home for father's day

I knew i'd be trying to fit in a lot during my stay in Philadelphia but so far I'm doing pretty good. Since my time in the "countryside" I've see my college roommie, my 3 best gals from growing up and have had lots of family time--just what i wanted.

We had the whole crew (5 of the 6 grandkids and my bros, sister in laws and dad) at my parent's house all weekend. Dad decided to treat everyone to steaks from the farmers market to welcome me home on Saturday night. Both sister in laws showed up with appz and side dishes and before we knew it we had ourselves quite a nice meal. Then on Sunday, Father's Day, I was 100% in charge. Shopping and cooking for 12 is more than I've done in the past so this was quite an experience for me...and I gained a new found appreciation for how my mom used to do it all the time. So I had a hot crab dip with crumbled baked cornbread on top with lots of cold beer for happy hour and then we had homemade burgers, dogs, and chicken and shrimp kabobs, rice pilaf, salad and garlic bread. And to top it off the kids helped make homemade vanilla ice cream to go with my mom's apple pie--which of all things I got the biggest applause for completely "nailing" the recipe. I was pretty happy about that. So all in all we had a lovely day and most of all the dads loved it. I of course had a quiet moment to myself out on the patio while everyone was talking among themselves where I felt such an emptiness for not having my mom to turn to and smile. As my dad and I said when we hugged good night, it was a perfect day but one very important person was missing...and things will just never be the same :(

Since then I've managed to see lots of people over lunches and dinners. One special lunch was with my mom's 3 golf friends, it was so nice to connect with them, I truly enjoyed it. And of course hanging with my best gals from growing up, we had a fun night out old school style :) The next few days are filled with aunts, uncles and cousins as well as my nieces and nephews in between, can't wait! While it's definitely been a bittersweet trip, it hasn't been as "bad" as I anticipated parts of it to be. Mom was so much of why I loved coming "home" so it's more been just learning how to live each day with something gone that I SO wish I could have back more than anything in the world...