Our tune for June

Apple Jam Mont Blanc pastry from Tous les Jours

We have been moderately busy.

There is always a flurry of activity in June ... two birthdays (three if you count my late mother, who would have turned eighty-eight yesterday).

Dagny's is the fourteenth, and our Chad's is the twenty-sixth -- today! Happy Birthday, Chad.

We're not planning a get-together per se but I'm sure he'll be fêted properly by all of us nonetheless.

I have three truly special sons-in-law and a lovely daughter-in-law, and I'm grateful for all of them.

Me playing with Dagny on the way home from the bakery

But before we celebrated Dagny with a party on the very day she turned eleven -- which is also Flag Day and President Trump's birthday -- we girls got up to some shenanigans.

Audrey needed to make a trip to Charlotte for an important errand, so we girls formed a plan.

Erica had at some point become aware of a Charlotte bakery named Tous les Jours. She'd wanted to go there for some time and the rest of us of course shared that desire.

If you love baked bads goods as much as we do, you will understand our yearning. Who does not love a bakery?

Turns out Tous les Jours translates (French to English) every day.

If you're ever in Charlotte and need a snack, try Tous les Jours

Yes I could eat bakery items every day. Make that many times every day. So you can see the appropriateness of this excursion.

It was an ideal time to go. Rhett was in North Carolina for VBS at our Stephanie's church. 

Erica left Elliot in the care of a teenaged girl from our church who adores that kid.

So it was that Audrey (who drove us in her brand-new Honda CR-V EX-L) and Erica and Dagny and I set out for Charlotte, a ninety-minute drive, at about eleven that morning.

Dagny's party was all about strawberries

Audrey's errand involved her visiting an office at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. We dropped her off and, not knowing how long she'd be there, decided to go shopping.

Dagny navigated with my phone while Erica drove us to the nearest TJ Maxx. Turned out there was a Burlington there too. We were happily shopping at Burlington when Audrey texted Erica that she was done.

Oh noes! We did not want to leave; we'd only just got there!

Audrey agreed to Uber over and in fact admitted that she'd already thought of it, when she'd checked and seen where we were and knew what we were doing.

Our Allissa cuddling Skippy at the party

She joined us about fifteen minutes later. We kept shopping at Burlington, made some purchases, and then hit TJ Maxx.

What a great time. Shopping! With a bakery visit on the horizon! Pinch me.

Eventually we got antsy to experience Tous les Jours, so we set out for the five-minute drive.

And oh the wonders we saw upon arrival. You take a lovely large square tray with high sides, put a piece of waxed paper in the bottom, and grab a pair of tongs.

Dagny insisted on displaying her Trump poster

Then you go to the cases and pick out what you want and put it on your tray, then go to the counter to order your coffee or whatever beverage you prefer.

There is a small seating area and we picked our spots and chowed down.

Apparently the pastries are French-Korean inspired. Fine with me. I chose the Apple Jam Mont Blanc pastry, while the girls selected, among other things, the Strawberry Croissant.

There were no complaints as we consumed our treats and coffee drinks. Mercy. I went back to the cases a second time and chose some things to take home.

I told Dagny to get a shot of her presents in the front room

In due time we were sated and decided to head for home. As we neared Columbia, a heavy rain came and we drove the last ten-or-so miles in the deluge.

Approaching our street (the girls had picked me up that morning), I saw on my phone that TG was at home. I said out loud that I just knew my beloved would be waiting in the garage with a big golf umbrella for me, as he too would be watching his phone for where we were.

Haha.

Turns out the garage door was open but TG was not standing in the open door prepared to escort me and my packages into the house without getting drenched.

She truly is berry berry sweet

He'd just got home and was sitting in the driveway in his car, waiting for the rain to abate.

It was coming down like cats, dogs, and ferrets. Maybe an armadillo or two.

Audrey pulled up more or less behind my garaged Cadillac.

I called TG. After he said hello, I wasted no time requesting that he brave the rain to get the umbrella out of my car and rescue me.

Birthday confection created by Erica

He chuckled. Ooookay, he said. You know how that sounded: Yes my love I will (reluctantly) sacrifice myself for you.

Haha.

Which he did, rather gallantly, I thought. Dagny reached over the back seat and got my shopping haul and passed it up to me. TG got those first and took them into the house, then came back and got me.

As he sweetly pointed out, he needed a shower anyway.

The strawberries would not stay on the candles

Wasn't that exciting? Yes it was.

Then we went into full party-planning mode for Dagny's upcoming birthday only two days hence.

Stephanie and her three children arrived on Friday night ahead of the party on Saturday. 

The theme we chose was Strawberries. I know; we realized that generally that is a popular theme for one-year-old girls. We just decided to add the other one. It was easy.

Our Mike took this birthday portrait of Dagny

I had already bought for her a pair of Betsey Johnson flip-flops featuring a large luscious sparkling strawberry on the top of one and a sparkling slice of lemon on the other.

And no I did not pay the Amazon price for those; I got them for significantly less on TJ Maxx's website.

Our meal was chicken drummettes which I got for free (story on that later), pigs in blankets with several dipping sauces, baked macaroni and cheese, and Bird's Eye McKenzie's Creamed Corn which you absolutely must try if you have not already.

Dagny, having first tasted that cream corn at my house, is wild about it. It is excellent. Audrey bought the frozen cream-corn rolls and I heated them up in the crock pot because there was a lot. Everyone loved it.

The cake was lusciously lopsided and so delicious

Erica had been commissioned to create the birthday cake, which she made with homemade angel food cake, real whipped cream that she stabilized with sour cream (you should try that), and of course gobs of fresh strawberries.

Dagny had a blast opening her gifts. There was a special gift at the very end of her present-opening time that I will share with you later.

By about five in the afternoon, everyone was gone. Dagny went home with her Aunt Stephanie and cousins because she would be going with them on the following Monday to church camp.

It was junior camp week at Mount Moriah Christian Camp in Knoxville, and our son-in-law Joel was the preacher for the week.

We took a selfie at the Billy Graham Library

Thus, the whole family went along although Dagny was the only camper. It was her first time to go to camp, so we were glad that her relatives would be on hand in case she got homesick.

But she didn't. She had a ball and can't wait to go back next year. She swam and zip-lined and made new friends and it was all entirely positive.

Meanwhile, TG and I celebrated our forty-sixth wedding anniversary on the same day that camp began: Monday, June sixteenth.

It's almost always my call as to what we do that day, and although I was ambivalent even up to the morning of, we decided to drive to Charlotte and take in the Billy Graham Library.

The lady who took this was a bride in 1979 too

It was exceptional. Everyone should go, no matter your spiritual orientation.

The first thing you do is go through the farm house where Billy Graham was reared. The house has been moved not once but twice, brick-by-brick, to finally rest at this site. It is a truly special house and I enjoyed looking at the pictures on the walls and many family artifacts that are on display there.

As we left, I asked the super-nice lady who was, along with her husband, one of the host that day, if she could remember what she was doing exactly forty-six years ago that day.

I always ask someone that on my anniversary.

She looked confused so I said, I know what I was doing: getting married. To him (I pointed TG-ward).

The lady burst into a happy smile. We just celebrated forty-six! she exclaimed, gesturing towards her husband who was standing in the Billy Graham living room. 

She had an extraordinary life

She told me that they had wed in April of Nineteen Seventy-Nine. So, she said, I was a happy newlywed on this day forty-six years ago.

We enjoyed chatting and then she insisted on taking a picture of us with the BG Library in the background.

After finishing in the library and gift shop, we visited Billy and Ruth Graham's graves, which are on the grounds. I was particularly taken with Ruth's stone.

She'd apparently often been amused by road signs at the conclusion of onerous stretches of construction. The sign would read:

End of Construction. Thank you for your patience.

So she had told Billy and her children that she wanted that phrase on her stone. At the top, above her name and the dates that define her time on this earth, is a Chinese character that translates Righteousness.

Stephanie captured Dagny as she arrived at church camp

Ruth Bell Graham was a missionary child born in China. Visting her and her husband's graves was a moving experience.

To cap off the day, we went to the Cheesecake Factory at SouthPark Mall for a late lunch. I had a cheeseburger and fries and it was excellent in every way. No cheesecake. We dawdled a bit at the mall after that, but were home by six and enjoyed a quiet evening.

One of the things i gave to Dagny for her birthday was a pair of silky summer pajamas in black with white trim. I have these same pajamas in the pant-and-long-sleeve version and I love them.

She had requested the pajamas and is loving them so much along with the transparent socks I got for her, for which she also specifically asked.

It's not what it looks like

So Audrey took a picture of her wearing the pajamas and it turned out so funny. It looks like either the house is miniature or Dagny is a giant, which of course is not the case.

It's interesting how one's point of view can change based on something as innocuous as a camera angle.

Have you ever taken a picture that turned out to look not exactly like what you saw through the lens? I hope you'll tell me about it.

And that is all for now.

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