Thanksgiving and Early December (2011)

If I were to pick a theme for the end of 2011 I think I would choose…road trip. 

The last update from the Shibata's was at Thanksgiving time, when we were in Illinois to celebrate the holiday with the Meinhart clan.  Marie did not have school on the day before Thanksgiving, so the plan was to take that day to drive south. 

As it turned out, we did use that as our driving day, but we didn't get as early a start as we had hoped / intended.  You see, the day before, I had noticed that the furnace wasn't working.  I had this realization in the morning, when it was still in the low to mid 60's in the house.  I figured it wouldn't be so bad; I'd have the repair guy come out and take a look at it.  He had all day, right?  I decided to use the day to do a bunch of baking (at least the kitchen would be warm) and waited for him to arrive. 

It got to be 4:45 PM and still no repair guy.  I called the repair company back and learned that somehow the work ticket had been misplaced and that is why no one had come to check out our furnace.  I was assured that a repairman (presumably the guy in charge) would be there right away, and in fact he was.  He went into the basement, and when he came back upstairs, he informed me that the furnace required a new part and that he might have the part back at his shop.  If he didn't, then he would need to pick up the part the next day and then install it.  I really hoped that he had the part…

He drove back to his shop and called me back to inform me that he in fact did not have the part.  This meant that we would have no heat through the night.  So, we got our (gas) fireplace going and decided  to have a camp out in the living room.  Hopefully it was something fun and out of the ordinary that at least Marie will remember.  At any rate, it was out of our routine enough that we didn't get started as early as we had intended.  (For those of you that are interested, the repairman came over later, replaced the part, and fixed the furnace.  Thanks Uncle Mark for checking on things later that night!)

We were able to make it home and enjoy a very nice Thanksgiving Day / dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Meinhart, Uncle Matt, Uncle Dave, and Itxaso. 

Our original plan for Black Friday was to have the whole family head over to St. Louis to celebrate and visit with Great-Grandpa Boedeker.  Since Grandpa wasn't feeling that well, just a few of the adults went over to visit for a bit.  It was much more time in the car than time to visit, but I think that Grandpa chatted just a bit and I think genuinely appreciated it.

On Saturday, we celebrated "Meinhart" Thanksgiving and Marie and Joey were able to play with and spend more time with that side of the family.  Marie is getting old enough to play with and remember some of her second cousins (and great-aunts and uncles), which makes those gatherings even more fun. 

We headed back to Michigan on Sunday, thankful for the time to spend with our family, but as expected, tired.

Not a week later, it was time to celebrate Joey's 3rd birthday.  Mom and Dad drove up to Michigan a couple of days early and helped out with getting the house in order and getting food ready for the party.  That also allowed us to celebrate Grandpa Meinhart's birthday with him.  We are guessing that this might happen on a regular basis in years to come since Grandpa's birthday is the day before Joey's.  We're not complaining! :)  This year, we had apple pie and ice cream and the kids' gave him night crawlers as a gift.  Boy was he surprised!
 

For the kids' birthdays we never have a really big get together or go too far out of the way, but I like to have a little something to make the day special and don't know how I would get it done without a couple of extra sets of hands.  Uncle Mark and Aunt Sarah came over and Grandpa and Grandma Shibata and Aunt Jess come up for the afternoon. 

The day after Joey's birthday, I was again able to take advantage of the extra hands and we put up the outdoor Christmas lights and also picked out our tree.  This year we opted for just picking out our tree instead of cutting it down ourselves.  We were running out of sunlight and decided if we didn't get it done that day, then it would be difficult to impossible to fit it in some other day.  As it turns out, it was much less work, the kids still enjoyed it, it was less time consuming and less expensive, and we still got a nice looking and smelling tree out of it.