Visitors to our Planet

This week we had some visitors, who opted to go off the beaten path and stop at our house for the night. Well the path originally went from Colorado to St.Louis. St Louis got dropped for little old Cow town, Oklahoma. And eventually ended for a bit in GA before going home to FL. Some path, huh?
But since we are so special and pitiful and no one ever visits us (big puppy dog eyes), and because they were convinced by Papaw that it would be the Christian thing to do to prove to my kids that I actually have friends, they came!
Of course I looked out the window all day, even though I was assured they wouldn't arrive until 5. And they gave me periodic updates at rest stops. But I couldn't help it. They stayed the night on Wednesday and left at 5:30am (on the dot, I tell you truly). Even so, it was so good to see dear friends that share such a long history with me.
Ian was thrilled to have a deviation in his schedule that allowed him to play and goof off with someone other than me and HC and still stay up past bedtime. Erin just enjoyed the general chaos (and she stayed up late too). My HC enjoyed the visit too, since he shares the same history. There's nothing so comfortable as old friends. They understand when things aren't quite as clean as they could be, fuss at your kids when they want to bungee jump from the fan (or other tempting feats), and stir the skillet of browning meat when you are untangling the cord from the fan to prevent future jumps. This is metaphorical of course.
It was just plain nice (the help, not the feats of derring-do).
That much being said, I can whine a bit. Because they could have stayed longer. But they wanted to keep jobs and previous commitments or something else equally ambiguous.