Visit From Sophia

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Over the week of President's Day, Dada's cousin Sophia and her mommies Catherine and Jennifer, along with GranJudy (Nei Nei) came to visit. Tante Lanita (Dada's great aunt and GranJudy's younger sister) came a day later.

The girls had a wonderful time, spending as much time as they could on the playscape, swinging and climbing in the play house and generally running around. Dada continued to ask about Sophia constantly after they went back home. The constant level of cuteness was difficult to take at times.

We all had a great time--Catherine and Eliot enjoyed getting to play video games together like in the old days (we even had Super Mario 64 installed on the Wii--back in the day before Eliot had video game consoles at home, he would visit Catherine and play Super Mario into the wee hours of the morning).

We got to visit Judy's cousin Harriet and Harriet's mother Frances, who both live here in Austin, along with Harriet's brother (and of course also Judy's cousin) Jimmy Carl and his wife Pat, who were visiting from New York. It was nice to meet these not-so-distant relatives and make connections.

Judy is deep into researching the Hyatt family history and capturing it on Ancestry.com. We spent a lot of time scanning in old photos and newspaper clippings and adding details to the Hyatt tree on Ancestry.com. It was very interesting--I had not really appreciated the Hyatt history in the panhandle or even that I have a famous distant relative (adventurer Richard Halliburton).

On that Wednesday we hosted a BBQ at the house that was a lot of fun--the weather was perfect, clear and about 78 degrees, pretty amazing for mid February. I cooked a big brisket as something of a dress rehearsal for our Spring BBQ planned for a couple of weeks later. I discovered that 12 hours is not quite enough cooking time for a 13 pound brisket (for the Spring BBQ I got up a 4:00 a.m. and had a much better result with a cooking time closer to 14 hours).

Harriet, her husband Bob, Jimmy Carl, Pat, and Frances came to the BBQ which was really nice. Peggy came up from Houston as well, making it something of a Gotcha Day re-union (albeit a few days late). Everyone had a good time, although Judy and Lanita had somewhat exhausted themselves getting the house clean [note to prospective house guests: if you want to clean our house, you are welcome any time and may stay as long as you like].

Catherine, Jenn, and Sophia left for Dallas on that Thursday to spend another night with cousin Dianna before returning home.

Judy stayed on for a few more days so she could spend a bit more time with Frances and Harriet. This turned out to be fortuitous because Julie and Eliot got pretty sick over the weekend and it was good for Judy to be able to look after Dada a bit.

All-in-all a fun visit. It was just this sort of visit from family that we wanted to have more guest room. The only real problem was for guests staying in the music room--Stanley's crowing is a bit loud, but it's not too bad (or at least you can get used to it). We're told that roosters crow less as they mature. Let's hope that's the case.