Happy Birthday Helen

Monday January 22

Early alarm clock and early on the road. It’s always a long day driving.

Halfway. Tennessee welcome center. Love that quilt. Have to look at earlier photos whether they ever change it.

We were lucky with the weather though. Always above freezing and just some rain.

We went straight to their house because William wanted to see us, sweet boy.

Tuesday evening we were invited to have dinner with them. Helen had made a really great soup and salad.

Wednesday was THE day, but Helen was working and she and William had their usual things. We did go to pick William up from school though. It was a nice day and we could walk. When we went home we decided we didn’t really want to cook but try Amy’s Ethiopian Restaurant we had never been. It was nice. We were told we should use pieces of the rolls and our fingers but we quickly decided it wasn’t for us, that we really preferred forks and asked for them.

Thursday

James had arranged a meeting with our financial advisor at 10:30 am in Paducah KY. You need to count on a 2 1/2 hour drive but I also wanted to do other errands so we left at 7:30 am. Everything worked like a charm. James beat the Rushhour traffic in the morning by using some side roads. 

We had a little time before the meeting so we had a quick stop at Hobby Lobby to see whether they might have the right beads for the large version of the newest Chrismon I had just designed so I could finish writing the pattern. John is eager to get started working on the Chrismons for Grace Church. I dashed into the store and found exactly what I wanted, paid and dashed out

Still time left so another quick stop at Hancock Fabric. There was something I wanted to do in our “off-time’, had packed fabric for it but had already found out that the background fabric was too flimsy and only fit to be pitched. I knew exactly what I wanted, dashed in, found something on a sales table and something on a bolt, had it cut and paid and dashed out. The lady who cut it for me though was Gloria, a church friend I knew when we lived here, of course we had to talk about her and our children. Fun.

We arrived at our meeting with one minute to spare. Even drove past our old house in The Pines for a quick look. 

We had arranged to meet our good friends Barbara, Sara and John for lunch across the street (location John’s surgestion) and made it exactly to the minute. The meeting had been excellent. 

And lunch of course was great too. It was like we had just seen these friends yesterday. So much fun. A young mother moved her two children to a different table so we could put two together. And we met more “old friends” when we were there just by chance. 

We knew when we had to be on our way back again but managed a quick stop at Grace Church to say “hello” to my father in the Memorial Garden. It is now almost 15 years but I still miss him. He was such a great person and super “Vati”.

James again took some side roads to beat the Nashville traffic and we were very lucky.

At 6 pm we were supposed to be at the bowling place in Hermitage for Helen’s Birthday Party and we were. We were 6 and we played one game. James and I hardly ever play but we all had fun, even if our balls sometimes went into the gutter.

Afterwards we all went to Ben and Helen’s house where we had dinner. I had volunteered to prepare taco salad dinner which I had done the day before. Helen put meat sauce and cheese sauce into their respective crockpots and the “buffet” was ready in no time.

William “chilled” while we were doing that.

Ben had baked and decorated a birthday cookie. He had a great story about how that had gone.

VIDEO!

We all had a very nice evening together and I think the birthday girl was pleased.