During the week, Son 1 let us know he was going to come in late Friday night and stay until after lunch today. Late Friday afternoon, Son 2 called and said his medical transport company was transporting a patient from his area to ours and he was going to drive the run with an employee that would drive the ambulance back if I could pick him up at a nearby hospital in the early morning of Saturday. His wife and 5 of their kids would drive up arriving late afternoon and they would leave very late evening to go back home.
We had arranged with Daughter and her fiancé to go see their new house and the progress they had made in getting it ready to move into soon. It needed some work that they have mostly done themselves to get it ready.
We showed up just after our lunch on Saturday with both sons. She knew Son 1 would be with us, but the Son 2 plans occurred after our call. She was happily surprised to see both brothers with us. It has been a very long time since we had all three of our adults kids in the same room at the same time.
As we were getting ready to leave from their house, Son 1 asked her if they would be at dinner. A moment of mild panic on my part as that would put 14 people at the table, but WOW, all three of our kids, 7 of our grandkids, 1 wife and one fiancé all at one time. We stopped on the way home, bought 16 burgers, 16 buns, 2 bags of frozen steak fries, 1 bag of frozen sweet potato fries, some salad greens and dressing to add to the goodies from the Farmer’s Market we had done earlier, a dozen ice cream cups and we would have dinner for all.
I set a folding table up at the end of the dining table with both leaves. Gathered all the chairs I could find including the piano bench and we set the table with paper plates (I don’t have enough pottery plates for 14), paper napkins so there wasn’t an entire load of cloth napkins.
Then the sons went down to the bee yard with me and broke it down. The hive that had been the weaker one, had a ball of bees right in the middle, they had eaten about half of the sugar block, but there weren’t enough of them and they had frozen to death. The stronger hive must have left the hive before the week of very cold weather, there was an un hatched queen cell and just a few hundred dead bees, but several frames of honey. It was all packed up and most of it later packed in Son 2’s van to go home with them. He had purchased most of the equipment for me two years ago, but my age, eyesight, and strength just aren’t enough to try again for a third year.
DIL and kiddos arrived, Daughter and family arrived after they finished their house work. We were missing 2 grandkids, and a Daughter-in-love and her son, but it was so wonderful to have all of them together. The littles dumped the toy basket, fought over them, cleaned them up repeatedly. Ate burgers, fries, salad, and ice cream, played ping pong, had a “rock band” in the basement, with the drum set and guitars including the two preteen gals, the 4 little ones, and Son 1 (the owner of the instruments). Daughter and her family left, then around 10, Son 2 and his family left for home.
It made my heart happy. Having so much of our family together was wonderful.
This morning, Son 1 helped me with some chores, then I fixed a Mexican fiesta meal for us and he headed home. We are tired, but so happy.