Summer 2011 part I, the craziness begins

Summer began as usual in more ways than one. The calendar date based on the Earth’s semi-axis being most inclined toward the sun, thus creating the longest day of the year for those of us planted on this end of our world, and it was also my daughter’s very last day of third grade. Ack!

Thus began her first few days of karate camp, a ballet rehearsal and recital which was preceded by mere minutes by her blue senior belt ceremony. I am pretty sure at this point that I may be one of those parents who over schedules her child. Because that’s not all. She then plunged into a week of medieval castle camp, a 4th of July trip, and landed this week in hovercraft and Egyptian dig camps (yes, two separate camps). On the other hand we work, so we have to do something, and I am pretty sure that all of this is better than staring at the walls. She still gets loads of free playtime. I would have loved a summer or two like this one! But it does seem like a lot given that we’re less than four weeks into summer.

HOT!

HOT! HOT! HOT!

Firefly!

Last night we saw our first firefly of the season. It glimmered in the little strip of green between the McDonalds and the Mr. Wash (car wash). Glad to see a wee bit of nature in an unexpected place!

Honeysuckle

Last Thursday my daughter missed the buss which takes her from school to the after-school program and I had to leave work and pick her up. But the cool thing was that as I picked her up from school, she noticed there was a mass of honeysuckle blossoms near my parked car. So she said, “wait, can we pick some honeysuckle?” I agreed and she proceeded to share with me the way she and her friends had been tasting the honeysuckle nectar on the playground. So I shared with her the way I used to sip the honeysuckle nectar and together we stood there tasting a handful of honeysuckle blossoms. It was deliciously sweet and I don’t just mean the nectar. Funny how something which at first seemed less than convenient, turned into such a delightful moment. Last night as I was driving back from seeing a friend in Old Town, I could swear I smelled honeysuckle along the drive home.

May the Fourth Be With You …

Always.

More fry!

Home again and we now have about 7 new baby guppies. It’s hard to count them ’cause they keep moving. They look like two little fish eyes glued together with a small piece of string. Cute!

Spring break vacation!

Finally I feel somewhat rested after getting some sleep because I certainly didn’t feel this way just a few days ago. Last weekend we (make that I) drove a total of at least 12 hours as we travelled from No.VA to the upper edge of PA and then just a little further into NY state. It was a lot of driving and a lot of thinking pushed into one little weekend as we arrived late Friday night/early Saturday morning and left again on Sunday. So I was tired!

Now we find ourselves in SC. I knew I didn’t want to drive another 16+ hours just yet. And the fact that my daughter gets carsick pretty easily and not driving became an obvious choice. What wasn’t as obvious was which mode of transportation would take it’s place. More soon.

Home again, home again.

We’re home after a trip up to Sayre, PA and Waverly NY to pay our final farewell to Betsy.

Our guppy had babies!

Three cute fry! Aw.

Busy weekend and we didn’t even have a cookie booth

It’s another one of those jam-packed weekends. It started with some fun, was tempered with sadness and finished off with a flurry of busy activity.

We started with a fun Pizza Bingo night at my daughter’s school on Friday night. As one might expect we ate pizza and played Bingo. Being a fundraiser for the school we also purchased four tickets for the cake raffle and entered a couple of bids in the silent auction. Luck would have it that we won the cake raffle–twice. Which meant we brought home a lovely box of cupcakes with green frosting and a tasty peach pie. The latter of which I’ve eaten way too much of already. My daughter won a Bingo towards the end of the night and selected a “Fear Factor” Mad Libs book as her prize. When I won later yet (as the powers that be made it nearly impossible not to win), my daughter selected a pen as a prize. She was so happy as she could start the new Mad Libs right then and there! Upon reflection we’re thinking maybe the pen wasn’t meant to be a prize–that somebody just left it there on the prize table. And, really, I have pens and pencils in my purse. So she could have chosen any number of toys from the table and been just fine. But I’m plenty happy to have the pen. It doesn’t take up much space and it’s useful. So it’s all good.

Saturday morning was tricky. Dave and I dropped our daughter off at my Mom’s. From Grandma’s house my daughter would head off to ballet followed by karate lessons as Dave and I would drive to Alexandria for a friend’s funeral. We’re still in a bit of shock over the death of our friend’s wife. It was quite sudden and we’re very sad, especially for him. We liked her very much–she was a special lady. And it will take time for me to get it through my head that we won’t be getting together with them or seeing them at a gathering again ever. Some things are hard.

Later we ate some yummy food and did a lot of talking as major events always make me think of major life issues and I generally like to talk about these things with my best friend Dave.

Then I did some cleaning. Followed by starting too many at-home projects at one time without fully finishing what I’d already started. But I did accomplish a few things like removing an old shelf that had wiggled its way loose. Filled the holes. Drilled new holes and put up new corner shelves. Rinsed and prepped our new aquarium. Got it filled and running. Did some more cleaning and ate several more slices of peach pie. YUM!

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