Dinner Time!

The 1st day of HCR was hectic to say the least.  I spent the morning shooting with my best GunDiva buddy, Tara, ran home threw some clothes in a suitcase for RockCrawlinChef and myself, changed clothes and headed out to my former boss' memorial service.  In the midst of all of the excitement of getting to spend time with Tara and getting to meet Killashandra and Rachel for realsies, reality intruded and RCC and I spent an hour or so at a memorial service.

She was an amazing person and one of the most genuinely nice people I've ever met.  She died far too young and without warning, leaving an adult daughter.  The fact that her daughter is an adult doesn't make it any easier - her whole life, it was her and her mom against the world.  Luckily, she got married a couple of years ago, so she's not completely family-less.  Nevertheless, I was too chicken to stay for the reception and face her daughter in the midst of her grief, so RCC and I headed up to the lodge.

Check-in at the lodge is at 3:00 pm every day, but I knew that Killashandra and Rachel weren't going to be getting there until 5-ish, so I wasn't too stressed out about getting up there before them - I figured we'd make it.  And we did, but not by much.  The minute I walked in the door, Bill asks me, "Have you heard from Rachel?"

Um, no.  Was I supposed to?  Seems Mr. Daddy had called the lodge looking for her.  And when he called the lodge looking for her he identified himself to Bill by his alias, Mr. Daddy.  Which cracked me up.  Only when bloggy land meets real life do we have to refer to ourselves as our aliases (or alii?).

Mom was a bit stressed out because there was still so much to do before everyone arrived, so we headed out to clean the horse pen and then it dawned on me...most people clean their houses for company, we were cleaning our horse pen.  Only for equi-bloggers, I tell you.

About halfway through the cleaning process, Killashandra et al. arrived and Bill brought them over.  I was thrilled to meet them face-to-face, despite the fact that I was slinging manure.  I have to tell you, I fell absolutely in love with Killashandra's boots.  They were amazing!  Red with just the right amount of bling.  I was so dazzled by her boots that I couldn't even gather my thoughts enough to get a picture of them. In fact, I'm pretty sure I gushed over her boots before I even managed to tell her hello properly. 

Mom headed back over to the lodge with them while RCC and I finished up the pen.  Tell the truth, we kind of didn't do the best job in the world finishing up, I was too excited to go spend some time with our guests.

We stalled for a bit, waiting on Rachel and her mom, but we were getting hungry, so I set the table while Mom put the finishing touches on dinner.  Bill rang the brass bell to announce dinner and we sat down.  Before all of our butts were in our chairs, up pulls Rachel and her mom.  By God, not only can the woman read lips, she can read minds!

We didn't even give them time to unload, just met them on the porch with hugs and ushered them to the dinner table.  Click here for the dinner photo and Mom and Bill's take on dinner.