Thanksgiving in Virginia

Tickets to fly to Kentucky for Thanksgiving this year were once again WAY too expensive, so we decided we would tackle the "short" 9.5 hour drive to Chuck's sister Shawn's beautiful and cozy house in Virginia. (Ever since our cross country road trip we feel that 9.5 hours in a car is a breeze .) So Tuesday evening, after I got off work and he got out of class, we started the drive. Looking back, trying to leave Boston at 5:15 pm on the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week was probably not the smartest plan, but oh well. Sometimes you learn things the hard way.

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. :)

My parents and sisters kept me updated throughout the day on their Thanksgiving in Louisville.  They spent the morning with my tiny little Grandma deWitt.

 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.

Road Trip: Days 3 & 4

Day 3

We drove from Rapid City, SD to Rochester, MN.  The drive started again right around 8 am and finished around 7:30 pm. This was technically the shortest distance drive of our trip but we took an extended detour into the Badlands National Park. We ended the evening in Rochester where we met up with my best friend, Lauren and her fiancé, Brenden for dinner, toured downtown Rochester a bit, had drinks on a rooftop bar, and stayed up late watching old videos on Chuckie's laptop from when Lauren visited Boston last year.

We took about 500 pictures in the Badlands so I will only share a few of our favorites. We could have spent an entire day there but because of time, we only spent 1.5-2 hours.

 

 

My "art shots."

 

 

 

After dinner on an outside patio in front of a really cool Barnes & Noble. :)

Me and Lauren on the rooftop deck where we had drinks! Our hotel is in the background.

 The Mayo Clinic at night.

The Mayo Clinic in the morning. At the bottom of those stairs, there is a person playing piano. It sets a very calm and soothing atmosphere in there.

The hospital building where Lauren works!

Day 4

We drove from Rochester, MN to Louisville, KY! The drive that day began a little before 9 and ended by 8 pm. Lauren gave us a quick tour of the Mayo Clinic where she works and we had breakfast together before hitting the road. The drive that day was not very exciting and a little stressful. We were happy to be out of the car once we got to Kentucky, knowing we didn't have to drive a long distance again for another 8 days.

 

 

 The only cool picture I got from Day 4 of driving:

A rainbow as we drove into Louisville!

 Yay!

Like I said, Day 4 wasn't the best so there weren't a lot of stops or pictures. Most of the day consisted of traffic, construction, and trying not to wreck due to crazy Illinois and Indiana drivers. It was a long day. So I will leave you with one more picture from the Badlands from Day 3.

Road Trip: Days 1 & 2

Day 1

We drove from Seattle, WA to Bozeman, MT. Our drive started around 8 am and ended around 6:30 pm. Between Washington and Montana, we passed through the skinny part of Idaho but didn't stop anywhere. The drive all day was scenic and beautiful and once in Bozeman, we got to meet up with a friend from Louisville, Sara, who has lived in Bozeman for several years now. We had a great dinner at one of Sara's favorite restaurants and spent the rest of the night hanging out in her apartment with her and her boyfriend until we crashed.

Our dinner spot in Bozeman.

Sara works for MSU and lives right down the road!

Day 2

We drove from Bozeman, MT to Keystone, SD. Our drive started again right around 8 am and ended around 6 again. We were supposed to get into Keystone earlier but we took a couple of small side trips along the way so it extended our time on the road. When we finally got to Keystone, we visited Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse and then finally ate dinner at 9:30 pm at one of the only places we could find that was still open that late on a Sunday night- Texas Roadhouse, one of our favorites. We stayed in a hotel that night in Rapid City.

We saw signs for the Battle of Little Bighorn battlefield, AKA Custer's Last Stand, and read that it was only a few minutes off of I-90 so we decided to stop and see it.

The memorial for all of the US Soldiers who died in battle.

 

The memorial for the Native Americans who died in the battle.

Soon after the site of the Little Bighorn battle we crossed into Wyoming. We stopped in a small town at Jimmy John's for lunch.

Mt. Rushmore! This is one place I've always really wanted to visit. Being there and seeing it in person was so surreal! We just stood and stared at it for so long.

 

Just about a 20 minute drive from Mt. Rushmore is the Crazy Horse memorial.

It's MASSIVE.  To give you an idea of how large this monument is, the 4 faces of Mt. Rushmore would fit inside Crazy Horse's face.

Crazy Horse is nowhere near finished- this white statue is what the finished product is supposed to look like. The people working on the monument do not want to accept money from the US government to work on it so they are slowly working on it over time with the money they get from visitors and donations.

 

 

Unfortunately I don't think we'll see it finished in our lifetime. 

Days 1 & 2 reminded us that we should have paid more attention during US History class in high school. It was fun to refresh on some of our country's history and I still can't believe we saw Mt. Rushmore!