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Sunday, July 14

noon

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Retirement offers time for things we haven’t done in years – if ever. Like, sign up at church to be the host family after Sunday morning worship.

We tried something new – bought two 9 x 12 area rugs for the garage so it was easier for us to put carpet on the garage floor. The old carpet covered the entire floor and was getting too heavy and cumbersome for us to handle. These don’t cover the entire floor – but that is okay. We do this because the dining area in our kitchen is too tight for twelve people.

To class it up a bit, I got our old white tablecloths out of the antique chest that Cerwin’s great grandpa built many years ago. It keeps being passed on to the oldest son in the High family. I used the cloth tablecloths instead of plastic. It looked as nice as a meal set up can look in our garage.

Then to add to the atmosphere, we stopped to get flowers at our Amish neighbor’s (Lizzie) roadside stand. I was pleased with these Trumpet Lillies. She had four and we bought each one.

The flowers don’t show up on this photo. We had two narrow tables on either side where we put the food containers before or after being served it. The two flower vases of Trumpet Lilies were on those tables.

Sorry, I didn’t take a photo of our guests – not everyone likes to be on social media, so I try to be careful about that.

If you know the people from our church (White Oak), you can imagine Tom and Phyllis Althouse as the first two on the right, then Jim and Faye Myer and Glenn and Bernice Wagner. Cerwin and I were at the far end on left, then Jesse and Martha Copenhaver and Sam and Miriam Cassel.

We invited a few couples ahead of time, then waited to see if we had any visitors who needed a place for lunch. Everyone seemed to have a place, so we invited Tom and Phyllis who sat to our right in Sunday School and Jesse and Martha who were on our left. Both couples said they were glad they sat next to us.

We started the meal with an appetizer of Sparkling Grape Juice, bologna and cream cheese rollups, and crackers. When you aren’t serving a fancy meal, you make it look that way. 🙂

I do not enjoy gourmet cooking – or any kind of cooking that much – so I made one of our favorite soups. Creamy Chicken Corn Chowder. Along with that we served sandwiches (ham, and chunky chicken salad). Each person made their own sandwich on slider rolls with their choice of meat, tomato, lettuce, onion and cheese. There were also red beet eggs and a few other relishes.

Dessert was cupcakes from Cake and Cup and ice cream (vanilla and raspberry cream cheese) from Fox Meadows Creamery. To finish the meal, we served cashews and mints.

The fellowship – which is why I enjoy having company for a meal – was fabulous. We especially enjoyed talking about some interesting and funny things that happened in our families or at church when we were children or young people.

I sure do enjoy being retired with time to do things like this. We may do it again some time.