An unexpected perk of coming home

No, the mail was not the unexpected perk of coming home. But I had to post that shot to show just how big the piles were.

But as for the perk part. Well, I knew we'd have fun reconnecting with friends when we returned home, but I didn't realize just how fabulous it could be. You see, our friends keep inviting us over to eat at their homes! Between Sunday and Thursday this week, I only cooked one dinner at home...and the rest of the time, we feasted on the fine cooking of good friends and enjoyed getting caught up on the last six months. It's like we're packing all of the dinners out that we would have experienced from January to June into these first two weeks. Not a bad way to live, I tell you.

We have been bringing wine from our "cellar" to many of these dinners, which is good for a few reasons. First, there are fewer things more enjoyable than sharing a good bottle of wine with friends. But perhaps more importantly, we kind of forgot about our "cellar" and it's been fun to rediscover it (and actually start drinking from it). We started it the first year in Lethbridge, in 2003, when the owner of a local wine store gave me this good advice: whenever you need to buy wine, try to buy at least six and even better, 12 bottles at a time (you can get a bit of a break on the price if you buy larger quantities, he explained). And when you do, you should buy five (or 11) "regular" bottles to drink and one special bottle to cellar. That is, make most of your purchases on the more affordable end, but indulge in one bottle that you set aside.

So we started doing that seven years ago. I even taped notes to some of the bottles purchased that first year ("best to drink in 5-7 years", etc.). We got in the habit of buying one good bottle and putting it away... and then we kind of forgot about it. When we came across a good deal on some 2004 Australian reds a few years back, we added six or eight to the cellar... and forgot about those, too.

Then John went to put our few bottles of French wine in the small "cellar" (really just a wine rack we keep in the cool storage in our basement) and we realized that we better drink some of those good wines before they turned! Who knew five or seven years could pass so quickly? And what a fun responsibility to have... to share good wine with good friends.

Here are some of those good friends on our first night back in town (and photos of us leaving Helena and heading home as well as one of the mail pile that awaited us that first week). Anne hadn't told her sons we would be coming (in case we were held up at the border, etc., she thought it would be better to let the boys be surprised). The look on their faces when they saw Jack, Kate and Liv (but mostly Jack) was absolutely wonderful.

But first... getting ready to leave Helena. The kids were kept entertained by a movie while we packed the van.

The minivan was crammed, but all of us, and the dog, made it. These are the familiar views that greeted us -- the university as seen for the south side of town, and the High Level Bridge.

Kaia recognized where we were as soon as we were on the bridge to the west side. Yes, she's smiling.

And here are the kids looking around the house, before we even walked in. You can see the lake (chock full of frogs and snails) out back. And speaking of snails, Kate and Liv have been keeping one they found in a container and feeding it grass and leaves. They are pointedly keeping it away from me -- because (as they said), I ate so many of them in France.

We dropped the bags, and immediately headed to Thomas and Daniel's (which is also home to their parents, Anne and Phil). They had gotten a trampoline during our time away, and the kids put it to good use.

We're off to dinner with friends (again) tonight, the home of the mighty Ailene (and her parents and fabulous sister, Claire). We'll bring a bottle of good Australian wine (we are holding on to our French wines for a few years, and hopefully won't forget about those, either). And we'll again be remembering that one of the best parts of traveling is coming home.