As you probably guessed, the family got together today. In recent times we often need an excuse to gather in one place, and this happened to be Mother's Day. There were many mothers in attendance at Suzanne's house for lunch this afternoon, including my own. In a week, we'll be together again for Eric and Kat's wedding, but after that, who knows when we'll have another day like today?

When I picked up Mom and our friend Joan at their building, I noticed that most of the downtown streets were blocked off. Since I don't read the local paper, I had to rely on the ladies to tell me that there was a bicycle race starting here in town this morning. We made it to Suzanne's house on time, and Kat and Eric and Alexander were already there. I played peekaboo with Alexander to make him laugh, but it really isn't that hard to engage him. He's ready to play, but he also likes to make the rules. And he's often content to play by himself.

For the longest time, he planted himself on the kitchen floor with the cupboard door open. He would methodically take out small raisin boxes, one at a time, and place them on the floor. Then he would take them off the floor, one at a time, and put them back in the cabinet. He had one hard and fast rule: The boxes must not touch each other, and they cannot be stacked. He would lay them side by side, or move one out of the way to make room for another, but he wouldn't pile them up like blocks. He was totally engrossed in this task, until he wasn't. Then it was time to move on.

David and Barb and his kids and her girls arrived not long after we did, and the party was fully on. Kylie loves to get me involved in her role-playing games, like Restaurant. She served me a delicious bowl of muddy leaves. I couldn't finish it, I'm sorry to say. Aiden told me it was a "medium." They had four sizes, he said: large, medium, small, and mini. I should have ordered the mini, I guess.

When I tried to get her to promise to dance with me at the wedding, Kylie decided that we needed to practice the bunny hop across the living room carpet. And I swear, I only landed on her once, and it was a soft landing. I was much better at hopping forward than I was at hopping back. I didn't make it back and forth very many times before I was winded and sore, though. I thought I was in better shape than that, but apparently not.

Later Aiden asked if he could browse on my phone, so of course I handed it to him. He watched music videos on YouTube and part of a movie on Netflix and then asked if he could download a game he likes, but only if it was free. It did turn out to be a free game, and he played it about twenty times in a row after dinner, when it was getting to be time to settle down anyway. So all worked out well.
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Mom and her great-granddaughter Kylie, perusing old photos.
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The moms, I think, had a good day. We honored them as best we could, considering they made up about half of our group. I'm pretty sure I don't let mine know often enough how much she is appreciated, so it's good there's a day set aside for that. There shouldn't need to be a day, but since there is, we might as well get together and eat and talk and laugh and enjoy each other's company. That's my philosophy of how to keep a family from losing track of one another, anyway.