it's summertime.

Remember how it's been raining? My weekend was glorious. Sun so bright that wearing sunglasses was actually a necessity instead of a pathetic wish for better things, spotless blue sky, and actual, honest-to-goodness hot weather!

On Friday I finally got outside with my new lens and recorded the first day of summer. Because I don't care what the calendar says--days like that are the real beginning.

Our cat, Chucky. His plan of attack: 1) creep up on her through the grass, and 2) crawl all over her and purr wipe wet nose on her at random.

Not helpful, darling.

Sun spots, I love you so much.

My new lens makes it much easier to get pictures of animals, because they always get uncomfortable/embarrassed or run away/run toward me if I get as close as I need to. But with epic zooming capabilities now, I can get close-ups without disrupting them. : )

Dixie sees the dog. (we immaturely call her "Meow-Meow" or more commonly "MOW" because of a small child who once dubbed her that. it's one of those things that we're used to and don't think it is weird until someone gives us a pitying look and says "your cat is named Meow-Meow?" awkward moment.)

Glad that the dog is gone. This cat makes me laugh out loud quite frequently. Her peevish expressions and the way she stresses out and skitters all over our hardwood floors is absolutely hilarious. And when she chases her tail. You'd think a cat that old would have a little more dignity. But no.

Henry, my hero. : )

He acts like a teenager, but he's getting gray hair. *frantic longing for time to stop and to cuddle with Henry all day*

The cats do what I want to do: roll around and bask in the sun.

Speaking of animals: we caught a skunk. Fun times. I always want to miraculously de-stink them and keep them forever and snuggle with them, but the realists around here tell me it's not an option. My dad has disposing-of-skunk skills.

Friday night the whole family (all the married ones, minus a brother-in-law and niece who were sick) came over for a family dinner and to celebrate my graduation.

Virginia. With the crazy blue eyes.

My awesome mother knows that I'm immature and get really excited about balloons. She got me one and made my day.

Victoria, my sister's baby. And Ben. OH MY WORD, eventually he'll have his own kids!

*spazzes out*

My brother Joseph brought Krispy Kreme donuts. YES. They took advantage of National Donut Day and got free donuts, plus a dozen extra. : )

(these pictures courtesy of my iPhone, which takes not-so-great pictures
but captures the good parts of life, just the same)

Hadley came over, too, and since our house was chock-full of people, we decided to sleep outside. On the trampoline. We figured it wouldn't be inordinately cold, since the day had been so warm. It turned out, it was warm all night and I actually was hot more often than cold. WIN.

Incidentally, though, the whole sleeping-outside-under-the-stars thing didn't really work out, since no actual sleeping occurred. DOUBLE WIN. We both checked off of our bucket lists: stay up all night. 

And this was the coolest way to stay up all night. Instead of watching movies or drinking caffeine to stay awake, it was a completely natural event. We didn't plan on not sleeping. We just ended up talking. And talking. We saw at least five shooting stars. We listened to the silence of the country in the middle of the night, and the scary noises of the country in the middle of the night.

We watched the black and starred sky fade into the  washed-out gray of pre-dawn. We heard the bird informing everyone (but mostly us, because we were the only ones nearby who weren't asleep) that morning was on the move. We watched the sun rise and heat up the still-warm world. 

  

We dashed inside to collect cookies and cranberry juice. We drank it straight out the bottle and laughed painfully hard at things that probably weren't funny at all. Then we burrowed into sunny blankets and power-napped for twenty minutes. 

We woke up ready to take on the world (aka laze around and watch movies and eat ice cream). Which we proceeded to do with gusto. That included High School Musical and Charlie St. Cloud. 

Mixed feelings about that one, so I'm not sure a review is forthcoming. We watched it on clearplay, so that took care of any offensive stuff. It was visually stunning, it was gut-wrenchingly tragic, it was probably a little corny. Whatever else can be said, though, Zac Efron definitely proved that he can act beyond the cheesy-yet-delightful movies like HSM. Maybe I should do a review... : ) Did any of you see it? What did you think?

Anyways. My weekend was absolutely awesome, and was made even more perfect by the fact that a young mom at church today wore these crazy-fabulous shoes.