finally...

It's been so long since I've posted a real blog post.  There is just the feeling of being very busy with very boring stuff.  All that beginning of school stuff, I guess.

One of the things I like about my new house is the rose bush in the backyard.  There are actually two, but one is mostly covered by a lemon tree.  The other, however produces beautiful roses on a regular basis.  I love being able to have fresh flowers on the table.

Here is a picture of the bush tonight.  Beautiful flowers, though the color kind of washed out in the flash....

We had a tropical storm a week or so ago.  It was a nice little change of pace.  They predicted as much as 20 inches of rain.  We didn't get that (or anything close as far as I could tell), but we did get a good bit of rain.  The wind must have blown a little bit because we had some branches to pick up.

Some little ones, too...

One of the things that I'm not really loving about the new house is the Water Oak tree overhanging the house.
How long before a good sized limb falls on my roof?  Plus all of the leaves and acorns in the pool and on the patio. 
 

I caught my child reading the other night!  He was probably trying to make an inappropriate gesture as I documented this unusual occurrence.
 

This sight here is taking years off my life.  Nothing you do in parenting prepares you for the moment your child gets behind the wheel of YOUR car with you in the passenger seat.  Although the last time we were out wasn't too bad, I didn't have to hang on for dear life, nor did I see my life flash in front of my eyes.

We are still spending time at the "old house"...trying to get it all the way empty and trying to get it decent enough for someone to move in.  It needs a lot of TLC.  Then there is the yard, too.

We removed some wallpaper....and put on fresh paint (of which I have no pictures yet)

We burned fallen branches.  (This is something I may actually miss, though with a funeral home next door now, we have less opportunities for fires in our backyard.)  Dear son mowed the grass, too.

We removed the shower doors.  Disregard the condition of the bathtub...that was partly due to me standing in it to clean various things.

The kids played a final game (or two) in their old bedroom.  You have to admit that it looks a little better in this picture than it did in the one shown here!

I always hated their closet.  I called it "the cave".  The oldest hung his clothes on the top bar on the left; the younger on the bottom.  It worked better when they were babies than when they were teens.

Found this while we were cleaning up.  I think my grandmother might have made it.  This is what people did back in the day before cable TV and blogging and the internet.  It was an art form that has been all but lost...all those special knots and stitches.

We found this hunk of cake frozen in the freezer at the old house.  None of us could remember where it came from, but we used our powers of deductive reasoning.  The icing looked gold....did we know anyone who had been married 50 years?  And the writing "urch"  Hmmmm.... Couldn't be "lurch"  How about Church?  Then it dawned on me...our parish's 50th Anniversary Celebration!  That was back in December.  We deemed the cake "safe" enough to eat.

And finally - just because - the clouds at sunrise this morning...

Do you see now why there hasn't been much in the way of blogging?  You might thank me for that - sparing you all the boring details!