We enjoyed a very short week, as both Ann and I only worked Monday & Tuesday. It was a well needed (and earned!) break. Both of those days seemed to drag, due to our failing health. We’ve both been lucky enough to host some kind of nasty bug that especially knocked me for a loop (Ann says it’s because men are just wussies). J Poor Ann has been sick now for about 2 months. We surprised Abby on Wednesday and went in to school to have lunch with her. She’d been asking for about year now, so it was something we wanted to do with her. She was totally shocked, but played it cool, “I knew you guys were coming.??? …Whatever… During my free time, I worked on Gigi’s PC, which had crashed over the weekend. It was my first time working on a newer, high-end PC with SATA technology. The hardest part was finding an OS that would recognize this new type of hard drive. I was finally able to get a cheap disc of XP, MCE 2005 and that finally did the trick. It was fun trying to figure out stuff and was a real challenge. I think I would eventually like to move in to more of a tech role when I grow up…
Early on Thanksgiving morning, Ann & Sandy made their annual trek to K-Mart to go bargain hunting. They were gone until lunch, coming home with lots of goodies. During the morning, Abby decided to get on the treadmill and despite her best efforts; Luke decided to join in and promptly fell on his face, putting a rather large divot in his chin. At lunchtime, we all went over to Grandma and Gigi’s for the big meal. MaryAnn did not disappoint, as she again went all out this year. We had turkey and ham, mashed potatoes and noodles, dressing and sweet potatoes, pumpkin & blueberry pie and chocolate cake. Ann brought her family-favorite green bean casserole and the dinner rolls to complete the scene. We ate like kings then took a nap during the blowout Lions game. The best part was yet to come, as I had been looking forward to cold turkey sandwiches for a couple months now. During the Cowboy’s victory, that wish finally came to fruition! J
Black Friday has become an annual event for Ann and Amy the past several years. Unlike last year (when they didn’t even go to sleep Thursday night and left at midnight), they decided to get a few hours of sleep and got up at 3:30 to begin their trek. As in years past, they were quite the sight to see, in their matching outfits and that hideous head gear. Apparently, they received several compliments! They were gone until about 10:30 that night, having accomplished all of their shopping…good job gals! Ann says its work, but I know she loves to shop, so she’s not fooling anyone…The highlight of the day was getting to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving for the final time this year. I think we watched it a total of six times this go round! We love that little show…
Keith, Rosie and Megan came to town Saturday afternoon, so we had the Owens family over for holiday snack favorites (my favorite kind of dinner!). Ann had quite the spread, as she cooked all day. We had lots of goodies, including her Polish mistakes, olive dip (a personal fave!), toasted bread and spinach & artichoke dip (a Scheumann-family recipe) veggies and Shallo’s dip, toasted bagel chips with green onion-cream cheese dip, baked feta cheese in a pastry (very yummy), and Gigi brought her Biddinger-family recipe meatballs. We had a fun visit, but everyone was tired so they left early in preparation for Thanxmas!
Sunday was Thanxmas. Let me explain; when Keith and Rosie are unable to make it back to Greensburg for Christmas, we combine the two holidays and meet on Thanksgiving while exchanging Christmas presents…thus, Thanxmas! J It rained really hard last night (we wanted snow) and actually woke me up! I pumped water off the pool cover for well over four hours in the AM, once it finally slowed down. We went over to Grandma and Gigi’s house at noon for the big event. We had another huge lunch of course. Ann brought several leftovers from the night before, plus MaryAnn had a couple from Thursday. In addition, she made 2 pots of chili, Rosie made some sort of dip and Chad deep-fried another turkey this year! He added some Cajun spices that really gave the bird some kick. Somehow Sandy managed to wind up with the olive dip again this year (she always seems to pull this every year!). After lunch, we played bingo (to make Lukey’s dreams come true. J (See previous posts for this explanation) I actually sat in the kitchen and played, watching the Colts squeak out a victory. We had 5 total winners. Rosie and Matt each won one apiece, I won two; but Megan won the big one, bagging a cool fifteen bucks for her efforts. She is so smart and it’s funny to hear some of the things she says coming out of a six-year-old’s mouth. Thanks to Gigi for making this a really fun event! Overall, the kids got along fairly well this year. Abby helped me put Sandy’s PC back together and get it all back up and running. We then snuck out to AutoZone to pick up a new battery for the Pacifica (Ann only had to “remind??? me a few dozen times this past week that she was getting tired of hooking up her little battery charger every morning!). We had to change it out in their parking lot in the rain, but it was worth it to save the $20. We were cold, wet and dirty; so it was nice to get back to Grandma’s house to get warm and snuggly again. We forgot (again) to get our annual grandkids picture (our second or third year in a row now!); so I had to “enhance??? a picture we were able to get right before we left. It looks OK, but it was my first experience with using PhotoShop.
Now let’s turn on the WAYBAC machine for a quickie…
The first couple are Abby pictures. The first one is her birthday party in September of 2004. It was pretty cool, as Ann and Amy did a whole luau theme. The second is just over a year earlier in August of 2003. This would’ve been the first day of school, as Bu was heading in to pre-school and Matt was beginning 3rd grade.
The second batch (as promised) is Christmas-related. The first one is Papaw Scheu’s ad in the Journal & Courier a couple years back. Aunt Marilou sent this one to me in a Christmas card. The next one is of Keith and the kids, circa December 2001 and the last one is the original Owens grandkid pic.
Hopefully, we can get to feeling a little better this next week. Hope your Thanxmas was as good as ours! Until next time…