Late Summer

Well, we made it to Saturday. Yay! Andy has been off since Thursday afternoon and after a day of readjusting to being around each other (it's a firstborn thing), we are having a delightful Saturday. A cool breeze is drifting from front to back door and dark, rain laden clouds move swiftly across the sky, intermittent with bright spots of sun. Reminds me a bit of an Arizona winter or a Colorado spring or a Maine summer ... early autumn in New York is all its own. It finds us staining deck furniture, organizing kitchen cabinets, planning home improvement projects and then opting for college football and pizza. It finds little boys taking 3 hour naps, trees tinged with yellow and orange, fiction novels read late into the night, and classical masterpieces drifting throughout the house.
And now with my inner Anthony Bourdain almost running on empty, I leave you with some pictures of summer around our house.

... whenever Blogger decides to bring back the icon that allows me to upload pictures ... sorry!

Ha-ha!  After online research, I figured out I was stuck in HTML mode.  I'm back into blogging/composition mode ... so here are pics!

It's a Dog's Life

Our puppy is so wonderfully quirky (both in looks & actions!) and yet so patient with the boys.  No, there are no pics of her and Ashton because she steers clear of him most of the time.  We think he might have been the culprit in her "droopy tail" a few weeks back.  He has a bad habit of grabbing onto her tail and not letting go, no matter where she goes or how fast she runs.  (He thinks it's the greatest game ever invented!).  Dog-Dog (as the boys call her) has given Aiden so much confidence outside and he likes having someone to lord over. And cleaning up after South Paw doesn't bother me one bit because of the laughter and companionship she provides - I just love her!

Here's an excerpt I had written about a pretty typical day for South Paw in our house:

With 2 boys in the house, it's never a dull moment!  The boys and I were just quietly sitting in the living room, South sleeping at my side, when Ashton slid the laundry basket full-throttle into my arm, knocking my coffee in the opposite direction: all over the dog! Poor thing, she thought my reaction yell was directed at her!

Fall Is In the Air

Distinctive seasons are one of the many perks of not living in Arizona anymore.  Just when I was getting tired of having the AC running in the house, cool weather moved in.  Today we are enjoying overcast skies and a cool breeze dancing in through the doors and windows.  No worries, because I have been looking forward to autumn for weeks! 

Dad, check out how good these mums look at the base of the mailbox holder you and Andy made!

Mum clippings gracing the kitchen in a Polish pottery vase.  Thanks so much, Gigi!  And Kisti, Brynn & Kira - I know you girls approve!

Acorns from the backyard!  The squirrels work so hard to pick and drop the nuts, but then they have very little opportunity to harvest, thanks to South Paw and her big-dog presence.  I on the other hand enjoy finding them in the grass with my bare feet and using them as free decoration!

My Gardening Assistants

 

Always talking ... and I don't want to hear it about the shorts: he dressed himself!

Checking out the lawnmower ... and telling me ALL about it!

Big Truck Day

Big Truck Fail Day

We tried to make it fun

And tried

And tried some more.

Even the barefoot music dude

Couldn't get the boys to get over

how loud the horns were blaring.

We thought it was a bad idea to allow all the kids to have fair-game at the truck horns.  But we had a good time anyway, despite our quiet-seeking children!

Daddy Long Spider

Aiden has a love/hate relationship with spiders.  He finds them fascinating, but is dreadfully afraid of their webs.  I call him my spider-web police: always alerting me to them.  Lately, the daddy long leg spiders have been having their month of glory on our fence.  I pick them up and show them to Aiden in an attempt to break his little phobia.  Courtesy of the dead tree in our back 40 (40 feet, but hey, it's 40!), some big branches have been landing in the yard after rainstorms.  Active imagination turned on: they are called "Daddy Long Spiders!"

Snacktime

My Little Ham

Celtic Woman

If you've never seen their outdoor concert in Ireland on PBS late at night during a telethon, you don't know what you're missing!  I like Celtic Woman for the romance & history ad Andy likes them for the thunderous drums & Braveheart-ishness.  Our fabulous friends Jack and Jen took us to the concert at a local amphitheater venue just 5 miles from our house.  Samantha the Magnificent came over to watch the boys, and they were, quote: "Great!"  (It would take another blog entry to go on and on about how wonderful Sam is!).  Anyhoo ... we were the youngest at the concert by 50 years, but we still all enjoyed ourselves, even despite the $5 bottles of Pepsi!

Yay!  We're out without kids!  

Jack & Jen

No cameras were allowed, but I tried to get a pic of the bagpipe player on our way out ... in the mass exodus, I got bumped, and ended up getting a pic of this sweet nun instead!  LOL

My favorite song was 

Spanish Lady

And the dancing fiddler was as always, most entertaining!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wzMfSiOkMQ

Parking Lot

I cannot overstate how obsessed attached Aiden is to his cars.  They don't have to be Matchbox, but be really anything that has four (or more!) wheels.  He organizes them on the dining room table to keep the organization from being demolished by his little brother.  His growing imagination and real world role-play encompasses his cars.  I present to you: "Parking Lot."