Thanksgiving Recap

So, who's sick of seeing "Backyard Balloons" every time you visit my page??? I am! I really don't feel like writing anything, but I sure am sick of those hot air balloon pictures. So how 'bout some new ones.
I'm back from a 2 week trip to Shelton for Thanksgiving. I have never been so busy or crammed in so much in just a couple weeks. Usually visiting my family mostly entails "hanging out" and maybe an outing here and there. Well we did a lot more than that this time.
Let me recap....
Rand, the boys, and I flew in on Monday (the 19th) around noon. We made a stop in Lacy to see Rachel and Jayden. We hung out there for a couple hours and Jayden wanted nothing to do with me. :( That is one of the worst things about living far away. He just doesn't know me that well, even though we talk on the phone every day. I should have gone into the living room and called him on my cell phone. Of course, he warms up to me like 2 days before we left....
Anyway, after Rachel's we of course, stopped by the FH (funeral home....or fun-home as we call it) to visit Aunt Nancy, Uncle Ron, and Curt. Finally, we landed at Nana and Papa's house for the night. Whoo. Long day of traveling.
As if we hadn't done enough traveling, the next day we decided to go to Vashon Island to our friend's art gallery. She had been hosting an art show for Willie's old boss, Alex and it was the last day for any of us to get to see it. So, my mom, Rachel, Jayden, Brendan, Wyatt, Rand and I all crammed into Rachel's Honda Pilot and headed off. We got right on the ferry and then headed to the gallery. It was freezing that day and we waited a bit for our friend Margie to come and unlock the gallery that was normally closed on Tuesdays. After checking out the cool, but really weird art we headed down the road to Margy's house to have hot dogs and a birthday cake for my mom. THEN, someone thought to ask when the next ferry was leaving. Come to find out it was leaving in 15 mins. Apparently, we were 17 mins. from the docks. We didn't make it. The next ferry was an hour and a half wait. Ugh! The 3 kids were done with the whole trip and so were the adults to be honest. We made the next ferry and finally got home....That was Tuesday.
The next day was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. My mom and dad both worked and so Rand and I decided to run the "day-before-thanksgiving-errands". We stopped by Lynch Creek to visit Nana and have some hot chocolate and then we did the grocery shopping and all that. That night we had a little birthday party for my mom with Rachel and Royal, who moved out to my parent's for the long weekend.
Thursday.....Thanksgiving. What to say about this......Thanksgiving was hard. Hard not to think about the obvious. We kept ourselves busy and distracted most of the day cooking and getting ready, but when it all stopped and we were sitting at the table.....well, I'm sure you can imagine. I've had friends who have had to go through this very thing and I always imagined what this kind of a holiday must have been like. I always imagined just sitting around and crying and not being able to do anything. It was a strange feeling to "do" Thanksgiving like we always do. There was lots of food, and people and laughing.....but along with that was the sitting and crying and just plain missing Willie. I guess I find it hard to have this horrible hole AND still be doing life at the same time. It's hard to balance it. It's hard to laugh and then turn around and cry and then laugh again. It's like good mixed with bad. I guess when I imagined it in my mind I could only imagine bad, but in reality there is still some good in there. Thanksgiving was good AND bad.
Onto Friday. You'd think we would take a break, but nnoooo. In the morning we blasted off early to Brewer's to get a Christmas tree. We rushed home trying to stick to Uncle Bubba's strict schedule and headed to Grayland beach to do some clam digging. We dug 105 clams! Rand, me, the kids...even Jayden, all participated. It was such a beautiful day at the beach, too! Then we blasted back and proceeded to clean, cook and eat them! My poor dad and Royal got ditched in the kitchen to finish shucking and cleaning clams long after we had cooked and eaten our fill. Sorry fellas!
I think Sunday we all collapsed for a while and then Rand flew out early Monday morning. I stuck around with the kids for another week, and believe me, it was just about as busy. We visited friends, watched the Christmas parade, etc. I won't continue with all the details. Here's some pictures of the trip!