A lovely weekend.

We had a very lovely weekend.  On Friday evening we cooked out and then went to Sonic for dessert.  We wanted to watch a movie and after much discussion to find a movie we could all agree on, we landed on Smokey and the Bandit. I know, odd choice, but we enjoyed it even though a lot of the dialogue would be considered politically incorrect today.  

On Saturday, I finished my uncle's birthday cake and Dan and Peter mowed the grass and Dan's sister Cathy arrived.  She wanted to come for a visit to see Sarah for her birthday but on Sarah's actual birthday no one will be home (Dan will be in Ireland and Peter will be in Raleigh and Sarah will be working).  Luckily, it all worked out that she could visit on Saturday and join us for our annual end of school year celebration at Tokyo!

After she arrived, she and Sarah went to one of the local strawberry farms and picked up a bunch of strawberries.  Cathy uses them to make jam. Then we had lunch (tomato, bacon, quesadillas which I realized later I accidentally left out the bacon - they were still delicious) then  we headed to the local garden shop to get some tomato plants.  

Dan and I have been going back and forth about the garden this year. Normally by now we have tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapenos and bell peppers planted. But Dan's been traveling and is about to head out again and will be gone essentially the whole summer so he won't be here to tend to the garden.

I can't stand the thought of no homegrown tomatoes so we decided at the last minute to plant a few tomatoes and a couple of jalapenos.  I will be in charge of watering them and hopefully keeping them alive.  There won't be a big crop but hopefully enough that I can get some sandwiches!

After the trip to the garden store, we planted them and then we all showered and got ready for Mass.  After Mass we headed to Tokyo for dinner.

And yes, my brother loves to mess up our photos by making faces!

This is the best one I could get.

And then one of me with Sarah since I wasn't in the group shot.

After dinner, we came home and spent the rest of the evening around the fire pit chatting and listening to music.  It was such a nice evening.

On Sunday morning, we discovered that something had come through the garden and eaten some of the tomato plants!  We planted 7 plants and several of them were completely gone!  This has never happened before in all of our years of gardening.  We had a couple extras that we had left over so we planted those and later discovered that they had been nibbled but were still basically there. If this continues, I may be going to the farmer's market for my tomato sandwich tomatoes this year!

We had Sunday lunch at my mom's and for the first time in a very long time, we had a full table!  It was so nice I had to take an awkward selfie...

And we celebrated my Uncle David's 88th birthday with cake!

It was a great weekend and I am thankful that we all got to be together.  I am currently enjoying one last week of everyone being under the same roof. Savor the little moments, folks!