The Weekend that Was

I'd like to say I had pictures to document our weekend adventures but alas, no pictures and no adventures. Pretty much just the standard fare of summer- pool on Friday night followed by tex-mex and the best custard outside of WI (anyone from the DC area would know I was of course talking about the Dairy Godmother). Saturday was filled with yard work, painting, and kiddie pooling in the backyard. I will get a picture of the kiddie pool soon since it is really quite delightful this year. The girls were also rather delighted to have their play house restored to a more playful area of the yard and I was delighted to have my patio back, even if there's hay still on it. (Long story involving lots of wet, yucky mud and grass seeds.) Saturday night we had dinner on the newly restored patio and were entertained by a bevy of rabbits in the lower back. Apparently the clover down there is quite tasty. We returned to the great outdoors following bath to watch for fireflies. It was just about dusk and so the viewing wasn't superb and the kids got a bit antsy, but in my mind there's nothing like a red plastic Adirondack chair on a June evening.

Sunday was much of the same except that I got into the kiddie pool myself for awhile. Yes, it's that big. A BBQ with friends Sunday night and it was off to dreamland.

Part of the hectic pace was dictated by our fun summer weekends (only so much time to fit in necessary house projects) and by my really strong desire to tackle a small kitchen upgrade. We've tried to make the kitchen more presentable by painting and swapping out the light fixtures, but we're in some serious need of more make-over. I'll post some pix this week to prove it. I am determined to do this for cheap- we're not talking a full make-over here and so I expect that the kitchen is going to occupy a lot of our time in the next few months. Alas (unless it turns out well then joy!)

Happy Monday!

No More Thunderstorms Please!

Today is Thursday and this will be our fourth day in a row of thunderstorms. I hate thunderstorms. Mainly because they turn my four years old daughter and now my two years old daughter (who absolutely must do EVERYTHING her big sister does) into snivelling piles of whiny mush. Even the most subtle rumble of thunder miles and miles away will start Isabel quaking and blurting instant demands to sleep in our bed. (Funny this since it usually happens hours before bed time is actually to occur.) Monday most of the storms were in the afternoon which wasn't too terrible to manage. Tuesday, the storms began at 5:00 AM which meant that by 5:01 both girls were in our bed telling us how much they were afraid of t-storms. Lottie just repeats "scary" over and over again. Tuesday afternoon we had a repeat which quickly curtailed our idea to inflate the kiddie pool in the backyard. Wednesday, most conveniently, the storm started just as we were putting the kids to bed, which inevitably meant that I was confined to my room surrounded by small snoring tow-heads. Thank god for my unseemly obsession with home improvement blogs these days. At least I can keep myself entertained for a little while.

Course the 'effin weathermen are predicting t-storms all the way through next Tuesday. Lovely. By that time, I might be blogging about how I've run away from home.

This weekend at the lake

Aiming not to disappoint, we were again busy with summer-y fun, this time under the guise of a visit to my mom's rental cabin on a week lake in NJ. The weather was none too promising when we left on Friday driving us inside to the cheesy delights of a NJ kid destination. This one was called the Giggle Station or something like that. It was kind of a weird amalgamation of boardwalk, climbers, and odd train, plus pizza! (sadly without the beer) but the girls seemed to like it.


Post odd train ride

Fortunately, Saturday and Sunday proved much finer weather and we got to do lots of lake activities, like playing on the wee beach and a kayak ride (a first for both Lottie and I.)


Picnic on the beach


The rowers return


Izzy keeping watch on our progress having declined a "boat ride" herself

Saturday night we visited our second carnival of the season, this time with my sister and her two sons. The highlight of this one hands down was going on the ferris wheel with Isabel. She was so delighted by the quick uptake and large, high loops. She announced that she would very much like a carnival permanently installed in her back yard.


Izzy, Lottie, and Baz on the train


Whirling Strawberries

The Longest Story Ever Told

The other night in the bath tub Isabel asked me for about the hundredth time to tell her a story about when she was a baby. Having played along for 99 times, I turned the tables on her and asked her to tell me a story. Here's what she came up with:

Isabel and Lottie were playing one day when a storm cloud with a very mean face [[face was demonstrated]] came along and tried to get them. Izzy and Lottie ran and ran until they ended up in a cave in which to hide from the storm cloud. Unfortunately, the cave was inhabited by a mean which who kept a pet dragon. The witch thought Izzy and Lottie would make a fine dinner. Before she could put them in the pot, however, the storm cloud, who decided he would rather be friends with I & L than scare them anymore, ate up the witch himself. Sadly (for I & L and the storm cloud), the witch had a magic wand and was able to put all her eaten up pieces back together. After reassembling herself and acquiring a new henchman in the form of an alien, the witch was successful in putting Izzy and Lottie into a pot and cooking them up. Of course, Lottie was the first to be eaten, followed by Isabel. Fortunately, somewhere in the course of the action, Isabel had acquired a beautiful magic necklace and was able to reassemble herself. Lottie was not so lucky and the storm cloud cried copious tears over the loss of his friend.

[[After receiving some meaningful looks from both her mom and sister]], Isabel decided that Lottie too could share in the charms of the magic necklace and could be reassembled. The witch, however, would not be deterred and quickly recaptured our two hapless heroines. At this point, my mother made an appearance in the story bearing a sword and told the witch very solemnly, "You are not nice." (Truly fighting words if I do say so myself.) Nonetheless, the witch already had I & L in the pot and cut up into pieces. And, being smarter than your average chicken, had managed to get the magic necklace and hide it so that I & L could not reassemble themselves so easily.

It's here that the story ended for the night although Izzy promises that there is much more to come. As she very earnestly told me, "It's a long story, mom."

**This is not a completely faithful rendering of the story since I missed the part where the third henchman, a monster, comes in and I believe a dramatic chase sequence. But I was trying to wash, dry, and clothe children while Iz told me the story.

Why Don't They Sleep?

I don't have the mental stamina to do more than a few lines of blogging at the moment. (My "work" blog has a couple of pathetic links and that's all.) But I thought I would record here for posterity's sake that my girls DO NOT SLEEP. Almost ever. Well maybe that's an exaggeration, but that's what it feels like at the mo'. Both girls had fits last night and fits this AM when we woke them up to get ready to go to school. Not sleeping makes me not a nice person. It makes me crabby and weird.

I wish my kids would sleep. I miss my bed.

Thank goodness there were no incidents on Box Hill

Wouldn't it be nice to think that we had something fun to record every weekend this summer. Somehow I doubt that we'll be able to keep it up, but this weekend we did do something very fun, and new, at least for us. We went strawberry picking. Our outing almost ended before it began. After doing some due diligence of you-pick farms, I settled on one near Markham, VA since we know the area generally. (I think Naked Mountain vineyard in Markham produces some very nice reds!) All was well until we got to the farm and faced a large sign saying to try again on Tuesday, 2 June, since all the ripe strawberries had already been picked. I think I was more disappointed than the kids. Fortunately, an enterprising competitor posted a large sign adorned with only a strawberry and an arrow at the intersection down the hill from the strawberry-less farm. Eureka! We were in business.

Here are some of the results- Pretty, huh?

A taste of summer

Again, I've been slacking off blogging. Things really are going on in our lives. It's just that I don't seem to have the energy these days to recount them. All that being said, we had a fine holiday weekend. I worked from home on Friday and picked the girls up early afternoon after their school closed early. We made a Target run for diapers and then treated ourselves to Dairy Queen. (Yum!) At Izzy's suggestion, we had a tex-mex picnic on our front porch, complete with chips, salsa, and margaritas. Saturday, after the farmer's market, we all lounged in the girls' inflatable pool, which Izzy has aptly christened the cold tub. And damn, was it cold. Nothing like hose water when the weather is really only in the high 70s/low 80s. The real treat of the weekend came over the following two days. Sunday we drove to Sandy Point State Park near the Annapolis to go to the "beach." I say "beach" because the sand is weird (kind of orange in hue) and it's on the Chesapeake Bay, not the ocean. On the positive side, it's only an hour from our house. You would have thought that I was Tinker Belle and Peter Pan all rolled into one given Izzy's reaction. She was in heaven. It wasn't too crowded, the waves were wee, and the weather, despite being somewhat overcast, stayed dry. She proclaimed it better than FL, which is high praise for a kid who has been angling to live there since she was 2.



Lottie enjoyed herself quite a bit as well, although her effusiveness was measured by the occasional demand for tommy and wa-wa. (As in go in water NOW!)



The beach was my idea, but the real coup came from Ryan. On a "daddy downtime" bike ride after we got back from the beach, Ryan discovered that Vienna, VA was having its annual town pride celebration. "Viva Vienna" meant a carnival. And the girls have never been to a carnival. And despite having just announced that she wanted to live at Sandy Point State Park, Isabel decided she instead wanted to live at the carnival. I have to say, it was fun and very old school- down to the glittery dune buggie cars under the stripped umbrellas to the Scrambler (here called the Sizzler), the giant slide, and even bigger boxes of popcorn and bags of cotton candy. Lottie was a little put out that she couldn't go on all of the rides Isabel did, but in the end, she was satisfied that she got to ride the "Wiggly Wurm" (kid you not) and had a fiesta Dora that Ryan won for her in balloon darts.







Welcome back summer! We missed you.