sophie and mom

Love them.

love is the only road

Yesterday became a special anniversary. Little Sophie showed up on this planet at 10:10 am. Oh, she is precious.

Here she is just minutes from her birth and thirty four years from our wedding day.

You can expect to be inundated with photos of her on facebook, instagram and the Grandparentals. No apologies.

And this guy.

HOW TO STAY TOGETHER NO MATTER WHAT

1. stay together

2. no matter what.

--Michael Xavier

Well, it's been a bit more complicated than that, but in essence true. How easy it was (still is!) to trade peace for some sort of upset, to grow cold or irritable or to retaliate. Thankfully the years have taught us  a measure of tolerance, of overlooking, of letting go, of forgiving. Once mercy is practiced and lived, however imperfectly, then we are struck with the astounding revelation of just how precious relationships are. 

34 years, dude. That ain't small potatoes. 

And because I am all weepy and sentimental, a little Baby James, then. On the Secret 'o Life.

60

We celebrated ld's 60th by trekking to a cabin in the latter part of September. He's actual birthday is in October but we couldn't make that work with all our schedules.

We spent that weekend hanging around Park City, eating, playing and blowing out candles. We had a little program for ld, he's a swell guy.

Early Sunday morning we put on our fancy color coordinated duds and had a few pics snapped right before it started to rain and hail.

A great weekend with all our peeps.

jiao's shower

Meghan and Kenz threw Jiao a lovely shower. All Panda bears and cherry blossoms, very fitting for our soon to-be-here China doll. These pics were taken back in September. Yes, my life is a bit back-logged.

Jiao posted some of these pics on her blog a while back. My camera died the night of so I'm snatching these. Can't wait for the arrival of grand baby #6. Soon, very soon.

giddy up, lil' cowpoke readers

We had our Reading Roundup party with Faye and Emerson while we were there.  Didn't want them to miss out. Faye was totally into the cowgirl thing.

Emers, not so much. This was the only pic where he didn't rip his hat off.

He did, however, enjoy the cow roping.

And the cow toss. Now, that was great fun.

New books were given out 

and enjoyed.

Faye and Emer were given their cowpoke dolls. Whoa, Nelly.

We sang multiple renditions of Trot 'Ol Joe and then finished off our doins' with these

Faye and Emer, we had such fun celebrating our SRC with you. 

Way to lasso them thar' books. 

grandparenting. such a great gig.

Back from visiting our Wisconsinites. They are crazy special to us. 

Our grandies make regular silly billies out of us. 

Yup. They do.

mermaids for america

This year we combined forces with Dana and Stacy and their kids. Doubled the fun.

Ryan made this awesome banner to tie our under the sea them all together:

Jackson as our shark:

Marshall and Ty as patriotic pirates.

Sadie, Cate and Maddie. Such lovely...

and dramatic mermaids.

Oh they had a good time together.

Cardboard seahorses with pingpong ball eyes.

And Andie in her Sandcastle stroller.  Amazingly, she slept enthusiastically through the whole thing.

Shots of the whole entourage:

Oh, I love a parade.

I really do.

We shape our buildings; thereafter, our buildings shape us. - Winston Churchill

That includes cardboard houses, too.

Replica of the house on 5th Street.

Back view. We had a fig tree in our backyard.

The front door. Yes, it was actually pink in the 60's.

Caters window gazing.

And now the Strawberry Shortcake House. 

Back View

Side View

Yesterday the girls wanted to play neighbors.  I pulled the houses out and they lived and played side by side for a time. Very friendly and neighborly like. Until they started to fight. Very sisterly like.