The Rest of May and June

Kent's birthday is May 3rd, so we had a small birthday celebration for Kent by inviting a few couples over to play games. 

The next weekend was Mother's day.  Our wonderful children really came through this year with cards and gifts from all of them.

 I hosted a mother's day brunch at our house for the Primary activity day girls and their mothers.

 It's nice to have an excuse to show off Kent's lovely yard.

I used a pink and green theme, and reused some of the pennant banners and milk bottles I'd used at Tyler and Rachel's open house.

We drank pink lemonade and green limeaid.

 I wanted to have it outside, but the grass was too wet, so we ate indoors.

After the brunch Kent and I dashed off to a 5k volksmarch in southern Stafford. We carried umbrellas with us but it didn't rain on us, and we enjoyed our walk on a spring day.  I was glad my arthritic knee wasn't aching too badly and I was able to do the volksmarch.

The next weekend we were representatives from our county (Stafford) at the state Republican Convention in Richmond.  It was interesting at times, but mostly boring as we sat and sat after votes were taken and needed to be tallied.

 The next Saturday we went to a "Women can Fly" event at a nearby small airport, where I went up with a pilot in a small plane for a free private flight.  It was really fun!

The view out my window--

That night we went to a free concert given by Jenny Oaks Baker at the DC Temple Visitor's Center. She's a magnificent violinist, and she played Disney songs.

 I must mention the 17-year plague of cicadas we had this year.  They were everywhere and caused a non-stop humming sound for about four weeks.  Someone told me it sounded like a spaceship landing, and that was a perfect description.  This one landed on my leg and kindly sat still while I took it's picture.

  The Stinsons visited us for Memorial day, which I blogged about in my previous post.  Next event was my piano recital.  This year I used a chalkboard style for my invitations.  I found the chalkboard background and fonts on this website here. 

 Re-used the pennant banners again--

Kent warmed up the crowd with a music-themed comedy routine.  The punchline below was: "Look!  He's under a rest!"   Music humor is the best!!

Another Saturday was filled with a trip to Yorktown for Sarah Andrews Yates wedding open house.  I gave Sarah piano lessons when she was five years old in 1996.  

Here's Sarah and her husband, Brad, with her parents-our good friends- David and Tresha Andrews

 The refreshments were set up in the Andrews lovely sun room; it looked so pretty!

 We rode down to Yorktown with our mutual friends, Jim and Bonnie Jeo.

Also in June I hosted a going away open house for a family in our ward, the Heckels.  We had it in our backyard and basement.  It was nice except as it got dark the bugs were attracted to the lights.

For the open house I made a bread sampler with four kinds of flavored butters.  I've been experimenting with different types of flavored butters.  The ones in the picture below were strawberry-lemon, honey- cinnamon, maple-pecan and apricot.  I'd created some lovely labels to put on the butters and the breads, but our printer was acting up so I wasn't able to print them up.