Book Club in the Garden

The Fabulous Four

Lola Colette ~ On the Brink of Two

Success!!

I desperately needed a new picture of all four kids, but the thought of pulling that off was making me tremble and weep.

This morning I decided to DO IT already. And we did! The boys were bribed with donuts. Lola was much more difficult to convince. But all I needed was a split second. A split second of her grinning (at the camera!) that happened to coincide with a shutter click.

It was a quick photo session, but it did the trick. I’ll share more later.

Summer Concerts in the Park

 

We have attended two Monday evening concerts so far this season. The first was a local swing band (oh, I love me some jazz and swing!), and the second was the Army Band Oregon National Guard (Sousa, Americana, and the 1812 Overture make me swoon!).

The Monday evening concerts are much more preferable to the Thursday evenings (in my humble opinion) in regards to content and crowd size. I love being able to arrive right at the start of the concert and have plenty of room to spread our chairs and blankets.

The fact that I love spending time with my family goes without saying, doesn’t it?

The view on the drive home from the first concert:

Lola was in rare form her normal self, ready to bring down the house. I had to bring the playpen along for sanity’s sake.

Just for fun, I managed to get a little video of her being silly. (This one has sound, but the sound doesn’t sound so great…)

The Girls

(I’m on a posting roll…Whew!)

Lola and I were taking advantage of some girl time while the boys were swimming.

And a gob of unedited photos just for fun.

(Helping Daddy fix the Mustang…)

Lavender Lovely

My sister rang the other day. Would you like to jet around the corner to visit a nearby lavender farm? I’ll pick you up in a minute.

Um, yeah!

Sister time. A lavender farm. A gorgeous day. Yeah, baby. (Speaking of which, she even has a little baby belly showing!)

My boys, upon hearing where we were going, immediately requested that we return with lavender ice cream for them. They still remember that from our visit to a lavender farm on San Juan Island three years ago! They are so silly.

No ice cream, but we came close! DELISH Lavender Swedish Cream. It took all my willpower to save them each a bite.

The Road Home

The time came to load up the crew and head home. Lola had been up much of the previous night all feverish. Which meant I had been up much of the previous night. But we packed up the truck and headed out at 8:30 am with the thought that we might just try to make it in one shot.

Breaking up the drive into two days is nice and all, but the prospect of unpacking everything, getting the kids to settle down and sleep in a hotel, and then getting everyone ready and packing it all up again the next morning was more than I could stomach.

Lola was a little fussier this time around. Considering her still feverish body and the four teeth she had just breaking the surface, I think she did well. We cranked up some rocking worship music and continued to head north.

It was blistering hot for much of the drive. I was so thankful for air conditioning as we watched the thermometer hover around 110 degrees for hours. We hit Redding and kept trucking. We hit Ashland and stopped for dinner. And changed Lola into jammies. We hit Canyonville for gas. Lola still wasn’t asleep. It was almost 10 pm. Holly took over driving for my dad, and Ilex got to ride the rest of the drive with me and my wailing baby. Fun stuff. At least it kept me awake.

It was midnight when we rolled into the driveway. I was so sick of being behind the wheel (I cannot believe how much road construction there had been!!), and so ready to put Lola in her own bed (and fall into mine without even changing out of my clothes). But we were home. In one piece.

Hallelujah.