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It has been a day of beautiful colors here in Birmingham.  The sky was that perfect shade of blue.  At lunch, coming back from a run with my husband, two little brown birds twittered on the sidewalk.  They were so sweet, so perfect.

One of my dear friends is battling an advanced cancer.  I am very depressed about it.  She has an amazing spirit.  In honor of her, I’m celebrating all of the beautiful colors around me today.

My daughter picked flowers and put them on our dinner table.

When I got home from work, she and DH were dancing in the kitchen.  He was teaching her the South Carolina Shag we used to do back in school.

I dyed some yarn in muted colors and like it so much that I think I’m going to make myself a scarf with it — a reminder that the hot humid summer weather will eventually give way to fall.

I arrived home today to a package from my friend Dannielle.  She had this incredibly cool needle holder on her website that I ordered, because I can never find a needle when I want one.  Not only did she send the little needle book, she sent me the most wonderful pincushion to go along with it.  Many of my children’s most treasured friends — hotdog, Ollie’s cat, and Ellie’s white unicorn, came from Dannielle.  I’m really excited to have some of her little things that I know I will use every day.

Today I’m just going to focus on the little things, the birds’ song, the rhythm of my spinning  wheel going around and around, the sweet mischevious face of my baby on the front porch.  I’m going to watch John Stewart and laugh a lot.  I’m going to read books and tuck little ones into bed.  I’m going to protest cancer in the only way I can.

We spent an absolutely wonderful five days at  Calloway Gardens, in a rustic cabin that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere!  We didn’t even have an internet connection, which really did make for a wonderful, get away from it all feeling.

Most of our time was spent swimming and exploring the gardens and butterfly house.  We had to go back to the butterfly house for a second and a third visit.  It really is incredible to see so many different species up close.  I took lots of pictures and although I’m not sure which ones are favorites yet, I wanted to post these two beautiful colorful butterflies.  Thank you DJ for encouraging me to get the Canon Digital Rebel XT.  I am so in love with my new camera and what it can do!  I’m still working through the basic instructions, but even with no skills we got beautiful pictures of the children and lots of wonderful shots I’m going to Photoshop and use in collage art.

A family tradition after a Calloway trip is to stop at the nearby Wild Animal Safari to feed the animals.  This year we saw lots of very friendly animals (because of the big bags of food we carried) up incredibly close: deer, wild pigs, zebras, geese, emus, ostriches, musk ox, and more.  But my favorite was this wonderful fellow who reached down through our sunroof to be fed.

Indulge me for a minute and let me tell you how amazing my baby, who is three and a half is. For awhile, we thought he might be the anti-Christ, just because he did so many truly strange things none of our other children had done. But, recently, he has begun to show signs of civilization and he is developing some charming baby manners, although i suspect he has also watched some inappropriate tv fare with the 15 year old.

So, last weekend, we were buying shoes. It was almost naptime and the black and yellow Nikes he had picked out were only available in blue and red. "It’s ok" the really nice girl in the store told him. "They’re Superman shoes." He was just barely awake as she put them on, so after she confirmed that they fit him, I told him he didn’t need to run around for us to see. He broke away from me then, ran about 15 feet really quickly and began jumping up and down higher than I had ever see him jump. Suddenly, he stopped and turned back to look at us sadly. "But I can’t fly," he said. All the parents in the store broke up laughing. Isn’t he amazing? And cute too, with curly hair and steel blue eyes.

Right now he is hanging with the fifteen year old, who just came in to tell me "Ollie has just summed up the entire history of human warfare." Hmm, that seems a little bit profound, even for a reformed anti-Christ. "What did Ollie say?" I asked. Fifteen says, "Ollie said: i hate them and i don’t know what they care about." Gee whiz. Now the two of them are double teaming me. One is interpreting the other’s ramblings as important wisdom of the ages. God has given me children smarter than I am. I don’t think this bodes well for my future.

This morning I did something I rarely do.  I took time off — four precious hours of leave — to go swimming with my children.  Like most working moms, I hoard my leave time for emergencies.  I use my annual leave sparringly and never take sick leave for myself.  But today, I decided I needed some pool time with the kids.  I couldn’t wait until tomorrow.

I got to see this:

And, my daughter decided she felt confident enought to jump off the diving board for the first time.  After that first time, she did it over and over.  She jumped high and she jumped far forward.  Everytime she jumped, she waited until she could see that i was there, treading water in the middle of the deep end, waiting for her in case she needed me.

I know, especially as my big kids get older, that it is these simple times together that we will all treasure.  In a week, no one will remember that I was gone from work for a few hours on a Friday morning.  But, my daughter will always remember that I was there the first time she went off the diving board. 

I have been trying and trying to get little "progress bars" for my knitting projects in the side bar of my blog.  But, for some uknown reason, everytime I thought I had the code correctly written, adding it would do really strange (and horrible) things to the rest of the blog.  Now, thanks to Jacquie, I have finally got them working.  I’m so excited!  Thank you Jacquie!

My mom is visiting.  We snuck away for lunch together and an afternoon of shopping (mostly Williams and Sonoma and looking at couches, which I will not buy because the three year old hurricane I live with loves to destroy new furniture).

When we got home, my friend, Wendy, had sent this wonderful blueberry cobbler recipe, so we made it to go with dinner.  Thanks Wendy!

Personally, I had no clue.  I knew about snakes, but lizards?  In any event, Spike, our Jalapura Dragon (this is what they claimed he was at the pet store when we purchased him) shed his skin yesterday and emerged more brilliantly green than ever.