Happy Birthday Jeremy!

(Two days late.) Thirty-one years crusty!

This is Jeremy as a wee lad...from what I'm told, he always looked that way.
See...
This is him and me one Easter morning long ago...I'm thinking about 20 years ago. Jeremy was stylin' as usual. He was going for an accountant/pool boy motif. I loved that nightgown. And apparently, those couches were real "big" back then.
People used to say we looked like twins, cuz, well, Jeremy was a runt. He didn't surpass me till high school. (And that was only by about an inch...but that made for more of a fair fight when we needed to wail on each other.) Those bikes were awesome. Dad was a stinker. He probably positioned himself just right so when he said, "Say cheese!", we'd look up only to be blinded for life...and he'd get a good chuckle. (Speaking of which, I have an uncle who's about Jeremy's age. He's a real ditz. Me and my aunt, who's my age, used to mess with him by saying, "Jaren! Look at the Sun!!" He would. It was too easy. Those were the days.)
This was about 6 years ago. You little punam, there! *said with teeth clench*
For Jeremy's birthday, Steve and I decided to take a little evening trip into the mountains. Too bad you couldn't have been there Jeremy! :) It was so...mountainy. I would pay big bucks if someone could actually bottle that smell in a jar...and if I had big bucks. It's pretty cool to live so close to the "pines." We can hop in the truck and be up there in 20 minutes. Steve did a little fishin'.
We all took a turn doin' a little shootin'. This was Lily's first time with a firearm. She had fun...quite a natural.
We set up our fire/site near a hot spot for deer. We saw three or four does in the time we were just in this one spot. They were close, too. This was the only one that would hold still long enough. The rest didn't want to be in my blog.

Lily took a fancy to this pine-cone...though short lived once she realized it was prickly.

It was at this point she turned around from her relaxation and said, "Mommy! Daddy! I sneezed!...?" We hadn't blessed her and she was waiting for someone to validate the sneeze.