‘Tis the season for travel once again, so we hopped down to Nebraska for Thanksgiving this year. It was a whirlwind weekend filled three family dinners, two birthday cakes, and one painful football game.

There’s not a lot of photo documentation, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Except for the painful football game. We did manage to capture that!

This is the third time my brother has perfectly timed our airport pickup, which baffles me since he’s driving 300 miles and we’re flying 3,000. And every time we arrive within 10 minutes of each other!

We arrived Thanksgiving morning after flying overnight, and rallied for a turkey dinner later that afternoon. It’s tough to say whether our post-meal drowsiness was due to tryptophan or jet lag?

Friday morning we woke refreshed and optimistic for a Cornhusker upset over B1G rival Iowa. My friend Kim snagged a sweet tailgating spot a few mere blocks from Memorial Stadium, and things were off to a great start. Alas, the fourth quarter got away from us again. Moral victories don’t count towards bowl games, so our season was done.

Womp, womp.

We still had a blast and love our Huskers!

Maggie was fresh out of knee surgery (and despises football – gasp!) so she opted to spend the day with her cousins putting up Grandma’s Christmas tree instead. They did a great job!

The list of things we didn’t photograph from the weekend is lengthy:

• One delicious traditional turkey Thanksgiving feast
• One 16th birthday cake (Happy Birthday, Austin!)
• Adorable 3-year-old antics
• One enormous taco bar awaiting weary football fans
• One gourmet surf and turf holiday meal featuring beef tenderloin and Alaskan sockeye salmon
• One 29th birthday cake (Happy Birthday, Elle!)
• Visits from dear friends
• Time spent with nieces, nephews, parents, siblings, and grandparents

GEESH! Sorry to all we missed!

Happily, we did manage to capture this special moment between our family’s eldest and youngest. I still cannot believe my little brother is a grandpa, but I’ve always known my grandma was double great. This little dude just made it official!

And just like that, it was time to board the plane back to Alaska. After enduring a six-hour layover in Minneapolis we were rewarded with a glimpse of northern lights from the airplane window. (In all honesty it didn’t look this bright in real life – I have an aurora photo app on my phone that made it look extra vibrant.)

Aurora sightings are rare, but this year family visits have been frequent. And for that, I’m so very thankful. Happy Thanksgiving!