Beautiful, busy days

I am posting this in Internet Explorer--for some reason, Google seems to have swallowed the button that allows me to choose photos from my computer.  I don't know if it will resolve itself or not, but at least I can catch up a bit.

The weather has been exceedingly pleasant since Sunday, and since Bret has been out of work this week, he has been using the time to catch up on things around here, things like fixing the pasture fence, at no small expenditure of money and labor; luckily we have some helping hands around here, even if some of them only pick flowers and play in the dirt.

Yesterday was Sebastian's 12th birthday and in spite of my having the worst allergy attack so far this year, I was apparently able to make it a good one.  Sebastian broke with tradition and decided to bake his own birthday cake, with a little assistance from me.  He made a chocolate cake with mocha buttercream frosting, did the decorating mostly on his own, and we even hand-dipped the beeswax candles for the cake (thank you, Ginny, for the idea!)  His requested breakfast was pancakes, and dinner was homemade pizza.  He's such a great kid...I love you, you wonderful boy!