i heart surprises

we have another mystery flower in the backyard! in the same spot there used to be this floppy, unmanageable greenery that came with the house and wouldn't go away. one day it just kind of disappeared and now this lovely bloom has taken its place. can any of you gardening aficionados out there identify it?
a second wonderful surprise this week--sarah sent me this monkey necklace (he's swinging from the chain!) as a congratulations-on-finishing-your-dissertation present (i never knew my neck was so freckle-y).
surprise #3--football season is right around the corner and rob brought home a cornfed herky t-shirt for me. i'll wear it to the chick flick matinees i go to when he and will are at the games. go hawks!

camp woodpecker

i fear that at some point last week, i got hopelessly behind here and could no longer pretend that i would really catch up. so now, here's a fast-forward to this past weekend at camp woodpecker, aka our annual summer sojourn to the fallon family's cabin on lake wisconsin. as always, there was a lot of laughter, great food and drink, lively game playing, frolicking in the lake, trashy magazine reading (which hollywood "it" girls ar partying too hard? just ask me!), lazing on the hammock and porch swings, and a smattering of ghost story telling around the fire (with s'mores, of course).
boomer, julie's golden retriever pup, has gotten so big, though he's not yet in total control of his limbs. we got to see a lot of adorable flopping around. he's a natural swimmer (unlike oscar, who graduated from guppy to minnow with some time in the shallow end of the lake, but is still very wary when there's no ground under his feet) and spent a lot of time in the water.

amy, jeff, julie and kelly hang out on the pier.
some intense, cut-throat yahtzee! rob is hamming it up a bit here (big shock, i know). by this point, he and chris were using the big casino dice and jeff had his glow-in-the-dark D&D dice out. julie and i prefer the traditional, came-in-the-box dice and red plastic tumbler that makes way more noise than necessary.


this summer's camp also happened to coincide with kelly's 30th birthday, and we enjoyed some cake before taking off on sunday. she's a gracious hostess, makes a mean mojito and always makes us feel at home at the cabin.

spelunk-ish

maquoketa caves state park has a network of 16 caves connected by trails and a lot of folks come prepared--with grubby clothes, kneepads and headlamps--to wriggle through the smaller ones with one or two foot ceilings. we were up for a less messy and claustrophobia-inducing experience, so we hauled along the giant mag-lite to get a better look from a distance. of course, you can walk through a few of the caves and one of them (aptly called dancehall) actually used to be a venue for dances with live music. the caves also used to have stalactites and stalagmites...until people stole them! me and rob under the natural bridge.
the natural bridge in all its natural glory.

check out the face on that tree!

here are rob and betsy with their cousins mark and sarah (who used to live near maquoketa) at the state park back in the day. i didn't shrink this one for the upload, so you can click on it for more detail. rob has a good, serious explorer pose going on, but betsy is clearly none too impressed.

say "muh-COKE-it-uh"

when i first moved to iowa, i had no idea how to pronounce "maquoketa." i thought maybe it was "mac-wo-KEY-tuh," but that is completely wrong. as it turns out, maquoketa is a lovely little town and we spent this past weekend there with my parents, celebrating my successful defense. rob and i had initially intended to visit maquoketa caves state park over memorial day weekend, but we didn't move on a campsite reservation soon enough and had to change our plans. it was nice to be able to make up for that trip with our stay at squiers manor. here it is... the front porch swing was a nice place to spend some time on saturday morning before heading out to see the sights.
squiers manor is owned by antique dealers virl and kathy and every room is filled with beautiful old furniture as well as cool details like decorative door hinges......and this stained glass window at the end of the second floor hallway.
caves and grapes in an upcoming post...