A few things

that made me smile today::

watching Ina Garten on tv in the waiting room at the orthodontist: she's baking something with her KitchenAid, and when she pulls the paddle attachment off and puts it to the side, Lindsey says, incredulously, "she didn't even lick it!"

my girls genuinely laughing at me, and my pathetic attempt at an Australian accent. I'm a sucker for a good accent, and have always wished I could do an English one. However, we all agreed it's a good thing I can't, because I would definitely use it all the time, and annoy everyone.

my mother dropping in unexpectedly this morning, and her being exactly the one person I needed to talk to just then.

cherries-local(ish) and dirt cheap (well, relatively speaking)...

even the boys pitching in to clean up our basement (the girls pointed out that it was only fair, seeing as they spend as much time down there as they do.)

this photo. and this one. and this one. summer.

the newborns next door getting all cute and chubby.

and an old favorite tonight: broccoli rabe, sausage, white beans, pasta. Oh, yes, thank you.

Hope you had some smiles today. Thanks for reading.
tt

OK, now it's summer.

Perhaps eleven is an excessive number of photographs for one post. What the heck, though.

I didn't touch a computer for three days.

The kids made tye-dye shirts, cinnamon-chocolate ice cream, stayed up too late to mention, watching borderline-questionable movies, and slept like babies until well into the morning.

They bravely dove headlong into a muddy three acre pond, which this mother would rather not have to jump into to save them. (But I would! I promise!)

The grown-ups did a fair share of their regular work, then quit for the day, drank very good wine, made a lot (a lot) of really good food, and slept...well, maybe not quite like babies.

I read somewhere in blog-land recently (and if you are the one who said it, please remind me, because I can't find you now) that vacation is meant to be so much fun, but you really spend the time waiting to go back home. Or something along those lines.

I don't at all mean to imply that I didn't have the best time I could hope for, but only that, in the end, I do love coming home most of all.

I suppose that's the best I could hope for.

Glad to be home, but boy, was that fun. Thanks for reading.
tt

Friday Happiness

When Thursday night is this good, Friday happiness comes on pretty easily.

Welcome, summer.

Tim-plus-three are away camping for a few days. That leaves me with "just" three kids. Plenty of girl stuff is planned. Plus lots of packing, for no sooner do the campers return, then we head out again to the farm.

Then back again, only to send some girls to the Cape. And on, and on, straight through August. Summer takes it's time getting here, but once it comes, it's like a freight train with a monkey at the helm. (Sorry. Maybe I did listen to a tad too much Grateful Dead in college.)


So, Friday happiness? Yeah. Pretty much everything.


More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt
ps::only the first two photos are mine. Give a girl a camera...