The kids outside

Mattie zooming down the driveway.

Emma's first time going down the driveway on her scooter, without using the breaks and she is

so proud, as is her mom

Emma's Shining Moment

My neighbor, Kyle, has a nephew in Emma's 1st grade class. Kyle wanted to share with the class what he did at work so he showed up to tell the kids what a pilot does. He needed a volunteer and because he knew Emma was a little down, and because he is just a great guy, he picked her to be his guniea pig. Here are a few pictures someone took.

Yard Stories

I have had a few requests to see pictures of my yard

since this has been my major spring project. Here it is. I pulled out most of the grass and built a patio and planted a vegetable garden in the middle and flowers on the edges.  It is an ongoing project, but hope is visible.

This is the spot where I read. It is good except when my backyard neighbors are in their yard. They are really noisy and say or yell something rude every other word at least. I turn on Catholic masses and sometimes they quiet down so maybe they take the hint. However, they also quiet down when I am explaining to some of my nicer neighbors when I will be out of town, which makes me uncomfortable.

This is the view from where I read which is a Calla Lilly Bed, and which is where the yard stories begin. Jenny Vezzani is a great friend. She is also really great at home improvement projects. She had noticed the grass growing between the bricks of my porch by the screen door for a long time, so one day she just told me that she was going to come over and we were going to rebuild the back porch. We tore the whole thing apart, removed the bermuda grass, leveled it, put down weed cloth and put it back together. I was exhausted and dehydrated and made us stop and finished the project later, but she would have kept going until the whole thing was finished which would have been around midnight.

Good friend huh?

Wait the story gets better.


This is the front of my house. Notice how neatly edged everything is. This is again the work of Jenny Vezzani. She found out I did not have a line trimmer. One day (actually about a week before we rebuilt the back porch) I came home from a long hard day with too many meetings, and the Vezzanis were at my house smiling and waving and edging my lawn for me. Completely unannounced. Completely unexpected. I worked with them until we were done and offered to get them dinner, which they refused because they had lasagna in the fridge at home. Amazing! That meant more to me than I can explain.

Later, the day after my birthday (which in the tradition of my birthdays was a fairly brutal day) she showed up with a line trimmer as a birthday present for me. All criticism and fiascos and general brutality I endured on my birthday were instantly gone.

I have a picture of Jenny but not on this computer so I'll post it later.

This last picture is for you Marie. I took your sugestion and got a decorative grill for my porch. I like this one because it is both a squared circle and a wheel. I like both of those symbols and this also seemed to be about the right shape and size.

Funny thing

I saw a bunny chasing a robin today.  It was weird.  I wasn't fast enough with the camera so I tried to recreate it.

 Voila.