Monthly Archives: December 2017

Reunion Weekend

In November, the entire Williams family met up in Cordele, Georgia.  My grandfather, Ed Williams, grew up in Cordele and has lived there his entire life.  He and his wife, Marylene, are no longer able to travel so we planned a family reunion in Cordele so that he could see everyone.  We love Grandpa and Marylene and we know how much they love their family.  It was such a treat to give him the gift of a reunion, and in return, it was a gift to all of us.

We rented cabins out at Lake Blackshear for the weekend so that the kids would be able to run around uncontrolled for a few days.  That was a great decision!!  There were 8 kids, ages 3-11, that really enjoyed each others company all weekend. Tom and I brought down three of our kids’ bikes and they rode them around non-stop for the entire weekend.  It made me wish that we lived on that many acres so that the kids could just run around safely without adult supervision all of the time!

The only problem that we had all weekend occurred during the first night – my bed and two others had bed bugs!!  So gross!  I felt like there were little things crawling on me in the night, but I thought that it was my imagination.  Wrong!!  I slept with bed bugs.  Thankfully, I was in a bed by myself because Tom was in the next bed with Wilson.  They switched us to a better room the next day after the bugs had been discovered, but I had already been eaten alive that night.  It is a week later and I feel like I have the chicken pox! I don’t think I will ever be able to sleep in a cabin every again!!

After we moved rooms, and they washed all of our clothes, we got back into the fun of the weekend.  I had a great time playing frisbee golf with all of my cousins.  I rarely see my cousins and some of them I hardly know.  Doug and I are so much older than everyone else, but once everyone started to get married and have kids, the age gap seemed to close in quite a bit.  I have never even really hung out with my cousin Luke, and I had never met his wife Carol, but after our bonding over bed bugs, we really got along great!  It was such an amazing blessing to get to know them better.  They are really great people!

Overall, I am so thankful for my family!  I have been born into such an amazing group of loving people.  We enjoy each others’ company and want to be together.  That doesn’t always happen in families, but it happened in mine.  I know that I am loved by my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents…and I love them in return.  I know that we made Grandpa so happy by coming to see him.  After the reunion, we swung by his house on the way out of town to hang out a bit.  The kids ran around in his yard while the rest of us socialized and rested.  It was an amazing weekend and I would love to do it again!

Thanksgiving

We had another fun-filled, food-filled and family-filled Thanksgiving this year. Thanksgiving has it’s traditions and we definitely have ours.   Years ago we started taking the kids to the Thanksgiving Day parade in uptown Charlotte.   I tried to get out of going this year, but Faith said, “It is a tradition!  We have to go!”. So, I took her and Gabriel uptown to the parade.  The kids pretty much go to the parade for the candy that is thrown at them, and the bands and floats come in a close second.  The parade, and the weather, was nice this year and I ended up enjoying myself.  We got to the parade late, which was a huge blessing, and were able to wriggle our way up to the front and sit on the curb.  The secret to being warm and comfortable at the parade is bringing a blanket to cover you and a few towels to sit on.  :)

After the parade, we headed on over to my parents’ house for the feast!  As usual, there was a ton of food and about 40 people.  I love my family and am so blessed to have so many wonderful aunts and uncles.  My cousin, Laura, came to Thanksgiving in my grandmother’s Moravian outfit which was squeezed on top of her 8 month pregnant belly.  It was hilarious!  And she celebrated her 30th birthday at the same time!

My parents had the bounce house blown up for all of the kids (about 15 of them).  They also got some great use out of the trampoline.  I had to go outside at one point and tell them to come in and eat!  Now that my kids are older, I hardly even see them on Thanksgiving.  They are having too much fun playing with all of their cousins.  I think that the only time that I saw Miller was when he kept coming back inside to ask for another cookie.  He had to have had 5-10 cookies that day.  I am pretty sure they ate more desserts than anything else.

It was another success Wilson thanksgiving! I am thankful for all of my loved ones and the time we spend together.