Rain, Rain, Glad You Came

Last week we had a HUGE rainstorm.  Luckily, there was no thunder (at least for the first half hour) so Ben and Jack ran outside to play in the rain.

It was AWESOME.

Parallels

Last week I attended one of my in-service days.  It was run by one of our district’s principals and she brought along cookies to share with us.   As we walked in, she pointed to the sign-in sheet, gave us directions toward getting started, and urged us to take a cookie. They had little  flecks of green in them, so I know they were homemade containing zucchini, and you know…not one person took a cookie. 

This stressed me out.  I really didn’t want her to feel bad.  She had taken the time to make cookies for all of us and (probably due to those rotten unwritten rules women have about eating in front of each other) no one was brave enough to take that  first cookie.  As a rookie, I was afraid to take one for fear I’d look like a brown-noser…but there was also that unwritten rule. God help the woman who takes the first cookie if no one actually joins her.

I’m still thinking about it, almost a week later.  I wish I had taken a cookie.

When I was in second grade and in the Girl Scouts, my mom sent finger jello in for our Christmas party.  She put Christmas sprinkles on them thinking it would make them look festive, but it hadn’t worked.  The sprinkles lost their color and got runny on the jello and they looked really pretty bad.  No one ate my mom’s finger jello.  She wasn’t there (she had just dropped them off) so I threw a lot of them in the garbage so she wouldn’t feel bad when she picked me up and saw all that slimy finger jello still sitting there untouched.  I have never regretted that decision (and, for the record, my mom is normally a really good cook).

So today was the Bible School picnic.  Parents of second graders were supposed to bring in salad or vegetables to our Friday picnic.  Unfortunately, I really didn’t give it much thought until this morning about an hour before the picnic.  Ben went with me to the grocery store where I bought some pepper cabbage and baby carrots.  I was thinking it would be a little something for the adults and the kids.  Ben asked what pepper cabbage was, and I explained that it was cabbage, peppers, carrots, vinegar, and sugar mixed together.  He thought it sounded disgusting.  He was worried.  “No one is going to eat that, Mom!  No one puts vinegar AND sugar AND cabbage all together like that!”  I assured him that there were going to be plenty of people there who would enjoy the pepper cabbage.

After the program, we went through the food line and filled our plates.   I didn’t really pay attention to anyone except Jack at that point, who would have walked away with a plate full of chips if I let him.

We sat down at a table and began eating, and eventually Ben said, “Mom. I knew this pepper cabbage was a bad idea.  No one is going to eat it!”  He had put a big pile on his plate.  “Ben!”  I said.  “Why’d you take pepper cabbage if you knew you wouldn’t eat it!”

“I didn’t want you to be embarrassed when no one took any,” he admitted.

“Honey, I didn’t actually make it!  I wouldn’t have minded at all!”

But I have to tell you… this boy who sometimes drives me crazy, this boy who is often mean to his brother, this boy who is filled with insecurities and as a result tends to puff himself up in a socially unacceptable way, this boy who very few really understand…well…this boy made his mama’s day.

And then I ate his pepper cabbage for him.

Big Children Are Dumb

Last week it was really hot, remember?  It was almost so hot that we didn’t even want to go in our 90 degree pool (although we did every day…but the air conditioned inside of the house was hard to leave).

            (So hot he had to cool off in the pool with the hose).

Anyway, I suggested we take a little trip to Bullfrog Valley Park. The last time we went was probably two years ago. There’s not much to do there except take off your shoes and wade in the creek, but it’s shaded and involves water much cooler than our pool.  I thought the kids would jump at the chance to go, because it’s simple fun, but it’s very fun.

Can you believe I had only had one taker?

                                                THIS guy.

The other two grumps didn’t feeeeeeel like going anywhere (Maddie) or said we’d probably be there forever (Ben).  I should have made them go, but I didn’t, and Jack and I had a really nice time together. 

Wading…

Stalking ducks…

Throwing rocks and building dams…

And hanging out with a ton of butterflies…

                          (Really!  They were all over the place.)

And then we went to Giant for a few things and Jack got a strawberry Scooter Crunch.  BURNED Grumpy Big Kids!  No Scooter Crunches for YOU! 

When we got home, both Maddie and Ben said they wished they had gone with us (before they even heard about the ice cream) so we will be going back again, this week or next.  

And I hope they will remember that there are better things in life than screens and lazing around on the sofa.

Early Summer Book Review

When I checked my Goodreads page, I was shocked to find that I hadn’t read a grown-up type book since February!  I’d like to blame it on my utter exhaustion at bedtime during the school year, and it is partly that, but I will also have to pin a little of the blame on Scramble, a Boggle-like game I played on my phone every night after slipping between the sheets. I often fell asleep during a game (my partners—Sue and Brenda—would occasionally send me messages when they spotted a lower than usual score indicating a nod-off during game play) and would only make it through 2-3 games before hitting the hay.

However, it’s summer time and the gloriously empty days of summer are stretched out around me and I read my first five (three) real non-vocabulary–controlled, non-illustrated, occasionally naughty books in a very respectable time.  Here they are:

Inferno by Dan Brown-Robert Langdon, our Harvard professor hero in The DaVinci Code, is back!  The novel starts off at a run, when Langdon wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy with no recollection of ever having left his cozy Boston home.  What the whaaaat? He teams up with yet another gorgeous, smart woman, and begins his chase around Florence (and other cities…I won’t spoil it) putting together clues and looking for something that will basically save the world from mass destruction.  It was hard to put down, and great fun to read mostly.  In his usual fashion, Brown gives us a lot of art history/city facts/descriptions of locales and after awhile I was all, “Oh my gosh, just let them get into the stinkin’ building!  I don’t need Robert to remember how he read somewhere that the columns holding up the portico were hand carved by Julius Caeser himself in a botched attempt to make himself a s’more stick!  I have HAD IT with the fun little facts.  GET ON WITH THE FREAKIN’ PLOT LINE!”  Anywho, the premise was totally believable yet unbelievable, and although I figured out a few things along the way, I really could not fathom how Brown could end this story satisfactorily…but he did it.  Definite thumbs up.  Get on your library’s wait list (or order the large print edition…there was no wait for that one!) ASAP.

The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls-I had super high hopes for this one, having loved Walls’ The Glass Castle and Half-Broke Horses.  It was a lovely story about two teen sisters, Bean and Liz who are basically abandoned by their hippie mother in California.  They get themselves across the country to stay with their uncle in Alabama, and lots of things happen to them there.  Walls’ writing is stellar.  And I would recommend this book, no problem.  However, it wasn’t quite as good a story as her first two books.

 

Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea–Although I told myself I wasn’t going to read any juvenile fiction this summer (which isn’t very responsible of me) I am in a little book club with the other fifth grade teachers in my school, and this was our first selection.  I’ll include it here if you have a child around 11-12 years old, because it was excellent.  I handed it off to Ben and he’s reading it now and enjoying it (although he won’t admit that to me as he’s mad I’m making him read again this summer).  Anyway, all of us 5th grade teachers  loved it and I decided I might start off the year with this as my read aloud.  It’s very similar to Wonder, another excellent juvenile book, as it’s told from several points of view. 

 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple-  Okay, I TOTALLY LOVED THIS ONE.  This is a fairly light read, but very well written (not a fluffy piece of chick lit).  Bee is 15 years old and her mother has disappeared.  Most of the book is organized by Bee, who is sorting through emails, letters, notes from neighbors, etc…therefore we are figuring things out based on all these little pieces Bee shares with us and Bee’s occasional comments explaining things.  The author wrote for Mad About You, one of my favorite tv shows ever, and I love her writing here so much.  I really really really really really hope you read this one, really!

 

Divergent by Veronica Roth-Doggone on it.  I read a Young Adult book.  So anyway, Veronica Roth decided to jump on the Hunger Games bandwagon by writing herself a trilogy of books set in a dystopian future.  However, unlike The Hunger Games, which had a very cool (though admittedly gruesome) premise, the premise of this book is totally dumb.  That said, I could not put it down.  I seriously read it in a day or so.  Maddie is reading Insurgent right now (the second book in the series) and Ben also read Divergent and is killing time reading Because of Mr. Terupt until Maddie’s finished so he can have his turn.  They both love Divergent!  The third book in the series comes out this fall.  So my recommendation?  Go ahead and read it, it’s a real page turner.  But quality literature it is not.

P.S.-Ben read it before me and told me there were inappropriate situations in it, and there are, so I probably should have read it first before him.  At one point, the characters need to face the things they are afraid of and our main character is afraid of engaging in sex for the first time (she is a teen).  They just talk about it though…she does not do it.  Also, this same character has her breast fondled in an aggressive way by a male enemy character.  Just a warning if you were going to share it with your children who are not yet actual Young Adults.

P.P.S.-Book Three comes out this fall.  Ben and Maddie can’t wait!

15 Years!

Fifteen years ago today, Dave and I tied the knot! 

                                Ah, to be young and thin again.

To celebrate, we left the kids with my in-laws (thank you so much, Julie and Al!) and we headed to Erie.  As you can imagine, we engaged in a LOT of romantic type activities.  (Wink wink-nudge nudge-snort). 

                                                          Oh YEAH!  Tandem beach reading along Lake Erie!  We are so wild!

No, really.   We totally enjoyed each other’s company, if you know what I mean…

  

                                             Mmmmm.  Thanks for sharing your twelve incher with me, honey!

Seriously, though, we had a lovely time.  Besides exploring Presque Isle State Park/relaxing on the beach there, we also visited three wineries and enjoyed wine tastings at each of them.

My favorite was a cherry wine.  The wine tasting girl gave me a Hershey Kiss and instructed me to take a sip of the wine, eat the kiss, then have another sip of the wine…and it totally tasted like a chocolate covered cherry!

My in-laws held down the fort with lots of swimming, lots of eating out, and a bonus field trip to Gettysburg.  The thing the kids remembered most about the trip?  A drive by Dave’s former frat house…which apparently looked pretty run-down.  Hard to imagine daddy living in such a place. 

Jack set the timer on the iPad to start counting down right after we left.  He gave us updates whenever we called (“You’ve been gone 19 hours and 36 minutes!”)  Which is why I know that our time away lasted exactly 50 hours, 50 minutes, 19 seconds.  

Anywho, it was a very fast, very fun almost 51 hours, full of relaxation,  lots and lots of reading and hot dogs, and time with my best friend.

 

June Instagram

Baseball ended and swimming started.

We went cherry picking.  Everyone was so excited to go,but once we got there, only Maddie had fun.   Ben gets creeped out really easily, and a lot of the cherries had brown spots or mold on them, so he stopped picking pretty quickly.  Jack wanted to pick, but was annoyed by the spots and eventually started to cry because he didn’t have many cherries in his bucket.  Maddie was a trooper though, and between the two of us (and Jack’s 20 or so perfect cherries), we got a lot of cherries.

We celebrated Father’s Day with presents for Dave in the morning, a visit from my mom and dad in the early afternoon (where we tried to show my dad the exciting world of the ipad…he was amazed, but not enough to invest in monthly internet fees), and then we went to Dave’s parents’ house in the evening.  We visited, ate, and went next door to the St. Paul’s Bazaar for fun, but got caught in the rain!  We took refuge in the snow cone stand that Maddie’s friend Caroline was working.  I’m happy to report that no goldfish were won this year.

The next week was our church festival.  We worked a very lame booth and also Maddie was in the dunking booth!  Which was AWESOME!

We have been swimming a lot, though the weather hasn’t been the most cooperative yet this summer.

I’ve been reading again!  I’m soon done with my 5th book, so I’ll be writing a book review for you in the next week or so.  In the photo below, Maddie and I are enjoy some Kool Pops while we read.  I was reading the newest Jeannette Walls book (she wrote The Glass Castle).

Jack got an expander.  Poor fella.  His mouth really hurt for 3-4 days and he talks kind of funny now.  After we come back from vacation he’s going to get headgear, which he’s supposed to wear all the time he’s home….for 8-10 months.  Please put us on your church’s Prayer Chain.  The picture below is of him checking out his expander using the ipad…and me sound asleep next to him.

HA!  Maddie fell asleep one afternoon this month, and Dave snagged this picture of her!

I’m just glad it was her pointer finger.

Maddie went for a fitting for her bridesmaid’s dress.  She is going to be in Uncle Mike and Aunt Nicole’s wedding (Aunt Nicole is standing behind her in the picture) on New Year’s Eve!  As a bonus, we also got to see a sneak preview of Nicole in her wedding gown, and she looked absolutely fabulous (no photo spoilers of that one!)

While the girls were all shopping (Grandma and Aunt Sue, who’s also a bridesmaid, went too), all the boys stayed behind at Uncle Mike’s house.  The plan was for them to go in to old Philly (the happy couple lives there) and see the Liberty Bell and a few other things, but they had so much fun playing in Uncle Mike’s bachelor pad basement, that they only took a quick drive through the city.  At some point, Jack got locked up in Ozzy the dog’s cage and Ben took a dart to the back, so I’m not sure what the heck was going on, but What Happens at Uncle Mike’s House, Stays at Uncle Mike’s House, I guess.*

Our Mama Bird is busy taking care of these noisy guys!  I’m so excited and will give you updates!

*Dave actually texted me those photos as jokes.  Please don’t call the Child Abuse Hotline on us.

Hello July!  You’d better bring us some sunshine!