Weekend

My daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren arrived at my house close to midnight on Friday. It sure was nice to have them on my turf for awhile! It was easily 2:00 AM before we all hit the sack.

On Saturday morning, I was awakened by little fingers tickling my back. Robin came in to get me up. Ryan was already up, too. Mommy and Denis were a little slower to rise, but that's okay. At 10:00 AM, Ryan went into their room to get permission to go to play with the neighbor boy. (At least he waited that long!) And that's how the kids spent their day--playing with the neighbor children, which is what we expected to happen. Before that, however, they manned the rakes and spent some time raking leaves and playing in the yard. They love rolling in the leaves!

Denis got busy with the leaf blower and got the yard mostly cleaned up by blowing the leaves to the curb where the Town of Plainfield will suck them up. There are still a lot of leaves yet to come down, so it wasn't a complete job, but it was an enormous help. Eventually, the young adults went for a nap while the old lady finished up plans for supper. (Hey...they have jobs and I don't. I figure I can catch up on my sleep later. They can't!) Sometime on Saturday, Denis changed out computer monitors from the defunct living room computer to the one I'm typing on (bigger monitor), and he worked on my laptop to "fix" the mouse. (It needed new batteries. I could swear we had already done that!)

Judy and Phil Heffelman, the children's other Plainfield grandparents, joined us for supper, along with their son, the kids' Uncle Dan. Denis cooked steaks on the grill. With that, we had salad, sauteed mushrooms, and oven-baked potatoes, plus a yummy pumpkin bundt cake that the Heffelmans brought. We didn't have to send out for pizza! They stayed to play three rounds of Russian Bingo--a game that Denis's parents had brought from Russia when they were here in August. It was a nice visit.

After J and P left, Megan and Denis took a run to Walmart. I had put "chocolate" on the shopping list, and they came back with a discounted HUGE bag of mini-Snickers/Milky Way/Twix/3 Musketeers--230 pieces worth! I should probably mention that I was concerned after Halloween what would happen to all of the leftover candy. What was I thinking? Before Megan and Denis went shopping, virtually every shred of candy was gone, with a leaf trail that led to the candy dish! When we finally all went to bed, it was midnight. Ugh!

Sunday, I had no takers for church. We were all pretty tired. When everyone finally got up--with an extra hour, due to time change--we had a big breakfast. Thereafter, I fear we abused Denis. Well...heh heh...I KNOW Megan did. At the breakfast table, he put a piece of candy in his teeth and asked Megan to kiss him...to get a bite of the candy. She obliged, but warned him that the candy was so small, she would probably end up biting his lip. Well...it actually happened! She made a last minute lunge, and he ended up with a bloody upper lip. I don't think she actually bit him--more like she pushed his lip into his teeth. At the time, it wasn't funny, but a few hours later, he acknowledged that it was HIS fault. "Never feed wild animals!" I threatened to put it on Facebook, but then she threatened to post some of her unflattering pictures of me from our summer trip on there. Stalemate!

When I say we abused Denis, I mean that we put him on tasks that we largely didn't help him with. Today, Sunday, he did things like replace the flapper in the toilet tank of my half-bath. The toilet has been running for months and months--not much, but enough that it ran for five seconds every five minutes. One of my friends looked at it months ago and adjusted things, but it didn't last. Okay...replacing a toilet flapper isn't a huge job, but the fact that there is a storage cabinet over the toilet tank makes it bigger. I had to empty the cabinet, then Denis had to lift the cabinet way over the tank before he could even get to the tank. He put in the new flapper. The toilet hasn't run since. Life is good!

There was also a last-minute project that became monumental. A few years ago, when Megan and the children moved in with me, we bought Ryan a Spiderman loft bed. It came with shelves that go underneath, but Ry was so small that we didn't need them. We stashed one of the shelves in the minibarn and the other along a wall in his room. This trip, with Ryan's permission, "we" installed the shelves. (Denis did!) Denis also changed some lightbulbs that would have been an issue for me. The dear man said, as they were leaving, that I should prepare a new "honey-do" list for the next time they are here. What a blessing!

My family isn't even home yet, and the house is trashed from having four extra people in it, but I loved having them here...and I am especially grateful for all of the help.

Tempus fugit. I am happy for every moment!