whirlwind weekend

What I failed to mention in my last post

was that we started tearing into the kitchen at noon,

knowing that my brother, his gal, and TJ

would be walking in the door to spend the weekend

in 6-7 hours.

And I had been helping a friend Thursday evening

and didn't get home til almost 3 am.

And the house was a bit of a wreck when we started on the floor.

And the kids wrecked it further

while we were busy...

Mid -project, I asked, 

"What kind of people put in a new floor

hours before guests will arrive?!"

Brandon said, "Probably the same kind of people

who make clothes right before walking out the door." 

tou·ché

We somehow managed to get the kitchen put back together

and the rest of the house, too, by 6:17!

Friday evening was spent visiting,

making and eating a late dinner of fried rice and eggrolls

and playing Tele-draw 'til almost 2.

At which time

we finally put the kids to bed.

And ourselves....

We were moving a little slow Saturday morning,

if you can imagine.

Tyler and T ran to the grocery store for some meat and potatoes

to add to the waffles for breakfast

since breakfast

 was turning in 

to brunch.

They got sidetracked by a huge yard sale,

and Tyler called 

twice

to tell me that Marin and I needed to sneak out 

and head over.

My girls love Marin.

There was no sneaking out!

We managed to leave anyways

and spent about an hour shopping

but the whole time

I was thinking that I really needed to be cooking waffles.

(It takes a long time to make waffles for a dozen people!)

I got home to find that Tyler had found a waffle iron

at the sale!

Only

it doesn't work for my recipe :-(

And what's worse, 

it took me 2 cycles (8 waffles!) to figure it out.

When the first batch was a bomb, I chalked it up to

forgetting to oil the non non-stick surface.

After brunch

it was time for Tyler and the boys to head out

for a TKD camping trip

(which they'd shopped for Friday evening,

between cleaning up the house and the guests arrival)

Marin and I had to get down to business and get the list made

and the shopping done for the surprise party

we were having for my sister, Terri, on Sunday evening

that Mom and I decided on Wednesday evening 

to throw together .

Oh,

and Terri and James were due to arrive

to spend the night also, in just a few hours

so we couldn't have any party evidence laying around.

This is turning into a book!

I'll skip to Sunday evening

- just know that the hours in between were full....

...with everyone's help

we had a very nice bonfire birthday party

and even pulled off the surprise part

only

instead of shouting "surprise"

to Terri,

we 'surprised' James;

my sister hadn't walked up to the house with him.

We all had a pretty good laugh about that one...

this is the only picture I took all weekend

Gramma called this morning

to say it was the best time she'd had

in as long as she can remember.

Which may not be saying much, but still...

It was a very good - albeit it crazy - weekend

but it was nice to wake up to a rainy slow day

today.