The Many Faces of Miss Willa

Daddy and his daughter

Tired!

Yesterday was a great celebration of 40 years of marriage with friends and family. This is the picture that sums up best, the day.

Pictures will appear throughout the week. Just not right now.
Thank you everyone for the cards, words and your presence on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
We are Blessed. Thanks for making it so.

The Yard

Curt has been working very hard and long hours, but the backyard fence is all done, just in time for this weekend's celebration.

This is how it looked before he finished the rabbit proof fence in the front of the garden.

And this how how it looks with the rabbit fence in place. I love the use of the old wood and the new.

The decorations are back up.

We are enjoying our backyard privacy, once again. We can sit out and watch the garden grow. I have made a new stand for the bird bath. That will be up and out next week.

Birthday Wishes

Happy Birthday, Melissa!

Streets Paved in Gold

Have you ever forked a lawn or had your lawn forked? Do you know what I am referring to? Plastic forks stuck into the ground of a lawn, usually front lawn so everyone notices?

Well, our lawn has been forked! But then it usually is this time of year...

by the thousands of maple seeds falling from...

the three Silver Maple trees along the boulevard. These two trees are more than 50 years old and provide much needed and appreciated shade in the summer. But the debris produced by the trees this time of year sure is a pain. First it is the brown flowers falling and filling the eaves and rain gutters. Late May is the seeding season. The eaves and gutters are now full of Maple tree seeds. The strong wind today helped with the deluge of "little helicopters" as the kids used to call them. In fact so many fell today...

it looked like the street was paved with little pieces of gold.  Time to get out the leaf blower and suck up the mess.

Happy Birthday to you...

Happy Birthday

to 

nephew Troy

and great nephew Corey

May 24th

Are we in AZ?

Tonight was a rare occasion at our house. We ate outside and had a fire. Both of these are more common when we live in our winter home. But May is the perfect weather for doing both at our other home.

We cooked steak and potatoes on the grill and enjoyed dinner on the patio, admiring all the work on the fence and wood shed.

We found a small fire pit last weekend and decided to try it out. After a 78º day, this seemed to be a perfect way to end it.

We have lots of wood for the new fire pit. Hopefully, we will use it often this summer. We listened to the Twins win their game and enjoyed a lovely May evening, pleased with the long daylight hours.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my knight in shining armor...

Miss Willa, 3 weeks old

We both got some one-on-one sleeping Willa time today.

This smile occurred while she was deciding if she should wake up or continue the nap.

Didn't matter to Grandpa. A smile from Miss Willa is like striking gold.

I figured out a way to hold Miss Willa in my left arm 

and take a picture with my right hand.

This is the look I got from Miss Willa. No smile for grandma!

We didn't hold her the WHOLE day. She was content to be in her little 

seat,  look around the room, and track her momma's voice.

What a sweetheart!

It's Done!

This is the fence in our backyard around our garden and the wood pile. To our best recollection, we think we built most of this around 1984. It is not this year's garden, however, just one of the many pictures I have come across in the last two weeks.

However, over the years the wood in the wood shed has pushed against the back wall causing the wall to bulge.

Fixing the fence has been on Curt's project list for several years. This was the spring to do it.

All of the boards were taken off. New support boards were put in place and the six support posts were reinforced. The alley behind our lot is used daily by three or four residents. We really like our privacy fence.

The week of rainy weather slowed the project.

Finally the back wall was back in place using the old boards. Instead of spacing them, Curt placed the boards side by side to keep the rabbits out of the garden and other critters from "living" in the wood shed.

Then he started placing new boards on the inside wall. This will look more like the fence around the patio next to the house. Ah, our privacy wall is back.

Then the wood shed was framed and the walls of boards in place to keep the firewood dry.

As of late this afternoon, the wood walls are all up and done.

 The firewood is now protected by a new roof. But...

there is more firewood to move back inside.

There is the door/gate to finish and a few other touches here and there, but it is done. Now the garden can be tilled and the veggies and flowers transplanted. That will happen this week. Good job, honey!

Perennial Flower Bed

I think I mentioned my perennial flower bed in an earlier post, probably the end of April. I was so pleased to see the flowers that had survived the winter and the rabbits. I had purchased this white pasque plant last spring but did not remember much about the flowers it produced as it probably bloomed for a short time last spring.

The plant has been blooming for more than a week. You can see we've had some hard rains as the white petals are dirty.

Today I realized the flower really opens and is larger than I remembered. It is a perfect compliment to the purple pasque (the SD state flower) which blooms several weeks earlier. I 'de-headed' the purple pasque as the flowers passed their prime and today I found it has some new flowers. It will bloom longer than I thought, if the dying blooms are pinched off, just like many other flowering plants.

The two rocks on the right are from the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Patras, Greece. I found three interesting rocks when I walked along the beach, put them in my suitcase and brought them back with me. That was before 911 and extra fees for overweight luggage!

The one spot of color in the perennial garden right now is another tulip, just one. The rabbits raised havoc on so many of the others.

Okay, a couple more Willa pictures

Great Grandma and Willa on Mother's Day

Willa and auntie on Mother's Day

No new Willa pictures until Monday evening. 

For some darling pictures from this week go to Crystal & Karl's blog

on the right hand side of my blog. 

Willa is changing daily. Can't wait to see her on Monday.

A Picture a Day

One of my summer goals is to go through my thousands of pictures and scan them, some of them, to the computer. Since the weather hasn't been very cooperative for working outside or inspiring house cleaning, I have been sitting at the computer and looking through photo albums and loose photographs. I have loved reliving memories and experiences, remembering and reminiscing. I've realized I have been very fortunate to travel as much as I have; some due to my or hubby's career and some as a result of the kids. I hope you take the opportunity to check out my other blog A Picture a Day.

The purpose of A Picture a Day is to share a photo each day for a year from my collection of photographs. I enjoy photography as a hobby and am excited to show some of what I have seen and the places I have been through the lens of a camera. It's challenging to find what will be 365 artistic, thoughtful, inspiring photos from my collection.

So I invite you to travel with me and enjoy A Picture a Day. Click on the link to the right of this blog, under my photo. My top ten favorite places to visit are coming later this week.

Willa and Auntie

On Sunday, Willa and Auntie got some bonding time with spit-up, even.

Mother's Day with Great Grandma

Josie hamming for the camera. Josie is 13 months old.

Willa and Great Grandma. Willa is 2 weeks old today.

And there was time for a four generation photo. 

Willa wasn't too pleased at the moment.

 I thought it was a wonderful Mother's Day 

because I got to spend it with my mother,

my two children and my grand child.

In fact it was a perfect Mother's Day.

I hope yours was special, too.

Miss Willa at Day 13

She did this a lot while we visited today, sleep. Here she is with Grandpa.

Rocco needed to get in on the action on Mommy's lap, too.

We get to see her tomorrow, so new pictures tomorrow, too.

And if you need to see more of our darling grand daughter, 

visit the link "Crystal & Karl" on the right side of this page.

Happy Birthday, Kari

Thirty some years ago today, you came into our lives.

May your day be as special as you have made ours.

Love, Mom & Dad

Willa Goes Home!

Today Auntie got to meet Miss Willa.

It took about two seconds for Auntie to become a devoted fan of the Miss Willa Club.

Then the best news of all, time to get dressed in her own clothes and

go home, finally!

Welcome home Willa Vivian Elizabeth