Happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July! I hope everybody has plans for some fun today. We will spend the day with Mom and Daddy, having our annual 4th cookout. Of course we have all our sparklers and small fireworks for our own little fireworks show after the town's big show. And what a big show they put on too! Luckily we live down the block from the park and are able to walk and avoid the traffic jams.

We have a tomato in our garden! It's amazing that anything is growing after weeks of neglect. I guess the afternoon rains have kept everything alive. Hopefully we'll have at least one tomato. As gardeners we don't have high expectations!

This little fella likes to scare me! I'll be walking along in the garden and he'll hop out of nowhere! I saw him first today and he kindly posed for this picture.

We've had a lot going on lately and have just not felt like sitting here writing about it. RL took the week off of work, so we've been running around doing all the things we should have been doing anyway! The eye doctor yesterday was interesting, as usual. We have the best eye doctor with a wonderful sense of humor. Everybody was getting examined, so we crammed into his little office and let the jokes fly. It's a wonder we walk out of there with the right prescriptions because we're carrying on so! RL actually had an improvement with his eyesight and R didn't have much of a change at all. L and I weren't quite so lucky. L had a change and is extremely rough on glasses, so he is getting a pair that you can mangle and they just pop right back into place. That poor kid has stepped, sat, slept, you name it - to his glasses in the past. I got lucky and get to experience mono vision instead of bifocals. Between that and getting those stupid drops to dilate your pupils, I couldn't see a blasted thing for hours! Luckily RL was the designated driver, so we all made it safely home.

As for knitting, well, you can forget ever seeing a picture of the socks I was making from the pattern I found on the Crystal Palace website. I am a blind follower and the pattern was just too vague for me. The sock has been ravelled and is now in a ball sitting in time out until I can decide what I want to do with it...or it decides to behave! I'm working on a neat pair right now. Hold on - I'll take a picture so you can see it...

Not a great picture, but you get the idea. The yarn is not as blue as it looks. It's Sweet Georgia from Knit Picky Yarns. The pattern is 'Pillars of Atlantis Sock Pattern' designed by Chrissy Graham. It's a great pattern and I've really enjoyed working on it. It doesn't use a cable needle for the cables, so that's a bonus in my book!

We spent Sunday at my Mom and Dad's visiting with some of their friends from way back. I used to just love them so much - and still do. They were some of the only adults we were allowed to call by their first names, so that was cool to me! It's been over 30 years since I've seen them and they haven't changed much at all. She's still as sweet as ever and he's just like always. He's into motorcycles, corvettes, skiing and snowboarding - some things just never change. We had a great day and the kids loved them. L sat in awe of Paul and all his adventures. And to prove that it's a small world - RL's Dad grew up with Paul and they compared notes of who they knew and places they both remembered. Cool!

Have a safe 4th - be careful with those fireworks! Remember our soldiers and say an extra prayer for them.