If you were to take these two

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and multiply them by two

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then add

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this

plus this

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what do you get? 

Four great friends having a wonderful time.

'Nuf said.

Happy Birthday!

July was birthday month here in my neck of the woods.  Trish and Stephanie and Vicki all have July b-days, so I went to TWO whole parties.  I don't go out a whole lot.  I'm too old, too tired, and too grumpy, I suppose. 

Anyway, we celebrated Trish's and Stephanie's day with a make-your-own-pizza party over at Trish's.   We had everything you can think of to put on a pizza....

Yum-yum-yum!!!

and of course, we girls wanted to preserve the festivities with a photo op and a birthday toast...

...and as that champagne flowed, some of us got a little more relaxed...

pizza toppings were discussed....

as well fashion and parenting tips.....and perhaps that age-old question arose: Can you feel your nose...err, ears?

...we had  a blast and got some really cute photos............

...but I got to thinking... should we preserve only the "good" photos?  Aren't the "bad" photos, the ones memories are made of?

...how about the one where we girls wanted to show the camera our "best side"...

...or the "true" us...

...or where I'm demonstrating a facelift technique...

...or this one which captures, I think, the essence of our friendship...

...it's just a blur of nonstop talk and waving hands...

and my favorite...

when I'm 80, I want to look at this one, remember, and laugh all over again...

4th of July means dinner and a zip line!

Tere's kids were at Seaworld with the G-parents yesterday and Jonathon is out of town. Much to our surprise, Tere showed up at our house around 7 just as I was contemplating dinner.  She'd made soup and invited us down.  As we all know, I'm the first to try to get out of cooking, so I was all for it!

The soup was an Italian sausage soup, and chock full of tons of veggies.  Tere just came back from a trip to a spa in Tecate was feeling very virtuous and healthy.  The soup was very, very good and even better once I'd dumped some cheese on it. Yum!

And even better, the Beckers have a zip line!!! How awesome is that?  And how did I not know about it? It's 20 feet up onto a tree platform and then you can zip probably 50 feet down to the yard.  Very cool.  I'm going back tonight to do it again, while Tere snaps pics for the blog... check back!

Real Men Love Goats

Tere and Jonathon hosted a neighborhood party Sunday night.  It was sort of a block party, except there aren't any blocks where we live; all the houses sit on an acre or more.  Tere invited everyone she could think of and this party really brought the whole neighborhood together.  It was tons of fun to see old neighbors and meet the new ones.

Tere does an awesome job with her parties -- she's very detail-oriented -- which gives every event a certain panache.  But I don't think six months ago it would have occurred to Tere that she'd ever have party guests like the two below.

Meet Betty and Boop.

They're two Nubian/Boer goats that the Beckers adopted and are bottle raising.

Goats really are good party guests.  Sure they like to hit the bottle pretty hard, yet they never get drunk and embarrass you or themselves.

A man and his goats -- it's a beautiful thing.

My neighbor, the trash-picker.

I really do have some great neighbors.  One of my favorite neighbors and a dear friend is Tere, who lives just one house away.  Tere is a dynamo - mother of three, craft woman extraordinaire, great cook -- and, by the way, a doctor.  She is/was the first woman radiologist to make partner in a group in San Diego. (I think I have that right.  I'll double check). In fact, when I found the lump in breast, I trotted up the street in my jammies for a diagnosis.  Tere was wonderful:  She amde a couple of call and had me in for all the diagnostic testing the next day.
And I know she'll be pleased to see that I am including in my blog a picture of her...
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 PICKING MY TRASH!

and I'm there too, helping her while Jaime examines her shoe and pretends we're not really picking the trash...and by the way that wet spot on my orange tee?  That's puppy pee.  Trashpickers don't need no stinkin' clean shirts!

Now, I will point out that not only are we picking the RECYCLE bin, which is clearly a notch above the actual trash, we digging for the New York Times.  We're well-read trashpickers.