One Big Shumate Family Thanksgiving!

Like I said in my last post, we went to Arizona for Thanksgiving with my family this year. It was so fun. We were all there... cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, grandparents, great-grandparents. There were about 40 of us in all for the big turkey dinner. We were able to spend a week down in Mesa, and here is the first installment of our trip!

We packed up and hit the road on Wednesday. We made it across the new bridge that goes over Hoover Dam. I thought it would be super scary to cross, being as it is so freaking high up above where you usually cross the Dam, but they built walls up just high enough you can't even tell that you are on the bridge. Thank you designers/engineers of that bridge! I really hate heights! 

Just outside of Kingman, I was trying to put a blanket in the window for the boys so the sun wouldn't be on them as they were watching a movie. Patrick was in charge of the window rolling up and down, and I was holding the blanket and told him to roll it up... so he did when I told him it was ready... and my finger was in the way and I didn't realize it. OUCH!!! That really hurts to get your finger rolled up into the window. I screamed and started crying and the next thing I know, Patrick has pulled off the road and is freaking out that he had just cut off my finger or something. He was sure that with how it was bleeding that we would need to turn around and go back to Kingman to the hospital to get stitches. Once I was able to stop myself from screaming and crying... the First Aid Instructor in me kicked in and we examined my smashed bleeding finger and found that the cut wasn't at all in need of stitches (it wasn't deep at all) so we just took some ice from Patrick's drink he had just finished and wrapped it in some napkins and put in on my finger until we got the the next town and stopped for Band-Aids and some Neosporin. All was well,  my finger was just smashed a bit and pretty sore for a few days, but nothing too bad. 

We got to Mesa and enjoyed our traditional Family Lasagna dinner that we have the night before Thanksgiving. After dinner some of my cousins started talking about food challenges, and soon money was thrown down on the table, and my 17 year old nephew had accepted the challenge to eat 1 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts in 2 minutes and then KEEP them down for an additional 15 minutes after that. It was a valiant effort on his part!! He actually came really close! It was so funny to watch him. We still let him have the money for his "mission fund".

Thanksgiving Day was just a bunch of hanging out and catching up with family that we haven't seen in forever. It was fun, and the boys had a blast playing with all their cousins they had there. I hardly saw them at all that day! They had fun playing outside, watching movies, and playing on my sister in laws iPad. Super yummy food was consumed in mass quantities, pies were devoured later in the evening, and it was an all around great day with my family!

Me and my sister

I just thought this was freaking hilarious!! This is one of our 2 or 3 turkey's cooking on the front porch. How redneck is that!?!? So funny!! It was a dang tasty turkey though! 

The boys and 2 of their cousins playing on the iPad that my Sister-in-law brought. It was a big hit. Bradyen now thinks he needs one. I'm pretty sure that won't happen... Daddy gets one first out of any of us!

My sister brought these funny hats so I of course had to get a picture of the boys in them. How festive!

My little niece Bailey was DYING to hold her Baby Landon all day. Landon wasn't having any of that, so we finally had Bailey sit on my lap, and Landon on hers, then all was good. She is a dang cute little girl... always wanting to hug and kiss her Baby Landon!

Then late on Thursday night, the Black Friday adventures began!! My nice Sister-in-Law came and stayed in our hotel room with the boys so Patrick and I could go out shopping all night. We first went to Toys-R-Us, and the line was wrapped around the building 2 times, and wove through the parking lot. We were in line at about the halfway point of the 2nd line around the store, and we got there at 8:30 pm (it opened at 10pm). We started to wonder if the few things we wanted on sale was going to be worth all the waiting and the craziness that we were sure to encounter. Being the smart man Patrick is, he got on his phone, got on toysrus.com and found that the things we wanted the most were already on sale on their webpage and he ordered them (most even with free shipping) right there on his phone as we stood in line. It was awesome!! Gotta love technology! So we left there just before they opened at 10 and headed over to Wal-Mart where we ended up spending the rest of the night. Seriously! We were there from about 10 pm to just after 5am. It was crazy! Most of the things we wanted to buy went on sale at their midnight sale, but a few items didn't go on sale until 5 am. And we had to stand in line for them from midnight on... with a ticket verifying that we were getting what we were in line for... and one of us had to stay in line the WHOLE time. So one of us stood in that dang line all. night. long.  We had gotten all our items that we could, and just took shifts standing in the line. It was a long night, and we totally paid for it the next day because we were so tired, but we got the boys almost all their christmas presents and all of Brayden's birthday presents during our night of shopping. There was just 2 things that we couldn't find... and we saved a bunch of money... which was really a good thing this year!  :) We got back to our hotel room and got about an hour of sleep before the boys woke up and we were going again for the day. 

It was a fun holiday. We were surrounded by so many that we love and we really had so much to be thankful for that day!