....with the sweet fragarant smell of tall garden phlox....

.....At the beach

Today, I seem to be feeling a bit sentimental.  There was a time in my life, while I was struggling through years of infertility, that I thought it was God's will for me to be childless.  Here I am today, most of summer slipping away, spending the afternoon with "my" children.  Every time I take pictures of them, I can't help but realize how incredibly blessed I am.  Not only did God bless me with one child, but he saw fit for that one child to have a sister.  I love my children enormously and I am so lucky they are mine.  Thank you God.  I love my gifts. 

 

 

When things in my life become unbearable, as some things do, I need only look into these two faces to know why life is good.

  

We didn't go to the beach this morning. It began to rain and has been raining on and off all afternoon. At the moment though, it's sticky and sunny outside. Here are the pictures from our Sunday drive.

















And as a reward for being Soooooo good. I took the girlies to the Ice Cream Parlour in our "small town".

....we went to the beach. There was hardly anyone else there. It was so beautiful. Madeline's language is expanding slowly but surley. She has the word beach almost down pat. She says "beeeesh". The girls had fun, mommy got to read a little, and we are going back this morning to meet up with the all the kids from play group.

Today we were planning on heading to the beach for the afternoon. Madeline fought and fought her nap (which she can not live without at this stage). Needless to say, by the time she finished with it, it was too late in the afternoon to go. Instead, I took a drive solely for the purpose of taking pictures. I told the girls we were going to ride the countryside and look for special barns. They were so good, and had such fun with each other in the back seat. I got a lot of pictures, which I will post later. But when we got home, Tara snatched our wild kitten Faline into her arms. The cat purrrred and purrrrred and was so still and gentle. Tara was in 7th heaven. The last time she had the kitty in her arms was back in April.

Here's a picture from April with Tara and Faline.

And here she is today with Faline.

The kitty is not so little anymore. It seems that as soon as the kittens mommy kicked her away, she has become much friendlier to us. We have not seen the mommy quite as much these days, but I did see her today, and she's definitely pregnant AGAIN. I'll have to gather up her kittens and take them to a shelter when she gives birth. I can't have a million cats around the house. Ugghhh!

 

And then there was the water droplet picture I took. I'm still so excited about it. Puts mommy in photography heaven!