Grandma's Orb Came to Girls Night In.

{We found a pile of glasses meant for the Lions Club}

I can't even say how many years we have been doing Girls Night In at my grandma's house, probably since 1997 (the first year they spent in Florida after retirement).  We started this tradition because my grandparents left for Florida the day after Thanksgiving and she hated leaving us...but grandpa loved it there.  She wanted all of us girls to have one last hoo-rah before going into the long winter.

Now even with both of them gone we decided we were not about to break tradition, so for this year's Girls Night In we decided to go through some sentimental items in the house and divide them amongst us.  We shared lots of laughs and lots of tears...

You wouldn't know it by looking at any of us, but my family is notorious for ruining perfectly good food.  One year it was sweet potatoes ON FIRE in the oven, or my mother's burned pecan pie...this year Whitney charred some snicker-doodle cookies and my sister did no better with her pigs in a blanket.

After eating we decided to sit down and look through all the stuff and unfortunately there wasn't a lot that we really wanted to take home.  It's like we felt bad thinking about giving something  away because we know how much everything meant to them but...who needs six holiday tea sets?

My mom was all over this vintage Christmas family, sadly it needs repair but she's up for the job!  We did a lot of joking around while we were looking through things, my sister even tried on one of grandma's bathing suits.  I will spare her public humiliation...she better be nice to me!

One thing I noticed when I was looking through my photos is that there were tons of orbs in them...I have always joked that orbs are the result of a camera catching a spirit in the room.  I just checked Wikipedia and it says "orb backscatter has been broadly interpreted as a highly variable range of paranormal phenomenon without verifiable causation — including invisible spirits, auras, angels, ghosts, energy fields, psycho-energetic artifacts, energy balls, etc."  so it has to be true right?  Of course it is, it's Wikipedia y'all.

While we were going through grandma's closets, we of course had fun there too.  Why in the world did she have a wig?  She died only three months after her cancer diagnosis this summer so I'm sure she wasn't already planning hair loss...and shawls?  A drawer full and I'm pretty sure she made them herself.

After we were done with all that we changed into our comfy clothes, made a frozen drink and then sat down to play, but not before handing out some gift bags!  Before we started the games, my aunt said a toast for our first night in without grandma and we got down to business.

Our first game was a truth or dare type of game and when it started getting into the sex questions, Whitney nearly puked after hearing one of her mother's answers so... moving on.

Partini was charades, making items out of clay, answering questions on paper, etc.  Lots of animation which my family is notoriously good at.  The more I drank, the funnier the game was, imagine that?

I'm not even kidding we were exhausted by like 10:30...we are getting old. Before we left, my sister wanted to look through one last thing, grandma's quilts.  My grandma was known for quilting and she did it her whole life...she even has an entire craft house in her back yard where she did a lot of her handiwork.

{The awesome quilt my sister took}

I thought I would end with a few videos from previous Girls Night In's (2010 and 2009) so I can remember those evenings spent with grandma.  Although she wasn't in a seat at our table this year, we definitely felt her presence.