Sweet Sue

Just returned from Estes Park, Colorado, where we stayed with our dear friend, Sue Anderson. She owns a cabin there and a home in Holdenville, where we live. Usually Sue goes to Estes Park in the summer and returns home at the end of September (when it gets tough to even wiggle under all the quilts required to keep her warm).

I taught first grade with Sue for a few years. When she retired, we began getting together for shopping and eating and talking. We both love red and school and cherries and Fiesta and about a million other things the same.

She likes telling stories and I love to hear 'em. Especially stories about her growing up, courting and being a young mom.

A few years ago she shared her cherry pie recipe with me. I tease her that she's the queen of cherry pies and I'm sort of like a princess. I have to admit mine is tasting pretty good these days, although hers and mine should never really be compared. She makes it look easy.

Last week she not only fixed two cherry pies, she baked her special less-cinnamon-than-usual apple pie (yummy and tart) and a delicious strawberry rhubarb pie. So I am soon going to be the princess of those pies too. I'm determined to get better every time. And I plan to practice A LOT. Pie makes everything right with the world.

Sue owns a lot of things from her past and I enjoy finding out the scoop on every single one of them. When we were there we were sorting through some odds and ends in the storage room. I've heard it before, but it was fun to be reminded that the plastic, yellow tub we were digging in was once a bath tub for her son Brad. I love that story. She cleaned it up this week and plans to take a photo of Ellie, Brad's newest daughter, taking a bath in it when they're in Estes Park over Labor Day weekend.

While Vaughn was busy remodeling one of Sue's bathrooms, she and I ran around shopping, eating and then shopping and eating some more. We took a trip to Loveland to the mall and I got some new school clothes. We were invited to a road party (people on Sue's road all had a party...why doesn't that happen in Holdenville, anyway?), went to the Rocky Mountain National Park a couple of times, watched a few movies (I referred to this activity as LOLLYGAGGING around), redecorated and rearranged and cleaned. We talked a lot. (We bring out the best in each other.) A couple of days we got sucked in by back-to-back episodes of Hoarders.

Loved every minute being with Sweet Sue.