Old friends, new looks

We went to visit my mom and dad yesterday, and to spend the day with some friends who I have known from childhood.

 Here are Lydia, Abigail and Knox.

 Here are Abigail, Philip, Erica and Simeon watching a movie.  Erica has 6 children.  2 pregnancies. 1 adoption.  Can you do that math?  She had quadruplets!  She is the most mild-mannered, truly lovely lady I think I know!

 Here's Uncle Steve eating dinner with a bunch of cats!  We used face paint that belonged to Gareth, 20 years ago!!

And if you imagine dollar signs on Lydia's teeth, you will know what we did today!  Braces 1.0.  She gets these partial braces for 6-8 mos., a year off, and then full braces.  By that time I'm sure I'll be paying for someone else's braces as well!

Knox is 2 months

Royal Mail

When I was 4 years old, I drew a picture for the Queen of England.  After all, I lived there and she had just become a grandmother for the first time.  She loved my letter and wrote me back to tell me so.  Okay, so her lady-in-waiting wrote me back and told me how much the Queen loved my letter.

Well, because my oldest son is taught largely by his grandmother, she suggested that he ought to do the same thing as a six year old, and write to the Queen.  After all, he lives in America and she's close to having great-grandchildren.  Makes sense, right?!  Anyway, she made him write a long letter to the Queen and here's the envelope.

Well, the Queen is still interested in receiving fan mail and at the end of May, guess what Philip received?!  Yes, a letter from the Queen.  And, if you can believe it, she said very similar things in his letter as she had said in mine 36 years ago.  Well, her lady-in-waiting said them, again.  And this time she sent some nice pamphlets which greatly impressed this little boy!

Saying Goodbye to a dear friend

May 23rd, we had to say goodbye to our dog of 12.5 years.  Silas had one eye removed last summer due to a disease which led to glaucoma, which resulted in much pain for Silas.  We knew that his other eye would at some point also go blind.  From December to May, I gave him eye drops 3x/day and they seem to work at keeping down the pressures in his eye.  However, at some point they stopped working and he went permanently blind.  He was obviously in discomfort and we knew that our only course of treatment was to get his other eye removed. We had already decided that we weren't going to do that.  He was deaf and it would've been a tremendous liability to himself, the children and anyone driving by, if a blind and deaf dog wandered to the road.  Nonetheless it was hard to say goodbye to a member of our family who was so integrated into our lives.  Interestingly, almost all the photos we have of him are taken by the children.  And often, he is just a background feature, just part of the fabric of the photos because he was part of the family.