More outside time

PY was up cleaning and prepping all morning. At some point, I joined in with the effort, although everything looked OK to me. There were two trips to the shops: for flowers and ice and for napkins. We removed as many of the fallen leaves from the back as we could and removed the covers from the garden furniture. When the back doors were open and the sun was out, it all looked very inviting.

By 2:15pm, we had a lovely family gathering around the outside table. Although it was not blazing sunshine, it felt like the perfect temperature to sit outside.

We had a lovely afternoon with delicious barbecue food and plenty of drinks. P managed to let PY do the barbecue: it must have been challenging as he's usually in charge. Nothing burnt. The barbecue chicken kebabs turned out to need an oven and not a grill, which was surprising given the name.

It's lovely to get everyone together and one of the advantages of some family having moved closer. I keep telling PY we should do it more often. We're looking for dates for a Sunday lunch.

After they left and we'd stacked the crockery, pans, and even barbecue grill plates in the dishwasher, we packed up some of the garden furniture and sat outside until 10pm. By then, it was getting chilly, and we decided to close up rather than add extra layers.