We are somewhere up to ... Rich is still cooking and we're cleaning

Sunday, November 25, 2012 @ 5:17 AM

Good MORNING!!!!!  This was the seen at our house yesterday afternoon.  It was one of the best Thanksgivings ever!  We still missed a couple of sons and DILs, but other than that it was one of the most remarkable days!  This was the day that all my Grandchildren met each other under the same roof!  AND, it was at my place.  Just what a wonderful day it was!  I’m so sorry that Thom couldn’t have been here to see his son interacting, but it was very very nice.

We did call Thom afterward, and then he called back.  It was a good conversation.  I didn’t like the part that he’d been drinking, but it was a holiday weekend, he was not drunk and he was safe within his own home.  He has told me before that he only drinks on weekends.  I’m thinking that you can’t hold a security job at the Pentagon without being clear-headed.  I know that it is just a mother’s prerogative to worry, and I know I shouldn’t, but there’s always the fear that something can happen to your kids that keeps a mother always on call.

But this was way later in the day and there is so much to go over between one point and another.  I think our last note went out on Friday, and nothing was written yesterday on Saturday because there was so much other stuff going on.  I really did want the day to go well – inviting over Maury’s and Laura’s families.  AND, it truly did measure up!  I think though we’ll take it back to Friday and see what we can remember.

The first memory we had was that we were working very hard to get the last blog entry out of most of the events on Thanksgiving Day.  The part that hadn’t gotten as much attention was that we were over at Maury’s after being with Rich’s Mom, Bud, Mark and Pat.  We’ll get back to the Pat part later, but we had asked and she declined going over to Maury’s.  We would really like to invite her over today while our place is picked-up AND dusted and while we have some pumpkin pie left.  She had said that it was one of her favorites, and this particular one was homemade by Rich!  But as to Maury’s …

When we got over there Rich had to drop me off because it was raining, I didn’t have a coat, and there was no immediate parking.  AND, just because that’s the kind of guy Rich is.  Just has to warm one’s heart.  Jade and Jasmine were in Maury’s and Nikki’s place on their own, because Maury and Nikki had gone out to walk Lady.  Lady came in VERY wet, but the kids had worn protective clothing, though I’m not really sure if they’d taken an umbrella.  It is a very romantic thought of them being out together in the rain because of the dog’s needs.  That’s one of the great parts of having a dog with no yard is that you get that image of people just loving their dog enough to take care of his or her personal needs without the advantages of just letting the dog go out in the yard. It thrills a Mom to know her kids are just plain out capable!  But, then again – what else to expect – they have four kids.  I just love saying that!

When Maury, Nikki and Lady got home, they unwrapped and then we talked in the Living room for a bit, but after a while, Jade suggested that we should have desserts and that turned out to be a good deal too.  Friday’s entry talked about a new fireplace mantel and fire – but there was no real fire … it just looked very real.  Maury said that they had gotten from their father when he had moved into his new place.  I guess he had two of them, and didn’t need the second.  It makes such a remarkable difference in their living room.  They have another piece of furniture corning it off that matches in color and stature, so again … Just an amazingly warm feeling walking into their living room and chatting.  Maury and Nikki had chairs in front of the fire.  Ok, forgot we were moving on.  Ame and Isa weren’t there, but the rest of the family was and it was a very nice conversational space to be in.  Nikki and Maury had presented THREE desserts to choose from – Pshwoo!  Because of something that Maury and Jade had going on, when we asked if there wasn’t something we could bring, Maury suggested ice cream and Jade filled-in the details.  I guess that worked for their family too, but no way are we eating ice cream with the other sweets there to be had!

It seemed that we stayed there a good while, but not too late.  Maury and Nikki we’re going to do the Black Friday thing about 10 PM.  I forgot to ask how that went yesterday, but they seemed in pretty good shape.  I JUST LOVE to have them over our place too, but it is nice seeing them in their environment as well.  Again, VERY nice conversations.

I’m thinking I’m not going to remember much of that night.  We got to Maury’s about 5 PM and let me think … we must have left around 7 PM, because I’m thinking we knew we had to take our medicine, but there wasn’t any water in the car so we might have waited until we got home.  We’re pretty sure it was a Rich night Hehehe, but I’m not remembering what we did now.  Just remember the Maury part.  Shoot, I hate that when it happens.  I’m not sure if we talked to Linda that night or not either.  Two nights seems like such a distance … Oh wait!  We got part of that I guess in our last entry.  I should then just read over that later to see what happened.

We’re then up to Friday.  I think we had gotten up, but then went back to bed on the couch because I remember something going on with us at the couch – maybe it was the cats or just keeping our eyes closed and dozing, because we wanted to let Rich sleep in and we hadn’t heard his rousing yet.  As it turned out … he had been up for about an hour in the kitchen planning his morning.  Since we’d woken with the kitties, we had made coffee before laying down so that was available to Rich.  When I woke up formally and Rich came in the living room, I think we talked.  I had remembered to look up the time we’d invited people, because we’d forgotten.  That’s just standard operating procedure though.  It turned out that we’d invited people at 1 PM and dinner was at 2 PM.  That worked out really well all around.  Laura’s were right on time and Maury was just 15 minutes later.

Before they all got there though there was some cleaning yet – AND some gift-making.  I’m getting my days confused as to what came first and next though.  I know that we’d gotten things cleaned-up so that there was a break in the Living room so I guess we’re still on Friday morning – mentally we’d jumped to Thursday, so I’m not sure now which day was which … there was one morning I know … oh yeah … that was Friday.  We had written until just after Rich had left to get the chairs.  That would have been around noonish.  At that point we finished dusting the piano and the desk and file area and then we moved into the bedroom.  I remember making the bed, and then starting by emptying the suitcase … I know FINALLY!  And then after that was sorted completely, we went about 3 rounds of hanging things up – you know the 3-4 piles of clean folded clothes?  Yeeks we’re going to need getting in on the steaming, ok ok … I know you know this … just saying is all!

After all the clean clothes were put in the closet – we put ours in our side, but Rich’s clothes we left on the laundry side so we could only put steamed clothes back in his closet.  So after that we’d finished dusting the room.  I’m thinking that is about when Rich came home.  He had more groceries and he had brought home the chairs, but had left them in the car which was fine because we didn’t have any floor space left at that point.  We are pretty sure that Rich got into the cooking part fairly soon.  Before the end of the night, he had made dinner which were brats on French bread and French fries, and then on the T-Day side, he had made Turkey, dressing, bread, THREE pies, and really good bars.  He’s like a demon in the kitchen.  Our part of helping was to stay out of the way, but also to peel and cut two bags of apples.  Pswhoo.  Lucky he had bought a new apple peeler!  WhooHOO!!!

He gave me time though to finish working in the sewing room.  That needed a lot of organizing.  Rich had done the moving around of things so that we had started the dishwasher for most the plates and bigger serving pieces from my Grandmother’s set after Rich had put them from the Baker’s Rack to the counter.  Then he moved the iron and Baker’s Rack to my sewing room, and we still had the walker upstairs.  Basically, as the other pieces came up the garbage and walker would go down, but that took til the next day because he had so much to do in the kitchen.  I didn’t have any problem with the furniture being moved because the places he’d placed things made sense.  He then moved the dishwasher to where the Baker’s Rack had gone, and then he moved the second one closer to the sewing room, and then he brought in the small round stone table from the balcony.  He also moved the treadle machine to under the window sill in the kitchen.  One last thing he did which I thought was interesting was that he took the two quilted pillow cases and he hung them decoratively by the fire. 

Once while we were in there, he teased that my next quilt should be a roaring fire to place under the fireplace mantel.  I think about the time he had said that, we were talking to Linda, so during that process we looked at various pictures, but we found one we liked, and now am holding that challenge with Linda to make it.  We set up a competitive situation where she had to finish Tony’s tree, and then we would have to finish Rich’s fireplace.  This is the picture we are going to base the quilt on J

Obviously it won’t say “Vector Stock” WITH the X through it, but otherwise you get the idea.  I’m really excited for the project.  I don’t think we have those kinds of colors – pretty much yellow, gold, orange, red, brown and black.  It might mean then rustling up some kind of colors from the quilt store and we’re excited to pieces thinking we should work with Batiks.  It will be BEAUTIFul!  That would be a January/February project though.

Getting back to the day … with Rich cooking in the kitchen we had a very nice time with cleaning-up the sewing room.  Mostly it is about clutter and our table had taken on a lot when we started not only cleaning the other rooms, but as well working with Dr. Marvin’s angel.  Did we show you that yet?  Oh my gosh!  We just checked and you haven’t even SEEN the angel!  Wait let me get that for you!

Pretty nice, hmm!??  I LOVE HER!  I’m not sure if we talked too much about this because otherwise we would have left a picture, but we had been fooling around with applique, because we’d just done a few pieces, and we hadn’t used the newer materials from Ann’s retreat (Steam-a-seam 2, Tear-away, and the pressing cloth).  Hmm, did we tell you that?  I’m thinking here we might have written about it in FB, but I don’t think we wrote about it here.  The other hard thing about doing a new applique project was that we knew for the pottery quilts we were going to have to add the skinny line that traces all the angels part … I know you can see it … it is that whitish outline. 

All the cloth pieces came from my Grandmother’s stash.

Whoops … lost focus here … and it is now a day and a half later, we will pick things up from here in a couple of posts J  Sorry!  It is now Monday afternoon…

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