The Circle of Life: Spend-The-Night Party And A Family Reunion

Friday night I had the great privilege of spending the night at Abby's. (Matt and Tom were at our lake house. Several other fishermen came to repair/paint, etc.) It's been a long time since we had girl time and now we have Cady to share it with. We took a long golf cart ride throughout her neighborhood. We craned our necks to see what her new neighbors were like. (She & Matt met them yesterday and they get a huge thumbs up!) Then Abby baked a cake for the family reunion on Saturday. She asked me to look at her cake after she'd put the icing/topping. I just said, "Looks like ya could have put more powdered sugar in the icing." Wiser words were never said, but more about that later. All three of us crawled into Ab's king-size bed and watched a good movie. Cady was about to fall asleep early on so Ab put her in the cradle.

I got up early the next morning to go home and gather my things for the family reunion in Elberton. I told Jane we'd leave here at 9:45 so we'd arrive in Elberton in plenty of time prior to lunch. She drifted in the driveway at 9:55 (she'll argue that point, but I'm the one blogging.) So, after picking up Abby & Cady, we were running a bit behind schedule. No problem . . . I always add a few minutes to my scheduled times for such setbacks. About 10-15 miles from home, there was a road block because of a bad wreck. Thankfully, Abby knew backroads to get us back on track (Seems she once drove the Springs residents all over these backroads). Ok, now we'll get moving down the road. Later, as we left the large metropolis of Iva, Abby said she needed to find a bathroom. What a laugh. There is no bathroom between Iva and Elberton. The only place to relieve herself was in a glorified outhouse at a boat landing on Lake Hartwell. Outhouse, it was. If you know my Abby, she's terrible at making decisions. It tears her out of the frame. I watched her from my car . . . will she go in, will she not go in. She opened the door, stepped in then stepped out. She appeared to be talking to two women nearby. Abby opened the door, stepped in, then stepped out again. Then she looked toward me and called, "Momma, come here." Oh, brother. The problem was that the "outhouse" didn't have any light and when the door closed, it was really dark inside and, in Abby's mind, there were probably bugs crawling around and she wanted to be able to see them. The nice ladies offered to hold the door opened, but she naturally wanted me to have that honor. After super-sanitizing her hands, we were back in the car traveling to the reunion.

I don't know why Abby decided to do this, but she opened the cake container to look at her cake. Remember the cake with the runny icing? It began to drip out of the cake container. And it wouldn't stop dripping. Actually, we found later, it began to leak out during the ride. I had icing in the back of my car. Now icing was getting all over Abby. She thought she had it under control and she handed it off to Jane who was sitting beside me b/c Abby was feeding Cady some baby food before arriving at the reunion. As soon as Abby began to feed Cady, the icing began to come out of the cake container with a vengeance. I believe the icing had a mind of its own. It was all over the middle seat and now it was getting on Jane's clothes and the front seats. We got so tickled at that sticky mess that I almost ran off the road. What a mess!

Finally, we arrived at my cousin's house at noon, just 30 minutes later that I wanted, but whatever. We had such a great time. Thanks, Phyllis (Flea) and Mike for opening your home to 50 crazy relatives. We loved every minute of the day. Food was great, too.

Mike and "Flea" cooking our lunch.