Thanksgiving 2014

This year we flew to Texas for Thanksgiving to visit the Mearse side of the family. We were able to fly out Monday evening and spend some time with the grandparents and cousins.

On Tuesday, Tutu and Jan (husband's Grandmother and Aunt) drove out from west Texas to visit with us and have an early Thanksgiving lunch.

Wednesday morning we headed out early for breakfast before going to Dallas for the rest of the week.

Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington are three distinct cities that sort of melt together in a vast and sprawling city. It's very flat so you can see a long way. There's a lot for families to do there. We enjoyed going to tour the Texas Rangers Stadium. Our 9 year old especially loved this since he's all about baseball. Also, our own Hickory Crawdads are the minor league team for the Rangers so it was neat to see some of the players that have moved up from here. 

After lunch we checked in our hotel next to Medivial Times and rested a while before the show. Medivial times takes you into an ancient castle for a banquet feast and a tournament of knights. Everyone is in costume (and in character) and there are live horses, jousting, and eating with your hands! What's not to love, especially for boys. 

Thursday, Thanksgiving day, we ate a quick fast food breakfast before getting to the mall for our appointment at LegoLand! Kids old and young loved this place. It's kind of a mini version of the one in Florida or California I think. There are rides, 4D movies where you get snowed on, hands on building activities, a playground, kerioke, a snack bar, and a whole exhibit of the city of Dallas made out of Legos. It is pretty awesome, even for grown-ups. The kids could've spent all day there I think. They close early on Thanksgiving so we only spent about three hours there and then it was lunch time. 

All made out of Legos!

We had Thanksgiving lunch at Applebees close to the Lego place because it was agreeable to everybody and there was no waiting. Then we took a short drive over to check in at Great Wolf Lodge. It's basically a huge hotel with an indoor waterpark and game area (think Chuck E Cheese) for kids. There's also a Magi Quest game you can play where you buy a magic wand and look for clues and go on this big LONG scavenger hunt through all 8 levels of the hotel to find the objects. It's a lot of climbing stairs. The waterpark was the highlight for the kids I think. They loved the huge waterslides, ocean wave pool, lazy river, play ground, and pool basketball. We stayed there til we flew home on Saturday. 

Friday night we had dinner at a really cool restaurant called the Magic Time Machine. If your in Dallas you should definatley check this place out. It's a weird kind of place with different themed rooms and servers dressed up as characters like Woody, Spiderman, Arial, and more. It is fine dining in a quirky, fun, adventurous admosphere. The food was fantastic and the whole evening was hilariously entertaining. As you can see below, we ate in the schoolbus and Woody was our server. 

"Help yourself to the salad car." 

We did a lot in six days but it didn't feel rushed to me. Thanks to the Mearse Family for a Thanksgiving to remember.