One of my dreams has come true

Some of my readers know Bill and I live quite a long way from the rest of our families.  I have a brother in Los Angeles and another in Miami.  All of Bill's family lives in Idaho.  From where we live, those are an eight hour to a four day trip away from here.  Truthfully, in addition to the summer heat, those are the only things we don't like about living in our city.

But!  Almost a year ago those thing started to change.  First Bill's niece Carolyn came to live in our city.  The next thing we knew, my son David and his wife came to live here.  We see Carolyn every week or two, and David and/or Alicia several times a week.

Today was kind of an ordinary visit.  Bill invited David and Alicia to go to a morning car show with him, then they came back here for breakfast, then went home and on with their day.

I.love.this.
[picture of David and Alicia that I think is on the hard drive of my camera because the card slot is empty but the battery for my camera is being charged and I can't access it right now]

A homey Saturday

Today was a homemaking kind of Saturday.  First thing this morning I went to Market On The Move which is the food co-op where for $10 you can have up to about 60 pounds of produce that would have been taken from the inspection station at the US-Mexican border to the dump because it was not picked up on time. 

I got:

tomatoes
English cucumbers
yellow summer squash
little sweet bell peppers

Doesn't sound like much, but from the tomatoes I got:

30 jars of diced tomatoes.  They were all pints except the last one which was a half-pint.  I was out of tomato pints (still have a few quarts) and was having to use store-bought ones. (!!!)

David stopped by around lunch time, then he and Bill went to a gun show.  It was David's first and he was quite intrigued, Bill said.

A little later Alicia dropped in and we chatted while I finished up the canning.  She suddenly had a hankering to pet and hold a chicken, so I sent her out with a container of scraps to entice them.  They're very friendly.

You can see the towels drying in the sun behind her.  I got a couple of loads of laundry done too.

 

In the evening, a cook-out with David and Alicia and all of us.

 

It was a good day.

David and the girls' day out

This morning David asked if he could take the girls out on an adventure.  Of course!  I suggested taking them down a main street here in the city until it dead ended at a natural desert area.  It's lightly developed with some rough paths and a few signs, and it's quite a good hike.

He and I packed some delicious fresh bread, trail mix, fruit, and drinks and off they went.  On the way back they stopped at a park and he snapped this picture of the girls there:

And here is my usual final question:  aren't they cute?

Juliette?

My 5th graders are learning about William Shakespeare this month and Elizabeth decided to make herself a Juliette costume.

This headband was some lace with pre-sewn ribbon rosettes on  it.

She found a pretty costume dress to add to it.  I hear David is to be Romeo. :-)

What do you do when the kids spend the night at a friends?

You go to out to dinner, of course!

Our needs are simple, so Sweet Tomatoes is was.  I like the Won Ton Happiness salad and always have some of that, although it didn't have much dressing on it and didn't bring the "Happiness" it usually brings me.  However, they did have broccoli cheese soup, which I adore, and I also had small bowls of split pea with ham and classic minestrone as well.  The key here was "small bowls."  I had several pieces of the four cheese bread (YUM), then two servings of apple crisp with frozen yogurt on it.  Since I had two servings, obviously it was good.  I realized with the second bowl that I should put caramel sauce on the ice cream and noticed the little sign said it was now house-made.  It tasted like and had the same texture as my homemade caramel sauce.  Really good.

We had David and my mom along and it was a very pleasant adult evening out.

Elizabeth's sewing project

Elizabeth got the idea to make a rag doll and she has been surprisingly tenacious in her efforts!  I'm really pleased, as I've been known to sew a thing or two in my time as well.

She is using some fabric that was originally purchased to make a little set of overalls for David (he's 25 now . . . ) and I also used to make her a pioneer bonnet two summers ago.

The doll has a head, two arms, and one leg, some of which are pinned to the body already.  She's working on the last leg in this picture.  She is really happy with her efforts.

David and Alicia's wedding pictures

Take a look!

Pictures of David when he was little

I'm scanning some old pictures of David for a "slide" presentation to be shown at his wedding reception. What a lot of fun memories!