South from the city to Colma again, for more time with Walter and family, before heading to Palo Alto for an evening with the Wilens. Rob and Stefanie are old family friends, and I’ve had the pleasure of watching their three sons, Nathan, Henry and Jesse, grow up over the years.
Unexpectedly, my visit was timed to coincide with Henry’s 11th birthday party with his grandparents, in from Indianapolis. Meantime, Rob and Stefanie are in the middle of preparing for a house move. I do like their current place, and their use of colour is amazing (yes, I know that I’m not the greatest in terms of interior design, but I know what I like…), but I can see why they might want a change of ’residential pace’.
So I found myself in the middle of a ’typical Wilen family afternoon’, with chances to collect children from school, drop them at the violin classes and generally chill. Alright, I’m not a ’family person’ but I do appreciate it in others, and given the astonishingly mature attitudes displayed by both Nathan and Henry (Jesse is still a mite young for that to become truly apparent yet), they are very easy to interact with.
Dinner at a local Italian restaurant was very pleasant before retiring back to the house for coffee and birthday cake. Given the circumstances, and the fact that Rob and Stefanie are in the middle of the whirlwind, so to speak, I took a pleasant stroll back through downtown Palo Alto to the train station to catch the last train back to the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment