Cupcakes, Birthdays, and Supercells

I just love my "tribe"! They make me really, really happy! This photo may look familiar because Maria, a dear member of my family, is sitting just to the right of my brother, Lee, all the way to the left, and Maria also posts on POTD. She often posts photos of extraordinary, absolutely inspired, tablescapes, and in case you are not feeling enraptured enough, she often includes evocative poetry along with it.

Just before Dianna's graduation over Memorial day, we got to celebrate David's birthday. David is Lee and Maria's youngest son. Doesn't he have the sweetest, most cryptic smile? And that guy off to the right of David is my delightful, younger, never-ever-no-matter-how-hard-he-tries-will-be-as-old-as-me, little brother, messing with his Nikon D40.


Robert had the great wisdom to recognize the near-perfect nature of my sister-in-law, Barb, and marry her. Oh, if only he were always so brilliant in his actions (and here, I just won't mention that little boat incident in Voyageur National Park, where we had to be rescued by Mad Max by moonlight.)

It's such a delight to catch three delightful smiles all at once! And here, on the left, is John, Lee and Maria's oldest son. John is a creative, artistic, and very thoughtful, young man; in my living room, I love looking at the bamboo plant he gave us at his high school graduation, graced by a glass bead made by him.

I love the sparkle in Maria's eyes in this photo. Do you think I could convince my brother, Lee, to let Maria run away to live with me in North Dakota, so we could hang out together more? (Wait! I think Maria is a sane person! What sane person wants to run away to ND?)

Yummmm! And these are the cupcakes I'm promising anyone who helps me and Doug move any of my kids next time we're drafted:

And just to further drive home the point that running away to ND might not be sane, I'd just like to gripe about our weather a little more. (You know me: I'm practically a gold-medal Olympian weather griper, and have earned it by living here for *gulp* 32 years.) Today, we had 19 tornado spottings in the area, and a supercell. A supercell is the worse of the four classes of thunderstorms, often producing severe weather events such as tornadoes, but also torrential rains, flash flooding, hail, and straight-line or updraft winds at dangerous speeds, and severe lighting. . . . just about everything but frogs, I guess. At one point at work, I left my 3rd floor of my office to take to the basement, but I guess I was a wuss; all the workers on the ground floor of the bank just continued to sit around working, with all their glass windows around them. Not me! --even if I do rather like tornadoes and storms!

Sometimes ND weather makes me feel like I'm permanently trapped in a bad novel that begins with "it was a dark and stormy day. . . ."