Crisp and Clear, A Sunny Morning

6:44

Hayden Bissell, almost eleven

Halle Bissell, seven years old

Making friendship bracelets with Baba's help

Dining al fresco, in fact, every meal the past two weeks has been alfresco

At 6:40, I awaken to a quiet house, a blinding sun, a cool 55 degrees, such a change from the heat and humidity of the last few days, a traditional Chautauqua morning, the kind I remember from our first few years here at the lake in the 1980's, before Global Warming.

Yesterday we saw the departure of the Albarrans, a sad day for Marisa, as she left behind her two cousins Halle and Hayden.  After a breakfast of their favorite local treat, pea meal bacon from the Lighthouse, they packed up and left about 9:00.  And as I mentioned yesterday, the first words from Halle were, "Can we clean our rooms now?"  So, after another breakfast of pancakes with chocolate and maple syrup, Evie and the two girls went upstairs, the girls picked out bedrooms, and together, they moved their belongings from our bedroom into new bedrooms, vacuumed, straightened and organized, so by the end, they had their own personalized bedrooms, with pillows, animals, and other knick knacks they had brought from home.  This took a good part of the morning and they never seemed to tire.  We still have a lot of cleaning up to do today to get the house back in shape and I know they will be a big help.

We took it easy in the afternoon, staying inside as we had close to an inch of rain, something we dearly needed.  In fact, yesterday was the first day we did not go swimming, just relaxed and stayed inside, reading, watching some TV, and making friendship bracelets, the new passion for the girls.  Around 3:00, Evie took the girls shopping at Wegman's.  They then stopped at Johann Fabrics to get more supplies for their bracelets.  While there, Hayden, who will turn eleven in a few days, picked out one of her birthday presents, a case for her supplies of yarn. She was so excited when she got home, with new yarns,  a case, and being the good kid she is, she shared lots of her supplies with Halle.  The two set to work making bracelets which took up the rest of the afternoon.

For dinner, Evie put together a traditional fifties dinner, ground beef casserole, made with Campbell's tomato soup, a staple when I was a kid, something we thought the girls would like.  They did, sort of, as they ate it but did not devour it, as we thought.  Probably they were not hungry from all the snacks they had been eating.  As we were about to sit down to dinner Hayden, the 6th grader said:  " What do you and Granny do when we(the grandchildren) are not here? It doesn't seem right now; you ought to have girls running around yelling, being chased by the boys"  How true.  What do we do here at the lake without our grandchildren around?

We watched some of the Olympics, had ice cream with peaches for dessert and went to bed around 10:00, both girls very tired, as were Evie and I.