The Gathering of the Smiths

In celebration of Roy's father's recent retirement from work, all of Roy's siblings gathered in Elizabethtown last Friday. This was the first time since I've been with Roy (over 3 years) that all of his five sisters, one brother and him have been in town at once. His oldest sister lives in New Jersey and his youngest sister lives in California.  Two of the triplets live nearby and one lives in Kentucky. His younger brother also lives nearby. Here is a family photo taken with all the nieces and nephews as well.

My brother also came to visit that night and we hung out with him for a bit. He crashed on our couch that night. The next day, Saturday, I went skating in the morning and we went to lunch with my brother. He left afterwards and that evening we ate dinner the fam and then went bowling. I beat Roy the first game by 3 points but he crushed everyone else in the following games.

On Sunday, we took Roy's sister Christina's mother-in-law to Amish country (after we made a quick stop at the jewelry store to peruse some wedding bands and ring settings). She came to visit from New Orleans so we wanted to show her some local attractions. We went to this Amish Village where they provided a guided tour of a traditional Amish house and explained their way of life. It was pretty interesting. The last part of the tour was a basement, where the women would spend 17 hours a day cooking in the summertime since it was too hot in the regular kitchen. There was a wringer washer in there, the same kind that Roy has in his basement (it came with his place when he bought it). Except, he used to use his for a beer and ice cooler.

We toured the grounds of the Amish house and there were quite a few animals. Goats, chickens, cows, horses, and peacocks. The peacock happened to open up his feathers for us!  Apparently they are like watch dogs on the farm, they make loud noises when they see or hear something strange:

Beautiful!

It was a great weekend (though I ate and drank way more than usual). Roy and George (his bro-in-law) didn't get in the drink tank as much this time around. There was a lot of wedding talk, especially with Christina. She is all about event planning (more about wedding stuff in another post)! She is really good about putting together photo books, photo frames, or anything to do with crafty projects.  As a gift, she gave her dad a photo/scrap book of all the kids when they were younger. My cousins kept saying how handsome Roy was when he was younger. What about now? He still is, in my opinion! 

Guns and beer 4 life

This photo might have been staged, but I'm pretty sure Roy had a real beer in his hand a couple years after this was taken.