We’ve been celebrating New Years with the Neimeyer’s for 24 years! It started as a simple visit to an apartment in Lawrence, KS in 1999. From there to multiple cities in the Midwest until we both settled in St. Louis. Complacency can get the best of anybody and we started mixing it up with trips to out of town locations. This year, it was the Neimeyer’s turn to host. They were not quite in a favorable hosting position. In July, a tree bisected their house. They are still staying in a rental as their house is being repaired/rebuilt. After a few discussions, we settled on an AirBnB near Warsaw, MO. We would have the basement of a house with 4 bedrooms, a lake and a bonfire! What could be better. But lets not get ahead of ourselves.
The boys (Jeff, Hogan, Mason, and Corvin) left in one car around 9am. We would get to town first and perform grocery shopping for our 2 night stay.
Of course, we took the scenic route detouring at the Uranus Fudge Factory. Just to be inclusive, we started an 8 person chat including the girls (Danelle, Sonora, Kelly, Aylo). There, we made comments about our visit to the fudge factory. Insert your own crude jokes here.
We had to follow this visit with lunch before continuing on. Eventually, we found ourselves arriving in Warsaw, MO looking for the nearest Wal-Mart super center for groceries. There, the men made fools of themselves grabbing nearly one of everything from the junk food and most of what was on the list. By the time we got to the rental, the ladies had already arrived and moved all of their things in. Did I mention that there was a private lake there?
We quickly selected our desired rooms and unpacked our shopping. We made a single trip into town to a bar to watch the Chiefs game. Unfortunately, we got seated in the smoking section of the bar. We enjoyed the food and the game was decent too. Okay maybe Sonora didn’t care that much.
One of the highlights of the weekend was a bonfire. We paid a bit extra for this, but it was huge, and fun!
We played a bunch of games and hung out as only two close families do. We played some disc golf on the baskets they had. This host was fantastic. Were it warmer, you can bet we would have been in that lake making lots of splashes! With luck, we’ll spend another 24 New Years together growing old and making many memories!
Hogan Haake