At-ten-tion!!

I give up, I can't help myself taking photos of corn! This week, the tassels are about ready to come out. When the corn leaves are standing at attention, the tassels come out shortly after. Ooo, I love seeing fields of these dark green leaves all pointing straight up in the air! It's amazing how quickly it grows. Just a couple of weeks ago it was only about 3 feet high!

I love having the pool "Field of Dreams" -side! Rich, rich rich. Today I bought a new yellow umbrella; the string broke inside the other one.

Club "M" is here today, so I just have to go out and vacuum it, and let the party begin!

It's absolutely gorgeous outside! Wish you Scottish friends could be here enjoying this with me!!

Demolition begins

Denny could hardly wait to start knocking out the wall. So fun! At least we can see what's inside! No "critters" so far, but when we smashed the hole in the soffit, we saw "evidence"! yuck. We also found that there's no ceiling above the soffit. It goes directly to the attic. So we'll have to redo the ceiling probably, but we're changing the lighting anyway. Hopefully, it will be finished by September! I'll keep posting the progress.

One More Weekend

(And, yes, that IS a line from a Bob Dylan song).

Bits and pieces of the Calhoun family gathered at Baldwin Lake in Union, Michigan for Fourth of July weekend. So sorry about the other bits and pieces who couldn't gather.

What a beautiful setting! The house we rented had full windows all across the front on the upper level with full views of the lake. When we weren't sitting outside we sat in this room. It was the best part of the whole house!

Nothing was structured. Meals happened when they got done. Activities happened when they happened, but there was a lot going on at the same time: card games, hot tub, boating, paddle boating, sitting on the dock, relaxing in chairs on the deck, conversation everywhere. (We're Calhouns, we always talk!) The weather was gorgeous! A short shower drove everyone inside for a bit on Sunday afternoon, but it cleared so that Josh and Ben (along with Ben and Andrew Calhoun) could blast off the load of fireworks that Josh bought. Boys and explosions...!

The party broke up on Monday morning. Celeste to Kentucky, Jen and Mom to Quad Cities and me back here. Good memories.

I'm ready to stay home for awhile!

Crusty old sailors meet again

Dennis and Will Stewart first met in 1983 as a couple of "older" sailors who had returned to the Navy. They were stationed on the USS America in Norfolk, Virginia. We had just moved there, and Will lived on the ship. Every once in awhile he'd come and spend the night with us. Will left the ship just a few months later. But somehow we stayed in touch.

Several years later we met up again in Italy. He was married by then and had two little boys. We were there together for the next 7 years. Our families returned to America in 1999. We haven't seen each other since, but this weekend we met up again in Kansas City for the wedding of their oldest son, Thomas. What a wonderful time! It was sweet to pick up where we left off, share about our times in Italy, our difficulty in returning to the States, what we missed about Italy and what our families are doing now. Fun to see their boys all grown up, well nearly.

Club "M" mega par-tay!

Since the original Club M members are moving away we had to have one last party to celebrate all our times together. We have a wonderful group of friends that have gotten together over the years over and over. We love them all. We will really miss the Hollidays and hope to gain some new friends to take their place, yet not in our hearts! We are thankful for blogs, Facebook, texting, Skype and all those means of communication that keep us from feeling far from old friends!

Morning sky

You can tell you're from the Midweast when you take photos of cornfields and clouds! So here I am. *smile*

Cheers for a morning at home!

My hours at the garden center have been cut from 20 to 8, so now I am home three mornings a week. This morning my angel wing begonia is so beautiful that, in my very amateurish way, I took some photos of it.

The begonia bench.