celebrations

Happy Memorial Day!
To celebrate our friends in North Korea have tested an underground nuclear test and Iran has sent six warships into international waters.
Yippee!
Really though, we appreciate the celebrations, but we as a country are going low key theses days, so thanks, but no thanks! We'd appreciate it if you respected our wishes for privacy. Just family really. Noone else is invited.
So why not keep those very special party celebrations for another time. A very distant time.

Game night!

Last night the sound of laughter echoed off the walls of our home. Screechy springs screamed across the lawn from the trampoline. Food smells wafted from room to room and dismayed laughs arose when the dog got his snout into the bowl off cheese puffs.
Last night was junior/senior youth group game night and we were the happy recipients of the crowd of kids. Emma pulled out at least twenty games, but I think they stuck to two, with a few breakoff groups playing on their own. Happily I might add.
What a true gift to have watched these kids grow from, for some of them, infancy or toddlers into the young adults they've become.
Hannah and Patrick and Stephanie and Eric brought their baby boys and it was interesting to watch the teenage girls' mothering instincts rise up and out and clamor for a cuddle with an infant. It was so sweet!
My own husband made me question his culinary tastes when he piled meatballs on top of Domino's Pizza. More than once.
But the laughing...how grateful I am to have heard the laughter of this crew. We'll have to have a least one more game night here before the girls take off for college.
Of course we'll still want the kids here in the next years as Jedd moves from junior to senior youth group, but this will be the end of this era and the start of a new one.
Change.

the perfect moment to start

Picking up one plump red strawberry at a time and rinsing it under cold water, gently shaking it and laying it in a growing puddle on the counter.
Reaching for the next berry and repeating until a nice pile lies in wait.
Opening a drawer and removing a sharp green knife from its sheath and slicing and dicing berries into a cheerful Emma Bridgewater bowl covered in polka dots.
Now a sprinkling of sugar to cover .
Stir gently and let the seeping juices drip throughout the bowl.
Lift spoon to mouth and savor the first bite of sweetness.
Try to eat them slowly, but it's an impossiblility.
This is how to enjoy even the smallest moments of life.
SAVOR the moments. Each and every moment. I know we can't really do this. We're human. We get caught up in all the moments instead of breaking them up into increments of loveliness. But we can try to keep reminding ourselves, and the beauty of a strawberry just may be the place to start all over again.

sheep

Here we go again...
In my memory it started with the pronunciation of Uranus.
Then it was the word, "harassment".
In the past years we've switched from things "disappearing" to all things "go missing".
And now the media is slowly giving us the British version of closing down stores, banks, you name it. Nothing, according to the media, is closing down anymore. It is all being "shuttered".
It is all so very pretentious.

pretentious.

There's my rant for the day....

Bella Luna

Steamed mussels, gnocchi, olive tapenade, crusty bread, red wine, strong Italian coffee.
Yum.
This was my dinner last night made better only by the company of Anna and Cetta.
Bella Luna of Cambridge.
Try it.