Buddie's Parents Visit - April 2021

Video in post. Watch at website.

Thanks to vaccinations, Buddie’s parents felt ready to make the long drive from Vermont to visit for a week with the half of their family in Nashville.

We were lucky enough to have them stay with us since the basement suite was available, which meant many options for visits in the morning, afternoon, and evening.

The background to the whole week was everyone working on a beautiful puzzle Mary and John brought with them. Fi had done it months ago, and loved it, so Buds sent one to his dad for his birthday. It was really tough, so we were grateful for the pictures Fi had sent me, plus her support early in the process.

We planned to do an “everyone make your favorite thing” dinner at the end of the week, so Buds and Monkey made homemade tomato sauce early in the week to go with the meatballs they were going to create for that meal.

Mary, John, and I got to see a cousin play flag football and that was really fun.

And we had a BBQ with Buddie’s brother’s family, and it was soo good to be together after months and months of only brief contact or seeing only 2 or 3 of them at a time.

Due to her car accident last year, Mary had daily stretches to do, and Buds enjoyed jumping in on those.

And, of course, they turned it into a competition with him literally jumping on her.

The two sons took the parents out for a walk around, lunch, and ice cream, which everyone enjoyed.

We had a walk on the Greenway near us to show them how high the river had gotten in the latest flooding.

The bridge you see us on above, a person on FB (I apologize that I didn’t make note of their name. It was someone on Hip Bellevue.) took drone shots of the bridge when it was flooded. This is what was visible during the flood:

There were other games and walks and conversations.

Buds helped them sort out computer issues, and Mary and I went to pick up John’s new computer from the Apple Store after wandering our way around the mall for a good long time.

We also meandered around at Parnassus Books, which was such a joy after more than a year of not being in a book store, and Mary bought me a murder mystery that her book club loved, and I devoured it over the next two days. I just got the second in the series from our library today and I’m using it as the carrot to get all my other work complete.

We had Monkey’s graduation celebration.

Mela the Australian Shepherd came to visit, so we had plenty of doggo coverage.

And some silliness:

At the end of it all, the puzzle was complete, and we waved them off, but only for a couple months this time with plans to see everyone in the summer.