The Rest of November

There was a lot of other shit that went down in November that I didn't mention earlier. Some of it was good, most of it was not good. I had a few pictures from the election

I voted

and watched the election results in these cool Rocky pajamas

That turned out incredibly horrible. I try not to really talk politics on social platforms aside from the occasional joke - which just got a lot easier. For the record, I was a Bernie guy, getting universal health care is really the only issue that affected me personally because I was paying about $1000 a month for Obamacare for most of the election season. Hillary was the lesser of two terrible candidates and the entire corrupt system needs to be reformed. Don't get me started. The eventual result left me very depressed.

 

Hiking in Boone with my Love!

eating at Our Daily Bread

Amazing hot sauce store

This year for our 18th wedding anniversary Kelley and I got away for a romantic weekend in Boone! We left the kids in Raleigh and didn't tell anything else what we were up to. It was awesome. We had a fancy dinner at the restaurant where we met 20 years ago. The entire weekend was amazing and romantic and wonderful.

We got a roadside selfie

at Twigs - you can actually see us reflected in the mirror

Such a fancy dinner. So delish

everyone loves a forced pose

That was definitely a good thing for the month.

This thing is becoming a pain in the ass

The rabbit is getting to be a pain in the ass. Still adorable, just pooping everywhere and bit through a phone cable.

I covered Thanksgiving in the last post, but didn't mention what happened afterwards. There was good and really really bad.

Christmas tree is up!

Ella got to hang the topper this year

After this we had a series of tragedies in the family. The Sunday after Thanksgiving the entire large Maness family got together at Tammie's like we usually do. It was wonderful to get to see everybody, we had a huge crew this year.

Can you find us?

The Tuesday after that was Kelley's Mom's birthday. We were all together at our house preparing a birthday dinner when we got the call that Kelley's sisters' husband had passed away. Marcus was only 37 and was very healthy aside from smoking. This was a complete shock to all of us.

We still had stuff going on. Kelley and Neena went down to Meri's to comfort her and start making the arrangements so I stayed here with the kids.

Ella finished her science fair project! Eventually she will have to give a presentation as well. It turned out really good and I think she's going to end up with a nice grade. But finishing under these circumstances made it difficult to focus.

So Marcus is gone. We decided to home base out of my parents' house in Greenville because it would be easier to get up to Meri's and the would be able to watch the kids. Saturday we were cleaning Meri's house because we knew there would be people coming by after the funeral. In the afternoon, she got a call from one of the other cousins that Donnie had passed away.

Donnie Maness was one of Kelley's cousins who was very close in age with her dad. They actually grew up in the same house and were incredibly close. Donnie's oldest daughter is Kelley's best friend, she has been very distraught since losing her father. We are all very close with these people, and losing two members of the family so close together is leaving us numb.

Marcus' funeral was first, on Sunday. We got to see a lot more of his friends and family than we knew about previously. I led a prayer since I couldn't sing. My voice was still gone from being sick with a cold all the previous week. The funeral was very sad. Afterwards, we went back to the house with the rest of our family.

The following Wednesday was Donnie's funeral in Biscoe NC. It still doesn't seem like he's gone, we were just hanging out the Sunday before and he seemed perfectly healthy. We saw Kendall and more of the family than made it to the first funeral. I did a scripture reading and a prayer. It was different, but very familiar. Very sad again.

So that's how the year is wrapping up. Ella isn't used to seeing Kelley and myself this distraught, so she's taking it pretty hard. All of us are operating at an emotional high ground; the kind where country music makes me cry. The Christmas holidays are going to be very interesting.