Visiting Vicksburg for Thanksgiving

So we ventured to a new destination for Thanksgiving this year b/c Mark's mom has moved to a new retirement home (more like a nursing home). She lives in a very nice place in Tallulah, but since there are essentially no places to stay in Tallulah, we stayed across the river in Vicksburg (which means we can literally go over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house.... How many of you can say that?).

Here we are outside Grandma's new place:





Here we are visiting with Grandma and Mark's sister Denise. Emma loves Aunt Denise!




A must have for any hotel we stay in for Thanksgiving is an indoor pool so the girls can swim, and they would do it for hours if we let them. Mama almost never gets in b/c even if they say it is "heated", its never warm enough for me. Good think Mark will get in, or if I take them, they can pretty much handle themselves if I am nearby.

I managed to get the rare family photo on Thanksgiving morning before we went to eat. Usually I am always behind the camera. (which is fine by me):

The next day we went to play around Vicksburg b/c we had never been there (as a family). It got really cold that day and it actually rained on us. They have a downtown area kinda like Denham but bigger and we did some shopping, including getting Emma the "Elf on a Shelf" which she has been asking for. Hopefully that will improve their behavior (at least until Christmas!). Here are the girls downtown:

They have a Coke museum downtown, which we walked through (in about 2 minutes), but we at least got a yummy bottled coke at the end.




There was also a doll museum (also about a 5 minute tour) we walked through. It had some neat barbies and a few of the girls' American Dolls. Then we ate a good meal at Rusty's on the River and that was fun too. We head out tomorrow back to reality and 3 glorious weeks of school. We are certainly on the downhill slide this semester.

One more thing from the trip, which I didn't get any pictures of. Katie and I did midnight shopping Thanksgiving night. Right around the corner from our hotel was an Outlet mall that opened at 11 pm that night, and I was going to go by myself and look around, but Katie was still up and convinced me to let her come with me - so I did, and was glad to not go by myself. Kinda felt guilty for taking my almost 10 year old out that late, but then I saw the other bad parents doing the same thing and didn't feel so guilty. We got a few deals with the best being 50% off at Children's Place - the entire store! I made a killing there for Emma! It was kind of a girl bonding thing!

Hope your Thanksgiving was great! Gobble - gobble!