This year, we celebrated Thanksgiving in Nashville, TN with Aunt DD and Uncle Rudy, Max and Vivi, and Nana and Pop-pop. We had so much fun! DD worked out a deal with one of their neighbors for us to stay at their huge old house in East Nashville in exchange for looking after their Golden Retriever for the weekend. The house was very cool, in an old neighborhood similar to Lindley Park, just with bigger houses. There was plenty of room for us and the dog was very nice. Since the family has a young child, the girls posed no threat to him at all.
We spent as much time together as we could over the 4 days we were there. Thanksgiving dinner was amazing, of course. And the kids didn't complain a bit about the food!
Goofing around with cousins is always a blast.
We took walks to an amazing coffee shop not too far away and a very cool park/playground up the street.
The best, however, was going down to a park called Shelby Bottoms that runs along the Cumberland River that snakes its way through Nashville.
We went for a nice walk along the shore and around the park.
But the kids were thrilled to get back to the big play area that was near the parking lot.
Thanksgiving this year was looking to be a solo event, so we decided to surprise Nana and Pop-pop by driving down to Florida to spend it with them! On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we loaded up the car and brought the kids to their regular meetings of American Heritage Girls and Trail Life. They finished up around 8pm and we piled back in the Suburban and got on the road.
We had toyed with the idea of just showing up at their door unannounced, but the community in which they live is gated, so we knew we'd have to get through that somehow. Rather than take the chance that they might be out somewhere in the morning, we called Nana and Pop-pop as we were leaving to see how they were doing. When we were about to hang up we put them on speakerphone and had the kids shout, "We'll see you in the morning!!!" Nana's reaction was priceless. She may have uttered a word or two that I won't repeat here, but their excitement was evident. With that out of the way, we got on the highway and drove through the night, arriving at their place around 9am the next morning.
Their community is a 55-and-older community and everyone drives golf carts to get from house to house. This fascinated the kids to no end when they first heard about it and had been looking forward to learning to drive them, but more on that later.
Their neighborhood has a really cool natural area where you can take the carts through and see wildlife and various plants.
It's got a Jurassic Park vibe to it with all the Spanish moss and palm trees. We half expected to see a T-Rex wander past.
We saw tree frogs,
egrets,
a Sandhill Crane
and, while not a dinosaur, it really is an alligator. If you zoom in on the picture, you can just spot 5 or 6 small striped baby gators hanging out on the band to the right of the culvert.
Of all the plants, this one was the coolest. Yep. Wild coffee! I considered taking a cutting home with us for a personal supply,
but then I picked a cherry and saw the size of the beans... you'd have to have a LOT of plants to just make a cup of coffee. Oh well...
This is the lake that their house sits on. This is actually taken from the opposite end of the lake looking back toward their house, which is the yellow on in the middle of the picture. From their porch, it's maybe 10 steps down to the water, but you don't want to go swimming... thar be gators in that thar water. The day we left to come home, just after we left, a big gator managed to catch one of the egrets right on the shore by their house. Just a shame we missed it!
Of course, we couldn't pass up a trip to the beach, considering the Gulf is only a mile away.
Even though it was late November, the weather was warm enough to swim, though the water was a little chilly.
The kids loved the waves.
There had been a storm the previous evening and the surf was unexpectedly high. And by high, I mean like a normal day at the Outer Banks. My previous experiences in the Gulf of Mexico were that on a nice day, there was almost no surf at all, but maybe that was just where I went...
A very cool feature of the beach was what it was made of...
Shells! Tons and tons of shells! If you dug down below the very thin (less than an inch) layer of sand, you just found layer upon layer of tiny shells and pieces of shell.
This is literally just a picture taken of the beach up close. I didn't dig for it or pile any up.
The boys decided to make use of the shells to make a design in the sand. (Look in the background... That's a ton of shells!)
After a while, they made a shell heart in the sand above the high-tide line so it would stay until someone covered it up.
In between all these things, we did have Thanksgiving dinner. The community had a big potluck dinner in the clubhouse by the pool for everyone who didn't go to visit family for the holiday. Somehow I thought this would be a small-ish gathering of maybe 20 or 30 people, but boy was I wrong! There had to be close to 150 people in the clubhouse and a whole lot of food! We brought food with us from home to make sure we were prepared, but considering how much there was, we probably could have shown up empty-handed and left full.
Now, going back to the golf carts. Each of the older 3 kids got lessons from Pop-pop on how to drive. Emma wasn't really tall enough to reach the pedals and the steering wheel and Irene... Well. She's driven enough for the next few years... I did get a video of each of them driving, so enjoy!
This year, we got to have 3 Thanksgiving dinners in one week! First, we went to Nana and Pop-pop's for an early one before they went to New York to visit family up there. The kids had a blast when Pop-pop made paper airplanes for them and they got to throwing them from the loft over the living room. :) Sadly, we forgot the camera, so we don't have any pictures. :/
Later in the week, we rode down to Grandma and Grandpa's house to make Thanksgiving dinner for them. On Wednesday, we had a little surprise for the kids. They'd been dying to see Star Wars for a while, but we don't own the movies. (I'm still kind of a purist and have been waiting in vain for the day they release the originals in their old, unedited glory... I may have to give up on that.) However, Grandpa has all 6 movies, so we had a big marathon and watched Episodes 4, 5, and 6 on Wednesday followed by 1 and 2 on Thursday and then 3 on Friday. Of course, they loved them. :) Now they're dying to see Episode 7 when it comes out.
During a break in the movies, the kids did some decorating for the Thanksgiving table.
The kids decorated by making their traditional Thanksgiving chain of what they're thankful for. Then they made turkeys from pears, zucchini and carrots.
They were very cute. :) One slowly sagged as the sticks pressed further into the pear so it looked like it was pecking the ground.
We didn't let them watch movies the whole time they were there. We made them take advantage of the beautiful weather we had while we were there.
As always, a favorite pastime is to go on the roof of the workshop and throw sticks or whatever off. This time of year is great because there's an abundance of acorns.
We found a lot of them in various stages of sprouting.
Some of them had tiny feeder roots coming off the main sprout.
That didn't stop the boys from throwing them off, though. :)
Olivia did her best Pippi Longstocking impersonation, walking the peak of the roof. She recently read the book a few times.
She and Rebecca went with a big homeschooling group to see a performance of it at UNCG last week.
On the night of Thanksgiving, we went out to see the nearly full moon. The kids were surprised by how bright it was. They could even see their shadows like in Owl Moon.
The next day, the kids really wanted to ride horses, so Grandma took them all out for a turn on the horse.
While he was waiting for his turn, Ezra did his best Hulk impersonation with the quick-release cross-ties.
Finally, it was time to go on the horse.
They all had so much fun!
Later that afternoon, we packed up our things and headed out to the Great-Grandparents' house for our third Thanksgiving dinner of the week. The kids headed right out to the backyard where they love to play.
Ezra being the monkey that he is. :)
Of course, the best part for the kids was going on the zipline. We enhanced it this visit with a swing seat. We also taught the kids to help stop each other near the end so there were less close calls with the brick wall. :)
They just can't get enough of that! I'm sure I'll eventually give in and put one in our yard. :)
Here is Rebecca's G-dad with the kids. They adore him. We spent a couple days the week before Thanksgiving at their house. The little girls like to sit on G-ma's lap (when her pain would allow it) and watch cartoons.
We discovered a Pomegranate bush in the backyard of Rebecca's grandparent's house. Rebecca was super excited about this find! G-ma tells us that it was at her home growing up. Then they transplanted it to this house. Rebecca's dad remembers eating from it as a kid. The pomegranate seeds were much more tart than the ones found in the store but they were delicious! We froze a nice supply of seeds so we can enjoy them for a while. It would be nice to figure out if we could grow a bush for our home from a cutting. :)
