Father's Day

Allie enjoyed her bike ride

All the kids got tractor rides though Allie decided not to once she heard how loud it was

Josh got Steve his favorite candy, big spender as he is. This stuff is safe from me

Early morning bike ride past a mailbox decorated with glass pretties

Father's Day was a busy day starting with my 6 am bike ride hoping that the forecasted rain didn't come. Lucky on that front. So I went 26 miles somewhat assisted by the  wind. Will I be able to cover the 65 miles between Traverse City and Grayling in 3 weeks? Traverse City is on Lake Michigan; Grayling is on the high central plateau SSE of there. Very few towns are in between but lots of hills are. We shall see.

On to food preparation after some gardening. Since now we have a 'big' house, family get togethers are now here. The meat and its bbqing were Josh's job; Shanna was bringing dessert. I had asked Steve to buy some sort of salad. He bought  a bunch of romaine so I had to be creative. I added lemon balm, Michigan strawberries (smaller and more intensely flavored than the commercial ones), honey flavored chevre and I made candied pecans to toss on top. We had no suitable salad dressings so I made an orange vinaigrette. All this takes time. I sautéed some swiss chard (somehow some creature was able to bypass my chicken wire and eat more of the replacement plants) and cooked corn (Steve had bought nasty frozen stuff whereas fresh would have been so much better.)

So the chaos of kids running to and fro began. Julie's father joined us. The weather held out so all of us could eat outside. It was nice.

Then the massive clean-up before my friend came over to watch the new season of Orange is the New Black. By then, I was quite tired.

We are the middle between 2 storms right now. The air is hot and heavy. The second storm will be much more severe but also can slip south without touching us. Steve unfortunately has a new game: see how long we can go without turning on the air conditioner. I am crying Uncle right now. I am hot and sweaty when I don't need to be. This game is about as fun as gasoline roulette: see how far we can go on fumes.

But for all my carping, I am lucky that Steve is my husband and the father of our kids and the grandfather of their kids. No one is more loving and involved, a sharp contrast to my father who just never grew up.