Dwindling Summer

Next week is supposed to be my last full week of Summer Break before returning to kick off the school year with two weeks of in-services and planning before the kiddos arrive. I had already decided to try (if rooms were available) to go in next Thursday & Friday (the week before our scheduled return to get a head start). Earlier this week... I was asked if I would come in to work with a committee to help plan Student Activities. Of course, I said yes because I love our students (and their activities). Shortly thereafter... I received a letter from the boss asking me to be a mentor to our new English department teacher. This will be my first time "officially" acting in a mentorship capacity, although I have always (well, most always) tried to take new teachers under my wing to encourage & collaborate. Then... having stopped in to use the office fax machine the other morning while picking up Cameron from Cross Country, I was given an "invitation" to the School Board Meeting on Monday night to celebrate the Key Club's achievements at International Convention this summer. Well, my eagerness to do that should not need explaining. And thus... school is starting back a whole week earlier than planned.
While I am excited to get this new school year kicked off, I have tried making the most of my few days of Summer Break. On Monday, the boys and I went to Water Country.

The weather was nice, if not a bit too cool, especially for Benjamin who spent a great deal of time transitioning between attractions bundled in towels. I often refer to the tot as "fearless" and the water park proved to be no obstacle to our resident Super Buddy. If unattended for just a moment, he was racing off to the next big slide or pool.

The first few times he went down a slide, he was none too happy, yet he kept wandering back. Once he figured to actually close his eyes before he emerged, twirling knee over elbow, in the rushing waters he was fine. It didn't take long for him to be bored by the kiddie slides and race off to those more suitable for school-aged children.

When approaching the bundle of slides at Rock & Roll Island, he informed me that he was going to ride the red one. When I explained that no he wasn't, he replied "Why? Am I crazy?" Then, he tried to get Cameron to sneak him off to the big (BIG) slide anyway. Thankfully when Cameron told him that he was not allowed to wear his life jacket going down it, he replied, "Oh, I can't do that."

In addition to all the splash parks and cruising on a raft in the lazy river, we also went on Hubba Hubba Highway and in the wave pool. Benjamin kinda shocked me with how brave he was. As long as he was holding on to a finger (and in his life jacket), he was bobbing right along. In the deeper waters of the wave pool I commented what a good swimmer he was and he replied, "I know. Look at my tail. I'm a mermaid."

After hemming and hawing, going back & forth, wrenched with indecision, I threw the boys in the car Wednesday (or gave them 20 minutes to get completely ready, packed, and out the door... same difference) and headed to Busch Gardens. We have Season Passes to both Water Country and Busch Gardens and I am pretty irked at myself for not using them more this summer... or at all, other than 1 pre-summer trip to BG.

We rode trains, flew planes, swung swings, played in Dinosaur Land and Elmo's World. We rode the merry-go-round and Benjamin was big enough to lay down on the parasail this year. He certainly wasn't all smiles and giggles this trip though. We wanted to get him measured and an arm band to know if there were any new rides he could go on. Well, you might think he would want to have surgery again rather than have his height measured by the fuss he was making. And, roller coasters... which were his favorite part just two months ago, scare him now.

We did make it late into the night though, aided by Wolf, which Cameron won playing a soccer game, and turtles. I took Benjamin into one of the overpriced touristy stores to pass away time while we waiting for the final show to start. There was a tub of small plastic animals and you could fill a little plastic briefcase with them for a souvenir. This distracted us for a great while. Surprisingly, Benjamin wanted no animal other than turtles, 12 pairs of them. This was very odd indeed having seen no particular affection towards the hard-shelled friend before.

Benjamin enjoyed the rock & dance mini-concert that ended the night, followed by fireworks, which he watched perched from Cameron's shoulders. When I awoke him, sleepy, after arriving home and asked what his favorite part was he said, "I have two- the music and the fireworks."

I had a couple of serendipitous events on both days out of town. At both Water Country and Busch Gardens, the "Preferred Parking" was open to the general crowd and we got (for free) the kind of front row parking you usually have to pay $20 for. I also stopped at a different thrift store during each road trip and found some good books- for my classroom library and for myself.

Not so fortunate was the drive home Monday. We pulled up to the ferry just as it arrived at the opposite dock. Waited 30 minutes for it to board there. Waiting another 30 minutes for it to depart from our dock, so the ride home took near three hours! Thus upon leaving the park yesterday, I decided to take the "city" way back home, which can be confusing and thus I usually avoid it at late night. However, the trip home was less than half the previous unplanned journey. THEN!!! Today Jason heard on the news that there was an accident on the ferry last night, with the barge pulling away while people were boarding, causing a car to actually go into the river! So, I guess it would have to be serendipitous too that we didn't venture that way last night.

I came. I saw. I baked.

 

On Saturday, Cameron and I went blueberry picking. Prior to this year, the closest I came to picking anything was... honeysuckles off bushes as a kid. (You so thought I was going to say my nose, didn't you?) Earlier this year, they boys and I went strawberry picking and had great fun. Thankfully, we had the foresight to leave Benjamin home for this adventure. Blueberry picking was a bit more or a meticulous and time-consuming endeavor.

 

Jason and I went out to breakfast earlier in the morning. Due to putting off doing laundry (and shaving my legs), my Saturday attire was an ankle length skirt. One might think this was a poor choice for blueberry picking, but au contraire. I quickly devised a method of sitting on the ground, laying out my skirt before me and twiddling (yes, that's a technologically agricultural term) the group of berries. I discovered that only the ripe berries would easily fall from the bush. Then, I only had to scoop up my skirt and add the berries to the collection. I was easily able to fill my large basket in under an hour.

 

Sunday morning Jason made blueberry pancakes (I think from scratch, but you know I was still in bed!). Benjamin has had a Joker-style blueberry grin over the past few days. I have pinned enough blueberry recipes to rewrite the Bubba Gump shrimp monologue to a fruity equivalent (blueberry sweet rolls, blueberry ice cream, blueberry hand pies, and on, and on). (Yes, seriously, "hand pies.")

 

And, then the cake.

Ooohhh, the cake.

 

I suggested to Jason that it should have some Victorian or Pioneer name like the "Patience" cake because it took a whole lot of patience to get it done. Jason, on the other hand, suggested the Veni Vidi Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) because making this cake... was a freaking battle.

 

Let me add the disclaimer here that many eons before I began to detest cooking, I actually had a modest side business in making cakes. This predates the current artistic fondant creations but was during a time when aspiring cake decorators gathered in craft stores after hours to perfect the Wilton rose. My point is, I know how to make a cake. If you were around this house the past few days though, you might think otherwise.

 

My journey with the Blueberry Lemon pound cake began Saturday afternoon... and it ended four days later. Between feeling sick, then having a back ache, then thinking there was a leaky sink, then having the fam descend on the kitchen just as I was about to go Betty Crocker.

 

Finally, eggs start cracking and mixers starts beating to realize I added double the amount of cream cheese that the recipe required... but didn't have double the amount of other ingredients to just go ahead and double the whole batch. Baking was halted by trip to store for new cream cheese and lemon... only to get back home and  find that I didn't have enough sugar, even after raiding the sugar container for coffee.

 

So, the cake was put off until this morning when we could make yet another store run for the needed sugar... and now eggs. Miraculously at this point, four days later, the cake gets baked. Ohh, but wait! As I go to make the glaze, there's a fleck in the confectioner's sugar... and it's moving. An ant? Seriously? An ant in the sealed 10x bag! So back to the grocery store... AGAIN... to pick up the needed sugar for the glaze. So finally, finallyfinallyfinally, I came back home to put the final touches on the cake to discover...

 

 

that a culprit bigger than an ant was my problem. More specifically a 3-year old blueberry-loving bandit and helped himself to a few pinches of cake while I was out.

 

Eventually, the cake is finished... four days later than anticipated.

About to go get a slice now and really hope it was a labor of love!

 

Click HERE for Recipe!

 

I Do Not Brake for Yard Sales

Well, technically I like going yard saling, but this is a post in relation to the other side of the coin- being the seller versus the buyer.

 

I will not have a garage sale.

Because I do not have a garage.

I will not have a yard sale.

Because I honor my sanity.

There probably would have been a way to write that in Dr. Seuss verse

that would have been far more entertaining.

 

 

Earlier this week, some of the blog goddesses that I follow on Facebook (and pretend they are people I know) were telling tales of yard sales woes. From asking to buy the chair you are sitting on. Repeatedly. After being told it was not for sale. Repeatedly. To asking to use your bathroom. To asking how much something in the neighbors yard was for sale. That was not for sale. And in the neighbor's yard.

 

Honestly, I have not had anyone as annoying as that. I just do not, will not, haggle. Will I take 50 cent for that? Does it say 50 cent? Did I stay up all.night.long pricing every.single.item so you could ask if I was mistaken about the price clearly stated on the sticker?

 

Jason, on the other hand, it quite happy playing the role of Barter & Bargain, Deal & Discount. So... we have still been reaping the benefits of having a Yard Sale (clearing clutter, making moolah) by using the local online yard sale site that has become the norm on Facebook. From a boat to baby clothes to decorative trinkets to more baby clothes and more baby clothes, we have had a revolving door around here the past week, moving in the right direction: stuff out, money in.

 

I gather up the junk discarded treasures, take the pics, write the descriptions and e-mail it to Jason. Then he posts it on-line and deals with the sales. Anything that we can't get at least $5 for goes to Habitat Re-Store/Goodwill for donation (as will most of the unsold treasures). Perhaps a benefit equal to the moolah is no mountainous pile of discarded items "to be yard saled" piling up for three years or so, until I convince myself to have another yard sale.

Zoo Day!

Only rainbows after rain. The sun will always come again.
Its a circle, circling. Around again, it comes around.

This was our backyard surprise last night.

Rumor has it that it has been unbearably hot lately. I could neither confirm or deny those rumors since I have barely made it outdoors the past few days. One thing I can definitely confirm though is that it has rained a lot this summer. A lot. Torrential downpours. There were several afternoons during Summer School when it poured so hard that you could not see out the windows. Flash Flood Warnings became a normal icon on the corner of the television screen. I told the kids that it was good that we were getting pass the rain while still in school so there would be nothing but sunny days when we were out. It still rained. It's still raining. A lot. Once upon a time you watched the weather report to see what day it was going to rain that week. Now, we watch the weather report to see which day has the best chances of not raining.

Well, today was that day this week. It was also the one, the only day, that Benjamin realized he's a kid, it's summer, and he could actually sleep in. Until 9:30 a.m.! So, it took a real effort to peel myself out of bed and carry the boys to the zoo. But I am so glad I did. It was an absolutely perfect day for a zoo trip. Per-fect! The weather was mild and breezy. Every single visit to the zoo until today has been a game of strategically making it from one temporarily cooler spot to the next because it was so blazing hot.

It all worked out well because our zoo annual passes end tomorrow and we wanted to squeeze in just one more visit. I don't plan on renewing the passes for at least a couple of years. I waiver back and forth between enjoying the zoo... and feeling guilty for finding entertainment in the animals being trapped outside of their natural habitat for human display. It does help some to realize that with deforestation, industrialization, and poaching that it is quite possible zoo exhibits will be the only remnants of some species.

I liken the whole conflict to feeling guilty for eating animals and wanting to be vegetarian, or at least Pescetarian (shrimp are lot less guilt-inducing than cows)... until I just need a big hunk of steak from The Outback.

Following  the pleasant trip to the zoo, we stopped by the playground for a short while... until it began to rain... again.

 

 

 

 

Elephant Paintings!

 

 

 

Recovery & Celebration

Wake up early & have more life. I saw this pic when I was stalking casually browsing someone's Facebook page over the weekend. As discussed before, I am Not a Morning Person. However, this morning had me out of the house before 5 a.m. Thus leaving my house when it was still dark and getting to my destination after the sun has dawned is likely to be as close as I come to willingly Waking Up "Early to Watch a Sunrise." The skies were very cloudy, so it never actually got "sunny," but the color of the world at dawn was peaceful. However, I still don't hope to see it at any time again in the near future.

 

Unfortunately the early departure time wasn't to embark on a road trip for summer adventure. I had to have Benjamin at CHKD by 6:15 a.m to register for his surgery. A little over 4 hours later, we left the hospital with two more ear tubes and two less adenoids than we arrived with. How sad is this pic?

 

We didn't have "ear issues" with the older boys so this has been all new Mommy ground for me. Benjamin had ear tubes put in two years ago. He has grown enough that the tubes have fallen out of the canal (but not the ear). We are still dealing with excessive fluid though so we had to get new tubes put in. He is a loud mouth breather. I think slightly obstructed breathing is one reason he is such a terrible sleeper. So, having his adenoids removed when it is conveniently coupled with the already scheduled surgery, will hopefully assist those issues. Although the ear issues were probably inherited from Jason, Benjamin's allergy issues are surely 100% my genetics. How bad are my allergies? I cleaned the blinds today wearing sunglasses to keep the dust out of my eyes. From what I understand, removing adenoids will also make Benjamin less snotty from allergy issues, which means less fluid being backed up into his canals, and thus less ear issues.

 

The nurses brought me back into Recovery before Benjamin woke up because he was fighting it so bad and just overall miserable. So I rocked him and waited for him to recover from the anesthesia. It was all very sad. Once home though, he rebounded quickly... to the point that I could barely stay conscious from exhaustion and found him with unzipped pajamas trying to hide the rather large label maker in one of the legs. He said it was his "phone." Stuffing "phones" into his pajamas has always been his translation of watching us take our cell phones out of our pockets. (I still don't know where he found that label maker though.)

 

 

 

Cameron had a pretty big day too. While I was at the hospital with Benjamin, Cameron was at the Orthodontist with Jason.  There are some kids that would benefit from braces but it's not life-changing if they do not get their "teeth fixed." Cameron was not one of those children. It is with pure motherly love that I say the child looked like an aardvark before braces. He was the most extreme of thumb suckers despite every method we tried to curb the habit. His orthodontist treatment began with a palate expander that I had to crank each night and it's been a very long road since then. He should definitely be one of those before & after picture comparisons hung in the orthodontist office.

 

Follow-up appointments for both boys over the next several weeks make me very glad I was able to schedule all this during summer break... although it's not quite equal to a tropical drink in the hand and toes in the sand.

Zombie Movie & Cemetery Playground

 

I noted several years ago that the Regal Cinemas do a $1 kids movie during the week in the Summer. So, when Jason and I went to see "The Heat" (Love it! Gut-busting funny! Still have total girl-crush on Sandra Bullock... and the two of them working together? Stellar!), I picked up the summer schedule... and I built today's events around it.

 

Jason and Cameron set out before dawn to go fishing at Bennett's Creek in Suffolk (about an hour away, where the theater is). They only got in a few hours fishing before I picked up Cameron. Still, they caught two croakers. I apparently think that is far more impressive than they do. The low tide was early and it just wasn't a good window of time for bank fishing, I guess.

 

I picked up Cameron to go to the movie with Benjamin and me. The hand-out schedule really emphasized "Doors open at 9:00, limited seated, first-in-line basis." This convinced me that we needed to be there an hour before the movie start time of 10:00 a.m. We did not. Not only were we the first movie-goers there; we were just about the only ones until 30 minutes before the start time. At that point, all the field trip groups started rolling in and filling up the stadium seating.

 

 

I got my dates mixed up (typical) and rather than seeing the cartoon about a tropical blue parrot named "Rio," we were left to choose between "Paranorman" and "Coraline"- both rather... dark choices for Benjamin's first movie. He did pretty good though. He was entertained until about the last 15 minutes of the movie when the unplanned purchase of popcorn wasn't enough to pacify him. Thankfully, I think he was just young enough to not know to be scared... or to get the muscle-lad older brother having a boyfriend joke.

 

Following the movie, we scouted out a park between the movie theatre and home. Being the nerdy English teacher I am, Cameron and I bounced around theories on what the prefix "para" mean.. paranormal, paraplegic, parasite, parachute... How related? Eventually, after making a few U-turns and shouting a few explicatives at Siri's directions (not really... only because Benjamin was sleeping). Silly me didn't think to turn down the road to the cemetery to get to the playground. (I was really starting to sense an unpleasant theme to the day at this point.)

 

 

I packed a simple picnic lunch of PB&J sandwiches (as conveniently displayed by Benjamin's sticky beard), some sliced watermelon that we picked up from the Farmer's Market yesterday, bags of chips, and a jug of water. My frequent penchant of grabbing food while out was evident though by Cameron telling me he had a gift card to Panera and asking if we were going to Tropical Smoothie... despite a cooler full of food in the trunk.

 

The Watermelon Seed Spitting contest was one of the ideas on The Martha's Bucket List I planned on overlooking. You just cannot convince me this is something the Queen of Northern Etiquette would condone. However, as I was sitting at the picnic bench with Cameron and the idea was churning in the back of my mind, I proposed the game. He spit. I spit farther. He spit farthest. Ok, he won, enough with that. I should have just followed my instinct and allowed having summer fresh watermelon a few times this season suffice for that check on the list! 

 

 

During lunch, Benjamin told me about the movie...

 

There was a witch and she went ooohhhh...

 

Then I got scared, like whoaaaaaa!

 

 

Honestly, he wasn't scared. He just knows how to ham it up... obviously. I wouldn't have taken him to the movie if I thought it really was going to be scary, or wouldn't have kept him there if I thought he was getting scared. The scare-factor , for the most part, was equal to the ghostly encounters  on an episode of Scooby-Doo. And, as I have often said, this is my Fearless Child. After lunch, we hit the playground, and he bypassed the toddler area completely, racing for the tallest slide he sees.

 

And no, I don't know where he gets his "hamming it up" from at all!

Bucket List, Maybe?

Summer School ended last Friday and Remediation ended today. Now, I only wait in anxious anticipation to learn how my students do on the state reading test tomorrow. I'm having a bit of a Ron Clark moment tonight...

Exactly 33 days until I report back to work. I know I had said "No Bucket List" this summer, but then this compilation of summer activities from The Martha graced my Facebook feed and I have reconsidered. I don't know what the "Theme Song" of my Summer will be yet, but I know the keyword of Summer 2013 is "Frugal." It's funny because I will sing in my head "Frugal Summer" in the tune of "Cruel Summer." So tonight I looked up the lyrics to Bananarama's song to see what parallels I could make, lyrics I could rewrite... and ya know, there aren't a whole lot of lyrics beyond "It's a cruel, cruel summer." We keep things simples in the 80's.

And, this is a simple Summer Bucket List... and a frugal one. Various of these ideas will be revised such as #27 (Have a Garage Sale) will become spend a morning leisurely yard saling and #19 (Host a Clambake) will become a feast of steamed crabs. Some of these ideas will be Summer activities for the family, as a whole, but not me, specifically- #8 (Fishing)- I'm looking at you! And alas, some ideas simply will be put aside completely... #13 (Outside Yoga)? Sounds lovely, but no... unlikely. Also unlikely is #25 (Make Your Patio Summer Ready).

But, for the most part, here are some fun ideas to spread Summer over the next 30-odd days until I start churning a new school year.