Social Butterflies

Tom's definitely more social than I, but we've BOTH been out 5 of the last 6 nights! That's a bit unusual for us, to say the least!

After nannying last Thursday, the peanut's mama and I went out for some much-overdue girl time and drinks, and Tom and a few others joined us near the end of the night.

Saturday night was dinner with friends in town after another day of nannying for me . . . arguing gun control over the dining room table!

Here's a shot of Baby Girl who I nannied for over the weekend . . . .


Sunday evening was the birthday party of a dear friend, and there was a GREAT combination of folks to visit with. (Almond champagne, anyone? Soooooo good!!!)

Monday night brought us the 16 miles down to the highway to surprise another dear friend on HIS birthday. Since I had to work both Saturday and Sunday, I knew the house wouldn't be in any shape for us to host (as I would have liked), so I compromised with the birthday boy's wife and brought the food to THEM for the party. My good homemade hamburgers went on the grill, baked beans and a yummy salad accompanied the main course, and we followed it up with Banana Cream Pie . . . my best one TO DATE, if I do say so myself! (And I've made a LOT of Banana Cream Pies since it's what my mom requests on her birthday, too!) I think the trick was using Tallulah's last three goose egg yolks. Goose egg yolks are much firmer and richer than chicken's.


I really didn't put THAT many candles on his pie - it just looks like the whole thing's on fire! :)

Then, we were off to new friends' last night for a wonderful dinner, visit, and talk about bee keeping! Unfortunately, while preparing for the evening, our hostess skewered the fleshy part of her left hand (between the thumb & forefinger) with a SHARP knife . . . went all the way through both sides of the skin! So, they'd spent a good part of the day in the ER getting 4 stitches put in! (Moral of the story? Don't try to remove a stubborn bit of candle wax out of a holder with a really sharp kitchen knife! . . . Oh, come on, we've ALL done it!)

An aside: both Sunday's & last night's guest lists included my folks, and it was great fun to be "friends" with them in that kind of format.

So, WHEW! I feel very behind in just about EVERYTHING today, my first normal day at home in an age!

Tom's been working LOTS lately with our friend & his business partner. The friend is building a small house, and so they've been building the forms for the EIGHT FOOT DEEP (!) corner supports, pouring the cement (wheelbarrow load by wheelbarrow load), digging in 16 floating piers and building those forms for the decks, etc. Today they pour the cement for those. Obviously, he's working WAY too hard, physically. (But try telling him to stop or take it easy!) After hauling the wheelbarrow loads of cement last week, he said, "Well, if that doesn't re-break my shoulder, nothing will!"


Last night, Tom drove the friend's Yaris home so the 1-Ton didn't have to rack up more mileage when it was already IN town . . . and they needed it BACK in town this AM. So, this sight this morning made me very envious of a time in the future when I HOPE we can have two Yarises (Yari?). We sure do love 'em! We and two other dear friends (this guy and another) all have them now, and the 2nd friend & his wife have even bought a 2nd like we want to do!

The critters . . . Maisy got sick twice in the car last night on the way to dinner. (Blech.) Poor thing. Dunno what she got into, but she seems fine this morning.

When I opened the little brooder to do chores Monday morning, Mama jumped out . . . signaling that it was time for Vanilla, her chick (named by the first little peanut I nannied for), to be out in the wild, too. So, out I scooped him! I'll try to get some better pictures soon, but here's one I took on the 1st.