What did Mama Tomato say to her slow-poke child?

I apologize for the absence. May ran away, as I figured it would and then June went in a similar, dramatic and busy way. So I will give you snippets of what has been going on in the Tblake household, not necessarily in any particular order.

We grew one of Cassie's favorite vegetables in our front yard.

We travelled to Baltimore with Kait and Jessica.

At the end of May we loaded up the van and took a great road trip out East for a refreshing convention. Tikkun International is an organization focused on bringing together Jews and Gentiles that love Jesus. They are a breath of fresh air for us and the conference itself was a time of renewal and excitement. We drove 19 hours to get to Baltimore and it was worth it. We also spent some wonderful time hanging out with Kait and Jessica, two incredible women. Thanks, ladies, for making the drive so much easier!

Cassidy and I added some new states to our growing list of adventures.

This might be the highlight of the trip for Cassidy -- a fridge just her size, like Maasen's!

We stayed at the same hotel as the Oscar Mayer weiner-mobile.

I spent some special time with my beautiful and hilarious neices.

And some fun time with my nephew, and his muscles

She loves to love on her papa,
even rubbing his shoulders to help him relax.

Now this feels good.

That's us: Wild and Wonderful

'

Who doesn't love a good Pixar movie with a friend?

When we got home Cass had a strange fever, but
thankfully it didn't turn into vomiting, like it did in May.

I suppose I forgot to tell you about the flu that went around in May. The leader of Tikkun Int'l came in town to speak to our congregation in the middle of May, but right before he arrived Dassah and Noah got sick. Then Lauren got sick, and her parents, and Cassidy. It was like dominoes. Just when one got better another one started throwing up. Cassidy was a trooper, even though she kept waking up and vomiting. Thankfully it only lasted 24 hours or so, but it sure reminded us that sometimes being a close family can get you into a mess.

And I got a new computer!

Tom surprised me with an early birthday present, that is actually birthday, mother's day, and anniversary all rolled into one. I am VERY thankful for this computer. Now I have an "a" key, the right and left clicks work, and I don't have to be plugged in all the time. Thanks to Eric it's incredibly fast and super clean. A month later I still turn it on and smile. Having something this nice is a bit overwhelming, and I am so thankful.

Gazania. It's really called a gazania.

And here enters the drama of gardening without a dog. We never had trouble with critters when Yuma was around, but now that she's off to new adventures in Missouri we have animals eating everything. Nibbling our strawberries, digging in our newly potted plants, and snapping the heads off our flowers. No kidding, just like Little Bunny Foo-Foo, some animal comes around and pops the heads off of my flowers. Doesn't eat them or anything practical, just snaps them off. I had to take this picture to remember how beautiful these flowers are. This was early June, and since then the flowers have expanded and survived, but the varmits still dig in the pot occassionally.

Artist in the making.

Big Cassie has been so great to encourage Cassidy to do more artistic things and she has started to embrace this side of herself. She gets up almost every morning and colors or paints by herself. She got these neat stained glass window pages from Lily and Mira for her birthday and I think in two weeks she colored every page. It's fun to see her mind process through how things should look: the difference between eyes and ears, how Tom and I look different, even practicing letters, shapes and numbers. She is growing up and changing so much.

Hope this whets your whistles. Things of more depth are sure to come. (Please forgive me if there are typos in the post, I'm still getting used to this fancy keyboard.)