Scattered Thoughts . . .

Shortly before arriving at our house the other day to spend some time with Gee and Papa, Kenzie got whacked under the eye by Ace's hard head.  I'm not sure Ace felt anything but Kenzie's eye quickly started swelling up.   Even after arriving at our house, she still spent much of the night with an icepack on her eye trying to bring down the swelling.  That night the swelling was just in a relatively small area right where Ace's head made contact with her face...  right on her left cheekbone.   By bedtime, her eye was becoming more bruised and it was becoming more obvious.  By the next day (yesterday), she had a more noticeable black eye and the swelling was more like a puffy swelling all across under her eye rather than just on her cheekbone!   She kept asking us whether or not her eye would be better by the time school starts later in the month.  Of course Gee and I teased her by telling her "oh no...  it will just keep getting worse...  with oozing puss and you

L iza and John gave birth to another child the other day and they are now home from the hospital. Lukey and Kenzie stayed with us while Liza was in the hospital and we had a great time with them, as always.  I believe they are still enjoying their time with us too which is a good thing!  I'll be writing more about our very busy days and nights spent with Lukey and Kenzie in other blog entries soon.   In the meantime, this blog entry is about bringing Lukey and Kenzie home yesterday so we all could meet their newest sibling, two-day-old Sophia...   In this photo, below, we are on our way to meet Sophia.  Lukey and Kenzie were unusually quiet on this ride.  I'm not sure if they were just exhausted from everything we did while they visited with us (I know I was!) or their minds were simply on the baby and getting home... Ace was very happy to see us and, naturally, he was looking for attention since he is no longer the baby of the family and, understandably, likely feeling a bit a

Ellie and Whitney came over to visit with Gee this Mother's Day to wish her a happy Mother's Day.  They had a really nice time together and the visit made Gee very happy, as always! They spent some time in the house while Ellie played with blocks, a basketball and a soccer ball.  The ball usage got a bit rough for playing in the house so we moved outside.   While outside, the ladies spent some time in the playhouse.   I managed to clean the gutters and set up the downspout to fill our rainbarrels while we were outside.  The downspouts were set up to divert water away from the house for the winter.  Now we have all the water collecting in our rainbarrels so we can water our gardens. Afterward, Gee and I made some nachos grande for dinner.  That was pretty good too!  

B ack in February, both Lukey and Kenzie had sports events on the same weekend.  Lukey had to travel to Saratoga, New York for a hockey tournament while Kenzie had her annual end-of-season figure skating show here in Barre, Vermont.  This particular holiday weekend was fast becoming a logistical nightmare and this logistical nightmare was developing at the last minute after months of planning. We were told about Lukey's February hockey tournament way back in October.  Literally the moment we were told about this tournament, Sheila and I started discussing making reservations at our favorite inn in Saratoga.  We like Saratoga so we were making plans within mere moments of Lukey telling us about the tournament.   We knew the hotels in Saratoga would book very quickly and we were correct.  In the few short hours that we were discussing and planning this long weekend trip, our favorite inn was filling up quickly so we knew we had to book the weekend immediately.  Actually, within just