Company! Yea!

The big weekend is finally here. I picked Kathleen up at the airport at 1:30 and I was so happy to see her. We went over to Jeremy and Maryke's house to visit for awhile and had a grand time.

Kathleen was especially happy to meet Arnold, their furry orange cat. He is a small version of her sweetie Jengo who passed away recently. Arnold is a fairly social cat as cats go and he hung out in the living room with us most of the time. Jeremy, Maryke and Arnold bid us a fond farewell as we dashed off to find Mom at Western Village.(OK, I made them pose for a blog photo, but they will sure be happy when they have this photo later taken on the first house they ever shared together.)

Jeremy then reciprocated the pose demand and took one of Kathleen and me.

Then we left for Western Village to find Mom and Ginny. I had spoken to David and he was meeting us there. For those of you familiar with Mom at Western Village, you know that pretty soon after the hello hugs are exchanged, she plops you down at the machine next to hers, pumps in $20 dollars and tells you to make her some money offering to split the winnings. I was on fire! By the time we took a break because we were all starving, I had $110 dollars on my machine..in nickles, of course.

After dinner, I went back to the same machine after waiting a few minutes for it to open up and on the second push of the button hit a $47 score. Kathleen sat next to me and Mom & Gin were not far away. We sat there till nearly 11pm and I cashed out at $164.75. Kathleen put her(Mom's) $40 back in the machine, but we played all night and had a great time!

When we got home, Monica arrived shortly after, with a tired Cory. Rachel and Matt chatted for a bit then left to go home after a long day. Kathleen, Monica and I kept pretending we were going to bed, but talking the whole time, till we finally forced ourselves to go to our separate rooms and stop talking. I laid down around 1:30. But found myself up at about 6:30 this morning excited for the day to begin. Michael, Rachel and the kids will be here tonight and I can't wait to see them. I am pointedly going to avoid talking about who I won't see to avoid those sad tears that well up everytime I think about it. I love you guys, this blogging weekend is dedicated to both of you

And it Mom's 70th birthday today. Happy Birthday, Mom! I love you!