A Nineteen Year In Da House!

 Well, the birthday weekend for Maddy is over...  I've got a care packet ready to mail to her as soon as I get a break this morning with her lap top charger and a couple other things that she forgot.

Her friend Rachel came with her for the trek and I think we managed to embarrass Maddy enough,even though that was not our intent. In the process tho, we gained another daughter!  

 Maddy played dress up with Leon.  Now he thinks our hat, scarf & glove bin is a huge dress up trunk.  But he looks darn cute in whatever he tries on and will probably let us put hats on him this winter. Woohoo!

Friday night, they got here in time for our traditional Friday night homemade pizza dinner.  We just ate late.  Then sat up and talked a long time.

Saturday, the girls played their grandma's piano downstairs to wake up Rachel.  I hadn't heard them play and sing together for so long, so I scrambled to find my camera.  

We celebrated Maddy's birthday-eve by having her two cousins drive up from a local college town and we had lasagna and sweet corn for lunch.  The kids played Apples to Apples a good chunk of the afternoon.  That is a great game to find out how a person thinks.  When I was younger and dating, my mom would always have us play Scruples and would play along so she could find out as much about how the young man thought about certain subjects...  But in this case, it was mostly just silliness.  Rachel fit right into our brand of crazy.

Saturday evening, not even 5 hours after our super big lunch, we attended a cookout at my bestie's house with a ton of our church friends.  They were all happy to see Maddy and welcomed Rachel in as one of our own.  I think I gained 5 pounds this weekend...  Later on this week, I'll tell you about the smoked potato salad!

Then we went back to the house and Maddy had some of her highschool buds come over and they drank coffee & played Qwelf.

Cute huh??

They stayed up late, but I'm getting old... so I went to bed.

Sunday, church!  Both girls sang with us in the choir.  Gorgeous singing!  It gives the organist goose bumps.  At least it doesn't reduce her to tears anymore!  Almost all of our family participate in the choir.  Robb sings with the bass, Meri with the sopranos and Maddy, Rachel and I sang alto.  Ryan sat in the pew with a sleeping sweaty toddler.

Then we had our real birthday dinner for Maddy where she gets to pick the meal and open presents.  She chose chicken noodle soup and since Robb doesn't like my rendition, he made a crock pot full of chili.  We've got lots of leftovers from the weekend...

Since we still had leftover birthday cake & ice cream out at my bestie's house and we were going to visit them before Maddy had to leave, we just let Maddy blow out the unity community candle before she opened presents at our house.  Then we went out to Ada's and had the birthday cake and ice cream with them.

Leon enjoys opening presents too, so he helped her out.

 

You can tell he missed her!  and vice versa.  They were severe Buddies the whole weekend!

Robb played the bagpipes for her.  The acoustics in our dining room are amazing!  It echoes all around for an hour even after he stops!

Or at least that's what the ringing in my ears sound like...

Oh, the Pride & Prejudice dresses were cancelled, but I have a new sewing project in mind that I just started last night.  I hope to share it with you soon!