just pictures

love, Val

the hornet's nest

There are probably numerous ecological benefits to having something like this on your house.

One of these guys flew up John's nose a few years back and stung him good up inside there.

It was a pretty horrible incident, eye swelled shut, terrible.

 Anyway, they approached quietly.

Only Jay was stung on the shoulder.   When I went to him, his shirt had them crawling around on his back so I fluffed the hem, and most fell off--except for one.

Here we've got Dannell inspecting the welt, probably about the size of a big cucumber slice.

He's okay.

The insects are not.  They are gone.    love, Val

a long weekend at the lake

We had the chance to take a long weekend, so we did.

This little girl came along too.  See her trusty monkey with his seat belt safely in place?

 The kids picked this weed/flower before we left, and had it in a vase.  It was too pretty to leave behind, and so was the dandelion.

The weather was cool and lovely, warm enough to swim, not enough to be hot out.

The traveled to the sand bar.

I piled all that junk on the bed thinking it would keep Sam off.

Wrong.

love, Val

the best kind of tuesday

 Not much on the calendar, just a trip to the little pool.

She forgot her bathing suit this morning, so I called Heidi and asked, "Is there a code or a key, any way to get in your house to get a bathing suit?"

No, there really is not.

So we stopped by Target on the way to the pool and bought a new suit on clearance.

Julia said she's never giving up her old bathing suit no matter what, not even with the twisty elastic we always have to fix.

 Raiding the grandma's purse for gum.

This is Larry with Sidney who loves him sooo much.   Ever since he was first around here some years ago, she knew he was her guy.

 

This is a picture of Tim which he was being a maniac and wouldn't cooperate or smile. There fine, Tim.  You look like a ghost.  Hope you're happy.

And that's the end of now, the first week of August, storms moving through.  We sat on the patio in the dark for a while, enjoying the fresh air after the rain, watching Julia do her highest jumps off the back steps, thankful for summer evenings.

love you all so, Val

the bookmark

Tim reads to me every day so I can observe his progress (and enjoy his company.) 

He's doing well, reading amazingly much better than a year ago.

Anyway, today when he threw himself across my bed with his book, I noticed the bookmark he was using was an old sock.

It looked like a dirty sock.

So fastidious mother-type woman that I am, I asked him, "Are you using a dirty sock for a bookmark?!"

He said, "Could be clean."

"I found it on the floor of my room."

Good LOR-ed.

(It did not look like a clean sock.)

And we left it at that.

I told my mother this story and we laughed our heads off and she told me, "I hope I live long enough to see him as a grown man, see how that one turns out."   

He's 10 now and she's just over 70, so it's likely that she will.    (Her own mother attended John, Dan, and Heidi's weddings.)  Odds are in our favor.

Oh, Timothy, Timothy, Tim.

love you forever,   Mom AND Grandma too

thursday at pam's

She invited us for lunch.

On Easter there was so much snow still this trampoline was stuck in a snowbank.  That was a very big bummer to the kids who love it.    They imagine Pam jumps on it every day.

 Here they found a little tree frog near the woods.

This little fake rodent made me jump, but no harm in it.  This is a great hamster--no cage to clean, no smell, no dying or drama.  Perfect.

This was the effort trying to leave.  They didn't want to go, obviously.  This hammock is really nice, but wow, kind of a hazard.

Back at home again we talked about going to the little pool, but Tim didn't want to because of those little hyper kids who pound on him the whole time.  (They're always there it seems like.)   And p.j. would NOT put on a swim diaper.  

Sigh.

Little Jay helped us exhume this relic from the garage--bought in about 1993 on clearance around the 4th of July.  We patched a couple holes and got some duct tape to hold together the frame where there are cracks.

And she wouldn't swim because while the pool was in the garage, a mouse might possibly have touched it.   We washed it with soap and water before we filled it, but that didn't suffice.  

Then she thought she heard someone mention a dead mouse, but nobody did.  "A mouse DIED in there?  I'm never going in it now!"

No, no mice died in that pool.    And by the way, it was washed with soap.  It's fine.

Nope.  She's a tough customer sometimes, has her own ideas.  

The sun is shining and it's 80 perfect degrees out.

Thank you Pam and your family for the fun day yesterday.  We had a blast.    love you all so, Val