With a few days left before Thanksgiving we got on the road again, sans-van this time, and instead the 300% more fuel efficient Mazda we shipped to GA! We had two main goals for this trip:

1. Celebrate Virginia’s 18th birthday
2. Survive Turkey Day with <10lb total gain

I would say 50% of our goals were officially achieved. Hope you had a great time spending your 18th birthday eating great food and losing (someone else’s…) money on scratch-offs!

Every year for the last few years we’ve been blessed to spend quality time with the extended family (both on my side and the much more extensive Moore side), and thankfully this year was no different. While some of the repeat visitors couldn’t make it due to work obligations, I’d say a consistent 90%+ attendance is nothing to scoff at – more importantly the cherry pie filling burglar was nowhere to be found this year and coincidentally my mom was also not able to join us… hmm, makes you think.

We also had the opportunity to visit with some of Rachel’s family friends – Jerry & Joanne (who I finally met for the first time in person after a decade of buildup) and Jerry & Nadxi (who are giving us a run for our money as the busiest travelers of 24/25 we know…) Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the latter since we were too busy getting drunk on happy hour specials, but I do have a sweet pic of the band we saw in a coffee show at 10pm on a Friday – that counts right?

Overall we had an excellent time spent with friends and family, eating way too much and passing out in front of the TV by 5pm – which if you exclude engaging in heated family drama, means we hit got Thanksgiving Bingo! This was a great way to relax before the next leg of our trip, which will be a bit more hectic given the plurality of planes, trains and automobiles we’ll be hopping on and off to get around South America!