THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

Only three days left until my "Cousin's Confab" guests begin arriving, and so far, the only thing I've done to prepare for it is shop for the non-perishables. Well, my sister did plan all the food, assign everyone their duties, and shop for all the paper goods. And John did clean out the garage. And I guess I did refurbish the porch and get the Cantina Garden spruced up, cleared out and spread with compost, ready for fall planting. Oh, and I did finally nail down a restaurant for Saturday, get a room reserved, and finalize the menu. OK, maybe my "DONE" list isn't so empty after all.

As it turns out, it's going to be more of a sibling's reunion than a cousin's confab, as we ended up with only two out of ten cousins able to attend, plus a spouse, a son and his girlfriend, and possibly an aunt. However, if you add in my three siblings, our spouses and our kids, we'll still have close to 20 in attendance. And, when you consider that the last time my family was all together in one place was for Mom's funeral, I guess that's a worthy accomplishment in and of itself.

My siblings have rented the old country church B&B that you can see from my porch, and my sisters are super excited about finally getting a peek inside! Hopefully I can get some pictures for you. And that antique store that was being turned into a Mexican restaurant? The one that's directly across the road from us, and would have been sooooo convenient for our main dinner on Saturday night? Well, it's still not open, even though they've been working on it for about a year now! With all the time and money that's been sunk into that place, I sure hope it manages to stay afloat longer than the average new business around here. Though it will be mighty handy for us, the tourists don't tend to stray much from the center of town - which is probably why the antique business failed in the first place.

So, here's the plan as it stands now:

Friday evening everyone shows up here for happy hour and dinner, once they've checked into their accommodations. We were planning to then head over to the Corral Theatre for a showing of the brand new Sorcerer's Apprentice (the one with Nicholas Cage, not Mickey Mouse), but at the last minute they switched to showing Twilight: Eclipse for the second weekend in a row. Boooo! Half of us have already seen it, and the other half don't want to!

Saturday will be the Design Your Day in Wimberley scenario described here, followed by an afternoon rest, then dinner, not right across the street, but 15 minutes away at Milagros.

Sunday we wind things up with a brunch here at the house, then everyone heads back home.

It may not be the well-orchestrated, well-attended, event-of-the-decade that big sis had hoped for, but I think everyone involved will have a good time. My one and only goal is to stay calm, go with the flow, and not spoil my hubby's brief respite here in Wimberley by getting my knickers in a twist over anything. Wish me luck!