The weekend before last we all descended upon my Grandma's house to help her celebrate her most recent birthday, the exact number I won't go into because she's a lady. Henry and Holly love going to her house. She has a piano, a stream with lots of rocks for throwing, lots of yard for running around in, and plenty of fragile glass objets d' art sitting right at toddler level, so, you know, Holly's happy. My parents drove down on Saturday morning and we had a big fry-up for breakfast, as is our tradition. Halfway through the bacon sizzling and the eggs scrambling, who should walk in buy my Grandma's first-born, my Uncle, who, unbeknownst to anybody, had flown up from Florida for the weekend. It was quite possibly the most thrilling birthday present anyone could have given her. There's nothing quite like having your whole family under one roof again, especially when it seemed like everyone had moved so far away from each other.
We spent the day talking, eating, making exciting side trips, eating some more, talking some more, and just generally relaxing. Henry spent the latter part of the afternoon busily organizing a fireworks display based on six or seven sparklers I found in my Grandma's basement, so once everyone had their fill of cake, Henry escorted everyone to a pre-arranged seating area and instructed me to start setting off the fireworks. It was a fitting end to a fine celebratory day, especially as far as Henry was concerned.
That night, much to Henry's glee, we discovered that my parents were in the room next to ours (Thanks Aunt Molly!). The interior door separating the two rooms was thrown open and Henry and Holly busily went back and forth between the two. Henry eventually settled down for the night in my parents room and after a quick discussion in which we ascertained whether any offense would be taken, Dave and I decided we'd each sleep in our own separate double bed. It's the small luxuries in life...you take them when you can get them.
Henry gets motion sick if he goes for any kind of car ride on an empty stomach, no matter how long or short, so our usual M.O. is to order in breakfast so he can eat while we pack. My Aunt works at the hotel, so she brought our breakfast up and later rejoined us to say she had been able to get off early. We all headed back to Grandma's for another fry-up. The kids passed some time tossing rocks in the stream until it was time to climb into the car for the ride home. Henry told me in no uncertain terms that he was very sad that we had to go. I love that he loves going to his Great-Grandma's house as much as I do. I was also very sad that we had to go...