Happy Labor Day!

This was deep clean the house week!  Prompted by an upcoming visit from my niece and her husband and hosting a barbecue for over 20 members of the extended family, some who hadn't been to my home in a decade or two lol. 

It's amazing how good we get at ignoring a little dirt on things like, baseboards, light switches, door handles lol.  Place looks much nicer!  Of course at the last minute we cleaned up the walker/saucer that i've used for the previous two grands for the sixth month old only it took not one, not two, but three family members to put the thing back together after I cleaned it LOL. 

We also had my hubby's birthday to celebrate - that was fun - including a movie night with the grands where everyone piles into Oma and Pawpaw's king size bed until they all fall asleep and then somewhere in the middle of the night Oma gets an elbow in the nose or kick in the stomach. (empty spot in the middle is where I would have been) I swear my grandson must dream of Cirque du Soleil!  But I wouldn't trade it for all the tea in China! 

The most interesting thing is that in the middle of all this chaos, I still managed to get some words in on Sweet Trust. 

here's a very short snippet as promised: 
The smoker had been going from the minute they’d returned from church. By four o'clock the whole yard smelled like brisket and mesquite. Gideon had learned in his short time here that Clint took the smoker about as seriously as some men took their trucks or their stock portfolio — checking the temperature every twenty minutes, adjusting the vents with the concentration of a man defusing something that could rearrange the world as they new it, waving off any offer of help like it might affect his manhood. All of which just made Gideon want to smile. Really smile.
Making himself useful, he hauled the long folding tables out from the equipment barn, two at a time, testing his lungs against the weight the way he'd been testing them against everything lately — carefully, without announcing it, stopping before anyone would notice he'd stopped. Too many months out and his body still reminded him at will that his world had permanently changed. Setting the tables in the shade of the old oak, he carefully wiped them down, and moved on to the folding chairs stacked in the barn's far corner.
"You don't have to do that." Kade came up beside him, already reaching for a stack of his own.
"I know."
"That's usually Benny's job."
"Benny's busy arguing with a cooler." Which was true. The head ranch hand had been locked in some kind of ongoing negotiation with a cooler latch for the better part of ten minutes, and it did not appear to be going his way.
Kade laughed, low and easy, and the two of them fell into a rhythm — chairs out, arranged in loose clusters instead of straight rows, all of which he’d been told would be cast aside when the dancing started. He’d known Kade a long time. Long enough to have seen him sleep sitting upright in a transport truck, eat food no human being should willingly consume and keep his head when everyone around him was losing theirs. This version was different. Not less Kade. Maybe more.
A radio someone had propped in an open truck bed crackled to life somewhere behind him, tuned to a station that leaned classic country with the occasional detour into something newer. George Strait singing about his ex’s in Texas gave way to somebody Gideon didn't recognize. By the time the tables were dressed in checkered cloths and mason jars of wildflowers Alice had cut that morning, the ranch had filled with the particular chaos of a party building itself from the ground up. Kids ran figure-eights around the legs of adults who'd stopped noticing them. Someone had hung string lights between two porch posts and a fence rail, looping low enough that Gideon had already clipped his shoulder on one and apologized to a string of bulbs with the same sincerity he’d offer a human who could hold a grudge. Bowls covered nearly every inch of the food tables. Somebody had added balloons to the fence posts, including one shaped like a birthday cake that kept twisting around in the breeze and showing everyone its backside. He liked this part. The building of it. It was different work than triage, but some of the same muscle, and it felt good to use it on something that didn't end in a medevac.
And that's the end of my little life update! See y'all next week!