the big double header

We watched Avery play ball while Grandmother and Donna were here.  Those girls do a great job for seven and eight year olds.  Between the three of us we managed to leave all the cameras at my house so Donna got to practice using her new Iphone to take pictures.

 the ball player and her assistant coach dad

 the (grand) aunt, grams and great grandmother braving the heat to watch the game

 Avery plays pitcher position but the coach pitches

 the girls are ready to field the ball

playing defense

Okay everybody, look to your left.

Some grandmother love.

In the end I think we won one and lost one but for sure, everybody had a great time.

wordless wednesday

company

My MIL and SIL came for a quick visit.  They arrived Monday afternoon and left Wednesday morning.  When they got here, we brought their stuff inside, they stretched their legs a bit, freshened up and we headed up to the east side of Nashville to see Avery play softball (another post on another day).  It was a double header so we didn't leave the ball park til after eight o'clock.  We stopped for a bite to eat and got home at 10:15.   

Watching Avery play ball accomplished the main purpose for their visit  so Tuesday we just enjoyed visiting. At lunch time we headed to Franklin to  meet Uncle Brian and Avery and took them to eat some good Mexican food at Oscars.   Then we took Grandmother to see where my son-in-law Matt works.  He gave us a tour of Financial Peace Plaza and we saw Dave (Ramsey) in his studio doling out financial advice  and met some of the guys Matty works with.  His group is in charge of one of the websites.    Avery came on back to the house with us and eventually her dad, uncle Brian and uncle Matty showed up too and we ate dinner.  Grilled pork chops, roasted veggies and strawberry shortcake. 

Avery and Aunt Donna played chicken foot while we were waiting on the guys to arrive.  We also played  a few rounds of scattergories. 

Avery, Michael and Aunt Donna

Brian, Michael Grandmother and Matthew.  She loves all her boys(and these are only part of them) and they all love her too.

the garden

I decided to try a raised bed garden this year.  Don't want to jinx myself but after a slow start, it is looking pretty good right now.  My tomato plants and one of the squash are looking the best.  The other squash and cuccumbers not so much but I planted them later for one thing.  I'm going to feed them when I water them later today and we will see how that goes.

I inherited some blueberry bushes with this house - 3 to be exact.  The first year I discovered them, I managed a handful of berries before the birds got them.  The next year I traveled a good bit and so the birds got all the berries.  This year I wanted to try to keep the berries for me and not share with the birds.  Well, when I was in Atlanta with my mom, my son Brian found the birdnetting I had bought and some old wooden stakes that were by the back fence and covered one of the bushes.  The birds got the berries from the other two bushes within 24 hours.  How do they know???  The berries were not even ripe yet!!  Anyway, now that we know what to do, we'll do all three at the same time and earlier in the season -- just not telling the birds.

a digital postcard

A few weeks ago Jennifer, Matthew and the kids went to visit friends in Georgia for a week.  At some point during the week I received this via email.

My favorite kind of letter :)

travels and visitors

Mother came to visit.  She spent a week at my sister's and then Beth brought her down here. She spent the night and then returned home. After a day or two of rest, mom and I  went to Georgia to visit my brother Jay and his wife. The trip was uneventful as far as the drive.  While there we got the tour of their new digs.  Love the house and what they are doing with it.  We did a little antiquing and saw some really neat things.  They live north of Atlanta and there are lots of junktique places around there.  It was a lot of fun.  Of course I took no pictures.   Had my boys over for a meal when we got back.  Brian stayed and showed his Granny how to play games on the Ipad.  She was pretty impressive with angry birds.

Mother and I  hung out here til Thurs when we returned to Beth's and the next day the three of us made the five hour trip back to mothers.  We spent two nights in PA to get her settled back in and then headed back to Ohio and after a good night's sleep I returned to Nashvegas.  This week I was babysitting so I've stayed fairly busy until today. 

I have family from MS coming for a short visit the first of the week and after that I hope to spend a lot of time in my sewing room. There are lots of projects in there to finish and lots of ideas to get started on if you know what I mean.

My one blueberry bush that got covered with netting is about ripe for the picking.  I will probably score two or three cups of berries.  I've been researching how to care for them.  Next season I'll cover all three now that Brian has helped me figure out a good method and I plan on pruning and maybe putting some stuff in the soil if it needs it.  I may plant a fourth bush too since it looks like they had one originally that died as there is a bush, a blank spot and then two more bushes.  My garden is looking pretty good.  I'll post on that in a day or too.