Celebrations Begin

It was a busy week as our family celebrations began! Working at the flower shop provides a quiet beginning to my week with beauty to focus on.

We had friends over to play in the creek that runs near our house. I find it so relaxing to escape to the woods and the running water.

I've started two days at the shop now -- Monday and Thursday. Beauty refresher midweek! Sounds like a good plan!

When I'm not working at the shop I'm working on developing nature journaling courses and part of that involves figuring out an indoor filming place. I'm making progress!

We had a church fellowship event this past week! Maybe our first since the pandemic? It was a chalk drawing night in the parking lot complete with popsicles!

David's toad (frog?) won a prize!

Drew painted the shutters for us! I've been wanting them to be painted for several years now and it makes me so happy to have them match the front door again!

I stopped by a friend's to see her amazing Hummingbird nest! What a treat for her family to have hummingbirds nesting right outside her patio!

James is playing a lot of tennis this summer in prep for the school season. I drove him to his first tennis matches and mentally prepared for a few more months of this!

We had a beautiful foggy morning this week and on one of my early walks with neighbors I captured this beautiful scene:

Laura is reading the Cherry Ames series and it takes me right back to being her age. I loved the Cherry Ames books (about a girl who studies nursing in college and goes on to have quite a glamorous career at a number of nursing jobs).

Drew went to prom. Yes, they had prom! I'm not sure it was quite what it usually is, but this year I made sure I was in on the pictures.

And got one with him too!

In the midst of life we took time to celebrate our 21st anniversary with a picnic.

Drew's graduation open house was Saturday at a nearby park. It was a great day and we so enjoyed visiting with all his guests.

I made some flowers for the food table.

We made all our food individually packaged: veggies and dip, fruit salad, and salami, olive, tomato, and mozzarella bites. Shaved ice for dessert!

Sunday we celebrated the birthdays of both of our moms! We had peach or blueberry pie for dessert. Yum!

And we ended the week with a beautiful rainbow out back and a peaceful light over the garden.

 And now we are headed into another week of graduation and birthday celebrations.

Summer Days

This summer has been the nicest weather-wise since I can remember! Really it has been incredible. Here is the view out my back door. It's the clouds that have been most astounding. Nearly everyday this summer we have been treated to incredible cloud formations.

The flowers make the back come alive with color and beauty. I always imagine sitting there and rarely get to but the thought that I could is still nice.

Rachel will be starting high school at a local Christian school next week! It's hard to believe. It will be a new experience for all of us since Michael and I were both homeschooled and Rachel has been until now. It turns out that golf is the sport that fit for our family so Rachel's been trying to learn all she can the last few weeks before practice officially starts. The nice thing about being a golf mom is you can sit outside in a beautiful and peaceful setting with no loud crowds (that I know of)!!!

"Dress Like a Cow Day" came last week and the kids cooperated with their outfits and we all enjoyed our once-a-year dinner at Chik-fil-a!

We managed to get all the 4h projects done and submitted (no small feat!!). Rachel's work finally paid off and after four years of entering knitting she is going to the state fair with her entry!!! (I will post details on the pattern later this week.) Andrew is also going to the state fair with his genealogy work!!!

We spent a perfect evening at the County Fair last week -- the weather was in the low 70's which was unbelievable! We visited all the children's entries as well as mine and then walked around the animal barns before ending at the archery building where the kids showed Grandma some of their skills!

It's now a tradition that we go to VBS at Grandma's church each July. The kids love it! This year there was a spy theme and David dressed the part!

Laura spent a few mornings home with Dad (she's too young for VBS) and kept him well fed and entertained.

I spent a few mornings (well, part of 5 mornings) at one of my favorite past-times -- shopping at the Goodwill Outlet where you "pay by the pound".  It had been months since I'd been. I find it a fascinating experience, not just a good place to find things for my crafts. I observed the "regulars" -- people who went EVERYDAY! (yes, I was one of those but just for last week!) I met and talked with the loveliest lady who drives a truck for Goodwill and she gave me all her linen-cleaning tips!

And I was blessed to find a lot! This was one day's traul: sweaters to felt, vintage linens to use and sell, a Gladys Taber book (!!!!!), a complete set of days-of-the-week tea towels, fabric, clothing, etc.

Laura came with me two of the mornings and of course we had a great time together!

 We love watching her care for her precious baby dolls. She is the best mommy to them!

And then she landed herself in the hospital overnight on Friday after tripping and hitting her head on the kitchen floor. This was her third ER trip of the year and we hated to go but she had too many signs of possible concussion to avoid going in. Thankfully, the CT scan showed all was fine but her heart rate was too low so they kept her overnight. Her heart normalized in the early morning and no one could explain what was going on and by the afternoon she was home again. Our crazy little baby!

 Craig and Em hosted the joint Grandma-David birthday party on Sunday afternoon. Lots of fun!

This was my favorite picture -- trouble is right! But, at least it is usually fun trouble!

Yay for the birthday people!

The grand babies all love Grandma:

We also celebrated 15 years of marriage last week! (We have about 6 birthdays and 1 anniversary in the same week in our extended family):

We managed to do some celebrating with a little get-away to downtown Indianapolis!

Some yummy food:

And a lovely hotel!

Looking a little different than 15 years ago:

The hotel we stayed at used to be a train station! Some guests could choose to stay in train cars! All I could think of was a Poirot movie.

And now we are home and catching our breath before we say goodbye to pure summer and dive into the next school year (yikes!).