A Day of Special Events

Friday was a fun-filled day with lots of friends. It started in Ruidoso with the wedding of a couple from our church. The wedding was at 11:30 and included lunch and lots of visiting. Then Ed and I hurried home to put the finishing details on a deckside dinner for our two good church friends, Jack and Linda Greene. We enjoyed dinner and visiting until well after dark in the pleasant cool evening on our deck.

The wedding party (the groom is Darrell Brooks, son of our close friends David and the late Sarah Brooks and also a former student of mine; the best man is Cody Glass, also a former student):

David Brooks, proud father and father-in-law, with Ed just after the service. They weren't really so worried--the sun was in their eyes.

A relaxing dinner on the deck

Deck Garden Update

Just got back from (1) Portland, OR--taking Emily home--and (2) Las Cruces, NM--attending a week-long Advanced Placement English Summer Institute, so since I don't have any cute kiddo pictures to post, I thought I would just update everyone on the progress of our deck garden.

Here are a few pictures, beginning with our "upside down" tomato plant experiment. This seems to be working since the leaves grow up and the fruit hangs down which allows lots of sunlight onto the growing fruit. Some of our garden is still recovering from a hailstorm a couple of weeks ago, but at least we weren't wiped out like some of our friends' gardens were.

This picture is of our grape and cherry tomato plants which are also full of fruit, which you can't see very well because of all the foliage.

Get out your magnifying glass and look at our little jalapeno pepper (just above the sprinkler head in the picture). The other little plant is a habenero which is also trying to squeeze out a few little peppers.

These plants are beets. They are growing really quickly, but we may not have actual beets until later in the summer. Hopefully, since they are also cool weather plants, we can have one more crop before our first hard frost which is usually in October.

Finally, here is our Aerogarden (indoors) with its first crop of salad greens. It's amazing how quickly they grow, so we're harvesting this evening so we can have crab cakes on a bed of greens for dinner. Sounds good, huh?

Photocopies Can't Quite Cut It...

As we sat down in the Irish pub last night, I looked up at the big screen TV over the bar and saw a soccer game, and it just struck me as hilarious--the Lions were beating the Xerox Lions. I said, "Oh look, the photocopies are losing big time to the originals!" Take a look--hope you have my weird sense of humor, but if not, at least I got a chuckle out of a soccer game.

The Wonders of Wet Portland

Emily has been learning to ride the train in Portland, and she is loving it in spite of the downpour we were all caugtht in last night when we rode the train to the grocery store. At least she got a balloon out of the deal.

Today we ventured out again and went downtown. Because the train was crowded, she discovered the hand straps and wanted to hold on even when seats were available. We ended up at Powell's Bookstore which is HUGE, so while Nana Jo looked around upstairs at all the Shakespeare books, Emily and Mama read books in the Red Room.While Emily napped this afternoon, Nana Jo & Mama went out on errands and Nana Jo bought Emily an umbrella which was a hit. She knew it was for outside, so she wanted to go out in the rain which we did (only mist but that counts, doesn't it?). We went across the street to a big park to try out the umbrella, but there was a cool fountain which made it more fun to actually get wet. What's wrong with this picture? Emily is standing in the rain while Daddy and Mama are under Emily's umbrella!Emily had so much fun trying to catch the water as it went up and down from the sidewalk. At last she caught it!

After she was totally soaked, she took a warm bath, put on a pretty dress, and we headed back for the train to go downtown for dinner at an authentic Irish pub.

The trains were so crowded that Emily actually got to stand and hold on to one of the poles and learned to balance very well. She looked so cute in her little dress & ponytails, but I couldn't get a picture because we were so packed on the train. She kept everyone entertained, and had a new audience at every stop as people got on and off the train...such a ham!

A First for Emily and Nana Jo

On Wednesday, June 3, Emily and I flew from Albuquerque to Portland, Or to take Emily back to her Mama and Daddy. She was such a trooper on the flight and seemed to understand that she was up, up, up in the sky. She buckled her seatbelt with no problem and just sat quietly in her seat for most of the trip. She even made sure Baby Girlfriend was buckled in. It didn't take her long to look up and notice all those buttons that looked like they would be fun to push. Fortunately, she couldn't reach them. About 1/2 way there (a 2-hour nonstop flight), she discovered that everyone was getting drinks and snacks, so she had some apple juice and wheat thins. She never slept, but she did rest quietly with her blanket and was actually the quietest of the many children on board.I did something on this flight that I had never done before on all the flights I made with my own children--changed a diaper in an airplane mini-lavatory!! That was quite the experience, let me tell you. There is a changing table that folds out of the wall and forces the "changer" to stand with her back against the door while the "changee" stretches head to foot across the width of the restroom. At this point Emily was so wet that she didn't mind getting changed in such a tiny place even though we went through a little bit of minor turbulence at the time. Of course, she got to talk to everyone in the plane both going to and coming from the restroom, so all was well for her. Coming into Portland we flew right over Mt. Hood and she got to see the mountain with all the snow (and a snowman according to her), but best of all, after we landed and got our luggage, there were Mama and Daddy!!

Little Miss Rock Star and the Kitties

Emily had a lot of fun on her last day of exercising with Nana Jo and Grampa at the church. She noticed the microphones on the stage and knew just what to do--go sing through her entire repertoire. Once she got tired of stretching to sing into the mic, she just took it down like a pro and went from there. After she finished singing, she went into the office where a lady was bottle feeding baby kitties that she was babysitting. Emily got to play with the kitties which was a lot more fun than exercising. We sure hope she's not allergic to kitties!

A Smokey Bear Adventure

Today while Grampa was in Midland after taking Mamaw home, Emily & Nana Jo picked up Linda and visited the Smokey Bear Museum and the Smokey Bear Playground. Look at all the fun we had. First we went to the Museum and looked at the historical memorabilia about Smokey Bear.Emily also had fun turning the souvenir penny machine's handle round and round. Linda thought we needed to put a penny in it, but it was more fun to just turn the handle.Emily and Nana Jo sat in a huge pile of Smokey Bears which was fun, but then....she found a broom in the corner and decided that was the most fun of all! Leave it to a kid.

After that we walked around the corner to Capitan's new Smokey Bear playground. Emily and Linda drove the train (Emily told Linda to sit down and drive and told Nana Jo to "go stand on the rocks"...hmmm). She did let Nana Jo hold her in the big kid swing. Then Linda put her in the tire swing which was really fun, and she sat in the big red chair swing awhile too. One of the coolest toys in the playground was the music maker. It was such a fun morning that Emily was too tired for lunch and just wanted to go to bed.