butterflies, bees, laughs, & old friends

This might be a long post because I've fallen behind, and some good stuff has been happening :-)

First is a new little obsession: decorating my house with butterflies. I think butterflies are exquisite creatures, so I have many things with butterflies on them. I recently looked up at the wood beam trim while sitting at my kitchen table and thought, "wouldn't it be cool to trim all my house with butterflies?" So I started doing that. I ordered a $2 set of little paper butterflies from China (ebay) and put them up on the beam between the dining room and living room:


And on a related topic, Seth had a run-in with a bee. My peonies finally bloomed in the front yard. They never last more than a couple weeks, so I broke one off the bush to entertain Seth on our walk Saturday evening. We walked around our normal walking route -- about 30 or 40 minutes -- with that flower. When we got back home, though, and took the flower up on the front deck to show Dad, bees flew up and attacked that flower. And one bee stung Seth on the ear. Poor Seth had no idea what was going on, but he knew that his ear hurt really badly! The poor child looked like a lopsided Dopey from Snow White when his stung ear swelled up and out! I put baking soda/water paste on it to make it stop hurting. Seth didn't cry or yell -- he's so brave and tough! His eyes had tears in them, and he had a look of total confusion on his face, like "what in the world just happened?!" until the pain subsided and he realized how much attention he was getting out of this situation.



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Luke is one of the funniest kids ever born!!!! He was sitting on my bed with Jason and Seth, watching a movie, I think, on Jason's laptop. He started yelling when Jason started wrestling around with him: "MOM!!! Dad hurt me! All I was doing was real snoring -- well, fake snoring -- and he rolled over and hit his head on my head, right on the noggin piece!" Where does he come up with this stuff?!
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Yesterday was a GREAT day!!!!! In fact, Joel told us that it was the best day he'd ever had :-) We got to spend the afternoon and evening with an old friend that I hadn't seen in over 20 years:

Lesley and I were friends when we both lived in Mesa, Arizona. We hadn't kept in touch very well, but we caught back up a little on facebook recently. When she and her friend Steve came up to see Alaska, we made a plan to have lunch together. We met Lesley, Steve, and another friend Charles at Sourdough Mining Company (Joel's first "best day" reason -- he got to eat out). It was SO fun to catch up with Lesley and get to know Steve and Charles -- one of the most interesting lunches I've ever enjoyed! After lunch, we walked over to Alaska Wild Berry to see the reindeer in the park and get some chocolates and souvenirs from the store. Lesley hadn't seen a bear yet, so they suggested we go to the Alaska Zoo (Joel's second "best day" reason -- the zoo is one of his all-time favorite places). We walked through that whole place and saw almost every single animal, taking pictures, chatting, and laughing. Even though we weren't hungry after the huge lunch we'd had, it was dinner time after the zoo, so we went to Gwennie's for a little something to keep us from getting hungry before morning (Joel's third "best day" reason -- eating out TWICE in one day, unheard of!). Seth and I were glad to see our friends Samantha and Dewey working there (they used to work at City Diner when Seth and I went there every week -- we've missed seeing them). At the end of dinner, Lesley and Steve had to return their rental car and wait for their departure time. Luke suggested they wait at our house and play board games, and that's just what they did (Joel's fourth, fifth, and sixth "best day" reasons -- he loves to play games, we had coffee, and he got to stay up late). Now everyone knows that kids can be cute for a while, but annoying or even monstrous after a whole day together. But Lesley and Steve were SUCH good sports with my kids! They seemed to enjoy their company and agreed to spend even more time with them :-) It helped that all four of my kids were on their super-best behavior (an incredibly rare occurrence). We had a fantastic game of Taboo before they had to get back to the airport and fly home.

Friends are an important part of a good life, and I'm so glad to remember that old friends are true friends! And getting to know new friends is like finding a treasure :-)