Lovely Weekend

It is nearly five p.m. and I am sitting awaiting the next text from my son. Last I heard, he and his two littlest girls were eating lunch outside Cleveland.

For the last few years Andrew has come to visit us on the weekend of the Martin Luther King holiday. He leaves school in the middle of Friday, arrives Friday evening, gets to spend Saturday and Sunday with everyone and drives back on Monday, the official MLK holiday. Of course it is a great treat for us, but I am one of those worrying mothers who is nervous about winter conditions on the Ohio and Pennsylvania Turnpikes. Not without cause this year, as he reported seeing numerous cars in ditches and jack-knifed tractor trailers on his way here.

He made it safely, and this year he was accompanied by six-year-old Veronica and eight-year-old Josephine.
After a good night’s sleep everyone was ready to get together with the rest of the family. One of the best parts about living where we do (location, location, location!) is that we are a few blocks from the city park with its two cinemas, and this weekend we had a choice between The Darkest Hour and Paddington 2. Kate and Liz and their families arrived after lunch and off we all went to the movies, 11 to Darkest Hour and 6 to Paddington. Then since Kate had already organized a “back-to-college” dinner for Patrick, we all joined her, together with Lucy and Peter and the two tinies. I am slowly putting together some photo packets for my children, and some of the photos (as usual) caused howls of laughter around the dinner table.

The big attraction here for Andrew is the books.

Sunday included church, a few extra here for lunch and then a visit by Veronica and Josephine to spend more time with their cousins, both the big and small. This time we all broke up for dinner and then the two movies on offer here in the house were Dunkirk and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. You may note a theme here: we have all been binge watching The Crown, which led us to The Darkest Hour which led us to Dunkirk. I leave most of the literary criticism to my son-in-law (well, actually all my children can be pretty vocal about the qualities of books or films), but I will go on record as saying I was not overly fond of Dunkirk. I have a feeling our exploration of WW II will continue, which makes it difficult for me, as most of the questions are addressed to me!

This was the scene as they pulled out this morning. It has snowed quite heavily since then, so I won’t post this entry until I have heard they are safely home in Maryland.

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To everyone’s relief they made it to their driveway at 7:26.