Happy place....

Here is the Hippie Gnome "at home" among the herbs!

Except I knocked him over when I used the hose around that direction
and I am afraid that the tip of his hat will break off so he may move again.

Here is my first harvest from the garden! Grape tomatoes, rosemary, basil, and thyme.

Up close!

Here is the product, supplemented with supermarket
grape tomatoes, also including fresh mozzarella.
It was delicious and fresh, real food.

Too dark, a couple of dads at the Bike Team party looking at the photo albums.
We also all viewed a slide show of pictures, LOTS AND LOTS of pictures.

Here is Michael at the party, not a very good picture of him.

This is another bike team member whose name I can' remember. I feel bad about that.

Left is Ian, Right is Ned, Right in black T-shirt is John, and then Michael in back.
The woman in the green shirt in back is Jeanne. She is John's mom,
also an orchestra mom and has a daughter that was in orchestra with Emily,
so we have known each other quite a while. The party was at their house.

Here is something interesting about Ned. Emily had a kid in her class named Daniel Bingham. He was the geekiest science dork EVER. I used to laugh at his clothes all the time, because he was SUCH the stereotype, I thought. A few years ago I got an email from a friend from church whom I have known a LONG time. We were both pregnant at the same time and had our babies 5 days apart. Then we both went through hellish divorces.... She sent me an email saying she was was SO sorry, and hadn't told me sooner, but she was going to get married in a couple of weeks and invited me to go, although it was going to be a rather small event. So I went to the wedding and afterward while I was talking to her and her new husband I realized he was Daniel Bingham's dad! I hadn't recognized Daniel at the wedding because he was in nice clothes or something! THEN when Michael gets to high school he started talking about "Ned" all the time and going climbing with Ned. It took me a little while to figure out that Ned was another Bingham. I knew Daniel had a little brother but Emily always called him "Little Bingham" So now Michael is really good friends with Ned and Ned is stepbrother to Emily, the baby born five days earlier than Michael! Isn't it strange how people end up connected? It has been nice because Carol and I can talk easily when the boys stay out too long and stuff like that. I am not always comfortable with other parents until I get to know them and sometimes it takes me a LONG time to get comfy. Well I've known Carol almost the entire 25 years I've been in Bloomington, know her entire family and it's just really nice. I was disappointed she and Geoff, her husband, didn't come to the party tonight. Ned is kind of like that, though, he does things on his own a lot more than Michael does. Michael will miss him this year. He is a year older and has graduated and is off to Cornell nest week.

These are what you get when you do well in a bike race in Japan;
bags of rice, noodles, some pumpkiny thing and fans.
The notebook is a journal in which each of the team members
wrote an entry on the way home.

The fans.

Cindy Kvale, the coach, and Jeanne divvying up the rice.

More good sharing!

I had a good day, didn't get any of my outdoor tasks done, but accomplished some errands, LOVED getting herbs out of my garden and using them, and enjoyed the party, although I was mostly in my "silent observer" mode. It was relaxing.

Tomorrow we are going up to Indy to see Emily and Heather and have some lunch. We also need to trade a few goods back and forth from borrowing or forgetting and stuff like that.

SO - I want to unload the dryer and then my heiny to bed!