Auntie Amy Texas gave this little one a xylophone.  You should have seen him go to town!  He was a xylophone slamming maniac, and all the pounding was accompanied by some amazingly throaty, yet sometimes screechy vocals.  He performed with gusto.  

These two nieces of mine look so much alike that they could be sisters.  

She ran up to me and asked if I’d like to take pictures of her pretty dress.  Of course!  It brings me great joy that she requests to twirl and smile at my camera.  She and I had a lot of fun reading books together and snuggling after she woke…

Papa Richard got a slide for the cabin, much to the delight of the small cousins!  The big cousins love it too, but the small ones spent hours and hours climbing up and whooshing down.  Their favorite thing was to bounce off the slide onto the winged floaty tube for…

They might be the rats of the air, but they are more beautiful than a ground rodent.

It’s that time of year when my yellow kayak is a permanent fixture atop the van, ready any time the Lake is cooperating and my husband is on hand to extract it from the top of the van and load it back up.    The kidlets laugh about being able…

Last summer I had one lavender plant.  At the end of the summer it was healthy and I couldn’t bear to see it succumb to the first frost, so I brought it inside and hauled it up to my bedroom and placed it next to the west window for the…

This summer Mr. Sneak Pants acquired his very own public  library card.  It is a very big deal, and he was super excited about it.  The rule in our family is that you are able to obtain your own library card when you are able to transport yourself to the…

Dr. Peds was still at work, but the rest of us were gathered at the table outside on the deck, eating fingerling potatoes from the Farmers Market topped with fresh oregano from the plants we are growing on the deck.  After a delicate discussion on the differences between novels and…

  An astonishing number of books have been read in our household this summer.  I only attempt to keep track of the books I read myself these days.  To be truthful, so far this year I’ve read a lot of books that were “meh” or “bleh.”  I’m not including any…