Start to the Summer

Happy 11th Anniversary to US!

Today, eleven years ago, Nick and I were married. He is my best friend, and my love forever.

Nathan is SEVEN!

Nathan is officially past 6, 6 and a quarter, 6 and a half, 6 and 9/12ths, 6 and 11/12ths, and 6 and 364/365ths. He is officially SEVEN, and although it's a wonderful thing, IT'S AN AWFUL THING! How absolutely dreadful! My sweet, brilliant son is going through the years at lightning speed. I have no problem with my own age. I am perfectly happy everytime I get to take another breath in another day. However, it is hard to be a spectator as I watch my boys grow up.
I should not complain. I am thrilled to be their mother. I am blessed a million times over that they are happy and healthy and fill the world with love...and a few tantrums, but definitely a sizable chunk of love too. Seven, seven, seven, seven, seven. My, my, my.

Divine Dahlias and a Defiant Darling

Yes, these are MYYYY dahilas! The yellow one is much larger than the purple one in real life. It's 10 inches in diameter! Some of the plants I ordered produced smaller flowers than I expected, but I've enjoyed watching them grow!

And yes, that's my darling, too! He was having a tantrum and I wanted to capture the moment of love on camera.

Houses 2, 3, 4, and 5

I don't have a digital photo of our first house. I'm working on getting one, but all of our photos from back then were on film.

These others have set the stage for our lives. Some homes came with big trees, some with tiny lollipop trees. Some came in comfortably established neighborhoods, some were the first-born of the new neighborhoods. Two backed up to cotton fields, three backed up to alley ways, one backs up to a pond, one backed up to a wall of poison ivy! In three of them, I've rocked our children to sleep. Three of them, we built. One of them was, no doubt, temporary. One of them we bought on a whim--on the way to lunch one Saturday afternoon. One of them had a basement. All of them housed our dogs. Two of them were small, two were medium-sized, and one was large. Two faced north, one faced east, and two faced south. In one of them, we put up wallpaper. In one of them, we took down a LOT of wallpaper. In three of them, we painted rooms. In four of them were fireplaces...that were never, EVER, used. In each and every one of them, we had gatherings with friends and family. Each home comes with many stories, hard work, indoor improvement projects, outdoor landscaping work, and a ton of memories.