Back home again...ahhh!

We have been back (for almost a week) from our trip home for Thanksgiving. The whole family drove to Glen Ellyn on Saturday (11/22) -- even though Frank turned right around that night and flew back to Omaha... I guess that's a price we had to pay for going to Hawaii in October - no more vacation days for Frank! So, while Frank was back here working and tiling the upstairs bathrooms (no joke! that guy is motivated... and the tile looks amazing, by the way -- a big upgrade from the linoleum that was there, for sure!), the kids and I were "playing" in Illinois. The time in Glen Ellyn consisted of a lot of cousin time, a lot of Grandma and Papa time, a shopping trip with just me and Meredith (super fun!) and even a trip to the newly opened Too Toots restaurant in town -- a whole train themed restaurant. Nathan was in train heaven - the most well behaved he's ever been in a restaurant since Cheeseburger in Paradise. There was no live music, but trains might be even better when you're a 2 year old boy!

We also got to spend a couple of nights at the Hilts house - two nights of fun "sleeovers" for the cousins - complete with videos and popcorn - who could ask for more? We also had the annual "cousin" photo taken - they all did great - smiles all around (and from 4 kids...that's no small feat!). We did the traditional "double" thanksgiving on Thursday -- noon meal with the Dykstras in Michigan and afternoon meal with the Williams' in Cary. (This was the official "switch-over" point in the week - packed our bags and stayed in Cary for the rest of the weekend...)

The time in Cary also was very realxing - lots of visiting, lots of eating and even more shopping. Frank and I even had a date while we were there (awesome!) and we spent the evening eating (of course...Houlihan's - a sentimental favorite of ours...) and yes, more shopping. It was after this evening that Frank looked at the back of the car and decided we had better not make any more purchases in illinois or we would never be able to haul it all back to nebraska -- needless to say, we made a good dent in the holiday shopping, which is a good feeling!

It was great to be "home" for longer than just a weekend.... (Our families might say otherwise!) I am already looking forward to Christmas time -- we'll do it all again, and Frank can be there the whole week! Well, hopefully without driving through the hours of snow in both directions to and from Chicago -- seriously - I-80 in the snow is no fun at all!

I am always most homesick right after we get home...good thing there's this whole Christmas thing to keep me busy for the next few weeks -- we don't even have our decorations up yet - we are slacking! We are using the excuse that we came home to Ellie coming down with strep throat and the rest of us just feeling generally crappy -- we'll get the tree up this weekend, hopefully!