What's Buzzing with the Brasfields: Happy Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving holiday was a whirlwind of travel again! Memphis - to Jackson - to Clarksville - to Louisville - back to Clarksville - and home to Memphis! Almost 800 miles in a 72 hour period. Crazy! It was too much to be honest...maybe a change is in store for us next year?? It is so fun to see everyone, but it is hard on our family...especially this year for me being 30 weeks pregnant.

Anyway, we started on Wednesday night in Jackson with our traditional Italian pre-Thanksgiving meal with Russ's family. We were missing a few folks this year, but was fun to see how much all the little cousins changed since last year. Tyler loved playing with everyone and had so much fun that he didn't any dinner! This apparently started a trend that we would see all weekend...he did not get the memo that Thanksgiving is when you OVER eat. By the time I broke out the camera, we had already changed Tyler into his PJs for the ride home to Clarksville. Tyler watched a combo of the Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving special and Thomas in the car and slept. We made it home to Clarksville around 11p.

The cousins! Lily is excited that Caroline's arrival
will give her a girl cousin to play with next year!

Brothers!

Nana and Tyler playing outside in the leaves!

Thanksgiving morning we got up early and heading to Louisville for Thanksgiving with my Mom's side of the family. Thanksgiving is really the only time I see my Louisville family and we look forward to it every year. There were probably 50+ of us that came this year and we celebrated 2 new additions, including my cousin Jennifer's brand new 6 week old son, John Franklin, pictured below! Another cousin is pregnant with a little girl and due around the same time as me, so there will be even more fun next year. Tyler did pretty well considering all the people. He didn't eat anything really all day but he did take a good 2+ hour nap that we did have to eventually wake him from.

Gran Margi, Aunt Pauline, Aunt Amy and
Mama Jennifer with John Franklin.

The proud Gran held her first grand baby
exclusively almost the entire day!

Daddy let Tyler play with this train...
even though it was a UK set!

A handful of the cousins who were willing to take a picture!
Isabelle, Kate, Molly
Tyler
Cooper and Jack

We usually make our trip to Louisville a day trip, so we headed back to Clarksville Thanksgiving night. On our drive back, a huge deer ran out onto the interstate and hit our car going about 70 mph! Luckily, Russ was driving and saw it coming so he managed to swerve. Instead of hitting us head on (and probably injuring us or worse), it hit the side of my Pilot and no one was hurt. I don't know how Russ managed to hang onto the car (because all I saw was a giant flash of antlers), but I am so thankful he did! We got to the side of the road and, even though there was a lot of damage, our car was still drive-able so we headed the rest of the way home. Tyler was pretty much un-phased by the whole thing and all he said was "uh-oh" after the noise of the crash and then screamed "GO-GO" repeatedly until the car started moving again. Ha! I do think that all the activity excited him so much that he did not sleep ANY on the drive home and we did not get home until 11p! Needless to say, he was still sleeping at 10a the next morning when we finally decided to wake him up. Dealing with insurance to get my car fixed will be oh-so fun.

Friday and Saturday were spent in Clarksville. Mom and I did a lot of our Christmas shopping online, which has become our Black Friday tradition. We also made an entire Thanksgiving meal again on Friday and had a late lunch with lots of leftovers. I think I overdid it in the kitchen helping just a bit because this week, I have been paying for it in back pain. Tyler finally broke his no-eating streak on Saturday morning when he ate his entire breakfast AND Granna's (as you will see in some of the pictures below). I think part of the appeal was getting to eat in Granna's lap with a big fork! But, really, who doesn't love cheesy eggs and bacon?!?!