You're It!

Tonight's grilling menu: potato packets (with butter, onions, and crushed garlic) and barbecued pork loins served with broccoli followed by vanilla sundae cones from Schwan's for dessert. While the food was cooking, the girls and I walked around the back yard and admired all the perennials blooming (thank you, previous owners of the house). I don't know what they are, but perhaps some astute blog readers have a horticultural bent and can identify them for me?


After dessert, the girls moved to the driveway for more bike-riding lessons for Hillary, and Susan and I joined them to examine the flowers around the driveway and front yard and to sit on the bench and enjoy the beautiful weather. (This always makes me feel a bit like my own grandparents, who used to spend a summer evening seated in lawn chairs on the driveway, watching traffic on the highway past their house, petting their cats whenever they'd get near, and using broomsticks to squash ants within reach of the stick. We don't have cats, but our neighbors' cats run loose and spend quite a bit of time at our house. I have not, however, gotten to the bug-killing stage yet.)

At some point, I hopped up off the bench, tapped one of the girls, and shouted, "You're it!" Thus began a lengthy game of tag. Susan quickly became everyone's favorite target. She was quick in her tag-backs, making it nearly impossible for a daughter to tag Mommy and get away before Mommy had retagged the child. This tagging/retagging could have gone on in perpetuity had I not generously offered my outstretched hand to the child to tag me so that I might tag Mommy and get away before Mommy could retag me.

Yes, two adults somewhere in their 30s running around in circles on the driveway in their flip-flops chasing three little children in full view of the entire neighborhood and passersby both vehicular and pedestrian. What a blast! What a great summer!