2 Weekends at Once

Pardon my tardiness, but it's something I'm known for. I've decided to recap the last two weekends together today.

I'll start with the weekend after I returned from Boston. (Makes sense, chronologically, after all.) On Saturday, I met up with my friend Christyn's sister-in-law to prepare for the baby shower, which was last Sunday. We hit Costco and picked up a bunch of food, and then headed over to their in-law's house to prep the favors and wait for the tables and chairs to be delivered. (Normally, I would not rent tables/chairs for a backyard shower, but Maureen was insistent, so she did that part.) We also planted individual petunias into little terra cotta pots as favors.

The shower went pretty well. We played a few games - even a water balloon toss (little water balloon in a diaper), and ate a whole lot of food. Maureen brought chocolate-covered strawberries and I made a key-lime angel food cake (in the photo above - the recipe didn't make quite enough frosting to cover the sides...or I am just not good at frosting cakes...). I am hoping that Christyn had a good time. :)

This weekend, I went up to my friend Kristin's cabin in LaPorte (CA). We left right after I got home from work on Friday and got there close to midnight. The cabin was freezing when we got there! So, Kristin started a fire in the cast-iron stove to heat the place up, and discovered that whoever was there last had closed the flue, which is broken, so you can't open it all the way from the lever on the outside of the chimney above the stove. It was a bit smokey that first night, but she managed to open it enough that we wouldn't asfixiate in our sleep. (I may be exaggerating a bit...it didn't fill the cabin with smoke or anything, there was just a little smoke seeping out the front of the fireplace, with the rest going up the chimney.)

On Saturday morning, we walked down to the lake, where there were a ton of these colorful little butterflies flittering and fluttering all over the place, close to the ground. It was quite difficult to get a good shot of them - camera shy, I guess. (And fast little fliers.)

After lunch, we sat on the deck reading for a while, but decided to head down to "town" and explore. We parked on the street in front of this tree, which had grown up and around this sign, of which I had to take a picture (naturally!). If you can't read it, it actually says, "DEER KEEP OFF HIGHWAY - MOTORISTS ARE PASSING." The tree trunk has grown over the smaller writing along the bottom.

Kristin and I decided to check out the little (literally - 2 rooms) museum on the main road, which was actually pretty cool. Lots of historical town information and items that had been recovered from the old gold mining sites. It also houses the world's largest bottle collection (old glass bottles) and the world's largest butter dish collection. (Not so sure if they really have the world's largest collections...but who am I to judge?)After that, we walked a few blocks to the town cemetery, which also is the site of the old schoolhouse. I think the oldest headstone was from 1830-something, with the newest ones in the 2000's. Kind of neat, but then I tend to get a kick out of old cemetaries (I'm twisted). The photo above is a detail of the ironwork fencing around one plot. After the cemetary, we peeked in the general store, then headed back to the cabin for dinner. Grilled burgers and salad...followed a little later with roasted marshmallows. You can't tell from this picture, but there really is a fire in that fireplace...flames and everything. (And don't you love the carpeting in the cabin?) Anyway, after filling ourselves with molten sugar, we settled down in easy chairs and read for a while (I crocheted a bit before my eyes got too tired, then moved on to my book).

And today we headed back. As we were packing up the car, the couple that owns the cabin next door were outside, so Kristin decided to go say hi. The man (Craig) is the nephew of Kristin's step-grandmother. I ended up chatting with his wife, and somehow it came out that I went to SSU, and she was wondering if I was there when her niece was, and she almost didn't follow through with the statement. But she threw out the name, and it turns out that her niece was my roommate when I was a sophomore (and her niece, Marta, was a freshman). What a small world!!

And now I'm tired again, and need to get to bed. I hope everyone else had good, relaxing weekends!