summer fun....

Mali brought little Lydia over to visit, I love being Grammy. Lydia is such a sunshine, she comes over here and gets passed around from Cam to Char to Jon to Sonja, Suze, Evelyn, Kathryn...and Emily and Mirielle were also visiting yesterday evening, so they held her too. Paul was also here, Suzanne and I picked him up from the airport yesterday.

Evelyn grilled chicken, we had rice and veggies, and ate on the deck in the warm summer breeze. Some of the girls went to the lake to watch the sunset with one of their friends, and Jon went to the drive-in with some of the boys.

Today we are going on a picnic to the beach on Owasco Lake, then the symphony plays the patriotic music, then fireworks. It's lovely weather, all sunny and warm, and I am very thankful.

Don't get me wrong, ha, it's not ALL sunshine and roses here. We have skunks getting into the garbage every single night, they knock down the cans, even it it has a lid on it, and have a messy feast. We know they're skunks because Joseph saw a few one night, he threw a chair at them, and they didn't seem too fazed. I guess if you are a skunk, and you live near our family, not much scares you. So we have to figure out something do do, besides Paul's suggestion, which is to wait up for them with the rifle, ha. I am tired of picking up the garbage in the mornings.

And, we have something that smells in the living room, we can't find it. Yesterday we moved the furniture, swept, vacuumed, mopped, and still smelled it. It may be a mouse dead in the heat vent, although we had no clues of any mice here. Today we are going to move the bookcases and see if we can figure it out.

We weeded the garden yesterday, Kathryn and Evelyn and Suzanne, Sonja, Jonathan, Char, Cam, and I. Evelyn had her snippers out there, chopping the weeds around the rasberries, and the rest of us weeded between squash and corn and beans and tomatoes. Afterwards we jumped in the pool...

I put flea stuff on the dogs, and they seem to have less. We need to treat the whole yard, as that's where they come from, but I am reluctant to put chemicals on where we walk with barefeet, and play.

Also, both girls failed their driving tests this past week. They'll probably kill me for putting it out here, but it happens. They are both good drivers, but one got nervous, and one almost hit the instructor's car when she was parallel parking, which I watched from the park across the street, oh dear. I have gone through driver's tests with eleven of them now, and some of them took a few, a few had to take it three times, although I think the boys all passed the first time. That's a lot of times to go through this...the nerves before hand, living with the sulky teen who fails...and you know us, we go take the test, then have errands to do after...and there I am, trying not to say the wrong thing, totally understanding that tears want to flow....I hurt with them, although I know better than they do that it's not really the end of the world.

So life isn't all sunshine and roses. But as I sit here in the quiet of the morning, sipping my coffee, the washing machine humming with a load of towels, after taking care of the pool and feeding the pets and taking a shower, I can't complain. The kids will be waking up and talking to me, and no, I can't complain.