encore

filmed the same day, a little earlier than the previous...

what has he been up to?

in no particular order, an update in pictures. he's been hanging out with his friends a lot and singing and dancing.

to start off with... a video clip!

on the slide at the park...

two little scarecrows... which one is ours?

roughhousing... ?

a (bathroom) break from roughhousing...

smile... this is what he does when you tell him to smile..

bath time babies...

sleepover!

roughhousing, condoned by dad...

this isn't a picture of william. it's a picture of the extreme hail that came down tonight. i think this is the kind of weather an auto body shop owner dreams of...

goodnight!

a minute

when i have a minute-- that is, when i'm watching william in the mornings and he takes his morning nap in the morning, rather than after lunch, i usually clean up a bit-- make a bed, put dishes away, start laundry... if i have a lot of time i start dinner or an elaborate lunch for the little man, and i usually check emails and think that now would be a good time to update the blog... but then i usually end up just reading other people's blogs instead. fortunately, some on my bookmarked list never get updated... just like mine... so that saves on time. anyhow, now i have just a few minutes before i have to get ready to go to work, so i think, this time i will do it.. i really will update the blog.

william was in a wedding this past weekend. if anyone who is reading this has pictures of him in his tux, i would love to see them! please send them on. otherwise, we've just been getting through work, like usual. it's cold and overcast today, which reminds me that fall is not always blue skies and fresh air. shucks.

do i have a picture to end things with? i don't know. i will check... it probably won't be very up-to-date though...

okay... here's one: william... just about 1 year ago:

lil bro live

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvx3EdA-ggA

wade hampton hamilton

you may have noticed, if you glanced right, that i am reading (and more often not reading) 'gone with the wind'... and have been for quite awhile now. (and i'm only on page 136 out of 1024, so it will be an even longer while before i finish). anywho, i just want to confirm-- scarlett did not have a son with her first husband (charles hamilton) in the movie, right?

17 month old baby on the loose

as per usual, it has been a very long time since i posted. but, we were on vacation all last week and i had minimal computer time (by choice), which was swell!
the entire vacation was great. we saw lots of family which is always wonderful and got to relax outside in warm weather (something wisconsin is inconsistent about these few days we've been back) and swim in lakes and ride on boats. it was just so much fun.

first, a cute pre-vacation picture i just found...

here are some pictures from kinnntuckeee!

strumming chords with uncle nu nu...

giving cousin ryan a big hug... william loves babies.

on the boat for the first time... filled with excitement...

enjoying the ride. greg's allergies were horrible that day, which you might be able to tell from his squinty eyes...

contemplative...

captaining, with some help from grandma...

swimming... he loved the water, more than he loves cookies (a.k.a. rice cakes... don't say anything to him!)

and, back at home with his friend. i love that they both have hair sticking up in this photo...

i would write more but i am oh so tired. until next time!

weather, watermelon, white wing

(thanks to grandma kathy for the terrific photo!)

it has been two weeks since i've updated! i think i need to update more like everyday, otherwise this space for a new post becomes too blank, too white, too big... a.k.a. daunting. well, that's a little dramatic, but if it's only going to be a bi-weekly event, then it does become more of an event to orchestrate.

i guess i will start with the weather-- an easy topic. the weather this summer has been great, in my opinion. last night greg and i sat out on our porch for about 20 minutes and the temperature was perfect in the warm, but not too warm, and cool, but not too cool, sense, and the best part was that we encountered not one mosquito, even after i mentioned it, which usually would have jinxed the situation. right now the computer tells me it's 79, though it feels cooler than that to me. it's breezy and overcast and very pleasant. in general it has been a cool and dry summer. i think my only suggestion would be a few more big storms, but maybe it would need to be consistently hotter to get those. until today, we have had a couple of hot weeks. aside from sleeping, and sweating it out last sunday in my office with a broken air conditioner, the heat hasn't been too bad either. perhaps it will yield us some tomatoes in our garden. we've had exactly one red tomato, although we are sure there have been one or two others nearing red that suddenly disappeared. today william and i went out to the garden and were saddened to see that our biggest little pumpkin had mysteriously disappeared too. the pumpkin plants are reaching to claim all four corners of our plot, so i'm sure there will be others, but still, i was looking forward to watching that particular one grow. we have also recently planted lettuce, carrots, and green beans. we're not sure if we'll get any green beans before fall, but we're trying late anyway. they're taking off despite the fact that we are not good at watering our plot. however, just this week, william learned all about watering the garden, so i think he will ensure that it gets plenty of water. before last week, we'd go out there and eat basil and look for tomatoes and pull an occasional onion, but last week, he found the watering cans in the shed, so we filled up a couple and watered the plants and he has been quite happy with the task.

yesterday i went to savers and got william "new" snowpants for winter, "new" tennis shoes for when his feet get bigger, and a whole "new" library of board books, which was maybe a silly thing to do, but they are so cheap and he likes them, so that's what i did. we also went to the big farmer's market yesterday. i had only been there once this season, greg and william not at all. we supplemented our csa produce with a yellow watermelon, a few more tomatoes, a few more carrots, some corn on the cob (one of w.t.'s favorites), and a sweet onion. we got some white sweet onions in our csa share a couple of weeks ago and they were out of this world delicious. i was putting them on everything, i kept talking about how good they were and when i wasn't eating or talking about them, i was thinking about them. the variety is called 'white wing.' it was a new variety for the farm. at the farmer's market, we saw a variety called 'candy' which sounded good, right? so we bought one and took it home and put it on our sandwhiches and it did not compare at all... just not even close. and it was not like eating candy either... it was just like eating an onion, but not an obsessively good onion. next year, we are growing white wing, and i recommend that you do too!

contents of a good summer

one evening last week, the sky was very strange... like a dreamsicle...








but it slowly became less strange...





and the next day, william drank his oatmeal from a coffee mug...











and after that, some days later, he acted like a goofball with his friend, in the burley...


and then they sat around and talked about the summers when they were kids, when they ran around all day long, making trouble, before their mothers would call them in for supper...


and then william played a lament on his ukulele...


and then he played in the pool with his dada...

green beans

so, it's been a long stretch here without an update. i can't say why i haven't updated recently. i think i have just been tired out by the end of the day. all in all we are having an enjoyable summer. we have had a couple of weekends at home without any commitments, which is nice, until you think, sheesh... we weren't doing anything last weekend... we could have gone to michigan or we could have gone camping. actually, we tried to go camping last weekend. when i say we tried, i mean that we looked at a website listing the available sites at all of the wisconsin state parks and could not find a single site that matched our criteria-- not more than a few hours from home and "real" bathrooms. apparently you have to plan out your middle-of-the-summer camping weekends and book the sites at the beginning of summer, or maybe even the end of spring, but not three days before you want to camp, if when you want to camp is the middle of summer.

long story short: we've stayed home eating green beans...

william's been steadily growing in his stature and his language skills. his hair has also been steadily growing. he desperately needs to visit his great grandma for a second haircut...

he is a fine fellow who keeps us entertained each day.

have a good friday tomorrow.

picturettes

a couple of weekends ago we went to wyalusing state park on the wisconsin-iowa border. we had a nice hike. william was through with the backpack toward the end of it, so he got out and ideally would have hiked the rest of the way with us, but instead played with sticks and leaves while we tried to keep him from falling off the designated trail. you start out quite high up and walk down to the mississippi river. here are some photos of the day (unfortunately i uploaded tiny versions of them and didn't think it was worth it to reupload them in larger versions or remove them completely).

high up at the start of the trail. mississippi and wisconsin rivers lay below...

greens and blues...

more of the two rivers...

on the trail, william's rapt attention on a passing freight train...

the family... minus oliver who was too short to make it into this shot...

have a nice sunday... what remains of it.