Where I Crawl Out From Under the Rock I've Been Living Under.

The above picture has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with anything we've done in the last week. My camera was not handy while I was dwelling under a rock.

This last weekend we had friends from New York come to visit for an evening. Jen and Dan have three kids, Rael and Conner (or is it Connor?)- who are twins about a year older than Shea, and Gavin who is about a year older than Atlee. We had beautiful weather for their visit, and all the kids had a lot of fun. I think the most fun award has to go to Gavin and Atlee. A few hours into the visit they discovered they both loved mud and mud puddles. How fortunate that our lake had transformed into some sort of mud pit that a mammoth could have been stranded in. I really wish I had pictures of the two of them playing in the mud. Or the two of them being hosed off before dinner.

The other big news around these here parts is that the Mountain House is under contract. If you said a prayer, or thought good thoughts, or sacrificed a chicken- thank you. Please continue whatever you were doing until we close in June.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to crawl back under my rock. It's actually pretty cozy under there.

Soccer, Weaning and Ducks. You know, the usual.

The title is pretty self explanatory. So, let's get to the pictures, shall we? Atlee's soccer season kicked off on Saturday. It's a good thing they don't keep score at this level, because that way we don't have to talk about just how badly her team got romped.

Which is difficult to understand. After all, they showed some great team effort in defending the goal. Oh. Perhaps they aren't defending the goal so much as just sort of hanging around in it. During the game.


Saturday night we decided to finally bite the bullet and wean Greeley from the overnight nursing. It was just about as bad as I thought it would be, but it is getting easier each night. Oh how she begged and negotiated. She offered to get out of our bed and go to hers, if we could please nurse. Maybe we could go to the couch, if you know, we could please nurse. She cried herself to sleep eventually.

Amazingly, the next morning she had this smile in place.
The last is a shot of the migrating water fowl hanging out in our pond out back. I'm sorry it's so dark, but it is what it is. Atlee and Rich have some plans to catch a duck so Atlee can eat "all that yummy duck meat."


Soccer, weaning and ducks. Exactly what I said it'd be.

Cooking with the Gettysburg Family Kids.

Last night as I was downstairs doing a load of laundry, I smelled a smell. A very bad smell. Rich was upstairs with the kids, and I figured perhaps he had burned something while cooking. I'm not sure what it says about our collective cooking skills that he was actually reading in bed and thought I was burning something while cooking. Eventually, he investigated. This was what he found.


That would be what's left of a microwave after your eight year old son thinks he's set the kitchen timer for sixty-nine minutes, but he's actually turned the microwave on for sixty-nine minutes, with nothing in it. Those are the little roller things all melted together in a big pile of plastic.

When Rich arrived, there were fifty-nine minutes left on the clock. The glass plate inside was glowing red hot. Of course, it had also melted. These are the remaining blackened shards of that glass plate in the kitchen sink.



Unfortunately, Rich sort of did a lot of angry yelling, as any father who finds such a situation going on in the kitchen might do. While he was dealing with the broken plate, we heard Shea slip out the front door. Any of you who are familiar with Shea may recognize the cause for alarm in this. Shea went outside. Not to his bedroom, but outside.

Rich took a few deep breaths and followed him outside. When he got onto the porch, Shea was walking down the road. In the rain. Rich called him back and they had some sort of father son discussion which included an apology from Rich for the angry yelling and a story about how Rich almost set this very same house on fire with a toaster oven in his younger years.

I've been wondering all day, where was Shea going to go? Was he just going for a walk around the block? Running away to join the circus? Is this going to be his response in those dreaded teenage years?

The silver lining in all of this is that I hated that microwave and now I get a new one! Shea has even offered to pay us back for it with his allowance.

Easter Traditions

Why hello there. It's me. Do you remember me? I know, I know. I said I'd visit more often, and I haven't. But, I've been busy. No. no, no. It's not just an excuse. For example, this past Saturday we had a little get together for dinner with friends. We all had a wonderful time. I was saying good night to my husband, who was off to bed, and heading downstairs with a wide awake Greeley when it occurred to me... I still had Easter baskets to deal with. It was 10:00 at night, Greeley was wide awake and I hadn't even dug the baskets out of storage.

I would guess Greeley fell asleep somewhere around midnight (curse that long afternoon nap that I thought was a good thing at the time because it allowed me to get the dinner for everybody ready). So, around 1:00 AM I was hiding plastic Easter eggs all over the house. I was pretty grumbly and thinking this was a crummy tradition to have ever started, and would the kids even notice if I didn't do it, and blah blah blah. Whine some more, whine some more.

The next morning, I woke up feeling somebody staring at me. I rolled over and saw Shea, just staring. "I've been waiting for someone to wake up!" "OK, you can wake up Atlee, but let Greeley sleep," I muttered. Fortunately, I was sleeping in Greeley's bed so I got to hear the following exchange.

Shea: "Atlee!It's Easter."
Atlee: "Alright! We get to eat our chocolate Easter bunnies!"
Shea: "And don't forget the egg hunt!"
Atlee: "I love the egg hunt!"

They would have noticed.

Did you happen to notice the giant chocolate rabbit the size of Greeley's head up there? My parents send them every year to the kids. They purchase them from their local Lions' Club. Your local Lions might sell them too, if you're interested for next year.

Fast Food.

So, last night I was trying to talk Greeley into coming in off the deck for a diaper and a clean pair of pajamas before bed. She and I were talking about how her shirt was kind of messy when she plucked a piece of food off her shirt and ate it. Yeah, kind of messy.

Parenting Tip #283

Parenting is a learn as you go proposition. But I think I'm getting smarter about some things. So, when a really good friend says, "Hey, do you want to bring the kids over on Sunday to color eggs?" I'm quick to say, "Absolutely! What time?"


All the fun of coloring Easter eggs. All of the mess of coloring Easter eggs.

At someone else's house.

You might want to practice saying it a few times. "Absolutely! What time?" You want to be prepared if you are asked such a question.

The pictures are all Atlee because Shea colored one egg and Greeley colored one egg. Which worked out OK because that left plenty of eggs for Atlee to color.


Any suggestions for things to do with hard boiled eggs other than egg salad or deviled eggs?