Friday's Dinner Party and Saturday's Day of Rest!

I love dinner parties!

Friday night at 7:00 we hosted our niece and her husband, Leah and Patrick, as well as our traveling companions on our Alaskan cruise, Brenda and Billy. We wouldn't be going if they had not invited us! Brenda will be 60 in September and I will be 70. We have done something together to celebrate our birthdays since 2004! Goodness! That's 14 years! But this year's celebration will top any other we have done or will do in the future!

It was a pot luck dinner and easy peasy!

I had the dining room all decked out in her patriotic finery!

At first when I got all the tubs down from the storage building attic, I thought,

"No, not this year. I think I will just skip this red/white/blue tradition and wait for the sunflower theme after the 4th of July." I have a series of themes to decorate throughout the year.

But when I was looking through the stuff  memories and recalled when Amber and Benjamin made the clay pot Uncle Sams......and the Patriotic Susie Amber painted on brown paper and won Second Prize at the State Fair in 1998.....and the photo of Jesse, Jr and his family at the Arlington 4th of July parade where they were all wearing their red/white and blue.......and then I saw all the Patriotic decorations Summer has given me over the years......

Well! Ever last bit of it is out and I am loving it all once again!

Before dinner, we gathered in the den with our wine and the appetizer tray Leah and Patrick brought.

We began researching the excursions available to us. 

We are sailing on the Ruby Princess out of Seattle.

Leah and Patrick are booked on the Norwegian......also out of Seattle on the same day!

We are the newbies as the other two couples have sailed several times and both of them have done an Alaskan cruise before. We booked our excursions!

Just between you and me......Louis Dean had decided he was not going to get off the ship once she sailed. NO excursions would tempt him - I had read them all and he was uninterested!

However......by the time we went into dinner .......we had booked and paid for several - with his enthusiastic support as well as his credit card!!

Thank you, Brenda and Leah!!!

Now I am happy to say that Louis Dean is fully invested in our cruise and getting excited!

For dinner I had made a recipe Summer told me about - Crockpot Chicken and Stuffing.

It was delicious! I also had company mashed potatoes and watermelon with mint while Brenda brought a great garden salad.

We had a wonderful time around the table eating and visiting.

And guess who did the dishes?

My hero!!!

We lingered at the table making our hotel reservations since we are flying into SeaTac the day before our cruise. Plus we arranged transportation from the airport to the hotel.

We accomplished a lot!

We will get together again in July to finish making our plans!

We set sail on September 8th!

Leah gifted us with a magnetic sign for our stateroom door.

She says the doors are made of metal and they all look the same.

Last time Louis Dean went with me to visit Mother, he had to go to the restroom and refused to use theirs. I said, "Go out the door. Turn right. Go to the nurses station. Turn right. Go to the dead end. Turn left. It is on your left." He found it! However, he could not find his way back.

He called me and said, "Linda, I'm lost! Step out in the hallway so I can see you!" Problem was - he was in a different hallway. I started walking trying to find him. We kept talking on the phone but he kept walking, too! Just as I would turn a corner - I would see him! Then he turned the corner! I told him I was chasing him and he got frustrated and hung up as he approached the nurses station - in another wing! Once again - I saw him but he was too far away for me to yell at him - and he had hung up on me! I called him back! I said, "QUIT walking!" But he had just turned another corner. I said, "Take three steps back and STAY there!" He did and we returned to Mother's room together.

Point being - we both get lost and this door sign will be our salvation when it comes to getting back to our stateroom!

Leah knows us well.......

Thank you, Leah!!!

This morning (Saturday) we both slept in!

When 11:00 rolled around and I was still in the bedroom, Louis Dean brought me a cup of coffee and asked if I was okay.

This was the first morning that has dawned since we came back from the country that I didn't have a long list of things to do or places to go.

We ended up having coffee in bed together.

I lingered long in there even after he got up and went in the den to watch whatever it is he watches on TV. I called my friend, Linda, in Oregon - it's kind of our Saturday Tradition to have a phone visit together - and we had one of those long satisfying chats where we solved what problems we could in the world and caught up on what was happening in our lives. We will be visiting in person when our cruise is over and I am so excited. We don't know what we are going to do with Louis Dean but we will figure that out! He may very well sit there and visit along with us! Who knows??

We are also going to be visiting Rockaway Beach in Oregon where my friend, Phyllis, lives. 

And then there's our friends, Brian and Bev, from Canada!!

Once our cruise is over, we have a whole other cross country road trip to look forward to!!

So the sum total of what I did today was:

Sleep.

Have coffee.

Talk to Linda.

Read the Bible with Louis Dean.

Eat. 

Nap.

Sew.

Water plants and yard.

Journal.

Now it's time to go to bed....again.

We both needed a down day!

Here are the four little aprons I made for the quads birthday party tomorrow evening.

They turned out adorable!

Shall I tell you the story of the bleached jeans I used?

Or have I already told it?

Mother lived with Nita for years and she would get mad if Nita got something new - and she didn't.

So one day when Mother was doing the laundry, she poured bleach on two pair of what she thought were Nita's jeans. When Nita got home, Mother went into her actress mode and played like she had a terrible accident and bleached those jeans. Nita took one look at them and said, "Those aren't mine! They are Mike's!" Mother did a 180 and looked at Nita aghast and said, "REALLY????"

She truly thought they were Nita's!

Mother no longer had laundry duty after that!

This wasn't the first incident.

The jeans were given to me that next Friday and after having them in my denim stack for years,

they have now been redeemed into four aprons for Trystan, Kailey, Harrison and Logan.

Mother would be proud!???!! I should show her the photos of the aprons next time I visit!

Okay! I am trying to get in under the midnight hour!

Summer safely arrived in San Juan and made it to Humacao where she rejoined Sabrina and her precious Rayne. This pic was from last night.

Today is Rayne's birthday!

Look how sweet she is!

You would never guess that she is ill with 104* fever!

She is like her Mummers! She always sucks it up and smiles for the camera!

Thankfully, tonight the fever has gone down to 102*.

Hopefully the fever will break in the night and she will wake up feeling much better in the morning.

They had planned her birthday party for today but postponed it since she was too ill.

And with that final update - it is now 12:58 and I am out of here!

Sleep well, all!!!!