Sorry, folks. This one’s just pictures of Maddie at her swim meets. Though if you’re patient and hang in there, maybe there’ll be a surprise at the end!
So you stuck around and now you’re ready for your surprise?
I’M NOT PREGNANT!!!!
Granted, it’s not much of a surprise, but there you go.
We went black raspberry picking which went much more successfully than last month’s cherry picking. Every year I make something different, and although I did make black raspberry sorbet (recipe over there on the right) this year, I also tried making them into muffins and they were DELICIOUS. I was afraid they might be too sour, but they weren’t. They were moist, sweetly tart, and scrumptious. I’ll definitely do that again next year.
Happy Fourth of July! We held a picnic here and the weather managed to cooperate enough for us to have a blast.
You know how when you host your own party, even though it’s fun and you have a great time, and you wouldn’t change a thing and blah blahblah? Well, it’s also tiring and never quite as enjoyable as attending someone else’s picnic.
The next day, I got my turn.
oh yeah.
While I was lazing in the pool, Farmer Smith was hard at work…
Then later that night, Dave and I had a date night with friends! We went with friends to the Hollywood Casino for dinner, some horserace betting, and a little hanging out listening to the band.
Jack did a lot of firefly catching this month.
Jack bugged me and bugged me until I finally got Jiffy Pop. His final argument that won me over was “we can pop corn while we make s’mores sometime!” Unfortunately I got the Jiffy Pop home before I read the directions which said not to heat it over an open flame. We started to make it over the burner, when we found out you also can’t do it on a ceramic (glass) stove top. So Dave fired up the grill.
It was hard to tell for sure when it was done so it ended up kind of burned, but since it was Jack’s idea, he proclaimed it “the best popcorn ever” though he hasn’t asked for Jiffy Pop since then.
We did make JiffyPop-less s’mores this month too.
We went shopping at Target and saw these awesome chairs for only $17 but I hated to buy them without checking with Dave first because he has something against chairs. I really don’t understand his phobia? prejudice? discrimination? thriftiness? But I knew if I brought home a couple of chairs he’d be annoyed. We texted him the photo below but he was not moved and later pretended he didn’t understand what we meant.
Seriously. How can one NOT be moved by the awesomeness of that chair and the baby blues of that girl?
Aunt Sue gave us three boxes of hand-me-downs from the cousins. Can you tell what Jack enjoyed getting the most?
He wore one that night to the swim banquet, with his sleeveless shirt and shorts (what he’s wearing in the picture). He felt a banquet (though held at a swimming pool) called for the proper evening attire. He put us all to shame, I tell you.
Maddie’s swimming finally ended last week. It was extended an extra two weeks because she made it past Divisionals to All-Stars, and finally to Mid-Caps (East Shore v. West Shore).
Those swim meets are long, however, the kids and families involved make it all worthwhile. We’re all looking forward to swim starting in late September.
In late July, we attended a picnic with lots of kids at someone else’s house. I got to relax at that one while the adult female ran around like a crazed person. Ha. (Strangely, the adult males at both parties were relaxed and had a fabulous time).
Glow Sticks are the best.
Maddie helped out with her Relay for Life team’s car wash. You never saw cuter car washers!
And finally, let’s end with a little pampering. My brother-in-law, Allen, gets my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, future sister-in-law, and me gift cards to the Hershey Spa for Christmas every year (I KNOW! He’s awesome!) We always schedule them at the same time and this year we all got pedicures and had lunch in the spa’s little restaurant.
We had an amazing, relaxing time. Thank you Allen!
July, I love you.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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!
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.
