happy anniversary

Yesterday the day started out with our cocoon having hatched into a gorgeous butterfly.

We showed our next door neighbors who actually taught us about caterpillars in the first place. The kids spotted him at the picnic table and ran to show him, the went running to pound on the door with their glass with the cheesecloth and rubber band to show her.


Then we let it go in the wildflower patch in the garden. I waited a while to get a picture of the inside of the wings, which are a gorgeous maroon, but the wings were still drying, not ready.

When I went out in half an hour, the butterfly was gone, off enjoying a July morning as a spectacularly beautiful butterfly, doing whatever they do.

All that I found was these bugs fooling around.


Then we got the house straightened up, the clean clothes put away, the dishwasher dealt with, and then I made the decision to NOT wash the kitchen floor and go to the little pool instead.

We can't get there again until Tuesday, and you know? To hell with the kitchen floor. It camouflages everything nicely and let's get out of here.

So we swam instead.



And then at suppertime everyone came for a celebration of our parents' 50th anniversary.

What?


Yes, fifty years of the two of them.


here they are going through the memory book

The evening was just fun, and the meal was pretty delicious too. My mom and my dad, my sister and brother and me, all the kids and their kids were here, and it was the best Friday ever.


I wrote this a long time ago,

"We want families where all the people can grow together, where we can all seek our potential and be ourselves, where generations overlap, so that we know for certain because we see it with our own eyes, that love is continuous, and extends backward and forward in time. It was a foundation underneath our lives long before we were ever born and will continue flowing after we are gone."

Happy 50th anniversary, you guys.



a picture with the grandkids, great grandkids, inlaws, everyone

Thanks for making everything you see around you possible.

love, Val