Weekend guests

This weekend we were lucky enough to have a quick visit from frequent commenter (Mike's) Aunt Jo and her son, Zak.They came in on Friday morning and were toured around TCU before stopping at a local institution to pick up lunch. Then Mike brought them home to see the real Fort Worth attraction: Natalie. We spent a lot of the weekend just hanging out inside, hugging and holding Natalie. However, Natalie did have another outing: we went to the Paris coffeeshop for some serious Texas food. With four of us at the table, we finally tried one of their cinnamon rolls. Delicious! And Natalie was great: she mostly slept. We just parked her stroller beside the table a jiggled it occasionally. She didn't wake up for real until we left the restaurant. As it turns out, Natalie is NOT a fan of the heat. At all.

Aunt Jo got some serious grandma practice in - a good thing, too, since she is to become a grandmother sometime this fall. I think she'll be a hit!

Here are some recent Natalie shots (including one of Natalie making her favorite counter-culture gesture):
The complete album is here (and can also be found here):

Aunt Jo's pics are here. For the life of me, I could NOT figure out how to get these images on our blog - if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know - Jo's pictures are great!

This blog is pretty much all Natalie, all the time, but I also want to tell you about some other things going on in the house.

First, our garden has suffered from some neglect on our part and from some searing heat from the sun, but we are still getting some tomatoes, lots of chile peppers, and a TON of basil. I remember trying to grow basil in Seattle - I had, like, three anemic yellow leaves. I now have, literally, a tree of basil in the backyard. Also, yesterday at Costco I bought a fancy compost tumbler that was on deep discount. Of course, the tumbler in its box was so big that it wouldn't fit in my little Corolla. So we had to take it out of the box; during the five minutes it took to do this, the chocolate chips I'd bought totally melted. Ahh, Texas. Anyway, pictures of that are coming once Mike assembles it. (Also, I'm sure that this will just give our neighbor one MORE thing to complain about, but, whatever.)

Second, I finally have a dresser! My old Ikea dresser broke when we were still living in Seattle (and by "broke", I mean, held my clothes just fine, but refused to give them up when I wanted to wear them). So I had been using some rubbermaid bins. This was an okay solution - durable, and very easy to move, but lacking somewhat in the charm department. This is my new dresser. It isn't assembled yet, either - and there's no particular rush, I guess. But pictures of that are forthcoming, too.

You know, because pictures of a compost tumbler and dresser are what you're really after....