It’s Monday and the start of a new week. But before we are all crazed about deadlines, meetings, chores, practices, and every other little thing, I thought I would take a moment to appreciate some of the better, and picture-worthy, moments of the past week.
About a week ago we had two of the neighbors over for a playdate. R & Big A are good friends from school, and Monkey and Little A are friends thanks to proximity and their older siblings. Monkey loooooves Little A and calls her his “best friend.” They are a riot when they play together running away from “monsters” and they are quite good at being formal when their big sisters dress them up for a ball (ah the vagaries of being the younger sibling!). You’ll notice Monkey is wearing a suit jacket and tie over his grungy weekend crew-neck t-shirt. Little A has been primped and powdered and made up within an inch of her life and is sporting a sash that says, “Princess” (in case you couldn’t get that from the bright pink foofy dress she is wearing). They were paraded down to the living room and danced to some Disney Princess song or other. Monkey is quite the charmer on the dance floor and as you can see from the second picture, he did twirl Little A about a bit with some grace. Is it too early to get them signed up for “So you think you can Dance?”
Like most of the east coast, we had a pretty good amount of rain within the last couple of weeks. That caused a pretty good amount of flooding in the field behind our house where it dips down. The kids have always loved when this happens–Monkey especially. He goes out back, rolls up his pants (and sometimes just removes them completely!) and splashes around in the mini ponds for over an hour. It is his favorite thing to do. He will sneak out there if I’m not paying attention, and I physically have to go remove him to get him to come in and eat dinner. He’s a little water bug.
So the other day, as I was assessing the clean up for the screen house attached to our barn, I’ve got half an eye on him as he’s standing out in the field. He yells to me something I hear as “Come look at the dust!” when, in fact, he was telling me to come look at the ducks. Curious why he’d want me to look at dust in the field, I trekked out there and sure enough, there is a pair of mallard ducks swimming along in the bigger and deeper of the puddles out back. They were a male and female who seemed completely undisturbed by the small boy yelling nearby and chattering at them as they dove for food and swam about. We talked about the ducks at length and I took some pictures for Monkey to take into school. Here are Mr. & Mrs. Mallard.
One of Monkey’s many favorite things to do on the fly is construct rock piles. I like to think of it as Cairn-building. Sounds way more cultured. So during the week he called me over to look at his latest creation.
I thought the pink polka-dotted rock was inspired…
This weekend, the kids, dogs, and I made a quick trip to my hometown for R to participate in another Greek Dance event. The weather was just amazing and I took advantage of the fact that there were multiple extra adults around and went for a walk early Sunday Morning along the water. I should have remembered my regular camera, but I was planning to do some running too, and the camera would have been to awkward to bring. So phone camera it was.
This is my favorite house on my walking route. It’s got the roof line I love in houses, wrap-around porch, nice decorative detail that is not over-done, and a widow’s walk. Someday…
I can’t wait to see what this is going to be when it’s finished. Might just have to keep visiting so I can take pictures of the progress!
Coming full-circle, we’ve got R in her Greek dance costume with her Irish blue eyes and freckles. She did a great job partaking in the Greek Independence Day celebration at church. Again, for a kid who doesn’t get the same opportunities to learn to dance that I had growing up, she did pretty well. I suspect the chance to wear a costume was a bonus for her, although for me I would have declined the pleasure if it meant dressing up more than the usual church skirt. She’s a beautiful girl no matter what she wears though!
Before I move on to putting kids on buses and getting my head collected for the week and clip on the pedometer to see just how much moving around I do in a day, I heard from K again today. He says they are still busy, the chow is good, and email is up and running. See? Somethings *are* the same there and here!
Hope you all have a picture-worthy week!
