no hot tub yet

Well, he tried. My nice brother came over again, but ran into some trouble, and has to come back on maybe Saturday....Oh well. But the good news is that it is all ready, cleaned and polished, and ready to be filled, and I have all the supplies for it. I'm supposing it'll be all the sweeter to sink into after all this waiting...

I didn't go to the concert after all. Camille just gets fussy in the evenings, and I couldn't get past how easy it is to be home when she wants bed...and Charlotte Claire, she needs to run and scream, not sit and listen. So daddy took the band kids, and Kathryn, Suzanne, Sonja, and Jon....so it was just Joseph, Evelyn, Charlotte Claire, Camille and I here....and my mother-in-law, Eleanor, came over with dinner for tomorrow night....when she comes back from Fla. for the season, she brings dinner over occasionally....she made: pizza pasta, which is ziti with sausage, pepperoni, fresh mushrooms, and mozzarella cheese.....and a chocolate cake...isn't that so nice of her? Now tomorrow, I will know all day that I have dinner already. Just so nice.

Emily is home from work, and Abigail home from school. I'm glad they still live here....I love hearing about their days. Charlotte Claire is still up, and she is so funny. Whenever she gets a bump or an owie, she kisses herself. No matter how many toddlers I've had, when they learn to talk, it totally entertains me. My husband calls her sweetie-pie....so tonight she tells him, "I sweetie-pie!"....Her and Jon are like little puppies, up on the couch looking out the window when the garbage truck comes, or the mailman, or if a tractor goes by. It almost looks like they are wagging their tails when someone pulls into the driveway. And when people leave, they beeline to the window to watch them pull out....

I cut some lilacs today to put on the counter, they fill the kitchen up with a wonderful smell...which reminds me so directly of my mother, I almost can't stand it. How can it be that she's been gone for almost 2 years? My father has been gone for over a year now. Laundry reminds me of him. He was the laundry guy, and drove my mother nuts. He washed everything together, she didn't even like putting things in the hamper, because he would do a load with only 2 or 3 things, just because he loved washing clothes....apparently it reminded him of his mother, he liked to skip school on laundry day, because he liked the smell of clothes on the line. So when I take clothes, wet and clean from the washer, and press my nose in and smell that yummy detergent smell, I think of my dad. Laundry detergent and fabric softener sheets were something I was never short of when he was alive, because he bought those by the cartfull. He kept us more than supplied....some of my siblings and I would talk, and sometimes it was just a plain pain in the neck, trucking home all the stuff he would buy us..."someday we'll miss this"..., we would say to each other, but it didn't seem real, that it would ever really end. I cannot believe they are gone, my childhood empty and sold....