Instagram August

~The tomatoes are in!  Unfortunately, they started off with bottom rot due to the drought conditions we had in July, and although that seems to have gone away, I now have leaf rot (or whatever it’s called) so my plants are soon to be doomed.  In the meantime, we’ve been enjoying and savoring every tomato.  Lately, I’ve been making eggs scrambled with tomatoes and feta, this dish, and don’t forget this recipe from Clover Lane.  My friend Sue makes it for lunch and eats it with light Wasa crackers (only 20 calories for a large graham cracker sized cracker!)

One of our tomatoes grew wedged in between a rock and a hard place, so to speak.  After some wiggling, I got it out and it’s (kinda) heart shaped!

~Maddie and her friends decided to hold a bake sale benefitting Paws for a Cause at the very beginning of August, so in between packing and organizing for our beach trip, another mom and I helped the girls bake and then set up the bake sale stand.  They made muffins, cupcakes, and many kinds of cookies and earned over $100, all of which will be donated to Paws for a Cause/Relay for Life for cancer research.  Way to go girls!

~Next up was our beach trip, and you’ve already suffered through seen all of those pictures.  Or have you?

Maddie found these books at one of the little gift shops and wanted them so badly that although I didn’t buy them, I’m going to put them on her Christmas list.  Click here to see some google images of the inside of these books.  We laughed until we almost peed our pants (well, I almost peed my pants…things are worn out down there after three children, people), and I know you will too!

~Before our beach trip, I took the boys shopping at WalMart for some last minute things.  My list was long and I stuck to it, much to their disappointment. That is until they asked for individual bottles of SunnyD to take onto the beach.  I actually said yes to those and you would have thought I told them they could have dessert for supper forever!

                                                     That is pure, unadulterated joy, people.

~So I’ve found a new addicting game for my phone. Have you heard of Draw Something?  It’s basically pictionary with another person (and I draw from my Facebook friend list so I’m playing with all people I know), however there’s no winning or losing, you just guess your friend’s picture and then they guess yours (drawing prompts are given by the game, you don’t just draw whatever you want).  I have found I’m a really bad artist.  Quite possibly, I am artistically disabled and should be riding a special bus everywhere I go.  Check out the pictures I drew of Shrek and Godzilla and bubbles:

As you can see, Shrek looks like a green Fozzie Bear, Godzilla has major tooth decay, and I had so much trouble drawing the eye on the person in the bubbles picture, that I wrote a little note to the eyeball telling it how I felt about it.  In my defense, I am drawing on a tiny phone surface with my huge, sausage of a finger, but still.

~After an extremely dry July, August has been bursting at the seams with rain showers!  Check out this awesome radar screen I snapped!

It totally looks like a seahorse/mermaid!  I think I even heard it whinny as it galloped over us!

~The woolly caterpillars are back.  Bug Boy is having a ball with them, and through some very thorough loving/isolation techniques, he has already inadvertently caused the deaths of 8-10 of the fuzzy little guys.  Also, Jack has decided to grow a mustache:

~We went Back-to-School shopping for the things on the list sent by the schools.

All told, I spent close to $90 on supplies (most of which were not for my own children, but for their classrooms).  It made me think fondly back to the pre-Tom Corbett days when the school supplied the basics and kept the class sizes optimal and cared about more than their PSSA scores.   But don’t get me started.  (By the way…the teachers still care about more than those scores, I’m not faulting them in anyway).

~The day before school started, we thought we’d take the kids to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid:  Dog Days, but it was completely out of theatres already!  Did anyone see it?  Was it that bad that they pulled it after only a few weeks?  So instead we went mini-golfing, which is not my favorite, but since I’m all about sacrificing for my children, I gritted my teeth, gripped my golf racquet, and hit the greens.  I told the kids if anyone got a hole in one they would earn a dollar, and can you believe that Jack, whose score was generally in the 7-10 range for each hole, actually got a hole in one!  Maddie and Ben were just a tad grumpy about this.

~And then, oh joy! It was time to go back to school!  Maddie and Jack were the most excited, but even Ben, who professes to hate school, came bouncing down the stairs to tell us “My deodorant’s on, my body spray is sprayed, and my hair is spiked!  I am ready!” 

There were 2-1/2 thumbs up when they got home.  Maddie absolutely loved school, Ben said 5th grade is the best and Mr. B. is the best teacher ever, but Jack seemed down.  He couldn’t really put his finger on what was bothering him, but I think he missed 1st grade and Mrs. F. and even though he liked his new teacher, he didn’t have that secure, happy, comfy feeling that he had in 1st grade.  I think (hope?) he’ll come around.

~Finally, for a new feature on my Monthly Instagram, I am going to share a celebrity Instagram!  This month features a picture of Melissa Gilbert’s junk drawer. 

After a month of posting photos from Paris and the road trip she and her boyfriend shared around California and (I think) Nevada, she decided to show us her junk drawer.  That’s a heckuva lot of batteries, Half Pint, and thanks for pointing out the flower food, I might have missed it!

Have a happy Labor Day weekend, all!

Book Review: Late Summer

The Expats by Chris Pavone- Although The Expats is a spy novel, and I’ve never liked spy novels, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it, possibly because Kate Moore, the female protagonist, is a CIA agent turned stay-at-home mom which maybe I found more relatable than a James Bond-y sort of book.  Kate and her husband and sons live in Washington DC where she works secretly (even her husband doesn’t know) as a CIA agent.  When her husband gets a dream job opportunity, she decides to chuck it all and move with him to Luxembourg and become a boring old (her words, not mine) stay-at-home mom.  Of course, once there, strange things begin to happen and she finds herself embroiled in an international affair.  I found the book hard to put down, even though I was a little annoyed by the author’s trudging around in the middle of not-much a lot of the time, as  Kate does a lot of soul searching and self-questioning and second guessing (of both her choices to be a boring stay-at-home mom and the strange goings-on).  I gave Dave this one to read and he liked it too.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen-I really like Anna Quindlen’s novels (remember Every Last One??),but this was a memoir and not too interesting at that.   I don’t have too much to say about it.  Except maybe bleh.

 

 

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson- I bought this one from Amazon a few months ago (I couldn’t find it in the library) and had been squirreling it away since then just for my beach vacation, and I loved it and it was totally worth the wait!  Jenny Lawson, otherwise known as The Bloggess, is a well known blogger (though I don’t follow her over on the right) who wrote the famous “Metal Chicken” blogpost that went viral a few months ago.  I’ve hyperlinked it in that last sentence, make sure you go read it if you haven’t already!  Anywho, now she wrote a book and that book is laugh out loud FABULOUS!  Unfortunately, Lawson makes good and abundant use of the F Word and is not afraid to talk about her ladyparts, so if you are easily offended you may not want to read either the book or the link.  If you do want to read this hilarious book, and I hope you do, see me, you can borrow it.

 

Moloka’i by Alan Brennert-This was the latest choice for my book club, and I was less than thrilled when I found out it was about lepers in Hawaii. Apparently, back in the late 1800’s, when Hawaii still had a king, and when foreigners were just beginning to travel to Hawaii, the new people brought with them a ton of illnesses and diseases to which the isolated Hawaiians had never built up an immunity.  One of these sicknesses was leprosy, and so many Hawaiians became ill, disfigured, and died, that anyone found to have leprosy was quarantined on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i.  Written as historical fiction, the 5 year old protagonist, Rachel Kalama, contracts the illness and is cruelly wrenched away from her family and taken to Moloka’i. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it?  But I LOVED this book!   First of all, I learned so much about Hawaii’s history, and I really loved Rachel’s character. There are some Hawaiian words thrown in here and there and someone at book club told us the trick is to pronounce each and every vowel in them, if that helps you!  Be careful that you order/borrow the correct book.  There is another book out there called Moloka’i about the same subject, and I don’t know if it’s any good. Read the one by Alan Brennert!

The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner-  Weiner has written another mediocre book.  I don’t know what has happened but I’ve sludged my way through her last two or three books which were all a far cry from her early novels like Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, and Goodnight Nobody (my personal favorite).  In this novel, Ruth and her grandma move to Hollywood so Ruth can pursue a writing career there.  At one point early in the novel, her script for a television show is picked up and the rest of the book is either flashback/history of Ruth or how Ruth makes her script into a tv show.  It was interesting reading about how a tv show is made, but I never really connected with Ruth and had to force myself to read this instead of just go to sleep every night.

I hope you’ve found something good to read! 

Happy Back-to School today!!!  Woo-hoo!

Bug Poem

One cricket,

Two crickets,

Three crickets,

Four,

A cricket on a leaf boat, are there anymore?

How about a spider with some babies on her back?

(Sorry for bad photo, it brought on a panic attack). *

When you try to kill Ms. Creepy, all her babies will run

In thousands of directions! Whee! We’re having such fun!

Sweet baby grasshoppers grow up to be

Beady eyed monsters, don’t you agree?

Dear Lord, another spider, sitting on our hose!

But that creepy guy is dead now, I whacked him on the nose.

*the photo of the spider on the purple pool noodle is mine, but I deleted it from my camera accidentally before saving it to my computer.  Luckily, I had posted it on Instagram, so I pulled it from there, but it didn’t transfer very well.

Jack had found that spider, and we quickly realized her back was crawling with hundreds of baby spiders. I was afraid to kill it (ew!) but Bug Boy agreed to do the dirty deed.  We got a shovel and he gave it a whack, and all the babies evacuated off their mother in hundreds of directions! There was lots of shrieking (and not just from me!)   I still have nightmares.

Indian in Underwear

On my List of Things to Do This Summer was a visit to NYC, with the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty at the top of our To See list.  Unfortunately, June just flew by, and then I blinked and July was over!  As we were driving home from Cape May last Saturday, I asked Dave if he had any open days in the two weeks before school started, but he didn’t, in fact he was traveling 8 out of 10 of those days.

Although I was a little nervous about it, I decided I would take the kids on my own, and with the help of my friend Sue, who knows the city well, I got the name of a train station in Summit, NJ, and then the names/numbers of the subways/ferries we would need to take, including information on how much I should tip taxi drivers, and the best New Yahk swear words to use for every occasion.

We left our house bright and early on Thursday and headed to Summit, where we caught the train.  All three kids were very excited about riding on the train, which was clean and nearly empty.  We watched the smaller, leafier towns of Maplewood and South Orange eventually change into the larger, dirtier cities of Newark and Seacaucus.  And then we went into a tunnel and when the train stopped, we were in Penn Station!

This was the boys’ first trip to the big city, and it was really fun to see them craning their necks and saying “Wow!” at all of the tall buildings.  Ben was very nervous about walking alone, so I had to hold both boys’ hands, which made maneuvering crowded sidewalks very tricky.  After a little bit, I handed Jack off to Maddie and she held his hand the rest of the day.

Penn Station is very close to the Empire State Building, so that’s where we headed first.   It was crowded with a Capital K! First we waited in a 15 minute line to go through security.  Then, luckily, we bypassed the very long ticket line because I had bought tickets online the night before.  The next line was for the elevators, and after about a 30 minute wait,we made it to the front of the line. And then we waited. And waited and waited and waited some more. People kept coming down and getting off the elevators, but the guides weren’t letting anyone new up, because apparently it had gotten too crowded up there. Just a feet from the elevators, and we stayed in one place and waited another half an hour!

Finally we were allowed up, and it was awesome (and fairly cleared out because of our wait)!

When we finally left the building (after a stop at the bathroom where Jack declared he had peed “at the top of the world!”and the gift shop), it was nearly 2:30, which was later than I had thought it would be. My original plans were to get something quick to eat at a deli, and then hightail it to the Statue of Liberty on the subway, ride the ferry to Liberty Island, ride back, and then take a train to Hoboken where we would go to Carlos’ Bakery (of Cake Boss fame).  But I was beginning to see that I was a little too ambitious with my planning.  Something needed to go.  After a chat with the kids, we decided to skip the Statue of Liberty, since it’s currently closed to visitors  anyway.  Instead we walked to Times Square and had a late lunch at Ellen’s Stardust Diner.

The waitstaff is what makes Ellen’s something special.  They’re all Broadway Star Wannabes (one of them at one point made the joke:  “Your waiters today all came to New York with the same dream in mind…to serve you people burgers and fries”) and there is always at least one waiter singing a song, often on top of the booths.  Our waitress’s name was Amy, and when it was her turn to sing, she came over and serenaded Ben (who wanted to just disappear down into his seat, but whatevs).

The food was very forgettable and expensive, but we all had a great time (except for Jack who said it was too loud, but whatevs).

After lunch, we walked around Times Square and visited M&M World and the most gigantic Toys R Us ever, which even had a ferris wheel inside.  Even though all we bought was some candy at the Candy Land section inside, we spent close to an hour in there, looking at every toy in the world, the amazing Lego creations, and the giant, animatronic dinosaur.

After Toys R Us we headed outside and we were so excited to find a Native American banging a drum in his underwear!  The kids could not believe this.  They were surprised by a lot of things that day:  homeless people, unusual hairdos and outfits, gum stuck to the sidewalks everywhere, skyscrapers, people carelessly tossing cigarettes on the ground, and noise noise noise, but this? This was the Cherry on the Sundae, people.

                           You can’t see it, but all he’s wearing is a pair of Tightie Whities.

And by then, believe it or not, it was about 5:00!  I didn’t want to be walking anywhere after dark, so we nixed Carlos’ Bakery too, boooo.

We walked back to Penn Station and bought Maddie some gelato along the way (the boys had bought candy back at Toys R Us), stopped in a little grocery store and bought drinks for the train ride home, and then purchased our train tickets.

The train was really full this time, but we managed to get 4 seats that faced each other so that worked out just fine.  The entire train was so quiet. People were exhausted from either a day at work or a day walking the streets of the city, and so were we, but we just had the nicest trip back to Summit.  All three kids were joking around, being silly, and that’s what I remember best and most dearly about our day.  Eventually we settled down too.

We had such a great day*.  I’m going to take them again next summer (hopefully with Dave, but at least I know I can do it myself!) and we’ll visit the Statue of Liberty first thing and then squeeze in what we can in lower Manhattan. 

But I’m not sure any future visit can top a Native American in his undies.

*except for Ben who is in no hurry to go back.  I think he was scared to death all day.  He held my hand and walked mostly with his head down.  At bedtime he told me he was in no hurry to go back because of all of the crime (cigarette/gum littering and occasional swearing) and the noise and traffic. 

Instagram at the Beach

Can you believe the kids watched old Brady Bunch episodes the entire way from Palmyra to Cape May? Oh my nose!!

                                                              Drippy forest

                                                                                                                                                         We brought home 7 loads of sandy laundry.  The end.