We're back from Boston. What a great trip! We celebrated Brad's grandma's 85th birthday (we also threw in her sister-in-law's 80th b-day and Brad's 30th for the party). We had perfect weather, good company and lots of fun. Here are the birthday folks:

Here's the close family: Brad, me, Brad's mom, sister Jill and her girls. Aren't we cute?

Jill and cousin Amy threw a surprise shower for me, which was awesome! It was so nice and I got a bunch of cute stuff. We had fun doing the cousin hangout thing - always a good time - and I got to see my friend Kelly from RCHS for lunch yesterday. It was a bummer coming home, but I leave for Texas in the morning. The excitement never stops!

Oh - and I also found out my glucose test was normal. Yay for no gestational diabetes!

Yesterday I got to take a glucose test to determine whether or not I have gestational diabetes. It's a routine test they give to everyone and it's yucky. They give you this nasty, super-sweet drink (10 oz. worth), make you wait an hour and then draw blood to determine how well your body broke down the sugars in the drink. The blood drawing doesn't bother me, but I didn't think I was going to make it through that bottle of orange liquid sugar. The only time I have felt worse about drinking something was when I dunked my Aggie ring... I should find out today or tomorrow what my results were.

Here's a howler of a good story. Mary Beth just started dating this new guy and for those of you who know my little sister, you know she's got the attention span and tolerance of a gnat when it comes to dating. She gets bored really easily, but she seems to like this guy and spent this past weekend with him in Houston without killing him. In fact, they're both quite smitten. They've been friends for a few months, but this is the first she's really mentioned him in great detail. Well, after grilling her for details, I passed on the story to Brad. After a few coincidences seemed crazy, a quick phone call back to MB confirmed the hilarious. See if you can follow this bouncing ball.... When Brad was looking at grad schools, one of his mentor profs at VMI sent him to A&M to meet up with his cousin's daughter who went there. Brad had a great time and decided to come to A&M (where he met me). He stayed in kind of touch with the girl and even met her younger brother at a party once he came to school there - that boy is MB's new boyfriend! The mentor prof, Turk, became an even bigger mentor when Brad started teaching at VMI. We adore Turk and think it's hilarious to consider that if the stars align, we might be related! Both Turk and the new beau think this is crazy funny, too. Small world!

I just had a fantastically mind-blowing "old" moment. I was playing around on Facebook, looking at pictures and found a fun set of pics put up by an old student of mine from St. Michael's in Texas. She posted a picture of a classmate holding a newborn baby with another classmate (her new husband) standing over them! Granted I taught these kids 5 years ago and they were seniors then, but it still blows my mind to see them married with kids! Violet and Shane are plenty old enough (23) - so it's not like when my 10th grade student got knocked up by her boyfriend. Man, time has really passed quickly... I feel incredibly old. Since their little girl was born last week and my little boy is due in September, my students' kid will be a year ahead of mine in school! Not that they'll ever meet, but still....

Today is Brad's 30th birthday!!!!! No more 20s for him! We had a big day of celebrating yesterday. After church, we headed downtown to see the Royals beat the Florida Marlins. The Royals don't usually win, so that made the game even more fun!

We've been anxious to get rid of this obnoxious willow tree in our backyard since we moved in and it finally came down yesterday afternoon. It's a nice tree - if it were somewhere else. It looks really ugly in our yard. Plus, willow tree roots are strong and are famous for breaking water and sewer lines in suburban neighborhoods. Shawn and Sean came over and helped bring the tree down. Shawn did the majority of the work - we think he was looking for any excuse to get to use his chainsaw - while Brad and Sean manned ropes to make sure the falling tree didn't crash into the deck, the fence or the power lines. (yikes!) Unfortunately, they did the work so fast, I didn't get a chance to take many pictures. We'll rent a wood chipper to take care of the branches and Shawn cut up the trunk to make a nice wood pile for our fireplace in the winter. Our yard looks so much bigger now without that monstrosity. Once we get the stump removed, we might put in another tree that fits the yard better or we might just leave it as open play space for junior. But anyway, here's the work in progress:

While the men worked, Sean's wife Tracie and I chatted and I made fajitas for dinner - yum! I also made Brad a birthday cake, which turned out to be incredibly tasty. All in all, a good day.

Okay, okay. I know I've been away WAY too long. Sorry 'bout that. There just hasn't been that much stuff going on. Now that I'm not working, I spend a lot of time reading, working in the yard or in the house on something. No major excitement. Until yesterday...

I realized my veggie garden was getting bigger and I needed to get supports for my plants. I bought some and went out yesterday to get everything staked and I couldn't believe my eyes! I have vegetables growing!!!! None are quite ready to eat, but it won't be too much longer. Check out my cucumbers - if you look behind the yellow flower, you'll see a small cuke growing. I have about 10 of these growing right now.

I have a ton of grape tomatoes and those don't get real big - some look big enough already - just have to turn red!

And finally, my green pepper plant is sprouting a lovely pepper. It needs to get much bigger before I pick it off, but it's so cute!