She's Home

and Mummy's happy. She rode half way(or better) home with her cabin Mom and I was in a panic until we picked her up in Portsmouth. Then she talked non-stop until we got home 5 hours later. It was ok though I had missed her voice around the house.
They called from the road when they left camp so that we could time the pick up. When I answered the phone I was expecting the cabin Moms' voice but instead I got this little "Hi Mummy" I am not a crier but I almost lost it right there. She was only gone 5 days, I am in so much trouble when she goes off to college.

Lilia had an observation about her ride home
She says " In their van they had 4 screens for the DVD player and we watched some movie with music in the title"
Daddy "The Sound of Music?"
Lil "YEAH!! it was weird"
Daddy and Mummy in unison "The hills are allllive with the sound of muuuusic"
Lilia " Um yeah, don't do that again"
Daddy and Mummy "Do a deer and female deer, ray a drop of golden suuuunnn, mi a name I call myself, fa a long long way to ruuuuun" all sang in falsetto for Daddy
Lilia "you are sooo weird, anyway they all sang along together to the movie. They are entirely too nice"

She was almost disgusted by the niceness, poor kid is jaded already and only 10 years old. We are a sarcastic lot around here it's how we show love. I totally LOLed over the whole "entirely too nice" thing.

Old is New Again

I have been playing with photoshop a ton this past couple of days. I really want to have a consistent pping style/styles this is what I have come up with. On warmer photos it really WARMS it up and on cooler photos it adds just a touch of warmth, at least that is what I see.
I have been told that they are overexposed and slightly green so now I am wondering if my monitor is totally whacked. The overexposed I can totally see but I just don't see a green cast, do you?

ETA I lied I do see a green cast on Grady, but I only noticed it once I got it uploaded to blogger. In photoshop it looks fine. Hmmmmmmmmm

Bloom

I searched for signs of life all spring but had given up hope that my lovely columbine had come back this year. Then a few days ago I noticed some familiar leaves under the stairs. I thought for sure it was some kind of weed mocking me, making me think I might just have my columbine back. Then I saw THIS.

Bloom where you are planted.
~anonymous

Oh and please excuse my janky steps, they were supposed to be temporary and we just never got around to building new ones.


In other news yesterday we spent 17 hours on the road with Lilia and Gavin(well technically only 7 of those hours were with Lilia). We dropped Lilia off at gymnastics camp in western NY and then drove home. BLAH!!!!! She was SOOoooooo freaking excited I thought we were going to have to tie her to the roof of the car just to get there with our sanity in tact.
We left Grady home because he was being picked up a little later in the day to be dropped off at his camp for 3 1/2 weeks! I cannot believe he is gone for that long, I almost turned down the opportunity for him to go when I heard how long it was. But this is a REALLY exclusive camp that he gets to go to for free. Every year they get a list of local kids as back-ups in case someone who signed up couldn't go. Grady was at the top of the list and got picked for the Allagash canoe trip, two weeks canoeing the Allagash and 1 1/2 weeks back at camp. So for now I have one child at home and I don't quite know what to do with myself.

Lilia says, peace out peeps!

And yes she had this much energy the ENTIRE way to NY.

Just Playin'

I followed a link given at 2Peas to change my blog around and lookee and what I did!
I got a bit carried away with my blog banner but I like it for now and I can always change it. :D

Little Chicken

Then followed that beautiful season... Summer....
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Yeah what he said.
~me

Big huge thank you to NDjane for her share of this super cool action. LOVE IT!!!! I think it is just perfect for photos of kids pretending to be chickens and American classics, don't you? :D
Hey I gotta let have a little fun with the tools of the trade if I am ever going to get them to muck out the chicken coop. :P

8th Grade Recognition and other stuff

Yessir, I officially have a high schooler now, not sure how it happened so fast, but happen it did.
How is it that time can both go sooooo slow and so fast all at the same time? It seems like I was just sending him off for his first day of school yesterday and then, BAM!, he's done with grade school. I dread how fast these next four years are going to be.

Of course a I have to show a few photos of the man in his duds. He did look right shahhhp! That is once he figured out how to tie his tie. :D



He and his buddy were all smiles for once( if you have a 14 year old boy you know what I mean).


I finally got a decent shot of all three of my little heathens, decent meaning everyone was looking in my general direction and had something like a smile on their face.


Had to get one in of Izzy because she is getting HUGE! Plus I love the light in this one.


Last but not least one of my new faves of Lilia.