Happy Birthday to Me!

What a gorgeously autumnal, delicious, hilarious and generally fantastic day - and well into the night.

A few words and pictures to illustrate the point:

A scene from the end of a long, lovely, languorous lunch at... (drum roll...) the Buerehiesel - !! - during which we thought often of Ellen and Donnie, and which was followed by a walk in the park that merited the same and other, similar adjectives.

the poster reads: A mother, a patriot, a warrior: Jenny! A president!

We were walking home from a movie (which was Made in Strasbourg, and in which the voices of our children can be distinctly heard at the very end - it's true!), knowing that Anne-Sophie and Caroline's offer to babysit while we took it in was not without diabolical plans galore. But we were still shocked when, as we neared our home, we began seeing the Jenny for President and I (heart) Jean-Philippe posters. The posse that awaited us was full of hilarity, there was more good food - this time grilled out (on the terrace), North American style - plus Gallo wines, and a putsch, to boot! Great friends, great times.

p.s. JPhi and I were too busy having fun to take more than the pictures you see here. A few Very Important Friends are conspcuously missing in this compilation, a fact for which I apologize profusely. I'm going to have to ask the official photographer for a CD of his pile and a half of images and films...

A young cowboy with a heart of gold and a spatula of stainless steel.

Marion is not amused.

BBQ-ing before, during and after.

(1) the propoganda posse, cranking out posters for (2) the putsch. Little whippersnappers!

Green Post 01

This just in - a bit of sunshine for a greener, better life!

Interlude: Dilly-Dally-ing (2/4)

above Sweet moments from the day of Dally's arrival.


above and below Sweet moments from the day after Dally's arrival, with a wink in Amber's direction and alot of fun in the sun. The second picture is of Tomikins' explanation of where he got bruised on one of his ways down that slide.* Wasn't half bad enough to keep him from going straight back up the ladder, though!



above An evening out with friends, including a "before" shot of David H's hair (see 4/4 for the "after" shot, whenever I actually manage to get that post up) and a look at the evening sky (which was much more impressive in real life, believe me).

above One of my wee artists at work, and another of his works.

* When we were home for Xmas, we went sledding at my old elementary school, on the hill behind this slide. The weather had turned funny the night before, and a good half of the tons of snow had turned to ice, making sledding quite the feat. At one point, Leo took advantage of our inattention, and bolted over to the slide and up the ladder. Once atop, he wasn't sure what to do. It was a long way back down, either way, and the ladder seemed like the least sure of the two ways, what with all of the ice that had accumulated the night before. So Jean-Philippe hunched down at the bottom of the slide and coaxed him down that way. But there was ice in the slide, as well, and when the kid-torpedo came flying towards him, there was nothing to do but back off - and watch the missile shoot another fifty feet along the icy ground, to an eventual halt. The beached baby whale that we collected in our arms had his eyes wide-wide open, and only this to say: "Ahch!"

Stone Soup and Dandelions*

Above: cute First Day of School pics
Below: yegads! Circuitous sentences galore!

I actually sent some of this to one of the people concerned, but then thought a part of it worth another oblique post - and so here it is, another post posted before I finish our Summer, the Io-Way blogging:

In the past few days, I'd been thinking so much of two people, both of whom are suffering from kidney inflictions (and the one of whom I know, in a way, through the other's family blog. Just to make things even more fraught with obliquity. They know who they are, though, and that's what matters)... Anyway, I was thinking so much of them that I managed to convince myself yesterday evening that I was developing another kidney infection, myself (like the one I'd had about ten years ago, thanks to a drunken doctor - no joke! - who gave me the wrong meds. Long, weird, painful story). Those fears didn't stop me from taking the boys out for sushi last night, though. (They asked!**) And by the time we'd gotten home, I'd reverse-convinced myself that the pain was really due to the way I'd been sitting at the drawing board all day. (Fingers crossed, knuckles rapping on wood...)

Anyway... it was kind of weird. I kept alternating between wondering how we'd do things for the next few days, and wondering how in the world all of them had been doing it over the past few days. And breathing in deeply, breathing out...

* Again: oblique. But once it had been thought up, it was staying up. My apologies.

** The boys were watching a Japanese animated series called Kié on the evening of the day before the first day of school (whew! That was a long-winded beginning to break the records the sentences above had already set, eh?), and began pleading with their daddy to be given the skewered meats and makizushi that Kié delights in for their supper. And so - and especially because I was already feeling rotten for not having prepared something special for their first-day-of-school breakfast, well... We broke down and took them around the corner last night, to the Mikado. They had a good time, though they were utterly exasperated by the the fact that they couldn't manipulate their hashi, and Leo wasn't into the fish makizushi at all. Tomi, on the other hand, ate his share, and a good half of my lovely seared tuna dish, as well. Oh, and as some of you know, the best way to keep our boys happy and busy at a restaurant is to bring along the drawing supplies. And as those some of you will probably already have guessed, the boys spent half of the time at the Mikado drawing - what? - Pokémon figures and scenes. Ô-yé!