Inaugurating our awesome new fire pit

Our friends Jed and Karen and their four kids came over for dinner and helped us test out the fire pit with s'mores last weekend. Now we need to have a full-on cookout.

Deep thoughts

A friend sent this to me -- made me a bit nostalgic for Texas. All the Protestant churches have message boards like this.

4 reasons to like Boston

1. Seafood. With Benadryl, in Donny's case. The best seafood we've had is at the Barking Crab in Boston. A close second was the Portland Lobster Company in Portland, Maine.
2. Walking. Even in the humidity, it's easy to walk to all the sites you'd ever want to see. Although getting to Cambridge and Harvard is definitely a bit far -- take the subway.
3. Weekend getaways. From Boston, it was an easy drive to Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Our other stops besides Boston were Salem (home of the movie monster museum), Portland, ME, Sharon VT, the Ben and Jerry's factory, the Dartmouth campus, and Concord, NH.
4. History. We walked the Freedom Trail on our last visit, so this time we went to the John Adams/John Quincy Adams historic site and the church where they are buried (by the way, the correct pronunciation is "Quin-zee"), Lexington, and Concord.

Happy birthday Don!

Tomorrow is Don's birthday and once again we're traveling on his big day. We're off on another trip back East: 4 days in New England, 3 days in Philadelphia (library conference) and 2 days in Washington DC (library conference again).

Tonight I'm making him cupcakes. I'm trying to decide if I should decorate them like baseballs, soccer balls (lately he's glued to the World Cup), or zombie heads.

The best $15 Don ever spent?

My husband has a slight addiction.

Welcome Kashton!

Our new nephew made his appearance yesterday afternoon. Congrats to Megan, Matt, and Wyatt on their new family member! Here is baby Kashton with aunt Maggie. And again with Uncle Donny (it's obvious what kind of uncle he is, too).

More pictures from the yard

I hurried and took pictures the other day because I was afraid the storm this week would ruin the blossoms everywhere. This is the crabapple tree and the front of the house.



This tree is in the back yard. It wasn't blooming when we left on Friday so it was a nice surprise when we got back on Sunday from Anaheim.