The Land of Moon Pies

Craig and I drove down to Tennessee to visit Cole, Emily, and Julie for the Labor Day weekend.  With a request to pick up some Moon Pies for friends, we loaded up the car Saturday morning and headed south.

It was a quick trip, but a fun one. We arrived during the late afternoon and chatted for a bit, then sent Cole and Emily off and out to dinner while we stayed behind with Julie. Emily made us a yummy pasta casserole so we had something to eat as well.

Sunday we attended church and ran into a friend from our Michigan days, Nick Mead. He's a high councilor in their stake and was visiting that day. Jennifer Edgin Meredith, who was a teenager when we knew her in Champaign, was also there. She has five kids and her husband is an Area Authority for the church. Small world sometimes!!

 Cole reads to Julie on the couch after church.

I told Cole I would cook him anything he wanted for Sunday dinner. He felt badly asking me to cook during a visit to his home, so we settled with my cooking the main dish while he cooked a side dish. His choice? Porcupine meatballs and mashed potatoes. My favorite meal of all!

 

 Cole turned our joint cooking effort into a competition - a family cook off, if you will.

Cole is a good cook - his mashed potatoes were delicious. We all decided that the cook-off was a tie.

 Julie has begun eating solid food. Despite her suspicious look here, she does like it.

 I love those big baby blue eyes!

When Julie went to bed Sunday night, we pulled out some games to play. After Scattergories (Emily is SUCH a good player - she won over the holidays and she won during this visit!) we got out the Skip-Bo cards.

 Cole contemplates a move.

All too soon, it was time to return home. We had hoped to have donuts from Donut Country for breakfast Monday morning, but it and all the other donut shops were closed. Cole and Craig ended up getting some from Kroger, and we also tried Hardees' fried bologna and Velveeta breakfast biscuit sandwich. (That's a separate blog post in and of itself - for good reason!) Oh, and I picked up that case of Moon Pies for my friends, Mike and Kim Pinto.

 Julie is all smiles as I cuddle her one last time.

And with her Boompa, too (although earlier in our visit, she was leery of him. It took a while for her to warm up to Craig.)

We arrived home Monday evening with enough time to unpack our bags and get a few things done before it was back to work on Tuesday.

So glad we had a three day weekend for a visit - it was quick, but it was wonderful, too.