so much to catch up on!

where to begin... erik, isabelle, and chester came in late last night (technically, early this morning), and the girls and their little dog/cousin had a fantastic day together. while i went to the lunch laura had for the women of the wedding, nick, erik, and isabelle took chester and the girls to squirrel island for a day at the beach. how fun! i saw 150 photos of the trip, and it looked wonderful. what a great beach they have at squirrel island, really nice fine white sand. sorry i had to miss the trip!

then we had the rehearsal. fingers crossed, but the girls seem to know exactly what to do. hopefully maggie will be in the right mood tomorrow too!

and of course, tomorrow nina turns 5! i just don't believe it. she's been counting down the days to her birthday for ... mmm... i remember when we were at 86 days, so i guess she's been counting down for about 3 months. and for the last 2 weeks, every morning she's announced how many days till her birthday. one day she'd say "14 days til my birthday!" and the next day she'd ask "do you think it's still 14 days to my birthday?" to which we must respond, "yes, i do think it's 14 days until your birthday," and she'd say "no, it's 13 days until my birthday!" sometimes she'd just lie on the floor, moaning, asking if tomorrow could be her birthday. poor kid, it's so hard to wait!

in garden news (goodbye erik, thanks for reading this far!), we harvested most of our potatoes yesterday and today! we had enough to feed all 8 of us at dinner too! i'm SO happy. they weren't very big, ranging in size from a small marble to about the size of a medium red potato. but they were very, very tasty. i'm definitely going to plant a bunch of potatoes next year. whoopee! sweet success.