Fighting a losing battle

This week I am spending a good amount of time cleaning - on Friday evening we will be welcoming some friends for the weekend. Are you ready for this? It's a family with nine children... yeah, anywhere we can put a bed or sleeping bag will be filled. So, we've cleaned the bedrooms, aired linens, and made a long shopping list. But... having sleeping bags and air mattresses out has become too strong of a temptation to the kids. Yeah, the living room looks like a campsite, and not a clean one at that. Oh, yeah, to top it all off? Jim is on a business trip until Sunday afternoon.

In other news, Dot is finally done with math for this year! Also, the garden is producing sugar snap peas, green beans, lettuce, and yellow squash. Tomatoes are ripening, but it will be another week or two before they are ready. Cucumbers will be ready about that time, too.
Check out some of our flowers - they are beautiful, too.

happy birthday/father's day

Sunday was, as we all know, Father's day. It was also Jamie's birthday. He has successfully turned four, although he still wants to be three - because he wants to be a baby. Apparently, being a "big boy" is too much work.
We didn't have a party for him, not a real one. We didn't have time! He got lots of little parties with family and friends, and he got presents.










He enjoyed a cake, cookies, brownies, and pie. Isn't that enough? If it isn't, he now has lots of money to spend (but it will probably end up in his bank account).
BTW, he got new glasses - what do you think? He picked them out by himself.

Cultural date night

Last week was so busy that we looked forward to a chance to catch our breath on Saturday. Other than our normal household tasks, there was nothing planned! That changed on Thursday, whenI opened the newspaper. There, in the middle of the Today section, was a large photo of Peter Schickele. P.D.Q. Bach was coming to Baltimore for a live recording! What's more, the tickets were only $11 a piece... how could we NOT go? Thankfully we have a good babysitter, one who is willing to stay up late! The kids looked forward to an evening with Miss Hannah, and we looked forward to an evening out alone.

The concert was so much fun! Peter Schickele is fun to listen to on the radio or on a cd, but it doesn't compare to being there in person! There is a lot of visual comedy that is missed on a recording. The string quartet was especially good at this - you won't pick up on a lot of it on the cd.

BTW, in the first half we saw a Mom moment - the string quartet was "playing so high that the human ear could not hear" - yup, high above the strings! In the second half we saw Dad's instrument being used - the melodica. I never thought I would see one used in a "formal" setting. It just added to the fun!

If you buy the cd when it comes out later this year, you'll hear us laughing and clapping along with the audience. We are now a part of history!

back door visit

This morning I went out to water the garden, and found it to be a beautiful day. It's a perfect summer morning! It makes me wish that I did not have a mountain of laundry to do, and a house to clean. I would love to spend the day outside...
Well, life does require work, so back in the house I went. I found a little visitor on the back door screen...










We have seen a praying mantis on our back wall before, but it has always been full-grown. I have seen a baby one in our flower garden a couple of times this year, but never so out in the open. I'm glad we have them in our yard!

Vacation, take two

The next day trip we took was down to Mohican State Park and Malabar Farm State Park. While Jim grew up going to Mohican, I don't remember ever having been there. We drove down to the covered bridge area, where we ate our picnic lunch.










The kids enjoyed the stream (creek? river?) and swingsets, but didn't like the bugs. The path to the dam looked a bit muddy, and the noise of construction made us give up on that hike.










We did drive to the dam, and we spent a little time there before the heat made us give up and move along. After all, a giant dam is not much fun to two kids... unless you let them roll all the way down, and then they would complain about the walk back up.
Next stop, Malabar Farm, just a few miles away. The visitor's center was welcoming - and Air Conditioned! Jamie and Dot didn't want to leave all the colorful displays, but we got them excited about seeing the farm animals. The farm was mostly deserted - it was a very hot day, over 90 degrees and sunny, and schools weren't out for the summer yet. We had the barn all to ourselves, and the kids loved it. Jamie wasn't afraid of the large work horses - he went right up and fed them.








Dot loved the rabbit running free through the barn - and would love to have been able to take advantage of the sign on his cage, "rabbits for sale, $4." Outside, the kids pulled weeds to feed the cow and goats - if only that worked in our garden... but we don't have a cow.







The chickens ran right out of the henhouse when we walked by. We watched them peck around in the dirt until I dug around in my purse to find two quarters - the chicken feed was in a gumball machine, and the chickens expected to be fed!







Even though we were near to the farmhouse, we did not go in for a tour. While Jim and I would have enjoyed it by ourselves, we could easily imagine the kids breaking stuff. Instead, we headed off for a hike through the woods across the road.







The trail through the forest was beautiful, quiet and shady. We tried to keep the kids from talking too much - and they did fine, especially when they saw the deer ahead of us. We listened to a woodpecker drilling a tree, and heard other birds enjoying the early summer day. Of course, Jamie got too tired, and had to be carried, but by the end we had him on the look out for the blue trail markers on the trees. We wearily headed back to the visitors center, where we indulged in ice cream and cold pop.







They also had fresh, free-range chicken eggs for sale, and we picked up a couple dozen, along with some blue popcorn to try later. Jim picked up a book (what else?), From My Experience, by Louis Bromfield, based on what he learned through Malabar farm. It goes on the shelf, a part of Jim's dream of a small family farm...

You always come home with more....

For the most part, we do pretty well packing up after vacation. Not too many items get left behind, and usually it's the kids who do the forgetting. This trip we expected to come home with more "stuff" due to birthdays and souveneirs, but somehow we ended up with a bag of candes, and we don't know who they belong to! (I suppose that should be, "to whom they belong." but I think that sounds stuffy these days.)
Can you enlighten us? (Ooh, sorry, bad pun!) Do they belong to you?

Vacation, take one

I promised, and now I can follow through, at least part of the way. For more, head over to my Picasa album. I'll be uploaded photos as I get to them.
Our first stop was with Grandpa. His room is very nice, as is the rest of the retirement center, which we toured before lunch. We were early for lunch, and the kids entertained some of the other residents while we waited. Lunch was liver and onions! (The staff was kind enough to let Jim and the kids have leftover lasagna instead!) After lunch we spent some more time talking with Grandpa, and learned more about his childhood. Did you know he lived on a large family farm - without any indoor plumbing? Because of the farm, they did not suffer during the depression. Did you know he used a boat to get to school? Did you know he met Grandma at a wedding where they were the attendants?
Here is Jamie, sharing an old train magazine with Grandpa:







Our next stop was in Painesville, to stay overnight with Andy and Sharon. The kids were overjoyed to be able to run and play with their cousins! We enjoyed a Sunday morning church service at their church, and then a nice lunch - and we all fit around the table!







On to Norwalk, our "base camp" for the rest of the week. From there we headed off to Kelley's Island for a day trip. It was beautiful there, making me wish for the island life - until I remembered that the summer tourist season hadn't really started up yet, and we had come to a relatively deserted island. We had our picnic lunch in town, and then started the 1 1/2 - 2 mile walk up to the state park. The kids got too tired, so we stopped along the way to let them rest:







Yeah, running and hopping on rocks is my idea of a good rest, too. :-) We eventually made it up to the park, and walked around the glacial grooves. They are very intersting to look at, to imagine the power of ice!







We then walked to the beach, where we warned the kids that we had no changes of clothing, no swimsuits, and no towels, so we would only be wading... That worked well as long as we were watching them like hawks. Someone decided to sit down in the surf:










Thankfully, the campground/playground part of the park is nearby, and we were able to relax (and dry off!). With a promise of ice cream running through their minds the kids were able to make the hike back to town relatively quickly (it didn't hurt that Jim carried Jamie for a good part of it!). We found some new favorite ice cream flavors - Toft's "Buckeye Bites" and "Coconut Cream Pie".