Saturday, Nov. 19

Up at 6 a.m. this morning, so I could help Mother get a shower before breakfast. I skipped my exercises today...kitchen duties called. Mother wanted to help, so after she was seated at the kitchen table, I gathered baking dishes and ingredients for putting together lasagnas. Mother enjoyed this project.

After she'd finished carefully layering the ingredients in both dishes, she went back to her rocking chair in the den to rest, while I finished lunch preparations...slicing and buttering French bread, cutting up vegetables for salad, and opening cans of green beans to be heated later.

Son, Daughter-in-Law, Grandson and his wife and three children (including a newborn) arrived a little after 9 a.m. Son, Grandson, and Hubbie set to work right away building a ramp to Mother's porch.

Around 10:30, I put the lasagnas in the oven to bake, and while they cooked, I enjoyed the great-grandkids, especially the newest edition, a two-month-old little girl that looks like her dad.

Lunch was ready at noon, and we all came to the table with our appetites on go. Even the two youngsters ate heartily.

The guys didn't dawdle after lunch, but went right back to work. They completed all they could by around 3 p.m., and then spent a little while visiting before heading home around 4 p.m.

They'll be back next Saturday to complete the task...installing a rail on the right-hand side of the ramp. On that day, Granddaughter and her boyfriend will also come, and we'll all enjoy a second round of Thanksgiving dinner.

Later, we watched a Hallmark Channel 2005 movie, "Silver Bells," starring Anne Heche. A young man, whose father owns a Christmas tree farm, decides not to return home after a trip to Manhattan to deliver trees. The young man, a photographer, bonds with a woman museum director. A year later, the father, who has never ceased looking for his son, returns to Manhattan and crosses paths with the museum director.

While we watched this movie, we had a sandwich supper, followed by slices of dark chocolate cake. The cake, one that I'd bought last April at the Scottish festival, has been in the freezer all this time.

When the movie ended, Hubbie and I watched our favorite college football team play to a wide-margin win. The game began at 2:30 this afternoon, but I recorded it on DVR.