We drove through the night to get to Virginia. It rained the ENTIRE drive, except for maybe 20 total minutes. The traffic was terrible. It took us 2.5 hours just to get 56 miles outside of Boston. So around 5:15 Wednesday morning, yes 12 whole hours later, we rolled into Virginia Beach. Chuck said it was just like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, except just Automobiles.
Wednesday was a nice relaxing day which was needed after only about 3-4 hours of sleep. All of the women of the house took the younger girls to the movie theater to see the new Disney princess movie, Frozen, which everyone loved, including the adults.
The rest of the day we spent doing grocery runs, prepping food for the next day, eating a yummy ham dinner, baking pumpkin bread and pumpkin pies, listening to Chuckie play guitar while the girls took turns singing along, and watching movies.
Thanksgiving Day we were all up early. We had breakfast, watched the Macy's Parade in our pajamas, colored turkeys and other things on some coloring sheets Shawn had for everyone, learned the Cups song, did crafts, wore festive hats, and colored some more. Oh and I got to pump the turkey full of buttery goodness before it got cooked. :)
Later in the day when they were at my other Grandma's house, we got to skype with them and all of my cousins and aunts and uncles! We love FaceTime, especially on holidays.
Finally it was time to eat dinner. I made sure I didn't stop eating until I was miserable, as that's my personal Thanksgiving tradition.
That night we cleaned up, watched the Lady Gaga and the Muppets special (more on that in my next post) and watched the David Blaine magic special.
Friday, me and all the guys (all THREE of them...they are sadly outnumbered by the ladies) went to the outlet malls in Williamsburg. It was insanely busy, as one might assume it would be on Black Friday, but fun. Chuck and I walked around and looked for deals but didn't end up buying anything. After the outlet mall, we headed to Busch Gardens to meet up with the van full of girls. Busch Gardens decorates the entire park for Christmas, sells hot chocolate and wassail at every vendor, has carolers walking around singing, and they put on several shows in all parts of the park. Most of the big rides are closed (I guess because it's cold) but a lot of the kiddie rides are open, which is what we probably would have been doing anyways. Also, year round, the park is divided up into countries, so it sounded really funny throughout the day when we'd talk about where to go next and say "Well we're in England, so let's take the train over to Italy and then we'll walk to Germany from there."
We rode some rides with the girls, saw two shows with singing and dancing, drank so much hot chocolate we all felt sick to our stomachs from it, and looked at pretty Christmas lights and decorations.
This next picture makes it look like Audrey was taken on this ride against her will but I promise she wanted to go and at the end of the ride she was thrilled and wanted to do it again.
On Saturday, everyone was pretty exhausted from our day in the cold, so we made that our "chill at home day" and did just that. The girls did some more crafts, we ate more, the guys watched football, I helped the ladies shop for some Christmas gifts, we taught everyone Telepictionary, and then we watched Spiderman.
Sunday we left Virginia at 6:30am, thinking we'd get home by 4 or 4:30 that day. Of course, we didn't get home until almost 7:30.
The driving portion of the trip was awful, but it was all worth it to get to be with some family for Thanksgiving.
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