Anna Grows

 The Kohler family met up in beautiful Deep Creek Lake, Maryland for a Thanksgiving gathering.  This has become a bi-annual event with different houses each time.  This year's house had a lovely view from the top of a mountain and a wonderful deck to enjoy said view.  That was all good for Wednesday, but then the snow and wind moved in for the rest of Thanksgiving week.  Fortunately, there was plenty of other activities to keep everyone occupied. There were many ping pong games, led by Aidyn (at one point he and Anna decided to play while on their knees).  Grandma, an experienced ping pong player from her younger days, decided to show them how it was done but then realized this was contingent on them actually being able to hit the ball back to her.  She decided to coach from the sidelines.  There were also some highly competitive Uno games with Anna introducing new rules that the rest of the family did not know (Aidyn called them the "college rule...

 Anna has arrived home for fall break, which for her means that she has the week of Thanksgiving off.  She made it home on Thursday night (no class on Friday) thanks to a ride from one of her high school friends.  She arrived to be greeted by Benny, who was the only one home as Joe & Theresa were at a concert.  Joe told her later that her parents were busy every night of the week and had joined a bowling league, been out dancing, played darts, went to concerts.... really she was lucky Benny was home.  😄 Anna has all sorts of tales from the first semester of college life.  An overall theme is fire alarms going off several times a week (usually in the middle of the night) thanks to people smoking/vaping (one would think they would learn).  There also seems to be an appreciation for those basic life skills, like cleaning up after yourself (ask her about the communal kitchen).  She has her roller skates and has been doing some skating with a frie...