The baby of the family, “sister Nancy”, arrived this afternoon. We all hugged each other and then unloaded more groceries. We always need a lot of food, especially since the nearest grocery store is 17 miles away.

But before that, I went “up the hill” to band practice with three other band members.  We admired our parade trophies, which were displayed on the mantel.

We listened to some new song ideas, then played a few of our old favorites. “I’ll Fly Away” was suggested by the mandolin teacher, so we sang that. And we fooled around a bit with my favorite melancholy waltz, “Niel Gow’s Lament”. Our own Neil, the recorder player, is going to own that song by the end of the summer!

Then it was down the hill again, to take the sisters and brothers-in-law to the local farmer’s market.

There was music…

  Flowers.
Jams and jellies.

The sisters shopped.And shopped.

There was a lengthy discussion between these two about what kind of jam to buy.  You can see that they thought this was extremely important.  Should I go with the huckleberry or would the apple cinnamon be a better choice?

I went inside the community center and picked up some books from the free take-one-or-leave-one shelves.  And after all the excitement, the eight of us returned to the house and partied hardy on the dock. See the hummus? Glen cut his finger on the blade of his new food processor, which may have serious banjo-twanging repercussions. So much for the music career, sweetheart.  You should have stuck with the potato chips.

We drank another bottle of wine and took this picture.  I think we’ll try to stay up late tonight and play dominoes.

It’s good to be back on the dock again.

(By the way, the temperature was really about 85 degrees. My in-laws are always cold.  I don’t know why, except they grew up in Nebraska and have a very close attachment to their outerwear.  Even in July.)