Getting Ready to Hit the Road

We are heading out to Nebraska tomorrow for Thanksgiving. We both have to work, but we are hoping to be on the road by 4pm.

I am so excited to go see everyone! We haven't been out since the wedding and that was almost 5 months ago!

We will see my family for Thanksgiving at 1pm and hang out before and after and then see them again on Saturday for my Grandpa's 80th Birthday. I don't know who all will be there on Thanksgiving, but I think the smallest group was about 30 people and it really did seem small! It can easily get up to close to 60 people, but I'd usually say it is around 45-50. I absolutely love it!

I remember the first time Dylan met most of my family was at Thanksgiving (the small year I believe) and he was a little overwhelmed. His entire family isn't 30 people even if you include the second cousins. He did great though and obviously by now he is comfortable (even if he may not always remember every one's name, in his defense there is a set of identical twins that I can't usually tell apart and I don't always remember all the 2nd cousins (children of my cousins, which I think is first cousins once removed or something technically, but we just call them second cousins)).

We will get to hang out with Dylan's family on Thanksgiving which is at his parents house at 5pm. This means we will have two meals, but the plus side is that since we will be gone during most of the day I won't have to help cook. That sounds terrible I know, but I used to just be a guest technically and now that we are married I would be more obliged to help. Since we will not be there though, that gives me at least one more holiday off of cooking/prep. That means dish duty, which is fine by me! Can't really mess that up unless you break something. (My turn will kind of come on Christmas since we are doing Christmas dinner at our house, but my mom likes to cook the meal and is planning on coming over and Dylan is the cook in our house, so I'll probably get out of that one a little bit too! I am a much better hostess than cook :) )

Then we will head out to do some Black Friday shopping. I am really glad it is starting at midnight since I can just stay up instead of getting a couple hours of sleep and then shopping. We mostly just have a couple video games and movies we want to grab, nothing too big.

We will see Dylan's friends before the Nebraska-Iowa game on Friday morning and then probably some more Friday night after they rest up from the game. We will have some down time during the day, so we are planning to go see the new Muppets movie since Dylan is very excited about it and I love Jason Siegel and Amy Adams.

Those are our major plans. I am looking forward to having some down time at the barn too. I want to try to get a "family portrait" of us and the puppies for our Christmas card. Plus I always love just chatting with Dylan's parents and hanging out.

Should be a great trip! I just cannot believe the holidays are upon us already! I love this time of year :)