Busy, not vanished from the face of the earth.

Lily participated in the Harbor Choral Festival again this year.  She is in the second row from the bottom, second child from the left end.  This year they performed Johnathan Willcocks's "Snow White", which was very cute and fun.

The blueberry-picking Mears kids found shelter beside some blueberry bushes when the sun got to be a little too much.   We picked quarts and quarts of beautiful berries!!

The ZOO!  We love that zoo membership in the summer!  If we get there at opening time (easy enough for this early-rising bunch!), we can see everything at the zoo and head for home just about the time the crowds start to pour in. 

There they are again, those camel-riding summertime Mearsies!  Our camel this time was named Angel, and she was as sweet and gentle as her name suggests.

We can't get enough of the budgie aviary at the zoo.  It is always, always fun to buy a birdseed stick and have the friendly birdies fly down for a snack.  This particular visit to the zoo, we were in the budgie area so early in the morning that they hadn't yet gotten full and lazy from a zillion feeder sticks, so they actually flew down to us, landed on our sticks, on our heads, on our shoulders.  Very neat!!

Like I said ... we just love this part of a zoo visit. 

How's life treating you lately?  We're JUST PEACHY!!  So many, MANY thanks to Astrid for your help canning all these peaches last weekend.  If you look in the background of this picture, you'll see a taste of our summer - fresh-baked bread cooling on the stovetop, and a totally overloaded bowl of garden veggies on the counter.

Fresh peach pie... OH, MY.  This was just a recipe I pulled off the internet because it looked simple and straightforward.  WOW, how delicious.  I have to give kudos to my brother, Mark, for having made his first-ever pie crust dough while Astrid and I were elbow-deep in the peach canning.  He did an admirable job; it was a perfect crust.

Another trip to the zoo, this time with Uncle Mark, Aunt Astrid, Annika and Ava. 

Close-up of Henry with a birdie. 

Close-up of Gregory with a birdie.

Ava looking dreamy in the bird enclosure.

Henry coloring a monarch butterfly at a fundraising booth at the zoo ... fundraising for ... um... gosh, I don't remember.  But we liked the butterflies :-)

Gregory colors his monarch butterflies.  Each kid got to color two - one to decorate the fundraising booth, and one to take home.  Woo-hoo!

We always have to stop and pet the baby pygmy goats.  They're nearly full-grown now, but were sure tiny and cute at the start of the summer!

Salsa anyone?????  Mom and I made 27 pints of amazing, delicious garden-grown salsa this morning.  We're tired, but happy with a good day's canning.