Thanksgiving with the Richeys

For the first time since we were newly married we had Thanksgiving dinner with all of Kevin's family.  We haven't left home for thanksgiving since we have lived in California.  Kelli and Lance just bought a new home so they wanted to host it at their house. We packed quite a few families in for a few days and while there was some drama, we did have a lot of fun too. I don't know how soon we will be leaving home again for the holidays so I am glad we did it. It's hard to go to Utah in the winter, with trying to find a time to drive over Donner pass and just plain freezing to death!

 The kids have so much fun playing with their cousins. I love seeing them together. Annie doing one of her very favorite pastimes. She really loves playdough.

 Grammie had a bunch of activities for the kids to do, which was nice so they didn't spend too much time on devices.

 Russell loves his boy cousins so much. He is always trying to be with the big ones and squeeze on the little ones.

 Clara and Kyler were really cute sitting there together. They weren't really to the stage of playing together, but that will come soon I'm sure.

 We all had a really great time putting the meal together.  I am always in on the cooking action because that is one of my favorite things to do and most people don't like it, so I might as well do it. I was in charge of making the rolls, the turkey and 5 different kinds of pies, banana cream, chocolate cream, lemon cream, apple and pumpkin.  It sounds like a lot but I love it!

 The kids always have such a fun time with their cousins.  Here is the kids table as it was called. This is one of my fondest memories about holidays growing up, eating at a big fold up table that had been set up for the kids.

Janie was loving on baby Rosie.  She sure is a cute baby and it was fun having her around.

 The last day we were there we went and saw Moana. It was a lot of fun (we are big movie people after all)

The day we left it had snowed overnight over Donner and they were requiring chains.  We don't have any and we didn't want to buy any, so all day long while we were driving I was checking the internet to see if if they lifted the chain requirement. Around noon and when were almost to the Sierras they had lifted it, thank goodness. Unfortunately it meant there was a lot of backed up traffic so even though we had made great time up to that point it took forever to get through the mountians.  Like double the time, or 4 hours!  It was so crappy. By the time we pulled into town we were so ready to be home and when Annie recognized  where we were and said "yay we are home!  That trip was terrible!" We had also had a few bad patches of snow through Nevada so it was so nice to be back where it was nice and warm.  We had a really good time on our trip even if us California folk froze to death and had a crappy drive home.