(A little background that may make this post easier to understand... You might be wondering where Wisconsin comes into the picture. Jake's parents both grew up there and all of his extended family lives there. Jake and I grew up together in Upstate New York, and his parents moved back to Wisconsin after we graduated from high school. Jake is the youngest of four- his siblings from oldest to youngest are Zach, Adam and Sarah. Zach is married to Jenna and they just had Madelynn, the first grandchild on the Koneman side of our family. Fewf, that was a lot of side information!)
My mother-in-law, Joyce, told us that we were going to see Adam Sandler's not-so-critically-acclaimed movie, Jack & Jill, and surprised us while we were out on the street with tickets to the traveling Broadway show of Les Miserables. The pic below was taken after she revealed the trick she had up her sleeve. 
(My Mother-in-law, Joyce, and I)
We had Thanksgiving dinner at The Hotel Fremont, Jake's parent's restaurant/bar/hotel that they own on the Wolf River. They were closed for the holiday, so we had the place to ourselves. My brother-in-law, Adam, and I cooked all of the food except for the turkey, which my brother-in-law, Zach, broasted (high pressure deep fried). All of the food turned out great!
The photos below are of a cranberry chutney that I made (my mom's recipe), a salad that I made of dark greens, brown sugar toasted pecans, dried cranberries, apples and brie cheese with a poppy seed lemon balsamic dressing and lastly, my brother-in-law Adam's slap-yo-mama-good cheddar sage biscuits (I need to remember to get the recipe!).
(Foreground - Jake's brother, Adam, background - Jake's brother, Zach cooking Thanksgiving dinner in the Koneman family restaurant's kitchen)
The absolute highlight of the trip was meeting our niece, Madelynn. She is such a sweet baby and we hated to leave her. I made sure to savor every minute that I had with her and of course, to take lots of pictures.
(Zach, Jake's oldest brother/Madelynn's Dad)
(From left to right brothers- Jake, Adam & Zach with Madelynn)
We were happy that we got to spend over a week in Wisconsin, since we are only able to visit a couple of times a year. It is tough that our families live so far away from each other. Especially, now that there are babies in the picture - they change so fast.
Do you have long distance families? How do you "split" the holidays?
(a) Les Mis as a surprise! BEST ever! I love that show.
ReplyDelete(b) your niece is just a little dollie, it's awesome you got to meet her.
(c) uber jealous of your fancy kitchen for the cooking.
And to answer your question: we do every Thanksgiving with B's family because we live 15 minutes from my family and 6 hours from his, and we trade off Christmases!
Whit, we usually do Thanksgiving with my family since they live here in North Carolina but we try to do the every-other Christmas thing too. Might get a little harder with kids some day since it is a 15 hr drive and the weather on the way is sketchy (so pretty much have to fly) but we are trying to do our best to split them evenly. In a perfect world we would all live closer!
ReplyDeleteso fun you were able to have an extended visit. the first black and white picture is great, but the last sleeping baby lips picture is too cute for words.
ReplyDelete