First pedicures for Neko and Mary Beth. They were DELIGHTED.
Category: friends
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Happy 40-ish birthday
In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, somehow we kind of missed celebrating Tom and Anne’s 40th birthdays with a bang. This is what happens when life is full of children and jobs and messy houses.
Tom’s birthday is in in December, when he’ll turn 42. Anne’s is in January, when she’ll turn 41. So when we decided to plan a surprise reunion of our old Dinner Club in their honor, we decided to call it their Happy 40-ish Birthday celebration.
Everything went off without a hitch, and we soon found ourselves in the midst of old friends, giggling and laughing. It was kinda of magical.
Thanks you two for letting us celebrate your 40-ish! And sorry about only taking two crappy photos, which didn’t even include either of you.
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Empty Bowls
I am always honored to be a part of this amazing community event. I can’t throw a bowl, but I can bake bread. I can’t think of a better way to come together as a community—for the community.
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Halloween and the last bits of fall
It’s been a busy October.
We got pumpkins, but had yet to carve them. Tom had to scoot out of town, so Nancy and Mary Beth came to join us for one of the last amazing fall evenings we’re going to have around these parts. One of those spontaneous evenings you never could have planned.
Neko and Mary Beth went to work on this amazing campfire scene, creating a fire pit out of kindling and spare gravel and a fire out of shavings from the pumpkin rind. We cozied up to the faux fire and got a start on pumpkin carving.
Silliness, good conversation, and magic light ensued.
Turns out chickens think faux pumpkin fire is delicious.
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You know it’s a good birthday party when…
…you’re eating cotton candy at 10:00am.
(And very special birthday wishes to my very own mama. Hugs.)
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Vacation: Days 3 and 4
I know, after all those pretty Harry Potter pictures, this is a really bad one to throw at you. But it’s the only photo I took in the last two days.
The vacation, although filled with good company (hooray for R+D!) and good potential, has taken a bit of a downturn. The beach house is not quite living up to what we had in our imagination.
Now, I should say, we’ve been very lucky with online house rentals up until this point, so I suppose we were due for a dud. The house was nice enough, but it just had…issues.
The worst of which was the mosquito problem. We have also discovered that Ellery is QUITE allergic to Florida mosquitos. She got all these bites in the 30 seconds she stood by the hose area so we could wash the sand off of her. If you count carefully, you will find 14. There are countless more on other parts of her anatomy.
Speaking of sand, the beach is a bust. The waves are rough and the beach is full of trash. This was quite surprising, as, you know, the beach was a bit of a selling point and all.
The pool has been nice, but is full of sand. It could use some gentle love and care, and loses a few extra point on account of its proximity to the mosquitos.
There are other weird things, too. About half an hour after Tom and I began unpacking, we realized our bedroom had no door. The only trash can in the whole house was in the kitchen. We were missing important cooking items like saucepans and cookie sheets. And the blinds were broken, permanently shut, obscuring our view of the ocean.
Despite all this, we’ve had a great time swimming, playing, and laughing. Because really, with company that good, we could be just about anywhere.
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Vacation: Day 2
A few weeks back we told the kids we were going to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter while we were in Florida. And I’m not kidding when I say, it was like Christmas in our house. The kids went wild.
So first thing this morning, we made our way to Universal, and people, it did not disappoint. I was amazed at all the details and how much it looked like stepping in the movie. The kids picked out wands and shopped for chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott’s beans.
We rode the hippogriff roller coaster (Ellery declared it WAY too scary, but Neko and Shep loved it).
Selfishly, I wanted to spend hours there, exploring all the details of the stores. I also wanted to ride the supposedly amazing ride, where you zoom around Hogwarts, but none of the kids were tall enough.
I suspect I’ll go back one of these days, and spend all the time in the world on the finer details. But in the meantime, I can’t stop smiling as the kids play Hogwarts in our hotel room with their wands (thank you Barb!), brooms (thank you R+D!), and a few other finds.
Truly magical.
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Field Trip #5: Rocket science
This was one of our best field trips yet! We went to a local organization that teaches kids about space. For about an hour they talked about the physics of flight (in a very simple way), and then the kids got to make their own rockets and launch them into the air.
The day before the last space shuttle launch, this couldn’t have been more perfect timing.
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Independence Day parade
This year our school decided to march in the Independence Day parade. No one else had time to take it on, so I agreed, but only if it was easy. Our school has been heavily involved with monarch butterflies, so I thought it would be fun if we marched as one large migration. I ordered some wings, rounded up some kids, and off we marched.
This silly little idea ended up winning us third place, and an absurdly large trophy. First place went to good friends with papier-mache chicken puppet, which were brilliant.
But, you know, anything with chickens is pretty brilliant.
