Precious week of visitors!!

After worrying that illness would crash our plans, we were able to welcome my Great Aunt Eleanor back for another nearly week long stint at Tangly Woods. And this time we were in for a triple treat in that one of her granddaughters (who is also my dear friend and second cousin) and her son were able to overlap visits. Mom and Dad were enjoying wild, wonderful West Virginia for a week and so the upstairs was freed up for a week of hosting. We did our meals all together outside for the first few days in case any virus germs were lingering, but then were grateful to have the flexibility and warmth of gathering inside or outside for the second half of our time together. We were thankful for some beautiful fall days and the official return of "soup season!" 

Aunt Eleanor was such a good sport joining us outside for meals AND soccer games! Thankfully we have plenty of blankets!

I don't think I can do a better job describing the week with words than these pictures can do. In summary the days together were full of laughter, sweet times of connecting, good conversation, delicious foods, a shadow puppet show, chicken training and nonstop fun and play for the kids! 

With our kids at the age where they can mostly fend for themselves AND love playing together, Colette and I got to enjoy not one but two hikes on the mountain together. It's a unique gift for me to have someone who has some shared family history/heritage with me and with whom I share so many interests and who is navigating some of the same kinds of life challenges and blessings and who shares a posture of curiosity towards the world and is always learning and growing and sometimes unlearning. It was such precious time together!!

During the week, I would pop upstairs to check on my aunt and we kinda have a running joke of me snapping pictures of her without her knowing it. There wasn't much chance of her catching me while snoozing! 

I also got a funny series of pictures of the three of us together. There's not one where we are all smiling at the camera. This was partly because Aunt Eleanor was trying to figure out how we were taking a picture of ourselves and seeing ourselves on the phone screen. 

Smack dab in the middle of our week together was Terah's 8th birthday (post on that forthcoming!). So they got in on some of the fun birthday celebrations and Terah got a long spread out week of celebrations. She was ok "sharing" her birthday with others as long as we could have a "fake birthday" with just the 5 of us! 😉 Her main birthday meal was on the eve of her birth (right around the time 8 years before when I realized I was probably in labor). Jonathan, Christen and Luca were able to join us around the outdoor fire for a feast of roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, green beans with garlic, fresh sweet peppers and we topped off the meal with s'mores and ice cream cones! Luca helped with scaring the chickens away from the picnic table (I'm so glad he is no longer scared of chickens, and seems to get great satisfaction from realizing that they are actually scared of him if he runs towards them). 

Then the next morning the final chain of her birthday loop came down! And we feasted again, this time on birthday quiches and funny cake pie! Our baby is officially 8!!

After soccer games in the evening, we enjoyed her birthday cupcakes and spent awhile looking at baby Terah videos (and gushing!).

We enjoyed a meander around the land the next day to check on the rapidly growing baby chicks, as well as the rest of the chickens. The gnats were making their presence known (in a most annoying way), but Colette and Aunt Eleanor discovered that leaning against a tree trunk somehow seemed to make them go elsewhere. Good to know!

On our last night all together, the three kiddos treated us to a shadow puppet show. They had worked on it for hours each day. The show was super fun, but I think even they might agree that the whole process leading up to the show was equally or even more fun than the show itself. 

The end of the visits came so fast! Now we are dreaming of a visit to their home in the spring!