Nana's Birthday

It's Nana's birthday today, so I paid a really long visit with Nana and Ye-Ye this morning, and it was super pleasant.  They have deer that just walk right by their house, hummingbirds chirping and all kinds of wildlife around their place as we sat and talked and caught up.  We'll do some more catching up on Sunday when we go to see Cirque du Soleil.

They're going through some health issues, mostly due to sore ligaments and medication side effects that don't sound like fun.  But they're still planning on big things, like heading over to a place in Texas to see bird migrations along the coast.  They're all about that, and make a lot of fun trips each year to see unique things.  

We see a few birds around here - the hummingbirds are still fighting at the feeder, and the cardinals seem to be ruling the back yard.  Until those plump mourning doves plop down and dominate the back deck.  No one likes the hawks though.  We had one land on a branch in the back yard, and the entire animal community started complaining.  The squirrels bark and the birds scream, and pretty much everyone in the whole neighborhood knows the jig is up - you're not fooling anyone, hawk.  Still, we worry about our chipmunks.  Mom and I have a soft spot for them.  They're quietly building an empire in our yard.  The squirrels... not so much.  We've singlehandedly reduced that population via translocation, and although we still see them, I think word has spread to stay clear of our back deck.  Still, we have one testing the boundaries of Mom's patience, so we'll see how that goes.  Right now though, our summer is much quieter than previous ones.  Although the spiders are increasing their presence.  The juro spiders are getting larger, and so are their webs.  I had to go out with the salt gun and do some Jurassic Park style hunting.  I'm out there in the thick of the grasslands, looking for big game with my trusty salt gun.

Tonight Maddie had FCY again, and she enjoyed it, as well as the company of her friends.  Everyone's gearing up for the next big thing, which is Camp FCY.  It's in a couple of weeks, and we're still in the process of signing folks up.  Maddie is registered and ready to go, and her friends will be going too.  She'll really enjoy that.  But tonight was good too.  She enjoyed service, and then of course the time afterwards, socializing with friends again.

We did some Tropical Freeze, because we're completists.  It's been tough, but we're getting closer to the end, and ending the deep freeze on this island.  That's been a fun theme this summer, a great theme for KidPak certainly.  There are still some new ideas in the tank, and I'm grateful for that.

Mom and I watched a few episodes of "Everybody Loves Raymond," our latest thing for she and I.  I think the idea is to go through all those.  It seems we're dipping a lot into older programming, and that's okay because there's plenty we haven't seen.  New material isn't as enticing, and perhaps that's a sign of getting older, but some younger folks I know haven't been as into the newer movies and shows coming out either - it just seems like "they don't make 'em like they used to."  And again, that's fine, because it gives us time to see stuff we missed the first time around.  For example, our household is going through a lot of the old school Disney Channel stuff from twenty years ago.  It's been fun.  

So tonight, Maddie and I read some more from this book, another short story.  And after that, prayers.  It was a decent day today.  We'll get some sleep tonight.  Got some meetings and things to do tomorrow!