Summer and Life and House Hunting

I would like to say summer is here, but the rain keeps interfering. Not that I care, I will take anything that isn't snow. We are spending a lot of time outdoors, my garden is being ignored as usual, my lawn resembles a jungle, and we have many camps for many kids, requiring much driving and logistics.

 

We are doing a lot of geocaching and baking and swimming. Cees still works at McDonalds, and Dawn works at an organic farm in Vermont. Jane is doing an aquatic explorations camp at our local science museum. The older boys will be doing a college learning strategy course at Dartmouth. Kate, Erik and Sylvia have daily swimming lessons. There is theater and soccer and other camps waiting for us over the next few weeks. I will go out kayaking a few times. So much to do, so little time!

 

And my divorce is finally OVER and I can talk about it and talk about looking for a new house. I didn't want to blog about the decision and the process. The summary is that it was a hard decision, but definitely the right one for us. The actual process took almost 1.5 years, which is way too long, but that's the way things are. Now I am happily single, and looking forward to house hunting and moving to a place where we can have chickens. Well, actually, I am not looking forward to the actual move (just wait and see how many times I will say 'I HATE moving!) , but I can't wait to settle in a new house and make it perfect for us.

I am happy to share more details in private email, my addy is in the sidebar.

 

Anyway, this is why I am so happy with my new table for my new house. It is very symbolic. Not only do we have the new table, but friends cleaned out our play room and moved the table in there and now the dining room is a dining room! Tonight, I had a great dinner with five girls (four of mine and a friend) and we talked much girly talk all around the table and life is good ^^

 

Tomorrow, I will get many things done and might even work in the garden. Or not. We'll see ^^

The Yellow Brick Road

Somehow, don't ask me how, the yellow brick road from Jane's school play made it over to our house.

 

The cats love it, it is a new place to observe the humans and to wrestle with one's siblings! How perfect!

 

Jane was a munchkin in the play, and did a great job.

 

I would post more play pictures, but the quality is bad and blurry, so this is all you'll get.

 

Anyway, we are now the proud owners of The Yellow Brick Road. I bet y'all are jealous ^^

Socks Seal of Approval

Socks would like to let y'all know that he approves of the new chairs.

 

They have really grown on me too, funny how that happens. Now my next baby step project is cleaning out the dining room, which is a play room at the moment, and get the new table out of the living room (it is just a tad in the way ^^) into the dining room. I might or might not post pictures soon of the 'Dining Room: Before'.

Today I hit the Salvation Army and got a bunch of placemats and napkins, in a variety of colors and sizes, including some with all kinds of Swedish cheers on them. And maple leaf ones. I am sure I'll post pictures of some of those too, or not ^^

Observant Girl

One thing I love about Sylvia is how observant she is. When we are driving, she will notice every single detail and often remark on it.

 

When we are at home, she will observe and pipe up with interesting and often deep observations.

Last week at the counseling center, her observation was quite funny. They just moved and their new waiting room has poles at various spots in the room, because it's an old building. Sylvia came in, sat down, looked around for a bit, and then told me 'Mama, I really like this waiting room, it feels so much safer!'
Me 'Oh?'
Sylvia 'Yes, the poles are holding up the ceiling, MUCH safer than the old waiting room!'

Now I am wondering whether she usually goes around worrying whether the ceiling will fall down?

THREE Teens!

Happy birthday to my favorite teenage daughter!

 

She got makeup and fish and makeup and books and makeup and chocolate (needed for all those teen hormones ^^) and did I mention makeup?

Did you know one can buy special stickers for one's nail?
Or special pens to draw on one's nails?

I didn't either ^^

She was my very first unattended birth, and she was an accidental water birth. Those were the times!

Riceball

Isn't she cute????????

 

First New Furniture

Today, we stopped at the thrift store and we were just going to LOOK at the furniture section. It would be nice if there were bunk beds, but we were not holding our breaths.

 

Well, there were no bunk beds, but there was the BEAUTIFUL and BIG table outside. It just had not so nice looking chairs with it, but then, maybe I could just buy the table. I asked the guy how much it would be and he started out at $100, but went down to $80 pretty fast. Which means that either *I* am a master negotiator, or it means that they wanted to get rid of this space eating ugly table. BUT! I had to take the chairs too, they were not willing to sell the table without the chairs.

 

It took me all of five minutes one minute twenty seconds to decide that I could totally live with the chairs after all, and I could either use them somewhere else in the house, or use my current benches somewhere else. I mean, this was The First Furniture for my new house, I couldn't let it slip through my hands just because of getting six extra chairs, could I?

 

The thrift store people were nice enough to deliver the table, since my van was still in the garage, and now I am the proud owner of a brand new old table. I just have to find a house to go with it. We had Chinese take out to help us baptize the table.

 

Wrecks and Windmills and Queen of the World

Yesterday's geocaching led us from 'I am the queen of the world!' to

 

Why the heck would anyone dump this wreck of a car at the bottom of the thousands blocks of granite from an old granite quarry?

 

The top of the stack had a windmill, it was an interesting contrast.

 

Useless tidbit: close to stacks of granite like this, it is very noticeable how much the temperature drops thanks to the heat mass (or lack thereof) of the stones. It immediately felt colder every time we came close.

 

Somewhat puzzling tidbit. We found many more wrecks like this. I guess that people consider this the manly way to get rid of their old cars?

Ice Cream

 

No visit to the farmer's market is complete without ice cream.

 

Excellent homemade ice cream.

 

Yeah, I know, I should have made pictures of vegetables and plants at the farmer's market, but I kind of got distracted by the ice cream ^^

 

Anyway, exactly two weeks till the summer solstice, so make sure to enjoy your ice cream while you can.

The Joys of Teens

This morning, Jane was up late for our farmer's market visit, and she would have been happy to just roll out of bed and into the car and totally ignore her hair.

 

But she had not counted on her sister and her friends who said 'Oh, make sure to bring comb and brush so we can do Jane's hair in the van.'

 

Since that is clearly the most important thing when you are an almost teen.

 

Jane didn't agree, but suffered the hair styling, as long as they did not put in a pony tail! Not sure what is wrong with pony tails, but she did win that fight. It was amusing to watch them do the hair styling in the back of the car, and made me realize that I shouldn't blink too often, because they keep growing up!