Invitation Etiquite

We finally had a weekend that was swim meet free so I arranged to go and visit with my two year old niece, Emily, for the afternoon yesterday. By arrange I mean I invited myself and Don and Billy of course. Kids are so cute at that age and I feel like I miss so much by not seeing her more often. Joe and Laurie (my brother and sister-in-law) are very good about calling and letting us chat with Emily but that is not the same as seeing her. I called Joe on Saturday and asked if we could come for the afternoon on Sunday if I brought dinner with me that we could share. He said we could come but bringing dinner wasn't necessary and he seemed excited that we were coming. Sometime between my call and us leaving he called back and left a message with Billy. What I heard Billy say was that Joe said we didn't have to wait until the afternoon to come and to not worry about eating lunch before we got there and also something about taking Emily for her first ice skating adventure. Now I probably should have called Joe back and gotten a better read on this message because I don't think I interpreted the message the way he meant it and I don't think I envisioned the visit the same way Joe did. I had wanted Don to have the opportunity to play basketball in the morning because he has missed so much of it lately because of the Cancer; now that I am "in remission" (I still put quotes around that because of the limited three month guarantee I have on it) I think he needs to get back to some fun. I pictured us leaving when he got done, between 9:30 and 10am, eating lunch on the way or maybe grabbing a hot dog at the ice skating rink, sharing dinner at Joe's house, and then starting on our three hour trip back home. What happened was; Don went to b'ball and then we started from home around 10. We stopped over at "Grocery Store Heaven" (if you are new to my blogs this is the Wegman's that opened near my house at the end of last year); I wanted to grab a cake to take for dessert and a little treat bag for Emily. I called Joe and asked if he wanted me to bring anything for lunch but he said no and that I should call him when we were about 1/2 hour from his house. Wegman's took longer than I imagined (it usually does) so we didn't leave the parking lot until 10:45. When we were about about to be run off the road by a young girl who clearly hadn't mastered merging yet we got a call from Katie, my daughter, who was already at Joe's house because of the snow boarding trip she had been on for the weekend. We told them we were about 45 minutes away and we arranged to meet them at Joe's rowing club for lunch. You can see this is already not going like I envisioned because I was picturing a quick lunch before skating and a sit down lunch wasn't leaving much time for ice skating. We got to the club around 1:30 after being slightly lost due to Ginger (the name we have given to the imaginary women in our GPS) not knowing where the club was. We had a lovely lunch (I had a lobster roll and I love anything that has lobster in it) and I was seated right next to Emily so I had quite a bit of face time while we dined. She was totally occupied with the valentine's I had brought to her in her treat bag: she is such a smart little girl. Anyway, we finished up lunch and then headed back to Joe's; apparently our not getting there earlier had nixed the ice skating plans. At this point I am already suspecting that Joe's and my visions for the day were not in sync. We played with Emily for a while and about 5o'clock Katie asked what the dinner plan was because she was tired from her weekend of snow boarding and thought she should be getting on the road soon. Not hearing any response from Joe to this query I said that if she wanted to get going that it was fine with us and that she should get packed up. Well..., Joe and Laurie flew out of their chairs to help her. When your hosts jump at the chance to help you leave, it is definitely time to leave. We all packed up while Joe ran out and got Katie's car started. When your host starts your car for you it is MOST definitely time to vamoose. I guess what I didn't catch when Billy was giving me the message on Saturday was that Joe was hoping we would get there earlier than lunch, we would have lunch, take Emily skating, and then we would head home and he, Laurie and Emily could spend their Sunday evening in peace. Oh well, we had a great time anyway and I think it all worked out fine. Next time I will make sure I call back and check the message out for myself. Maybe I can blame my faux pas on "chemo brain". Till tomorrow...