big weekend here in our little neck o' the woods...

mike and michelle and their 13 month old daughter, zoe, arrived saturday evening for a visit. the last time we saw zoe, she was 4 months old. boy, has she changed! now she's walking, making all kinds of sounds (some loud, some not so loud), saying a couple words, and generally being a busy little toddler. so far, her favorite activity has been taking the cans of cat food out of a box and putting them all back in. she also like pearl and pearl likes her. rory is just fascinated by everything that zoe is doing.

sunday was the day of the piper party. our neighbor anne has a friend, ruairi somers, visiting from dublin, ireland. he was in the states to take part in the dublin (ohio) irish music festival, and took a side trip to come see anne for a week. we decided to have a lawn party in which ruairi (pronounced kind of like rury) would play his irish pipes, also known as uillean pipes. they are not what most people think of when they think of bagpipes. they sound much the same as highland, or scottish pipes, but the bag is inflated by a bellows rather than the player blowing into it, so they need to be played sitting down. anthony (who is the brother of laurie's midwifery student, elizabeth) also happens to play the uileann pipes, so he came down from burlington and we had not one but TWO irish pipes to listen to. it was a wonderful day, a little on the hot side, but most of the adults sat under our big maple tree munching cookies, drinking juice and iced tea and listening to some great irish pipe music.

to keep the kids occupied, brian cut a whiffle ball diamond into the back 40, and got a wicked game going with mike and a bunch of the neighborhood girls (none of the neighborhood boys showed up). once the girls got tired of the ballgame, brian and mike just continued with batting practice, as i thought they might. when they get together, it's hard to tear them away from that kind of stuff... :-)

mike and michelle are here until wednesday, so we'll be showing them the sites of the upper valley, as well as just enjoying the nice weather. gotta take them for a swim in the moonlight farm pond to cool down some afternoon-it's supposed to be pretty hot this week.

hey, don't forget to keep an eye out for the perseid meteor shower. peak time to watch is supposed to be tonight, but you should be able to see something in the sky in the evenings for the rest of the week.