The beginning of the month (or actually, the end of May) started off with the Graduation of our ring bearer. Hard to believe that cute little guy is 18! As we did with the other boys, we helped out with the graduation party; it made for a long day, but the party was a success. Dave even expressed his artistic talent again and made Matthew's banner:
Each stick figure was one of the many activities that Matthew was involved in. He was a busy guy.
In order: fishing, dirt bike, baseball, football, basketball, track, golf, and weight lifting.
With the acres of rain we received in the past few weeks, our flowers sure are happy. There are dozens of buds waiting to bloom on each of the farm's rose bush:
(now if I can just keep the slugs and other leave-eaters away from it this year!)
We finally got blooms on our peony bush this year - and the storms magically stopped when the flowers appeared - I expected them to explode the blossoms one night so we wouldn't get to enjoy them! I'm not a big fan of irises, maybe because they only last for a few weeks too, but this year we had some very nice flowers.
Unfortunately, I never got a picture of the ones in the front yard - they had a lighter purple edge with off-white centers. Very elegant.
Dave added a couple more trees to the yard this spring - apple trees! I think he was a bit envious because he'd planted apple trees at the old house and this year there are ~100 apples on each tree. This year we have .... ONE. But that's one more than I expected with new plants.
Not sure why this picture ended up rotated sideways!
The second weekend in June, we drove down for Chelsea's wedding (Nuland cousin). That was not a fun trip. The first storm system just rolled in as we were leaving the house, and it was pouring heavily by the time we got to LaCrosse. Fortunately, within the next hour we had moved ahead of it, and even got to sunshine. However, the storm system caught up with us again after we'd been in Madison for a while. The tornado warning sirens even went off a few minutes after the wedding let out. And we got soaked trying to get from our cars to the reception! If that wasn't bad enough, once we left the reception and started driving back home, the second storm system moved through. We could see the black clouds up ahead and debated whether or not we should pull into the wayside (we should have). I was happy to get home that night - having to drive 30-40 mph on the interstate is not fun.
The next day, the local EAA was supposed to have a Chicken Q and Fly-in but they decided to postpone it until the following weekend. Good choice - it was beautiful weather last Sunday. Too windy for a hot-air balloon, but otherwise a nice day.
Dave's still drooling over the idea of building his own plane. A Nieuport would be the "cheaper" option, but I really like the looks of the RV airplanes. The best looking plane there this weekend was this RV-9:
(I love the colors!)
Here's one of the planes as it was taking off. You better look quick (bottom of the screen) - I didn't think I had captured it because it went by so fast!
