Sugar cubes

Yesterday, after peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on whole wheat bread that Rob made (his mom gave him a bread maker machine, which I have yet to use, but it's a really good thing in that we know all the ingredients that are going into the bread and it's small, better than heating up the huge oven and the whole house, eh?)...we had tea together. I brought the old silver tray outside with teacups, the teapot and blackberry tea from Trader Joe's and instead of the usual honey, we had sugar cubes. I decided to buy a box of them, just for fun.
Now, last summer, we went to Vermont for vacation, there our friend Joanne, took us to see the Lipizzaner horse show. One of the women there explained that they give the horses a sugar cube as a reward after performing, because an apple slice or carrot would produce colored foam and the sugar cube keeps them looking clean for the show!
So, back to our little tea, Olivia asks me, "Why are we eating horse food?" I had to laugh and explained to her that it isn't horse food, necessarily, mostly humans eat sugar cubes.

You have to swim a lap in the deep end in order to go on the diving board. It's 12 ft. deep and thus it takes longer to warm up than the 4 ft. area in which we usually swim. It took a bit, but Hannah braved the waters, doing a mean freestyle! Then, her swim instructor even watched her as she jumped in. I'm so proud of her. She went in over and over...

(I'm feeling frustrated, because I took a video of Hannah jumping off the diving board and blogger lets it upload, and then said "processing" for like an hour and never completed the processing!)

We're babysitting Cleopatra, my sister's cat. She has been on her honeymoon and is now waiting to hear about her status as a Canadian resident, before she can move up there officially. So, she's living out of a suitcase for the time being...and we're enjoying this time with her playful & affectionate kitty.