Phowey.

Its been a long year for me. I finally caught my breath. Eowyn's in bed. The pup is in bed. Maren's asleep. Baylor is curled up on the futton.

After school ended the last week of April, we started May term immediately. I taught a senior level theatre history class. I had not taught the class before, so in large part I was preparing a full week's class one day, and teaching it the next, for nearly 4 weeks. And for the final two weeks of May, I was also in rehearsals for Horton Foote's play Tomorrow in Salado, TX, which is 4 1/2 hours from Marshall. So after my last class I was zipping down to rehearse. We played the first two weekends, and the show was really pretty good. Its too bad the producing group wasn't better.

Two things happened on June 6. First, we got a new pup, Jetta, a German shepherd. She just turned 8 weeks old, so the bladder isn't very big. But we have mostly hardwood floors, so its easy to clean up, and she's beginning to learn to go to the door when she needs to go out. Baylor didn't like her the second day she was here at all, but they play together quite well now, and she follows Baylor around like a little sister.





Second, Maren's dad (Markus, a.k.a. Markus the Burger) & youngest sister (Annika) came for a surprise visit. I was in Salado, so I had a colleague pick them up from Shreveport and just "show up at the door", quite literally. We had a great visit with them, although my time with them was shorter because of the show. We still had a great time. I don't think I've eaten so much as I did while they were here. Lots of burgers. I think they sampled every place that sold a burger in Marshall. Markus wants to come back next summer for longer and help do some work on the house, which I would love. So now all of Maren's family have come to visit us here in Marshall all the way from Germany.





They were here for 10 days, and now its just us again, getting used to the summer, setting up some summer projects and goals. Eowyn is a joy. She's getting bigger (she was above the 100 percentile line for height). She turned 10 months old on father's day. Maren put her in a new 18-month sleeper tonight, and it was almost tight on her for length.

Here's a couple of photos of our yard. I wish I had taken a few "before" photos from last summer when we moved in to use as a contrast. But for an idea, we didn't know there was a house there on the other side of the fence because the bamboo was so high...