A Weekend of Festivities

Holiday weekends are always full of excitement, time with family and generally a lot to do.  This past Thanksgiving weekend, however, things were especially busy for Bryan and I.  Not only did we have the expected Thanksgiving dinner, but we also had my 10 year high school reunion and a gathering at his parents' house to assemble the Lego Christmas village as a family.  We were going all weekend with barely a break.  Instead of breaking it into three separate blog posts, I decided to clump it all together, mostly for my sanity.

For Thanksgiving, Bryan and I join his family at his sister-in-law's parents' house (it's a bit confusing to explain to people for some reason) where we gathered with his parents, his oldest brother's family, and his sister-in-law's sisters (along with the husband of one of said sisters).  In all, it was about sixteen people.  Joy's mom, Kathy, always puts on a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with more food than imaginable.  In addition to the turkey, there are about six different sides, including three types of cranberry sauce and fresh rolls.  Kathy makes absolutely everything from scratch, from the rolls to the pies for dessert.  As always, the food was beyond amazing, and I always eat way more than I should.

This year, we didn't just celebrate Thanksgiving, however.  The day before, Bryan's nephew turned one.  Instead of the entire family getting together two days in a row, his parents decided to celebrate his birthday on Thanksgiving.  It wasn't anything fancy, we sang "Happy Birthday", and then he ate an entire cupcake in three bites.  I've seriously never seen a child eat so much before, he's like a bottomless pit!  Of course, some of the icing ended up in his nose, so he spent the rest of the evening trying to blow it out, without much success.  Overall, it was a wonderful way to spend the holiday, surrounded by family and celebrating a birthday in addition to Thanksgiving.

I didn't go out shopping on Black Friday.  The overwhelming majority of my shopping was on the computer, so I wanted to wait until Cyber Monday.  Besides, the crowds were apparently ridiculous at some places, and it simply wasn't worth it.  Instead, I stayed home and relaxed while Bryan went to his friends' for the day.  That evening, we did our usual Friday routine: pizza, a bottle of wine and streaming something on TV (lately it's been Disney+, but more about that in a much later post).

Saturday night was my 10 year high school reunion.  I'm not so much struggling with the fact that I graduated high school ten years ago as much as I'm struggling with the fact that I've been friends with some of my closest friends from college for an entire decade.  It seems like just yesterday we all started hanging out together!  The reunion was at Pinstripes in Bethesda, which was nice because it was about five minutes from Bryan's house, so we didn't have to drive very far.  We'd never been to Pinstripes before, and we usually don't go to Pike and Rose because it's a bit expensive.  I was intrigued, though, and couldn't wait to see what it was like.  Let me start out by saying that Pinstripes wasn't what I was expecting at all.  I expected more like an upscale Bowl America with fancy tables and lots of bowling alleys.  Instead, it's a legitimate restaurant on the first floor with a handful of bowling alleys upstairs, along with several ballrooms that can be rented out for private events.  I also want to say that Pinstripes is the perfect location for a reunion.  Not only is the food delicious, and there's plenty of space for people to mingle in the ballroom we rented, but it was nice to have bowling available as an option also.  We had eight lanes reserved just for us, so people weren't obligated to just stand around and talk, there were activities to do as well.  Bryan and I didn't bowl, not bowling is kind of an inside joke between us.  We've tried to go bowling a few times in the past, but it's never quite worked out, so it's become a thing between us now.  Maybe we'll get there one day, one can only dream.

Photo of Bryan and I with some old friends from high school.

I have to say, getting ready to head out to the reunion, I had no idea why I was even going in the first place.  I don't really talk to anyone from high school anymore, and, to be honest, I didn't feel the need to reconnect.  That sounds cold, like I don't care about the friends I made in high school, which definitely isn't the case, I simply didn't feel this overwhelming desire to see a lot of people.  At the same time, I was curious.  With the help of Facebook and Instagram, I could see what people I graduated with were doing, and it would be interesting to see them in the real world, not just through a screen.  All of this made me weirdly anxious going into the reunion, but only a little thankfully.  I knew I was going to have a good time, and if I didn't, we could just leave.  I did feel bad for Bryan, however, since he knew absolutely no one other than me, so he would probably be pretty bored.  Even so, he was a great sport and didn't complain at all.

It was wonderful seeing people and catching up.  Like I said, it's one thing to see what people are doing through social media, it's another thing to talk to them.  There were also people who didn't really go on social media, so it was wonderful catching up with them face to face.  It's great to hear what people are doing and about everything going on in their lives.  It was also wonderful to talk about our high school days: people who weren't there, old adventures, inside jokes and drama at school (such as the huge fight our freshman year that resulted in over twenty police cars showing up at our school).  There was lots of laughing, reminiscing and eating delicious food.  The woman who put the entire reunion together, Amanda, did a fantastic job.  It also made sense to do it Thanksgiving weekend (I know at least two other high schools had their reunions that weekend as well), because a lot of people were already in the area for the holiday, so it saved them a second trip.  In all her planning, however, Amanda forgot name tags for people, but that actually made the reunion a little better.  There were a few times where I wasn't entirely sure who a person was, but everyone was pretty cool about that.  At one point as we were leaving, someone announced, "Christina Sesok!" really loud and gave me a giant hug.  I must have had a completely lost expression on my face, because he immediately introduced himself, and I felt so embarrassed for not recognizing him.  We were in the honors program together all through high school and even sat next to each other a few times through the years.  It was great to see him and everyone else.

As if all of this weren't exciting enough, the next day Bryan and I headed over to his parents' for his family's Christmas tradition.  Bryan and his brothers grew up loving Legos, so every year his family gets together and spends the afternoon building a Lego Christmas village.  It's a huge undertaking and is pretty much all hands on deck.  We arrived around 1ish, and I left around 5:30, but most people were still there.  Each year, Bryan's oldest brother, Adam, buys the newest Lego set, so the village grows each year.  We outsourced a little bit this year, and Bryan's parents invited a little boy and his mom and sister from church to help as well.  Surprisingly, we got most of the sets built this year in one afternoon, which hasn't happened in a while.  Apparently last year Bryan's dad, Tom, had to keep building on his own for several evenings afterwards.  The past two years, I've always gone for smaller sets, something easier with a few smaller buildings instead of one larger building.  This year, however, I felt comfortable enough to do something a bit more complicated, so I went with last year's set: a fire station.  I also knew that the likelihood of having missing pieces after just one year was minimal, and since Adam always builds the newest set, I could blame him for any missing pieces.

The front of the fire station I built.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how my fire station came out.  It was definitely the most challenging Lego set I've built yet, and there were a few times where Bryan had to help me out, but it was only two or three times total.  What I like about the newer sets is they outline the pieces that are added onto the build in green, so you can see exactly where you have to put the pieces.  The one challenge I do have with the Lego sets is the depth.  Sometimes it's hard to see if the pieces are supposed to be flush or if one piece is supposed to be a little higher than another.  If you follow the directions exactly, it shouldn't be a problem because everything works out in the end.  In the end, it all worked out, and the one piece I thought I was missing showed up.  At that point, however, I couldn't access the empty spot, and you can't even tell there's supposed to be a piece there, so it really doesn't matter.

It's not just building Legos when we go to Tom and Joann's, it's also a chance for all of us to get together as a family.  There's tons of food and lots of hanging out.  Bryan, though, isn't the most social during this.  He gets in the zone and focuses entirely on whatever he's building.  It's actually really funny.  Thankfully, he's willing to help if I need any.

The back/inside of the fire station I built.

Overall, it was an incredibly busy weekend for the two of us.  We spent a lot of time with family and some time catching up with friends I haven't seen in over a decade.  While it was a blast, I'm also looking forward to this coming weekend, it's the only weekend between now and New Year's when we don't have anything planned.  Bring on the relaxation!