Two November Weekends with Extended Family

November, 2016: Two Weekends with Extended Family

Part 1: Richard's 75th Birthday Weekend in Boston

To celebrate Richard's big birthday, Tia and Amanda flew into Boston with Yasmine, Coeur, and Mike, and Katy and Andre, respectively. They all stayed with Richard and spent Friday and Saturday at his house visiting. Friday night, Yasmine, Tia, Amanda, Robert, and Richard went out to a fancy dinner, and Saturday night everyone went out to all-you-can-eat sushi (Minado). Sunday everyone came to our house for a French-themed brunch.

All in all, it was a lovely weekend: It was great to see how much Coeur and Katy and Yasmine had grown since we last saw them; Marcus followed Yasmine around playing Minecraft on her iPad, and Katy followed Samantha around playing a million different pretend games.

Part 2: Thanksgiving Weekend 2016 in Chicago

We spent Wednesday-Sunday of Thanksgiving week staying with Jennifer, Joe, John, and Emi in Plainfield. Highlights of the week included stopping for lunch at Portillo's on our way from the airport, making nd eating Samantha's chocolate cream pie for Thanksgiving Day, making creative uses of Thanksgiving leftovers, the Aurora SciTech Museum with Jennifer (and Aurora) on Black Friday, baking gingerbread cookies and doing perler bead crafts at Jennifer's house, learning about mastodon bones and other exciting things at Uncle Don and Aunt Loretta's house, playing video games in the basement with John, flying drones with cousin Dave, and enjoying a wild game of charades (jousting! breakdancing! cow-tipping!) with Grandma Judy and lots of cousins on Saturday night.