Full House

I love a full house! I just love when our home is full of laughter, noise and company!

D2 is here - she has an entire week off from work. Son and DIL will be returning from a soujourn at her parent's house. They'll leave sometime tomorrow for home. D2's friend Tim will be arriving at some point today. He just got back from deployment in Afghanistan and he's on his way "home" to a new apartment in southcentral Northeastern Really Big State. We're on the way.

I'm planning a big dinner for tonight. I grew up as the oldest in a family of nine. If you count my parents, grandparents, foster brothers and sisters and any neighborhood kids who happened to like what we were having for supper - our dining room table usually had -on average- 15 people around it. It had six table "leaves" and stretched out 12 feet. Our dinners were memorable and served buffet style.

Ten pounds of potatoes. Five pounds of spaghetti. Huge roasts. Ten pounds of hamburger. Lots and lots of home-canned vegetables from my grandparents HUGE garden and slabs of fresh homemade bread and slices of homemade pies, made every Friday. We never went hungry. God seemed to multiply the loaves and fishes.

There are times when I really miss the noise, the laughter, the chaos and the fun of being a member of a large family. And there are times like today when God brings it back to me in small doses as a gift of grace.

ps... Add four cats and a guinea pig to today's crowd!