Memorial Day Annual...

Window washing and spring cleaning. We all work together every year to do this big job, and are done by suppertime. Mother washes all the windows and screens in the bathtub, while Daddy works on cleaning tracks and taking out windows. Brenda helped Mother in the bathroom with wiping and shining the windows. The rest of us work on all the smaller jobs, washing the large living room windows, vaccuming, dusting, and using the webster on the corners of the rooms. Jeff barbecued hot dogs for lunch. Then Dad took us all out to eat at Johnson's Corner (the resturant that makes world famous cinnamon rolls) for supper.

Jeff dusting fans and fanblades.
Mother taking out a bathroom window to wash it.
Emily spraying window blinds with water.
These two pictures go together from inside and outside.
Jeff making lunch.

Flower pictures

Here are a few of the flowers we've enjoyed this year. This is an iris in our neighbor's yard. She always grows lots of pretty ones each year.
This is one of lots of purple blooms on one of our two clamatis plants. Both of our clamatis plants are doing wonderfully this year. And below is one bloom from the red one.
Here is a picture of a snipit of the flower bed we have in our backyard. It is the prettiest it's ever been this year. Purple irises, red clamatis, yellow irises.
We have only one poppy flower this year in front of our house.
This is a picture I took in our backyard. The light coming through the trees above this bush cast a lovely shadow on the board below.

Scrapbook for Grandma

As a Mother's Day gift, my children presented a small scrapbook to me that will portray my grandson Quil's first year of life in pictures. They had kept it a secret for awhile, but needed to let the secret out so they could make more progress without having to be secretive about it.

A couple of the pages from the album

Painting the bench

Painting must run in our family! This picnic bench badly needed a facelift. Daddy sanded it and let Beth and Emily stain and varnish it. It looks lots better.

A lunch visit 5-29-08

Last Thursday Nicole and Phoebe Hinkle came to see us for a few hours. Brenda was leaving for NJ the next day and it was kind of a goodbye visit for Brenda with our Hinkle friends. Brenda had made a flannel baby blanket for their coming new baby and gave it to Nicole then. (Notice: You can see how much the bench needed the facelift in the other post.)This is a close up of the blanket. Bren embroidered it and crocheted around the edges.
We enjoyed our time with Nicole and Phoebe and had a pizza lunch.

Jason's mustache: missing in action!

This is the mustache that Jeffrey helped Jason to shave off. And look how happy he was about it!

NEWs

The other day we got a new picnic table from Sams that folds up. The same evening we also got a new barbecuer and set it up after supper - which was eaten on our new picnic table! Beth (me), Jason, and DadWhile Dad, Jason, Jeff, and I set up the barbecuer, Mother planted some more new green bean seeds where some did not come up. Mother, straddling the bean rows and planting more.

We have always had a turtle dove couple live in our area. Some years, their nest has been in our Blue Spruce tree where we could watch the babies grow up. We understand that doves mate for life, so we figured this was the same couple year after year that spent time on our property. Last week, we found one of the doves dead by our driveway, close to the highway. Jason and Emily gave it a decent burial. After that as we have eaten on the deck several days, we noticed this lone turtledove sitting atop a telephone pole. He or she is most likely the mate of the deceased. We feel sorry for him or her.