This was the summer of Anakah—Dianne watched the child everyday and got her through tennis, swimming lessons and summer boredom which plagues every kid sometime during the summer. Anyway, in gratitude Gabe and Bridget had Dianne and over for steaks and coconut shrimp. Anakah had called earlier in the day and asked if she could spend the evening—it has been a long holiday weekend for Dianne and myself so we figured why not. Anakah was specific however, that we would have to ask at just the right time. We decided to go along with her plan.
The dinner was excellent; great steak and Gabe makes best coconut shrimp and garlic toast. The dinner was later in the day 5:30 p.m. right at the beginning of a major storm system which would plague us for the next 18 out so hours. We ate and visited and just at the right time Dianne asked if Ani can spend the night and the approval and between bands of rain, when the rain was falling at its lightest we raced for the van and headed home. The remainder of the evening was spent watching our storm and for Dianne keeping track of Gustav and Anakah watching her favorite videos. We did not really stay up late and I think everyone was in bed by 10:30—with no major incidents.
One of the traditions we have fostered over Anakah’s life is to have bacon and eggs when every she spends the night and Anakah often helps with the breakfast production. I get up about 600 a.m. and turn on NPR and prep for breakfast which I did this morning. I try to make enough noise that I wake Ani but not this morning. 7:00 a.m. came and went but I got the bacon fried, cheese for the eggs, grated and coffee made. When I called Ani and Dianne the wind had picked up and the rain started falling and the thunder started. Some lightening but not too much, is after we had eaten that the wind gusted and the rain turned to hail. The cold front pushed the temperature down significantly, and because before yesterday’s storm the temperature was in the 90’s so the heat in the house is not on. Dianne went back to bed to get warm and tried to get Ani to join her hoping to get the girl to get a little more sleep. Anakah would have nothing of that and slipped out of bed as soon as Dianne had slipped off into a stormy morning nap.
Ani was bored beyond tears beyond any relief of her animated videos. I figured the best cure was to keep her busy and decided to bake oatmeal cookies. Baking cookies turned out to be a much bigger project then I had figured. We spent an hour searching for the mixer, ingredients and finally had Anakah had to wake Dianne and ask her where everything was. We eventual found everything we needed. We had to pummel the hard brown sugar to get the sugar to a useable consistency, but soon we were mixing the butter, sugars, flour and the rest and by the time we were ready to put the cookies on the cookie sheets, Dianne was up and took over. What was supposed to be 18 soft cookies turned out to be 36 plus crisp oatmeal cookies but the cookies were better then I had anticipated. I had managed to keep Ani busy for over two hours, the storm had dissipated the sun had come out and though the temperature was in the 50’s the kids across the street were out playing in the water. Ani gathered together a paper plate of cookies and headed across the street to buy her way into the games. Happy Labor day everyone!!!
Oh, by the way, Dianne's mom is just fine-she weathered the storm just fine...
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