Thanksgiving Weekend

What a weekend to be THANKFUL!

Tuesday night, after basketball practice, we drove through the night to Michigan. I know, we may be crazy to drive through the night, but we didn’t want to “waste” a day by driving during the day – especially on the busiest traveling day of the year – Wednesday. When we left, we called our parents and quickly learned that there was supposed to be lake effect snow storms from midnight on, so we thought that getting an early start definitely was a good choice!

The drive went extremely fast (especially for me since Dan drove the whole way and I was able to sleep a few hours), and by 5:30am, we hit St. Joseph. We made a pit stop at Dan’s parents to pick something up, ate some breakfast, and headed up to my parents. Everything went so smooth until we hit Van Buren County. The lake effect snow had begun and it was ugly. White outs, tense moments, and as Dan puts it, there wasn’t even one lane open. I took a short nap, woke up, and Dan told me to just go back to sleep because he knew I would start stressing. He was right! Though I didn’t necessarily sleep, keeping my eyes closed was the best choice. It was crazy and we were so thankful it was only an hour that we had to deal with that. Then, when I saw the national radar that morning, there was a good sized snow storm from Minneapolis to the top of Illinois – the exact route we would’ve driven through if we drove during the day on Wednesday. All that to say, it was a good choice to drive through the night!

Wednesday we spent the day shopping (getting a head start on Christmas shopping because even Wednesday had just as good of deals) and just hung out with family!

Addison, Emma, and Noelle – love loving on these girlies!

Emma and Dan – she always has such a love for him! AND…nice photo bomb Katie!

So we left Minnesota, with NO snow on the ground – in fact, we have only gotten maybe an inch or two the whole year so far. THEN we come to Michigan and this is what we deal with!

I have to say, it was beautiful!

Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving by starting it off in God’s house. What a great way to start the day! Being reminded of the things that we need to be truly thankful for, helps keep life in perspective. We then filled our bellies at my parent’s house with my dad’s side and at night, with my mom’s side. Seeing family again, meant so much to us!

Friday, my sisters, mom, and I went out shopping – and joined all the other crazies. In all honesty, it really wasn’t bad at all! We had done a good portion of our shopping on Wednesday, so that helped tremendously. We had a great time together! Dan was able to hang out with a good friend of his on Friday as well. Friday night we met Dan’s brother Tom and his wife for supper at Logan’s – good times! Living where we do now, we don’t have the options for places to eat like Grandville does, so it was nice to throw down a good burger from one of our favorite restaurants! After that, we headed to St. Joseph for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday morning Dan went on an “adventure” with his brother Mike as they went exploring around the local dunes. Put those two boys in the “wilderness” and they will be entertained for hours on end! Meanwhile, my sister-in-law and I went to Aldi, the local Parable Christian bookstore, and grabbed a snack and coffee at Panera for the morning. I so appreciate Aldi (we do not have one close to us in Minnesota – closest is in St. Cloud). Finding a bag of tortilla chips for $1.19 is just a steal of a deal, I think! Whenever I am back in Michigan, I always try to stock up on pantry essentials from Aldi! Stopping in at my former workplace (the bookstore) is always something I enjoy! I absolutely loved that job, but I do love what I do now too. It was so good to catch up with my sister-in-law! The rest of the day was spent with Dan’s family. It has been just like old times – living with Dan’s parents for 5 months, made us pretty comfortable there! I wish I would’ve remembered to take pictures of our niece and nephews on Dan’s side, but I forgot! Hanging out with them was so much fun again! They are growing up so fast!

It has been such a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend – it has gone by extremely fast, but we know in 3 short weeks, we will be heading right back out here to celebrate Christmas. Hard to believe Christmas is less than a month away!

Dan and I realize that we have strong family values – seeing family means the world to us! Family is just so close to our hearts – I think after all we’ve been through, we realize how meaningful and healing family is. They have helped us get through so much. We truly have so many things to be thankful for!