OCTOBER 2004 Mom had sent me a box to throw me off.  She included a cute black stuffed bear, but surprisingly, no BLACK BOWLS!!   The next day another box arrived, a package of ….. (you guessed it) BLACK BOWLS arrived at my doorsteps.      Black Bowls Saga by Joan Cook   2004 Continued   NOVEMBER 2004 Mom thought that I would come up with a clever way to deliver the BLACK BOWLS for St I was so busy with our new start up business I didn’t even think about how and when I should deliver the BLACK BOWLS to my mom.   About a week after I had received the BLACK BOWLS from Mom in October, I had sent the BLACK BOWLS to my sister, Peggy, to hang onto until I could come up with a devious plan to deliver them back to my mom.   The week before Thanksgiving week, we were quite busy packing for a business trip to Panama and I had decided that Mom needed to be thankful about the BLACK BOWLS.  Chatting with Peggy online, I came up with an idea.  Mom always joins Peggy and her family to Peggy’s husband’s family for Thanksgiving, why not have Peggy’s sister-in-law, Susan, join the ranks of BLACK BOWLS delivers.  I emailed Susan: Hi Susan, I am Peggy Jones’ sister, Joan and I would like to ask you a favor.  My mom and I have a running joke in passing 4 BLACK BOWLS back and forth to each other.  Since my Mom is joining you for Thanksgiving, I thought it would be fun if Peggy could give you the bowls ahead of time to serve some of the Thanksgiving meal in those bowls on Thanksgiving.  I look forward to hearing from you. Susan wrote back “I'd be happy to serve something she likes in the BLACK BOWLS.” Mom knew that I was quite busy and would think I would not have any time to think about the BLACK BOWLS.   With Peggy’s help, we fooled her!   Peggy delivered the BLACK BOWLS  to Susan prior to Thanksgiving.  After everyone ate their way thru the Thanksgiving feast, Susan asked my mom what she would like for dessert.  Mom answered “Mince pie”.   Mom was quite surprised to see that her pie was served in 4 BLACK BOWLS.  Meanwhile, we were enjoying the 80 degree weather in Panama and I told Rod that Mom should be getting her BLACK BOWLS back at that moment!  We laughed!!  I called Mom from Panama a couple of days later and she said that she had not expected to get them back since I was out of town.  Did we ever fool her!!     DECEMBER 2004 Do you remember Tanya, the BLACK BOWLS deliverer (July 2003 & December 2002)?  One day, I was helping Tanya’s parents, Chuck and Carolyn, with their office computer and they told me that they had been given some wedding dresses.  They asked if I would be interested in taking them since they knew I would transform them into Victorian gowns.  They said they would give me the wedding dresses at our annual New Year’s Eve party at their home. Later I had found out that Mom had sent the BLACK BOWLS to their home and Chuck came up with the idea of how to hide the BLACK BOWLS inside one of the wedding dresses.   Tanya brought out the wedding dresses for me to inspect and hung one on the ceiling beam.  She was telling me how creative the cardboard form was used to keep the shape of the dress on top.  She was encouraging to view it from the bottom of the dress.  As I moved over to view the dress, I noticed Tanya had a camera in her hand.  I thought for sure she would snap a picture of me looking up this dress and blackmail me with this picture!!  I stopped right there and said, “NO WAY”! In order to convince me to look up the wedding dress, she hands me the camera and tells me to feel the cardboard form in front.  The minute my hands felt the empty cavity inside the bowls, I knew right then that these were THE BLACK BOWLS!!  They had 2 BLACK BOWLS in 2 sets wrapped in aluminum foil and then they shoved them up to fill in the boob areas.  Leave it to Chuck to come up with this crazy scheme!!