Thanksgiving road trip, parts III & IV

This post is outrageously late, but as my mother likes to say, "Better late than never." So... we continued our road trip by pulling into the Big D on Wednesday afternoon where Mom (Nana) and Glen (PawPaw) treated us to a really yummy Mexican dinner -- Lucy's favorite!

Part III

Aunt Michelle held down the fort while we waited for a table.


Getting Lucy to hold still for a proper picture these days is like trying to wrestle a deranged and highly pissed off monkey. At least Nana & I were having a good time!

We had cabin fever after our delicious feast on Thanksgiving (featuring Glenn's amazing smoked turkey and ham and my pumpkin cheesecake), so we headed to Breckinridge Park in Richardson to let off some steam. Uncle Allan volunteered to accompany Lucy down the "big slide" and realized that he'd have to take her through the tunnel to get there.

Lucy went plowing straight down the hill in order to get to the ducks. She spent the whole time we were there yelling, "Quack, quack!". Of course, this resulted in the ducks flying away as fast as they could... which led to a major pouting/crying session. :)

We headed back to the park the next day for PawPaw to take pictures for the Powers Christmas card -- this was by far my favorite outtake.

Part IV

On Saturday, we began our journey back home and made an overnight visit to see Honey in Natchitoches. Lucky for us the annual Christmas Festival was already in full effect! We strolled the river to see all the lights, enjoyed some meat pies and crawfish pies, and visited some of the truly unique downtown merchants.

This psychedelic Christmas tree was gigantic and really interesting to watch -- we hung out under its branches while watching Lucy doing the "toddler butt dump" dance to the local band performing on a nearby stage.

Honey made us a delicious breakfast the next morning while Andrew and Lucy checked out all her old picture albums. So precious to see her point to pictures of Andrew when he was little and exclaim, "baby!". She called all the pictures of PopPop "Daddy" -- to be fair, he did have brown hair and a constant beard at that age!

We finally made it home on Sunday afternoon (after a speeding ticket fiasco) and Ella was beyond thrilled to see us! We have so incredibly much to be thankful for this year -- most notably our large, extended family who loves us without fault and the promise of new life.

P.S. Did I mention that we're really, really looking forward to staying home for Christmas?