Surviving Cyber War

Richard FINALLY received copies of his first published book today!! Woot!

He was such a sweetheart to include me in the acknowledgments.

Donna's back in town!

Donna and I have known each other since about 1979. She is one of my dearest friends, if not THE dearest. She lives in San Luis Obispo, California, and was back in Michigan for two weeks on vacation. We were lucky that she could take time out of her busy schedule to visit with us. Richard told me that he loves when Donna visits because I'm so happy. "You guys giggle a lot when she's here and you don't even need alcohol to do that!" I told him that's a sign of a good, true friend.

While she was here we went to see a performance of "Gypsy" starring another really good friend of mine, Rose Randall Warner after having dinner with the family (minus Chelsea :-(( ). Here are some pictures before dinner. Chelsea WAS able to join us before dinner and it just happened to be her birthday.
Above picture, from left: Donna, Chelsea, Sarah, Hannah, Courtney, and moi!!
On Sunday evening we fired up the brick oven for home-made pizza. Yum! Here's Jonah putting together his creation and firing it, minus any hint of a 'wiggle.'

And Donna concocting something vegan.Donna was a good sport and agreed to learn a new game, Settlers of Catan.

My beautiful orchid as it charms us on my dining room table. It has an incredible amount of blooms.

The cuteness next door

There are two little girls that live next door to me that I have adopted as my 'psuedo' granddaughters. They are so incredibly cute and smart and precious. Jordan is 7 years old and Sydney is 3. I love the fact that they feel they can come-and-go as they please at my house and when the weather is nice their parents often find them 'over at Karen's house' when they thought the girls were in their own front yard. Here are a couple of pictures of Sydney taken on Saturday, May 22nd. One of the first things Sydney said was "Karen, I'm hungry." in a some-what shy voice. "Well, what do you feel like eating?" I asked her. "A peanut butter and banana sandwich!" "Okay! I'm glad I have those fixings!"