hmmm...Where to start.....?

I feel like I am just now beginning to emerge from some sort of post-wedding haze.  The kids are almost 4 weeks into the school year.  India is immersed in her Senior year.  She sings in two choirs and is the VP of one, has a demanding course load-including honors physics, which means we have a trebuchet in our future-, keeps her main neighborhood clients happy, and has a busy social life, both off and on-line.  Niall and Leith are settled in school, too, and are doing well.  I so neglected them during the run-up to the wedding that they had literally no shoes or jeans that fit when school started.  The handy part of this neglect is that they are now free to explore the world of  young men's fashion.  Niall is sticking with 'skinny' jeans, but Leith is going with 'straight'.  Niall is interested in military style shirts and performance wear.  Leith is very attracted to shirts in a certain shade of bright blue-something between aqua and royal.  He is also experimenting with hair gel.




Leith rocks the 'faux' hawk.



Gorgeous flannel

Niall is ready for sports at recess.

Military style:  two pockets and shoulder tabs

Now that I have a bit more free time, I have been sorting through and filing a year's worth of personal photos while we wait for the professional ones of the wedding festivities.  As always, it seems like our life here proceeds at a pace that is hard to process, and sometimes hard to enjoy in the moment.  I am enjoying having some time to reflect on it all.

I heard the voices of a new group of birds this afternoon that turned out to be Lesser Goldfinches-green backed variety.  There is a least one male-above-as well as several females-harder to photograph through the window- who are all intently eating the wild sunflower seeds.  At one point the male was feeding several others beak-to-beak.   

Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated

Kevin has been driving his '96 Ford Ranger longer than he has been parenting half of our children.  We bought it in 1998, and it has been a remarkable transportation value, really.  It has attracted the admiration of a certain set of automotive-centric friends and neighbors- some of whom have repeatedly offered to take it off our hands.  Sadly, after 200,000 miles, the truck has experienced its first mechanical failure.  It was hard for us to wrap our minds around it-we don't even have a mechanic that we have ever worked with.  I worry that the 'age of the truck' is nearing an end.
I, too, have had poor automotive luck this summer.  My Mom-Mobile became unreliable shortly before a busy summer that included two trips to CA.  The transmission guy tried to reassure me by saying that I shouldn't worry while I decided what to do with car, as long as I didn't plan to take any long drives! 

We replaced our old Odyssey with a new one that looks remarkably like a hearse from certain angles.  Niall really wanted a black one, but that would really only work during the Halloween season.  The new 'Topaz' Odyssey has some slick integrated technology, like Bluetooth capability and every 'port' imaginable.  That, combined with the appearance and the overall sensibility of a larger 'family' vehicle, led Coral to suggest that we name it 'The Borg'.  We could not have found a more perfect name.  I giggle about it every time my satellite radio transmission is interrupted by a phone call coming through the sound system.  Jonathan, Lance's brother and fellow 'Trekkie' with Coral, kindly supplied me with an appropriate rear view mirror ornament.

We have been assimilated.

A little flock of Black Capped Chickadees was causing an invisible, but loud ruckus this morning in the trees above my backyard.  After I watered and counted the ripening pumpkins, I paused for a while, trying to become inanimate, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the tiny, rambunctious birds.  I sat still, staring into the canopy filtering the sunlight, until I could distinguish their movements in the leaves.  After some time, a few of them moved lower and lighted briefly on bare lower branches, and even on the heads of wild sunflowers momentarily. 
I have neither the equipment nor the skill to photograph a Chickadee.  They do not feed at the feeder or sit still on visible branches.  I mostly only hear them.  Today, they chattered and cheeped together nearby for a half and hour before moving on as a group.  In winter, they sound more solitary, calling each other over the hillside with a high pitched feee-beee.  I can't figure out the exact interval on the piano, but Niall can whistle it. 
I love hearing them so often throughout the seasons.  And, I cherish the rare times I actually see them.