I realize that we're far closer to Christmas now than Thanksgiving, but I still feel the need to share about our Thanksgiving week. Bear with me.
We drove to Missouri on Wednesday - a nine-hour drive - and Lincoln did great. Our plan was to leave Tuesday night so that he would sleep for the majority of the time, but we ended up not being able to leave until Wednesday morning. But no worries, he still did great in the car for nine straight hours!
We arrived in Union and the first stop was to meet Grandma Jenny for the first time! They were both in love!
Lincoln also got to meet cousins Eden and Ella on Wednesday night too. They had so much fun playing together!
We stayed with Hal's sister, Debbie, and her family. So we got to her house and met more cousins: Emily, Amber and Trenton. I'm obviously horrible at documenting with pictures because I don't have many of their family. But let's just say that Lincoln wasn't lacking for attention!
Here's my little turkey on Thanksgiving Day! He did manage to get a bit of a cold or congestion on the drive down, so he was pretty stuffy/snotty/drooly for a few days. Neither of us got much good sleep. But he was still a happy little guy!
Uncle Hal and Trenton had to get their workout in before eating Thanksgiving dinner!
Since we're not with Hal's side of the family for Christmas, we usually exchange our gifts on Thanksgiving. Well........someone got a car for Christmas this year! I'm not sure I'm quite ready to see him behind the wheel yet, but he does look pretty darn cute driving his new car! (Lincoln is sitting with cousin Amber in the picture. She's nine and did not want to be out of Lincoln's sight all weekend - such a sweetheart!)
Lincoln loved listening to Great Grandma Ann talk. She's doing great for 95!
Trenton was SO EXCITED to finally have a boy cousin. He's been outnumbered by all the girls for too long!
Hal's sister, Ellen.
On Saturday, we had lunch with (most) of the entire family. It was so great to all be together! This was the first time I had met Hal's brother, Bo, and our first time meeting his wife, Amy. They just had a little girl, Oliva, who is three months old.
In the front row of the picture, it's Hal's grandparents, who are both in their upper 90s, Amber and Emily, Ella and Eden, Lincoln, Oliva, and Trenton, and then Hal's mom, Jenny.
In the back row is Jenny's first husband and Debbie's dad, Willard, then Hal, me, Debbie (Debbie's husband, Bill, had to work that day!), Don and Ellen, and Bo and Amy.
There were so many of us, we had to get two big tables at Cracker Barrell. Lincoln looked like such a big boy sitting up at the table!
On Sunday, Hal and I (& Lincoln) went to the chapel in Beaufort. It's a small meeting out at Rick Babb's blueberry farm. It was a nice meeting. That's where Hal went to church after he got saved through the Sardina family, so it was nice for him to go back and fun for me to go for the first time.
After church we drove by the house that Hal grew up in. He said it's pretty run down since they lived there.
And we of course had to drive through the high school and check out the new football field and baseball fields. Oh, the memories!
It was so much fun to be able to spend time with Hal's family and for them to get to meet Lincoln. We're hoping to be able to get down there more than once a year now that we have Lincoln so he can grow up with his cousins on that side of the family as well. But we all had a great week together and can't wait to see them all again hopefully soon!