Weekend in Review: Family Reunion

The weekend is now a blur--stress does that to me, I guess.  I do remember a few things.

• The most fascinating discussion took place on Saturday over lunch with distant cousins Milton and Faye Wells. He was a professor at OSU in the animal sciences department and did a great deal of research with animal husbandry. He took a few years off from teaching to go to Ethiopia where he introduced dairy cows, (there were none in that country prior to his time there) and then when he returned home he started his own insemination business.  Eventually his wife's quilting hobby took over his life as well, and in the last ten years he has stitched over 1600 quilts on his long-arm quilting machine.  Elizabeth and I agreed that it was one of the most interesting discussions we had had with anyone in a long while. The relation is thus: Ornery's dad's mother and Faye's mother were sisters.
• The most fun hour or two I had was when Ornery's second cousins Andrea and Melissa joined me in the studio for some playtime with the twinks. Later our niece Rose came in to do a picture as well.  Elizabeth and I also played a game of cribbage with Andrea and Melissa's brother, Nathan.  Elizabeth helped him, and they beat me. Oh, well. The relation was this: Ornery's dad's sister is Andrea, Melissa and Nathan's grandmother--her daughter was Lisa, who along with her husband Juan also attended. 
• The most stressful part of the weekend was when I kept worrying about whether or not I would have enough food for breakfast on Saturday morning.  It was rather nerve wracking!  It was fine, there was plenty, no one went away hungry nor did I have a pile of leftovers to deal with. 
• We stayed up until midnight on Saturday and got up at 5:00 AM on Sunday.  That night was a little too short for my taste, but we survived and had a little mini-coma after everyone left on Sunday afternoon.  We also napped and did little on Monday, and are feeling just about ready to tackle the week.
• Sunday was Ornery's birthday. We all sang Happy Birthday to him before we ate breakfast.  It was the most people he had ever had celebrate with him. Monday he went out to Woodcraft and bought himself some new tools with his birthday money.  Oh, yes he did! 

Tomorrow is Ornery's last vacation day.  It has been glorious to have him home for all these days and it will be hard to let him go back to work!  I plan to work on birthday cards the rest of the week.  I have 50 or so to make for this year, and I figure it will be easier to remember to send them if I have the hard part already done!  After that, I plan to finish off all the journals I have in stock and work on getting a few new new things into the Etsy shop.  I am looking forward to the new year.