Obie pays a visit

Jeff's cousin and his wife paid a visit recently with their son Obie who is 13 months younger than Edie (read: he will be 2 in the Fall).  They had a total blast making a racket while digging through Legos, driving cars and pretending to eat giant strawberry pillows while giggling hysterically.

First Strawberry

Edie and I bought a few strawberry plants for our pots out front this Spring.  She likes to check on them every day (sometimes twice) to see if any new ones are ripe.  She was SO EXCITED when the first one was ready to pick and eat.

Can you read her shirt?

It says: "I'm going to have a new BABY COUSIN!"  Which means my brother and sister in law are pregnant!!  (not to be confused with Jeff's sister and her husband who are ALSO pregnant)

This means that Edie is going to have *2* baby cousins this Fall/Winter.  Jeff's sister Kathleen is due around Halloween and my brother and Emily are due at the New Year.

Front porch

Horsing Around

None of these really require (or have) any explanation - just some every day hijinks around the house in June.  Although I could point out that these first photos of her in the Mickey shirt were taken on a day that was about 50 degrees.  What is it about youth that makes you feel no pain?

Friends (at the end)

This photo simultaneously warms and breaks my heart.  Taken in Maurice's last weeks - Jeff was disconcerted by the total silence that emanated from the living room and rounded the corner to find this:

Birch Bay Weekend

A few weeks ago, we impulsively decided to head north for a weekend at my parents' (newish) cottage at Birch Bay.  We were on our way home from a birthday party late Saturday morning (it was a long weekend) and the weather was oddly summer-ish, so we decided to swing by the house, throw some stuff in a bag and keep driving.  We rarely do such things last minute like that, but we ended up having a great weekend somewhere other than home.

Bocce in the backyard of the cottage the afternoon/evening of our arrival:

Hot dogs on the grill for dinner:

We changed into grubs and walked down to the beach for low tide.  Then our camera died as soon as we decided to wade barefoot into the mud flats at sunset for what could have been the funniest and cutest photos of the weekend. Sigh.

Cake pops and playground the next day:

Sorting her shell collection from the beach visit the previous night:

"Kayaking":

Dinner (and roasted marshmallows) night #2 - we invited my parents to drive up and join us: