Bravisimo!

What a wonderful dinner tonight! Mike 'n Mike 'n Lonnie prepared a lovely Italian feast complete with caprese salad, minestrone soup and brouchette. The menu was angel hair pasta with shrimp scampi (I picked out the shrimp and gave them to Lucy) and penne pasta with six cheeses and sausage. Oh, yummy! I sat with the Victory folks which included Harold and Lucy who used to be members at Good Shepherd, plus Ed and Judy, Stephanie, Rita and her son, Jon. Rita and her sister, Bonnie, were formerly members at GS but she does not remember me. It was a long time ago. Jon sat next to Ed who took great pleasure in teasing him, like a grandpa would, and Harold pitched in his two cents worth of teasing when Lucy allowed him to. The unfortunate thing was they ran out of dessert and some of our guests did not get any, even though Judy C. went to the store to get more. Just not enough. I felt badly for taking one, assuming more was coming from the kitchen...oops! Renee was also busy in the kitchen, I am sure she knows all about the Italian food since Lonnie and she lived in Italy for many years.

Justin met us at church this a.m. to help with the decorating, with his project being to put up the decorations hanging from the ceiling. We rigged up a system where we used giant paper clips to hold to the two-sided themed pieces. Judy was wishing we could put some of the decorations on the ugly blank wall where a grease board used to hang and I had the brain storm of putting some of the checkered plastic table cloths on the wall. It looked great! Judy took pictures of the room once decorated and I hope she will share her photos. I took some this evening which I will post tomorrow.

From church Justin and I went to Winn-Dixie so he could help me stock up on some stuff for posterity purposes, things with a long shelf life. When we got home with the purchases, he got busy shuffling things around in the cabinets and closets to make room. One project leads to another when we work on these things so he relocated a shelf-worth of mugs, glasses, and Christmas glasses. He straightened out the food cabinets, put things in the pantry (which he says is our next project!), and organized the kitchen food cabinet. Very nice!

I was able to sit and coach from a chair as I had to rest after all the setting up at church, for that project. When we moved to the next one of putting away the Timmy memorial, I pitched in. I remember what goes where and all that so it worked for us to do that together. When he was making room in the closet in the back closet, he pulled out a cardboard box, yes, I said cardboard, of old photographs. Yikes! At long last, my wedding album came back to me as did many other ancient photos and memories. Justin got a kick out of some of them, including one Lisa from when she was 6. Oh, my! Does she ever look like Manny...or would that be the other way around? I had him put the box aside or we'd never get anything done but not hidden away so I can look at them some more. Justin very nicely suggested putting the photos into scrapbooks, described how the pages should be set up, and such. He further suggested I work on THAT instead of newsletters. His heart is in the right place, this is for sure.

Justin had to leave for his friend Jesse's brother's Eagle Scout ceremony just down the street. Afterward he came back to get his grocery items his mother bought for him, and told me about the ceremony. It seemed a bit disorganized and Justin found it ironic that one of their pillars is to 'be prepared'. We always thought there was more pomp and circumstance to this process but apparently not. People are always mentioning how someone is an Eagle Scout so we had a preconceived notion about it.

He left and me not far behind him as I had to get over to church for the dinner. If I had left sooner, I could have stopped for gas but will do that in the morning instead. Hopefully the price won't go higher overnight. Certainly I pray the unrest in the Mid East subsides soon so that I will not have to break into my stockpile of food! I heard a guy state the other day that our currency could become toilet paper, and toilet paper become the currency.

The other day my friend Ruth V. called to uninvite me to her house for the LWMS rally. It seems she has out-of-state company coming for ten days which will overlap with the rally. She hated to do it but I assured her it is no problem at all, I will ride down there with Judy C. and whoever else goes to the rally. That would have been fun, though! Like Ruth suggested, we will do it another time!