Mother's Day Surprise

First I have to apologize if I offended anyone with that last post. It's not that there actually IS no one to call; it's that I'm too embarrassed to call, especially late at night or when I'm an enormous wreck. And maybe I'm the only one who has that problem; I have LOTS of unique problems, like my feet.

Anyway, I had a really nice Mother's Day. Dan and the kids made me breakfast in bed, a very lovely card with Art By Helena, and I got a present - a real, actual present -



The camera isn't that shade of magenta; it's a nice calm purple color - perhaps grape? Eggplant? Aubergine?

I had joked with Dan earlier about how that camera was meant for me: simple, small, idiot-proof, and featured in commercials with Steven Tyler.



Clearly, the camera for me. I just about fell off the bed when I opened it, since we don't usually get big gifts for Mother's and Father's Day. Dan gave me a (completely unnecessary) tutorial, but it's so simple. Yep. Even for me. PLUS - it's nice and small. So many, many thanks to my technologically savvy hubby, without whom I would never be on speaking terms with iPods or cameras or computers or anything else that plugs in.

On another totally random topic: Dan, the kids and I were taking a walk tonight around the neighborhood. We noticed a couple of houses two blocks away that had been under-maintained for years (they were the homes of two elderly women who recently passed away). One has just sold, and we commented on what improvements we thought it would need, etc. As we were coming around the block, we ran into my old high school friend, Jana Peterman, and her new husband Phil. I haven't seen Jana much since we graduated, but her parents live a block over from me, and we've run into each other occasionally because of that. Turns out that she and Phil just bought the aforementioned recently-sold house we'd just been discussing. They'd just walked past my Mom's house, too, and was telling Phil all the old stories about the "library" we'd opened and later closed, since we were its only patrons, or the imaginary families we'd created. It was nice to see her, and now that we're near neighbors I hope we get more chances to visit. I've been hearing more from old friends lately, mostly through Facebook, and in a way it's kind of fun: although we'd all spent over a decade together, now we've all been apart for a decade and started our own, separate lives. Something to think about. (I'm also near neighbors with Ryan and Laura Wiles, my sister's friends from her graduating class. Crazy!).

Soon I'll upload a few of the pictures from the new camera, and you can see the BEAUTIFUL flowering trees in our yard (and some of our neighbors' yards!).