tom’s sister, jessica, her husband, mark and their little one, adam, came for a visit last week. for wanting a relaxing time, they sure did pack in quite a bit of action. we caught a few of the adventures on film.

we went to salem, ma:

went back to college to visit uncle will:

ignored mark’s protests and braved the butterfly conservatory:

(he looks thrilled, no?)

went apple picking in the rain:

where i taught jess that, to get the good apples, you have to ignore the wet and really get in there. note the differences between apple-picking student and teacher:

she still has much to learn.

and debated the question, “which are more fun, toys made for kids or toys made for dogs?”

a lovely, exhausting, time was had by all. and i have so far gotten two delicious pies out of our apple adventure.

psychically send a few good thoughts mark’s way, he left for iraq on saturday. we hope to see him safe, and home, soon.

went to the garden this weekend, and found:

raspberries!
this spring we took a few raspberry plants from a gardener who was thinning her crop, and were told not to expect any berries until next summer. but we got a late-season surprise. they were delish.

there are probably still a few more weeks of growing season left, but we decided to get the garden ready for winter now, especially since it had grown a little bit out of control.

we rescued a few plants from the compost pile and put them in the adopted garden plot, which, next summer will hopefully be the flower plot:

and tom put the garlic from the garlic festival in the ground:

before:

after:

see you in spring, garden!

i took too long to find a photo for this week, and so missed my opportunity to scan. we’ll have to settle for a picture of a picture today.

this week’s theme was way harder than i expected it to be. i know that there was a whole lot of homemade happening in my life pre-1980…my grandmom crocheted, sewed, & spent whole afternoons cooking elaborate polish meals, my other grandmom (mom-mom) painted, and i made a bajillion projects and crafts in school and at home. but none of this is documented in the stack of photos i have!

all i could find was this picture of me on a couch covered by a crocheted blanket:

we always had a pile of these in different shapes and colors floating around the house. my grandmom was always working on one and it didn’t matter if you already had 10, you were probably getting another soon.

clearly landry is peeved that i am running a little late with the flashback friday post today:

jeez landry, it’s still technically friday.
(hopefully she won’t be mad that i am ignoring the theme this week, too.)

this week’s picture is of me and christina posing in my backyard. we were inseparable and were pretty sure we were the coolest things around. we were totally right, as you can see:

we spent a whole lot of time posing and creating dance routines. we have many of these moments on film. sigh.

who would have imagined that these two weirdos would eventually find people to love and accept each of them?