Sunday, July 24, 2011

And Back In The Real World

And, back to the real world where people are good.

Speaking of good people, let's talk about my friends Ruth and Jeff from New York! They have been my friends for more years than I want to admit. I don't think I'm old enough to have friends for that long!

Anyway, the weekend before the 4th of July, Ruth and Jeff came out for the weekend. We fit a lot of fun and a lot of catching up into a few days, let me tell you!

We had picture perfect weather that weekend. They picked the best weekend to come for a visit, the weekend of the International Festival. If you've been reading my blog for awhile, then you know I am a HUGE fan of the International Festival. The only negative thing I could say about it, is that usually the weather is lousy for the festival. Lousy as in hot and humid. I don't think we could have had a more perfect day this year as far as the weather went!

Unfortunately, I was so interested in playing tour guide to my friends that I barely took out my camera while they were here! Most of my pictures were courtesy of Ruth! Thanks for letting me use them!!

One of the stops after Pete's for breakfast and on our way to the festival was to make a stop at Lakeview Park. It was pure luck that found us there while they were having the volleyball tournament! I don't follow the volleyball circuit so I have no idea what organization was playing, but it was a lot of fun to sit down there and watch some of the activity. I've played a little volleyball in my day (never well, but I've played!) but these two man teams are amazing! There had to be 20 nets with games going on at one time. It was hard to decide which net to watch!




It was a little breezy and cooler right down on the beach, which I'm sure the volleyball players appreciated.

Then, a couple of pictures of the tourists! First, Jeff and Ron talking guys stuff. Please note they are in the rose garden, but I'm sure, talking guy stuff and NOT roses!


Then, Ruth and I, talking girl stuff!


While at the rose garden, I tried to channel Mark! I walked around, saying "WWMD". That's my "What Would Mark Do". I got a couple of what I thought are good shots, but his blog always gives me great ideas! I have a ton of stuff I want to do if ever I get caught up on my blogging!!

Anyway, here are a couple of good shots of the roses.




And since I know next to nothing about roses, I can't give you too much information about these. The only thing I can say about the next picture is that I had no idea that roses would look like this but I absolutely fell in love with this one. If it hadn't been in the rose garden, I don't know that I would have guessed it was a rose!


Ok, the bud looks like a rose but the full open flower didn't. But I absolutely loved this flower!

That's the kind of weekend we had. Good friends, good food, good conversation and just catching up. A lot of time was spent around my dining room table and even Benny got into our conversation. Ok, this is really nothing more than a gratuitous cat shot!


Hopefully, it won't be so long in between our next visit. Ruth and Jeff now have a standing reservation here for the International Festivals! You can't go wrong with that!

1 comment:

Mark said...

I forget what type of roses those "open" ones are, but I'm not really fond of them. Once they open, I don't think they're that pretty; I don't think they look like roses, either.

Nice shots!!