SOMETHING SWEET

for you, because you're so sweet to me.

Great big shiny bursting sweet red berries, and the plump, juicy blues---they made several lovely breakfasts of parfaits with vanilla yogurt and a free hand with the Redi-Wip can. They were requested for afternoon tea, for bedtime snacks, for a cool munch on the patio on a warm afternoon.

Powdered sugar in the big berry, brownie bites on the tea-stand.

Thank you all for your inquiries and your e-mails and your good thoughts---we're getting better and better, and will be back soon.

Sweet days to you all,

MOIRE NON . . .

Much more later about our visit and all the activities and fun, but not quite yet. Chris has not been well since this time last week, and he's just getting back to his usual self, and I've also had a rocky couple of days---due to a Sunday afternoon latte from a Friday-stocked vending machine, I think. I should have known better.

Anyway---I've missed everyone, and will be back and running soon---lots of pictures and stories about our adventures with the GRANDS.

as above,

AND THE RAIN . . . .

And the Rain said, "Slow DOWN."

The clouds and thunder and rain off and on for the past few days have left us in a muggy, humid (right now downright soaking, as it's coming DOWN out there) place in which I expect Clark Gable and Ava Gardner to appear in Black and White, (she in eternal couturier gowns and he in immaculately-pressed khakis with lots of pockets), sludging through the tendrils of the back garden.

I'm usually awake and up and going at O:Dark Thirty on a party or entertaining day, but I just lay there, one foot companionably looped over Chris' ankle, breathing softly in the whussssh of the fan and the echo of the distant thunder.

Nothing we can do outside. Plans of sunshine and romping children and a pink crepe-paper pinata swinging from a lush tree---gone with the rain. No promise of fair for the day, and if the sun DID emerge, the air feels like more warm water on your skin.

So, we'll set up a small table in here for the food, put the beautiful Princess Castle cake up into the pass-through under the lights, and set two tables with fancy, crinkly cloths and imaginative cardboard plates. And we'll do fine. We all LIKE each other---we like each other's company and nearness and the tumble of children in the floor.

I look on this as a snug, comfy day at our house, everyone laughing and talking and holding squirming or comfortably hugged children, eating the lovely lunch I've made, watching our growing girl blow out her candles, her bright eyes sparkling as she opens her gifts.

Today IS what it is, and since we had birthday cake for breakfast already once this week, and since she's going to her Mammaw's tomorrow for another week, the prospect of a sunny lawn party is still quite promising. I think we mught just send that pinata home with Mammaw for sharing with the cousins down there.

I think this was meant to be---this close, piled-together party with no plan and no great space to spread out in. It's indoors---so what? It's a NICE indoors (if some of my own angels will fold this tableful of laundry and get these toys out of sight when they wake up), and after all, it ain't the worst place to hold a party.

It coulda been Chuck E. Cheese.

I love everybody---see you later.

FRIDAY

Wonderful day yesterday---lots of fun at breakfast, then outdoors for most of the day. I did the picture-taking, as Chris had to be gone for most of the day, as did DD, who was picking up the goodies and decor for tomorrow's Birthday Party.


I saw a tall, long-legged six-year-old whose whoops and yells and barks and tree-climbing and running on all-fours wearing a foxtail clipped to the back of her belt belie her ethereal grace in a floating fairy gown. I captured the sweet, demure presence beneath her flyaway hair, her ever-running feet---hair smoothed into a clip and topped with a tiny wreath of pink rosebuds, shining in the afternoon sun as she stood amongst the hostas and whirled smoothly on the lawn in her white dress.



And she was still and beautiful, profiled against the old concrete Venus-statue in the hosta bed.



But the everyday girl, the active, laughing little being whose bright eyes gleam even brighter as they look into mine---I love that one, the one of cheery chatter and long stories of horses and fairies and birds, of the careful foot-placement as she negotiates all the limbs of the arbor, making a little house high above, with her Princess lunchbox and her tight-capped mug hooked onto handy little cut limbs for easy reaching as she surveys the world from her eyrie.



She's the girl of the hour/days, it seems, with Gracie buried in her new-found knitting talents and her wee brother all awash in the glories of having petted not one but a dozen little sharks in the tank at the zoo. Tomorrow we'll celebrate her Birthday; yesterday we planned the party, today we pre-celebrated with beautiful parfaits in pretty sherbet-cups, the strawberries and blueberries and yogurt piled prettily, then buried beneath great curls of Redi-Wip, each child allowed free hand with the creating.



They're going to spend the afternoon with old friends, so I'll finish up on the party food. I hope it doesn't storm all day tomorrow as predicted, so we won't have to move the festivities inside.



All the Angels of Glory couldn't help this house.



moire non,

JOY