boppies

Once again, we headed outside the loop and up to the King's Orchard for some fruit picking. This time of year in Texas promises blackberries and blueberries, fruits that I associate with August most places we've lived. It seems as if we were about a week too early for the sweet blackberries, but we managed to find some that were tasty. Lilly, as anticipated was not so fired up about picking these due to the thorns, but nevertheless persistent for us to pick one for her, one for the box. Our trip also coincided with the last of the strawberries, so we picked them too. The real hit for Lilly was picking the blueberries, as they were 1) easy to pick at every height and 2) plentiful. Try as we did, it was hard to convince the little one to avoid the green ones in favor of the blue ones. Every "boppie" was tasty to her!

Mother's Day weekend

My oh my, it has been a while. It has been busy down here in H-town with visitors, out of the loop excursions, parties and the like. Since the last real post, "Gram-pete" Peter and Sue came down for a visit. Right on time, the nasty summer weather arrived. The weekend activities could not have been more fun! Saturday saw the whole gang down at the annual Art Car parade. Shade was at a premium and we managed not only to get clutch indoor parking (even more so with no A/C in the subaru!) but we managed to carve out a good spot near the turnaround on the parade route under the trees. This year was much better than last, as we actually watched the parade instead of just seeing the cars line up. Lilly's favorite was the giant chicken car. It was awesome. Our favorite was the *heavily* modified VW that was made into a flower.

Afterward, we headed over to a friend's graduation party where 50 pounds of crawfish and several pounds of smoked meats were awaiting consumption. Nothing says high-class like a old closet door propped up on sawhorses covered in crawdaddies and keg beer. Lilly was running around like a crazy woman, flirting with all of the boys. Moving to the woods into our yurt may not be as far off as originally planned....

Thankfully, a summer version of a 'comfy front' made Sunday considerably more pleasant. Even better--it was mother's day. Lilly was not quite up to the task of fixing mommy breakfast in bed, but by next year she should be turning out a bowl of cheerios at the very least. She did come home from school with a glorious bunch of foam flowers for me that were absolutely dripping with glitter, spangles and the requisite hot glue oozes. They now sit on my desk at work.

drumroll please.....

yep....the deuce is on the way...early December 2008

quick update

we've been busy and behind on the updates....stay tuned for the many goings on including:

Peter and Sue's visit
Berry picking, part deux
Memorial Day weekend "vacation"

infatuation

Trains. Lilly can't get enough. First thing out of her mouth in the morning is "choo choo"....she does manage to hear the train that both Cory and I have spent months ignoring. Over the weekend, we passed the railroad tracks just before the gates went down, so we pulled over on a side street to watch. The engineer gave us a toot toot and a big wave. Heaven.

The magic of You Tube has brought all the excitement right to us! Yay for train fanatics that videotape trains!

Email me and I'll send you the video since it won't upload correctly here....

Polly's visit--beach!

We continued the fun down on the beach in Surfside. Team C packed up the car with a picnic lunch and we headed down to enjoy a chilly morning on the sand. We saw some dolphins swimming by the breakwater as well as many little fish that some kids were using for bait. Lilly was very excited. It was warm enough later on to get our toes wet after lunch.

Polly's visit--strawberry picking

Polly came to visit for the weekend--what fun we had! We headed up to Magnolia, about an hour away, to pick strawberries at a farm up there. A rare departure from inside the loop for Team Clechenko! Lilly had a ball--I am quite sure that no strawberry she picked made it into the box.


springtime in Texas wouldn't be right if there weren't bluebonnets!