Pate's Full Circle: Thanksgiving

It's beginning to look a lot like....Thanksgiving? Well it is here at the Pate Household, because I am updating the blog with outdated pictures! Last year at this time, I was getting ready to pop, which meant no travel for the holidays. Even though we had the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with great friends, we still felt a little hole in our hearts at not being with family. I obviously have a big family, so having lots of cousins running around and aunts and uncles everywhere was commonplace growing up. I still have such fond memories of that day, and it is important to me that Liam gets to have some of the same experiences as he grows up.

I have been super busy with my new job and our evenings are often spent trying to catch up on all the things I used to do during the day when I stayed at home. So it was great to have 5 days in a row of family time. We climbed in the car and headed to Kansas early on Wednesday morning. The car trip was....fine. Although we stopped 4 times before we even hit the Texas-Oklahoma border. Did I mention that we are only like 2.5 hours from the border? Any way, we got to Kansas without much fanfare and the fun started. Eric's parents were already there when we arrived so we had plenty of help getting settled in.

I won't bore you with the details of the week, but it was lots of fun! We had like 9 pies (for 10 people) and had an nontraditional but yummy Thanksgiving Day feast of green chile cheese burgers and baked sweet potatoes. And of course, more pie than you can shake a stick at. Grandma even made one of the apple pies with all three grandchildren.The day before Thanksgiving was incredibly beautiful and we had lots of time to play outside. But soon a cold front set in and we were glad that we had taken advantage of the glorious weather.

The kids all play together so well, and they all adore each other. It was so much fun to see Ansley starting to join in on all the fun of playing with her cousins! On Saturday morning we packed up and headed back to Dallas. While it is always hard to leave family, there is something so nice about coming home. We spent that weekend decorating in preparation for Christmas and Ansley's first birthday. It was a great week filled with lots of laughs, wine and pie!

Making gingerbread houses

Liam was often reminded that he could not eat his house, but the evidence was all over his face.

Proudly showing off their decorating skills.

Another meeting of the Mutual Admiration Society.

Proud grandparents

Taking advantage of the beautiful weather.

Ryan and Jo are in the process of putting a swimming pool in their backyard, which meant BIG DIRT HILL! What could be more fun for kids...and Uncle Eric, sitting in his dirt chair.