Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Thanksgiving 2014

This was our year to travel to North Carolina for Thanksgiving with the Miskiewicz family, our very dear friends.  We have spent Thanksgiving together every year since 1997, missing only one year when they went to Kim's mom's house in Kentucky in 2006.  We have a wonderful time every year.

This is the second year Gerren has not been home for Thanksgiving.  Erin and Jeremy missed last year when they were newly married and living in Wisconsin, but they moved back to Raleigh this July.

 On Thanksgiving morning, the game playing began with Matt, Landon, and Chase.


Erin and Jeremy arrived and joined in.

Carys watched the Macy's parade while the rest of perused the Black Friday ads in the paper and did some dinner preparation.

Around lunch time Kim's nephew and his family arrived.  They were going elsewhere for Thanksgiving dinner but dropped by for a visit.  Their baby Lorraine is 3 now, and they have a new baby.  Carys had a blast playing with Lorraine.
 The both had fun playing with Parker, Erin & Jeremy's dog, in the back yard.

 Landon is patiently waiting for dinner.

Kim took pictures of EVERYONE at the table (there were 19 of us), but I'm just including a few.

Matt's girlfriend Bethany is a new addition to the Meahl/Miskiewicz family Thanksgiving.

Chase LOVES having her picture taken. :)

Carys was glad to have another kid there, Jeremy's cousin Jonathan (and his three sisters!).

Landon and Erin

Dave and Greg (you can see where Landon gets the goofy faces)

Kim and Linda (another masterpiece dinner pulled off!)

Carys ADORES Parker!
 

 
Snitching some homemade whipped cream

After dinner, we had an epic game of Mafia.  Actually, it was based on Mafia but was called Werewolf (or something like that)!













I was whipped!













On Friday, we relaxed....


 Played some music....
 



Found a lost dog....















Didn't want to return the lost dog....













Eventually found the owner and had to return the said dog (and cried :( ).













On Saturday, Dave and Greg fixed the loose shutter on the 2nd story.  This was a two-man job since it took a very strong hold on a very tall ladder to even get up on the roof.


Carys read this book to Matt.  I think this is the first time she's read to him instead of the other way around.














On Saturday afternoon I met Michele, one of my online Loopy Friends, in person for the first time.  We had a great time chatting over coffee.














Saturday was parents' night out, as usual.  We had a great meal at The Pit, a Raleigh institution!




On Sunday, we went to church with Matt and Bethany while the rest of the family when to their church.  We all met up for lunch at a Mexican restaurant.  We headed for home at 2pm and arrived at 12:15am, about 2 hours later than we should have due to the insane traffic.  Other than that, we had a wonderful time as usual.

Fall 2014


Wow!  It's only been 3-1/2 months since I posted last!  Haha!  What have we been doing?  Well, school mostly.  Greg's been working at his new job at Florida Concrete Construction as a project manager on a Fed Ex distribution center.  He's loving it, and we're lovCring that he's not working nights or weekends at the hotel.  Landon has been working 35ish hours a week at Walgreens.  The girls and I have been doing school.

We have been on a few fun field trips, though.

In early September, Carys and I went to the pool with our Elementary Connections group.

In October, we went to the Coon Hollow Corn Maze.  Chase went along, but this is what she did most of the time.

Carys loved this giant slide!





Carys makes friends everywhere she goes.  This is Aubrey on the hayride.

The cows are well-trained to come and be fed.

The tractor pulled this "train" around the farm.

Carys got QUITE a bit cut off her hair.
Chase earned her Mitchell Award in CAP and was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant.

This is the first time I got to pin one of my kiddos!

In November, the girls and I went to a petting zoo with our homeschool group.  They had a blast!

This is Carys and her friend Adeline.

They adored the miniature horses.

Of course, Carys likes horses of all types!

They had goats and bunnies and chickens and CAMELS!

They also had a playground and a bounce house for the kids to play in!







That catches up to Thanksgiving which I'll do in a separate post.  :)