meandering

My Mom made the girls some new dresses.




Note the height of my tallest sunflower! :)




The girls dance with grandpa. I used to dance on my paternal grandfather's feet when I was small.





K slides


We did a lot of biking this weekend. My parents borrowed my Uncle C's van so that they could bring their 'trikes' with them. I was still feeling punk from the sinus infection on Saturday morning but really wanted to go riding (I hadn't ridden for over a week because of the cold/infection).

We rode to the playground with the girls and then Dad offered to let me try one of the trikes. So I rode off on Mom's with the intention of going back to some wildflowers I saw to photograph them.

It wasn't meant to be. I crashed. Trikes (at least the style of my parents) are not so easy to keep balanced as one might think. I was going fast and slid along on my right side. I got the bike up and discovered the chain was off. I could not get it back on. Two people passed me by before a Samaritan walking a huge retriever stopped to help. We discovered that I had actually shifted the gears about an inch. We got it back together with minimal grease to his hands and I returned to the playground. I was spent, covered with grease, and sore.

That evening I went for a trike ride with Dad and he tutored me a bit. We went about eight miles.

On Sunday morning, we put the girls in a trailer and went on a twelve mile bike ride before church. It was a fun weekend. I have lots of scrapes, a sore shoulder, and the insides of both my knees seem to be bruised. So goes life, I guess. :)



Mom and Dad went home with lots of produce from my garden, they went home with squash, cucumbers, jalapeños, and this cabbage (they didn't' need any of my tomatoes, not sure I would have shared anyhow).


Mom gave me a slightly belated anniversary present this weekend and there is a larger one coming). This is a flower aquarium. The flowers are enclosed in water. My Mom thought it would be nice for me to be able to bring flowers indoors without everyone's allergies going nuts. This is the first arrangement I made.



This is my latest arrangement in my flower aquarium. I wanted to play with possibilities. This is celosia and banana peppers. My husband thought it was a protea at first glance.

a contest

My good friend Heather who is an incredible painter (she painted an incredible portrait of my daughters) is doing a giveaway for her bloggy birthday. She is giving away either a custom portrait (my choice) or a blog design. Check it out at her blog Graced by Christ.

yes, but (spider alert)

Yes, I have a sinus infection but I am in a good mood. My parents are coming for the weekend, so I have got to go get a few things in order.

Have a good weekend everyone.

sunflowers and sinuses

more sunflowers since everyone seemed to like them



tonight I am going to Urgent Care to see if this cold has morphed into a sinus infection

a general health update

I am still croaky but improving. K seems slightly better. C now has it. Now the more important health concern is this. Mari-Nanci asked after my Uncle P from My Tippy. This is the latest as written by my Aunt P.

Well, I see that P in typical P fashion left out a few details about our weekend. He developed an allergy to the IV antibiotic he was taking so had to discontinue it. He is being admitted to the hospital. I'm assuming so they can watch him more closely. Funny how doctors get nervous when you're allergic to 2 of the antibiotics that treat psuedomonas.

Will keep you posted.
P

It isn't a great situation. Please pray.

Writing you from the house with marigolds and an elephant sprinkler on the doorstep.

I still sound like I have smoker's cough

and K is running a fever and rubs her snot on anything that is handy. As a result, no bike rides are happening around here - we are staying close to home. I finished three books this weekend The Earth Moved, Jane Eyre, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. But every time I try to sit and write I feel like my brain is in a fog. Oh well.

You can find me at the house with the sunflowers.

Photo Hunter: Tiny

Teeny-tiny stitches on my husband's eye.



This is a photo of my husband's eye back in November. He had a corneal transplant last August because he suffers from the eye disease keratoconus.

He had a check-up yesterday and they are not as satisfied as they once were with his progress. Hubby has dry eyes and it is inhibiting the healing of his eye. These take eighteen months to two years to heal and it looks as if it will take the long term for hubby.

bell jars

I love cloches but am too cheap to buy one. I love floral arrangements but the allergic reactions they cause in hubby and I are enough to drive one insane.

So, I did this and put a floral frog on top for a visual pun.





I have a really gross cold. I probably got my cold while on vacation and it is probably the same one that one of 'us' probably gave my Uncle P (UP from My Tippy). Of course, a cold is a million times worse for him than it is for me. If you would, please pray for a quick recovery for UP.

Here is UP with K. She fell in love with him. UP got a bunch of supplies while we were visiting and he got K to bring all the boxes into his room and help him unload them and stick them on the shelf. She was very serious about her job.

When we visited a dairy farm and took a tour she was very sweet. Once when he got to coughing she called out across the bus "Are you okay Uncle P?" then when he was getting lifted on and she couldn't see him she got worried "We left Uncle P." My favorite though was when we were getting ready to leave - we were nearly the last visitors there and so when she saw Uncle P across the parking lot I let her race to him. It was a like crazy game of chicken.



UP If you don't want this on my blog, let me know - you never answered my email! :)



UP is definitely a lot like my Dad. He is a smart aleck and he has way more wisdom than he sometimes lets on. We had an awesome visit.

While we were there our caterpillar Carl made his change into a butterfly (we brought him along as I knew he would emerge from the cocoon soon). We let him go our first morning. I didn't get any photos but let me tell you, it was cool.

random

Right now things are well...I get frazzled and distracted but nothing is eating at me if you know what I mean. However, I thought I would write a down-and-dirty post about things that don't often make it here. It is not that I try to portray a life that is calmer, cleaner, more gentle than it really is. It has more to do with a very hard lesson learned that I do better if I don't complain about my trials. I have discovered that when I talk about the yuckies I obsess about the yuckies so I simply try to avoid dwelling on them. And as I said, life is pretty good at the moment (except for the ugly children alluded to in the previous post). So here are some random uglies, hidden truths, or weirdnesses from my life.

1.) In the afternoon, while the girls nap, I often get into my pajamas again and change out of them when the girls wake up. Do I nap, nope - I just want to be comfortable.

2.) I would not call the meals I put on the table balanced in a classical sense. I am prone to one dish meals plus bread except in the summer when my garden is going nuts (as it is right now).

3.) In the summer, my house gets a little bit dirtier than I care to admit (try gross in some places). I am too busy being outside and doing all the things I can't do September through April/May to worry about cleaning too much. In the winter, I make up for it with multiple cleanings that are unnecessary.

4.) My closets and dresser drawers are ugly. I am just not into keeping clothes in neat stacks or hanging straightly. They get folded, then they get jammed in wherever they fit, and as long as I can close the doors so that no one can see, I don't care. Hubby's are neat and perfect.

5.) I am a million times better than I used to be but I am not a patient person. Even at my best, I can be irritated more easily than I care to admit.

6.) I know that a five cent piece of change is larger than a ten cent piece of change but I have to think really hard to remember which is a dime and which is a nickel and sometimes, I just can't.

7.) I hate making beds - I am not good at it at all - so I let hubby do it.

8.) Sometimes I am lazy and open another jar of peanut butter because I don't feel like scraping the remains in the old jar - but I don't toss the old jar out, I stick it back in the cupboard for hubby to scrape (but I don't tell him).

9.) More than ninety=five percent of my fluid intake is iced tea. Water and fruit juice are next. I am happy to say that Dr. Pepper is relegated to Saturday night with pizza or hamburgers.

10.) My children watch television once a day for one hour to two hours but the real pickle is this - I let them do it during lunch so I can get stuff done without interruption.

11.) I seldom drink milk after the bottle has been open a day or two. If milk tastes even slightly off, I can't stand it.

12.) I take life way too seriously.

13.) I am tired of owning a dog but realize that when Willow dies (she is twelve which is very old for a greyhound) we will get another dog. K loves dogs and cried when she thought we got a new one and I chased if off (a very, very friendly little silky made itself at home in our backyard). Hubby wants another one too...basically, I think it is three to one around here.

14.) I do not wear shoes that need to be tied if I can help it. I like to slip on shoes and go without having to bend over.

15.) I am too lazy to make cookies. Every week I make hubby chocolate chip cookies for work - only I make them as bars (which if you like soft chewy cookies is much better anyhow).

ugly kids

Lately the girls are ugh...ugh...ugly. K is extremely three which means she throws fits about whatever doesn't suit her and refuses to eat what you give her even if it is what she asked for. And I don't know what it is but when she yells I just wanna yell with her...urgh...

C is something altogether different. She acts like a teenager lately. In her words she doesn't like it here and we treat her like slave. She also would like to live with Grammy (my MIL)...I get so frustrated.

I would love to tell her fine you can never see your Grammy again! That is what I would like to say...

I know God brought me through the same attitude but sometimes I worry He won't do it for her or that she will plain refuse Him.

my most beautiful photographic subject from vacation

My niece Grace.




My sister B has beautiful hands, don't you think?


My personal favorites are the three below.





Dad looks on.


Gracie gets a lift.




Gracie didn't sleep well when she visited and so she was a bit cranky.



For more pics of Grace now and when she was a newborn you can check out this gallery. Just click on the photos to see them in a larger size or to enter a different gallery.

going on vacation

We are leaving on vacation. We are going to visit my uncle UP from My Tippy.

I leave you with pictures from the fourth.

prayer request

This is my friend Kita. She is an artist and a wonderful friend. She lives in Scotland where she runs a bed and breakfast. I've known her on the internet for close to four years. We've never met in person but she always listens and loves to share. She just discovered she has breast cancer. Please pray for her.

picnic food

Yum, guacamole.


My recipe.

spider webs (mostly pretty dew ones - only one spider visible)

I am sorry folks - I do think spiders are the coolest. I had fun playing with DOF and angle. These were taken on our daily bike ride. In Bunker, there is a boardwalk across the lake/swamp. When the water is high it floats and flexes (it is basically a series of pontoons anchored and strung together. No part of it floats this year because it is so terribly dry.

Last night we had rain so it was extremely muggy this morning. I saw these and had to photograph them - I was so steamy I kept fogging up the blasted camera!!