A Beautiful Memorial Day

After my morning shower, I stepped onto the veranda to sample the weather and found it so temperate that I remained there, prompting my three children--one at a time--to join me for conversation and cuddling. Susan was making a big breakfast (ham/cheese/red pepper/onion omelettes, lemon poppyseed muffins, grapefruit, juice, coffee), and she served it on the veranda, so we ate outside, too. Then we started looking at the dozen or so pots of flowers that Susan potted yesterday (while I mowed the lawn, planted moss roses on the west side of the house, and got sunburned), which led to further weeding, which led to digging out the tiller, and soon a day's worth of tasks unfolded before me. But now all the bicycle tires and basketballs are aired up, and my work bench in the garage is organized, and everything that we planted yesterday is watered, and a faucet in the powder room is repaired, etc. It was such a lovely day that we ate all three meals outdoors, including grilled bratwurst for dinner and grilled marinated venison steaks for supper (along with baked beans, grilled potato/onion/bacon packets, watermelon, and homemade rice pudding for dessert). Oh, and did I mention my sunburned neck from spending two solid days out in the sun?

Ours is the kind of neighborhood in which a neighbor will stroll over to our backyard to discuss gardening when he hears me starting up the tiller, and his wife will pop over later in the afternoon to compliment us on our flowers, and the couple across the street will grab a box of popsicles to offer the girls when they ride their bikes over to visit, and another neighbor will launder and deliver clothing that our kids had left over at her house when playing there with her child. It's awesome. It's also awesome that our children can be off playing with neighborhood children, running among various yards, checking in with us occasionally but otherwise keeping themselves occupied with their friends . . . and all the neighborhood adults keep an eye on them.

Our girls found a turtle in the street this morning--yes, a turtle!--and "rescued" it. They put a little water and a rock in the bottom of a large plastic pail and placed Shelly (get it? "shell"-y?) in it, from which she spent the rest of the day trying in vain to escape. Susan diced some carrots, cantaloupe, and lettuce to feed Shelly (thank you, Internet, for knowing what turtles eat), and our daughters and a couple neighborhood girls spent the day hauling around Shelly in her pail in a wagon tied with a jump rope to a bike (this they called "giving her exercise"). When the girls wondered whether Shelly would drown in the large amount of water they had provided in her bucket, I suggested they put an even larger amount of water on the stove, boil it, and let Shelly live in that along with some chopped carrots, celery, and potatoes. No dice. At the end of the day, I was going to repatriate Shelly by driving her to nearby Patterson Lake. This prompted one of the neighbor girls to convince her parents to borrow Grandma's aquarium and turn it into a terrarium so that Shelly can live in the girl's bedroom instead. Good luck, Shelly; I tried.

Suzanna shows off Shelly. She's a good-sized turtle! And what's a turtle doing wandering the streets of Dickinson, ND? The world may never know.

Hillary is learning to ride a bicycle. She's going straight from a trike to a bike, training wheels be damned. You go, girl!

Sunday night we went to St. Patrick's Cemetery in Dickinson to visit relatives' graves for Memorial Day. Here Susan and the girls are at the grave of Sue, Susan's mother who passed away eight years ago.

Saturday night the girls posed with their second-cousins at Makenzie's graduation party: from left to right, they're Shantell, Makenzie, and Paige, my cousin Darren's daughters.

Makenzie, Paige, and Shantell have two little kitties. Hillary helped me to cuddle one of them.

Although their last day of school was Wednesday, Hillary's class celebrated their kindergarten graduation on Tuesday. Do you think she might be a little proud?