As many of you know, I now live in Pleasant Hill, Missouri.  Years ago, I lived in Pleasant Hill, Iowa.  Monday we returned to the Iowa version and camped at Yellow Banks Park.. the county park is situated on the Des Moines River and the river is up…actually there is a lot of flooding in the area.  The camp ground sits pretty high up from the river, so the flooding didn’t affect our camping other than:

Katy and Adam visited Tuesday night – it was a lot of fun.  Adam and I love fire, sparklers and s’mores and we did all of them!  The two of them along with him walked down to see the flooding – I’m still recovering so I offered to drive down to get them so they didn’t have to walk up all of the huge hills back to the campgrounds.  It was Kate’s first time in the back of a pickup truck on steep hills.  She loves it when I take pictures like this.

I’ve talked about Brett in many posts.  He was my girls band director and one of the most inspirational and motivational people in their mother’s life.  We became very good friends and spent a lot of time camping, fishing and drinking coffee together.  He passed in 2010 after a lengthy battle with lymphoma.

Brett didn’t like all of the cutesy lights that everyone put on their awnings…and I loved them…his opinion did not deter me and we always had some good natured disputing about my pink flamingo lights.

I have one string left….and it always brings a tearful memory of the Brett/Nina friendship when I hang my pink flamingos.  As I hung them Monday night, I felt like he was standing right behind me – saying …GGUURL WHAT ARE YOU DOING!

That’s it for tonight….

Until next time….