Down it came

Our neighbors have three pine trees right on the edge of our property, next to their driveway. A local tree expert has been warning us that one of the huge trees was leaning and potentially could fall on their roof, or maybe our roof.
Imagine our surprise when we returned from a delicious dinner with Emily and Nicole to see this:

It was leaning quite a bit and it seemed so strange for the person cutting such a big tree down and only using a small chain saw. It took him two days.
You can barely see our house through the huge limbs. Now we really must plan our landscaping to take care of this huge bare spot!

A sweet memory

From my journal, written Dec 9 , 1980.
KC was 3, almost 4 and Camille was 2 and 4 months. In North Carolina, still in graduate school.

Clyde was gone to his evening class. I was making orange coconut bread and KC kept trying to help and yet doing things that irritated me. I got upset when he almost spilled all the orange juice. He just looked at me like he turned his ears off. Then just one minute later he started singing "Love One Another" all the way through - boy did that make me feel small. After he left the room I started to feel bad for my silly upset and began to shed a few tears. KC walked in and asked, "Why are you crying?" I told him I felt bad for getting upset at the orange juice and he hugged me and said, "I like you so much, I love you, I'll go get you some toilet paper." (Maybe we were too poor to buy Kleenex?) Then Camille came in and she said, "I want to love, too." So KC gave her a big hug. When she went to bed she said, "Let me kiss you so you won't be sad."
Little children do teach us how to be humble over and over with their sweet forgiveness. If I had not apologized to KC I may have been grumpy till bedtime and missed his sweet hugs and words and Camille's tenderness.

Many thanks to all my children for teaching me, stretching me, loving me, and allowing me to grow as their mother.

love this

Here's a link to Mother's day message from a one of my new favorite authors, Kelly C0rrigan.

Alcatraz

We just returned from a weekend in San Francisco and one thing we did was to take a night tour of Alcatraz. It has a famous and eerie reputation.
There are some fascinating facts about the island - like the 2,000 gulls that live and nest there. Apparently the male and females come back to the same exact spot to mate with each other, build a nest and lay three eggs year after year. You can see the birds in the air and all the white spots on the land are birds. San Francisco is across the water.

Clyde shows us how miserable the cells were. Every Friday night was 'music' night for 1 hour and one person may have played a harmonica and another played the trombone - only three notes!

There were some attempted escapes here and we even saw the two cells where the inmates enlarged their vent opening with spoons. Those two may have left Alcatraz the prison, but everyone thinks they drowned in the frigid waters because they were never heard from again!
We were glad to leave when the ferry left!

Triple treats

We've had some delightful visits lately from some very special people.

Michelle shared her birthday dinner with visits from Alex, Bennett, and Ruby, and Cameron!

The only way to feed three babies at once and eat dinner yourself at the same time!


There's nothing better than mommy's kiss!

Triple the fun



Technology =$
3 generations of Robinson boys = Priceless

treasures

I'm cleaning out my bedside drawers.
Found this little entry in a notebook written by Nicole in 1990.
Love her spelling.
click to enlarge the writing.
gost melt's there haert
Look what can happen in 20 years! She is a Master's student now.

What's that smell?

In the last 6 months or so I noticed a strong earthy smell when I turned on the water in my kitchen sink. I rinsed it well, ran baking soda vinegar and hot water down the disposal, read up on where the smell might originate. Nothing conclusive and I wasn't ready to accept it was some weird water standing in the pipes somewhere or some mildew growing in a hard to reach place. It didn't always smell, but was noticeable when I first ran the water. It was not the dishrags.

I finally figured it out. By mistake.

I was cleaning in and around my sink and scrubbing the rubber thing that sits inside the drain opening. It came out with the sponge into my hands! One look and I knew where the smell originated. Apparently our disposal is so powerful (YAY) that little bits of food and pulverized debris get tossed UP into the rubber thing instead of it all draining down through the blades of the disposal (BOO) and drain pipe.

So now I just have to regularly pull up the rubber sink drain thing (does it have a name?) that is supposed to stop a spoon or knife from entering the disposal, and scrub the gunk off!

Sorry no photos. Use your imagination.