I just finished writing an e-mail to my mother, who is with my father in Australia for three weeks, and I thought maybe you would enjoy “reading over my shoulder”. Just to get you up to speed, here’s the background. Michael’s sister and her family (they have nine children) are here in town for a visit, and since my parents are out of town, they were invited to stay at my parents’ house during their visit. Not only is the Bennett family here in town, but Michael’s married niece, Rachel, and her husband Stephen and their two children are in town visiting their parents (Roy & Mary) who live here too. So when we all get together, there are 29 of us.

Anyway, here is the e-mail telling about our day today:

Dear Mom,

Thanks for your e-mail. I’m so glad you have a good report. And
really, even though we miss you greatly, I’m glad that you were able
to get to go with Dad. I’m sure the trip is much more enjoyable for
him with you there. I hope you come back all excited like you
have been after your trips to Hawaii and Israel.

Today was a good day for us. The whole Lyons/Bennett clan descened
upon West Monroe Street shortly before 10 a.m. The moms stayed around
our house to keep an eye on the kids and to make lunch, while the men
and bigger kids worked on Todd’s side of the street. They had two
goals for today. First was to get Todd’s garage sealed up and ready
to accept our things from storage. That meant sealing up various
holes in the garage, hauling more junk to the curb, sweeping out the
garage, and building simple platforms to keep the items off the
concrete floor. The second goal was to clean up Todd’s house that was needing attention after he and Roy had sprayed the ceilings earlier this week.

I had offered to provide lunch for everyone, so I hurried to Aldi this
morning to buy supplies. When I got back Mary and I worked diligently
to get lunch ready. I made three different kinds of “wraps” (with
tortillas, meat, cheese and cream cheese), and Mary worked to cut many
different veggies for a huge veggie tray. Natalie’s youngest daughter
needed some special “mommy time”, so Natalie kept us company but
couldn’t really help with food prep. That was fine with me,
especially since we had several children eager to help us. There were
many cutting boards and tall chairs and eager hands all around the
island working hard.

Partway through our lunch prep, Natalie realized we needed bottled
water and some chips to round out our lunch, so she headed off to
Walmart to get those. She returned with those items plus some
Popsicles. She was instantly voted the favorite auntie of the day by
every child between the two houses.

When lunch was ready, we requested a table to be set up in our front
yard, and we set out our spread. All the workers gathered from both
houses and we ate in the front yard. The weather was beautiful… not
too hot, not too windy, not to buggy… just perfect for a picnic.

After lunch people started falling away from the work party. Those
with little ones had to get kids down for naps, and soon it was just
the four men (Roy, Michael, Stephen and Steve Bennett) working at the
garage. Once everything was ready, they moved all of our things out
of Todd’s house and into the garage. When I took the tour later, I
was so impressed. Our stuff that looked like so much in one small
room now looks like only a little bit in part of Todd’s garage. It
sure will be easier to sort through things in the big garage.

Around 4:30 pm we all met at a local bowling alley and had some
friendly gaming. I volunteered to be the kiddie wrangler, so I sat
with all the kids in the two lanes that were using bumper pads. I
didn’t want to bowl anyway, so it worked out well for me to remind
kiddos whose turn it was to bowl, etc. Miguel was beside himself with
delight, hardly believing that he was finally able to go to a bowling
alley. It was his first visit and everything was so amazing to him.
The lanes were empty except for our group for quite a while, so it was
quiet and beautiful with the pins all standing silently at the end of
each lane. I guess Amelia has never been bowling either, and she was
interested, but she wasn’t jumping up and down like Miguel was.

After some friendly competition, we all migrated to Hot Wok for
supper. After supper we split up. Some were going to head back to
the pool in your neighborhood, while others just wanted to go home to
collapse. We were among the “collapsing” group, so we came home and
started getting kids to bed. I took a long bath and am now sitting in
bed wrapping up a few things on the computer.

Now that I’ve written such a long synopsis of our day, I’m going to
copy it and post it on my blog. At some point I’ll get some
photos posted in my gallery too.

Well, there you have it. I am realizing that I didn’t write anything about our Saturday night or our Sunday, so maybe at some point I can fill in those blanks, if for no other reason but my own journaling. I’ll forget so quickly what this week held if I don’t write it own. But that will have to wait for another day.

Love, Christie