Surprise Delivery

This is looking down the hill towards my parents' neighborhood from a little ways up the road.

This afternoon, after a morning spent adventuring with my stepsister-in-law Linda, we arrived at my folks' house with the cake Linda had made (she does beautiful work, and bakes and decorates them professionally as a sideline), presents, and a bouquet of balloons. Kris and Linda went on in, and I hung back in the car for a couple of minutes before bringing the balloons to the doorstep and ringing the doorbell.

My dad was surprised.

So here I am, and it's just as beautiful as I remember from last time, even if the local major grocery chain is called Wegman's, which is a pretty silly name for a grocery store, if you ask me. Also, the highway reference markers make no sense at all. I'll be sure to get a picture of one of those too. The weather is cool, it's breezy and bright, and the cake was delicious, or at least as much of it as we were able to consume; Linda appears to have been expecting 30 or 40 more people than actually exist in my parents' immediate family. But leftovers never hurt anybody.

My parents are very bad influences. My seventeen-year-old step-niece, Taylor, brought a Jehovah's Witness friend. He might not have been supposed to be at a birthday party. He kept insisting he wasn't going to get into any trouble, but when his mom called to check up on him we all tried to be very quiet, just in case. Grandparents these days!

I plan to take a lot more pictures once we get out and about; but for now I'm just very relieved the sneaking-around-and-surprising part is over. I was terribly nervous. I had to apologize to my dad for the shock. But he seems so pleased that he hasn't even hinted at wanting to send me back home, so I think this is going to be a good visit.

He did inform me, though, having a little better memory of the events of 1969 than I do, that my porn name is actually Sambo Sandstone.

Surprise!