Memorial Day, Baby Addison, & More Pics from Susan's Visit

Good morning from Leila!

We didn't camp or go anywhere big this Memorial Day weekend (though we thought about the holiday campers who braved it out through the area's thunderstorms and tornado watches!).

We did go to Cornell yesterday morning for a parade. Jon's father Bud is one of the last remaining WW II vets in Cornell, so was asked to be part of the parade, riding in a convertible with other veterans.

He wasn't sure about going at first, but after encouragement from family decided to participate. When he rode down Main Street, a crowd of his own children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren were there to cheer him on.

Pictured at right, below, are: Jon's sister Sally with arm around Michael, sister-in-law Jill (Phil's wife), Bud, Emma, Luke (Sally's son) and Luke's girlfriend (sorry-- I'm blanking on her name).

The parade was followed by a small ceremony in the local cemetary, and a scrumptious turkey dinner courtesy of Jane.

Since we were in Cornell, we took the opportunity to visit Jon's long-time friend Dave DeJongh and wife Shelly, who recently had a baby of their own. Their first child, daughter Addison, was born twelve days after Leila, so the two girls are very close in age. We think there will be lots of fun play dates ahead! Here are some photos from this "meeting of the babies":

It was fun seeing their similar postures and expressions. They like to stretch out but tend to be all curled up when you hold them.

Everything has really leafed out here, in the past few weeks. It's been exciting to watch things come alive this spring-- we've only ever seen our new house in the winter, of course. The melting snow uncovered beautiful perennial gardens that have been filling out, as the season progresses; all we had to do was rake leaves out of the way. We have tulips, bleeding hearts, lillies-- and more types of flowers than we can name or identify.

Jon has been using his Bobcat to expand our back yard. He's also been making trails in our woods. I'm finally getting to see his landscaping skills at work-- when we lived in town there wasn't much space to work with, so he didn't do much more than mow the lawn and trim the bushes. Now he's talking about adding a water feature and building play equipment for the kids.

When Susan and Jonathan were here, we had to laugh because they could see first-hand what their father does to "relax" at home-- work! After spending all day working his main job, plus a few additional hours working one of his side jobs, Jon likes nothing better than to come home and get in his Bobcat.

Another aspect of living out here is that we're turning into bird watchers. There is such a rich variety of birds around here, it's hard not to watch them. When we see something "new", that we can't identify, I try to look it up in the bird book Dad gave me, years ago. Our most recent exciting discovery was a hummingbird-- I saw it sipping out of one of our red tulips.

This weekend the kids and I went for a walk and then came back to our backyard, for a picnic (Leila's first picnic--aw!). Emma took great delight in packing our supplies, which included pop tarts, apples, and cookies. We sat on a blanket and enjoyed the sunshine.

I'll close with more pictures from our recent visit with Susan. Enjoy!