pork butt pork butt pork butt pork butt. pork butt.
Katie is baking pumpkin cookies and roasting pumpkin seeds, and Trey has spent this entire day slow-smoking a couple huge pork butts. See?
this is the just-dawn light. katie and trey got up MUCH earlier than they'd have liked, but it's worth it (easy for me to say!)
two pork butts so big it takes the both of them to turn them.
that's just shy of 20 pounds of pork butt. How many more times can I say pork butt? PORK BUTT. I am so mature.
How did I get so lucky!! My husband cooks fantastic meals for me every night, we eat fantastic meals on fantastic vacations, and now my daughter and her husband make fantastic meals for me. Granted, I put in my time on their end of the spatula — many, many long hard years of getting dinner on the table every night after a long day of classes and work — but this feels like a big bonus.
Katie’s frying some okra to accompany the pulled pork sandwiches we’ll have, and there’ll certainly be leftover Halloween candy — if not, we’ll have her pumpkin cookies for dessert. And I think there’s a gallon of Blue Bell chocolate mint chip ice cream in the freezer. Have I said it’s kind of about the food already?
Katie and Trey, Marnie and Tom, just a few of my beloved kids.
Even though I didn’t get to be with them this year, my daughters and their husbands spent the holiday together in Austin, at Katie’s beautiful home. They got to see their dad and step-mom, and their stepgrandparents who just moved here from Russia. Ah, the complex family. 
I won’t go into the details of their Christmas, though I do want to share a couple of pictures with you. Looking at them made me feel like they’re going to be ok. Even when I’m not around, some day in the far far distant future, they’re going to be ok, they’ll be each other’s family, and the beat goes on. (yeah the beat goes on. that’s playing on my ipod. i love cher.)
They carried on our family’s traditions for each other. I can’t tell you how that makes me feel. So here are my daughters and their husbands, wonderful people one and all. I have more pictures of Marnie than Katie — I wish I had more (hint hint Katie).
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- Katie and Trey, cooking a gorgeous-sounding Christmas Eve dinner
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- Marnie and Tom in their waiting for Santa nighties, courtesy of Katie. I have a similar photo of Katie and Trey, but their eyes are red and I couldn’t fix it.
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- This is how you spin around under the Zilker tree. Katie and Trey are holding hands, leaning back and looking up, and spinning around as fast as they can.
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- Marnie and Tom, extremely dizzy after twirling and looking up under the Zilker Tree.
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- They took a quick trip to San Antonio to see family, and did not forget the Alamo. Which does not have a basement (get the reference?).
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- Tom spontaneously broke into a samba when “Girl From Ipanema” came on. I can’t tell you how dear this is. Good son.
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- Trey built (and wrapped!) this structure to disguise Katie’s new KitchenAid stand mixer. Good son!
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- Oscar and Penny dressed for the holidays – Katie’s and Trey’s doggies
dancing in the dark.
My sweet older daughter Katie got married in June 2008 (easiest anniversary ever to remember: 06/07/08). Hers was a much more traditional wedding than Marnie’s, complete with puffy white dress, groomsmen in tuxedos, rosebud corsages, and all that happy jazz. She hired a professional photographer, who caught this very enigmatic shot that I rediscovered yesterday while wandering through her online photo album:
me dancing with my son
Several things to note, before turning attention to the odd glance:
1- That’s my daughter Katie, dancing with her husband Trey, in the right side of the photo
2 – That’s Marnie visible in the back, in the green maid-of-honor dress
3 – Yes, that’s right, I’m wearing the same dress at Katie’s wedding as I wore at Marnie’s. First, both girls crazily decided to have OUTDOOR weddings in the HOT SUMMER, so something extremely cool was called for. And second, I bought it specifically to wear to Katie’s wedding, and when Marnie’s came up I decided to call it my “dress I wear to my daughters’ weddings.” I’ll have to keep it safely aside to wear in the future when my youngest girl gets married, which will probably be several years, since she’s a sophomore in college.
It’s a very long story with my beloved son – lots of very long stories with him, to be more accurate – so I know everything that lives behind that glance, behind my close hold on him. I store the photo here so I don’t forget about it again.
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