ruby crowned kinglette

6:47 wednesday morning

tuesday night was family dinner.  the plan, when we were planning, was to have a family dinner once a month.  although pretty good about doing that in the beginning, we began to slack off.  we're back on a more predictable schedule now and seem to be getting together at least every two months, although it really is more often than that because we, and by we i mean my mom, sisters, their significant others and a little one, are very close. that, in itself is worth celebrating, but so are birthdays and weddings.  tuesday night there was a new house in the mix too.  for only 6 adults we dirtied a lot of glassware - that too is worth celebrating.

i hope you have been enjoying summer and are going to make the most of this last official weekend of the season.  i have a very strong sense that summer is going to continue into september as it has been taking a little break this last couple of weeks.  so with that, here is to enjoying a few more evenings on the patio, with good company and a pair of binoculars.

alice and i....

are still doing our best over here.....

today is my birthday....

one gray hair, plucked this morning at the same time i was looking in the mirror considering how much older i looked than i felt... at exactly the same time.

there are more from where this came...

lucky me

so, michelle was in town and she stayed with me.  we decided to invite a couple other bloggers for dinner and sitting around outside. jen and rose were able to come which made it a perfectly lovely evening.  we printed up alice and bethany too, so they wouldn't miss a thing.

it was a pleasure having you stay at my house michelle.  thanks for putting yourself out there, asking for help and allowing me to provide it. it was an honor.

-steph

sharing my secrets

a collaboration is still motoring right along over here....  although, we do seem to be taking it a tiny bit easy this summer.  i am a little behind, but not so much i am full of any kind of guilt... oh, no. not at all.

well, hello there

yesterday was jen's birthday... we were emailing last week and she mentioned that tuesday was her birthday and i immediately suggested she take the day off and we go do something.  her first reaction was to say that she thought it was quite decadent to take the day off... but then her almost as immediate second reaction was to actually do it...

it was a beautiful day, forecast to reach the mid 80's.  i came prepared with my binoculars, camera, and four bottles of water.  you can see two of them on jen's kayak... she laughed when i brought them out - she thought it was a lot of water. she also wondered if we drank that much water where i thought we might pee. she had a point.

we rented from agua verde cafe and paddle club on lake union...  they were wonderful and within a few minutes both jen and i decided we were absolutely going to do this again.

jen's boat is the green one.... it matched her shoes.  not her skirt, like i said yesterday, because i couldn't see her skirt once we were all tucked inside.  yes, she wore a skirt, and i almost did, but then didn't.  turns out, skirts are just fine for kayaking.  they are just fine, too, for showing your underpants to people at the restaurant, but that wasn't jen, that was another girl.

our tour took us through the montlake cut and over to foster island and the arboretum.  these waterlilies are probably considered a nuisance to most and they were a bit thick to paddle through, but they were kind of pretty.  i picked a couple for the boats.  i think i know where rubber bands were first invented.  they are what man discovered when tugging on a waterlily flower.  i didn't roll the kayak, but i wondered if i was going to when trying to free a flower from its root... wow.

the requisite great blue heron shot, because they are so pretty - and so patient.  saw some other waterfowl too, still need to look them up as there were a couple that i didn't know so well... and two raccoons washing their fingers. they seems quite leery of us and lumbered away after a couple of minutes.

then back through the cut... this passage is what connects lake washington to lake union.  once we got back, and paid for the boat trip, we went upstairs and had ourselves some fish tacos and a margarita...  was tempted for two, but then again, i always am.

happy birthday jen, i am glad to have spent it with you.  i hope then rest of your day was as fun. the rest of mine was spent in the garden, going to the mat with some rose bushes.  there were a couple times when i was losing the battle but eventually i won that war, with quite a few scratches to prove that it was, indeed, a bit of a struggle.   oh, and that pie? that was a tasty end to the day.