Summer Update

Day 12

If I have to mediate ONE more argument over who farted on whom and whether or not it was on purpose, I am going to the Home For Runaway Mothers! That is all!

What I did over my summer vacation

There is really no fast way to catch up on months of blog neglect. Especially if you are like me and can't for the life of you figure out how to flip pictures so that blog readers don't throw out their necks turning their heads to look at the pictures. But I digress.

I decided it would be easiest just to post some random assortments of pictures. And by the way, my use of the word "vacation" might have been a little sarcastic. Moms don't get vacations. They don't get sick leave or overtime, either. I tried standing in the living room with a sign demanding fair treatment, but no one even noticed, so I gave up.

First off, I grew some things. These are peas. The best peas you'd ever hope to eat. And I grew them. If you want your kids to eat vegetables with enthusiasm, try having them help grow them. Amazing!

I also spent a lot of time cleaning bunny cages, brushing bunnies, carting bunnies outside for play time, trying to catch bunnies when they sneakily opened their cages and escaped into my kitchen, and made disgusting oooooing and aaaaahing noises over how cute they are. Knit sleeps on his back with his giant furry feet in the air, but I haven't caught it with the camera yet.

My children also spent a fair amount of time communing with Knit. They know better than to get too close to Purl. We're fairly certain she descended from the rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In other words, she's slightly evil.

Then my friend Kat, known among certain circles as "Kat the Enabler", taught me to dye yarn. It was fun. REALLY fun. Here is some sock yarn I dyed. I call it...Hubba Bubba. Am I dating myself? I loved that gum!

At some point, this creature adopted me. Her name is Maura. She weighs all of five pounds, has only three working legs, and is The Boss. When Maura meows, you listen. I find that letting her run the household saves a lot of unnecessary worry. Plus, my children obey her far better than they obey me.

As you can see, I grew some more stuff. These were my herbs somewhere mid-summer. The small tomato plant below has since made a play for domination and taken over the front yard. I should really take a picture, because I'm not kidding. One day, my house will just be the big lump covered in tomato vine. However, I'm not complaining because we've had LOTS of tomatoes.

Kat was involved in this activity as well. She taught me to spin. I've always wanted to learn, and I'd been saving for a wheel. For my birthday, Mom, Dad and Pawpaw conspired to get me my own wheel. I also need a picture of that. Because this is apparently the only part of my wheel that I photographed. Odd.

And then I grew some stuff. This is a heap of mixed greens. It was delicious. We ate pretty well this summer, considering my garden tried to kill me. (It gave me poison ivy that landed me in the ER. Twice. And no, I wasn't trying to grow poison ivy. It's a long story.)

I would like to say I grew this, but I didn't. The birds did. I have very helpful finches.

I made some pickles, using my grandma's recipe. My cucumbers didn't do very well, but my cousin donated some cucumbers to the cause. I enjoyed making them, even if the smell of the brine caused Timothy to walk around with his shirt over his face for an entire day.

So, that was my summer vacation, the highlights. Yes, I realize I turned into a hippie. I didn't mean to, if that counts for anything.

Last Fifth Night Concert of the Summer

With summer officially drawing to a close this past Monday, I guess it's high time I finished posting pictures from the summer months. As I mentioned in previous blogs, most Thursday nights of the summer were spent at Utica Square, at the Fifth Night Concerts. We met with a group of friends and everyone brought food to share. Gabe had a couple of school friends who came with their families, so he was pretty well entertained. Timothy is mostly entertained by food. The picture below is an example of the face he makes when he demands to have his picture taken. Someday, I think he will probably regret the large number of pictures of him making this face.

Yes, it has happened again. An actual picture of me on my own blog. That is all I have to say about that.

Since it was the last concert, Nichole splurged on cake balls from Mallory's Mud Pies. Andrea has mentioned these little bits of cakey goodness on her blog, and they are every bit as good as she says they are. Chris is trying to perfect the recipe so he can make them at home, but so far, he's succeeded only in making a gooey mess. If he does succeed, we'll all gain 50 pounds. They are pretty irresistible!

Here is Gabe, with his buddy, Caroline. She is also known as Care-a-lot, because apparently, Timothy has her confused with something from the CareBears DVD. Luckily, she thinks Timothy is cute, so she answers to both.

Have I mentioned that my children are weird?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation...

So many of my favorite images from the last month cannot be categorized in any logical fashion. I decided that I needed a truly random blog post to put them all together. Try to think of it as that dumb essay that every teacher assigned the first week of school.

First, it should be understood that a lot of my time is spent rescuing my children and pets from carnivorous furniture. In this case, Moses was being devoured by the sofa. He was horribly ungrateful when I rescued him. Perhaps he was offended that I risked his life by taking pictures first. Yes, his head is actually falling into a large hole in the couch.

Here is Timothy, in much the same predicament. For two solid days, I got called every five minutes or so to get him out of the bins. I finally refused to rescue him again, and after ten hours or so, he managed to free himself.

I also enjoyed working on my swap package. It was a pirate themed swap. I made this for my lovely swap partner. There isn't much more I can say about this.

Then one day I came home from the grocery store and found this. Chris had lots of points at work, and the points system has all sorts of goodies available for the busy bees at his company. Chris decided we need a kayak. It's actually really cool, I was just a little shocked to come home and find it in my living room.

Somehow, this is the only picture of Gabe I could find for this post. I'm fairly sure Gabe did live here this summer, so this is perplexing.

Timothy took a summer job as a Chippendale dancer. The hours were awful, but the tips were great. Ladies can't resist a man in pull-ups.

His portfolio was really impressive. I like this shot. Pensive, yet rugged.

Miney spent a lot of time watching Star Wars. Can you guess his favorite character?

So that sums up the last month. It probably also leaves you with lots of serious questions about my grip on reality. Luckily, people have been questioning it for so long, I no longer notice.

May as well dive right in...

Yes, it's me! After taking the entire month of August off, I am back! I would like to pretend that this is something I did on purpose. Many European countries take August as a holiday, from what I understand. However, like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. It is partly laziness and partly technical difficulties. Let me 'splain! No, too much. Let me sum up.

First I was sick, then the computer was sick, then school started and the kids and I all got sick. That's about the sum of it. I am still snorting and coughing, but I have run out of excuses, so I will start the long process of catching up. Whether or not I still have readers remains to be seen!

Timothy more or less learned to swim this summer. Sure, he forgets to come up for air now and then, but we're always there to help when he needs it. He couldn't have less fear of water if he had gills. He would have gladly spent the entire summer in the pool all day, had that option been offered! This video took forever to upload, and it won't play beyond the first 14 seconds for me, so you'll have to let me know if it plays for you. Also, I apologize in advance for the the swimsuit shots. If I could, I would edit out myself (and probably Dre, as well, since she'll probably murder me for posting this!)

I think this is video of Gabe diving. I can't watch it so I can't be sure. He is very comfortable in the water these days, and diving was a new skill for him this summer. The disclaimer on all Gabe footage is that I really do feed the child. He is the skinniest kid I've ever seen, although my mom assures me that he looks just like I did at his age. But in case anyone wondered, I do feed him daily, and he even gets ice cream and cookies, but he still never gains any weight. He's getting so tall, and yet he only weighs about ten pound more than he did when he was 4!

The Fourth of July and Timothy's First Fish

I'm making progress in the catch-up process. I'm up to the Fourth of July! We started out the day with some fishing and a picnic at the park. We didn't have any real plans, so it was kind of a fly by the seat of your pants holiday. Here we see Gabe, having some fried chicken and fries.

Timothy reeled in his first fish, with a little help from Chris!

Almost got it! Keep reeling!

Look, a FISH!!! Since Timothy's vision isn't great, it's always exciting to watch him experience things for the first time. I know he knows what a fish is, theoretically, but this is his first real, live sighting!

Timothy's wasn't the only catch of the day! I think everyone but me ended up catching something. I was too busy making sure Timothy didn't wind up in the lake this time. I failed to mention in the Scout Camp post that the Sunday before camp, when Chris and the boys went out to Camp Russell to help with set up, Timothy managed to fall in the lake, right in the middle of a muddy, shallow spot that was full of slime and weeds. He's very proud of this fact. It seems to have been the high point in his summer thus far.

Because we didn't have official plans, we decided to go to the Drillers game and watch the fireworks afterwards. Because we've already wrestled our children through one baseball game this summer, we opted to go late. We arrived at the bottom of the 6th inning. It turned out to be the perfect time to arrive. We kept the kids busy and happy with LOTS of snacks. Here's Timothy, experiencing his first cotton candy!

Gabe's an old pro with cotton candy. Don't his eyes just scream "SUGAR HIGH"?

What trip to the ballpark would be complete without Cracker Jacks? They turned out to be even bigger a hit than the cotton candy was with Timothy!

The game ended with an incredibly exciting play and a close win by the Drillers. The crowd was on its feet for a dramatic slide into home plate! Then, after a few minutes of set up, it was time for fireworks. My camera never does well with low light pictures, so I just sat back and enjoyed the show. We all had a fantastic time! Can't you tell?

Big Splash

We've spent a fair amount of time at Big Splash this summer. We got Gabe and Timothy season passes for their birthdays. It's quite a deal to buy them in the winter because regular tickets cost enough that you can buy season passes, go twice and save money. And since they keep changing the policy on who gets in free, we ended up with an extra pass. The website said "under 3", but when we got there to take our pictures for the passes, I was told it was "3 and under". Chris ended up with Timothy's pass, so now we can all go anytime.

My water baby, in the wave pool.

Tormenting Big Brother, as always!

Gabe is such a ham. A very skinny ham, but a ham, nonetheless!

A great way to spend a hot summer afternoon!

More summer pictures

A few weekends ago, we went to a fly fishing seminar at the park. Chris and I learned to fly fish in Montana two summers back, and we have our own rod, but we don't get to do it much, because, you know, we have children. Since the park thing was A) Free B) On a Saturday and C) Free, we decided we had nothing to lose and took the kids along. First, we learned to tie our own flies. It was really pretty fun, and not as hard as I thought it would be. I guess all the knitting and crocheting has made my fingers nimble. Then, we went down to the pond to try out our new flies. Hey, look, I'm on my blog! I am not actually a hunchback. Apparently, I just impersonate one when I cast a fly rod.

The hardest part was not hooking errant kids on the back cast. Since Chris and I only have one rod and reel, we took turns keeping the kids out of harm's way.

It was also challenging to keep the ducks and geese out of harm's way, harm's way being Timothy. He really wanted to pet them. Oddly enough, they really didn't want to be petted.

I call this one "Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn". I have not the mad photography and editing skills that some of you have, so I apologize for the quality.

Gabe is becoming quite the fisherman. His Pawpaw will be proud!

Not a keeper, but quite a cute little bluegill. He posed for one quick picture, then we quickly sent him back into the pond to tell his fellow fish about his adventures. He must've done a good job of it, because he was the only catch of the day. Unless you count that one slow duck that Timothy caught. He didn't need those tail feathers anyway.

Bank of America Night at Driller Stadium

What is summer without baseball? We attended Bank of America night at Driller Stadium again this year, although this year it didn't coincide with Scout Night. The kids were really only interested in the food and the fireworks. Unfortunately for those of us who had to keep the kids entertained, between the food and the fireworks lie nine looooooong innings!

Timothy is a big fan of the two-fisted hot dog eating method.

Gabe is more a burger kind of guy.

Chris will eat anything, provided it is unfortunate enough to linger on his plate long enough. Between this and the video of him on the slip 'n slide, I maybe needing a place to sleep tonight.

'Cause it's ONE, TWO, THREE strikes you're out! Gabe kept heckling the wrong team. We should probably provide some baseball background before we attend any more games!

A rare moment of attentiveness. Either that or he was practicing his gymnastics skills!

Fifth Night at Utica Square

Summer is in full swing, and most Thursday nights now find us at Utica Square, for the Fifth Night concert series. We tried it a time or two last year, but Timothy was still pretty high-maintenance then. This year, he's all about picnics. We meet Nichole, her parents, and various other "regulars" at the Square. We decide on a menu in advance, and everyone brings something to share. This last week, Janet brought the most delicious key lime pie cups for the adults, and pudding for the boys. As you can see, Timothy really enjoyed his pudding.

Here are Cindi, Nichole and me, on a night so windy, we couldn't leave our seats for fear they would wind up in another county!

Two weeks ago, Gabe discovered a school friend who also attends the concerts. Meet Caroline. She calls Gabe "Gabriel". He calls her "Caroline", as this is her name. Timothy calls her "Care-a-lot", for reasons best known to himself (and possibly fans of the CareBears). She and Gabe spend a lot of time dancing and running back and forth between her parents and our group. Timothy likes to tag along, because Caroline's parents gave him oreos once, and he's not going to forget about that anytime soon!

Can we say "little brother"???

Depending on who's playing, we sometimes have to get there very early to get a good spot. When "Midlife Crisis" plays, it's packed by 6 o'clock, half an hour before the concert starts. On those nights, we bring along sidewalk chalk, bubbles, kites, etc for the kids. When the Light Opera group played, there wasn't so much of a crowd.

The boys are happy to run around and be boys.

Their Mama is happy to sit around with Miss Nichole and sip sangria. Or margaritas. Or something!

The first time we went this year, this motorcycle showed up. Cool sidecar, huh? Apparently, this Great Pyranese is the permanent sidecar passenger.

He even has his own "doggles"!