It's Summertime, Summertime . . .

One last picture of my sweet peas
in more abundunt times!

Oh my gosh, we finally got some heat here and my beloved sweet peas bit the dust. Really, just dried up and the leaves turned papery thin. I'm in the process of tearing them all out now. I'm sad to see them go but I learned alot this year in my quest for sweet peas. I learned two things ~ 1) I won't plant so many next year & 2) I will only plant along a fence. The few things I have in my garden are doing well, we've had zucchini bread made with zucchini's that have grown and the cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and radishes and growing like crazy. I would like to plant a watermelon and maybe a couple of pumpkins but because I don't have a drip system with a timer it's kind of hard to go away and ask someone to water my plants for me. Actually, it's just hard for me to ask anyone to do anything for me. I wonder why that is.

We just got back from our 1st camping trip of this summer. We went up to Richardson's Grove State Park, just south of Garberville. It's beautiful up there, surrounded by redwood trees and nature in general. We had 2 really nice camping spots and the kids really enjoyed riding their scooters on the loop (the road around the campground). The weather was warm and everyone (but me) swam in the Eel river and had a great time. It was a very low key camping trip for us, no big agenda of things to do, just basically playing games, eating and having a good time.

Joe playing his DS on the hammock ~ Benji playing on a log with his toys ~ Zach giving our trip a thumbs up! Matt & Santino riding their scooters.

Mike came up with Benji on Friday and left with him about 1:00 on Saturday when he fell out of the door of the motorhome, face first, onto the asphalt. It was awful. I am terrible in an emergency, I just ran to Jeff and cried. After Benji stopped crying he seemed to be alright, but Mike felt he should take him home. When he got to Santa Rosa he took him to the ER where they checked him out and declared him alright and Mike finally walked in the door at home at 9:45 p.m. It was a long day for him. Benji has a little scuffed up nose and his lip was a little swollen but he's fine ~ Thank God!

On Saturday, as we were camping, our prima ballerina, Chloe, had a ballet performance in San Francisco ~ but ~ our roving reporter ~ Erik ~ (Chloe's father and totally non-biased) said Chloe was by far the star of the show! This is Chloe's 2nd ballet recital. Last year we were able to attend it and I made a DVD of it. The soundtrack I used for it was Stevie Wonder's "Isn't she lovely", it continues to be a song that identifies our little Chloe girl. She's a wonderful, loving spirit with a beautiful smile who loves to giggle! I am so sorry we missed her performance.

This is Chloe at last year's ballet recital. Last year, almost 5, this year, almost 6. She is a definite cutie pie!

So now as we get into July we have another camping trip planned in 2 weeks and then that will be the end of my camping for this summer. Kenny and our sons and the boys will do another trip or two but Grammy sits those trips out. I look forward to Kenny retiring next March and the two of us going on a longer trip to places we've never seen, but until then I'll just be happy that we're able to take the short trips we do now and include our family.

My thought to leave with you for today is: We have not inherited the earth from our Fathers. We are borrowing it from our children. Let's try a little harder to leave them something that they can leave to their children.

Until next time . . .