End of April

The Mayor and Hobbit Wife had coffee last Saturday and the Mayor announced that plans were officially afoot for the north side of the house.

First up was a stop at Aurora Rents.  Word got around the shop and no less than 5 guys showed up to see the guy putting the huge rototiller in his minivan.  Little did they know that the Mayor is deeply acquainted with Italian rototillers.  3.5 hours later, the tiller was back in the shop, tilling job complete.

Next up was delivery of a load of topsoil and a half load of drain rock.  The meerkat Seimi rejoices!

A very small hobbit watching a very large truck.

French drain excavated in the backyard.

Hobbitlings playing "I Overthrow You" on the pile of drain rock.  The rules are self-explanatory.

The hobbitlings backfilling the french drain.  Boookie claims to be ahead of the Mayor by 48 loads.  No load tickets were available to verify this claim and the trench was filled in the end.  Who's to say who really won that contest?  Boookie insists that he won.

The backfilled drain and regraded slope, awaiting landscaping.

The two younger hobbitlings out for a celebratory drive.  "I swear, officer.  I just dozed off a second!"

Fully alert drivers at their respective wheels.

The beautiful Ela, as captured by photographer Boookie.

Squeezy Eejee the Turtle, aka Speedy Eejee the Snail.

Vegetation Vandalism

Today marks the 12th Engage-adversary for the Mayor and the Hobbit Wife.  As the Mayor and Hobbit Wife were sitting on the porch in the sunshine reminiscing, the Mayor noticed that one of the rose bushes had suddenly burst into bloom with flowers that were clearly not roses.

It turns out Ela had picked up fallen blossoms from a neighbor's empress tree and placed them strategically on the rose.

As the Mayor and Hobbit Wife were talking with Ela about engagements, they began laying out the framework of conditions under which Ela could become engaged herself.

1. No long engagements, but...
2. The Mayor and Hobbit Wife will have to have known the young man long enough to know his character, and...
3. He has to have a job, because even Adam had a job before he got married, taking care of the garden..

Ela piped up, "Well, that's not a problem.  I could always just give him a job taking care of my garden and they we could get married whenever we wanted to."

Yikes.  Just yikes.

Verbalizing

After nursing, Eejee announced to Mommie, Daddy's in kitchen!  
He repeated this accurate observation several times but then grew tired of being asked, Where's Daddy?
He grimaced at Mommie, then announced that the game would be changing by grabbing her hand and saying High Five!

Boookie Stark, The Early Years

Here's Boookie with his aluminum can calculator.  The highlight of assembling this was his getting to say Tony Stark's line from Iron Man, "I've got a big one powering my factory at home."

There was great rejoicing when the first zero appeared!

Our Beauty

A wonderfully talented friend sketched this portrait of Ela recently.

Update

Lately we've been hanging out in the play yard,

napping out in the regular yard while hobbitlings weave dandelions into our hair and/or throw grass on us,

and collecting dandelion bouquets and/or just being dandelions (doesn't it look like one good "PUFF" and Seimi will be bald?).

Here is a series of portraits taken as all the hobbitlings played on the swingset together.

At night, we've been enjoying reading stories out loud and playing with playdough.

Our latest book is the first in the Wingfeather Saga, "On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness,"which is a really fun story.  Here's Ela's take on the one-legged grandfather Podo chasing a rascally Thwap that has taken off with one of his carrots.

A very manly easter

Here are 75% of the Michael Delving men getting ready for Easter.

 

And here they are, sporting bowties from the Mayor's "Grandpa Walt" collection.

E's at Play

Here are our E's playing together. 

Ela calls the plastic rings "the food chain" because Eejee loves to eat everything on it.

The Future

Seimi was eating an orange for lunch by means of mashing the inside with his fist and then drinking the juice and prying the pulp out with his fingers.  The Mayor requested, Seimi, in the future, please do not eat your oranges that way.

Seimi replied, What's the future?

This kid right here, he's the future. :-)