the kentucky moon

My my my, Kentucky was blast. I got in late the night of the 22nd, Yale and Keebler coming to pick me up. We actually ended up seeing Amanda Mills (Jesse's halfsister) at the airport. She was on her way back from the Bahamas where she had been for her honeymoon. We made a few calls and then headed over to a party to meet up with April and Shelley. The host of the party was apparently a wedding photographer and he had set up a photobooth in his living room. I don't know how it worked since the equipment was all boxed up but it worked fabulously and I got a number of new pictures to look back on in nostalgia. At then end of the night, I also had the chance to showcase my Rubix Cube skills.


So the following day, I traveled from Louisville to Georgetown to see the Willetts. It was the first time in a long while that all of the Willetts kids and all of the Adkins kids managed to be in the same place at the same time and it was fantastic. Topics of conversation ranged from time travel to television to books. Another one of the reasons I miss New York is having Simon around the same city. I headed back to Lancaster later that night and the following day was Christmas Eve. I spent most of the day shopping, as I hadn't done any Christmas shopping. Katie took me around and brought Leah with her along with her friend Eva's couple children. Leah is just as adorable as I remember her from last May. She greeted me with a hug and during lunch put her french fries in her hair. That night, Katie and Leah came to Christmas Eve Mass with my family and got to see all of my uncles, aunts, cousins and Grandmother at the same time. This was a first for her, and a welcome reunion for me. After mass, we went back to the farm and ate oyster stew. Again, this was a first for Katie (both seeing the farm and eating the stew) and I was really glad she got to spend the night with us. Jerry (who I'd met for the first time the previous night) brought a bottle of Elijah Craig which Kyle and I (and a number of my relatives) highly enjoyed.


Christmas was as it always is, my absolute favorite holiday. It consisted of snack foods all day, lots of wonderful presents, games of Balderdash, and a movie at the end of the night. The entire day was with my family and it was fantastic. We should have Christmas every month.


Most of the rest of my week was spent with my Mom during the day and with Katie and Leah for a few hours each night. A few highlights throughout the week were seeing Chris and getting drinks with him, Katie, Chris' lady and Ty, my mom cooking fried chicken and fettuccine alfredo and Katie and Kyle joining my family for dinner and a game of Apples to Apples and Taboo. I also got to go back down to my farm again for our extended family's gift-giving and Hot Wheels race. We actually managed to win first place in the race for the first time in fifteen years of racing with our car "Erasmus" (named after John Blackthorne's ship in "Shogun"). My last night in town I went to Winchester and helped Katie study for the ACT and said goodbye for a while. My final day in Lancaster was spent with my mom and we eventually said goodbye before I headed to Louisville. I'm really going to miss my mom over the next six months or so.



I got into Louisville and spent New Years at the Pour Haus watching some cover band that April and Shelley knew. They were surprisingly good for two reasons. One, they didn't bother doing their own "take" on the songs. When they covered a song it was as close to the original as possible. They also had an amazing stage presence. They were dancing the entire night. I even asked a random girl if she would take me on stage and she did. I stood there for a few minutes, waved to the audience, and then got off stage. I ended the night fairly early since I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep the night before and the next day I ate with Dougie and Shannon, watched football with Bryan and Keebler, went to see "I Am Legend" with Brian and Brendan, and then drove around in the freshly fallen snow with Yale. I actually got a bit worried that my flight would be cancelled because of how hard it was snowing at times.


The snow in Kentucky was magical because it came just in time for me to see it. If you know me, you know I love snow and that week was the only chance I'd really get to see snow the entire year and it was provided for me. Then I flew home and ended up seeing the snow covered tops of the volcano as I landed back in Hilo.