Thanksgiving recap and back to the grindstone

Well, I kind of failed in my NaBloPoMo attempt at a blog-post-a-day, but I got close! Yesterday we left our hotel first thing in the morning, but didn't get home until after midnight, so I had no chance!
We are home from our quick trip to St. Louis.
It was awesome seeing Rosalynde and John and their kids. All the cousins played together well. Going swimming at our hotel was a particular hit. Elena cried when she had to say goodbye on Saturday night, so I guess that meant she had a good time.
Wednesday was spent driving.
Thursday was Thanksgiving.
On Friday we met Rosalynde and her kids at the Magic House, which was every bit as magical as the first time. I wish we had one of those in Austin! We ate dinner at Steak and Shake, played at Rosalynde's for a while, and then took the kids to swim at our hotel.
Saturday morning Rosalynde and I took the kids to a holiday play put on by a children's theater group. It was extremely cheesy, but cute and the kids really liked it. They had all the kids participating. At one point, all the kids went up on stage to sing Jingle Bells. Everyone except Joseph. He doesn't get into performances at all. Sigh... I wish he would just give it a try! Anyway, Elena was the star of Jingle Bells (she is the exact opposite of Joseph and is a natural performer). Later on, Brigham went up to help turn the key in a toy soldier, and then went along with the little dance afterward. I was so impressed with him! He was very serious and watched the other actors to get the dance just right. Go Brigham! I so wished I had my camera with me. I debated bringing it, but decided to leave it in the car at the last minute. Mistake!!!! It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment for him. I'll just have to try to remember it.
After the play we drove downtown and took the Tom Sawyer riverboat out on the Mississippi River for an hour cruise which was pretty fun and interesting. Although we parked in the MOST handicapped inaccessible place that we possibly could have. Ben ended up carrying me down about 100 stairs, with John toting the wheelchair behind us. Oh well.
I took pictures of Rosalynde's family after we got back, and then had a Thanksgiving-leftovers dinner and another swim session at the hotel.
Yesterday we headed back, after a brief detour back to Rosalynde's house to claim a missing jacket. Ben was not in favor of going back to get it, thinking the cost of the Walmart jacket wasn't worth the added time to our trip. He said it would be more than an hour before we passed our hotel again heading back down the freeway. It was actually about 18 minutes. So there! :-) Shorter than it would have been to drive to Walmart to buy a new jacket.
The drive back was loooong. We drove through a lot of rain, and then made a poor decision in getting off the turnpike too soon. And then when we got through Dallas we hit traffic. Bad traffic until nearly Waco! It took us almost 3 hours just to get from south of Dallas to 10-15 miles north of Waco. It was a bad combination of freeways merging, and 2 disabled vehicles several miles apart.
We also passed a record number of highway patrol cars up to St. Louis and back. We decided to count them on the way back. We passed 21!!! And that is not counting the several additional cop cars helping with the 3 accidents we passed. But we did not get pulled over. All the cop cars certainly did the job in keeping us from speeding, that's for sure.
Now we're home. The dog is happy to see us. The fish are alive. Spots is back home.
Joseph isn't feeling too well, I haven't unpacked much of anything, and all-in-all it is a bit of a let-down to have to plunge back into real life.