We had another weekend hosting house guests and it went very well.

Louie had gotten his PhD back in August and then participated in a recognition ceremony in December, but he hadn’t gotten to do the “hooding”, where his adviser puts his hood on. He had some family that wanted to attend the May ceremony as well, so it was on.

People arrived on Friday, and came over to the house. Saturday was spent hanging out and prepping things for Sunday, when we were hosting everybody for a dinner. Saturday night we headed over to Louie’s mom’s house for a party.

That’s where I ran into trouble. There had been a big storm, and unbeknownst to me the sidewalks were very muddy. I ended up slipping in the mud…slowly…one leg went straight forward and the other bent off to the side. At first I thought I was okay except super muddy, but by evening my knee was hurting quite a lot.

I ended up missing the actual graduation ceremony and watching it online instead.

I had trouble walking, but my knee never swelled up or anything, so I was hopeful it would be getting better on its own. Resting that day seemed to help a lot as it is definitely better but still with twinges here and there (not the knee, but the side of the knee). Hopefully it won’t negatively affect our trip too much as we plan to do a lot of walking and hiking…

When Louie’s name was called out the place erupted in cheers. Many of the graduating students have taken classes with him, so they cheered him and even stood up! It was very moving to hear. You might be able to see the videos on my Instagram. you

In any case, we managed to host a bunch of people for dinner. We had planned on using the grill but nature has its own plans and there was another huge storm and rain so we all sat around the table and cooked on the stovetop. It worked just fine.

We had Louie’s parents and stepparents, his brothers, his in-laws and me. It was a good time!

Monday morning I had my last class at my school job, and Louie took some people to the airport. I’ve been finishing up teaching, recuperating from my silly knee injury, doing grades (done!) and finishing up my summer teaching schedule. It’s been really nice sleeping in–I got up at 8 am this morning and it was so ridiculous and decadent.

We finished watching Jury Duty–I loved it, and highly recommend you watch it, so funny! We’ve been watching The Sinner lately, which is pretty good. We accidentally watched the last season first, which mostly worked but did spoil a few things, so don’t do that if you can avoid it. I have been reading some good books lately, and especially enjoyed “Cutting for Stone” by Araham Verghese and “Happy Place” by Emily Henry (though it was fairly predictable, still very fun to read). I’ve been reading a bunch of cozy mysteries by Lynn Cahoon as well.

I was happy when people seemed to think we had really done a lot with the house so far. It’s been really fun getting to show the place off (a feeling I am quite unfamiliar with!) and I am tickled and proud when people compliment my decorating choices. We still have things to do, the shelves, the walls, the kitchen, and the sunroom, but we’ve done a lot and are really happy with how the places looks and feels. We are excited to host more people this summer (both my sisters) and look forward to having this house for a long time.

Louie is glad to be done with graduation and the semester as well. I couldn’t’ be more proud of him!