So I spent this last week getting the house ready for Chris' sister Laura and her family to come visit us. They were our first house guests. We had so much fun hanging out with them this weekend. They got here on Friday and then Saturday we went to Tombstone with them. They went to church with us on Sunday and then headed home. It was so nice to have the kids be able to play with their cousins. Even though Laura's kids are quite a bit older than my kids, they all played so well together. It's fun watching teenagers play with toddlers and actually enjoy it. I hope they had as much fun as we did. It's been a long time since we've stayed up late playing cards. That was fun!!

Actually I should say I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday getting ready for the house guests. Thursday I went to the annual birthday party for all my sisters and my mother. We get together once a year to celebrate them all at once. Mine is in December, four sisters in February, one sister and my mother in March. We usually get together sometime in February or March, eat food, exchange some gifts, and have a great time. We're all pretty good in the kitchen so the food is always worth cheating on the diet. This year my mother made this coconut cake. I need to explain something about my mother's cakes. She always made us birthday cakes. They always tasted good. When she layered them, they usually would slide off of each other. One year for my brother she made a particularly lopsided cake. His birthday is in October and it was chocolate with orange frosting. The cake not only slid around but it started to crack apart. It was a mess of brown crumbs in orange frosting. We called it the goblin cake. She also makes her cakes from scratch. Scratch cakes taste so sublime when made right. Mom may not be a cake architect, but she knows how to make it taste great. And that's what's really important when it comes to food. Anyways, this coconut cake also had homemade custard filling between the layers. It was like coconut cream pie with frosting. Yes it looked a little wobbly, but it tasted so magnificent. I really cheated and ate two slices, and every bite was worth the damage done on the scales the next day.