Post-Visit Blues

Well, Happy Saturday to you! Friday was a busy day for the Pretties, as the kids left to travel back to their home, several states away. The end of a visit, whether here or there, is always a little bittersweet. First, there is the good-bye to the sweetest little girls I know...

Then the tears, and the re-adjust...for the last 16 days, my house has looked like this:

Which is great (even when wrangling cats and dogs together)! Every time I look at the floor, or step around a toy, my heart leaps for joy that we can be their home for a short time. Even though it interrupts my routine, and I often stress at that, I am glad to make that sacrifice. There is no better feeling than coming home to open arms, smiling tots and a happy family that is well-loved!

While they were here, we celebrated a first birthday, complete with cuppy-cakes and cookies,

went with them to visit grandparents (Sweetie's parents' house),

and generally had a pretty good time watching them size up each family member and figure out each one's place in her life! Here's Peanut, sizing up the relatives who ate vegetables with her at her sister's party...

Yesterday was the re-set of the house, which makes it feel even more empty...kindof like the after-Christmas letdown I feel when I put the tree and all the trappings away. Sweetie and I busied ourselves with the vacuuming, putting away of toys, rearranging of furniture and mounds of laundry...which are mostly finished. And this morning, there was the normal stillness, full of cats and yarn and lovely memories of the visit.

As we head into the weekend, I am sure we will find evidence of their visit in unexpected places...a bottle cap under the sofa, the last of the stacking cups under the TV stand, some fingerprints on the door frames, banana body wash in the shower... Oh, the memories! This is the very spot we sat in while I read Little House on the Prairie to Peanut...minus the cats...lol! (That's cwazy, Gwamma," she said to me as we read the last few chapters. "That's cwazy that the person who wrote the book is IN the book! That's cwazy!," she said, shaking her blonde curls.) The cats spent a LOT of the visit hiding under the sofa! Now it's just me and the meow-ers...still and content. 

What's in store for your weekend? Will there be knitting? If not yarn and crafts, I hope that you will have time to do whatever it is that you love to do. As for me and my house, we will be missing the kids and celebrating the love!

Thanks for stopping by today, and Knit in Good Health!

PS - If you are looking for the knitting in this post, it's there...in a birthday shrug for Sweet Pea, with a matching shrug for Peanut, and of course the experimental sweater across my lap and the cat.