Christmas Visits from ‘Family’

One of the nice things about being in our hometown of Quincy over the holidays is that it is a gathering point for many of the folks we consider family as they come home for the holidays.

 

We were able to have a brief visit with Michaelena (Miki) and John while Trevor was here.  (I stole their picture off Facebook since I seem to be forgetting to get out the camera a lot lately!)

We don’t get to see Miki often since she has moved to KC for grad school but she is one of several of our sons’ friends who we consider extended family and love to see over the holidays.

 

 

 

 

 

Luke, our “#3 son’, and his lovely wife Lindsay were in town this year for Christmas and so we invited them to the house for brunch on Sunday.   Of course, since the Bears played at noon, the next 3 1/2 hours were spent lounging in front of the TV together watching the Bears win.  

Since Kyle and Jenni’s dog, Staley, was still in residence, Sox took refuge from the rambunctious pup on Luke’s lap. 

For some reason our darling little Sox, seems to, at times, have some real flatulence problems giving off an aroma worse than you might imagine for such a small little cutie.  Well she chose her lap time with Luke to let loose so he had Ken’s Sudoku book nearby to help fan away the repeated putrid outputs!!  We all got a good laugh from it and Luke was a real trooper continuing to let her cuddle on his lap despite the consequence to his air space!

On Monday I started battling a really nasty head cold during the night and couldn’t sleep, so I started on the ZICAM.  I dressed for the day but was moving pretty slow.  Because Ken’s sister, Ann, from Bloomington, IL, had found that her car had no breaks on Christmas Eve, she left the car with Ken and returned home with her sons and their families.  So, Ken had a adventure he needed me on -- a 4 mile drive taking the brakeless car  from our house to the mechanic.  I followed him in the jeep, while he drove at a snails paces and juggled  the gears and emergency break to deliver the vehicle for repair.  I brought him back home and found that even that little trip had me worn down, so I slept all afternoon instead of accomplishing our planned Christmas decoration teardown.  Ken woke me in time to meet our good friends, the Ellsworth family who were in from Atlanta, GA.

It’s a Frericks/Ellsworth tradition to meet whenever they are at town at Cassano’s, a local restaurant with a style of pizza they haven’t found back in Georgia.  Afterward, they come back to our house.  Since the Falcons were playing, of course, we were watching the game.  But, Ken decided to also introduce them to ‘Hand n Foot’. 

The result was a marathon 3-hour game.  The concensus was that the Ellsworth’s were now hooked on game and were planning on some family rematches when they got back home!   I think after a lot of tutoring from Ditka, Kenny (yes, Ken’s godson and namesake!), will be ready for the rematch!

 

It’s now Tuesday morning and we are one-day behind on our preparations for ‘snowbird lift-off’.    The Audi, now 5+ years old (and of course, now out of that wonderful Audi warranty) is showing signs of a gasket problem.  Ken wants it fixed before we leave in case Trev needs it  as a fallback  for his travels if the old Buick is fussy during bad weather.   We are dropping it off at the export mechanic today when we pick up Ann’s car so waiting for its return may be the new critical path to takeoff.

There seems to already be a full schedule of visitors at Hotel Frericks here at home while we are on the road and Ken has added some interesting new little security system features and technologies to keep the home nest safe during our upcoming travels. That means all of the visitors need to be apprised of quite a bit of  security procedures which is now one more addition to our pre-flight checklist. With all of this plus vigilant neighbors and pop-in relatives to keep an eye day and night, leaving the sticks n bricks is a little less worrisome.

The weather window is looking good for a Friday or Saturday takeoff ,

We leave you today with a picture taken from our kitchen window this morning.  While the winter scene is lovely, we will be glad to leave it for awhile!

Hugs, C