7 Days: Day 2 - Hollandaise Makes Everything Brighter

Hi. How are you? I'm tired and happy and kind of stuffed. We went to Omaha this weekend. We had a relaxing, lively few days with lots of friends and family and since we won't be in Omaha for the holidays it was great to be here for a long weekend. The picture above is my 7 Days portrait for today. The theme was "Bright" and as we all sat down at Joe's grandparents' house for the traditional Christmas morning Eggs Benedict and monkey bread (moved forward a week,) you can see the crazy bright sun blazing through their sliding glass doors.

Omaha has a few inches of snow on the ground and the huge panes of glass reflect in all the light from the white expanse of golf course right beyond their backyard. Joe's family were a bunch of troopers. A few questions of, why are you taking a picture of us eating? And this has to be the most photographed brunch in history and are we eating or documenting? They were great. Aunt Lori hates having her picture taken so I liked this one the best. Plus my mouth is open. Which it usually is. The photo above was my alternate. Bit too serious and simple compared to the beauty of a table full of hungry laughing family. Plus hollandaise sauce is bright yellow, so that fits the theme too, sure it does.

I got to drink coffee with a little egg nog. I got to play catch with Jacob right up there. That kid has a serious arm. Might have a future in the NFL. There were several times I had to actually jump up quite high to catch that red plastic football. We got to conversate with Ethan, home from college for winter break, grilling him about school, his lack of shoes, and his strange name change to Arielle on Facebook last week.

We noshed on Eggs Benedict and monkey bread with extra frosting, because why not? Sherry believes strongly in frosting, I concur.  I admit I might have had three Eggs Benedict. It was breakfast and lunch and a delight I only eat once a year. I didn't even feel guilty about indulging a bit.

I got to watch Joe chase Kaleb, into the guest room, scare him so that he burst into tears and then Joe swept him up over his shoulder when he tried to run away. It was funny, once Kaleb could breathe again. They became friends shortly afterward. See above.

We looked through and tried to help Kelsey narrow down the top 51 Senior picture photos that Joe had taken of her over the summer. I think we narrowed it down to 49. She looks so lovely in all of them. Though Janice was happy to cut out any photos deemed too smiley. Grandmother's are helpful like that.

I'm telling this weekend backward though. Since the 7 Days photo was the main reason for blogging, I opened with the bright Sunday. Friday night got it's own blog post. But Saturday was one of those easy mellow days that you just shouldn't take for granted. We slept in. We tried out a new Mexican restaurant with Joe's parents, including some yummy table side guacamole.  And then we wandered around in the Old Market. Visited my second favorite place in Omaha.

And then met Katrina and Matt and the boys for dinner.

Triplet six year old boys are loud. They like to scream and climb on you and steal your iPhone to play Angry Birds and eat piles of plain mashed potatoes, smiley face french fries, pepperoni pizza and when they find a Storm Trooper ring on the ground it's like Christmas has come early.

Katrina and I are both doing 7 Days this round. So Matt is helping line up the shot above, which ended up as Katrina's alternate shot for the day. I was feeling uninspired and didn't end up taking any, but here's Katrina's, I love it.

We sat around and talked and looked at pictures of their new house. It's perfect and worth the wait and each of the boys gets their own room. Next time we visit them they'll be all ensconced in the new pad. Can't wait to sit around their kitchen table there and talk for two hours while the boys climb around and take pictures of a thousand random things.

I put a lot of photos in this post because I just had to. They were too good not to include and they just capture the weekend for me.

Smiles, laughing, and people that I love. I'm tired now. It's almost 11pm and I still have to go share the comment love on Flickr. But here's my abbreviated Reverb prompt. 

The prompt was: What healed you this year?  And I feel pretty whole and healed and satisfied after a weekend like this. I think just driving for three hours in the car with my husband listening to an audio book about the origins of sex and monogamy, (Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan- it's fascinating,) pausing it to laugh and comment and make a list of stuff we need to finish before Christmas, and then spending the rest of the weekend with loved ones is enough. That's enough for me. So that's my post. All healed up, at least for now. So how was your weekend?

Some photos by me, but most by Joe, of course.