Perhaps you have noticed a certain LACK of pictures on this blog lately. Our camera battery charger got lost in the move, and the camera lasted a good two months until the battery finally gave up the ghost shortly after we returned from our trip to the Midwest.
It's taken Erika this long to admit defeat and finally secure a new battery charger. She found all sorts of happy memories lurking in the camera (no pictures of ME, however). This one is her latest favorite Peter picture. Nope, not a baby any more. Two and a half next month.
Well, we've been here two and a half months now, and we are learning a few things.
1) The sun moves east to west. Now that it's down in the 80s, I've been following the sun from room to room in order to get 90% of my daylight sleep in a nice, warm sunbeam. This makes for a 3-part nap (guest bedroom to master bedroom to living room) but I try to take advantage of the transitions by incorporating fuel stops at my food bowl.
2) Deer will eat bird seed right out of a bird feeder. And lick it clean. Those of you who are "friends" with Erika on Facebook might have already read about this, but Erika thought it was worth repeating here.
3) Cedar trees (and China trees and just about any other kind of trees) grow much faster than you expect. Auntie Kristina came to visit yesterday and pointed out a "driveway" that we didn't even know was there because it had cedar trees growing right in the middle of it. Anybody need a cedar Christmas tree this year? We are taking orders.
4) Grown men take great pleasure in watching hundreds of Easter-egg colored plastic ducks float 100 yards down a creek if it's done in the name of charity. The Kosinas attended the Duck Race last weekend (I stayed home to follow my sunbeams) and it was...surreal.
5) Alpacas are not llamas. To the untrained eye (city folk), they may look identical, but alpacas are smaller, gentler, and cuter than llamas. Also less aggressive. Erika even got over her llama phobia and reached out to pet an alpaca on Sunday, at the strong urging of her 8-year-old neighbor.
6) And speaking of neighbors, it's awfully nice to have good neighbors where ever you live. When Peter rolled the Retro Rocket today and cleaned up the street with his face, the neighbors kindly turned off the sprinkler before it flooded the street (Erika was busy tending to her bleeding, screaming son) and even brought over an ice pack to ease the swelling. (Rejected. Cookies were the only medication that truly seemed to help.) Peter seems ok, although these battle wounds are worse than the time he tipped his stroller over and landed on his forehead. I could hear the wailing all the way upstairs, poor guy.
That's all for now. It's been a long day of following sunbeams. Send Peter some love; he needs it.
We arrived home last night after a fun-filled nearly 2-week trip across the country in the Apache to visit friends and relatives. It was a reprise of last summer's Midwestern Adventure, only this time we were aiming for a complete Willett family reunion. Unfortunately Uncle Bill took a bad fall just days before he was scheduled to fly, so we didn't quite get the whole family together. He was missed.
We still managed to have a good time together in a gorgeous "cabin" on one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. I had almost forgotten how silly and wonderful my cousins are, and it was fun mixing three generations together for a week. On the way back, we spent a day and a half in South Dakota with our dear friends, the Briggs, and made a quick stop in the Nevada desert to visit our second family. It was quite a trip. Peter is still processing everything that he experienced. We were pretty lame about taking photos, so here is a stream of consciousness narrative of our journey instead, representing three perspectives on our trip. Pawlene did not join us, but received regular visits from the neighbor girls. Martin's perspective is similar to Erika's, just with more emphasis on "plane", "fish", and "beer".
