Memorial Day Reunion

This holiday weekend has been a great time for our family. My ex-husband's cousin, Lyle, and his wife, Ann, from Arizona are in our area and are staying until Friday. We have had the most enjoyable time over the past weekend, and there is still more to come! They travel around the country doing trade shows, and they are in our area this week. They have their Fifth Wheel RV parked in the campground where I had mine for quite awhile. Below are a couple of photos of them taken Sunday evening.

Sunday, we were invited to the campground for a visit. We hadn't seen them in 3 years, the last time they were in SC. Stosh and Lyle played together when they were just little tykes, so this was a wonderful reunion for the guys, as well as us gals, as we had a lot of catching up to do, too! (Oh, how I wish I could put my hands on a photo I have somewhere of those two when they were just little boys about 5 or 6 years old, dressed in their knickers!) Ann prepared some delicious blueberry waffles (yum-yum!) in her new waffle maker while we were there. It was just such a pleasurable evening! Have you ever wondered why families have to live so-oooo far apart?

When we were leaving the campground later that very warm evening, there were so many people sitting outside around campfires, oblivious to the heat, I guess. There were really a lot of RVs there for the holiday. It looked quite full to me. There is nothing like camping to bring you close to nature! My son loves it, too. When he was little, he just wouldn't shut up about camping...everything was camping this and camping that. Finally, we went out and bought him a really nice tent with a floor, zippered door, a real tent, not a kid's tent, and put it up in our backyard. Well, he and his little buddy, Brian, played in that tent the entire summer that year! They didn't even care if they went swimming or not. Now back on track to Memorial Day.....I get sidetracked so easily these days!

Stosh had us all to his home yesterday for a Memorial Day cook-out, which consisted of steak, grilled baked potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, baked beans, dinner rolls, and 2 strawberry desserts. My daughter made a beautiful strawberry dessert, too, and I had made strawberry cheesecake. When strawberry season is in, you eat strawberry desserts! I had all good intentions of taking pictures of the steaks sizzling on the grill and the desserts...well, you know how it is when you get to talking. I completely forgot all about snapping photos for my blog until we got ready to leave!!! Imagine that....me forgetting!!! LOL After dinner, we all sat and watched a video we had made back in 1990 when we had gone back to PA that summer. We watched the part where we had gone to Olean, NY as Lyle's mother, Aunt Myrtle, from AZ was there for a couple of weeks visiting her sister who lived in Olean. Another sister and her husband from CA had also flown in. Aunt Myrtle and I corresponded quite frequently for many years, and we were thrilled when she wrote that she was going to be in Olean during the same time we were going to be in PA!

What a fun afternoon it was! We listened to many stories about when the sisters were young and raising their families. We heard stories about "speakeasies," too, which we found to be quite entertaining. For those of you too young to know what a "speakeasy" was.....a "speakeasy" was an establishment that surreptitiously sold alcoholic beverages during the period of United States history known as Prohibition (1920-1933, longer in some states), when the sale, manufacture, and transportation (bootlegging) of alcohol was illegal. The term comes from a patron's manner of ordering alcohol without raising suspicion — a bartender would tell a patron to be quiet and "speak easy." One of the sisters described it in her own words, as follows: There was a little eye-level door within the door that could be opened from the inside. When someone knocked, that little door was opened to see who was knocking. If it was the cops, they all took off running!

The sister who lived in Olean was a quilt maker. She showed her beautiful quilts while we were videotaping. We all enjoyed watching the tape as it didn't take long for the 3 sisters to forget that the camera was rolling and talked as if it wasn't even there. Lyle and Ann had never seen it before. Now all 3 sisters are together again in heaven. I am so glad we documented our entire visit home that year, as we tried to see as many friends and relatives as we could. Many of them have passed on, also.

Here are a few more photos of Ann and Lyle, and the last one is of Stosh and Lyle.

When you've lived away from home as long as we have, you welcome family and friends. It's always so much fun to see loved ones again and reminisce about old times and catch up on the kids, who are now grown and raising families of their own.

Tonight we are meeting for dinner at a new restaurant, as if we need to consume any more calories. (Yikes!) I plan on having them to my home for dinner also one night this week. I hope they like cats! I know they do as they had a 19-year old cat that travelled with them last year. We were surprised by their cat's name. He was an orange striped tiger. Both of my children graduated from Clemson University here in SC, and the university's color is orange and their mascot is a tiger. The cat's name? "Clemson." What a coincidence! Anyhow, we are looking forward to spending more time with Ann and Lyle this week. Tomorrow is tour day of our city.

Welcome to South Carolina once again!!! We are so happy you're here!!!!! "Y'all come back now, ya hear?"