Dear photo editing softwear

you stink! I have tried and tried to get this picture right......you will just have to tip your heads until I figure out how to speak my computers language.

Partners

Here is Ryan and Marlaina on the day they were engaged. They are both such lovely people and so excited about their future together. Next to them are Susie's boys Gunnar and Cooper who may not be excited about a future together but they are stuck with each other none the less. Life is good when you see your kids happy and healthy and feeling like life has so much potential!

Dear Tiffany's

When Chuck and I got married we had no money and very little interest in jewelry or fancy gifts. In fact I've never had a wedding ring.....a wedding spatula perhaps, or a wedding pasta pot, but no ring. Well, my daughter could not be more different. This picture just doesn't do it justice, her ring is in the shape of a flower and very sparkly. Marlaina is such a beautiful person and Ryan is her equal in every way. Can't wait to celebrate.....some time next year perhaps! Maybe in the mean time the folks at Tiffany's will have pity on me and toss a few diamond chips my way just for hanging in here for 25 years! Ha!!

I did go to Baltimore for work, I promise!

Here are Sue and I after successfully presenting at a national conference in Baltimore. Drinks and sun relax the nerves you know. We wandered around the Fells point district and fueled up enough on crab cakes and sun to be able to get back to a chilly New England for the remainder of the school year.

Yankee ingenuity!

Chuck is a thrifter from way back. He can turn any manner of useless junk into something.....eventually. Meanwhile it usually sits idle with it's other junk yard friends on my porch or in the yard until he finds that use for it. I complain a lot to no avail and then of course I eat my words when he does come through with some sort of invention. This is an old yard umbrella re purposed as a pea growing structure. When the seedlings get tall enough he will crank out the umbrella and tie string to the skeleton, then up they grow. Genius? or crazy hoarder? You decide.

Spring!

More evidence that in fact it is getting to be spring. This is a weeping cherry my kids gave me for mothers day years ago when it was a little twig.