Pancake Goddess in the House of Boys

Jeremiah this summer

Unlike in the picture, Jeremiah was serious on the field. His team won first place in their division for the league this spring.

Now, his focus is on swimming, pick-up soccer in the evenings, an upcoming 11th birthday, and some organized activities - soccer camp, Summer Strings (band camp), and possibly a regular sports and crafts day camp in August.

He had the opportunity to go to KI with K, T and the cousins, and will probably do that again a few more times this summer.

In preparation for school in the fall, he's spending time every day on multiplication/division memorization, hand writing, and as always he's in the middle of a novel (The People of Sparks).

playing catch up in the blog

A couple of weeks ago, the youngers attended a "Truck Touch" at a local dairy farm.

We also got a new (to us... nearly 100 years old) piano and Jamie began lessons with a new instructor at A. M.

And here is a little before and after for K's first summer buzz.  I think the new look is really sweet in person - he looks kind of unhealthy-bald in this picture, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Last week, we had cousin F here for some outdoor lunch and sleeping over. He ended up staying two nights because the big thunder storms and tornadoes arrived during our first attempt at dropping him off.

misc updates

There is a new local hs group starting in this town and the next one over - much saner driving than the last group we joined. So far, we've been to a board game day.  The kids were younger than Jeremiah, although I know of at least one family that didn't make it that day with a girl his age who I think he could enjoy.

Dentist - Jeremiah and Ryan and I needing work done, wah. Not a lot but still anxiety-producing for me.

Did I post about bowling? I've got some bowling pictures and a video coming up but the camera is nowhere to be found again. We bowled with WILC. Ryan and Jeremiah had a good time.

Soccer all the time. Jeremiah is on two teams, and has soccer every day this week. He's pretty overwhelmed but is improving and seems to want to continue, even though he can be unhappy about it in the moment.  His team (and he) played very well in the soccer tournament this weekend. We thought they had made the finals but then one team had a big upset and it ended up coming down to goal differentials, and they missed out by one goal. Bummer, but it did result in only a 75% loss of our weekend rather than a complete weekend slurp, since they didn't have to go back for the 4th match.

Jamie is very unhappy with his OWL class. He had to wear a pregnancy suit and care for a fake baby during the time of the class.  It seems the camraderie and mutual respect is breaking down in that group, at least for Jamie.

Today, our kitchen is being painted. We're going to try to stay out of the house a lot and will probably go for a field trip to the newish mall that opened last year.  I think it has some outdoor water play place and Jeremiah is hoping for an arcade.  I'd like to get back to listening to books on tape in the car, to give our fluffy not-so-academic outing a bit of redeeming value.

Right now, Jeremiah and I are working our way through the City of Ember series - I just finished The People of Sparks and JJ is midway through Ember.  I've been basically meeting my reading goals this year, but not posting much since starting to use GoodReads - I'd like to link to my book list but I think you might need to log in for that. It's a very helpful site for keeping track of to-read books, sharing your reading with others and getting suggestions.v

we consumed

Ikea was fun and crowded. We spent many dollars on furniture and ate delicious food that was totally affordable (close to half the cost of our family eating at the local family restaurant, and with much much better food and quicker service).  They have arrows on the floor so you don't get disoriented about where you are, and we would have, because we were following those arrows in HERDS. Evan had a hard time shaking that squicky, consumerish, disney feeling of Moooo.  I'm not sure why I wasn't having that problem except that I saw the day as the answers to my prayer: not to live among boxes the rest of my days.

There are many ways I think we could have made it go much more quickly, but it's that hindsight thing. The kids seemed to have a pretty good time even though it was a very long day. JJ had his friend JH along, and Katie (who got us properly enthused by greeting us through our van window, shouting "You're here!! It's IKEA!!") was there for the first few hours to spend time with Ryan.  In the end, I was too pooped to wonder why our final bill was so much lower than we'd estimated. When we got home and discovered all of the pieces we'd left behind on a big cart somewhere in that big warehouse, we realized why. It's ok... we bought just the right amount to fit in Evan's work van and we bought the most important pieces - bookcases and shelving, kitchen stools to replace the unbelievably sad stools we currently had in this house. They were acceptable when we moved here - spinny, vinyl covered cushion stools with wicker-ish backs.  Within two weeks, the children had destroyed the wickerish part, leaving them mangled. If I get my camera battery in the mail, I will post a photo for the benefit of Stefaneener, whose day it will make, I know.

I'm not sure what it means that I can be so chatty on the topic of Ikea and on most other topics you get a few words and a picture, but there you have it. I'd like to write more every day, but it doesn't seem to happen.

spring

These were actually what came up in the yard at our old house before we moved. Yesterday, we discovered daffodils in the new yard.

Jeremiah is anticipating the permanently warmer weather, so that he can be outside every day doing his normal things - taekwondo on the roof of the shed, biking, trampolining. The littles are loving this new concept - a sidewalk! They have two very easy boundaries at the edges of our front yard, and they ride back and forth, back and forth on their bikes.

Yesterday, Jeremiah had a major accomplishment. He learned a back handspring without any help or spotting. He's a tumbling master!

This weekend, I made my first pizza dough in the new mixer, planted 24 little cups of tomato seeds, and other house-y things.          

a warmer day

We met up yesterday with cousins to exchange hand-me-downs, nice catalogs, soccer cleats, and obviously for some fun play time.

The bigger cousins care well for the toddlerbaby cousins, and we adults were able to sit uninterrupted for quite a time (10 whole minutes maybe! and listen - I'll take it).

more from the zoo

We went to the Col. Zoo - my first time to that zoo, and the big boys' second time. It was a perfect weather day and not crowded. There were some sad animals - we always have some ambivalence about zoos, but many seemed really happy and some were just totally fascinating.

 

brothers at home and at the zoo

 

This week we are on vacation

We decided not to leave home, though. It is the Scott Family Hotel we're at, where no one does dishes (paper), older children have late bedtimes, adults play video games with kids, and we eat a lot of sugar late at night. We also went to the Columbus Zoo yesterday - more on that with pictures soon. Today, I'm hoping to find the right cable for connecting our new GPS to the computer so we can try out geocaching.

Outings

A few interesting things we've done in September:

We attended WILC's Back to School Not picnic, and it was interesting to see all the new families. The group has changed a lot.

We also went to the Fair at New Boston on Labor Day weekend, which is traditional for our family. The weather was fantastic and the food and sights were fabulous as usual.

 



We bought some inexpensive wooden weapons, as always, and Ryan managed to break one before we even left the fair. The other was broken the next day. I guess that takes care of that.

And finally, Carillon Park. We attended with WILC and Jeremiah went to their program on plants and pharmaceuticals, while Jamie and the littles walked around. It's a very nice place to take the littles because there is little they can't touch, and no traffic. We roamed freely.

They must have a small train that runs sometimes, because there were some narrow train tracks behind the buildings where we waited for Jeremiah. Ryan was pretty serious about being a chugga-chugga. After 3.5 years of not following in his train-loving cousin's footsteps, I'm starting to see the Brio track get some use.