This colorful birthday cake artistically made by Hope celebrates 2 years with our youngest, Stephen. (For those of you still guessing, it's a train...). We had a small party for Stephen on Wednesday (his actual birthday), with some of his little friends (and their parents) joining us:
The picture above shows Hope piling up more sugary goodies for the kids... The cake was very moist and delicious, and the little cups of ice cream were perfect for the kids--especially Stephen, who as birthday boy got special
privileges to get messy:
The gift opening was a big hit with all the kids, especially the somewhat older ones:
Stephen has yet to quite get fully psyched up over opening gifts. He (and his siblings) have made good use of them, and are quite grateful for them. This weekend has been a busy one (of sorts) for Hope. Friday and Saturday afternoon she manned a booth at
Monticello's "Rhythm and Roots" festival for the Monticello Tree Board, for which she is president:
Busy, in that she put a lot of work into it, but not too much so--not a lot of people braved the 90+ degree weather both days to ask tree questions. Still, this kind of effort is needed to keep
Monticello's newly won "Tree City USA" designation, and she was happy to do it. The Monticello festival, you might recall, was supposed to have happened much earlier in the year, but a tornado and heavy rain struck the town just before it, so they postponed it for a few months. The festival has a grilled chicken cook-off, a small car show, some other events, and music:
This is a local legend, Jed
Clampitt, who sounds an awful lot like Willie Nelson. He and his band were the only musicians we listened to, and they sounded pretty good. Today (Saturday afternoon) while Hope was doing her tree care clinic, the kids and I piled into my truck and drove around a bit. Here's a pretty view of Bayou Bartholomew, about a half-hour from Monticello:
Though it may be hard for you to tell, the water is actually fairly high in most of the local rivers--we had over 7 inches of rain in Monticello in July, and some more in early August, which is noticeably above average for this time of year (probably twice our usual amount). This next week will be busy for us--Kenny returns to school on Wednesday. We've been waking the kids early and sending them to bed earlier for the last week or so to get them used to school time. Beth starts her preschool the following week, and the University of Arkansas-Monticello starts soon after that...
This colorful birthday cake artistically made by Hope celebrates 2 years with our youngest, Stephen. (For those of you still guessing, it's a train...). We had a small party for Stephen on Wednesday (his actual birthday), with some of his little friends (and their parents) joining us:
The picture above shows Hope piling up more sugary goodies for the kids... The cake was very moist and delicious, and the little cups of ice cream were perfect for the kids--especially Stephen, who as birthday boy got special privileges to get messy:
The gift opening was a big hit with all the kids, especially the somewhat older ones:
Stephen has yet to quite get fully psyched up over opening gifts. He (and his siblings) have made good use of them, and are quite grateful for them. This weekend has been a busy one (of sorts) for Hope. Friday and Saturday afternoon she manned a booth at Monticello's "Rhythm and Roots" festival for the Monticello Tree Board, for which she is president:
Busy, in that she put a lot of work into it, but not too much so--not a lot of people braved the 90+ degree weather both days to ask tree questions. Still, this kind of effort is needed to keep Monticello's newly won "Tree City USA" designation, and she was happy to do it. The Monticello festival, you might recall, was supposed to have happened much earlier in the year, but a tornado and heavy rain struck the town just before it, so they postponed it for a few months. The festival has a grilled chicken cook-off, a small car show, some other events, and music:
This is a local legend, Jed Clampitt, who sounds an awful lot like Willie Nelson. He and his band were the only musicians we listened to, and they sounded pretty good. Today (Saturday afternoon) while Hope was doing her tree care clinic, the kids and I piled into my truck and drove around a bit. Here's a pretty view of Bayou Bartholomew, about a half-hour from Monticello:
Though it may be hard for you to tell, the water is actually fairly high in most of the local rivers--we had over 7 inches of rain in Monticello in July, and some more in early August, which is noticeably above average for this time of year (probably twice our usual amount). This next week will be busy for us--Kenny returns to school on Wednesday. We've been waking the kids early and sending them to bed earlier for the last week or so to get them used to school time. Beth starts her preschool the following week, and the University of Arkansas-Monticello starts soon after that...
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