A Family Time Weekend

 

Shannon and Brian have a tradition of an early Thanksgiving family gathering at their house. This year was even earlier than normal because of their plans to head to Orlando, Florida over the Thanksgiving holiday with all 6 kids to get some use out of their 1 year passes to Universal Studios. The weekend of November 14-15 was the chosen weekend.

We started off the weekend on Friday night by attending a High School presentation of Beauty and the Beast. Our Grand Daughter, Hannah had a part in the play. Her boyfriend Kyle also had a starring role playing the character, Gaston. They both played their roles with enthusiasm and the entire production was quite good and very enjoyable.

Hannah is the red magic carpet in this picture:

 

I attended the play with Kim, my mother and father in law, Phyllis and Richie, Brian’s mom, Linda and our son Mark.

They had a full house for both nights of the performance and made a nice donation to a local education based charity. Well done Ozark High School Drama.

I love going to those plays because it reminds me of going to see my daughter Shannon perform when she was at the same High School. The cool thing is the same drama teacher is still there doing an outstanding job with the kids.

Here are a couple of shots of Phyllis and Richie meeting their new great grand daughter Amelia for the first time.

Saturday was the big family dinner attended by over 30 people. It was a beautiful day, so we played in the yard before we had dinner.

Our son Michael was the only one missing. He was having issues with his outage at the power plant back in Arkansas. Audrey did bring Conner and Cameron up. I really enjoyed my time with all 8 of the grand kids. Here is Cameron:

Watch out for those tickle snakes! My time with Will, Connor and Cameron.

We have so much fun together.

Dinner is served! There was a bunch of food.

It was really a fun day and I know I ate way too much food. Here is a shot of our son Mark holding Amelia and our grand daughter Isabella.

Thanks to Shannon and Brian for hosting the event.

On Sunday, we had the baptism of Amelia. We all headed to their church and watched the ceremony. We then had a reception and then back to their house for leftovers and more fun playing with the kids.

Here is Hannah’s boyfriend Kyle posing for pictures. He is very talented and also a great guy.

Here is a shot of Amelia in her Baptism gown:

It was a very full weekend. We drove back and forth to the ranch each night. The drive is about an hour each way. We needed to be at the ranch anyway because of some stuff going on out there.

Family time is so important to me. It seems that for years these gatherings were either missed or shortened because of our busy schedules. It is so nice to now have the time to focus on them and maximize the experience. It looks like much of our travel time this coming year will be focused on family events and that is just fine with us. We did miss our family this past year and we look forward to seeing everyone this next year.

It has been a month and a half since we arrived in Missouri. Wow, had that time gone fast. Now we have to get focused on many projects that we would like to complete before Christmas and our departure to head south. I do miss being on the road, but spending time with family makes staying in one place just fine.