My weekend really kicked off on Thursday, with the arrival of my parents and my Aunt Ruthie, up for a quick visit to Seattle.  After a little at-home happy hour action, we all headed for a walk around Seward Park and dinner at Geraldine’s.  I hadn’t seen Aunt Ruthie for a couple of years, so it was good to catch up with her on all the latest happenings with my East Coast family.  I went into the office on Friday, but slipped out at lunchtime for mimosas and chowder at the Market with my mom and aunt, and then left a little early so that we could crack open that bottle of white wine while the afternoon sun was still grazing our back patio.  We grilled burgers and watched baseball and sat around the table telling stories from way back when.  As I get older, I’ve come to appreciate that my story doesn’t start with my earliest childhood memories.  My story is wrapped up in my parents’ first years of marriage, in the opossum-shootin’ shenanigans my dad got into as a kid at his grandparents’ farm, in the letters Nannie and Grandaddy wrote to each other when they were just young kids in love.  I’m just one little leaf on a family tree full of love and laughter and devotion.
Oh, and speaking of “way back when”, how incredibly awesome is the picture my aunt brought for us of the Jarrell clan, circa 1979? Holy retro, Batman!
My aunt left for Baltimore on Saturday morning and my parents headed down to Portland, so the rest of the day was devoted to…a whole lot of nothin’.  No house projects, no errands, no baseball, just an afternoon full of completely blissful quiet on the back patio with a good book and a bowl of cherries (followed by a perfect afternoon snooze). Putting away my to-do list felt so, so good – I think I needed the break.  We ended the day with one (last?!) backyard summer bbq at Brian and Nicole’s. Sausages hot off the grill, piled with all kinds of toppings? I needed that, too…
Sunday was full of more relaxing, a killer lunch at our favorite Malaysian food cart, another nap (or two – ?!), and dinner/catch-up at Chez Rust. Stick a fork in this weekend – it is done. Wellllll done…