Roommate reunion 2013

Roommate reunion!  

My lovely roommates and their families came to visit for a few days over the course of the summer, for a few blissful days.  It was fantastic seeing how the little ones are growing (so quickly!) and to spend time together as a group again.  We made pancakes, played with the bunnies, had a girls-only lunch downtown, picked veggies from the garden, played in the rain, made fancy desserts, and enjoyed time together.  We've done this just about every year since college, but this was the first time that we had all of the husbands and children with us as well, and that made it even better.  I can't wait for next time!

The sunflowers were showing off for their visit.

 Dinners are an adventure with seven adults and three little boys under five.

 Step portrait!

 Fancy dessert!  And not that hard to make.  And SO delicious!

 Very proud of chocolate mousse and fruit tart.

 Lunch time!

 Playing with Gwenn, who really enjoys eating lettuce treats from small people.

This kid is an expert pancake-maker.

 Picking carrots!

Chincoteague

After we camped for two days we drove a bit south into Virginia's Eastern Shore and ended up in Chincoteague. Gorgeous! It's a cute beach town with beautiful sunsets and the wildlife refuge is amazing - it has endangered squirrels (ha) and wild ponies. They were beautiful.

This is taken from Main Street in Chincoteague...



The inside of the lighthouse. I think it's neat.
The outside of the light house - it's neat too.
This is taken from the beach on Assateague- the ocean's to my back and below the sun is the wildlife refuge and the marsh. The town of Chincoteague is straight ahead, but you can't see it.
OK, so, this is supposed to be a picture of wild horses, and they're there - they're the tiny little white dots near the trees. Ah well.

An oak toad. Isn't he cute?

Some favorites from this weekend

We had a wonderful, amazing weekend. Fun, relaxing, rejuvenating and heartening. Some favorite pics:


Baby's first ocean experience! He LOVED it.

Boston's 4th of July fireworks!


Listening to the Pops by the Charles River

Jim sharing the news of his *NEW JOB* with his family at the campsite

Evy and I hiked here. It was beautiful and far away and we were the only people on the entire lake.

World cup fans...

Picnicking at Tanglewood

Hiking through 'moose country' along a creek

The NYC Public Library

Jim's 30th birthday party

Just a few pics :-)

Flowers from our yard

I don't know what these purple ones are but they're beautiful... and we have a magnificent rose bush with dozens of enormous pink flowers that smell like heaven. I don't have a good picture of the rose, though. I'll have to find one.

Summer memories

A far cry from the snow flurries today, but here's a nice pic of the ocean from our summer trip the beach.

News and pictures from this summer

New doggie! (again) We got her from the Huntingdon SPCA, and we had a surprisingly good experience with them. The approval process took only as long as it took to get our landlord's approval, and they spayed her, microchipped her, played with her and gave us a bag of dog treats, toys and food to start out with. How nice!

She's a little black lab mix- maybe with hound of some kind, or collie? I don't know. She's little, though, only forty pounds (soaking wet) and she has a little white strip on her chest, with a very narrow face. Very cute. She's maybe 8 months old, and bounces and chases her tail and LOVES to play. She seems to be housebroken, by some miracle, but that's about the extent of her training. Her name's Shasta (like the daisy).

She really wants to play with Gemmy. It's a shame that the two of them speak completely different languages- when Gemmy says "Go away and leave me alone", Shasta hears "Play with me!" and when Gemmy smacks her upside the head, Shasta gets frustrated and very confused. She leaves the bunny mostly alone though, which is great.

There are lots of things going on- we thought we'd share some images from this crazy summer, and we'll post some of the new house/doggie soon.

We took this in May after visiting our friends T. and M... I love the way that you can see how good Jim is at skipping stones!

We went to Delaware this summer- to Cape Henlopen, to be exact- for 2 blissful days at the beach. Wonderful. The other two pics are from birding with my dad, and it was a beautiful morning in Central Pennsylvania.

After our lease ended, we housesat for a little more than a week at a house with 8 dogs and 2 cats. One of the cats (not pictured) is beautiful. The other, well, he's very sweet.

After housesitting, we moved to our friends' E and A's house for 2 months- which was a blast. (Thanks again!) We did some canning, some chicken-coop building, and ate leeks.

Here's the finished chicken coop. Of course we couldn't leave well enough alone, so we added ears and a tail when E and A were out of town...

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Then I went out to sea to do some field work for my lab for a few weeks in September - so here's a couple pics... the Gulf of Mexico is beautiful, when there aren't hurricanes.

Our new house- it doesn't look a lot like this anymore- the shutters came off, and the ivy's down now (as per our landlord's request). Moving in was... fun... we had to take a zillion boxes out of the basement and unpack them. It exhausted poor little kitty, who was a big help. Really. We also spent some time cleaning up outside, starting some planting, rebuilding a stone wall, and getting ready for winter. That's when Jim ran across his new (not so) Little Friend, who is a long horned beetle larvae, and is now living in an enclosure in the basement, where he's busy pupating.

We also managed to get up to Ithaca a couple of weekends ago, and go apple picking! I love apple picking! And there's lots of milkweed around, which is one of the most beautiful plants...

Anyway, more later...