Sunday

I get up early to set the brioche out for a rise. I don't have much hope for it. We really had to work it to death yesterday to come to a smooth dough. Still, I give it its time in a warm spot.

They'll be coming for brunch -- the young family, my youngest girl and her husband -- a final meal together before we disperse.

I slide the brioche into the oven and take out ingredients for huevos ancheros. With bacon and fruit at the side -- not too hard. A warming meal. Just what you need on yet another freezing day.

(Hey, it looks okay! Just a touch too dense for my brioche taste, but still, the flavor is good.)





The youngest couple arrives. They can't get in. The lock and handle are completely broken. The door wont open.
Ed!

They walk in through the porch.
Mom, is there a gas odor outside?
I don't smell it. My nose is full of brioche and bacon.

Ed sniffs. Maybe. He calls Madison Gas and Electric to get the official sniffer out here.

Oh, in the end it's just a loose fitting on one of their pipes outside, but still, I marvel at how many things can break, unhinge, snap, crack, dissolve, fall apart in an old house. Four things this one weekend. Still, I'm grateful that it's nothing that requires our own work outside. Did I mention it's cold out there?!






There's a little time to play before the meal...






But we quickly settle down to the serious business of eating.






Well, someone is anxious to get back to playing, twisting her small frame between chairs to get to the other side of the table.






But don't think of her as really small. She isn't that. When we retake a photo of "me and my girls" that I remember fondly from two years back, Snowdrop is so big that she is quite capable of obscuring the person behind her.






A few more games...






And then a sandwich hug...






And we're all off in three different directions, but with that warm and wonderful feeling that no one is really very far and we'll surely be visiting each other within weeks, oh, indeed -- hours, because today is Sunday and so the young family comes to the farmhouse for supper, absence of door nob on front door notwithstanding!

(Time release photo...)






Snowdrop is settling down now, moving rather seamlessly from chaotic fun to calmly arranging her Duplo characters with mommy.






The week ahead is again unusual: tomorrow Ed and I are going out on a date and Thursday afternoon, I take off for a brief and somewhat unusual trip to Poland. But right now, I'm stuck in the glow of this weekend, when we all watched a little one grow bigger and smarter and funnier, in the way that all parents and grandparents marvel at how quickly little ones grow up.