You know how a fiction writer can establish atmosphere for his/her work by setting a short story, for example, in an abandoned building on a dark and stormy night and trusting that readers will expect something dark and negative to occur? Nature today is like that fiction writer.
My sister-in-law Cassie and her husband Nick, who currently live in Fargo, are moving to Raleigh, North Carolina a week from Wednesday. For a final family get-together, they came to our home for the weekend, as did my brother-in-law Jerrett and his wife Cheryl and her son Arron (my father-in-law lives here in town and joined us, too). After a week of beautiful, sunny, hot (90 degrees) weather, things cooled down yesterday and became downright frigid this morning as everyone prepared to pack up and drive back home. We all shed tears as we hugged and bid Cassie and Nick goodbye and good luck with their move and waved as they drove away in the rain. The house has been relatively quiet this afternoon, and now it's snowing. Nature set our family's story perfectly today.
On a positive note, however, Cassie and Nick were able to see how their efforts at wallpaper-removing here a few weekends ago have since paid off with painted walls. In anticipation of this weekend's guests, Susan and I painted like fiends last week and got everything done. Every room upstairs is now painted. We also painted the storage room, the stairway, the family room and craft room, and the bathroom (all downstairs). My father-in-law used his pickup to pick up our dining room table set, and he delivered it last week, so we had comfortable seating room for 11 adults* at once for supper last night. We're still waiting for our entertainment center to arrive, but we got the rest of the family room furniture into place before everyone arrived. There was sleeping room for everyone, too.
Today we're bringing in more boxes from the garage and putting away what we can. We're waiting for some storage shelves to arrive for our storage room. I'm looking on-line for a couple more pieces of furniture (storage for our music books and a computer desk for the girls' homework area downstairs). We're waiting for a contractor to drop by to discuss installing egress windows in Suzanna and Abigail's bedrooms downstairs (after which we can finally paint their rooms, too, and be completely done with painting in this house). Several people took naps this afternoon, too (not I, though).
It was sad to say goodbye to family today, and nature didn't make it any easier with the unfortunately appropriate weather. Here's hoping for great things for Cassie and Nick in Raleigh!
* Susan's grandma, Laura, joined us, too; she lives in town. Also, our friends Jeff and Janelle and their three kids from Harwood, ND joined us. Jeff and Janelle spent a day and night in Medora and left their children with us Friday night and Saturday. Their kids and ours ate first, and then we 11 adults (and Arron) ate next.
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