Cherry pie

Being at grandmas was a wonderful, simple week for the girls and I.  I enjoyed the nostalgic restfulness and funny childhood memories of trying to sleep in Grandma's curlers and getting to play with my mother's old toys.  I don't remember ever baking pie with my grandma, but my girls hopefully will.

  

Yes, it was very good.

GG's house

After Carrie's wedding, the girls and I went to visit my grandmother.  She's "GG" to the girls.  Two things that I distinctly remember about going to visit grandma are having to wear curlers to bed as a very little girl and getting to see and catch fireflies for the first time.  So I wasn't too surprised to find my little girls having similar experiences!

Rosie

Nana has a very sweet and small 17 year old cat named Rosie.  She is beautiful and tolerates (and I think even enjoys) the girls' attention when they visit.

post-wedding flower-girl reruns

After the wedding there were still lots of flowers and petals to be dealt with, and the baskets and flower crowns were still around, so the flower girls continued their job for several days after the event.  They also recruited their new favorite friend, first-cousin-once-removed (yes, I looked it up!) Sophie.

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Even Nana got to try!

Uncle MISTER ROGERS!

Our third wedding of the summer was Carrie's (Joel's sister).  Besides being a family wedding, this one was particularly exciting because Elsa and Nora were FLOWER GIRLS!!! and, equallly exciting, was the fact that Aunt Carrie was getting married to MISTER ROGERS!!!!!.  Of course, she was marrying Gabe Rogers, not everyone's favorite cardigan-wearing preschool TV host.  But that didn't matter to the girls.  we had to keep reminding Elsa especially to "please let go of Gabe for a while now" and it's time to get off from Gabe's lap now," etc. etc.

 The girls were already educated about dancing at weddings, so they immediately headed for the dance floor with cousin Sophia and spent the majority of the evening there!

Thankfully there were plenty of Grandpas and Daddys to go around.

Opa taught Elsa a few "real" ballroom steps,

but I think she was happiest when the ring bearer was willing to dance with her for a few moments! 

"Mommy, he was just my right size!!!"

 

Wedding dance

We had a lovely day at Jedidiah and Kelly's beautiful wedding at the end of June.   

One of the ways we've gotten to know them and their family is through the colonial dance group that we participate in, and towards the end of their celebration they taught everyone the Virginia Reel!

The girls waited on the sidelines for the parts they could participate in:

And "waltzing" with Daddy is always a favorite:

And thank you to our friend who took photos for us while we danced!  

 

What the cat brought in

Tabitha Twitchit does a wonderful job of catching the rats and mice for us, always, of course, leaving them (or part of them) on the doorstep for us.  Lately she had been bringing us insects to add to our nature collection!  Most recently she came up on our back porch mewing loudly, with this lovely (but badly wounded butterfly) in her mouth.  We were sad for the butterfly, but we could scold her because she seemed so proud!