Long Drive Home!

So my whole life I have spent EVERY single holiday at my Grammy & Papa's house. . .well this year things changed. I have been blessed to have ALL my outside family all within 200 miles of each other. Which is awesome because i have never had to do a lot of traveling and especially for holidays. When I married Brandon I had to begin "sharing" holidays with his family also. Which do not get me wrong but this is something new and hard for me. We did get the opportunity thanks to both of us having flexible jobs and the help of his mother, to take a trip to see his brother Jeff and family. So the Friday before Thanksgiving we packed up my Saturn Outlook and hit the road to North Carolina with Brandon, Me, Camdon, Hunter, Dannikka & Juanita.

All started out smooth. . .until we were in the car for 10 hours. . .then i think we were ALL ready to be there. It was so great to sit with Brandon and learn some new things from him about his time in the Marines to the drives he took to go get Hunter from NC. I learned that there are rest stops usually 10 miles before/after the state line. . .and it was neat to see all the different ones. First one in Lousiana!

It did take us 22 hours to make it to Jacksonville, NC around 10am on Saturday morning. . .but well worth it. We saw some amazing scenery of beautiful trees, lots of hills, and just a different view of the world. I got lots of time to catch up with Sherri and just gossip. Brandon enjoyed hanging out with his brother and even sat in the sauna at the gym for some bonding time LOL The cousins, I think, had the best time just running around together. Madison is 10, and her & Hunter played LOTS of video games, but they enjoyed that. Kevin is 4, and him & Dannikka ran all over the house together playing. And Camdon just followed all of them and annoyed as much as he could.

We were introduced to these pokey bouncy balls that were all over the Bartek house. Come to find out these are from CC's pizza, so we took the kids there one night to escape from having to cook.

A huge thanks goes out to Aunt Sherri. . .because "some how" we forgot to pack these bouncy balls from CC's (darn). . .well Aunt Sherri didnt want Camdon to be without (Although these balls broke two ornaments off her tree, thanks to C). . .she managed to send them in the mail back to us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We enjoyed a DELICIOUS Thanksgiving dinner with Ham, Turkey, and Dressing. . .and thank goodness Juanita brought all her groceries with her for dressing because they were not on sale in NC. . .LOL love it! The kids enjoyed some 4-wheeling in the backyard, we played soccer and baseball. It was such a great trip and so nice to hang out with everything. The kids also exchaneged their Christmas gifts:

AND THEN IT WAS A LONG DRIVE HOME!!!!!!!