Birthdays, return visitors, weekend plans

Cathryn’s birthday was yesterday: shame on us for not calling to wish her a happy birthday until the day was almost over. Cori’s birthday is today, mine tomorrow, Rebekah’s on Monday, Nate’s on Tuesday and Mama and Chase on the 29^th. September is our most crowded month for birthdays, and we are capitalizing on that Saturday. One of Trace’s boys has a September birthday as well. I do not know yet how many will be coming over for our big birthday bash, but Seth and Gabriela will be over. We already have Rosalee with us. Trace and his crew will be here. Nate, Cori and the kids are already here. Mama is getting Yilin, Cheyenne and Aubrey tomorrow afternoon. Grandma, Grandpa and Norman will also be coming over. By my reckoning, that makes at least 24. That should be fun. We will go to the church this afternoon to get tables and chairs to accommodate the crowd. I will be up early tomorrow morning to start the grill. We have chicken and ribs to smoke for the afternoon feast that I will start on the grill very early tomorrow. Sausages (two types) and hotdogs will be put on the grill much later.  

Nate, Cori and the kids arrived at the farm about 1 pm yesterday afternoon. I had just made it back home from a doctor’s appointment and was setting up my home office when they pulled in. Mama and I had met at the restaurant for lunch since that is where she had the girls for their lessons. So, she arrived home just before the travelers got to us. When the crew arrived, the boys ran through the house to get their farm shoes, barely acknowledging Grammy, and immediately headed to the goat paddock to catch a baby goat. Since we have the seven now, it was an easy feat to get hold of one. Everyone spent the next thirty minutes with the goats. I was replying to emails and Slack notices at the time so I missed the opportunity to get a photo of the entire family in with the goats.

Yesterday evening Nate, Cori, Blake and I took a walk to Sand Creek where it crosses the property the quarry lakes are on. The walk is a little over a mile each way. Since most of their day had been spent in travel, they needed the movement to stretch their legs after sitting for so long. I had not been down to the creek crossing for a couple of years. The owners have done a lot of work at the crossing, adding a concrete crossing, some huge boulders on the downstream side and building up the roadway leading to the crossing. While we were on the boulders at the crossing, we were watching some bass and what looked like an alligator gar popping in the pool just downstream of the boulders.

It was exciting enough to see the activity in the pool that we went back for an hour after dinner to fish in the pool. Blake and Grant were very excited about trying out the new fishing spot. It felt like we were fishing in West Virginia on one of the remote rivers with the waterfall effect created by the boulders. We had to talk loudly over the noise that the cascading water made. We did not catch anything in our hour at the pool, but Nate and I both got some hard strikes at our artificial worms. While retrieving one cast, what we suspect is a gar hit Nate’s lure and bit half of it off the line just below the boulder we were standing on. While we fished, the boys ventured downstream and found snakes, turtles and minnows. I will go back this afternoon and set out some trot lines to see if we can catch any catfish upstream of the crossing where the water is slower and deeper. It was a fun time.

Today is not necessarily scripted. The boys are planning on doing a lot of fishing. They already stared I the little tank on our property – catching two large bass. The girls are planning on going to Bowie to have lunch with Victoria and Grandma. I am taking a half day vacation to participate in the ongoing fishing portion of the activities. This afternoon Mama and I have to clean the chicken coops – if we do not put that off until next week when our children and grandchildren are gone. Much of this evening will be used in prep of dishes for tomorrow that can be made ahead of time – potato salad, macaroni salad, deviled eggs, etc.

It will be quite the party.