We started off the month celebrating Emily's graduation.  She graduated with honors after taking honors classes all 4 years.  She graduated with all A's for all four years except for one C her freshman year.  WOW!

She walked with her best friend, Allison.  They met in kindergarten and have been best friends ever since.

I can't believe that it is even possible that a high school in Oregon would consider an outdoor graduation in June!  And so of course it rained.  And if you were not sitting in the back row, you were not allowed to use an umbrella.  

How is it that each couple that posed for a photo with her had the man and woman on the same side?

Bonnie and I went shooting a day.  I can not believe it!  Before I even took one photo, I realized my camera battery was dead.  That has never happened to me before.  My spare one was at home on the charger.  So I spent the day taking photos with my cell phone.  I actually was pretty happy with how they turned out.  Cell phone cameras have really improved. This is the Clackamas River, just out of Estacada.

 With school out, we get to spend extra time with the 3 kids.  They are sure making good use of the little cars.

The girls love playing dress up.  They are making great use of the costumes their Mommy used to wear for her dance classes.  Sure am glad I saved them.

We strapped on their water tanks and had a water war.  Not really fair, though, Grandpa used the hose! They thought they were pretty clever hiding under his truck.   They didn't come with their swim suits, so I let them strip to underwear, so ignore that part.

Then they gave me a pedicure.

 When I was little, my very favorite toy was my Barbies.  We had a Barbie Theater and it was the best time ever playing fashion show with the theater with my cousins, Debbie, Sandy and Allen.  Well, the theater was falling apart, but I have cherished it (and all my Barbies and the clothes my Mother sewed by hand for them) and moved it from home to home through the years.  Jessi, being an only girl, just really didn't get into playing with it.  I did my best to hook Emily, but still, just one girl, it didn't catch.  I spent a day last week, taping and putting it all back together almost as good as new.  To my amazement,  I pulled it out to show Arianna and Lina.  They loved it.  Even Josiah took his turn with the boy doll on stage.  It was so fun reliving my Barbie Theater days with them.

 I am not the only one loving the flowers in the yard. If you look at the bottom right photo, you can see some red carnations on the ground.  A little bunny has decided to pick them for me.  I don't know why he just nibbles them off and leaves them laying, I thought that he would eat them.

 I decided that we needed to cover the dirt pathway at one side of the yard with rock to match the other pathways around the place.  I put in a little pad for a chair and now have a perfect view of the river.  The view for my morning latte.

 When we first moved here, I loved the colors on the walls and didn't think I would need to paint.  But little by little I have been making it my own.  I painted the family room and kitchen before Christmas. The guest rooms suddenly got to be so dark and heavy.  I did the dark brown room a nice sunny yellow.  I found a pretty ocean green that is almost a blue for the other guest room.   The gold is what was in the guest room. Even the ceiling was gold.  They rooms look so amazing now.  As soon as I got them done, then the guest bathroom looked so dark that I had to go get paint and get it done too.  There was so much paint left that I used it to paint the laundry room and I still have paint left.  

Before and afters

 Guest rooms  (we even made the headboards for the yellow room) (check out my Barbies on the wall)

 Guest bathroom

 laundry room

June 22 marks 43 years since we got married.  I heard that Cannon Beach has a rock where puffins nest.  A few people I know from Flickr have posted some amazing shots of them.  I have wanted to see them, so we went to the beach for a couple of days.

Well, I was pre-warned by one of my Flickr contacts that they are way up in the rocks and it is difficult to get a good shot.  He was so right!  They have short little wings and fly erratically, so it was like tracking a mosquito.  My shots just cracked me up!  He is a little collage of my puffin tracking skills.  some of my shots didn't even have a bird in them.

The best shot I got were these two.  Neither one is anything to show off, I am only posting them to mark the event.

It was really mesmerizing watching them fly back and forth from the rocks to bring food back for their young.  It was like watching a beehive. After realizing that the perfect shot was not going to happen, I just enjoyed the view instead.

And here is what 43 + one for the year to come look like.

And this is what they look like less than a week later because of the heat wave we had.

The day we arrived to the beach, we received a phone call from John's brother's wife that Bobby had been to the doctor for a check-up and the doctor had sent him from Lake Havasu to Las Vegas to the hospital.  The hospital in Lake Havasu was full and he needed in asap.  The next day Bobby called and said they were doing some tests and pictures.  He said things didn't look too good for him, that he probably only had months left. A year ago, he had a heart attack, the result of too much alcohol and cigarettes.  Well, by Saturday, he asked John to contact his family and let them know that he had very little time left. Instead of months, he had only days.  It was shocking to see how fast it all happened.  From the time we had the first call, it was only a week and he was gone.  He was the baby of the family. So sad to have him gone.