Oakes Family Gathering is over......

Just a quick update on what has been happening around here. We had the Oakes Family Gathering this last weekend and it was a great time. Lots of work from my family who were quite generous with their help (I don't know many hubbys that would allow their wives to do this and work that hard to help her put it on).
We had about 30 people here on Saturday for a cookout and 49 people on Sunday for the potluck. I was able to cook lots of food and that made me very happy.
The only bad thing happened on Saturday night and that was that our "inside cat" Gabby was scared by the kids here in the house (they had decided that a pillow fight in the family room was a good thing). Gabby ran when a pillow hit her and through some type of series of events got outside and then continued to run from all of the strangers around. She was missing until yesterday. We had been searching everywhere up and down the road. I happened to walk down the road and then up the neighbor's driveway. I called her name and got this wail from a scared kitty. She came slinking out of the shed at the back of his yard yelling at the top of her lungs. She jumped at every little shadow and noise until she made it to me yelling all the way. It was like watching "Homeward Bound" the movie. She is quite happy to be home and tries not to let me out of her sight. We are all quite happy to have her home. The "not knowing" what has happened to your pet will kill you. Who would have known that this little 5 lb. fur faced critter could mean so much to our whole family?
Well, I need to go and fill the hummingbird feeder and head out for work. Jacob is helping Grandpa build a garage and right now they are working on the foundation. Jacob gets to work with a pick ax and boy is he proud. Jessalyn is learning to make homemade bread from my Mom and homemade jams etc. They are both having a great time doing it. Will and I could be showing them some of this stuff I know, but we are "just" their parents. We are not the same as the grandparents. They're fun.......we're just Mom and Dad.
I have a meeting tonight for Cranfest to discuss an emergency evacuation plan. We have to find a way to evacuate Cranfest in case of some type of disaster. That means many different plans depending on what area has the problem. The problem really is getting the people all back to their cars, not the getting them out of town. People get lost and cannot find their cars on a normal day. Add panic to the situation and they will just be running with no clear idea of where they are going. The county has a paid position for an evacuation plan, but she has never even been to Cranfest, so it has been dropped in our lap. Just what we need another thing for our "to do" list with a little over 90 days left before the festival. Oh well, we'll just have to get busy.
Have a wonderful and blessed day. I'm sure that Will is planning on posting more pictures tomorrow.