Thursday Evening Scrabble at Evergreen

We were finally able to sit in briefly while Mother and Mabel were well into their second game of the evening.  By the way, this is not just Scrabble, it is Competitive Scrabble.

We had told Mother that we likely could not get to Goshen before her bedtime, but traffic moved well, Delilah (our GPS) worked well, we skipped supper (well, some apples and nuts), and we arrived in time to see some of the second game.


We looked through the blinds, to see if Mother might still be playing.  This is a study in concentration.

I managed a photo at the doorway.

Though we could never offer Mabelesque levels of competition to Mother, she did not hesitate to accept our offer of a game of Scrabble Sunday evening, Valentine's Day.  We were of course reminded of the special day by a dinner in Evergreen which offered an excellent menu.  And each time we knocked on Mother's door, we were greeted with Charlotte's special Valentine's Day card.

We played in the very peaceful card room.  Almost nobody was around, so it was like being in our own private home. 

My tiles were always easy to play:  "That's 'Dinvr', as in Dinvr, Colorado."

Guess who's winning.

The Olympia Candy Kitchen

The Olympia Candy Kitchen has played a role in each of the brothers lives at one point or another and those times are fondly remembered as they normally centered around the girls we were dating that eventually allowed us to marry them. This morning Evan, Paul and I looked back to those days over eggs done easy, bacon, buttered toast and the sweetest fresh squeezed orange juice imaginable, a very nice beginning to a day in Goshen. Paul and Evan will be taking Mother out shopping, I'll be setting up Dad's new birthday TV from the brothers (just in time for the Notre Dame game) and Janice and Kay will spend some time with Dad. We're all looking forward to Frank's arrival later this afternoon and Bruce is here in spirit.

Frank is visible through the windshield

Amish in Shipshewana and Goshen

I went a little out of the way to pass through Shipshewana on the final leg of my trip to Goshen. Seeing Amish folk and their buggies evoked the familiar feeling of being back home. A few of these shots were taken through my windshield while driving ("car hunting" don't tell). Several others were made possible by brother Bruce maneuvering the car to an inconspicuous spot in the Walmart parking lot allowing me to use the zoom feature and a half rolled down window as a tripod.

Sunglasses on a lady buggy driver made that shot interesting for me. The loading of perishables into Igloos was the perfect answer to a question I'd never asked and the Huggies for a babies bottom brought a chuckle. Although it was nearly noon I went into the Auction Restaurant for a country breakfast and enjoyed the local folks around me being themselves, living lives so very different from mine and doing it happily. There was an atmosphere of fun in the air. I do wish I could have taken a picture of a table of four Amishmen on their cell phones but propriety held me back.

I did jazz up the color a lot on the Menno-Hof shot as the original was gloomy. Now it looks like a tricked out postcard!