We are heading off to Seattle this evening, since it’s my little sister’s turn to host the family gathering this year. I had a long list of stuff I hoped to accomplish before we left, and the only things left to cross off involve packing for the trip, so I am feeling pretty good about that.

Saturday was my brother-in-law’s 40th birthday, so my older sister threw him a surprise party. His mom came to take him out to lunch, so while he was out, friends and family gathered in the house, and all got to holler ‘Surprise’ as he walked back in the door. One of his birthday presents was Rock Band for the Wii, so throughout the party, people would gravitate toward the living room to try that out, or alternatively either trying not to snicker when little kids sang along with songs from our youth, likely having absolutely no idea what they were singing about, or feeling old because the songs of our youth are now incorporated into a video game.

I brought along a jar of the red pepper jelly I made a few weeks back, and we swung by a grocery store on the way in order to pick up a block of cream cheese and a box of crackers. It’s a really easy dip to make – just put the cream cheese on the plate, dump the jelly on top, and then scoop it all up with crackers – but it well worth the effort involved in making the jelly in the first place.

I finished shucking all the remaining pomegranates, which was a good thing because some of them were about a day away from going off, and stirred up two more perfect batches of jelly, including a little bit extra, which we slathered on top of the pumpkin scones I made yesterday morning, and which we have been nibbling on ever since. We did a bunch of much needed cleaning around the house, since with six cats, hairballs have a tendency to gather at an alarming rate, and I always prefer to clean the house before I go on a trip so that it won’t be a complete disaster by the time we return.  I managed to plow through a large pile of laundry, and got the last of the dishes into the dishwasher, and I have selected four knitting projects to bring along on the trip with a surprisingly minimal amount of my usual new-project-related dithering.  We’ve printed out boarding passes, and reservation info for the hotel and the car, and instructions for the pet sitter, and I ran an extra key over to the neighbors, just in case, and over the past week or so we’ve procurred and cut up enough PVC pipe that there are marshmallow shooter parts for everyone, so all that’s left now is to figure out a way to cram all our combined stuff (including all the pieces of PVC pipe) into one large suitcase. We are both usually very resistant to checking luggage, but in the case of the marshmallow shooter parts, we realized that it was probably best to not try to bring those onboard in carry-on, plus we are nerds who will be bringing laptops because Richard is stll doing Nanowrimo, and the hotel has free wireless, so our carry-on bag allotment is already set.