30 November 2017

We had a family reunion over Thanksgiving in Orlando last week!  My parents and my brothers and sister and their families all came, and it was a great big cousin-fest.  We'd started planning this reunion in Orlando well before we even thought about moving here, so in the end it worked out very nicely for us.

My parents rented an enormous house in Kissimmee, which had a nice big kitchen too.  Mr. Brown and I considered inviting everyone to our house for Thanksgiving dinner, but instead we packed up most of our kitchen and carted it down there.  My Oklahoma brother and sister-in-law had to leave on Friday morning early, so we had Thanksgiving on Wednesday instead so we could eat leftovers on Thursday before they left.  There was so much food and it was so delicious (leek mashed potatoes.  maple pecan sweet potatoes.) except for the rolls and the taro, which was experimental. Also we made pecan pie bars and pumpkin bars instead of pies this year... and while they were delicious, we missed the pies.

We swam in the pool at the house and in the community pool, played lots of card games, watched the Macy's parade, and went to Downtown Disney together.  We had a surprise birthday party for Grandma and Uncle Chris, complete with pinata that Nut Brown made, shaped like a birthday cake.  Every night, some of the siblings/spouses would hang out in the hot tub after the kids went to bed, and that was some fun bonding time too.  My dad was sick for the last couple days of the reunion, too.  Also we got to meet Chris's friend Kelsie, who we liked very much.  I guess everybody else got to meet her, because Chris had brought her to our house before.  (I really love living closer to my family.)

One night we had everybody up to our house to give them the tour and have marshmallow wars (thanks to Grandma).  Grandpa took us out to Golden Corral for dinner.  I'm so glad that we got together!

Cousins

(Basically all of us showed up in minivans... the exceptions being my brother who's not married and my brother/sister-in-law who have no kids... I think my dad thought it was funny because he commented on it in their Christmas letter.  My uncle Bob hates minivans because he says they took all the romance out of cars... but they're extremely popular because they're so PRACTICAL.  We love ours.)