I swear V posed for this without prompting. She's just naturally corny, people!
The first, third, and fifth pictures of this post are all shots of my favorite lily in the garden, whose name I do not know. I bought clearanced Martha Stewart bulbs from K-Mart 6 years ago and planted them in the fall...when they didn't come up the next year, I ordered a mix of asiatic lilies from some mail-order catalog, and planted those. That year, I had a gazillion different lilies...dang latent Martha Stewart bulbs. So I don't remember which is which. I just like this one, because it's the closest thing I have to the famous Stargazer Lily. It's only famous to me because I once had an elaborate dream about my cousin Connie, about how she was climbing a wall covered in the most amazing pink lilies I'd ever seen. So amazing, in fact, that I was sure I just made them up. The next day, I went to work (at a college with a solid Horticultral Department) and they had THOSE VERY LILIES for sale. Creepy, huh? I brought one home for my cousin, and have been strangely drawn to them ever since. Drawn to them=freaked out by them, that is. 
My mom has this belief that her flowers are changing color, particularly her columbines, because she swears she planted blue and white ones but now hers are all that "average" pink. My horticultural friend insists that that's impossible, and it's more likely that the pink one expand and the blue and white ones just died. The pink one is the original, afterall, and the others are variations. 
At any rate, I'm sure I used to have yellow lilies, but they are nowhere to be seen this year. Hm. Maybe they just died. Or maybe Myra's columbine ate them. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Did you come to my backyard and steal my lilies? If so, can I have them back please? I'll trade you a pseudo-stargazer. Seriously.
7:30--the on-call doctor comes in and breaks Jess' waters. She's at about 4.5 centimeters.
I don't have access to digital copies of our wedding pictures right this second (and I'm kinda too lazy to look for them right now), so instead of those pictures, here's a recent shot of my groom. He's probably saying something profound in this photo. Or talking about farts.
Then there was a carrot photo op.
After the carrots, we had cheeseburgers and gyros and ice cream sandwiches. Oh, and yes, the boogers are back.
To finish the evening, there was playground time with digging and slides and bouncy bridges.
Ben likes to hide. You can barely tell, but what appears to be the right-most flower up there is really Ben's blonde head. V hides, too, but mostly by turning her face to a wall and yelling "Find me!" Ben actually hunkered down and blended right in.
He just turned two, and he's in the best stage: you know, that adorable, learn-something-new-every-five-minutes, so-much-personality-it-hurts, tiny-little-human stage. He's got big old boy paw hands (you know, with the little dimples) and jumps like a superhero. He also was very attached to our lawn ornament.
It was a little odd talking about Ben to his parents, in that it's not quite like talking to a friend who's had a newborn... I mean, it kind of is, in that this new, dependent, demanding life has only lived with Ed and Linda for seven months. So they still have those same nervous "I sure hope he's still breathing" middle of the night moments that I had the whole first year. Though he and V aren't that far apart in age, his parents are still in a sort of newborn phase, and we're more in the toddler exhaustion stage. I don't know quite how to explain it better.
On Sunday, we went out to breakfast together, and despite the screaming (seven grown ups+4 children under 3=big adventures) it was a great way to end our whirlwind weekend together. Plus, there was bacon.
I don't know why I don't have any pictures of Kathy, except that she was probably talking to the tables around us in her joyful, calm, unapologetic way. "So much for a nice quiet breakfast, folks." One of my earliest/deepest memories of Kathy was realizing that she was so good at being positive in almost every situation. That's a crazy thing to notice about someone when you're only five years old...
My mother tells me this iris is called the BeastMeister...but my extensive online searching has yeilded no verificiation of this claim. Do with that what you will. Whatever it's called, it is a very striking iris, moreso than I can capture on film. My mom has a wide variety of irises (iri?): her garden is just spectacular this time of year. The thing about irises, though, is they're not really great bouquet flowers, because they don't last once they've been cut. 
This is the north (far) side of the Trailer in Our Driveway Where Random Homeless People Have Been Living. See the orange cord coming through the window?
