For this Fourth of July weekend, Amy & Rachel decided to come visit us from Minnesota. Their plane was scheduled to arrive around 11pm tonight and we’d then spend quality family time until they left Tuesday. Earlier this week, however, Amy received word that all of the Nature Conservancy employees (of which she is one) would get Friday off. So the girls left early for the airport today and applied for standby tickets on an earlier flight to Ohio. And got it! I received a phone call around quarter to 11 saying they’d gotten their boarding tickets and would be arriving around 1pm. Woohoo!

I was, at the time, working on a computer in the business lab. My goal for the work day was to get half of the business lab computers cloned to their new specifications (they’ll be going into other classrooms this summer). However, with 2 bad CD-ROM drives and the three 3-com switches hooked together (a quicky replacement for a 16-port hub that died at the end of the school year) not playing nicely with Norton Ghost, cloning wasn’t working. When Amy called, I was fighting with a piece of elementary software that will be going on every elementary machine this summer. And then realized I hadn’t installed the updated version yet. Whoops! 🙂

So, I basically worked 2 fruitless hours today and then went home to pick up dad. Mom was working, and dad was only allowed to accompany me to pick up the girls as long as he had a miserable time (so sayeth mom). We didn’t have to wait long at the airport before they arrived, and then we headed off to Stop 8 to the Panera Bread there and had lunch. Dad made sure to have a miserable time. 🙂 Then we stopped at Krogers on the way home to pick up the groceries needed for snacks and supper. And we got home about half an hour before mom came.

I had this inspired idea last weekend that perhaps Amy and I could work together on making an Indian meal for everyone. I have this nice kitchen and all, and it’s good to have folks around who like to cook so that it gets used. (It’s one of the reasons why I love it when elsaf visits!) I worked on the tandoori chicken and Amy made the vegetable curry. Basmati rice, steamed pita bread (instead of nan), and fresh peaches rounded off the meal. For dessert, we’ll have strawberry ice cream which I made earlier this week. (Everyone was too full after supper for ice cream. So we’ll have it after the girls get done visiting one of our cousins.)

This has been a wonderful day for sisters. 🙂 (Crappy day for computers. I was having troubles with computers. The dentist’s office where dad & Granny were today was having computer troubles. AAA was having troubles when I was off getting my euros for my Italy trip. Just a bad day for computers.) Tomorrow, we’re off to Yellow Springs to shop and so Amy can show off her old stomping ground to Rachel. Yay! Cool toy store! Great shoe store! And probably some Ha Ha Pizza! Oh yeah, and that store that sells bongs. 🙂 (Yellow Springs is still stuck in the Hippie Years.)