We decided to go to Bell Buckle this weekend to get out of Jon’s hair, as it’s tax season. Since he’s an accountant, he has A LOT of work to do on the weekends this month (and next.) H was in Atlanta for a few days visiting with friends with some girl he identified only to me as “Marie,” so he wasn’t with us. But J, C, E and J’s friend G and I went together and had a grand time. (H is back from Atlanta now, and I’m still trying to get a clear answer on the mystery that is “Marie.” Let me tell you that getting information on a female acquaintance out of a very private 18 year old male requires a lot of tenacious persistence on the part of said male’s mother.)

The night before our weekend excursion, E helped me get his little sister to sleep by pretending to fall asleep with her himself (she likes that.) But then he actually fell asleep. So did she.

On Saturday morning, we hit the road, but not before making a stop at the carwash place where we had the interior of the car decontaminated before picking up J’s friend G, who was going to go with us. C LOVED the auto carwash. It both mesmerized her and terrified her. Here she and E are – the latter looking a bit like a young Unabomber in this photo – watching our car get run thru the – in C’s words – “very, VERY scary soapy machine.”

My sister and her fam had preceded us to Bell Buckle the day before, so C was very glad to find that NC was already there, waiting for her. The girls enjoyed their favorite activity: taking a bath together.

C was also very glad to see her cousin N, who is just about 9 months older than she and NC.

NC spent some quality alone time playing toddler app games on my sister’s iPhone. She is only 2 and she already knows how to pull up her favorite color and shape sorting games on the phone, and how to play them and change games when she’s ready.

We absolutely loved having J’s friend G along with us for the weekend. He’s a fantastic kid – polite, funny and enthusiastic about jumping into the chaotic maelstrom that is a house party weekend with our family.

Robert & Nicole had to go to a charity event Saturday night, so we made them pose for photos, like the prom.

In fact, I made them pose just as if they were at the prom.

While we were at Robert and Nicole’s all weekend, C developed a deep, obsessive attachment to one of cousin N’s toys – an animatronic puppy whom she named “Spots.” After she carried it around for 24 hours straight without letting go of it once, Aunt Nicole kindly offered to let her “borrow” Spots to take back to Knoxville. She was so excited by this offer that she immediately announced that we needed to leave for Knoxville RIGHT NOW, and she threw a fit when we told her we weren’t going yet. She thought that if she didn’t take Aunt Nicole up on the offer right away, somebody might have a change of heart and take Spots away from her.

When we finally did go home on Sunday evening, she clutched Spots the whole way back, including during the NUMEROUS bathroom breaks necessarily involved in a 3.5 hour car trip with two teenagers, a 12 year old, a toddler and a pregnant woman. Here you see C and Spots touring public restrooms all across Tennessee.

Oh, and the best quote of the weekend came from my grandmother, while chatting with me and my dear friends since middle school, David & Harry, who were also in Bell Buckle for the weekend. She told us that, “All of the dictators I’ve known have actually been quite nice in person.” (For the record, those dictators include but may not be limited to Baby Doc, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and the Shah of Iran.)

My friend Harry, whom I’ve known since we were both 12 years old, and with whom I went to this prom (he’s pictured here with me) dug up this photo of the two of us at our senior prom.

Me: Laura Ashley dress (bien sur!), patterned gloves (!!) and tights a la Madonna circa 1984, topped off with bad, bad, VERY BAD perm (what the hell was I thinking?)

So I am notoriously bad at keeping secrets. But I was actually able to keep a pretty big one recently, that culminated in a huge surprise birthday party for my sister and sister-in-law in Bell Buckle. The secret was quite elaborate; many of the kids in our family were in on it, too. And my brother and brother-in-law pulled it off wonderfully on Saturday evening. Both Nicole and Betsy were VERY surprised. There was a band, great food, and friends my sister hadn’t seen in ten years came to celebrate with us. It was awesome. Everyone had a great time.

And Betsy was further surprised with some quite lovely diamond earrings from her husband, who really did it up right this year. (Well played, Ray!). I mention the earrings because in some of the photos from the party (below) you will see various male family members trying the earrings on for comic effect, which might have left you with the impression that all the men in our fam routinely sport diamond studs in their ears. Nope. The guys were just checkin’ out Betsy’s new bling.

And the adorably, deliciously fat newborn (well, he’s 3 months now, but that’s sort of still a newborn) in the photos is my newest baby cousin. Isn’t he yummy looking? I totally want to gobble him up.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

My mother is still trying to sell her house. Pass the word to anyone who might be interested.

It’s an awesome house, and our family has so many great memories there (for one thing, Jon and I were married in the backyard.) But it’s really too much house now for just my mother. It’s ready for a new family, and a new chapter.

Someone dear to me has died.