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Well…I shouldn’t call inviting one of our most special friends here an invasion. But given our countries history this is my attempt at a snappy title.
We were so fortunate as to have the infamous and brilliant blogger StetotheJ (aka Ste J) in our home for a few weeks. All here…including the animals were most happy to share what we could of an American family with our visitor from across the pond…so to speak.
I did my best to make him a caffeine-a-holic, like myself…but we found it only made him sleepy. Tis alright though for we did make good 
friends with Tyler from Starbucks….whom you will have already heard of if you’ve read Ste J’s posts about his trip to America from his point of view.
I thought it apropos to share our point of view as well. Since we are all very verbal and chatty…he fit right in and I had to wait in line to speak with him as all here (mostly the children and animals) vied for his attentions. Jack and Emma had him racing Mario Kart style. Jack even made a few videos of Hotwheel’s Trick Track’s with some additions of Dominoes and such with Ste J as his helper.
By far the bestest and my most favorite part was the many trips to our various book stores about this small town I often refer to as “Podunkville” because it is small and I am a big-city girl having grown up in Portland, OR and traveled to most of the major big cities in America.
Treasure Trove of Books!
Honestly…it was bliss pure and simple. Good coffee…the bestest company and reading each and every spine in each store. We laughed in Time’s face as we paid it no mind on our quest for books. We quickly chose our favorite book stores and then re-visited. While Ste J may say that we were gracious hostess’s….in fact he was the greatest guest ever….having seen my new yet empty bookshelf he went on a mission to choose the very finest in literary selections to fill it with. In the end…there were 42 gifts….a virtual treasure trove of who’s who in modern and classical literature.
The first of the aforementioned gifts was Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s “Love in The Time of Cholera” and I have to admit his style is simply exquisite and inexplicably profound…no wonder he won a Nobel Prize for literature! Not even half way through and I am ready to replace my all time favorite book (Pride & Prejudice) with this one. Reading this is more of a literary delight than anything I’ve previously experienced.
Our trips to the local restaurants…walks by the river…and explorations of book stores…
Queen of The West on the Columbia River
not to mention some awesomazing Doctor Who watching made this visit more than memorable!
To Ste J I say…leave your Kingdom dearest sir and come back to us where we will all write and share our stories and find even more magnificent books to peruse….
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∼ Reconstructing Christina ∼ 