Personal requests

Chay wants me to show this picture of Doug. He was looking through one of my photo albums from years ago with Nicole and Alana and saw this picture and seriously asked "IS THAT GRANDMA?" And then he took a closer look and realized it wasn't Grandma... Nicole and Alana had a good laugh! Sorry Doug. (which baby is this?)


I was uploading the above picture of Doug from my camera and the picture below showed up and surprised me. I still had the CD in the computer and so I accidentally uploaded the last picture on the CD. Seriously, that is what really happened, I'm not just trying to slip in cute pictures of my kids randomly. And since it showed up, I thought I'll just keep it there. Chay actually took this picture and it's one of my favorites. It was hot and Nicole discovered that nothing brings out Blade's curls like "sweat". Normally Blade's hair looks straight but get a little sweat action going and the curls spring up. I love those ringlet curls...


This next section is for Sharon. This is the before picture. Last summer we added the porch to the front of the house and the walkway up the front. There were only stairs and a small landing at the bottom before.
Dave added a sprinkler system in and then we added some trees and bushes.

Then we added some sod that I was able to obtain at no charge. It was left over sod from a park project that I noticed on the way home from NPS one day and got the nerve to ask what they did with the left over sod and if I could have it. It just shows that it doesn't hurt to ask, and that you really can find some deals going to, or leaving, NPS. Unfortunately, the plants did cost.
There is also a flowering cherry tree on the left side by the curved corner of the porch. We still need to put cobble on the flower beds and figure out what perenial plants to add to the beds. Dave was able to mix up a concoction for the lawn and the newly sod that you see above, turned into a rich deep green and looked great. We pass the "mother load" at the park and notice that our lawn is definitely better looking...so, the grass IS greener on the other side (NPS is on the west side, we're on the east side).

I'll work on getting a recent picture of the front yard with the cherry tree. I don't know why I didn't think to take a picture when the deep red day lilies were blooming and before the flowering almond bush (in the bottom corner) started dropping leaves from the bottom up, and the cherry tree started losing leaves (and not because it's fall, I think it got some kind of bug or something).

And the next story is just an example of the quick wit of individuals in our family.

When we were eating at Chuck a Rama yesterday, Alana got some mashed potato on herself ( I think from Chay) and she wiped it off her shirt. Dave told her "You have some on your forehead (hair?) (not forehead hair, but her forehead or possibly her hair) and I thought that was cruel and so told her "No you don't". Alana just looked at us for a second and said "One of you is playing a cruel joke" (and Alana, as you know, Uncle Dave was playing the cruel joke). That response was clever and so unexpected that I did one of those sudden bursts of laughter and not a courtesy laugh. Maybe you had to be there because even as I read what I wrote it doesn't sound so funny but, if you had been there, trust me, you would have found it to be just as funny as I did. I liked it so much that I hope that there is an opportunity for me to "spontaneously" use that line in the future.