Wow, the last few weeks have been crazy busy. I can't believe it's already June. The first half of the year has just flown by!

We've been doing a half dozen things all at once. My dad is coming up to visit next week, so I've been working on finally getting his outfit for the Twig Renaissance Faire finished. I have his shirt, his vest, and his boots done. I'll just have to find him a pair of pants ... black sweat pants would probably be the most comfortable. We've also been working on getting our gardens finished. I have the garden beside the sidewalk and we have our vegetable garden finished. I have almost all of the butterfly garden in front finished too (yay!). Plus we bought some new appliances for the kitchen. Our dishwasher has been going ever since we moved in. It doesn't clean well and it smells like burning wires when it's going through the dry cycle. Now we have a pretty nice, middle of the road Bosch dishwasher that's an energy saver and it's quieter than our old one. They delivered it today and Steffie is working on installing it now. We'll be picking up our new refrigerator next week (finally a fridge that actually has some room!). We got a really good deal on both too, so that's cool.

Rae, Steffie, and I went to see Phantom of the Opera the weekend before Steffie's birthday. It was a pretty good consensus that we were all three very happy with the show if not totally impressed by the way the person who played the Phantom portrayed the character. I've always seen the Phantom as an obsessive, possessive, very dominant character. He's talented and charismatic and alluring despite his deformity. That's not how the actor played him. He came off as Steffie said, very gollum-ish. He was a pitiful character. I actually ended up almost sorta routing for Raoul, which I never ever do. It was odd. Although, aside from the portrayal of the Phantom, I was super impressed with everyone and everything else. I loved Carlotta and the theater managers. The ballet mistress was fantastic. And the sets were just amazing, and they blended so well with the Orpheum Theater too. It was very realistic and looked like it all belonged there.

Steffie and I went to Jenna and Jared's house for supper last Friday night, and we both had a really good time. It was nice to visit with them both. I finally got to meet Elizabeth too (she's adorable), and I got to see my friend Kim again who I hadn't seen in a long time. It was really nice to get out of the house for a friendly, low-key visit with friends who we don't get to see that often. Very enjoyable for both of us. I'm hoping we can all get together more often at their place and ours for play dates, possibly some DnD gaming nights, and just hanging out. It would be a lot of fun to do on a more regular basis.

We're also both excited about going out of state to Sioux Falls tomorrow for the Renaissance Faire there this weekend. Steffie has a bunch of bottles to sell this year again. She made more colors this year, and I think they are all really pretty. Black, dark blue, pink, and brown for the fairy bottles. Hopefully they will sell well. And then we'll have next week to work on getting my new belt and skirt hikes made before Twig.