Look! Our very own tomato!

We have a plethora of tomatoes growing on our back porch. Anna counted 17 green ones.


We also have strawberries which didn't do so well. I think we got 5 or 6 tiny little strawberries. And one raspberry plant that has yet to produce a single raspberry. I wonder if they aren't just snobby fruit that are offended by being planted in kitty litter containers...


For a while our neighbors thought that we were growing illegal substances on our back porch. But we set them straight.


So it appears that gardening isn't really our "thing." But we are trying really really hard. And we're going to eat our tomato and smile.

Charting new territory.

I've been wondering if there is a protocol. You know. For how long you are actually supposed to wait after your children leave for college, before you can take-over their bedrooms. And put your stuff in there.

My kids are telling me that I can't actually have their rooms until they leave.

In theory, I guess I have to agree with that. It does make sense.

Except if I wait until after they leave, who will be there to help me pack up their stuff and re-paint their bedrooms? Who I ask you?

So this was my general thinking back in May. Maybe a day or two before the girls officially graduated from high school. As I had them pack up their belongings. Into nice plastic bins. That are now stored neatly in a closet.

And Sarah really did do a great job painting the new recording studio.

P.S. Lest I seem too uncaring, please notice that I did leave a "guest" bedroom for the girls to use if they do decide to come and visit in the future.

And I sincerely hope that they will come visit.

Gone fishin.

The other day we took the kids to go trout fishing. They caught 12 fish in just a few minutes. It was amazing.

But the best part was they have this guy that cleans and fillets them for you. While you wait.

So there we were. Watching the guy fix up our fish. Happy and feeling relieved that he was doing it and not us.

One of the kids remarked that maybe having fish guts spattered on you just might be the worst thing ever.

"I bet there are worse things," my sister commented.

Yeah, I thought to myself---hemorrhoid's are way worse than that.

Seeing the look of surprise and horror on everyone's face I realized that I had just blurted this out. In front of everyone. "I mean, it's just what I've heard. It's not like I would know this from, um, personal experience or anything." I assured everyone.

I'm sure they believed me.

Sisters are a wonderful thing.

Me and my sisters are together for the next few days. I love my sisters. They are awesome and we seem to laugh a lot.

I don't know if other sisters do this, but we seem to spend a lot of time comparing body parts. Our children are completely grossed out. They are like---you guys are always saying something like---mine is bigger than yours, mine has more hair, mine turned black and fell off...

We totally didn't say that last one. Except maybe once.

All I can say is this. Wait until you are 40 and see what you and your sisters talk about.

And when we aren't comparing we are grooming each other. We decided to dye my sisters hair blonde. She is now a redhead. But it looks cute. It really does. And I'm not just saying that.

We are trying to convince another sister to let us do her hair tomorrow night. And we can't figure out why she won't let us. Of course we can always try when she is asleep...

It's amazing what you can find...

I have a filing cabinet upstairs in the nook. A few months ago I noticed that for some reason someone had moved my filing cabinet down to the cellar. Then last week the filing cabinet was back upstairs! This was very confusing.

This weekend we were dragging stuff from all over the house outside for our garage sale. It was then that I made my big discovery.

We have TWO filing cabinets. Huh. Go figure. How is it that I did not know this? The good part is that my husband hasn't been moving the filing cabinet up and down two flights of stairs in the middle of the night.

But the big question is: What in the world is in the second filing cabinet!

Unsettling Dreams. Again.

There I was. Wearing a Spiderman suit. At a wedding. Which apparently was my own wedding. And I was trying to marry my dad. Except everyone kept saying that I couldn't marry my dad because I was already married. (Which by the way no one even mentioned the fact that I couldn't marry my dad because he was, well, MY DAD!)

Anyway. I announced that because I was wearing the Spiderman costume, I could marry anyone I wanted. Which seemed to make everyone happy. Because everyone nodded their heads in agreement, and decided it was now okay for the wedding to take place.

So I married my dad. In a Spiderman suit.

When in Rome...

Do you remember that time when we were in Rome and driving to Pompei and I had to go to the bathroom? Really, really bad? And we'd been looking for gas station signs for miles and miles without any luck?

When all of a sudden we saw a guy pulled off to the side of the road peeing against the guard rail? And we were like, maybe we should pull over!

And there weren't any good bushes so I had to hide behind the guard rail while Julie held a blanket up around me. So no one could see me. Peeing.

While Diane took pictures, capturing the whole event forever on film?


Do you remember that? Yeah. Good times.