Thanksgiving

In the last-minute rush to finish NaNoWriMo this year, I didn't have a lot of time to post about our lovely Thanksgiving trip. Part of that rush was due to the fact that I was so busy over the long weekend that I got behind on my word count- which was actually a positive thing. We left Salt Lake around 2:30pm the day before Thanksgiving with our friend Elisa, who we always bring back to Colorado with us. Sammy was a champion for the whole long drive- every time he got fussy, we'd give him his blanket and Snugaphant and ignore him for a few minutes, and he'd fall asleep. In fact, in Ryan's opinion, I was the worst passenger because ol' pregnant bladder insisted on stopping at every "major city" in Wyoming to use the bathroom. This was because
1)Sometimes it is 50 miles between restrooms along that portion of I-80 and,
2)There are no private places along the side of the road to stop because Wyoming has no trees.
Anyways.
We dropped Elisa off and made it into Deer Trail in only 9 hours, even with all my bathroom breaks. So there, Ryan.
On Thanksgiving morning we headed out to the ranch where Ryan's dad works and lives. The kids whose family owns the ranch wanted to play with Sammy, so we went out and threw rocks at a cattle guard for a good hour. Ryan took me and Sam out on his dad's 4-wheeler to see the ranch, which was terrifying and yet exciting. The rest of Ryan's family joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, which was wonderful. Russ and Richard cooked a big turkey, and we had all the traditional side dishes (plus a few surprises, like the lasagna Richard made in his Dutch oven). Sammy was having too much fun playing with his cousins to eat more than a few crackers.
We headed into Denver the next day to hang out at Ryan's brother Rusty's house. My cousin Steven and his wife Lauren drove up from the Springs to see us. We met them for dinner at an old favorite of ours, Mustard's Last Stand. It was so nice to see them, and nice for them to indulge us on our restaurant pick! The food must not have agreed with Sammy, however, because he barfed twice that night. Lucky for us, Rusty lives in a for real house with his own washing machine, which happened to be right off the room we slept in. That made it pretty easy to clean up after him.
Saturday morning we woke up all strung out from being up all night with His Royal Barfiness, and met Ryan's mom for breakfast. We ate lunch back at Rusty's, picked Elisa up at her mom's, and headed back to Utah! Ryan actually let me drive through Wyoming- it was really windy, which was a little nervewracking. But we made it home safely, somehow.
It was a really good Thanksgiving, with good food and good company. I think Sam will remember his cousins when he sees them next year, and he'll be really excited to play with them again. Next year we'll also have Baby Brudder in tow- we'll see who's the worst traveler then!