Back Online

Finally, my Toshiba is back online. Its original AC adapter gave up the ghost almost 2 months ago and I just got around to ordering a replacement. Well, ok, it's more complicated than that, but I don't want to bore you with the details. The main point is that once again we are a two-laptop family!

So, I'm trying to catch up on a lot of things, all while watching the Victory Day celebration live from Moscow thanks to RT On Air. I'm planning on staying up for the Victory Day Parade, but it's still more than an hour away (it'll start at 10am Moscow time which is 2am EST) and I'm not sure I'll stay awake that long.

Anyway, as promised, here are the highlights:

It's strawberry season here in the Piedmont! So last weekend our good friends - Kelli and her 2 little boys - went to pick strawberries with us. Or rather we went with them since Kelli drove us all in her new mini-van.

The kids picked strawberries, ate a bunch too, petted the goats, played on the playground and generally had a great time. Did I mention, there was a big red tractor there too?!

While we were busy enjoying the berries, Chris was hard at work demolishing the lower part of our deck. That's where we're going to build a cool little playground for M. That's one of our new 3 projects.

We, and this time it was all 3 of us, went to the grand opening of a new Art Museum. The museum is, as far as I understand, is pretty striking, with lots of very cutting-edge features and excellent collection of art (I'm not even pretending I understand much about art, but I did pick up a museum brochure and read it).

Of course, that was the day M. chose to stay in PJs all day. Well, what can you do with these 3 year olds, right! At least he changed out of his rubber boots that he wears around the garden.

And speaking of the garden, we started seeing some produce coming in. First - radishes (spicy, but not woody or bitter), lettuce (very tender) and that's about it for now. We planted lots of tomatoes, some cukes and squash and sweet peppers and also various herbs.

Tomatoes are doing very well. Some are supposed to get up to 9ft tall! Wow, we figured we better build some kind of support for them. And then we started building (it was the other one of our new 3 projects). Ok, by "we" in this one I mean Chris. He planned the whole thing and built it in 3 evenings. And let me tell you, it's probably the prettiest tomato support I've ever seen! My hubby has so many unexpected talents! I also planted some vining flowers and beans between tomato plants.

M. came down with a cold. Even though it only lasted a couple of days (not counting some lingering cough), he gave us quite a fright. As our pediatrician explained, there are fewer summer colds than winter ones, but the ones that are around are much more severe. Well, leave it up to M. to get aquainted with every little cold virus that happens to float his way! Hopefully this is the last one for a while though 'cause him being sick every 3 weeks is getting ridiculous.

And that's all, folks!