We arrived back from our journey to find that we didn't miss all the flowering apple and crab trees after all! Our tulips are just blooming (what a cold spring we've been having! Tulips in the middle of June!) along with lilacs and a couple of brave irises. Even though we mowed our lawn just hours before leaving, it rained and rained while we were gone, so we were greeted with a jungle of green grass, water in our garage, and dampness in our basement, and worms that had gone crazy because of swift changes in the barometric pressure. The above artwork is Sarah's watercolor impressi of our long grass blowing in the breeze along with tall weeds that she and Dr. Peds spend the afternoon trying to extract from the lawn. The weeds are the yellow parts. I think they were cutting out dandelions.
It has been a flurry of unpacking, putting things away, and organizing. Dr. Peds made a quick trip to the grocery store and motor vehicle department because while driving in Fargo he missed a red light and ran right through an intersection. A polite and nice policeperson pulled him over, and discovered that the state of Minnesota didn't enter his driver's license into the computer correctly, so it showed up as though he had no driver's license, even though he obviously does and had it in his hand. The short story is that they were ready to haul him off to jail for driving without a license, even though he had a license, but the very nice and polite policeperson took pity on us because we had a minivan filled with testy little children and a lot of luggage and just gave him two little tickets and told him to high tail it back to Minnesota and get his license fixed.
After the smallest kidlets enjoyed long, luxurious naps in their own beds this afternoon, we decided to try out our new, free canoe that we patched up (the duck tape blocking the hole on the canoe made me more than a little nervous, and I refused to step in or toss in any of my three children until the hole was repaired, which Dr. Peds has been working on for a couple of weeks). We loaded the canoe on top of the minivan, buckled all of the kidlets into life jackets, and went for a little canoe ride on a small local lake. The kidlets had an excellent time looking for fish in the lily pads, and viewing a beaver dam up close and personal as we randomly paddled around in circles. The Banana was so excited to be on a boat. She sat in a little lawn chair right up next to me in the front of the boat and was just so proud about the situation. She really liked her life jacket, did a fantastic job of sitting, and thought I should be using my paddle in the water at all times.
For my nervous, worrying relatives, the hole in the canoe is fixed perfectly, and the boat is nice and stable. You can stop worrying about us all drowning right now.
Here is Sarah's artistic rendition of our first canoe trip next to the beaver dam.
While we were gone I took literally thousands of photographs (close to 1,500 actually) of the weddings, friends and family, and I've been editing them in bits and pieces all day. I'll be sharing some of my favorites this week.
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One Comment
Cousin Lisa
This picture was so pretty I had to go out and buy a gerber daisy! I’ve never heard of them before.