At Mom and Dad's

On Friday evening we all (me, Diana, Josh, Gwen, Zoe) piled into the car and drove up to the mountains, arriving around midnight. Mom and Dad, Tabitha and Chris (and Kathleen, Emma, Luke) and James and Heather (and Ella and Franklin) were there.

On Saturday we set off to find a Christmas tree. There were some trees of the right size in the east field; that is, there were some trees in the east field, and some years ago they were the right size. They seem to have grown a bit in the meantime. So since we were nearly to Reva and Vinson's, we marched up the hill and visited them. There was a round of DeBoe Rules Baseball, in which I was third base for a while--that's "third base" rather than "third baseman." First base was a fence post and second base was the old outhouse; I have no idea how I was selected to be third...
In the afternoon, a tree was actually found, cut, and dragged home. It was ten feet tall and eight feet across, and took up most of the width of the great room. "It didn't look that big, outside" was a recurring comment. But better to be a big, memorable tree than a boring one.
Evening was Josh's birthday party. Josh had suggested a birthday salad rather than a birthday cake--what a change for our carnivore over the past couple of years!--but what he got was cake.

Sunday was church, a bit of backyard football, and a couple of hands of Skip Bo, with Gwen, Josh, Tab, Chris, Mom and me. Important note while playing SkipBo: "That's not cheating, that's just an idiosyncratic local interpretation of the rules."

I drive home on Monday, in Dad's (now "Dad's and my") Oldmobile Aurora. Diana Gwen and Josh will return Tuesday, via Virginia Tech, where Gwen will interview for their grad school.