Nailed it…

If I had had a plan yesterday it would have gone perfectly. The “plan” would have built against what I consider to be a perfect day and since, that’s what we ended up with I’m calling it a win.

The day started early 5:30 early. God knows why I have to get up that early on non-work days but the alarm goes off and coffee gets made. My lovely wife brought me a cup and a spent a few minutes enjoying it on the patio in the cool morning air. The peace of early morning, the calm before the storm of a hectic day. The time to get your mind right for dealing with more than 20 people bouncing around your house for most of a day.

About 10 or so I started a small fire on the patio and worked on getting the big dutch oven ready to cook. The Oven had a bit of rust on it so I took the time to clean it properly and re-season it. “Seasoning” a cast iron pot involves coating it lightly with grease or lard and then baking it on in a 500 degree F oven. If you get just a bit too much grease on the pot you can end up with a house full of very thick, white, smoke. Note to self: time to replace the smoke detectors.

The get together yesterday was scheduled for supper (that’s dinner to you non-southerners) and we just told everyone to meet at my house after naptime. I’d like to point out that I love living somewhere and having friends that schedule the day around naps. For non-nappers “after naptime” is sometime around 3:30PM.

We had new friends and old present yesterday. The new friends worried over their children getting lost in the woods while old friends showed them how it’s everyone’s job to keep up with the kids. It’s interesting to watch. The kids are in and out of the wood line, playing behind bushes and brush but if you ask, “Where’s Ethan” someone, whether “Ethan” belongs to them or not can point him out or point to where they last saw him. Worst case you just call his name and he’ll answer you. If he doesn’t, he’s easy to find. A kid can’t get far enough away from the house that we can’t find him. Teamwork.

The young kids played in the woods and the older kids played in the pool while the adults sat on the patio and had a merry old time. Jinksto worked on his supper while everyone else just wandered from topic to topic. My fire wasn’t quite hot enough so things went a little long and Rob got the kids started playing charades in the yard. After a while they switched from that to playing duck, duck, goose… fun to watch.