What a wonderful week and a half it's been.

I spent the first week of their summer break with my three nephews in Illinois...

...and their three kittens!

Spaz

Cocoa

Caramel

The cuteness!  Can hardly stand it.

Where my sister and her family live is also my old stomping grounds, before getting married and moving to Wisconsin.  I love going back there.  It's in a warmer growing zone, so even though we have pretty much the same flowers and vegetation, their blooming things are a little bit further along in the season than ours.

Oh magenta...my forever favorite color.

My oldest nephew playing in his first piano recital.

One evening all three boys had baseball games at the ball field.  As we sat on the sidelines and watched, our friend's daughter came running up and declared to her mother, "I have a question and a statement.  First the question.  Can we have a duck?  And the statement is...I just found eleven duck eggs."  It was so funny the way she said it.  And there they were, right under the wooden baseball field sign that sits atop a pile of field stones where traffic flows in and out of the park, half-hidden under a row of sparse bushes.  Eleven duck eggs and one mama duck guarding the nest.

My heart is full.