Cousin Weekend: The Beginning of the Bourbon Trail

I am constantly shocked with the date. I mean, January 11th, REALLY?

Anyway, we had another busy (awesome) weekend around here, so rather than actually put some thought into a meaningful blog post (like about the Bengals and my depressed state over the disaster that was that playoff game) I will just share some pictures!

Turns out this is the only picture I got of the entire group, and Nicole isn't in it since she stayed home with sweet baby Cosma, but still.  Look!  We like bourbon! Also, not the best picture of Henry... sorry kiddo.

Maybe that statement needs some context (or does it?). Kentucky is famous for it's bourbon.  And at some point people around here realized that people like bourbon, and they like bourbon tastings, so they set up the bourbon trail.  Every stop on the bourbon trail will get a stamp in your bourbon trail passport. It's genius really.  So we decided we will start making a stop along the trail every time they SC family come to town.  This trip was our first official stop at the Bulleit distillery.

The group learning about prohibition and bourbon. Did you know you could get a prescription for alcohol during prohibition? And apparently Kentucky had 6 million written prescriptions among a population of 2.6 million. So... yeah.

The tour was awesome, and at the end you do a tasting, so win win. We are excited to hit the other stops on the tour. (Some pictures stolen from cousin's social media pages because... I like them)

Random picture of Nick on the tour which I like a lot...

Also a required stop on this trip was bring the SC crew to meet the newest family member. Can you even stand how adorable this baby is?!?!

I can't even...

Aaaaand here is a random picture of Henry from our dinner on Saturday night... I have around ten of these, and the conclude my picture taking from the weekend.  I apparently dropped the ball on photo taking this visit, which I guess means we will just have to do it again as soon as possible!

Cousin Weekend

So this past weekend my godson Wes came to stay with us while his mom and dad went up to Cleveland to be with my Aunt Jan. I am happy to report that my aunt is doing extremely well, all things considered, and is finally getting moved down to our home town tomorrow! This six hour distance has been a struggle for the last several weeks, so we are all thrilled to get her home where we can more easily help her as she begins the long process of rehabilitation.

Anyway, Wes came to stay! And it was so wonderful! The boys had an absolutely blast together and Nick and I loved getting to spend quality time with him.  Do you want to see some pictures? Because I (of course) took lots of pictures....

Things started off good right from the start. I mean, video games always helps, but I want to believe it was because they LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH.

Playing with Legos

More toys

Watching Star Wars A New Hope... they both loved it!

And then, on night one, Wes asked if Henry wanted him to read him a bedtime story. MY HEART COULD HARDLY TAKE THE LOVE.

Saturday morning Nick and I learned what it was like to live with a normal child who wakes up insanely early. I have no idea how you all do it, really. Wes was up for the first time at 5:15 but Nick sent him back to bed arguing that it was most definitely still the middle of the night. at 6:20 there as no going back though, so I got up with him and we hung out and discussed our joint love of Harry Potter over coffee.  It was awesome. 

Later that day we went to see The Good Dinosaur which was awesome, but also emotional. Not that I should be surprised since it is PIXAR.  They love to make the mama's cry. Even Wes and Henry said they got tears in their eyes.  A kid sitting behind us BROKE DOWN SOBBING. It reminded me of how I cried when I first saw the Lion King.... ah memories.

After the movie we headed to the park because it is freakishly nice weather around here.  They sorta wanted to get back to Super Smash Brothers (oh man, they love playing that game together!) but once they got to the park they admitted that yes, being outside in December is sorta awesome.

That night and the next morning... so much Super Smash Brothers.  Also, the first half of Empire Strikes Back.

Sunday we finally were able to catch up with the other cousin! Cici joined us for Luke's birthday party and they all had a blast!

Henry and the birthday boy... this picture cracks me up. Do you think Luke was excited to be turning seven??

And one last picture of Wes and Cici

All in all an excellent weekend with our sweet Godson!
 

A Cousins Cabin Weekend Surprise!

So remember last year when we went on the first annual Cousins Cabin Weekend?  It was amazing, and we had immediate plans to do the EXACT SAME THING (but with less traffic) this year.  Then life stuff came up and our plans got postponed, then sorta canceled with a "we will get that on the calendar soon..."

It was sorta starting to look like our "annual" Cousins Cabin Weekend might miss year two entirely, when Blair stepped in and said "You know... Matt's turning 30 and you know what would be a REALLY fun??"

SURPRISE!

So all the cousins who could make it (We missed you Caleb, Chris, Nicole, Nieem, and Catee!) met up over the holiday weekend for Matt's Surprise Birthday/2nd annual Cousins Cabin Weekend(CCW) event.  It was awesome. Seriously, we love this group of people so stinkin much...

At the top of the birthday boy's list of things to do was to ride Go Karts.

Lots and lots of Go Karts.

As in, four tracks in a matter of maybe two hours. But how do you know which track is the BEST track if you don't attempt to ride them all??

There was only one crash in all of that Go Karting, and it happened when I was driving... with Henry.  We came around a turn and he was like "GO AS FAST AS YOU CAN MAMA!"  I did... it did not end well.  But all was fine and beyond a sudden stop and NEAR MISS on Thomas T-boning us (THANK GOD THAT DID NOT HAPPEN) all was fine.  I just had to hang my head in shame a little because... you know THE CHILD WAS IN MY KART.

Also on Matt's list of things to try was the escape game Trapped.  If you don't know what this is, it's where they lock you in a room and you have one hour to escape.  we have a different version in our home town and I had been wanting to try it, so I was excited!  This is our before picture.  Guys, we were so confident. SO SO CONFIDENT. We are a group of very smart people! How hard can it be??  Oh man.  HARD. IT CAN BE REALLY HARD.

So yeah. We failed. We look so sad in our after picture...  BUT we loved it!  And want to try again, maybe on the THIRD annual CCW!  Now that we know what it's like, we are back to CONFIDENT that we can figure this shit out...

Our only complaint about CCW #1 was that we didn't spend enough time at the cabin just being together.  We worked hard to fix that this time, so beyond Go Karts and Trapped we pretty much spent the rest of the time at the cabin playing games (EXPLODING KITTENS IS AWESOME!), eating good food, drinking good drinks, laughing, and just enjoying being together

It was exactly as perfect as we thought it would be

Saturday evening I was like "We need to take pictures!  I LOVE our pictures from last year!" So four of us got out our cameras and started attempting to capture CCW which funnily enough resulted in us taking lots of pictures of each other taking pictures

And also, at least few good shots of these awesome people.

 Man, I loved everything about this weekend.  I think we are all solidly in the camp of being sure CCW3 happens next year.  Our only complaint as we walked out the door was that man, it still didn't feel like we had long enough together. I am not sure that's a problem we can fix with a single weekend.  So, until next time, we are just left wanting to do it again. Soon!