November, part 3

The vacation:

Throughout the move,
knowing that we were going to be headed to California, Kent's parents' house, and the cabin
was the light at the end of our tunnel.
To know that once it was over we were going to have two weeks of peace and relaxing and being taken care of really helped us get through it all.

Our first few days the kids were still kind of a wreck emotionally--
but things got better and we had such a fantastic time!

We spent a weekend at the cabin, played with cousins, visited the taco truck as often as possible, decorated for Christmas, and loved just being together with Grammer and Papa and all our cousins, brothers, and sister-in-laws.

Sam and Heidi hosted a beautiful and delicious Thanksgiving dinner!

Kent and I even got to go on a date one night while we were up at the cabin--we sat right next to the fireplace and it was so cozy!

The first Sunday there we stayed at the cabin, just our little family,
and it was the most relaxing, peaceful Sunday we've had in months. 
It was just what we needed to heal a little bit from the craziness of the move.

I got to go on a little girls' getaway to the cabin the following weekend.
Teresa had dressed up the cabin for Christmas, and it was so sweet and magical, I wanted to stay forever!

We wanted to get a picture of all the cousins together on our last night there, 

we should have thought of it earlier, before Mason and Jessica left with sweet little Alene and Ayden.

The kids were so so sad when we had to leave--the two weeks we had just flew by.