Found the House Fine

We found the house fine. The kids ran out to greet us and I gave them groceries to carry and dropped my bags in in the room. Grandma had come down at this point and the family crowded around her.  I returned to the car with two of the older kids to get the last groceries. Back inside I exploded the bags and Charlie appeared. I said happy birthday to Marilyn.

I went upstairs everyone was over in my friend’s sister’s room. She had bunkbeds, so decided later that she wanted to move to another room.  I found the groceries had all been put away. I got a beer and sat in the kitchen as people came upstairs.  Two of the kids sat nearby. I quizzed them about San Francisco and people figured out what I was doing. Someone forcefully changed the subject.

The groups were essentially the grandparents from Montana and the kids from Utah- most of which had  gone to bed.  I knew they were listening from the attic though.  We had to turn off the lights and eventually everyone went to bed.

I slept really well and in the morning I went upstairs first and downed what coffee there was. One of the kids had made me a pancake and one of the younger kids had had gone on a walk with her dad. The oldest and I read Paw Patrol over the walkie-talkie with her father and that was pretty funny.

Everyone crowded into grandma's room then and I made myself an egg. The others had slept well also. At that point my friend and her father had sat down on the couch together with grandma. I tried to hang out with them at first but got up to play with one of the kids.  Someone started making coffee then.  I was clearly obsessed.

Later we all piled into two cars for a trip to Yellowstone. I took the front seat of the car driven by the brother-in-law and grandma sat in the back with her mother-in-law and one of the younger kids.  We made jokes about Paw Patrol over the walkie-talkie. Someone from the other car made a comment about a swamp but I interpreted it as White Swan Bourbon.

We stopped at Subway where we made jokes about the swamp. Then we went to the Paint Pots where the brother-in-law and I escorted the ladies around the boardwalk.  After that we headed to Old Faithful. We found a picnic table near the concessions and ate sandwiches.  I observed the children.

One of the kids told us her strawberry looked like a heart.  I had a strawberry too.  Before I helped clean up and told the boys to quit horsing around before we headed off to see the guyser. However, when we arrived we we quickly learned that it it already blown.  We went to the information center for about after that and a short time later we went to West Yellowstone.

I went to Bullwinkle's, got a bottle of whiskey, I sent a postcard and met everyone at Dairy Queen.  I was falling asleep when we headed back to to the cabin.  When we arrive I brought my stuff in, fixed myself a whiskey and sat in the living room. The kids were all over, playing ping-pong and cards.

At one point we went out back and took some pictures of the rain- there was lightning off in the distance.  We played Uno for a while.  The eldest kid was really good  I made cheese and crackers for the crowd.

We sat and ate burgers and salad. Two of the kids sat with me. When the meal was over and the kids went down to float in the hot tub by then. I did some dishes until. Later I sat looking at Twitter and Youtube with some of the kids.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.