A Friendly Visit

A Time to Talk

by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don’t stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven’t hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

For a friendly visit.

This visit reminded me of this poem.  The plan for our friends to come stay with us was somewhat of a last minute thing.  While we were visiting them in Arizona, this trip was born out of a conversation following a chain of events that cancelled their other summer travel plans.  This poem says it perfectly.  There's always lots of work to do, but when a friend visits you pause the work because the work is all just a means to an end anyway.  Relationships and friendships are what is truly important at the end of the day.

While they were here we went hiking at Enchanted Rock, to Fredericksburg for German feast, a museum, and shopping.  We went swimming both at our pool and my sister's, to Mexican food one night, tubing on the Comal, and we even went bowling.  They left for a few days in the middle to go to the Gulf Coast as a family.  

Contemplating these isolated ecosystems with little shrimp-like creatures that don't have any awareness of the many other similar creatures in other miniature ponds on Enchanted Rock.

It was very windy up here.  The little boys really liked playing in the water.

Most of our group went to the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg while Hannah, Quin, and I went shopping and wandering through the town.

Bobby made this sometime during their visit after a friendly poker game.

 

Our nights were filled with family trivia games and card tricks!  It was so very loud, but so, so much fun!  Almost every body had a card trick to perform and Quin and Isaac practiced new ones during the day and taught Bob a couple so we had new tricks all the time.  There was also some dancing to Rah Rah Rasputin, but I won't put those videos on here.  ;)