So what else do you want to know?

I'm going to try to catch up for several months of not communicating with people!

Here's another out-of-order picture from this spring at Grandma and Papa Owen's house. This is Graham operating Papa's remote control boat on his new pond. There sure are a lot of fun things to do at Papa's -- throw stones in the pond, ride in the pickup truck, and sometimes getting to operate the backhoe!

We've had some work done on the house this year. First, we had a wall taken down between the kitchen and the dining room. It really opened up the kitchen, which is at the back of the house, and improved the heating and cooling, too, as a bonus! We're about to have a sliding glass door installed in our breezeway to the backyard. There currently are no doors to the backyard; you have to walk all the way around the garage or the house and when Graham falls off the swingset, that's a long run! We'll eventually install a deck but are not sure that will happen this summer as the house is desperately in need of a coat or two of stain.

Chuck continues to search for answers to his ongoing pain. It's narrowed down at this point to psoriatic arthristis or post-Lyme disorder. He's on some super-strength NSAIDs right now, and is tapering off some pretty high doses of prednisone and is feely pretty yucky right now.

We had horrendous rain/thunderstorms yesterday. There was a hailstorm in Exeter with golfball sized hail which damaged our van. Chuck says we're lucky as a number of cars in the lot had smashed windshields!

New Bike

This is out of order, but I thought I'd tell about Graham's new bike. He got a big tricycle a couple of weeks ago. It came complete with a (loud) bell, and streamers on the handles. It makes Graham go very fast. He likes to ride it to the playground at the elementary school up the hill, which he can do without much assistance. He also uses it to tow things around the yard. Right now, it's towing a monster truck that apparently got stuck in the mud.

Fourth of July

We took a trip to the Hollow over the Fourth of July, and it was a great time for Graham. Because of all the rain, the brook was quite fast, cold and high. This, however, did not deter Graham, who apparently should have been born in a more tropical climate as he eschews clothing on nice summer days. We were very concerned that he would not don the appropriate garments for his swim lessons (which started yesterday), but he did manage to keep his bathing suit on for 45 minutes. He did spend the remainder of the day in his wading pool in the backyard buck naked, including a trip to pick Mom up at work! As we say "Naked is as naked does!" Here's one of the few pictures of him with clothes on!

After going to the Hollow, we headed south to Keene to celebrate "baby" Jon Ryan's birthday. Graham still calls Jon "Baby Jon" which he started about some time ago to keep Jon Comerford distinct from John Wolfe (fondly known as "Big John"). Jon turned three on the Fourth, and there was quite a party for the three three-year olds (Jon, Graham and Derek) plus their older cousins (Katie and Adam)! We tried to take a walk around Goose Pond will all the Memmesheimer boys, but we had some footwear issues, and then it POURED!