Picture Post...I owe you one

I've been (somewhat wisely) choosing novel writing over blogging for the last couple of days, but I'm getting out two posts today for the price of one. Sure, this one is mostly pictures, but they're cute!

So this first one is a picture of my little sister. I'm going to call her Turtle, 'cause I bought her a stuffed turtle when she was a baby, and she had it with her on this trip. She also took a little while to come out of her shell (as do I), but once she did she was one super cool almost-kindergartener! And finally, when we went to the Children's Museum on her last day here, there was a huge turtle there, and she had fun playing with it. So anyway, here's Jabber and Turtle outside the hotel room. Turtle is five years old, just eight months older than Jabber. The day she was born was the very day I found out I was pregnant! Auntie and Nephew got along super!

Here's another of Turtle and Jabberwock, this time at a Fourth of July parade, enjoying a quiet moment together on the curb (during one of the ten minute gaps between events, as the city apparently thought they could make about 20 minutes of parade take up an hour and a half, if they spaced it out right!)

This picture just cracks me up because it totally looks like Jabber is flicking someone off. Wrong finger, but otherwise it's even the right facial expression.

And here's our mural after we worked on it today. This is day 2 of bedroom mural creation, and we've made a little bit of progress. Jabber mostly painted weeds today, but he also is the artist behind that nice little tree trunk below the branches of the main pine there. He's pretty proud of that one.

And here's Turtle and Jabber enjoying the bounce house, where they played an extraordinarily exciting game of their own invention, called "Dragon." Kids are so weird. Within five minutes of introductions, these two were chasing each other around, shrieking, playing "Dragon." An hour later, Jabber was calling Turtle his "bestest friend."
And here's the Monkey, being his usual dirt-eating self. If you've noticed that Monkey is almost always dressed in red, it's true, we do that intentionally, so we can find that little bugger, as he is extremely fast.