Feeling Thankful in Tennessee

We decided to fly to Knoxville and spend Thanksgiving with Brian's family. Luckily there is a direct flight from New Haven to Knoxville which makes traveling with Tate to TN super easy.

We drove down on Tuesday, grabbed Tate after classes and finally went to check out the Dive Bar- think scuba not dumpy,  for dinner. It's a popular spot for UNH families. That night we all stayed in a hotel in New Haven.

Before our flight on Wednesday , we popped over to Yale to finally visit the rare book & manuscript library, which was quite modern. Brian has been wanting to go, and even registered as a researcher!!

Next stop was the “new book” library-

Oh so beautiful !

The old card catalog drawers are now full of handwritten notes from students. I pulled out one that had a riddle, then had to go to another stack to find the answer.

This announcement was so exciting! Not.

Next we headed to  Tweed Airport, which is the smallest airport we've ever flown out of, besides one in Nepal!  Everyone said that it was the busiest day to fly in over ever, over a century, blah blah blah. Not here-

We arrived Wednesday night, Brian did some turkey prep and we watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

We were a tiny part of the Knoxville 5K Turkey Trot- it was a huge race with over 4000 runners!

Macy's expected finish time qualified her to run in the first grouping of elite runners. She could have killed me for registering her with her time!

Be proud kiddo. Run fast!

Macy ran solo, Brian and Tate ran mostly together, although Tate came in pretty close after Macy. And then Cathryn and I power walked together. 

Gill has finally passed the Thanksgiving meal torch to the kids.

Friday night we headed to the Downtown Knoxville Christmas tree lighting

Fireworks and fake snow!

The sweetest carolers & band players!

Oh yes I did have to try to help this snowman stand tall and find his jolly joy once again!

Sunday before our flight home we were able to go to church with the family and get a quick photo shoot with Nana Gill!

Had to laugh at the place Tate chose to put his shoes back on after going through airport security! It was like a flashback to toddler Tate!

We flew back easy peasy, dropped Tate off at his dorm just minutes from the airport and headed home! Counting our blessing during this trying season for our family. But as always, we have so much to be thankful for still. Especially the bonus holiday visit with Brian's home- we never thought that would happen this year!