Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Bumper Boats

What's better than bumper cars? Yep, bumper boats. The kids thought they were epic.

What's Happening

So last week and this week we've been busy with swimming lessons. This will be Wesley's third class and Greta's first. The first two lessons were at the YMCA. I think they do a decent job but it's pretty expensive and a 25 minute drive. This year we tried the city pool. It's 6 minutes away and only $30 for 2 weeks. It hasn't "clicked" with Wesley up until this class. He is doing great and going under the water now. He wouldn't stick his head in the water for love or money but he decided this year he was doing it. Now he's always under the water. I'm really proud of him. So he's ready for the next level which I might enroll him in next month, we'll see. Greta on the other hand was eager for swimming lessons until they asked her to try a back float (with a life guard helping of course). She shut down, ran to me crying. That's pretty much been our experience since day 2. I tried getting in the pool with her, didn't work. So now I sit on the stairs of the pool with her and she does the things she feels comfortable doing (pretty much anything except floating or dunking). We'll try her again in level 1 next year.


 We've been pretty busy this summer which has been nice. Wesley is having fun with baseball. He has games every Saturday in June and it's nice seeing the community come out to support their youngsters. Greta tells me how she wants a pink glove when it's her turn to play in a few years.



I got a call this morning from Sean, he broke down on the way to work. He said it's the first time he's been stranded since college. The corvette blew a radiator hose and it was leaking fluid on the engine causing it to smoke. I loaded the kids up and we went to rescue him, picking him up and taking him to the parts store for a new hose. He fixed it and was on his way to work in no time.


One of my kids favorite things to do is pick cherries (or peaches or apples) off of their grandparents fruit trees. This year the sour cherries were in full swing last week so we went to help Noni pick them. The poor little tree isn't very old yet it had more cherries than leaves on it. There is some great pollination going on over there (on our trees....not so much!). So they filled up a bowl full and I made a cherry cobbler with it. I probably should have taken a picture of the resulting cobbler but it was inhaled before I even remembered. Fresh cherry cobbler is the best! Thanks for sharing your fruit Mom and Dad!



Friday, June 20, 2014

Life with a 4 and 6 year old

Staying home with kids is not for the faint of heart. This summer has already had its ups and downs and they've only been out of school for a month. This morning was just the cherry on an all round rough week. I was in the kitchen and I noticed both kids were in the bathroom with the door shut. Never a good sign. I yelled out "Hey what's going on in there?" to which I got the reply "Nothing!"  Again, never a good sign. Just about the time I got over there they were exiting the bathroom. I look in there and see that the edge of the floor is wet and the carpet by the door is wet. They both had little innocent looks on their faces. 

Me: "What happened in here?!"

Greta: "Ummm, I unrolled a lot of toilet paper and tried flushing it down the toilet and then it overflowed everywhere."

Me: "Why did you do that?!"

Greta: "I wanted to see what would happen."

Needless to say I was a bit mad. She got a half an hour time out in her room and a stern talking to. She's four and sometimes I forget that. She's a tall four year old but she's still four. I, of course, went into the bathroom and tried flushing the toilet (stupid me) and it once again flooded the ground. I used all the bath towels hanging up and cleaned up the water.

I then taped the toilet shut so that Sean can somehow unplug it. I don't unplug toilets, I've tried and I'm no good at it. That's one of those things that I married a man for.

So fast forward to this evening. We went to the pool this afternoon to just play, no swim lessons. Had a fine time. Came home, Greta jumped in the shower to wash off all the chlorine. Since I had used all the towels hanging up I reached under the sink to get a new one. What I found under the sink was two soaking wet towels. I take them out, unable to process why there would be two wet towels where I keep my clean towels. Then it hit me....those kids were in there this morning cleaning up a flooded bathroom......with clean towels to which they threw back under the counter to hide the evidence. The wet towels, naturally, soaked into all the other clean and folded towels.

Now I'm washing load after load of towels. Grrr. They better not mess with Mommy tonight. When does school start back up?

Monday, June 16, 2014

Father's Day Weekend

We had a very nice Father's Day weekend. We met up with my parents at the local amusement park and spent the evening riding nearly all the rides. The kids are officially big enough for several of the adult rides which was entertaining as well. Greta was very uneasy about any of the rides but we slowly chipped away at her until she was screaming with joy on the tilt-a-world. That one definitely needs a warm up period. It was great fun.












Friday, June 13, 2014

Growing Sweet Potaotes

I bought an organic sweet potato to enjoy for lunch and then forgot to eat it. It sat in our fruit bowl for a few weeks before I noticed all the little green sprouts. I hacked it in half and suspended it over a glass of water with tooth picks with just a little bit of the potato in the water. After a week it looked like this:


After the shoots got to be about 8-10 inches tall I gently pulled them off of the potato and put them into a jar of water where they quickly grew roots.



After two more weeks the roots had filled up the glass jar. I filled up a pot with potting mix and plopped them in there. Now I have a big beautiful pot of sweet potato vines growing on the deck. Give them a big enough pot (or plant them directly into the garden) and you'll have sweet potatoes by fall. Great thing about all this? That one sweet potato keeps on producing sprouts endlessly. I could fill the deck with greenery very inexpensively.  Just make sure you start with an organic sweet potato, the traditionally grow ones are sprayed to prevent sprouting. Happy gardening!