Driving, Gobble Gobble, More Driving, and Miley

Mimi canceled her decorating plans for this picture

Three weeks ago, we had our whole Thanksgiving planned out. We were all staying here in town, and we were going to cook Thanksgiving dinner at our house. End of story. Well, actually, we had thought about going to eat dinner over at a friend's house, but bringing our tornado of a family to a Thanksgiving dinner would be a HORRIBLE idea. I mean horrible. We might as well bring Colonel Frank Slade with us (That's Al Pacino from Scent of a Woman for all of you people who were living under a rock during the early nineties - Whoo-AA!!). Anyway, my grandma has been in and out of the hospital for a few months, and on the Friday before Thanksgiving, my mom called and said that she was back in the hospital and not doing so well. So my original thought was that I could head back to Louisiana that weekend, spend some time with my Maw-Maw, and come back in time to spend Thanksgiving with Rach and the kids. Rach wasn't going to be able go with me because she had to work all weekend and couldn't take off since she was already off Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And she was taking off the following Saturday to take the girls to the Miley Cyrus concert in Columbia. Keith wanted to go see Maw-Maw too, but he was already planning on going back to Louisiana the day before Thanksgiving to spend the holiday with his mom since his mom was going to be by herself. She was going to be by herself because my mom had already made plans to go visit my brother in Washington DC to help him decorate his new house.

Quick side note: The idea of my mom helping my brother decorate his new house is absolutely hilarious to me. I could just imagine the conversations between the two of them:

B-Lo: So do you think I should hang up this giant LSU blanket on this wall? Or this wall? What about this 1995 Intramural Runner-Up Trophy? I should put that by the doorway so people can see it when they walk in, right?

Mom: But if you put that blanket there, you won't have room to hang up all of these fake floral arrangements! And where are you going to put the 17 life size photos of Jaxon?

But I digress. My mom had decided to go to DC because my dad wasn't going to be home anyway. You see, he was flying to Minnesota to have much needed surgery on his back. Why is he flying all the way to Minnesota to have surgery? Good question. And the answer is: My dad knows a guy. He ALWAYS knows a guy. Always. I think he knows at least one person in the New Orleans area in every profession that exists (except back surgeon, apparently). And I don't think he ever paid for anything either. Need your brakes fixed? Dad knows a guy. Need a haircut? Dad knows a guy. Need to get bailed out of jail again? Dad knows a guy. I remember going fishing with my dad when I was younger, and if we happened to come back with a boatload of fish, we'd have to make about 15 stops on the way home so my dad could stay in good standing with all of these people that he knew. I guess it was sort of like the seafood mafia.

But I digress again. So instead of Keith and I driving to Louisiana separately, we decided to wait until Wednesday and take Cole, Gavin, and Jaxon with us for a boys Thanksgiving. I was kind of excited about driving down there with Keith, since normally, Racheal's version of helping me drive is to keep me awake by talking on her cell phone in the passenger seat.....When she's not sleeping, of course. Which, coincidentally is just about as helpful as Keith's version of helping me drive, which included buying me energy drinks and watching movies on my laptop. He drove for exactly zero minutes on the entire trip. In Keith's defense though, he did offer to drive every time we stopped for gas. After we were all back in the car. And I was in the driver seat. And we were getting back on the interstate. But he did ask, though.

All in all, it was a good trip. I'll go into more detail tomorrow, but everyone got to do something special:

Keith and I got to see our moms and our Maw-Maw.

Jaxon got to watch the movie 'Cars' 27 times. (He would not let us change the movie. At all. For 27 total hours of driving. Same movie, over and over. Then when we got to Louisiana, my mom DVR'd the movie off of the Disney channel so he could watch it on loop some more. If you want to get punched in the face, just walk up to Keith or I, and say, "Ka-Chow!")

Keith was actually trying to shake the

'Cars' movie demon out of Jaxon

Gavin got to shoot a hog on a hunting trip with his dad. (Which now puts Gavin in the lead in our 'lifetime pig shooting contest'. He's winning 1-0.)

Cole got to go to an LSU game in Tiger Stadium. (And he got to see the Les Miles that gets ridiculously lucky at the end of close games. And not the Les Miles that treats the end games like it's opposite day.)

Tori and Scarlett got to see Miley Cyrus in concert. Rach took them to get their hair done and got them sassy new outfits to wear for the concert. (Mark my words right now, Miley Cyrus: If you turn my daughters into mini-Britney Spears's, I will hunt you down and force you and your dad to listen to your own Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana songs for weeks on end. Without the benefit of radio commercials. And don't think that you can hide from me by wearing a blonde wig and slapping a mustache on your dad. I won't fall for that.)

And best of all, Rach got 4 days without my retardedness. Which, from what I've been told, is priceless. (Just kidding. She loves me. And she happens to be a bigger Miley fan than Tori and Scarlett put together. And something tells me that she wasn't exactly miserable while she was shopping for outfits for the girls. And although I have no evidence of it, I'm pretty sure she got something for herself).

So you see, everyone wins. Even my parents' dog Cassi:

The funniest part was right after this picture was taken,
my Maw-Maw woke up from a 7 hour nap and said,
"I KNOW that that's not MY hat on that dog's head!"

My nanny's dog was not as lucky:

That may look like a hug, but it'll
turn into a headlock REAL quick