Sweet moments from today

James and I were sitting on the couch after dinner when I noticed that the clouds were turning pink and yellow and pretty, so we went out into the yard. We went outside barefoot because it's summer and it's a pleasant evening and we were only going to step out onto our lawn for a minute. Well, stepping out to look at the clouds turned into appreciating our flower garden, which turned into weeding the flower garden because I noticed an ivy vine that was threatening to choke our new lilac bush. And then we noticed that the ivy was everywhere, thin little light green vines that are little babies now but was seeking out all our good plants, growing up in them and trying to smother them. So we ripped out all the ivy while it's still tender and easy.

That turned into thinking about our garden around back, I guess, because somehow we wound up in the back yard weeding the vegetable garden. Then we gathered up some trash that had accumulated in one corner of the backyard, and when James moved a piece of it a chipmunk came screeching out and ran into the downspout of our gutters. So James, being the twelve-year-old boy that he is, put a rock in front of the downspout to trap the chipmunk in there. This turned into a James quest to capture the chipmunk in a trash can so he could look at it. So, then we heard the chipmunk run up inside the gutter, which turned into James spraying the hose up into the gutter which resulted in a wet angry chipmunk, I'm sure, but no chipmunk flushed out in the garbage can. Eventually James conceded the battle and gave up and moved on to other things, so I decided to plant a couple of herbs that my dad gave us. Right next to the downspout of the gutter, so every time I heard a chipmunk-y rattle from inside the gutter, I gave a yelp and imagined a furious, wet little rodent zooming out of the spout and attacking my bare feet. Luckily I got the herbs planted before the chipmunk reappeared.

By then, it was getting on towards dark and the mosquitos were out with a ferocity only seen in New England, so we retreated inside.

Where I realized that my bare feet were filthy!

So I hopped in the shower fully clothed, turned on the bathtub spout and filled the bottom of the tub a bit to wash my feet. In my haste, I blorped a big blorp of peachy body wash into my shower poof and started scrubbing. Well, soon enough there were mountains of suds everywhere, so I called James. And he came hustling in, probably thinking that I'd hurt myself somehow (it is me, after all), and I invited him into my peachy foot bath. So he hopped in fully clothed too. I squeezed out a handful of suds for him, and we stood in the inch of peachy-scented water together, washing our feet while we were still dressed, and the air smelled like peaches and it was just such a sweet, spontaneous, funny, peach-scented moment that I never want to forget.

Also: this morning, we were just started down our street on the way to work when James stopped the car: there was a momma duck and twelve tiny baby ducklings in our neighbor's driveway! We watched them go into the bushes separating our property from our neighbors', then James backed the car up and we watched the ducks emerge from the bushes and start across our lawn. I hopped out of the car to take a couple photos with my iPhone, which weren't that good because I couldn't get close to the cuteness. I remembered my camera in my purse, so James popped the trunk to give me access to my purse, and I hustled over (the ducks were still continuing on their way across our yard) and got a few photos of the cuteness. It was the best way to start a Monday, ever. And the fact that we were running late for work, but my loving hubby stopped to observe the cuteness and let me run around taking photos of baby duckies, makes me so happy. That's true love.