our thanksgiving break started tuesday night at about 12:30 am, when we started driving. no, we're not crazy--or maybe we are. i needed to be in wichita on wednesday by 4:00 pm for a doctor's appointment. justin decided that leaving at 4 am and it taking 11 hours to get there didn't give us much leeway, so we drove through the night. (or, justin drove through the night. i started driving when the sun started to come up.) it worked pretty well and we didn't have to deal with traffic, so we may try this again for christmas.
we got in on wednesday about 11:30 am. we just sort of rested and recovered from the drive in the afternoon. i did bake my sugar cookies. that night we went over to adam and abbe's for dinner and got to see dakota and creyton. justin had never met creyton, so he was excited to see him for the first time. dakota was more concerned that riley wasn't with us, than he was excited to see us. justin got to hang out with matt wednesday night too.
thursday morning i started decorating cookies while mom finished up cooking. we ate lunch at noon with everyone. fifteen i think in all, not counting the three little guys. we had a fun time and it was fun to get together with everyone. nate loved riley, but it took dakota a little while to get used to her. he would ask her if she wanted to play hide and seek, then run into another room to "hide" and then call for her. once she figured out who dakota was, when we asked her where he was, she would go run to find him. they both loved it. according to him riley is "the best dog in the whole world."
friday adam and abbe and crew and aaron came over for potato soup lunch. they stayed around until nap time when they
needed to head back home. mom and i did a little shopping friday afternoon after the crowds had somewhat died down. then around 4:30 we headed up to manhattan. we had another wonderful thanksgiving dinner with terri, jesse, josh, kylea, kit and joann. after dinner, us "kids" ran to target to look around and jesse did some shopping. we ran into sandie anderson and it was fun to catch up with her for a while. as we were talking, we mentioned that justin was going to be on a christmas special with mandisa and george huff on saturday night on the gospel music channel, but we didn't know anyone who actually got that channel so we didn't know if we would be able to see it. well, turns out her daughter, dee, has that channel! dee was able to record it and give a copy to justin. thanks dee!!
saturday we got up and drove out to overbrook to justin's aunt's house so we could see his dad's side of the family. linda cooked us a great lunch and then we had to go out and fire up the 4 wheelers. noah, justin's 9-year-old cousin, has his own now. as the boys were getting them all set, i was chasing riley around the yard. i stepped in a hole and twisted my ankle pretty good. it was nice a swollen for about a week and a half, but it's all good now. i know you were worried. :) it was good to see all the ostranders-i hadn't since last christmas! we headed back to manhattan that evening and got to see ben and kristin before dinner at old chicago-yum! i've been missing that in nashville. justin and jesse went and saw the mist. my kind of movie! oh wait...not so much. i decided to hang out with my friend, anne, instead. great choice! we spent a good 2+ hours catching up. i'm excited to see her again at christmas.
sunday we got up fairly early and headed out. we stopped in topeka to get breakfast with kit and joann (justin's grandparents-love them!). then we got on our way. three things contributed to our ridiculously long drive home. 1-the mizzou fans heading home after the game. 2-the chief's game traffic. 3-general holiday craziness. we were stopped on the highway more than once. not a fun drive! plus it was rainy most of the way. we had a great trip, if not a short one. we'll be back at christmas!!
well, we made it to wichita on saturday morning despite the snow. justin drove from about 12:45 am to 6:30 am. I took over just after st. louis. i drove through kc and then it started to rain. the rain started to freeze, and then it started to sleet. once we got to just outside emporia, it started to sleet and snow. i got a little nervous driving 
after that, with all the trucks flying by and the highway getting slick. i woke justin up and made him start driving. it seemed to take forever to get to wichita from emporia. there was construction on the highway, plus all the weather. thank god at the last minute we decided to take my pathfinder instead of justin's little honda. the 4 wheel drive was so great! riley had never really seen snow, so she had a blast playing in 
mom and dad's back yard. once she realized what adam and dad were doing when they shoveled the drive way, she had fun "playing" with them while they worked. she kept getting in their way and adam would throw snow on top of her and she thought it was the best time ever. the wind had blown so hard that in one area of the backyard, there was hardly any snow, but a few feet away, there was a 3 foot drift! it was fun to watch riley jump in and out of the drift. she almost went in the creek once, but we called her back just in time.
