Yesterday afternoon, we came down to visit my family. The "we" includes my husband and our daughter. I was going to take Maddie on my own since the hubby has been very busy with work but he hasn't been to see my family in a while so happily he came, too. The drive wasn't too bad. Only an hour and fifteen minutes. Madeleine seemed to enjoy the ride and finally fell asleep halfway through the trip. I was so anxious to come down and felt we had already left later than I usually do so it was quite a surprise to arrive at my parents and no one was here. My dad had to work out of town and arrived a little later than usual. And my mom went to the mall to look for a jacket to wear at my dad's uncle's funeral. He had been ill for some time and was in a coma for a couple of weeks. And then I found out that my uncle, who had surgery to remove a tumor from his colon, has another much larger tumor that they were unable to remove because it is attached to his liver. Yikes.

On a bit of a lighter note, my hubby and I went to the mall here in Hamilton to look for a gift for the christening we'll be attending on Sunday and I bumped into an old friend I haven't seen in a decade. She was the librarian at my high school and I volunteered my lunches to help her out. I enjoyed working with her so much that I even reorganized her filing system! (Yep, you guessed it. I didn't have much of a life back then.) Anyway, it was so nice to see her.

It's always so nice to come back to Hamilton to see my family and even moreso to see Madeleine interact with them. But sometimes, it's seeing an old friend with whom I've lost touch that makes the one-hour-long trip even more worth the while.