May/June/July

I feel like the blog is fizzling out.  Different season of life, I guess.  Here's some of what we've been up to.  

We have a gray cat in the neighborhood that has been coming around to visit.  I've been putting food out for him, because I find it so amusing to watch Grumman's little walnut brain be blown by the idea of another cat out there.  I leave the door open a couple inches when he is here, and they "high five" each other through it.  

We made it through the end of the school year, and all the end of school year events.  Certificates were passed out.  Songs were sung.  Parents applauded.  

This was taken in the Kaiser waiting room.  I had some weird eye issue when we finally limped across the End of School finish line.  Thankfully, after 3 weeks of prescription drops, it cleared up with no lasting repercussions.  

Here's Jack with a 3D printed airplane.  He's a full fledged grown up with his own car, his own church, and his own opinions, lol.  He even took his first solo vacation recently, road tripping to Idaho to visit family.  

And here's Jack flying a plane.  Again.  Different plane.  

He loves flying, and will hopefully be taking lessons at some point.  

Speaking of flying, in June, I flew to Colorado to see Sam and meet Nan, his fiancé.  They took me to the Denver Zoo.  If you look closely, you can see the elephant is about to chomp down on an entire bunch of celery that the staff member tossed at him.  

We saw lots of neat animals.  Their cream colored raccoons are adorable, but they were hard to photograph.  I think one was named Cashew.  

It was wonderful to see my boy.  And Nan makes him happy, which makes me happy.  

They're getting married next summer.  

This is a terrible picture of their dog, Pip.  He kept crawling in my lap and making himself right at home.  

This is one of their kitties.  They also have a gray kitty, but I can't get the photo to upload.  

It was a quick trip, but I'm so glad I went.  I love that my kids are interesting grown ups with active lives of their own; it's just hard to have them in 4 time zones sometimes.  

I discovered my own mini travel hack on this trip.  I used binder clips to keep my charger cords untangled in transit.  When I turned off the light in my hotel room, I realized there was a gap in the curtains, letting in a flood of light.  I used one of the binder clips to fasten them shut.  

At some point, I will write a post (or a few) about the next trip I took this summer.  

Whizzing along from September to October

We've acclimated to the school year routine.  We're weathering the cooler temperatures.  The nights are getting dark earlier.  All signs that winter (my least favorite season) is on it's way.  

I appreciated this reminder not to let the turkeys get me down.  

Terrible dark pictures of Katie roller skating at a birthday party.  

I'm thrilled she's so capable.  I don't roller skate, so it's awe inspiring to me.  

I'm reading my 5th/6th graders The Horse and His Boy this year.  (We did Magician's Nephew last year.)  I decided to get the Narnia map I'd grown up with, but I was disappointed in the quality of this version.  It's not a printed paper poster like the one I had as a kid.  It's photo paper, and not great print quality.  It feels like someone took a cell phone photo of the real map and printed that.  

Katie's flag football season is drawing to a close.  They won one game this year.  

Took the cats in for their shots.  It's nobody's favorite.  I ended up bleeding and Grumman and Fiona gave me the side eye for the rest of the day.  

I stopped at a local Little Free Library to swap some books, and it was full of baby frogs!

It's been a while since I've been up close & personal with amphibians.  

We read a book about the changing season and watercolored autumn leaves on diffusing paper.  

I like that I could use different leaf shapes for different classes, so I could see at a glance which dry leaves belonged in which stack.  The following week, we mounted the leaves on construction paper and wrote Give Thanks in paint marker for a fall decoration.  I didn't get any pictures of the finished projects, though.  

I'm pretty sure there's a picture of Annaliese very similar to this somewhere.  Just purple softball uniforms instead of blue flag football ones.  Katie is #2.  

Speaking of Katie, she had a birthday!

My baby is 13.

At the pumpkin patch for evening church one night.  

This story isn't finished yet.  I introduced my 2nd graders to Kandinsky, and we're working on a Kandinsky inspired project.  

Here's the example I made them.  Fingers crossed they can create something similar.  

My eclipse supplies.  I sat outside on the porch swing for the whole thing.  The kids popped in and out of the house.  

We were in the 80% band of the map.  We did have some clouds, but they were moving quickly, so we got some good views.  

No, Grumman did not look at the sun.  

Is it me, or does the eclipse look like the French hood Anne Boleyn wore?  Not that I'm Tudor obsessed or anything.

Fiona IS autumn decor.  

She's also a fairly good seat warmer.  

Jack's boss needed an aerial shot of his business for the county.  So Jack and I flew the drone one morning.  (Okay, Jack flew the drone while I hovered nearby telling him not to crash, not to go over the road, not to go too high, and other "helpful" things.)  

Tell me you've been flying a drone without telling me you've been flying a drone.  I'm just glad he had access to the roof it came down on.  

Still weird.  

Grumman pulls random things out of the clean laundry and drags them upstairs to me.  He was really enjoying this pair of boxers.  

Fiona would much rather hold down my latest projects in the sewing room.  

Speaking of projects, this was a fun one.  Our city was holding a drive through donation event for the food bank.  Instead of going through the pantry and pulling out random garbanzo beans and such, we made birthday cake kits.  A couple 4 packs of disposable covered casserole pans, cake mix, frosting, candles, extra packs of unopened napkins from birthdays gone by.  I printed coloring pages, and we put a colored page in the bottom of each one, hoping to brighten the recipients' day.  

My step mom sent us an advent calendar.  I put it away so I wouldn't peek at it.  Now to remember 1) to pull it out on the right day, and 2) where "away" is when the time comes.

The school choir performed in church.  I was impressed.  The accompanist lost her guitar strap in the middle of the song, and the kids kept right on singing while she seated herself and began playing again.  

I've found some odd things in the washer over the years.  But this was my first pair of scissors.  Instead of, "WHO PUT SCISSORS IN THE LAUNDRY?!?!" which would have elicited panic and lies, I left a note on the white board, and the guilty party laughed and indicated they'd seen it.  

This year's school pictures, brought to you by the color orange.  Not sure why they're using the Trump filter on everybody, but several of the moms were like, "This barely looks like my kid.  They're supposed to be blonde, not redheaded."  

Unlike the cake kits, this was an idea that was better in my head.  I had no idea how long caramel takes to melt, and by the time it finally did, the kids had lost interest and wandered off.  The results weren't really worth the trouble, so we won't be doing this one again.  

Stay tuned for visits from the adult kids.  Maybe if I get really inspired I'll even go back and share the highlights of the rest of our road trip.  It really was quite the adventure.  

June in a Nutshell

The school awards ceremony was actually the very last day of May, but we'll throw it in here anyway.  

Certificates were awarded.  

Applause happened.  

Summer camp at Wolf Mountain.

It's nice to be hitting some of the same places they went last year, because I'm starting to get familiar with the route.  (Matilda still goes straight to the car wash after leaving the gravel roads.)

We started the process for a new leg.  We've actually got the leg now, we just need to go back soon for a different foot that's on order.

My dad & step mom were here for a visit, and we took the kids to the new Museum of Science and Curiousity.

It was a fun place to spend a few hours.  Lots of hands on exhibits.  

It's the kind of place I'd want a membership to if my kids were little.  

It was a nice visit, and I'm glad my girls got to spend a little time with grandparents.  I feel bad for them because the older kids got a lot more grandparent time, when we all lived closer together.  

My dad with Jack and Josiah.

And Bri made a quick trip to our area for a bridal shower weekend.  It was wonderful to see her, and she and I took the girls to a local rock shop.  Bri knows so much about rocks and minerals, and she just lit up explaining things to the girls while we were there.  

I fired up Crikey to make a journal for our trip.  (And then I was terrible about writing in it while we were on vacation.)  

Some bibs I made for the grandbabies.  There's an avocado one that's not finished, but I have to take my serger in for a spa day before I can complete it.  The farmer's market, watermelon, and banana prints came from the March quilt show.  The striped yellow coordinate was in a batch of stuff someone from church gave me.  The green, I picked up at JoAnn's.  The argyle and dots were leftovers from reversible toddler pants I made years ago.