"Thanksmas" Vacation I

On November 9th, we left our crossed off lists at home...

and boarded a plane bound for Wichita!

Once our early morning flight crew went through the safety briefing, Emily wanted to look at the booklet.  

Since she has never had any fear when flying, I was a little concerned that the pictures and the information shared might give her reason to worry.  Thankfully, she didn't let them bother her and she told me about the pictures she saw in there.  The ones with the "red circles and lines."  She told me that the pictures meant (l-r, top to bottom), "no temperatures (meaning thermometers), no fire, no music, no phones, no phones, no race cars."

Everett, who was sitting on our laps, really wanted to look out the windows...

except for a brief time before take off that he enjoyed the headrest TV...

and later when he shared Emily's DVD for a little while.

We had a layover in Denver that was stretched several hours due to bad weather in another location.  But, luckily we met a little boy who had packed his own carry on and was very willing to share.

There were lots of kind people actually, this was an unrelated man waiting for another flight who sat and played with the boys a little...

and this man waiting for our flight (and to share our row) who let the kids play on his iPad...

and phone!

(He was a prison warden who has a little 4 year old girl of his own. He is the one who told Emily about cutting out pictures and gluing them to a paper that she can then hand to Santa.)
Once we finally boarded our second flight, Everett was ready for his nap and did sleep a good portion of the trip.

And by about 4:00 in the afternoon, we were at our cousins house and it was "all hands on deck" for making a leaf pile!

That area was pretty puny though, so the girls soon moved over to a larger area with far more leaves!

There were leaves everywhere!

Enough for Cole...

and Cooper to be buried in.

Eventually, Everett even got in on the leaf action!

The kids were so happy to be with family...

and Emily followed Lauren around, trying to learn how to be a bright big girl like her!

Then Emily was able to make her own pizza...

for dinner that night.

The next morning, Everett tried on some of the boys' toys...

before deciding that the basketball court was more his thing.

Lauren, Cole, and Cooper all had basketball games that day and yellow and blue seemed to be the colors to wear!

The first game of the day, and the only one that Everett went to before nap, was Cooper's.

Emily was very interested, paid very close attention the whole time,

  and was a really great cheerleader.

Cooper played hard,

Everett just played,

and Emily cheered.