a few favorite quotes.......

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh," he whispered. 
"Yes, Piglet?" 

"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw, "I just wanted to be sure of you.
                                                                                    a.a. milne

"You miss 100% of the shots you never take."

                                                                Wayne Gretzky

We must teach our children to dream with their eyes open.
                                                                                                Harry Edwards

When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.
                                                                                                  Henry Fielding

“The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.”

                                                                                                                           Pablo Casals

"To become a real boy, you must prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish."                                                                                                  — Pinocchio Serenity Now!!!!                              George Costanza

"Life is not measured by the breaths you take 

but by the moments that take your breath away"

                                                                                                       Anonymous

i hope you are having a great weekend....

so now that he's back to work.......

do you think i can get a new patio table umbrella???

when we bought this patio table set about 5 or 6 years ago, it had a really nice matching umbrella.  

somebody, ahem, 

and i'm not naming names....

left the umbrella open when we had a heavy rainstorm 

and it flew away like mary poppins.  

we searched the neighborhood (because the neighbor's son watched it fly away) high and low but think it may have flown into the large woods behind our house 

or the neighboring county.

anyhoo....

we never found it.  

our neighbor (same neighbor with said son who watched it fly away) had a garage sale and some of her friends from church brought some of their things to sell.  one of the items was a patio umbrella. 

that sort of matched our set, for 5 dollars.  

so we bought it.  

it was a real piece of crap.  

but unnamed dude was determined that it was going to work.  so he 

sewed what needed to be sewed when the rivets popped out of the spines and the rest

he duct taped....see that shiny spot above???  look closer

don't all men think that duct tape fixes anything/everything??

yesterday we opened the umbrella and 

this

was the result.  

lovely, isn't it??

well, now i'm on a quest for a new umbrella.  hopefully i can find one in gray or black or turquoise (ooh, turquoise) 

and cheap...if you can direct me to a great deal, 

i would appreciate an email or comment.  :D

unemployment, the finale....

well, i've been afraid to say anything, especially after the first disaster with don's job situation....

but...

he has a job.  a JOB!!

for real this time..

he starts his third week tomorrow.  

so i am hoping that the precautionary waiting period is over with. and that it's for real this time.  

he is working for the state of michigan in lansing.

it's an hour away........which sucks.....

but it is a job.  with fantabulous benefits!!!
and a three year jump on being vested.  because he is a veteran of the military
he is vested after 3 years instead of waiting 6 years.

the drive is long but i have him set up with harry potter books on cd and this has made a huge difference there and back.  it really makes the time go by faster.

so for now, all is good!!

i want to thank everyone for all of your thoughts and prayers for us.
you rock!!!

have you ever seen clouds like this????

last night it was very hot and humid.

probably about 83 degrees and 100% humidity at 9:00. 

i don't think i have ever seen clouds like this 

these came up pretty fast although they didn't produce any rain or storms.  

just 9 minutes later it looked like this in the east......

then this....

 the southern side of the yard looked like this...

the color was remarkable...

back to the east it all looked very omnious...

but to the west where the sun was setting, we had this....

pretty cool, huh..

and since there was no rain, my little neighbor, evan 

and i picked some flowers for her mama...

:)

another busy couple of weeks.....

lots and lots of this

which was played on the west side of the state in grand haven, michigan.  what a gorgeous town.  

there was a beautiful beach where austen and i walked the boardwalk, 

and got ice cream 

after his games on saturday...

we left friday and got home today.  

wow, since july 6th, austen has played in two baseball tournaments and had two regular season games for a total of 12 games in 12 days.

i am about baseballed out!!  

but we had fun. but we also had a very scary day too. 

 on the way back to the hotel after first game yesterday, one of austen's coaches and his son were involved in an auto accident.  the coach had 5 broken ribs and  a concussion and austen's teammate had a slight concussion.  he was t-boned while turning onto a main road.  thank goodness for side crash airbags.  his injuries would probably have been much worse.  

we are all praying for a speedy recovery and i hope you will say a few prayers for them too!!  

i also was lucky enough to take pictures of two beautiful baby girls...

this one, baby j

who was just 5 days old...

isn't she darling?? she was close to nine pounds!!

and this one, baby s

who was two weeks old but just over 5 pounds.

and so very precious...

needless to say, there really hasn't been too much time to blog.  

but baseball will be over in a week since austen's last tournament is next weekend.  

hopefully i will be back to regular posting by then....please be patient.

scarlett....

loves to read....

and at 6 years old, is reading harry potter.   

ah, a girl after my own heart......

i think the thing i love the most about this picture is the dirty fingernails.....so very typically scarlett.  she is the sweetest, most loving child.  she is so much like her mother...

shannon was the best child to raise.  she was so easy, and i was spoiled by that. 

 i was a single mom when her dad and i divorced.  she was just 3 years old and it was just her and i for the most part.  my parents were very helpful and helped with babysitting whenever i needed it.  my dad was a wonderful influence on her and they adored her, their first grandchild.  

scarlett has the same temperament as shannon did and is just a joy to be around. 

we watched scarlett a lot when she was a baby and we grew very close to her.  she is our first grandchild, too,  and we have a very special bond with her.

she is sassy...

and sweet...

and extremely smart....(yes, i am prejudiced)

we truly love this girl.

i adore this picture of her.  i love that she is sitting in the window seat reading.  i love her curled toes, her silly band bracelets and the way she is pinching her foot. 

she is the polar opposite of her sister.....  

the handful....

but we'll save that for another post.

so, we went to "ow ardens".....

as one of the day trips we did while i'm on my vacation.  

well, that's were we went when don uses the camera...
here is where we really went.....

yes, that is the shot he took after i looked at the pictures on the camera and had to recompose the shot for him.

he did, however, manage to get a couple nice ones of me.  i never have pictures of myself because i'm always behind the camera.  he just does not want to learn how to use it. i think all of the bells and whistles scare him.
 but i forced him to.  because he is never going to remember what i look like if i croak...

so, i set everything up and all he has to do is push the button.
remember me looking exactly like this, honey, but 20 years younger.  when i wasn't a grandma.

we had never been there before even though it is only about an hour from our house.
it was really beautiful.

huge trees, and i mean huge.

of course, scarlett found a frog.  i had to keep her from putting it into her pocket.
because she loves frogs.

there was a gorgeous rose garden.  i think this was don's favorite part of the venue.  he loves roses

there were hundreds of different ones and we saw some really beautiful varieties.

 i think the kids loved them too.  the colors were stunning and they all smelled so good.

 every color you can imagine.

 i think the bees were in heaven too. their legs were full of pollen.

i think these were my favorites.  i'm a sucker for pink shrub roses.

 the exposure sucked on this one but i loved the shot so i went with it....

the best part was the picnic lunch we brought.  we had chicken salad sandwiches, cheese, bing cherries potato chips and raspberry lemonade.  it was a great summer picnic.  a picnic was on my list of things to do while on my vacation.

 we set out a blanket in a shady quiet spot and ate a leisurely lunch.

 then we laid back for a while and looked for animal shapes in the clouds

and i think we got a little too comfortable with our full bellies....

it was hard to get up and get going again.
but we were excited to see the rest of the gardens....

austen and scarlett were so cute together...

when he didn't have her in a chokehold

or giving her a noogie....

they were bringing tears to my eyes with sweet images like this....austen and scarlett are more like brother and sister than uncle and niece.  they are just 6 years apart so they have practically grown up together.  i think it has kept don and i very young to have a child and a grandchild so close in age.

there were streams to cross

but i thought it would be loads more fun to land in the mud when i jumped the stream.  that was fun!!!!  walking around with a wet muddy foot is always a blast.

and just for the record, i was farther upstream and had a much wider span to jump over than the kids did...

we all loved the children's garden....

 if you look closely, this is a rainbow garden...red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. (click to make it bigger)
very clever.

those are actually real grapes on this arbor/tunnel.

 i loved the farmer made of straw who was tending the corn.

and the scarecrows made by children

 helen kell....i mean, austen loved the water pump

there were all kinds of different vegetables and fruits planted within the garden designs.  there was corn, beans, radishes, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes among others.

we spoke with one of the employees who said that when all of the vegetables ripen in august, the kids can just pick and eat what they want.  she told us the only thing ripe when we were there were radishes.  austen picked one and tried it.  not a good thing.....

 lots of insect life too.  have you ever seen a red dragonfly??

me either...until then!!!

i don't think i've ever seen a green elephant either.  until then!!!

why do kids wait until 5 minutes before we are going to leave to run through the sprinklers?
because that is what you do in the summertime.  and then you ask for the picnic blanket in the car because you are freezing cold in the air-conditioning......

it's a definite do-again activity.