A Few for Friday - #30

This past weekend we took our annual summer sojourn slightly westward to head over to the Pittsburgh area to meet up with my dad's side of the family for our reunion. My uncle and his wife from the Philippines are there (it's funny to meet someone who you only 'know' through Facebook) for a few weeks and as my grandma's house is kind of small, we stayed in a hotel this time. I don't like hotels. I get all germ-obsessed (though I normally am not), the shower is different, I don't have my normal stuff in its normal place, and so on. The plus was that I slept in a bed instead of on the floor so I didn't wake up in the morning feeling about ninety years old. But I didn't get to do my normal lounging about in the morning as I was woken up by a voice saying "Aunt Bee! C'mon! It's free breakfast! It's gonna be over! Come on!" What a frugal little guy is my nephew. Unless it was the vending machines, because then we could feed that thing quarters all day because "I know we have the same crackers, but these will taste different!" Which, I totally get. I really can't refuse Z-man when he reminds me of myself. Anywho, here are a few snaps from the week.

A double-heart strawberry in my cereal transformed it into the breakfast of champions. Which is handy for enduring long car rides with an eleven year old.

 I love that my grandma loves gnomes. I get that from her. Along with my affinity for headaches.

 I know, it's a bug. And I hate bugs. But I turned around on the porch one night and it was just there, outlined so perfectly on the outdoor shade. I took a flash photo and immediately got grossed out so I deleted it and stuck with the silhouette.

 I talked myself out of bringing my good camera, and regretted it as soon as I saw this cardinal. The thing has wicked zoom and I could have gotten an amazing close-up. I like that you can see that the wings are fluttering, though.

 The night we came home my fingers were craving fabric play, so I was chopping up a few bits when my mumsy called me outside to take a picture. These two are always hanging about together, just chillin'. Sometimes they sit on the phone wires and coo, sometimes they sit on the fence and just hang out. I'm going to name them, I think.

I was actually eager to get back to work as four straight days of being around people with no respite but sleep drained my introverted soul of energy. Plus the insane heat and humidity didn't help. We're having much nicer weather now, which is a welcome change--I don't need to reapply deodorant before I get in my car in the morning. Is it fall yet?