My not-so-little-anymore nephew tuned 13 years old last week. Wow. I can’t believe that much time has passed since he was singing (and dancing) along to The Lion King and doing his funny little inverted hand clap. On to a new and exciting phase!

We started the celebration by watching Nick at his baseball game. Here he is in the last inning, with a tie score, getting a base hit.

Karianne and Joseph were on the sidelines cheering their brother on…

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And the husband has become a great assistant, carrying all of my gear!

Vincent was playing around in the car.

Ichiro Japanese Restaurant was next, which had really good food, surprisingly. Well, I have always loved the experience of Benihana although their food is just ok. This place had the same fun chefs with good food to boot!

The rest of the images…

blowing bubbles!

and Erik is going to kill me for posting this…but oh well. It’s fun!

I am not posting any of my own images today, but I wanted to share with you a disturbing article I recently came across.

You can read the article in full here. And please do. Please!

For those of you who know me well will realize just how devastating the article is to me.

Of course I have known that plastics are a no-no in this world. They simple do not biodegrade. They are poisonous. I suppose I needed to read an article such as this to motivate me to change. I hope by sharing it with you that it will help you change with me. Now, I am not one to get too preachy (atleast I try not too), but when I read this article I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. As a lover of humanity and of nature, I found it utterly disturbing. I suppose that is all I will say about the article. I will say that I will be MUCH more aware of my use of plastics. I had already stopped using plastic tupperware to store food (I switched to glass under the tutelage of my dad). Now, to stop using all those plastic bags? I am so guilty of using excessive plastic bags (and we love paper towels…but, er, that’s for another day). We frankly need to figure out an alternative to plastic grocery bags in my household. Ok. Talk to you all soon.

I am SO in love with this weather…well, most days. I love the sunshine and the warm rainy days. I can’t wait for it to rain when I have a day off so I can drag the husband outside to play. The clouds have been amazing this week – I am enamored with sun rays peeking through storm clouds. It is not good for my driving. I have had a hard time paying attention and have had a couple of close calls ; ) I am still adjusting to the humidity though – which I know isn’t much right now. I think the husband will have a huge shock when August comes and we still have no air conditioner.

I found this image that I took about a month ago. It reminds me of summer – I love it! This was the one of the funniest cats ever. He (at least I think it was male) came right on over to us and was sure ‘talking’ to us a lot!