Grandparents, Great Grandparents and Uncles

As many of you guessed from my last post, we went to Tennessee last weekend. We drove down to Sevierville on Friday night, after Bill got off work, and spent some time with some friends of ours there and then headed off to Goodlettsville on Saturday mid-morning.

Sam and Gong-Gong

My father was asked to speak at Vanderbilt for some function this coming Thursday evening, so he bought tickets back to America from Thailand. My mother called me a couple days later and told me she was coming too. We had already made plans to see Daddy, so it was just a bonus to see Mom.

I think we had a fantastic visit. Everyone was very happy and despite jet lag, awake. This picture is in Hermitage, TN, where my grandparents live (Sam and Angie). It was a beautiful day for a picture - and some blackberry cobbler! My Aunt Carlene brought some over for us. Yummy!

Four generations!

We also went over to visit my uncles. They always have these fabulous dinner parties where there is some theme. Lucky for Sam, they still had their cafeteria tray from when they served cafeteria food one night. Sam was thrilled to have such a special plate to eat off.

Can you tell that they're brothers? I only wish I had gotten a photo of Sam making the same face - which he does all the time!

We found beef ribs on sale, so I marinated them in Kraft Hickory-flavored BBQ sauce and wrapped them up by twos in aluminum foil. The day of our dinner, we threw them in a 300 degree oven for two and a half hours, then took them to my uncle's house for grilling. We basted them a bit more as we grilled them to a perfect taste. It's a very easy way to make perfect ribs. You can also see from this picture that we had grilled crab-stuffed jalepenos - which were awesome.

Here we all are: Brian, Patrick, me, Sam, my father and my mother. It was almost impossible to get Sam to look up. He had missed his nap that day (again) and wasn't cooperating for our pictures.

Next post: My English muffin recipe.