Lizzie Goes to a Party

Marta's family has two parties a year to celebrate family birthdays. One is for all the birthdays that happen in the first part of the year, the other is for all the birthdays that happen in the last part of the year. The party this weekend was brunch at Ned & Marta's house and they invited us to come. Ned also suggested I bring Lizzie with us. I figured Lizzie could use some time with just us, away from all the rest of the hoard. She so rarely gets that.

She had a great time riding in the car.

When we got to Ned and Marta's there was somebody else to occupy everybody's attention, baby Charlie.

It's just too bad he was such a skinny, ugly, unhappy baby. :)

We enjoyed chatting with all the Wilsons, including Charlie's grandparents who happened to mention that they are leaving on a trip to Russia next week. I asked their plans. A cruise, they said. From St. Petersburg to Moscow, they said. With Viking cruises, they said. Boinnnggg. Turns out we are going on the same cruise at the same time, with the same company, but we are on the Viking Kirov and they are on the Viking Surkov. I suspect that our chance of meeting accidentally either in St. Petersburg or in Moscow are slight, but what a coincidence. When next we meet we'll have to compare notes.

We were seated at one long table for lunch, with a smaller table off to the side for the overflow.

I had brought potatoes to share and had planned to make this neat recipe that called for bacon, onions and red peppers. Then the bacon turned out to be moldy, so I substituted a Cajun potato dish, which worked out fine because so many people, it turns out, don't like onions (I knew Walt and Marta didn't; I didn't realize others in her family don't either).

It was very hot when we left and we cranked the air conditioner in the car up to high. Unlike the trip over, Lizzie didn't stick her nose out the window to sniff the air. She discovered that if she stood between the two of us, with her feet resting on the console in the middle of the front seats, she was right in front of the a/c and she stood there the whole way home (40 minutes), drooling copiously onto my arm. I found a towel stored in the console and stuck that on my arm for her to drool into.

When I checked messages after we got home there were a slew of them on the discussion board for our upcoming trip, from people who were very unhappy with things. I'm going to keep a positive attitude and assume that our trip will be just fine. We endured Ludwig, Nevada. These people don't know the meaning of primative. These people are complaining about sanitary conditions because they never saw hand rails on the stairs being sanitized. We ate dinner in a sandstorm in Death Valley. More than once. I think we can handle unsanitized stair railings.