Busy Weekend

Last weekend was one of those weekends that sent Dave to bed early.  See, I’m used to all the activity and noise and bad manners and unexplained odors and foul language (kidding!) (well, mostly kidding---Jack’s been saying DANG! a lot), but when one is locked in a calm, quiet, nice smelling office all week, well, you might just need a little time out every now and then.  But this weekend was short on time outs. 

I already told you about our Scout cookout on Friday night, but I didn’t tell you about what happened when we got home.

All week, Jack had come home from camp begging us to let him buy a carving kit from the camp’s Trading Post.  By Friday, he had worn us down, and he came home with a small carving knife and four pieces of balsa wood.  Dave discussed rules with him, like, “This knife is used only for carving and only in the presence of mommy or daddy” etc.  And then he and Dave sat together to do some whittlin’.

Jack was very excited! At one point Dave got up and came inside to use the bathroom.  Knowing Dave, I’m positive he left Jack with strict instructions to wait to carve until he came back.  But before Dave was even out of the bathroom, Jack was back in the house crying. He had cut himself, and pretty deeply, enough that Dave made a run to the drugstore for some butterfly clips.  Even though they didn’t carve again that night (since Jack had not listened) and even though his thumb was throbbing, Jack begged and begged to be allowed to finish his carving. 

He and Dave finished it the next night:

                                                                He used his own blood to color the necktie! 

The Carving Master is currently in the brainstorming process for a new whittling project, but I think this one is going to be pretty hard to top.

On Saturday we headed to the State Track Meet in State College.  Maddie’s relay team was there to run the 4x100 in 105 degree weather.  We stayed in the shade as much as we could and we drank all afternoon and hardly needed to pee, since we sweated everything out.  Was that too much information?

Maddie hands off the baton to Amelia.

Beaver Stadium in the background.

Camryn, Amelia, Ashton, and Maddie                                                                                    Maddie with Coach Bill

They came in 2nd Place, shaving 2 seconds off their fastest time and missing First Place by less than a tenth of a second!  We were very proud of these speedy girls!  Afterwards, we went to The Creamery for the hugest ice cream cones ever:

FYI, Butter Pecan is the ice cream flavor choice of champions.

On the way home, I decided I might need to invest in actual full time (not just reading) glasses.   The first time we passed the sign below (when it announced the exit in one mile), I thought it said Old Fart.

Old Fart.  My home sweet home.

Sunday gave us a little bit of a break, although I decided to invite some kids over to play with my kids, so we ended up with a houseful of kids (seven to be exact) and that’s when Dave wisely took a little nap upstairs.  Behind a locked door, I believe.

By evening, only one of those extra kids was left (Kelsey on the left in the photo above) who was staying for a sleepover with Maddie.  We decided it would be fun to break out the sparklers! 

UNFORTUNATELY, the ground was too dry and the grass caught on fire!

That’s Dave running with a bucket of water to put out the fire.  I am helping by taking a picture of it all.

What lessons have we learned this weekend?

1)  Fingers are good things.  Don’t cut them off.

2)  Old Fart is a funny name for a town.  Old Fort is a boring name for a town.

3)  A burning lawn makes for an awesome photo opportunity.

4)  Children are mentally and physically tiring.

P.S.  Dave decided to “take a business trip” this week.  I wonder if he is giggling maniacally in his quiet hotel room right now.

My Scout

Last week Jack went to Cub Scout camp.  He loved it with all his heart and soul and being, from the tippy top of his crazy Alfalfa hair to the bottom of his stinky piggy toes.

They did archery and shot bb guns and went hiking and swimming and rode in paddleboats and did BMX biking and played games and did crafts.  He didn’t even mind the 90-100 degree heat that plagued the camp last week.  The lunches were the BEST!  They knew how to make a mean PB&J sandwich and there was a salad bar and he could go back for seconds on anything as many times as he wanted.  He came home every day absolutely filthy, covered in dirt and food and paint and bug guts and more dirt, and if that’s not a sign of a good time, I don’t know what is.

photo courtesy of Shay’s mom, Jill (you’ll meet Shay down a few pictures)
The last day of camp, families were invited to join the campers for a cookout.  Do you remember last Friday?  Last Friday of the 100+ degree heat? 

We arrived as evening color ceremony was taking place.

The bugler played the National Anthem, and then invited us into the pavilion for our meal, which was luckily not around a campfire!

That’s Jack’s good buddy Shay behind him and that is a half a chicken on his plate!  Two bites into the chicken, Jack noticed that there were some leftover PB&J’s wrapped up on the table behind him.  He grabbed one, and ate that instead of that gorgeous chicken, can you believe it?  He gave me a bite to try, because he wanted to share the PB&J joy with me, and I thought it tasted a little stale and not nearly as good as my own amazing PB&J’s at home, but I told him it was delicious.

After dinner, the kids put on skits for us!

And even the counselors put on a skit.

And then it was time to go. The counselors line up to do a High Five Tunnel with the boys.  I looked at Jack as we started to get in line for our turn to high five the counselors and realized that he was holding back tears.  He turned to me and stuck his head in my shirt and started to cry.  He didn’t want camp to end.  But he high-fived the counselors through his tears.

I tried getting a shot of Jack and Shay before we left, and Jack has stopped crying, but is giving me his “I’m only smiling to be nice” smile.



He was really just so sad.  He cannot wait for camp next summer.  He cried for the first couple of minutes on our gorgeous drive home.

And then Dave remembered the Radio Game. 

Mm-hmmm.  That’s the way to work the radio.

You turn down the volume on the radio, someone asks a random question (“What will I eat for breakfast tomorrow?”) and then turn up the volume to hear the answer.  Sometimes the answer is a bomb (“1-800-555-7711”) but sometimes the answer is hilarious (“bugs, bats, and rats”)  and that cheered Jack right up.

Before camp, Jack had decided to quit Scouts this coming year, but camp has changed his mind, and he will be rejoining again this fall.  He’s only joining again so he can go to camp though.  He wants to make that point clear.

Scout camp rocks!

Percolator

I’ve found a new camera phone app called Percolator.   I’ve been taking way more pictures than usual with my camera phone because
a)  I always have it with me
b)  Using editing apps, the photo quality is often nicer than photos using my regular camera.

This app, called Percolator, is just WAY COOL!  It turns a regular old photo into a work of art!

Regular old Photo of Jack the Flipper:

Jack the Flipper as ART:

I’ve been having so much fun playing around with this app.  Here are a few more:




I’m not sure there’s any use to this app at all, except for giving me something fun to do on my phone when I’m waiting for swim practice/piano lessons/baseball games/track and swim meets/dentist visits to be over. 

My friend Janet posted a photo on Facebook from her phone that she edited with a Lego app...it makes your photo look like it was built with Legos.  I'm thinking I might have to check into that one next! 

And then I'm going to clean my bathrooms.  Maybe.

Instagram June

Wow, can you believe it’s almost the Fourth of July?  Our June has just zipped by, thanks to swim/track practices,weekly swim meets, playdates galore, an art camp for Maddie, and just a general feeling of busy-ness.  Our summers are usually very lazy and there’s lots of sleeping in and lolling around like beached whales, but this June has felt rushed.

Here’s what’s been going on.

~Sooo I told you about the goldfish Jack won who promptly bit the dust, which then spurred a trip to That Fish Place down in Lancaster, and after a visit to the guinea pigs and snakes and chameleons, we headed to the fish tanks where Jack picked out some fish and a frog.  We brought them home, got them installed in our old tank, named them (Molly, Gibby, and Mr. Fishy Wishy, also Kermit the Frog), started to bond with them, but within two days Molly and Gibby joined our Lord in His great big fishtank in the sky.  So we headed to stinkin’ Wal-Mart where Jack picked out two Bala Sharks whom we named Christopher and Hagrid. 

Jack loves his fish and frog.  Above he has set up his iPod to play a Spongebob episode to entertain them.  If you look right in front of Patrick, you can see Mr. Fishy Wishy is actually watching the show!

~My friend Sue invited Jack over for some waterslide fun.  Jack had a great time sliding with Sue’s son Erik, and as a bonus, the Google Maps truck drove by while they were on the waterslide, so we are hoping that they will be on Google Maps someday!

~Grandma and Papa Wolfe went to Paris and brought us back a bunch of fahncy French chocolates!  Oooh la la!

~I attended my cousin Diane’s daughter Laura’s bridal shower.  (Say that three times fast!)  We greeted her with these little poppers that shot silver tinsel in the air!  Here’s the lovely Jamae throwing tinsel and sweet Laura cutting her very yummy cake.

The funniest part of the day was when my mom and her sister, my Aunt Betty, got together to pose for a picture.  I took a series of increasingly hilarious shots of them (mostly my mom) arguing as they posed.  Here are just three of them:

“Betty!  You are standing on my foot!  Just smile, you don’t need to kiss me!  OW!  Betty!  Your kiss hurt my ear!”

I finally got a good one of them though:

They love each other, but sometimes you wouldn’t think so.

~When we swim, the kids will always beg Dave, “Throw me, Daddy!”  And if they’re lucky, he will.

And if they’re not paying careful attention, Dave will hurl himself into the pool and make a gigantic splash right on them!

                                                                                             INCOMING!

~Ben signed up to be an altar server at church a few months ago, and he’s been getting pretty good at remembering when to do the different duties involved.  Here he is before mass with Maddie who is helping him tie his belt.  It’s weird the way they do it, and Father had to explain it to me several times before I gave up and handed the job over to Maddie.  Sometimes I worry about my brain.

~Our Ice Cream Tour has been going well.  Mostly.  Well, not really…we’ve been enjoying ice cream a lot, but we seem to be stuck at Rainbow Snow, which really is our favorite ice cream place in the world.  I always get this:

That’s peanut butter soft serve with hot fudge.  And it’s AWESOME.

~We finally went berry picking.  We missed sour cherries and the apricot crop was bad this year so we had to make do with black raspberries.

We ate so many raspberries while we picked we really should have paid extra (but we didn’t).  We made a black raspberry pie with them and it was delicious.  Notice it’s a lattice top pie!  I’ve always been fascinated by lattice top pies and have spent much time over my life gazing at them and trying to figure out how to do it.   I finally googled it and it was disappointingly easy to do.  Here’s where I got my pie recipe and here’s my lattice top link.

~See what I mean?  Busy, busy busy!  But trust me, we’ve still made time for this:

One month down, two to go.

Also, Happy Birthday, America!