Our Texas Thanksgiving

To celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we traveled down to Texas to visit some friends who moved down south this summer. We drove down with Brad and HanNah after the guys got off work on Wednesday and drove until the wee hours of the morning. 

We finally entered TX around 1am. 

We ate our Thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel. Eating out on Thanksgiving was a first for me. It wasn't bad, but I'd much prefer to eat home cooked turkey next year {as long as I'm not the one cooking it!}. But most importantly, it was fun to be with our friends and what a treat that no one had to cook or clean up!

We skipped Black Friday shopping this year and visited some places around Fort Worth instead. We had breakfast at some cool pancake place. Delicious! And then we headed over to the stock yards {where the real cowboys come out to play}.

Jackson enjoyed looking at the long-horn steers, but he wasn't so thrilled about me taking a step back to take his picture.

Jackson was so thrilled to be hanging out with his BFF, Carter. He was attached to him practically the entire weekend.

Texas is clearly the Dr. Pepper mecca {and we've even been to the Dr. Pepper museum in Waco}. Derek has had the jelly beans before, but Dr. Pepper jerky-- GAG!

I love me some boys in cowboy hats!!!!

And check out our cute little cowgirl! She's waving for the camera.

We went to this awesome ice cream place. You pick out a flavor of ice cream and two cookies and they smash it together to make your custom ice cream sandwich! Ah.may.zing.

We don't have many {or any pictures} from Friday afternoon on-- mainly because, well, sickness invaded our living space. We had nine people in a cozy two bedroom apartment, three who got sick at exactly the same moment. It was way weird. Lots of vomit. All night long. Lots of sleeping and recovering filled the following days. Thankfully, our family dodged that bullet. I did get the naseau bug on Saturday night, but fortunately, I was able to hold down my meal, but I was thought I was dying for a couple of hours for sure. 

And then, Derek and I were stuck with a little baby that WOULD NOT SLEEP! Oh my goodness. We had to drive Belle around at every moment we needed her to nap-- morning, afternoon, and bedtime! She had a high fever and was so cranky. She hardly ate anything and my word was she difficult! Did I mention how much time we spent in the car just to get her to sleep? We drove all the way to Texas so we could drive around and sit in the McDonalds parking lot so we could use their wi-fi because some little cranky-pants would wake up the moment the car engine went off. She has already been told that all the gas money we spent getting her to sleep will be deducted from her college fund.

It's really kind of comical to look back upon. Pathetic really. We were so careful to plan to make sure that our Texas trip wouldn't turn into a disaster {after our last trip ended up costing nearly $1,000 more than planned} and this bug just came and invaded our plan. I can't help but chuckle at how the whole thing panned out. But, we wouldn't have traded our visit for anything. I really miss Brooke {and Trey and Carter too} and it was just super great to hang out with her again. 

I'm sure we'll go visit again, but Derek has already made it clear that the kids will be kenneled the next time we venture out of our city. Yes, kenneled-- his words.