The Hillian Collection

So fine. It's been over two months since my last post. I'd be surprised if anyone is even going to check my blog. Kudos to you from me if you're reading this now. ;-)

Back in March, after Sean essentially completed his Master's degree by finishing his thesis, he planted a vegetable garden in our backyard. He has ten tomato plants, eight eggplant plants (or eggplants?), four cayenne pepper plants and seven collard plants. They're just about matured enough to harvest. Mmmm mmmm. Here's Daddy and Sammy working hard to put it all together.

Relocating grass before gardening.

Sammy can put away dirt like it's no one's business.

In April, I took Sammy to a local park and snapped some great photos of of my cheese-ball. I meant to share them earlier as updated 10-month-old shots, but they've just been sitting on my computer since then. My bad. Here are some of the highlights.

See? Cheese-ball.

What in the world?

Sammy's signature bear crawl

This past week, I've been in Tallahassee while Sean attended the world's largest medieval conference in Kalamazoo, MI. Grandma Shack has just been dreaming of taking Sammy to the beach (a feat not easily accomplished when you live in Tallahassee), so almost as soon as we go there, to Wakulla Springs we went. It's something like the clearest or deepest spring in North America, and it's chock full of alligators, Tarzan (seriously, one of the early 20th century Tarzan's was filmed here), jumping fish and even a bald eagle. For a while, Sammy just enjoyed the sand, but once he started into the water, giggling with how cold and exciting it was to be crawling in water, he couldn't get enough. He spent about a half hour just crawling along the shoreline in the water, making his way up the beach, and circling back down to the water again. Grandma Shack and I kept our eyes peeled for alligators. He would make such a tasty morsel. The fun ended when he crawled in just a little too deep and got a mouthful of fresh spring water.