December 23, 2013

The Family Is All Here!

December 23, 2013

All of our sons have arrived in town with their families.  Our youngest son and his girlfriend arrived Saturday evening and tonight the rest arrived.  We had a wonderful family gathering tonight and celebrated the birthday of our oldest son (his birthday was actually last week, but we celebrated anyway).  There were 20 of us here for supper tonight.

My day started at the usual wake up time - 6:15.  I got up and started getting ready for the day.  Pretty quickly I left to go to Wal-Mart for the groceries for supper this evening.  I was fixing chicken fried steak and wanted to get the meat fresh today.  I had to have the meat market man get more since I cleaned out the ones on display.  I think I heard better than he did.  It took me four tries to get across to him I needed 2 more packages.  He found them for me and I finished my shopping.

Many of you are probably familiar with Chex Party Mix - a snack made up of several varieties of Chex cereal with various seasonings on it.  My guys love it and one daughter-in-law plans to make some while she is here.  When I walked into Wal-Mart there was a huge display with the boxes of Chex cereal for $1 a box!  Yea!  I stocked up!  She will be busy making several batches while she is here. Our name for the Chex mix is "Bar-B-Q Cereal".  Shopping done, I returned home and Stephen was waiting to help me unload the car.

It was a chilly morning so I took care of the bird feeders and soon had takers for breakfast.  Kristina, Stephen, and I also had our breakfast before he left on a variety of errands.  I sewed for a while and then went to the office for a couple of hours.  Stephen and I left and shopped a few minutes and then I took him back to the office and came home.

Once I got home, I put potatoes in the oven to bake for supper and mixed up a batch of cookies while they were baking.  Next Bob's birthday cake went in the oven and I started on the chicken fried steak.  It took a couple of hours to fry enough for the family and then the steaks went in the oven to continue cooking.  Then it was time to mix up the frosting for the cake and heat a vegetable as well as fix an alternative main course for some of the family.

Kristina checked on me a few times while I was cooking as she would often hear, "Ouch".  I told her that it was nothing serious, just that turning the wrist to certain angles and putting any weight in that hand would cause instant, quick pain.  But the pain didn't stay - just passed through.

 

 It seems that the effort was worth it!  Everyone enjoyed the supper of chicken fried steak, gravy, baked potatoes, corn, rolls, three salads, and of course the birthday cake. 

The little boys had their own private dining room.  This is a tent-type thing for them that is supposed to be a hot dog stand.  We set up their little table in there and they had a good time.

The older kids had their table.  It was a great evening.  The hearing was pretty good.  I had some struggles.  This afternoon I mentioned to our youngest son that I was sorry I have to ask him so often to repeat things.  He told me I was so much better than I have been for years.  I needed to know that.  As I mentioned recently, I can get discouraged.