Our Final Sunday In Lee Summit

Happy Family

Tom and Mary with Kelly and Mike Burlingame

Up at 7:00, like clock work now in Lee Summit, to, what else, a sunny morning, cloudless sky, and quiet though Evie also got up soon after me.  It's nice to think we have at least one more full day with the Davis family before heading back to the lake tomorrow morning.

Yesterday was a Saturday but to all of us, it seemed like a Sunday, not sure why.  We relaxed in the morning even though we were having company for dinner.  Tom and Mary worked out, and we stayed home with Nick and Marlena until Marlena went off to a birthday party at noon.  When Tom returned, we took off for Costco, for our final shopping fix but also to pick up dinner, shrimp and scallops, everyone's favorite meal.  We mightily fought the urge to buy, buy, buy, things other than the essentials for the week.  It's hard to pass up that new camera, set of luggage, package of pots and pans, just about anything in the store.  We also stopped at HyVee, the local  grocery for a few things, so we were gone for close to two hours.  The rest of the afternoon was spent watching various football games for Tom and me, Ohio State/Michigan, then Alabama/Auburn, though neither of us had much interest in the latter.  All of us worked some on getting the shrimp and scallops ready for the evening but the main focus was going to be making fresh pasta.  We brought our mixer and pasta attachments for making pasta with us from the lake, so we could make it with the kids.

Starting to Make Pasta

Friends Mike and Kelly Burlingame and son Peyton arrived around 6:15, just as Nick's high school football team, Lee Summit West, was winning the State Football Championship, a blow out actually, something like 51-14. Times are good in Lee Summit today.  Soon after the gang arrived, Tom and I browned the scallops in butter, then added garlic, parsley, shallots and white wine, and at Tom's suggestion, we toasted some sliced baguettes and served each scallop on the toast, topped with the sauce.  It was an amazing appetizer, I must say and serving them on toast was the coup de grace.

Marlena Rocks

Hanging Out With The Fettuccine

All It Takes Is CONCENTRATION

After the appetizers, Evie began the process of making TWO recipes of pasta noodles, with the help of the three kids, Nick, Marlena, and Petyon,  the adults sipping wine, talking, watching, and kibitzing. The noodle making began badly, the dough falling apart but Evie thought to add a touch of water to the dough and it was perfect.  The kids took turns passing the dough through the pasta machine and a half hour later, we had a wrack full of fettuccine, ready to drop in the boiling water. The kids were amazingly patient and interested, never bored, loving the process.  While I cooked the pasta, Evie added the already grilled shrimp to the vodka pasta sauce and made a salad.  Once the noodles were done, we added them to the vodka sauce, then let marinate for a few minutes before serving.  Everyone loved it, of course, and we had more than enough, in fact, enough for another meal as two recipes of pasta noodles goes a long way.  We had chocolate peanut butter cheese cake for dessert, leftover from Thanksgiving but still good, and then relaxed the rest of the evening, yakking, telling stories of our travels in Turkey, finishing the dishes, and watching, what else, football.  The Burlingames left around 11:00, the evening having gone too quickly.  It was fun seeing Mike, Kelly, and Peyton, something we have done each of the last three or four years.