Lovelihood

With the days more or less pleasant, though not entirely summer-like, I've been throwing open the french doors and letting the kids wander in and out. Bear, the picture of toddler independence, lets me strap on her shoes before she heads out and up the hill to lusher parts of our modest, in-city yard, where she pokes through the ivy and plucks out longer strands of grass and stashes away balls for future use and takes on her brother's mission to overturn all the little stones in search of creepy crawlies. My favorite thing about the new telephoto lens: being able to hang back and let her do all that on her own.

Things of note today: 1) I put together our newly purchased, packed-flat deck furniture today. No longer will we aimlessly mill around the back for lack of seating. 2) I tried to assemble the grill we also picked up the other day, but it seems a slew of monkeys had packaged all the pieces in the box and drawn up the instructions in Publisher. It was a disaster that could only be rectified by an encounter at Target's exchange counter. 3) My new camera goodies arrived, as dictated by the package tracking gods, and I spent the afternoon naptime lounging in one of my newly built chairs, stalking bees on the other end of the deck with my new telephoto lens. Two out of three for consumer satisfaction isn't so bad, I guess.

A fancy new telephoto lens, something I've been pouty-lipped lamenting the lack of, is scheduled to make it's way to our doorstep tomorrow. As for tonight, I came home late and completely void of photographic inspiration. And it probably won't impress you to learn that I've actually got big plans for this stick. But I do.

Doors are open all over the house tonight. Ok. Doors are open in two places in our house tonight. That's what happens when it's been a warmish June day and you live in a place where opening your doors to the air outside on actually makes for a pleasant evening in.

Among the wildlife for whom it was not intended but who eat from the birdfeeder anyway is this squirrel. What he's doing doesn't exactly look easy, so I'm gonna give him the bye.

It was really The Boy's outing. He'd been the one talking up boats and ships and various seafaring vessels. So, feeling festive from yesterday's celebration, and encouraged by the weather perfection, we rolled onto the ferry, not concerned so much about where we were going as much as how we were getting there, and enjoyed a mini nautical adventure. Photos were taken. Boy packed seashells into his bag. He envisioned the geoducks beneath the surface spitting up at us. He stared into the water in search of fish. He pointed out sailboats, seagulls, path-crossing ferries and motorcycles. He talked non-stop. But nothing's sweeter than a Bear taking refuge on her poppa's shoulder on her maiden voyage.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the graduating class of 2011. A preschool graduation is really nothing more than an excuse to watch your kids put on a semi-choreographed production of song and dance. The girls don their fanciest gowns and clompiest shoes. The boys wear pretty much the same thing they always do, sneakers and all. This morning, while assembling the day's clothes for The Boy, I srambled through the drawers for something that might be ceremony-appropriate, and the only thing I came up with was a tea-dyed shirt that made up his newsie Halloween costume three years back. That's as formal as our attire gets around here.