Last weekend Doreen and I flew up to Wisconsin to celebrate some birthdays, and the fact that my Three Sisters were running in a 10K race in Green Bay.
Sadly, one of my sisters had a stress fracture in her foot, and was not able to run. But her daughter ran in her stead:
They all finished, and did quite well. Melanie (the one on the right) placed 26 out of thousands and thousands of entrants! We hope that she will be the next Rosie Ruiz (ha! That is a joke. I recall that in the original version of Trivial Pursuit, one of the questions was "Who did not win the Boston Marathon in 1980. There are about 6 billion right answers to that question, and only one wrong answer:
Jacqueline Gareau)
But after the race, the festivities began. My sister Abbie hosts Thanksgiving in this house every year for most of the nearby family. (I come only occasionally.) SO she is well prepared to entertain many, many people. You can see a small piece of the crown here:
Part of the fun of such a gathering is playing games. Here, our nephew Brian Larson is golfing in the living room. He was playing through from a bad shot. Nobody seemed to mine. (in reality he was getting golfing advice for a tournament in which he was in his CEO's foursome. He has never played golf before, and we were "helping")
Gus is Abbie's very tolerant and ever supportive spouse. Here he is making crappy ceviche. Maybe that is croppie ceviche. Some sort of ceviche, at any rate. It was delicious!
This is a robin's nest on Abbie's back porch. That color, I believe, is Robin's Egg Blue
Much of the time in Green Bay was spent waxing poetic. We all had many things to say, and the worst part was waiting your turn to say it!
These are some of the crazy inlaws. Laurie, (Matt's Wife), Jesse (Eric's Wife) and Doreen (my wife). They all wanted to risk their life on the Zippin Pippin. Crazy, I know.
They survived.
More family fun. Ree, Laurie, Madeline, Abbie, and Jesse. Jesse is a very talented Fiber Artist. She showed off some of her creations at the party, and they were snapped up by discerning consumers.
This is Eric. He is holding a rasher of Bear Bacon (Jesse's boss gave it to her). Eric pointed out that the bear bacon (which was delicious, by the way) was shot out of a jerky gun. Enough said.
We were lucky enough to even have the Wyoming branch of the family in town! This is in-law Beth and brother Chas.
Little Joe Cool (Ben) was everyone's sweetheart at the party.
Matt and Eric. (Eric loathes to have his photo taken without giving a big thumbs up)
The other great thing about family gatherings is that nobody minds if you just walk out with some of the furniture. Here is Matt, who had his eye on this chair for a while, and then just put it in his car.
Here are the seven sibs. Mark, Ree, Chas, Abbie, Matt, Mel, and me.
I had to slip in a self portrait in Abbie's back yard.
The house I grew up in (isn't there a country song about this?) 714 Pierce.
My namesake
We stopped by brother Matthew's Quickrete plant on the way to the airport. Nice!
And here he is in his office.
Next year in Santa Fe!
