christmas day, 2018

 We went to Mark and Barb's.  They've been hosting for at least ten years now, and it's always a great day--delicious food, easy going company, just perfect.

 There were gifts for the kids.

 This tree is quite a beauty. It was cut fresh about a month ago and still looked amazing.

 After all these years too, Barb's Christmas decorations are as familiar to me as my own, feel like old friends.

So much love, Val and Jay and Everybody

a week in july

 The Little Pool is as blindingly bright and wonderful as ever.

The babies are cautious and stay amused along the wall.

 The others are fish who swim and fight.

 There's Kari, looking ghostly in the stairway as she headed down to sing Happy Birthday to Julia.

 They all went out for supper last night while I worked.  p.j. slept over. It was a fine birthday.

Here we are today at the Library Event.

The two of them were seated in a bobcat owned by the city of Golden Valley.

This is what he did when I held up my camera and said, "Smile for Grandma!"

 Okay, being less bizarre now:

 James and his attachment:

Yesterday when he took an older brother to the bathroom at the Little Pool, she indicated him, concerned and called him, "Mommy."  (She very well knows who her own Mommy is. But early speech apparently is generic.)  I told her he was coming back, no worries.  She stuck with me and her cousins while keeping a wary eye on the gate.

At the Bounce House, her older brother called him, "Dad."  Then he looked embarrassed and said, "I mean James."

James was digging around in the diaper bag for the kid's water bottle. He answers to any name.

Plus I keep calling him Dan, to the point he answers me.  He's not Dan, even though these are Dan's children.

It's supposed to be 100 degrees out here tomorrow.

Onward.

love, Val