more family time

A week or so after my mother went home, we welcomed my in-laws for a visit with them. It had been several years since they came to visit our city. Their visit also managed to work out for Shane's other brothers who took some vacation time to be here as well. The last several summers we have met up somewhere in New Brunswick, but this time it was here. Shane couldn't take much time off, so you see his twin brother in several of the photos who brought his young daughter to hang out every day. My brother-in-law took my son and my father-in-law canoeing on the waterways in the city, while I spent some time with my mother-in-law, niece and my girls of course. The days were filled outside with games of croquet and washer toss, an afternoon on a river beach, eating together and general mayhem.

My father-in-law loves books and always makes a point to read to our kids whenever we are together. He gets up early so often he read with them once everyone had some breakfast. He also brought several wonderful copies of books for us to use for this coming academic year as well as a few to leave for-good with the kids.

My oldest brother-in-law has a stepdaughter who loves Kate and who is always such a great help in taking care of Kate both in and out of water. She chased after her throughout Ikea and played with her constantly. She also enjoyed some games and hanging out with Seth. She really is the best.

On our last night hanging out, the girls and I headed home while Shane and Seth stayed to watch some baseball with the other guys. We followed the setting sun and stopped the admire it as we went by the airport. Less than a minute later, I heard a loud whirring helicopter sound and watched this large military style helicopter come right over us. There are often cars pulled off when we go past the airport, so watching airport activity is still something people do.

The garden harvest is starting to come in starting with the lettuce, peas, garlic, yellow beans and some of the celery. Some of the pickling cucumbers are also just about ready to pick, along with a golden zucchini. The radishes were duds. They were all leafy tops and no radish bulb. This is my first time growing them, so I need to read up on what went wrong. I already had planted some more, so we'll see if they grow any better.
We've had some good rainstorms so I have not needed to water as much in this last week.

A week ago, during a Saturday night, a small tree in our courtyard came down. As my husband found out when he went to remove the downed tree, it was infested with ants, presumably carpenter ants. He spent a morning with help from his dad and younger brother using his chainsaw to cut up the limbs and pieces of trunk into logs; just another perk of serving as condo president. Or maybe the only perk.