A Northern Visitor Comes to Town

What is better than getting together, eating exquisite food and wine, and sitting down to a good book? A visit from a certain Pennsylvanian GILL!!!!

On a cold Wednesday night at around 10:00pm we (as in me and Micah) hear a little tap on the apartment door. We look out the peep hole but to our dismay the hole has been covered! We slowly open up the door to find none other than REBEKAH!! We all squeal at the top of our lungs since we haven’t seen each other in about 7 months, but quickly quiet ourselves due to the fact that we’ve been tattled on once before to our landlord about being noisy tenants. Stinking neighbors! We just love to have people over and sometimes it gets a little loud. These people need to get out more. Anyway, tangent aside REBEKAH is here! We squeeze her till we can’t squeeze her no more! She’s only a little thing and we don’t want her to break because she just got here.
We stayed up talking till almost 2 in the morning even though we had to get up early for work the next day. Sleep can be sacrificed for Rebekah though, and it was. We had the whole weekend pretty much mapped out. Thursday we visited the Ploughcroft Tea Room. Rebekah had never been and it is simply finer so I skeedattled out of work a little early and headed over. We sat there for two hours and ate the most decadent pastries and finger sandwiches. It was simply exquisite! That evening we had all of our friends over to make sure they saw little Rebekah. Friday night we ended up just hanging out at the house for awhile, but then we took Rebekah to Bull Branch. It’s one of our favorite spots just to unwind and hang out. We ended up playing celebrity head just like in the movie “Inglorious Basterds”. We made two new friends who own a beauty salon in town. They played with us and Lindsey was convinced that they were gay. Haha…I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. That was an absolute blast!
Saturday night we all went to see our friend Thomas in the onstage production “The Last Night of Ballyhoo” by Alfred Uhry. Thomas ended up getting an Irene Ryan Nomination for his performance. Way to go Thomas!! It was a great weekend visit with little Rebekah, but unfortunately she had to leave and go back to PA on Sunday. We’ll be seeing her soon though to attend a friend of ours wedding in NYC! Till we meet again, stay finer. 

The Plot Thickens - Kitchen House

We had a little problem with The Kitchen House. One being the fact that we couldn't put it down. Jen, Lindsey and I were good little gills but Micah and Rachel both broke commandment number four. At least Micah and Rachel were honest and admitted their rebellious behavior. Micah finished the entire book and Rachel figured since Micah finished the whole book then she could read ahead too. Well to make up for their rule breaking, they brought ALL the food to the next meeting. Which was amazing and extremely finer.

Let's talk about the book for a little bit. I'm sure we can all agree to the fact that Kathleen Grissom, the author of this amazing piece of literature, is a brillant writer. The twist she pulls at the end was so unexpected. She connects you to the characters like they were your own family. Mamma Mae and Papa George were two of my favorites. Lavinia's naivety began to start to annoy me due to the fact that she is clueless most of the time. Especially in the case of Marshall and Beattie. A huge theme in this book is miscommunication. Lavinia could have married Will Stephens if it hadn't been for the miscommunication. Maybe Mamma Mae would've still lived if Marshall had known that Belle was his sister and not his Daddy's mistress. Who knows how the story would've changed if people would have simply been honest with one another? Several cliche life lessons can be learned from this book including, "Honesty is the Best Policy" and "Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover." Other than miscommunication there are so many "what if's" which can be explored in this plot line. What if Marshall's parents treated him better? What if Mr. Waters had never been a tutor to Marshall? What if Sally had never died or Campbell would've lived? One little plot change could have changed the entire story. I absolutely loved this book and it has been my favorite that FTC has read so far. We'll be choosing another book soon, but till then, stay finer. ;)