Camping photos

For some reason, it’s taken us a while to get our camping photos off the camera we took with us.  It was a Father’s Day gift to Michael and has served us well so far…except that 24 hours into our camping trip, it flashed the message Battery Exhausted, turned off, and refused to function any further.  Vacations aren’t just for people, you know!

However, we did get some pictures and I’ll share some with you so that you can feel like you really were there with us…or at least see a bit of our experience. 

Here’s us about to leave the driveway.  Michael got to sit in the Introvert’s Corner – in the back, packed in with the luggage.  He doesn’t seem too upset.  He’s got his book back there and is ready to spend 90 minutes reading and not needing to communicate with anyone. 

Hannah and Naomi, on the other hand, are ready to spend the next 90 minutes quizzing Fr. Jerome on his life and asking why we’re not at the ferry yet.

Fr. Jerome, upon being picked up only 10 or so minutes later than we projected, was ready to get on the road.  He was happy to be quizzed by the girls and to chat with me as I drove along.  And he did a great job as navigator. 

Which is how we got to the ferry.  The girls were very excited that our trip included a ferry.  They’re watching the scenery as we make our stately way through the waters of Puget Sound. 

Simeon was delighted with the ferry, too, although I’m not sure he cared so much that it was a ferry…he was just happy that we had lunch and that he could get OUT of the car seat.  And he got to know Fr. Jerome a bit better.  Sitting backwards in the car seat is no kind of way to get to know someone who’s sitting in the front seat.  He of course needed to look his best for the trip, so he brought along his brush.  Please don’t pay any attention to the bite marks on the brush handle. 

We’re relaxed already.  And Naomi is enjoying the red peppers we brought with our lunch. 

This was meant to be the “Before” picture of our campsite.  It turns out that it’s one of the only pictures of our campsite.  But you can see how close we were to the lake.  Just imagine a tent on the left, one on the right, and some chairs by that fire pit over there. 

Ah, here’s Fr. Jerome, putting up his tent – the other picture of our campsite.  Naomi “helped” him quite a bit, and even with help, he had his up sooner than the family tent.  It is quite a bit more substantial.  

 

Here we are in the restaurant where we believe Hannah got food poisoning.  We’re all watching the ferry come in – the spectacular views of the ferry dock were one big plus about this restaurant.

Swimming.  Michael has Sim, who is trying to get to the water with all his might.  It’s what Sim does when he’s near water.   This makes life very exciting.  This is the campsite of fellow campers – the cousins stayed here.  Our site is just beyond it, and I’m taking a picture from the swimming area.  Their site was, as you can see, right on the lake. 

So there you have it.  There are no pictures of the  campfires, the middle of the night…well, there probably wouldn’t have been pictures of that anyway…the airstream trailer that Sim and I stayed in, the food, Mass outdoors, etc.  But rest assured, it was lovely and picturesque and fantastic. 

Plans for the future, continued

Hannah: I think Sim is going to have to be a Dada.
Me: Why?
Hannah: Well, I'm going to be a nun, and Naomi's going to be -- what are you going to be when you grow up, Naomi?
Naomi: I'm going to be Hello Dolly.
Hannah: Okay, so Naomi could have kids. But that might not work, because what if she was pregnant when it was time for a show? So Sim has to get married, or you won't get any grandchildren. And you want grandchildren, don't you?!?

In which Hannah discovers Half Price Books

Hannah has been wanting to get some books with birthday money. She had picked out one that is part of a popular series, and she had seen it at Barnes and Noble for $6.99. She counted her money and asked about tax and made sure she had enough.

I was pretty sure that this series would be at Half Price Books, so I thought this would be a good introduction to used book stores. Today we had some of the morning free, so we headed out to the store. I had told her that if she couldn't find what she wanted at Half Price Books we could go to Barnes and Noble to get it.

Hannah loved Half Price Books. She was excited when she saw the books there and picked one out. Great! She was ready to check out. I showed her the price tag: $1.98. She got a look of sheer joy in her eyes when she realized she could get not ONE, but TWO! Then, after a bit of math, she realized she could get THREE! There were some customers shopping nearby who were very amused by her delight.

She spent some time picking out three and asking about tax, then counting out money so she'd be ready to check out. She also looked around at the other books; "Look, Mama! They have..." was heard many times.

On the way home, she said, "I think people who thought of used book stores must have known that children wouldn't want to spend all their money on one book."

The wheels were turning, too: "Mama, are there used toy stores?"

This has been a morning of discovery for Hannah. She is most pleased. And now she's immersed in the world of the Magic Tree House.

Naps

While camping, I got 2 naps a day, since I took Simeon for his naps and took the opportunity to lie down and read, which almost ALWAYS leads to sleep for me. It was great. I felt so darn rested all the time.

I'm missing my naps.

Yesterday marked day 3 of no naps for me, and I think I haven't outgrown my nap, as children seem to. Or maybe I grew back into them. In either case, 2 naps a day seemed like a good amount to me, and I'd like them back, please.

Yesterday Simeon opted to skip his second nap. This was a poor choice, since he gets really cranky (and if you know Sim, this is very unusual) when he skips a nap. So I go about nothing done, what with following him around and digging stuff out of his mouth, as well as comforting him from his crankiness. Hmmm...why are you cranky? Oh, right, you skipped your nap!

I'm cranky from skipping my naps, too.

We had lunch out

on the Thursday of our camping trip. For Michael, dining out signals "vacation," so he particularly requested we eat out at some point on the trip. I don't care so much one way or the other, so Thursday found us eating at a lovely little place in the town nearby. We had some tasty food (including some good seafood) and enjoyed ourselves:

Michael: Fried coconut shrimp. He liked it.
Fr. Jerome: A gourmet burger. He liked it.
Monica: Fish and chips. Yum.
Naomi: Burger and fries. She ate a small part of the burger and most of the fries.
Hannah: Burger and fries. She liked it. Until that evening, when she started feeling sick. The vomiting didn't start until 12:30, when she woke up and got Michael's sleeping bag, Naomi's shoes, and a couple places outside the tent. She felt better afterwards and was fine the rest of the weekend.

Michael had to hang his sleeping bag outside and sleep in a towel. He says that this is not as cool in practice as it sounds in books where people sleep on the ground in their cloaks. The next day he took it and all the other stuff that got tagged to the laundromat. I'm not sure this dining out experience made his vacation feel more vacationy.

Dirt

One afternoon while camping, Naomi and her girl cousin decided to build sand castles. Of course, it was in an area of just dirt near our campsite, not in actual sand. They got quite filthy, especially Naomi, who kept wiping hair out of her eyes with dirty hands and got her face almost completely covered in greyish dirt.

When I gave the kids a bath on Sunday after we got home, the water wasn't clear. It was pretty grey, actually. I wonder why.

Adjustment

Yesterday when Naomi got up, she asked, "Is it a work day today?" When I answered that it was, there were tears and the protest, "But yesterday was a work day!" She's gotten used to having Michael around and it seems criminal to have him work two days in a row!

Last day

Today was the last day of swimming lessons for the summer -- it flew by!

At the beginning of the summer, Hannah was comfortable going under water, using a kickboard, and jumping in by herself in the shallow end. She could do lots of things with someone holding on to her, or when she was holding onto someone, but she wouldn't swim without help -- she was very afraid of not having something to hold onto in the water.

Today, she swam across the pool by herself, coming up to breathe when she needed it. She did the backfloat by herself, including getting into the backfloat in the first place. She can do the pieces of the breaststroke and is beginning to learn the dolphin kick that is the basis for the butterfly. She jumped into the deep end and swam across. She started to learn to tread water. She swam from the deep end back to the shallow end by herself. She got a toy from the bottom of the pool by herself.

At the beginning of the summer, Naomi didn't like to go under water, and would repeat that to Miss Connie several times at the beginning of each lesson. She refused to blow bubbles. Today she was going under water frequently, kicking, blowing bubbles, and using her arms. She jumped into the deep end without holding anyone's hand. She touched the bottom of the pool with her feet and got a toy from the bottom of the pool (with help). She swam several feet on her very own. She still needs help getting into the backfloat, but once there, she can do it without help.

Both girls have made amazing progress this summer, and we're so proud of them!

Simeon spent the swimming lessons trying to convince me to let him into the pool. When we go swimming (not in lessons), he spends most of the time doing full-body kicks. He's certain that he could do all that his sisters can do and more...

Fishing

On our camping trip, we swam at the lake nearly every day. It was a lot of fun, although the girls got blue-lipped and shivering; then we spent some time running around, trying to warm up. On the way back from swimming at the lake one day, Fr. Jerome asked some people who were fishing whether they'd caught anything. The kids with the fishermen were eager to show their loot. Hannah and Naomi were interested, too, and they went over and took a look.

Dead fish someone has just caught provide the first and only necessary reason for me not to fish myself. I was expecting some backlash from the viewing.

Here it is:

Hannah: Mom, maybe next time we can bring a fishing pole and WE could go fishing, too!

Some of us are less squeamish than others, I guess.

Fr. Jerome,

a good friend of ours and a Dominican priest (as well as an outdoorsy type of person), came with us on our camping trip. It was great! We all enjoyed his company and his administration of the Sacraments. We had daily Mass at the campsite -- a beautiful setting for it -- and the kids seemed to really enjoy being so up-close and personal with the Mass. Sometimes they asked questions, sometimes they did acrobatics, sometimes they just watched.

Fr. Jerome was great with the kids and they loved playing with him. Several of the mornings when Naomi heard his tent door open, she went running to the tent yelling, "GOOD MORNING FATHER JEROME!" Then she would take a flying leap onto him and give him a big hug. Apparently that isn't his usual wake up call in real life. He probably got more than his fair share of upper body workout, since he would do some aerial trick with one child and all the rest wanted a turn. And then they all wanted another turn. And another. After several turns for each of 6 or 7 kids, seemed to get somewhat tiring.

We all had a great time with Fr. Jerome and are so glad he came with us. We even learned some new things:

Nephew [somewhat skeptically]: Are you coming swimming?
Fr. Jerome: Yes, I swim like a fish.
Nephew [with wonder in his voice]: I didn't know priests could swim!

It figures

When we all got home yesterday, here's what each one did:

Hannah: Found the next book in the series she's reading and went to read.
Naomi: Found her Hello Dolly dress and hat, put them on, and looked at books.
Simeon: Found a basket of stuff and emptied it out.
Monica: Found Simeon emptying the basket and brought him upstairs for his nap.
Michael: Found the car full of stuff motivating and emptied the whole thing!

We're back

and better than ever! We had a great camping trip, really enjoyed ourselves, and can recommend it to anyone! If you like camping, that is. I'm not posting anything lengthy tonight, but I'll give you some stories in the upcoming days.

It's interesting to note that, despite a case of food poisoning that had Michael up with a vomitting child one night, we had a really fantastic time. And Michael admits that, too.

I won't be posting too many photos, because our camera battery ran out 24 hours into our experience.

But we had a great time anyway!

Camping!

We leave tomorrow morning...around 8 a.m...hopefully! The girls were so excited that they couldn't get to sleep. About 7:30 Naomi came out, "Is bedtime over?" Uhhhh...no. Hannah then explained about how Naomi was going to sleep with her in her bed. Uhhhhh...no. There were only 2 other times that they came out, which is probably good. Hopefully they'll get a good night's sleep and be happy and cheerful in the morning.

Sim is excited, too. He doesn't know why.

See you next week!

Plans for Simeon's future

Hannah: I think Sim will grow up to be a Dada.

Naomi: I think he will grow up to be an otter.

I suppose I should be glad that her ambitions that he be a tiger have been replaced by something slightly more friendly...

Okay, I figured out one thing

Sim runs his little tiny baby fingers UNDER the fridge and the oven in order to pull out small fragments of things. Despite the fact that I take the head off the vacuum and run the hose along the edge of these appliances, I haven't actually vacuumed underneath them, so Sim gets some fun stuff when he does that.

Let me just say that neither Hannah nor Naomi worked quite this hard to find stuff to put in their mouths.

And now I have to figure out how to vacuum under my kitchen appliances.

How does this happen?

I've mentioned that Sim considers it his life's work to clean up around here by putting any and all small particles he finds on the floor straight into his mouth, right? And I've mentioned that we're upping the sweeping and vacuuming?

HOW DOES HE FIND SO MUCH JUNK TO PUT IN HIS MOUTH WHEN I JUST VACUUMED (the whole downstairs!) YESTERDAY?

I believe this is likely to remain a mystery. Meanwhile, I keep fishing random pieces of whatever out of his mouth and he keeps complaining about it.

Blueberries!

We went blueberry picking last week. Apparently there were a lot of blueberries ripe because nobody was picking in the extremely hot weather. We had a great time, picking from bushes that are about 6 feet tall! In the rows they formed a little tunnel, and the girls really thought that was cool. Simeon was inclined to be somewhat bored...until he was given a blueberry. Then he decided that blueberry picking is a great activity. I forgot the camera, so no pictures of the pickers, unfortunately, but Naomi was pretending to be Sal from Blueberries for Sal, which we got a few weeks ago. Hannah made friends with an older woman who was picking with a friend. Afterwards, Hannah told me, "You can even make friends while you're blueberry picking!" We brought home 3 pounds of berries and have been enjoying them ever since.

Sim likes beets

In the grand tradition of our kids so far, Simeon has decided that beets are yummy. This makes for messy eating.

But you have to admit, it's pretty cute.

Especially the look of satisfaction and beet-induced happiness.

Birthday party

Hannah enjoyed turning six. She opened many presents at breakfast (Michael had made pinwheel biscuits and maple bacon), then played for a long time. After lunch, quiet time, and a walk with Dada (it was only 90 degrees, you know, quite cool!), guests began to arrive. Now that I think of it, the birthday girl and her siblings were in the tub at the posted start time for the party, but that was quickly remedied. Much to the chagrin of Simeon, who loves the bath.

Hannah was a most gratifying present opener this year.

She had to fend off little hands, but was able to do so without getting cranky, and she had some fabulous appreciative faces.



But the crowning glory of the party was definitely The Pink Parasol.

A good friend of ours got it for her, and when she opened it, besides having a face-splitting grin, she cried, "HOW did you KNOW?!?!"

It was very endearing. Then she danced around with the parasol for a good long time.

At this point, Naomi wanted to check to be sure that we're still a sharing family.

Fish!

Today we made a short visit to the Seattle Aquarium. I think we've been there with Simeon, but not when he's been old enough to take notice of the things in the tanks. He watched and watched the fish, and even learned the sign for fish! It was very cute to see. The girls both enjoyed it, too, although they already knew the sign for fish. And we ran into cousins there, too! We didn't realize they were going, and we'd made a last-minute plan to go, so it was very funny.

Phew!

Well, it seems the heat has broken here. We have cool, cloudy weather today! Over the weekend it was cooler than during last week, though not as cool as today. It was a blessing, in some ways, that we had such hot weather during the week, since it was about 82 degrees inside our house on Saturday when we had the dinner party. I would never have expected to be relieved that it was 82 degrees inside for a dinner party of 14, but when earlier in the week it was 93 inside, 82 felt pretty pleasant!

You don't usually hear this...

Hannah: Mama, please please please can we start First Grade early? Maybe today? PLEASE?

The Big Dig 2009

Showing a trace of Irish stubbornness, I planned out my Big Dig project for what turned out to be one of Seattle’s hottest days ever. But, I had the day off from work. I set out to dig a trench 20 feet long and 12 inches deep so that we could lay power conduit to get electricity out to our garage. I got up at 5:45 am (on my day off) to get started.

The ground was hard, as it had not rained significantly for several weeks. The hardest part was getting through the turf, the tangle of dried out grass and roots. I thought once I got to the soil, everything would go more easily. This was mostly true, except for the huge root that I ran into that ended up being longer than the shovel! The whole digging process took about two and a half hours.

Here’s the trench. The boards are the bridges that Hannah insisted we find to help her cross the chasm:

Hannah and Simeon were soon out to help.

I was racing against the sun, since I didn’t want to dig in 100+ degree weather. You can see that the sun just hits Simeon when I finished. (This feels like a fairy story, somehow, but neither he nor I turned to stone.)

It’s 12 inches deep, all right.

Yanni Gennaios, Hannah’s godfather and prince among men, came at noon to help me lay the conduit:

The next morning, up again at 5:45 to fill it back in. Hannah was not impressed – her bridge was no longer needed. She put it over the old trench anyway, just in case. The best part is, the grass is so dead from the heat that my trench didn’t even damage the lawn much.

Monica does prefer the yard without a trench, though.

Next step: pull wire through it and start hooking up some outlets. To be continued …

Now We are Six

Hannah's birthday was Saturday. We had a wonderful day, and I'll be posting more once I have a bit more time to go through the pictures. She loved everything she was given (including, but not limited to, the tape dispenser and tape refills we gave her -- "Oh MAMA, I've been wanting something like this!" -- have I mentioned that she's addicted to creating things and uses a ton of tape?) and was a gracious hostess at her dinner party.

A dinner party meant that the guest list was much shorter than for previous years, but it was still great fun. Here's the menu:

Appetizer: Hummus with pita and veggies (Hannah's choice)
Soup: Chilled Blueberry Soup
Main Course: Pakistani Kima (Hannah's choice)
Salad: Greens with apples, beets, blueberries, sauteed onions, goat cheese, and balsamic/maple vinaigrette (some of Hannah's favorite things put together)
Dessert: Apple Breakfast Cake (Hannah's choice)

Hannah liked most of the dinner, but surprisingly didn't like the blueberry soup. I (and others) thought it was quite tasty, but she said she didn't care for it -- not at dinner, but afterwards. Michael, who had been seated near her, said, "But Hannah, you ate a whole bunch of it! You really didn't like it?"

To which she replied with all the grown-up dignity of a girl of six whole years old: "I didn't think it would be polite for the birthday girl to say she didn't like something in her dinner."