a few quick pictures from the weekend

 Here they are, with all of us, waiting for our food at the chinese take-out place.

"It will be 30 minutes. We have to make more rice."

Okay.

Well, all those containers of plain white rice went in the wastebasket today as we were packing the coolers to leave the lake.

Nevermind.

It was a great weekend at the lake, lots of laughing and food, one-card poker and nonsense.

Perfect.

Onward.  With love forever, Val, aka Grandma, aka MOM

instagram week

love, Val

friends in may

 This girl and her mom came to stay for a long weekend.

Ahhh, friends, and family.  And summer.

So glad your'e here.  love, Val

memorial day 1985

 Back in the day, on Memorial Day weekend, my mom's parents and sisters would all rent cabins at the lake where we have our cabin now.

We'd take up a whole resort for four or five days and have fun fishing and swimming.

It was film cameras back then so I have only a handful of photos from all those Memorial Days.

  Often it rained and the kids were bored and we had no Ipads to pass the time.  We had no portable VCR movies to entertain them. (That's the downside of the good old days.)

 My cute cousins, Tammy holding Heidi.

Onward, the summer of 2015 is before us.

love you all, Val

a few pictures for fun

 I came across these on Facebook yesterday, had never seen them before.

And these ones on Instagram made me laugh.

And that brings us to the end of a pretty fine Saturday night.

Onward.

love you all so,  MOM

two weeks old

 Here she is, in a very pretty picture Heidi took, perfect little lips, perfect little toes.

Here's Heidi making the most of her maternity leave, sacked out in the recliner in the living room, p.j. off playing Barbies with Julia, far enough away so we don't have to overhear their arguing.

 Here's my girl hugging her baby sister.   I teased her today as I kissed her cheeks, "You have not come to my house and watched George or warmed up my back for WEEKS now.  We used to do that every DAY."  She laughed, told me she loved me.

These are the Little and Scrunched pictures.

It's easy to get those of a newborn.  I admire photographers who get them to sleep and then pose them and take fancy pictures that capture their perfect miniature toes and eyelashes.

Newborns are hard to get good pictures of.   This little girl is so completely delectable, but here she looks just little and scrunched.

 Awww.

Sweetness everywhere.

This little baby sister is such a little morsel.

And her cousin babies born this winter are turning into PEOPLE already.

This spring is once in a lifetime.

love all you crazy little tiny girls, Grandma

a long weekend

It's been a long week, emotional and strange.

Alicia's grandpa died this week, which was part of it.

This picture was taken tonight at the funeral home, her little brother with the tiny sister on his lap, sticker books spread out over a table in this formal room.

Yeah, it's like this right now.

Alicia's grandpa John is among the angels, no doubt about that.  And he's equipped the rest to manage without him, even in a state of loneliness, they are equipped.  He did that.

Sigh.

It's a strange world, and in times like this it's easy to start to get at each other along the way.

No, no, no.

We're not doing that.   All we have is each other.

Onward.

love, Val

a great saturday

We went to the lake, just for the day.  This baby was there with her cheeks.

 Kids on a bunk with Ipads.

 The trailers were put in place.

 John treated us to lunch at some weird restaurant in town.

They were nice. The portions were huge.

Dan's teasing his nephew something about the ketchup.

 A soccer game back at home.

 She got hot playing soccer and wanted to swim.  The water is icy, the dock needs a coat of paint.

 This pool had warm water in it.

 A turtle was found, about the size of a quarter:

 Grandpa and the child turning the turtle to the swamp:

 A fine puzzle, fully assembled:

 And this is a picture Alicia had on Instagram of a most beautiful little girl:

And now it's the end of Saturday, and Sunday is looking fine.

love always, Val