Catch Up

Oh, so many things I meant to blog about at one time in the past few weeks. But the days somehow slipped by with nary a word committed to the blogosphere.

I have a new job. It's not keeping me busy. I'm having a hard time getting up to speed because there's so little time to spend at the computer with the kids home. Where I overbooked the entire family last year, such that we were either out of town or the kids were in camp, I totally underbooked this summer. Our planned trips are minimal, the days in camp are much the same. It's been a long summer already.

So, I was going to post about how my fabulous sister visited. Not the least of her fabulousness was that she spent an evening with all three kids, letting Daddy and me go to the City to see Wicked.I think I would have enjoyed it quite a bit had it not been for the rather large, multiply pierced woman in the seat next to me who insisted on texting throughout the performance, talking to her friends in the seats next to her and singing loudly during the more famous songs. Oh, and she farted. A lot.

But before that, I had a nice time hanging out with Aunt Karen and SPENCER! She's seven months pregnant right now, so we kept it mellow. We spent one late morning/early afternoon at a local park with a water feature. Naturally, my kids loved it.
SPENCER! wasn't altogether sure about the whole thing. Sure. It was fun while it lasted, but then you're just cold and wet, huh?We took a picnic break, dressing the kids with strict instructions that there would be no more water play today. We had a great little shelter. Whoever invented the Sportbrella should be given a medal.Easy to set up, easy to take down. Plenty of shade. Hard to fit back in that handy carrying case, but I'll forgive them for that. And, I'll have to forgive my kids for this. Because those of you who have met my kids, perhaps even in this very park, know that I should know better than to get them dressed near water...ever.

Aunt Karen and SPENCER! left on Wednesday, which was probably good for them since we had our final weekend of tournament baseball coming up. But prior to that, I had a couple of very bored children. I don't know what we did on Thursday, but it was probably miserable enough that I had to come up with a "real" activity for Friday. That turned out to be berry picking.We spent a couple of hours and more than a couple of tens of dollars picking raspberries, blackberries and loganberries. It was fun and kept everyone busy for a while. Smunch couldn't contain his enthusiasm for the notion of berry pie. I asked who was going to make said pie and he offered to help. He and Mam had already helped themselves to plenty of berries, after all.It was a really fun morning. And we came home with about 5 pounds of berries...enough to make two crumbles when I was too lazy to make an actual pie.

Then tournament weekend came fast and furious. Another weekend of driving 45 minutes each way for three days just so Smunch's team could get beaten at his favorite game. Smunch got to play a little more this time around and made some excellent plays.It was still fun to watch and the Red Fireballs managed to beat the team they played Sunday morning in their final game of the season.It wasn't good enough to move on, but it was July 4th and there were barbeques to attend and fireworks to see.The next week went by in a blur of new swim lessons and attempted end-of-season party planning...where the Fireballs coach and I clearly didn't see eye-to-eye. He asked for a barbeque at a particular park and that's exactly what I organized, but every time I set a date, he sent out another e-mail changing it. Then the day before the party, he announced that his wife would be bringing pizza. I ended up thwarting him by e-mailing his wife directly, telling her I'd purchased enough hot dogs for an army. She offered to not bring pizza.

In the end, the party was perfect. Although very few families RSVP'd, the turnout was really good for a party in the middle of the summer. And it was so nice to see the boys playing together and goofing off for a change.Of course, that doesn't mean they weren't playing baseball!And at the end of it all, I got to present the coaches with the gifts I'd somehow been charged with organizing and each of the boys went home with a medal.As frustrating as the all-star season felt, it was a really fun evening and it was nice to have my kid back...just being a kid.

Boom!

You would think that Christmas was on the 4th of July if you saw my children on the morning of Independence Day. This is really one of their very favorite holidays. I'm not sure they really care about the nation's birthday or our independence from British rule. It's all about the fireworks. It seems so unfair that they have to wait until dark, but then, it makes for a grand finale to the day.

This year was a little bit different because my cousin was visiting from Texas. After a nice breakfast of bagels, muffins and varieties of Starbucks, followed by a significant amount of lolling around my parents' house, we finally packed up some food and headed to a local winery for a picnic.Unfortunately, Daddy was feeling particularly ill, so I drove him home before we left on our adventures.The rest of us had a lovely, if slightly too warm, time at the winery. My cousin's husband treated us to a bottle of rosé and we took a short walk to "the pond". Mam was sporting her Independence Day best. And Smunch (pictured here with my cousin) was looking pretty festive too. At this time of year, the pond is little more than a few large puddles among the reeds. It turns out that the reeds were alive with tiny little frogs, each about the size of a thumbnail. I loved watching them jump around. They were fast and hard to photograph, so this is the best I did.And, like all good ponds, there were a couple of mother ducks overseeing a group of teenager-y ducklings. They looked so picturesque among the reeds and the pond weeds that were blooming with pink flowers.We also spotted this cool, red dragonfly.We walked back to the car and parted ways to get ready for the neighborhood block party on our street. Our block party is a really fun, yearly event where we all set up tables in the middle of the street, barbeque, make ice cream and supply potluck dishes to share. Both my parents and my cousins joined us for a mellow evening of food and company. I didn't bring my camera. Just as well. I could barely roll my own bloated body home, much less anything additional.

My cousin and her husband decided to forgo the fireworks, instead watching them on TV while the rest of the family headed to our oldest fireworks-viewing haunt to wait for the pyrotechnics to start.

Turns out, as the kids get older, this whole thing gets much easier and more tolerable. They happily played several hands of Uno with us, begging for another one as soon as the last one was done.As has been the case for the last couple of years, there were glowsticks, but we didn't use so many this year with all that card playing.I don't remember exactly what was going on when I took this picture. I just liked the backlighting on Mam's hair. It cracks me up though.Finally, the show started. I'd forgotten how rewarding it is to drag the kids out to the park. They have such a great time watching fireworks, commenting, squealing, exclaiming over their favorites. I annoyed people by trying to capture their reaction. This isn't a great photo, but I think it captured them rather well.We all had a really nice time, well worth the crabby Smunch we had this morning. I don't think I'll tell them they'll get to see plenty of fireworks at Disney World this summer. I can't wait to see the look on their faces when they just start exploding overhead.

The magic of glow bracelets

I admit I find glow sticks a little disturbing. I mean, stuff isn't supposed to glow. It doesn't stop me from getting the kids the occasional glow stick though...because the look of bliss on their little neon-lit faces is just so darned cute. They rarely get to stay up late enough that it's dark enough for anything to really glow. And it's always a long wait for the fireworks to begin on the 4th of July, so I didn't mind at all that my mom had gone out and bought a 50-count tube of glow bracelets for the kids to play with. Of course, it turned out that all of us were the kids and we all had a great time. It made for some fun photos too...
This particular package also came with connectors, so Grandpa made this cool little toy, which also made for cool photos.Twirling your chain of bracelets is also fun...although not really quite as fun as the main event.For anyone who just must have their own package of glow sticks (we're taking some camping), these tubes were on sale at Diddams for $3.99 (regularly $9.99). Worth every penny and more!

Our 4th of July

It's only been since we moved to our current house that I've felt like we're really living the American Dream. And nothing illustrates that like our neighborhood on Independence Day. It's kind of surreal to have our own little slice of Americana, right here on our own street. Each year, our little cul-de-sac has a block party. We all bring our own meat to barbeque...although a lot of sharing goes on...and we bring something to share. This year, I brought fresh squeezed lemonade and a rather patriotic spinach, strawberry, and blueberry salad with feta cheese.

Our neighbor, Bob, introduced the kids to making ice cream the old-fashioned way...in a hand-cranked ice cream freezer. As you can see, they were enthralled! Since it's a pretty laid back affair, I also invited Kirsten, my friend since kindergarten and maid of honor in our wedding. The kids had a great time hanging out with her too!

We left the block party a little early for our annual pilgrammage to Cupertino for their fireworks display. We arrived just before dark and had about an hour to wait. The kids passed the time by running around like maniacs in their pajamas. Smunch waits for this night for the entire year. Sometimes I'm not sure that even Christmas compares to fireworks in his mind.


Smunch and Mam were both absolutely thrilled with the show. They both spent the entire time with wide eyes, exclaiming about the size and colors and noises. Interestingly, Smunch was completely fluent the entire time. We've noticed that's usually the case when he's excited and speaking almost accidentally.

It was a fun night and after all the food, racing around and excitement of fireworks, neither of the kids made it home awake. It was the easiest bedtime we've had in ages!