Waiting For The Gang

Kitchen Help

It's 6:30, Jill, Drew and the girls are here, all still sleeping and I am sitting downstairs in the dark listening to two podcasts.  Bill Simmons and an interview with Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge, both a welcome relief from the news.  It looks ugly out, as the big melt has begun in earnest, the snow turning to puddles of water, the lake soupy.  So we will have cloudy skies and rain much of the day, not exactly a white Christmas for our granddaughters.  By the way, we received a phone call yesterday from Home Depot, saying the last piece of our carpet is in so they will be arriving this morning to lay it in our TV room, great timing! Jerks...don't buy from them.

8:03

They did not arrive until 6:00 so we had the day to ourselves, waiting mostly, filling the hours with the usual, shopping, some baking, reading, TV and a nap.  The day started with coffee, the blog and Evie making a final list for Wegman's, as there is always something else we need.  So I was off at 10:30, stopped at Ryders Cup, took a selfie with the regulars, then on to Wegman's to pick up a few things, not a big shopping trip.  Afterward, I stopped at a craft store to pick up some fabric magic markers since we could not find the ones we had.  We have this cool tablecloth that we bring out each year to color and we need fabric markers.

The Locals At Ryders Cup

I was home by 12:30 and Evie had been busy of course, tweaking the living room and bedrooms, making sure all was right in the house.  For lunch, Evie made me a quesadilla, fast becoming the easy go-to lunch, warmed up some lentil soup and I was happy, enjoying lunch and watching another episode of Peaky Blinders on Netflix.  The rest of the day was just waiting for the family to arrive and envying our neighbors, who were once more out on the ice skating.

Wow

And as is obvious, when you are anxious for someone to arrive, time moves slowly.  I took a nap which helped but the rest of the afternoon was slow-moving, looking for things to do to pass the time.  I finally texted Halle and she replied they were 40 minutes out which meant they would be here just after 6:00.  They arrived on time, in the dark, the two dogs charging out of their SUV with the girls, for hugs and petting.  We moved lots of girl stuff in and upstairs and within 15 minutes, the dogs were relaxing in their dog beds, the four of us were enjoying Blue Moons, and the girls were just happy to be out of the car.  All of them look great, Hayden, now a freshman at West Virginia, Halle at freshman in high school, both so grown up.  It was great to have a house full of kids and grandkids, the way it should be during the holidays,  Evie made the girls' favorites for appetizers, hanky pankies, and feta cheese boreks. Yum.

Dinner At Last (Coco eyeing the ham)

Dinner was a honey baked ham, stuffed shells for Halle, twice baked potatoes for Hayden, and a great salad with onion strings.  It was fun to sit down to a table with family once again and all were hungry, enjoying dinner after a six-plus hour drive from Virginia. Evie and I thought hard about a film or TV show all of us might like so we settled on The Morning Show, on AppleTV Plus.  We have seen it but were happy to watch it once again.  We watched two episodes, finishing just after 11:00 and it was a good choice because everyone loved it and can't wait to get back to it this evening.