Surprise quiche and dinner guests...

Ani and her cousin

Yesterday was mostly about getting ready for the arrival of Family. My extended family are the kind of folks who travel long distances for a matter of a few precious hours together, and we were the lucky interlopers who got to intercept such a road trip. My grampa, aunt and uncle, two cousins, and two nephew-cousins (what ARE they called?!) drove from Wisconsin to North Carolina to see another cousin who is being deployed to Afghanistan in two weeks. We are kind of the halfway point and got to host them all for one night, and we soaked up every minute of it! Late night chili and cornbread, talking on the pull-out couch, thermarests and inflatable mattresses, brunch eggs and coffee cake (my girls' dream-come-true). It was crazy, lovely, ridiculous and we are so grateful that they were here, if only for a few hours.

As I mentioned, we had coffee cake, which my aunt brought with her from Wisconsin. I seem to come by the love language of food quite honestly, which brings me to the quiche! We had a quiet moment in the afternoon that found the girls playing quietly and me sitting at the kitchen table writing, when a neighbor called to ask if we had dinner plans and could she bring me a quiche with salmon they had caught and smoked? Um...wow. This sets me tingling in so many ways!! So, she walked it over, with her two dogs and 5 month old baby, and the girls and I immediately devoured half of it. How amazing it feels to realize that someone thought of me while making something incredibly delicious and then went to the trouble to bring it over.

Today, after sending the Family on their way bright and early, we went to the farmer's market, aglow with pumpkins and gourds, bittersweet and sunshine, and loaded ourselves down with beets, yams, kale, peppers, pumpkins, potato bread and spinach rolls and apples. Then on to the library, where Dan found a quiet corner to read in and the girls and I spent close to two hours making paper! They loved this project, and I wish I'd had E's camera handy to capture the tearing of paper, the tubs of pulp, the frames and deckle dripping their colors, the rags hanging out to dry in the wind and sunshine. It was a glorious day to be outside doing this, and the girls got the hang of it quickly - I followed Ani through every step, watching as she chose paper to tear, filling her container to the brim, then very competently remembered how to fill the blender, how much water to add, which buttons to push while I held the lid down against the whirlwind, and on and on...we will have to do this again soon here at home, after trolling the aisles of the Goodwill for frames and a blender.

We ended our day with a family movie night, watching Chicken Run, and then to bed, where I should be...