The photos on my camera

Here are some of the pictures we've been taking lately. And by lately, I mean since mid-February when I last bothered to look to see what was on there.


1. Jonathan in his homemade shackles. He linked bits of wire to his wrists and ankles, and then connected them all in the middle. Because this is the sort of thing that is fun. He only tripped himself a few times before they were removed.


2. I don't remember the setting here, but we have several pictures of this iron-ninja-wizard-jedi from March 14. I thought this one was the scariest.


3. Moving on to more family memories, here's a shot from the Easter egg hunt we held with Jonathan's grandparents the Friday before Easter. I post this particular picture for two reasons. Number one, it helps me remember why we remodeled our basement. This is a shot of the laundry room, which we didn't redo. We decided to leave the yellow paint on wood paneling on brown tile for memory's sake. Pretty much the rest of the basement -- at least the finished parts -- looked like this last June. It's much better now. Number two, I like the plaid shirt and turquoise striped socks on that man, who may or may not be related to me depending on who is asking.


4. A classic shot of Grandma and Jonathan. This, by the way, was taken in the remodeled part of the basement. You cannot see much, but contrasting with the previous picture, you understand.


5. Real Easter (i.e. Sunday), up at the other Grandma's house. And I suppose it's Grandpa's house, too. These two have moved to the edge of suburbia, right there where it butts against rural living. They are the last house in the subdivision, and their next door neighbor is a horse. This picture, with its attending glare, was taken from inside the house looking out the window.


6. This one was taken just outside their house.


7. Although we did hunt for Easter eggs on Sunday as well, I have no pictures of that. Instead, we have gardening Jonathan.


8. Ah, and back to our house. You have probably been wondering where all the remodel posts have gone. There were so many back in the early days of the Clown and Poker. Did we finish? you ask. Is the silence due to the fact that the house is now perfect? No, we just gave up. At least for a long time. Well, the day after classes ended, I headed to a tile store, picked up some samples, and finally designed a backsplash after eight months of bare wallboard in the kitchen. This is the design I settled upon, done in paper cutout tiles. Diamond tiles behind the sink, meeting smaller square tiles around the rest of the kitchen. Nice, eh? (I realize you can't really see much from this photo, but the proper thing to say is yes, very nice. I love it.)


9. And some more diamonds over the stove for continuity. We're going with all white tiles to brighten things up a bit, and because the cream-colored ones made my backsplash look dirty against the white sink and appliances. Also, we decided on a plain white backsplash because our hickory cabinets are beautiful, and they yell at you when you enter the kitchen, saying "look at me I'm gorgeous!" I don't want the backsplash yelling as well. That would be too much noise.


10. Oh here's a fun photo. This is what we awoke to on April 16. Six inches of snow. Jonathan packed up in snow gear and went sledding again.


11. Two days later, we were all out gardening in our back yard and I took this photo. This is typical spring weather here, apparently. At least the tulips didn't seem to mind the six inches of snow. One fun thing about our first spring in a new house is we get to discover where all the plants live. We have tons of daffodils along the grass border in the back yard. This fall, I'm digging up some of those bulbs and moving them to the front, where we just have boring evergreen bushes. I'm going to guess here that the previous owners rarely went out front, but spent most of the summer in the back.

Ok. That's the end. In four more months maybe I'll post some more pictures.