People I Miss (In No Particular Order)

. . .And the last photo is in case you guys miss me :)

Happy Birthday Dear Granddad

The Fair

Psychedelic Walk to the Car in the Morning, Psychedelic Sky in the Afternoon

Meleesa told me that she really liked the video of Midnight, so here is another one. The last video showed what he does when we arrive home. This one shows what he does when we try to leave :)

Except someone borrowed Droidy without permission and altered my settings so the video colors are all lallypaloozie. But Midnight still has pretty eyes, even when they are black rather than yellow.

My black cat is silver, and my silver car is black. My blue shirt is orange! The rhododendron foliage is purple?? All before my morning stop for coffee. It's a wonder I got to work at all!

And below is the Oregon sky this afternoon. It was about ninety degrees. Frances, Carsten and I had the moon roof open for fresh air. Then massive grey clouds moved across the sky! Huge drops of rain started to fall on us. Across the street there was blue sky. Then the lightning started, so we closed our "rain roof" -- Frances' new name for it.

Note I told YouTube that I was "feeling lucky" and allowed it to choose audio for me to swap in for this video. . .was I lucky? I guess it kind-a goes with the video. Sounds like big raindrops. I wanted Psychedelic Furs but they weren't on the selection list.

Storytime

Most homes just have a welcome mat . . .

. . . while we are lucky enough to have our own personal greeter.

Midnight is an unusually self-aware kitty cat, very likely due to the enriched kittenhood environment. How many kittens get storytime? He seemed especially to like the James Herriot's animal stories for children. I think he gets along better with humans than with cats. Maybe this is because his early experience with feral dairy cats wasn't so good? His brother, Starlight, and he don't get along so well, and he's lost contact with the rest of his family.

Frances and Athena found him at the dairy. We didn't really need a cat, esp. with the household of asthmatics. But his food dish was an overturned manure shovel into which one of the workers had poured a bit of milk. And his "meeeowwww" was so pitiful. We thought at the time that he was skinny, but he seems just to have a slender build. He really is his own kitty cat.

Wedding Stills

Can feet fit into fancy dress shoes after wearing soccer shoes all summer?

They can!

Aunt Amber as photographer made it easy for the kids to smile at the camera :)

Pascal, Cade, JimBob and Jono

Happy girls

Uncle David is lots of fun, and he has a nose.

At least we get a little more time than the day lillies . . .

Athena and Jacoby took a nice walk by the lake with me, hoping for frogs.

Carsten took some photos, too, while we were waiting for the ceremony. Here is an artistic shot of some chairs overlooking the lake. At least I think this was an intentional composition. . . kinda cool but hard to tell if it was check of shutter function or experimental perspective shot.

And a portrait of Mom

Self portrait of Carsten as a young, very sweet boy

When did our children become the older cousins?

Bustling the train . . . the ceremony is about to start

Waiting for the procession

Happy Carsten

This one isn't a still, but it's a movie of a still so it sort-of fits with the post:

Wedding Videos

Fourteen is a lot younger than 100 and boys are throwing shoes

These nice giggling girls kept insisting that Frances was an old lady. So Frances came to me to confirm for them that she was 14. . .

Mom, how old am I?

What could I say?

Frances is 34 and Pascal is dancing.

But most spectacularly: Frances is GIGGLING!

The D.J. liked Pascal's dancing so much that he kept playing Michael Jackson. Until Pascal started requesting Queen. We left the reception a bit early, Pascal & Athena staying with cousins; and supposedly after we left Pascal did a Freddy Mercury dance solo to Bohemian Rhapsody. Wish we'd seen it! We saw a couple 80's music specials in quick succession earlier this year. I think that explains why the Billy Idol arm motion is mixed in with the Michael Jackson moves. But he sure gets the Jackson facial expressions and angst.

If Jacoby and Genevieve grow up dancing like this, we'll know who taught them. . .

But in video below are the dance couple of the evening :)

Jack and Kathleen dance and Athena lets her hair down :)

Oma would be very proud of her. . .

I am no longer the only seamstress in our household! Here is Frances hemming a full-length linen skirt :)

It is so convenient that my daughters are also left-handed, allowing us to share the sewing scissors and to set up the ironing board in the left-handed manner.

I'm sure Athena will catch onto sewing as soon as she sees Frances producing clothing made exactly to specification . . .

. . . and the view from Mom's desk down onto the big maple tree is very nice, too. Perfectly inspiring for creative endeavor :)