Our Deer Baby

Getting Ready to Sell

2012-01-27T09:55:00.000-05:00

Today is another snow / ice day so I have all kids home. Our morning project is to sort through Sylvia's clothes and donate the ones she outgrew / doesn't want anymore.

I have done tons of things like that this week. I donated many bags of useful, but not to us, items to our thrift store. I made two runs to the dump for recycling / garbage. I cleaned up part of the basement. I organized my closet. I replaced our old rusty, banged up heating vent cover with nice shiny new ones. The big thing I am still waiting for is new carpet, the guy came over yesterday to measure.

It feels good to be doing stuff again instead of just waiting waiting waiting. I guess patience isn't my biggest virtue :D

Vacation is Over!

2012-01-23T21:07:00.000-05:00

So we had taken the house off for the winter with the plan to put it back on in the spring. I was tremendously enjoying not having the 'house has to be perfecct at all times!' stress, but on the other hand, the house was backsliding into more clutter and less 'put stuff away IMMEDIATELY'.

Until my realtor gave me a call 'There is lots of activity, what would you think about putting it on the market again?' Well, what else could I say but 'Sure, let's do it!' mostly backed by enthusiasm, but also a slight 'Do I REALLY have to do this again NOW already? Can't we wait till next month, year, decade?'

Over the next few days I'll be getting the house ready and it will be back on the market. Not sure who would want to buy this house in the winter (driveway from H&*&*&*), but I am willing to try, if only because no one will buy it for sure unless it's listed.

Send more house selling vibes! I'll share them with whoever else is selling their house (Hallo flowtops ^^)

More Beaver Pond Pictures

2012-01-16T23:46:00.000-05:00

These are pictures from before the snow storm. I would have gone and made new ones if the temperature hadn't dropped to frigging freezing our butts off. Yesterday was under 0 F and this morning I woke up to -26 C. Brrrrrr.

Maybe I should have given Kate some breakfast before we went hiking so she wouldn't have had to eat the local vegetation...

Today was a day off from school to celebrate Martin Luther King day and we had a nice relaxed day at home. Most of our planned appointments / activities were cancelled for one reason or another, so we puttered around and did a lot of different nothings. I cleaned up a bit more of basement and garage, but not enough to actually see a difference.

First Snow Day of The Year!

2012-01-12T15:56:00.000-05:00

Remember how I said yesterday we had barely any snow this winter? Well, the universe listened and sent some today...

At this point I almost had forgotten that snow usually is a NH reality, so I woke up at 6am as usual, started waking up kids who ignored me as usual. Until I realized 'Wait a minute! There was snow in the forecast. A winter storm warning. There is snow outside, even if it isn't a lot. Hmmmmm.' A quick trip the the school web site confirmed it. Our Very First Snow Day!

Told the kids to go back to sleep, curled up in my own bed, and slept a bit more till I had to go out anyway for a doctor's appointment. Said kid was slightly sad he didn't get to miss a few hours of school due to this doctor's visit ^^

Winter Sports

2012-01-11T09:50:00.000-05:00

This year I finally managed to get Erik and Sylvia on the slopes. Erik is learning how to snowboard, Sylvia is learning how to ski.

Of course, it sure would help if there actually was SNOW. This is a weird winter, still no major snow storms, apart from the Halloween and the Thanksgiving ones which have long disappeared. Once in a while we have a few flurries, but that's it so far. I am both happy about it and wondering what is going on with our weather.

This mountain is making artificial snow, which at least keeps the lessons going, but it is a poor substitute for the real thing.

Sylvia came home all happy and excited from her lesson 'I was the first on in our group to fall over!!!' I am so proud of her :D Erik informed me that he was the first one to fall over too, so I clearly must be raising two prodigies ^^

Pileated Woodpecker

2012-01-07T20:40:00.000-05:00

I had heard we had them in the neighborhood but today I finally saw them in our backyard! During breakfast Kate noticed one pileated woodpecker.

A few minutes later Erik saw the second one.

Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde

2012-01-05T11:47:00.000-05:00

We loved visiting the cathedrals in Montreal. This was our second one and it was just amazing. I'll let the pictures talk for themselves.

Ex Beaver Pond

2012-01-02T20:54:00.000-05:00

After playing on the ice, we hiked down to what used to be our beaver pond. It is more of a beaver marsh now.

Hiking there saw way more ice than we have in our backyard.

The kids had fun on the ice and the rocks and just playing around, and there were only two kids who ended up with wet feet. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to tell which kids.

We saw evidence of deer hunters. At least that is the only reason I can think of for people leaving their cans of deer urine around...

Tomorrow first day of school after the vacation, will be interesting to get everyone out of bed in time ^^

Ice Skating Rink in Our Backyard???

2012-01-02T19:35:00.000-05:00

The kids have been having fun on the ice.

OK, maybe it is not QUITE big enough to ice skate, but it's fun anyway ^^

Me? I am just happy that it's early January and we don't have any snow on the ground!

Good Christmas

2011-12-30T00:39:00.000-05:00

We had a wonderful and great Christmas, even if I mostly forgot to take pictures. It was nice and quiet, just the 12 of us. The kids played card games and everyone enjoyed.

Notice the new deck doors in the background, these are a replacement for the 'Bad Not Good At All No One Wants To Buy a House with Doors Like That' doors we had up till now. The miracle is that they keep the cold OUTDOORS, as opposed to the old ones which liked to suck the outdoors intot he house.

Locks of Love III

2011-12-29T17:11:00.000-05:00

First Dawn, then Kate, now Erik donated hair to Locks of Love. He had been growing it since the spring and it was long enough to make braids or pony tails. For some reason he didn't do that much though ^^

Quite a difference!

Busy Busy Busy

2011-12-29T02:00:00.000-05:00

Catching up in a midnight post with some more pictures of the Montreal Science Center. They had one of those 'three mirrors' set ups, where you can see yourself uncountable times. Always fascinating.

This month has been full of fun and festivities and busy days, but this week is a bit more relaxed with no school. Sylvia is doing swimming lessons every day, which will give her a nice head start on our usual summer ones.

For the last few months I have been working out at the gym and am really enjoying it. Well, most of the time, not so much today when my abductors and adductors were yelling at me 'What the heck were you thinking working us so hard yesterday???!!!'

We took the house of the market for the winter, we will put it back on on March 1st. Which will be here before we know it! The good thing is that it gives me some time to fix things, paint some more and do a deep cleaning of garage and basement. The really good thing is that I don't have to have my house ready for showings at a moments notice.

This December has been mostly snowless so far, I like it. I am not under any illusion it will stay like that the rest of the winter though ^^

More Insect Pictures

2011-12-19T00:40:00.000-05:00

Too tired to write much. We went to the winter Revels today. It was awesome.

The week has been filled with performances and concerts. Four performances this week and four performances of the high school play last weekend. No wonder we haven't put up our Christmas tree yet!

An insect wedding.

The Insectarium is close to the Olympic Tower, which we didn't visit this time, but we still have fond memories from last time, a few months ago.

Word Scramble

2011-12-17T21:34:00.000-05:00

Sylvia was doing our newspaper's word scramble and couldn't figure out a word. Erik gave her a hint 'It is the non-plural of geese.'

Sylvia happily exclaimed 'Oh!!! Now I know!!!! Swan!'

So Many Insects

2011-12-16T21:21:00.000-05:00

Erik has a new favorite fast-food place. I liked how they had mama burgers, papa burgers and baby burgers. This one was very close to our hotel, so we ate there a few times. The nice thing was that it was part of a food court, so the kids could eat their favorites, while I would get myself excellent Thai food.

We went to the insectarium, where we had a great time seeing so many insects. Sylvia now knows how many ants she weighs.

Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal

2011-12-08T20:48:00.000-05:00

This church was amazing. I loved the peaceful atmosphere and the rich decorations.

Dawn took all the pictures.

Happy Christmas!

2011-12-02T19:15:00.000-05:00

Today Sylvia's 'Big Sister' was singing at the green for the annual Christmas tree lighting.

Not only did they sing Christmas carols, they also sang a Hanukah song. We had never attended the lighting of the tree before, it was pretty cool.

Sylvia says 'Hohoho! This is from your secret Santa!'

Dinosaurs Unearthed

2011-12-01T16:10:00.000-05:00

Very impressive exposition at the Montreal Science Center.

Interesting dinosaur facts and even a feathered dinosaur.

More Walking and The Science Center

2011-12-01T15:52:00.000-05:00

So much to see on our walk, I guess I really like walking on street level much better than than constant underground walking (talk to me again at the next snow storm though, I might just change my mind)

The Science Center was cool, and the best thing was that it was reciprocal admission from our Boston Museum of Science membership. I like 'free' perks like that.

We spent most of the day in the Science Center, including watching an amazing Imax movie 'Born to be Wild'.

Walking to the Science Museum

2011-12-01T15:34:00.000-05:00

Underground is nice, but I have to admit that I also really enjoyed walking around on the Montreal streets. There always were many things to see, like this cool teddy bear car.

And of course this huge Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal. I thought it would be nice to go visit that on the way back from the science museum.

This is the kind of architecture we don't get to see much (ok, not at all) where we live in the States.

The city was getting ready for Christmas, lights everywhere.

Happy Thanksgiving Eh

2011-12-01T09:27:00.000-05:00

On Thankgiving Day we woke up to snow. It was only a few inches in Montreal, but they got a lot more at home, so I am happy we decided to go on vacation and that we beat the snow storm. Our hotel window was a favorite with the local doves, it was cool to see yet another bird joining us for company.

Since we didn't quite bring any turkeys from the US (we figured it would be too hard to smuggle it across the border) we decided to have an unconventional Thanksgiving by ordering room service for breakfast. (Erik's idea after watching too many Home Alone movies :p)

I am all in favor of eating chocolate croissants and drink freshly squeezed orange juice for Thanksgivings breakfast. Especially if someone else prepares it.

We had a nice leisurely breakfast and then we walked through the underground city to the metro. This whole underground concept isn't so bad at all. Especially on snowy days like this one.

A Story of Hope and Survival

2011-11-30T13:28:00.000-05:00

This is a touching blog/ story I would love to share with y'all.

I will let Heather introduce herself:

I am a mother to a quirky little 6 year old, Lily. She is my only child, and my whole world (I’m sure you know the feeling!)
The very beginning of Lily’s life was a little more turbulent than I would have hoped for. When Lily was just 31/2 months old, I was diagnosed with Mesothelioma; a type of cancer that kills 90-95% of those who have it. As I’m sure you can imagine, the first thing that came to mind when I was diagnosed was my baby girl and how I wasn’t going to be able to watch her grow up.

After all that, I’m still here 6 years later and cancer free! I'd like to turn my pain into purpose and become someone that other parents can look to for guidance, inspiration, and hope in situations like my own. I contacted you because I feel that your website would be an excellent place for me to share my story. Your visitors are the exact type of people I'm trying to reach out to; these are all the types of people who could gain something from my story.

If you'd like, check out my blog: http://www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/heather/
It details the struggles I went through as a new mom diagnosed with cancer.

Please go visit her and send good energy her way.

Bad Penguin

2011-11-29T20:41:00.000-05:00

I like how the Biodome has different ecosystems, here Kate is looking at the introduction to the St Lawrence valley.

Hiding in an egg is fun. I do not remember what kind of egg it is, but I don't think the kids cared.

When we arrived at the penguins we were happy to see it was feeding time. All the penguins were crowding around the care giver, eating fish after fish. I wonder how she keeps track who got fish already and who didn't yet. After a few minutes she got up and handed over a small penguin to another caregiver who came from behind stage, and disappeared with a flailing, wing flapping penguin in his arms. We had no idea what happened, so for now our theory is that it must have been a bad penguin and he was put in time-out.

After the Biodome we went to the metro, had food in the underground city and went to visit the National Library. There was a Manga exposition, pretty cool. We asked whether we could use the computers for internet access and it turns out that yes, that was possible after half an hour of showing official documents. They were very disappointed we couldn't show picture ids for the kids, beyond our Biodome card 'We need an OFFICIAL id, madam!'. I told them that the kids could get into Canada on their birth certificate and thought 'Geez, the birth certificates are good enough for the border crossing, but not good enough to browse the internet in a library?' Anyway, eventually we had our coveted internet access and the kids were all happy and content :D

The Biodome

2011-11-28T09:29:00.000-05:00

Sylvia grew elephants ears, and Erik almost got eaten by an alligator. Dangerous place it is!

Last time we didn't really see the otters, but this time they were active and visible and we enjoyed watching them for a while.

The Biodome

2011-11-27T16:12:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday we visited the Biodome. We took the metro from the hotel, although I have to admit that it wasn't easy... I soooooooooooo felt like we were country bumpkins when we could not figure out how to work our three day pass and gain admission to the platforms. We tried many different things, including chanting and standing on our heads, but nothing worked. Until one of the locals took pity on us (when she stopped laughing that was) and showed us how to do it. Gah.

Next thing we lost Erik in the metro although we did eventually locate him again. Mental note to self 'Learn how to say 'I've lost a kid!!!' in French, since there is a good chance that the metro attendants will not at all understand English.' Luckily I was able to convey the message to them and they started calling around when Erik showed up in the next train. Phew...

The Biodome was fun as always, it is always nice to see all the different climate systems they have built.

We were planning to do the Science Center that day too, but after the Biodome and lunch we were ready for a break, so instead we went to the Grande Bibliotheque, the national library and saw part of their manga exposition.

Four pictures didn't work earlier today, hope they will this time.

The Hotel and The Metro

2011-11-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

The border was fast and easy (I might have told the kids about 25 times 'No Jokes! NO JOKES!!!! Border agents do NOT have a sense of humor! Especially not you, Rowan! Don't say anything unless they ask you a specific question.' (name changed to protect the innocent).
Most of our trip was accompanied by Northern lights, which was like the universe reminding us 'Life isn't so bad after all, is it?'

We arrived at the hotel past 9 o'clock at night and found out that their parking garage doesn't allow studded tires. And yes, my car has studded tires indeed because my driveway is steep and evil (No wonder no one wants to buy this house!). They gave us a map to another parking garage, and I found out that Kate is NOT good at reading maps. At all. 'nough said. Eventually we parked the car.

Thanks to the wonders of Hotwire, we had a nice hotel, and got a room on the ninth floor. None of the buildings in our town is higher than a few floors, so we enjoyed watching out all over Montreal. When we arrived, there were some fire dancers performing right in front of the hotel. How much better could it get? To top it off, Erik had not thrown up in the car and seemed to be over whichever bug had been bothering him. I just hoped it was not contagious, since I didn't want to be stuck even in a nice hotel room with puking kids.

It got even better next day when we discovered that our hotel was connected to a metro station, we could get there without ever having to go outdoors. Which was fun once we didn't get lost over and over anymore. The underground city of Montreal is quite amazing! We almost always saw musicians. This accordion guy was the kids' favorite because he played the Mario theme song!!!!

ok, one or two pics work, what about three?

The Trip

2011-11-27T15:55:00.000-05:00

The trip was not without adventures, as in the car not starting after getting gas in St Albans, VT. You know the cold feeling you get in your stomach when you turn the key and almost nothing happens... Mentally I was already trying to figure out how to get a rental car in the middle of nowhere and whether we could still make it to Montreal that night, but I also was hoping that it was just the battery and that jump starting would solve the problem. Of course, it did seem mightily unlikely that keeping the lights on for a few minutes while getting gas could have drained the battery, but I like to be an optimist.

The gas station didn't own any jumper cables. I didn't own any jumper cables, or at least didn't carry them with me in this car, since it's relatively new and not like the car I had before which had to be jumped over and over. Back then I always had the cables. So the gas station attendant asked all her customers whether they by any chance had jumper cables and about 20 minutes later we found our savior. We attached the cables and the car STARTED!!!!!!!!!! I didn't turn off the car till we were in the parking garage in Montreal!

One picture at a time worked. What about two at a time?

Off to Montreal!

2011-11-27T15:52:00.000-05:00

This is how our family room looked the day before Thanksgiving vacation. First there was a big hole when they removed our old door so that a new door to the deck could be installed. It was noisy, messy, loud, cold and not comfortable at all, even if it was for The Greater Good of the House Selling Quest. In addition to all that Erik was on the couch, throwing up, time after time. And a big snow storm was forecasted. We decided to leave it all and go to Montreal!

Testing just one pic at a time to see whether picasa is willing to post that.

Snow, Life and Picasa Issues

2011-11-27T02:16:00.000-05:00

This whole month, picasa has been having a hard time posting to my blog. I just did a web search tonight and found that a lot of people are experiencing it, but no sign of Picasa trying to fix it. I wrote a long post twice tonight, with many pics, but both times it got eaten. Giving up for now and just telling that we had snow again (to celebrate Thanksgiving) but we were happy to escape it on our Thanksgiving trip.

The picture gives a hint where we were, clearly a dangerous place...

More tomorrow or when Picasa finally starts behaving. For now doing 5,000 loads of laundry and trying to find my family room floor where we dumped everything when we came back from vacation.

Chaos!!!

2011-11-22T12:27:00.000-05:00

Before something looks good, it first has to look chaotic, right? Well, sometimes it does.

One baby step closer to selling this house by getting a new door to the deck! The old one was... holey, 5,000 years old, not very effective and somehow people didn't seem to like it as much as we had hoped. The new one is awesome!

Geocaching

2011-11-12T21:56:00.000-05:00

Geocaching with a short hike to a local pond. It was getting dark, but still just enough light to hike in and back. Which was good, since I know I didn't bring any flash lights. We haven't been geocaching enough and I have gotten out of the habit of always having them with me.

It was getting darker and darker.

But we made it out just in time!

Yes, We Are Dutch

2011-11-12T21:52:00.000-05:00

And everybody knows that Dutch people wear wooden shoes, called 'klompen'.

This was your culture lesson of the day ^^

Halloween

2011-11-05T21:38:00.000-04:00

Many kids, many costumes, lots of candy.

Enough candy to make the pumpkin vomit...

The girls were Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach.

Getting Ready for Halloween

2011-10-31T22:25:00.000-04:00

Day before Halloween, pumpkin carving and face painting.

Too tired now to post Halloween pictures. All the kids are totally sugared up and hyper and did I mention tomorrow is a school day?

Hope y'all had a good Halloween!

Open House

2011-10-30T14:40:00.000-04:00

Sylvia had an open house at her school and we had fun seeing all her teachers and class rooms.

They don't have black boards anymore, they have something way cooler now. Makes me miss the squeaky sound that chalk used to make on our blackboards :D

It Ain't Over Yet

2011-10-28T08:35:00.000-04:00

Gah! This is the view from my kitchen this morning.

It would be bad enough to just have this much snow in October, but it's going to get worse!

... Winter Storm Watch remains in effect from Saturday evening
through Sunday morning...

* Hazard types... heavy wet snow.

* Accumulations... 6 or more inches of snow are possible.

Time to move to Arizona. Or Hawaii. If only I had sold this house!

Community Open Art Studio

2011-10-28T08:22:00.000-04:00

After blogger eating my earlier post (three times!!), a quick post of open studio pictures. Kate worked on a table for her doll house, Jane made a hat for Halloween, Sylvia spent time drawing and painting and Erik worked with clay and enacted sword fights with his figurines.

WHAT??!!!! SNOW?!!! You Gotta Be Kidding!

2011-10-28T00:57:00.000-04:00

October 27th: first snow of the season!

The kids are thrilled. I am not so much.

Did I mention all our winter clothes are in storage because we were going to sell this house before the winter for sure...

Corn Maze Fun

2011-10-15T08:59:00.000-04:00

I love this corn maze, with all the pictures and 'people' and 'animals'.

The kids had a blast discovering them all. Well, that was when they weren't trying to scare each other.

We have had a bunch of RAIN days, but luckily today looks better. Nice and sunny which is perfect for Sylvia and Erik tennis lessons.

Have a nice weekend all!

Husband for a Day

2011-10-14T17:50:00.001-04:00

After our talk about Bob, the amazing guy who fixes anything, we started talking about the 'Husband for a Day' service, we sometimes see around time. One of those handyman type of guys.

Kate remarked 'The first time I saw that, I thought it was a dating service.' Followed by a sister's 'Me too!'

Someone else spoke up and wondered 'Why would he have that van though?'

Jane 'Well, that is easy! To put in all the men of course!'

Interesting Geocaching Find

2011-10-13T16:03:00.000-04:00

Make your own story.

I am busy doing laundry (two kids with stomach issues...) and cleaning (two showings tomorrow).

Pumpkins and Corn

2011-10-10T20:50:00.000-04:00

After apple picking it was time to select our pumpkins. Everyone found one that they liked.

Followed by: The Corn Maze!

It was a very well done maze, with a historical story about a local 'famous' guy , divided over a bunch of different placards throughout the maze.

We went through the maze twice, just because it was so much fun.

And naturally the kids tried to scare each other, since we all know that every corn maze is haunted!

More Apple Picking Pictures

2011-10-09T13:49:00.000-04:00

Today we have a showing, so I have been cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and did I mention cleaning? I am sooooooooooooo ready for someone to actually BUY my house!

Since I am pretty much on schedul showing wise, I allow myself a break to share more of yesterday's pictures. Today Jane and Kate spent quite some time to put all the apples in bowls which we have distributed over kitchen and other rooms, so that we don't have a boring brown paper bags full of apples messing up our 'perfect' living room.

After all the hard work we had apple cider. The kids chose cold, I chose hot. Makes me want to make hot cider at home, but that would mean messing up my kitchen! Can you tell I am DONE DONE DONE with the showings? Even if I am grateful that people want to look, I still would very much appreciate someone actually BUYING the house.

I loved how big and fluffy this cat was.

That Time of the Year

2011-10-08T21:18:00.000-04:00

This summer has been dominated by Trying To Sell The You Know What House and we had missed out on many things we usually do during the summer.

We ALMOST missed out on the traditional applepicking during the fall too, but today I decided that cleaning for tomorrow's showing could as well be done tomorrow morning. The weather was glorious and I refused to stay indoors. Time to go apple picking!

Many of our local orchards have hay rides, and this one was no exception. We were lucky and found a spot almost immediately after we arrived and had a nice leisurely ride through the orchard before we actually had to get out and do our OWN walking.

After we were done with the hay ride we met up with some friends, making the day even better.

The morning started out cold, but as often in New England, the fall day turned fabulous, sunny and quite hot.

We picked many many apples, no idea yet what I will make with all of them. I know Kate really wants to make an apple pie, so that will be at least one product originating from today's trip to the orchard.

In addition to apples, we also got pumpkins, because it won't be long before we will be visited by goblins and leprechauns for Halloween. Or was leprechauns another holiday?

Afterwards we went to our local coop and had a nice dinner at their cafe.

Yes, the decision to go apple picking instead of cleaning definitely was the right one!

Lake Champlain Fun

2011-10-08T14:37:00.000-04:00

After we visited Montreal, we made a stop on the way back to visit Champie at Lake Champlain.

We had a good meal, lots of fun and it was a great break from the drive back from Montreal.

I miss living close to Burlington.

Carpenters are Useful

2011-10-06T07:31:00.000-04:00

With the house sale going on, we have been fixing up stuff around the house and I was telling the girls that Bob would come over today. Jane was still waking up and asked in a surprised voice 'Bob???'.

I replied 'Yes, it's the carpenter. He is amazing! You point to something and ask 'could you please fix this?' and a few hours later it will be fixed!'

Jane's eyes lit up in understanding. 'Ah!!! Unlike a husband!'

Happy Birthday, Mama!!!!!

2011-10-03T20:21:00.000-04:00

My mother lives in the Netherlands which we all know makes it a bit harder to visit her for her birthday. Luckily she had twenty plus other people visit here, she is socially very active, swims every day, has all kinds of clubs, knitting, making lace and who knows what else. But still, I miss being able to visit with her on special days like this.

Luckily we have the internet with very convenient flower delivery options. It is not the same as being there, but it did make her very happy to get those flowers.

Happy birthday, mama!

Geocaching Adventures

2011-09-26T21:27:00.000-04:00

Many years ago, we were new to geocaching and decided to hide a geocache on this hill. Cees was the official hider.

The cache was quite a hike up, but pretty popular and people really liked the view. But one day this year, the ammo box which was the geocache just disappeared. Into nothingness. Which is not totally unheard of, but in this case the people who took the ammo box did leave the contents of the cache. So there was one wet and soon becoming slimy and moldy geocache left.

I saw the notes from geocaching.com but many other shiny things were vying for my attention, so never made it up to do maintenance and replace the cache.

Yesterday we finally did! The cache is a nice new container and back in perfect condition. Not only that but we found two new to us caches AND we hid another cache.

Being out in the woods is good for my soul. There is a sense of calmness and adventure and happiness which gets into me when I go out caching even if there is much whining and groaning and moaning and gnashing of teeth.

We found out that exercise induced asthma does get induced by geocaching, what a surprise. Next time I will bring the albuterol for sure. It wasn't too bad because we could take plenty of breaks, but it's a good reminder to think a bit more deeply when preparing for a caching trip.

Not to mention that I am out of the habit of always carrying at least one working flashlight with me. Which clearly tells me we haven't been geocaching enough, since we will inevitably end up in the woods after dark. Not yesterday, but often enough in the past.

I am totally motivated to hide more caches and of course find more of them too. In my spare time that is. Oh wait...

Today I found out that two of my acquaintances were on the lake while we were climbing the hill that overlooked the lake. I didn't notice any of them, but it was one of those 'small world moments' to find out we were all in the same general area.

Mushrooms Mushrooms EVERYWHERE!

2011-09-26T20:31:00.001-04:00

This fall I seem to see mushrooms everywhere, even at places where I usually don't.
These small round ones are on Sylvia's maple tree in my front yard, of all places.

Jane saw this picture and said 'Oh, a pancake with maple syrup!' She looked at me with an unbelieving face when I told her 'Nope, it's a mushroom!' Like, yeah right, I can easily see it really is a pancake with maple syrup.

She did believe me when I zoomed out more and was amazed. So was I when I found this mushroom with weird oozing fungi on top while I was heeding the call of nature. At least I had something interesting to look at.

The last few pictures are all from yesterday's caching trip. I love how many different types of mushrooms and lichen there are. Some day, in my spare time, I will study them.

For now I will just photograph and enjoy them. If anyone recognizes any of these, I would love you to tell me the name. Thanks!

Finally Geocaching Again!

2011-09-26T09:51:00.000-04:00

This past summer has been so busy, between kids activities and house selling, that we didn't get to go geocaching at all. We didn't go hiking much either. Or did many extra activities. We did clean the house a lot though.

Selling a house really feels like a full time task. Every time anybody puts anything out of place, I have to fix it now, or be stuck with picking up 835 things hours before the next showing.

The days that we didn't have showings it is easy to just relax and not go anywhere, but we did miss our hikes and our geocaching.

Yesterday finnally we got to go geocaching again! It was a nearby cache, so we didn't have to drive far, which is always a nice bonus. The kids were full of energy which did lag a bit once we starting climbing that hill.

And up and up and up we went. We had a few requests for 'Can we take a rest' and I happily agreed to it, so we could sit and chat and pretend we didn't have to climb even more.

This hill is a popular sledding hill in the winter.

The view at the top is amazing, I love looking over the lake like this!

UBF

2011-09-25T21:22:00.000-04:00

Yes, we still do exist. And yes, we are still selling the darned house. But today we took the day off to finally go geocaching again!

Erik found this UBF. You might wonder what IS an UBF???? So did I. Erik explained to me that it stood for Unusually Big Feather. I agree, it is pretty big. We wondered what bird it came from. Maybe a pheasant or a grouse?

Any ideas? Please comment if you know which kind of feather it is.

Erik:
GIVE ME A U!!! GIVE ME A B!!! GIVE ME A F!!! UBF ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Olympic Tower

2011-09-08T12:00:00.000-04:00

The Olympic tower in Montreal is the highest inclined tower in the world, with its 165-metre elevation and 45-degree angle. The Tower of Pisa, by comparison, has a 5-degree angle.

They have an elevator / funicular which is two stories high and can accomodate 76 people at a time. It has two stories!

We were lucky that we got to ride on the second story both on our way up and our way down.

The view was spectacular and we spent quite some time trying to figure out what is what.

The easiest to spot was amusement part La Ronde. The ferris wheel sure helped in identifying it.

Naturally that led to my kids to want to visit La Ronde, but I didn't think I wanted to add it to an already full day :D

More Animals

2011-09-06T15:27:00.000-04:00

We really enjoyed seeing all the animals and biospheres in the Biodome.

Dawn made many pictures, although it is hard because you aren't allowed to use flash.

The porcupines looked quite lazy, made me wonder whether they had been hanging out with the sloths too much....

All the signs were in French and English, which added to the excitement of being in foreign territory ^^

After the Biodome, we made our way to the Olympic Tower, which rises over Montreal.

Biodome

2011-09-05T15:39:00.000-04:00

For many years I have wanted to take my kids to our 'closest foreign city' Montreal in Quebec, Canada. But as always, life interfered and it was one of those things that was on my list of 'some day' but not very high on that list.

One complicating factor was that I thought I would have to get passports for all the kids, and the amount of time and money I would need to spend on that never seemed urgent enough.

Plenty of excuses were easily found and life went on. Until last year when I was talking with some friends about traveling to Canada and found out that children still do not need a passport to get to Canada. As long as they are 16yo or under, they can get into Canada with just a birth certificate. I double checked the official web sites just in case, but as always, my friends had the correct info.

Fast forward to this year when I found myself in the middle of selling a house (amazing how much time and energy that takes!) but the trip to Montreal stayed in my mind as something I wanted to do. The summer went by fast but the good news was that after a few days of school we were going to have a long weekend with Labor Day. I closed my eyes, held my breath and jumped into our Montreal trip!

Yesterday we woke up super early and left the house before 7am (yawn!) The trip to Montreal was long but uneventful and the kids were still too sleepy to fight much in the car ^^ Even the border was fast and easy crossing (and yes, the birth certificates were enough)

,

We started at the Biodome, where they have a lot of different biospheres set up. My favorite one is the tropical rainforest, complete with monkeys, many birds and all kinds of other creatures.

One big bird, whose name I can't recall, would walk on the walkway in the middle of all the people. He was very self assured, stopping to pose for pictures and wave at his fans.

I had been in the Biodome once, but that was many kids and many years ago and none of the kids who went with me yesterday had ever been there. They loved it.

For Sylvia, Erik and Kate I played up the 'first conscious visit to a foreign country' angle. What I like about Montreal is that there is so much French around so it feels more foreign to them. We had fun reading all the signs.

We arrived in Montreal around 11am, so the drive was not too bad considering that we made two stops along the way. Definitely something we can do again.

Fruit Loving Girl

2011-09-03T23:59:00.000-04:00

My kids might not be big veggie eaters, but all of them love most fruits. Here is Sylvia with one of her favorite fruits.

She loves eating mango, so I always get them when they are on sale. Her sister Kate loves mango too but prefers it dried, and only from the Philippines, so she is a tad more picky ^^

Summer Play

2011-09-02T14:54:00.000-04:00

This summer my kids have been getting together with friends to work on a play about Sparta and Troy to perform.

They had a great time getting together with friends twice a week and last week it finally was time for the performance.

They did a great job!

Humming Bird

2011-09-02T14:41:00.000-04:00

I had never seen hummingbirds in the Netherlands, so when I moved to the States I was thrilled to see them in our backyard. Our flowers have been very popular with them lately.

Cat and Mouse

2011-08-31T13:08:00.000-04:00

Mars got a new cat toy. It is a lot less bloody than when she brings in her own prey...

Did I ever tell the story of the chipmunk in the wall? No, we didn't like it either and I still shudder thinking back on it.

Back to School and Back On Line

2011-08-31T11:30:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day back to school! I got them all up and out of the door and no one missed the school bus. Wow!

We had been without internet for a while, but managed to fix that, so hope to be able to post more now that I have some time during the day.

Irene didn't do any damage to our house, not even a lot of wind right here, but our town has flooding and we had another friend and her family over when she needed to evacuate. When you drive around in Vermont it is sad to see how much devastation was wrecked there.

We did lose our community garden plot. Last I heard about it someone was actually canoeing RIGHT on top of the garden! The sunflowers still are standing tall as far as I know. I haven't visited it yet.

Happy back to school day to everyone who is in school!

Beach Day

2011-08-21T13:07:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I spent the day at the beach with three girls.

It was a wonderful day. The sun was shining. The water was warm (well, as warm as Atlantic Ocean water ever will get I guess), the gulls were flying around, I got to read my book and life was just perfect.

This was Sylvia's very first ever day swimming in the ocean, so that is quite a fun milestone.

She loved the waves and couldn't get enough of the water. Even when the waves often totally engulfed her or pushed her over, she couldn't care less.

Of course we came home with 5 lbs of sand all over our swim stuff and bags, but hey, who cares?

Today I have a small family. Kate and Dawn both are camping with friends, so I have only three kids left. Too bad we'll have to spend part of the day to get ready for a showing. Let's just hope those people buy the house and we can move on to our new home.

We got our first letter from school 'Courtesy reminder that school is starting soon'. Geez, like I didn't know, and didn't want to forget about that ^^

We'll just have to squeeze tons more summer activities into our last week of vacation.

Enjoying the Summer

2011-08-19T18:57:00.000-04:00

I love living in a small town with a farmer's market where 'everyone' hangs out. The kids always find one or more of their friends to have fun with. And there is cotton candy. What could be better than that?

We hiked the rail trail from the farmer's market, to have some idea of how far it would be to our new house. Well, maybe it isn't our new house yet, but it is the house at the top of our list at the moment.

We just need to sell this house first...

Dawn took all those pictures, it is wonderful to have a daughter interested in photography so that I just have to go through the pictures later and decide which ones are good for my blog.

Tomorrow the town pool closes. I am sooooooooooooooooooooo not ready for summer to end yet, but I guess it is one of those unavoidable things. I am totally committed to enjoying every last minute of summer though!

The Perks of Working at a Farm

2011-08-13T20:55:00.000-04:00

Once a week Dawn works at a local organic farm. It is a great job, and gives her some extra spending money.

Not to mention that she usually brings home some goodies!

Last week it was corn. Heavenly!

Dish Washing Help

2011-08-13T20:44:00.000-04:00

Our dishwasher has not been working perfectly for a while (unless you prewash the dishes till they are totally clean) so we usually just wash by hand. This time Sylvia helped me and had a good time, amazing how many bubbles you can make and chase while washing dishes!

Farmer's Market

2011-08-04T18:36:00.000-04:00

Today was farmer's market in our town. We don't always make it, but today I actually did, even if I had only two children with me. Of course that meant that we got more unhealthy stuff than healthy stuff, but it will be winter soon enough, so why not eat some cotton candy while we can.

We saw friends, petted dogs, smelled the flowers and ate buckwheat crepes.

I bought some pakistani veggie roll for myself and got veggies samosas and coconut rice to take home.

Did I mention the maple zucchini bread? It was so good!

Life is Good

2011-08-04T12:49:00.000-04:00

We are having a great summer vacation, even if the house didn't sell yet. Today Kate went off to camp, ten days of hiking and canoeing.

The house is looking better and better, but no one has to want to buy it yet. But even if they don't, I get lots of decluttering done, so it's a win anyway.

Glutenfree Pancakes

2011-07-31T12:35:00.000-04:00

It is official: Erik reacts to gluten, even if he tests negative for celiac disease. After his last doctor's visit on Thursday he is supposed to eat glutenfree.

Luckily nowadays there are lots of glutenfree items available, and it shouldn't be too hard for him to make the adjustment. It sure is easier than when we did the full elimination diet, because then there were so many other things we couldn't have either.

Today I used the King Arthur glutenfree pancake mix which is excellent. My kids liked them even when I substituted the eggs, the butter AND the milk. This time I didn't have to do that and they were really good.

After we move I'll figure out my own glutenfree mix, but for now the King Arthur mix works perfectly.

Quote of the Day

2011-07-29T22:12:00.000-04:00

Sylvia at her first day back from camp, walking through the house, noticing all the cleaning, changes, and staging we had done while she was away. 'Mama? I figured out WHY you wanted to sell the house. You just wanted to live in a CLEAN house!'

Picture and hair style courtesy of Dawn.

Busy Busy Busy Busy

2011-07-29T22:08:00.000-04:00

This picture courtesy of Dawn.

Life is totally busy as usual, made even more so by having the house on the market. We have had some showings, but no offers yet. Tomorrow will be open house, so we did tons of cleaning last night, and I got nice fresh flowers to have a welcoming and inviting house. Not only that, but I will bake bread in the morning, so they will have the magical smell of baking bread.

Talking about bread, Erik has a gluten sensitivity and is on a gluten free diet now.

I can't wait to sell this house, so that we can get rid of the house showing stress and start settling into our new place. We have two promising looking houses, and one house we could make work if needed. The only thing we need is a buyer for our current house.

Melting!

2011-07-23T19:27:00.000-04:00

It has been hot hot hot here, which for sure beats all the snow, but I still am melting. Oh well, gives me time to share the different homecomings of Sylvia and Erik after their camps.

Sylvia immediately starting unpacking her backpacks, showing off all her new stuff and art projects, and helped me put away her clothes / put them in the laundry.

Erik dropped all his bags and totally ignored them even when I gently reminded him. Today while he visited his dad I decided to make a start at unpacking. It was FILLED with dirty stinky clothes, some of them still wet which made them even more stinky thanks to the current heat wave. No wonder he didn't want to unpack them! I have to admit that for a moment I contemplated just burning the whole stack, but I decided against it, even if I don't know anymore why. Maybe because I didn't want any burn marks on the carpeting while we have all the house showings going on.

The similarity is that both of them had a great time and came home happy and bubbly and that is what really counts.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a bit cooler, I am looking forward to it!

Dawn's Geocaching Pictures

2011-07-22T23:24:00.000-04:00

While I was eating ice cream with my family, Dawn went out geocaching with my friend.

She made some awesome pictures to share with y'all.

They had a great time.

Last Day!!!!

2011-07-21T17:23:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was the last day of my Dutch family visiting. We celebrated it by going out for ice cream.

Today they left around a 10:45am in the morning and will be home tomorrow early morning in the Netherlands. Lucky ducks, they get to be in the air conditioned bus and then in the air conditioned air port.

We had a wonderful time and I am sad to see the go, even if it is also going to be nice to just be with our family again. At least, we will be once Sylvia and Erik return from camp tomorrow.

Damian got a bubble gum ice cream. Kasia thought that meant it would have the flavor of bubble gum, she did not realize that it had actual bubble gum in it and that he (and subsequently she) were both covered in the sticky gum.

All the pictures in this post were made by Dawn. More of her work on her Photographic Musings blog.

Erik Off to Camp

2011-07-20T00:02:00.000-04:00

I took my Dutch visitors to drop off Erik at his camp in Vermont. It was a nice scenice drive, even more scenic on the way back when I told the GPS to take shortest route.

This is the first time ever Erik is going to an overnight camp. He is in the Cardinals cabin. Kate told me she was a cardinal at camp last year too (totally different camp, even in a different state). I guess there are only a limited number of New England birds to use for cabin names.

Damian enjoyed watching all the camp activities.

On the way back we made a stop at our favorite snackbar for a real American hot dog. Damian is used to hot dogs boiled in water instead of grilled, so he looked at it with a funny face and didn't eat much more than one or two bites. Luckily it was accompanied by a big portion of fries, so he didn't quite starve.

Kasia has developed an addiction to brownie sundaes, something you apparently cannot get in the Netherlands.

Oma and Kasia Visit

2011-07-17T23:49:00.000-04:00

Oma and Kasia have been here for more than a week now. We are having a super duper good time, apart from when oma wants to get out of the thrift store NOW.

In between all the house cleaning and staging, we have done fun stuff too. We have gone to the playground, to two farmer's markets, to Vermont, to Erik's camp.

Today we saw a turtle cross the road, the first time they got to see a real life wild turtle up so close. Kasia got a picture, I was too late because I had to park the car.

They brought many Dutch goodies, we love them very much now.

And Kasia will have lots of space for her thrift store finds. Oma found two cute bunnies in the thrift store, glad it was not all negative for her.

I am so happy I get to spend all this time with them and that they can accompany me to new houses. We looked at two on Friday, and two more tomorrow. And of course they have been invaluable in helping me with this house. Another showing on Tuesday, keep your fingers crossed!

Dining Room Before and After

2011-07-16T01:35:00.000-04:00

A few years ago I bought our dining room table. We have enjoyed it ever since.

But now... I have to sell the house and I have to pretend we have formal dinners here.

Like this.

Unlike this.

When I track back another few years, you can see that the dining room not always was used for dining.

I had so many little ones, that we used it as a play room. Worked pretty well back then. Wouldn't work so well now.

Quite a transformation from that old play room.

House Stuff and Some People are Funny about Languages

2011-07-15T01:09:00.000-04:00

Today my friend brought over all kinds of staging items to help me sell the house. Next time there is a showing, the dinring room table will be set with table cloth, and four place settings, beautiful china and wine glasses. She also lent me some pictures for the walls, since I had taken down all the family pictures and the kids art and the Chiquita banana stickers which used to be on the wall.

After a wonderful time at the farmer's market we came home to a realtor's email 'Can we do a showing tomorrow and Saturday?' Well, that was easy, that was an 'is the sky blue' type of question. Apart from the fact that the 'formal living room which used to be the television room which used to be the computer room' has been mostly stripped from its furniture and only consisted of a futon, a television, and a router on the floor. Oops. Not very appealing it was.

The universe gave me a whole evening to fix that though, so the first thing I did was call my friend 'Remember that you told me I could borrow those wing chairs? Would you mind if I came over tonight to get one? Will it even fit in my car?' and yes, I could borrow them and naturally it would fit in my car because my car is awesome.

They loaded the chairs for me (TWO of them actually fit!). At home we set up the room into a 'Wow, this is not a bad living room at all!' type of configuration and I feel all good about tomorrow's showing, even if there still are 5,000 other things that do not look perfect yet.

On another subject, today in the thrift store (did I mention my mother does not approve of long thrift store visits, as in longer than three minutes on a good day) I got into a conversation with an American lady about languages. She stated that everyone in the world should learn the same language, either as a first or a second language, and that that universal language should be English.

I pointed out that more people in the world speak Chinese, so wouldn't it make more sense to use Chinese as an universal language? She absolutely disagreed with that notion. No, all the Chinese speakers could just learn English... I didn't think it was worth my time and energy to try to convince this person that English is not the solution to all the world's problems.

Bullet Points

2011-07-14T02:01:00.000-04:00

My mom, my niece and her 4yo son are visiting!!!!! It is awesome!
The new cat has been named Mars and is settling in beautifully;
Our house is on the market!!!
We have survived our first showing;
I haven never seen my house this clutterless and empty;
We have a new toilet (yes, on Sunday, the day before we listed our house...)
I harvested my first cucumbers in the garden;

It is a HUGE help to have my overseas family here to help with all the practicalities of listing and cleaning the house;
The new cat discovered that the green stuff on the water surface of our garden pond is NOT grass and will NOT hold you when you pounce on it because you see something move;
Now that the BIG things in the house are done (dump runs, thrift store runs, storage space runs galore) suddenly a myriad of smaller things jump up at me;
Sylvia is off to her very first ever overnight camp;
I wonder what happened to a nice and lazy summer vacation, because this one sure doesn't feel like it, even if I am happy about listing the house;
I stayed up way too late I wish there was any day in the near future I could sleep in. Like till 8am.

Progress

2011-07-02T11:20:00.000-04:00

This window is usually filled with plants and little thingies and lots of stuff, it truly never looks this way. I was going to post before and after picture, but couldn't find a good before one, so just showing the after. I can already feel the effect 'The house will look so nice, you won't want to sell' starting to get to me.

Not really though, but I am making tons of progress. Yesterday I rented a storage unit so I can get all the packed boxes out of the house and I can pretend we don't own all that clutter. Today is another big cleaning out day and the sun is helping me feel super good about it all.

Strawberry Festival III

2011-07-01T22:49:00.001-04:00

Eat strawberries, not meat.

There was face painting, to the utter delight of Sylvia. At home Dawn had offered to paint her face, but Sylvia politely declined 'No Thank you, I'll have the people at the festival paint my face, they are professionals.' I see... Don't try this at home, eh?

A 'portable' or drivable pizza oven. It is wood fired and they drive it around Vermont to fairs and farmer's markets, how cool. We had seen our first one of these at our own farmer's market last week. It is such a cool concept.

Kate meditated in a sunflower teepee in the making. It reminded me of when we tried to make a sunflower house in our backyard and the stupid groundhog kept eating the seedlings! I bet the organic farmer might have more effective ways to deal with ground hogs than I did. I have heard that guns do indeed work better than store bought coyote pee...

There was a guy on stilts and he never fell over at least not while we watched.

When we came home, Jane had baked butter cookies which went very well with the strawberries. Life is good!

New Cat...

2011-06-29T23:28:00.000-04:00

It's a long story, but let's just say you never know what you will come home with if you take Kate to the thrift store.

Looks like we might have gotten ourselves a new cat, although I have an appointment to have her checked for a micro chip.

She seems friendly enough, and would be a great addition to our household if we can't find her old owners. She has a collar, so that would point to a caring owner AND she knows how to use the litter box.

We have been trying to locate her owner for a few days now, but no luck so far.

She reminds me of Tiger, who disappeared almost two years ago, Sylvia keeps saying that maybe it is Tiger returning to us.

House for Sale!

2011-06-29T23:17:00.000-04:00

It took a while, but my house is finally officially for sale, or will be within a few weeks! Yesterday we signed a contract with the realtor. Today I started packing although I spent WAY more time driving in circles than I spent packing.

Still we packed three boxes AND donated three bags with clothing to the thrift store. I am excited and hope the selling process will be speedy and smoothly. I am looking forward to having the house look a lot less cluttered than usual. Heck, we even might find FLOORS in some of the kids rooms!

More Strawberry Pictures

2011-06-26T22:18:00.000-04:00

We spent quite a lot of time picking strawberries and ended up with a whole flat full.

Of course I started picking with five kids helping me, but slowly one by one they disappeared till I was picking all by myself in the end ^^

It was worth it though.

The freezer has tons of organic strawberries for smoothies now.

Oh and we saw a few butterflies...

Random Meadow Pictures

2011-06-26T22:02:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's geocaching brought us to a meadow. So many beautiful flowers and insects. Oh, poison ivy too, but I am ignoring that for now.

I made some of those pictures using my friend's camera, my friend cropped and edited them.

Amazing how many critters live on simple grass.

And how many different flowers there were so close together.

Black eyed Susan.

Strawberry Festival

2011-06-26T15:49:00.000-04:00

One of our local organic farms has a strawberry festival each year. It finally stopped raining so we took that opportunity to get out of the house and to the farm.

Wagon rides always are fun.

And smoothies made by a bike powered blender!

More picture later, have to drive in circles for a bit. We had an awesome super time!

Erik Graduated from Fourth Grade!

2011-06-24T21:11:00.000-04:00

School is OUT for the summer and Erik graduated from his current school. They had a cute graduation event, including recorder group playing songs to entertain the parents.

He has been at this school for two years and it has been a very positive experience.

Most of the time, that is, as long as you ignore the homework.

Time to move on to the next school, where two of his sisters already paved his way.

Happy Summer Solstice!

2011-06-22T21:26:00.000-04:00

I love summer!

We went to a local summer solstice celebration and had tons of fun.

We met a purple dragon, saw morris dancing, did square dancing, listened to music, stories and drumming and watched a fire spinner.

Six months till the winter solstice!

Dawn's New Project

2011-06-22T21:01:00.000-04:00

Dawn started a new blog to post a picture every day (a 365-day project).

Go visit her at Photographic Musing.

Balloon Festival 2007 WITH Pictures

2011-06-19T22:33:00.000-04:00

Four years ago, we did not only see the balloons, but we managed to get pictures!

Sylvia and Kate were a bit smaller than this time though. Fun to look back in time.

When we lived in Vermont, a long time ago, we lived close to another balloon festival location. They would come right over our house. It was fun to be in the back yard and see all the balloons float over and hear the typical whoosh whoosh.

That was before I had a digital camera and I am not organized enough to have old fashioned pictures of those balloons right at hand, so I am glad that at least I found my 2007 ones.

Hot Air Balloon Festival (Sans Balloon Pics...)

2011-06-19T22:14:00.000-04:00

Hot Air Balloon Festival Take II. After Friday's night thunder storms and our going for a hike instead, we had high hopes for this night.

Well... We arrived at a good viewing spot, but no balloons.

We explored the golf course, but no balloons.

We saw a bunch of geese, including cute little ones, but no balloons.

I realized that I should have brought my binoculars so that I could have figured out what ducks were swimming in the pond, but still no balloons.

We found many goose feathers, and collected them all, but no balloons.

Kate kept taking pictures (all the pictures are made by her), but no balloons.

My normal camera is not usable because my battery charger is misplaced somewhere in my black hole house, so I couldn't use that to make pics. These are pictures of an old point and shoot not very high quality camera, but better than nothing.

We had a grand old time, although we figured we were out of luck on the balloons and we should make it home soon.

Guess what?

Finally the balloons showed up! Many of them, very impressive. And guess what? The camera was out of batteries... Or the card had problems. Or both...

We got exactly ONE balloon picture. Even if we saw so many balloons. One of them close enough that we could wave at the people in there and they waved back! How exciting! I saw many amazing picture opportunities, but I guess they'll have to wait till another balloon festival. At least we did get to see the balloons!

Four More Days of School!

2011-06-19T14:16:00.000-04:00

I can't wait! This weekend has been nice, lots of activities and I am sooooo not looking forward to school bus early tomorrow. For today I am showing off Kate's hair style for one of the many concerts / performances we have been attending.

Dawn has been helping out her sister with hair styles and I really love how sophisticated some of them are.

Dawn is lucky, she has only three more days left of school and most of those are half days thanks to finals.

Weirdo Cat

2011-06-17T22:30:00.000-04:00

Pink ponies are not safe with Darkness around...

Balloon Festival Sans Balloons

2011-06-17T22:18:00.000-04:00

Once a year there is a balloon festival in a nearby town and we like to go and see the hot air balloons take off. This weekend was the big weekend.

Well... I said 'I don't think it's going to rain.'
Jane disagreed 'Sure it's going to rain!'
Me 'Not at all, it says only 50 % chance of rain, that means it's going to be sunny!'
Jane 'No, it will rain, and we will all freeze to death and the balloons won't take off and we'll die of hypothermia.'
Me 'Jane, what I love most about you is your optimism!'

Maybe there was a tiny bit of a downpour. And there might have been some thunder in the far distance. I was still hoping the balloons would go up but no such luck. We saw one balloon sadly laying on its side but that was all the balloons we got to see.

Luckily we are flexible thinkers, so we decided to go on a hike to the bottom of a local gorge.

Erik convinced us that the hike should be proceeded by ice cream to celebrate the balloon festival, even if there weren't any balloons. I was still hoping we would see some float over during our hike.

After ice cream we hiked down and had an awesome time on the rocks with all the little pools.

We saw tadpoles and found the remainders of crabs and crawdads. We even got to take crab leg skeletons home, all colors and sizes.

No, we never saw ANY hot air balloons fly over, but for some reason nobody seemed to care.

Such a lovely way to spend a Friday night!

Six Days and Counting

2011-06-16T10:57:00.000-04:00

The end of the school year is sooooooooo close I can almost taste it!

We had another missed school bus this morning.

And another performance tonight.

Homework keeps getting lost, maybe we can clean up the house during the vacation! (Yea, I am a dreamer)

At least the sun is shining again, which improves everyone's mood.

Eight Days of School Left

2011-06-14T13:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday two kids missed the school bus, one lost her shoes, one lost a reading journal, the cat pooped on the floor, it rained, it poured...

Today, we were out of dried mango (a lunchbox staple for one of my kids), the dishes are overflowing the sink, there are so many permission slips to sign and we misplaced half of them. Oh and where are all the library books? It is still raining.

Eight days and counting!

Getting the Garden Ready.

2011-06-12T21:16:00.000-04:00

It took some time to get our plot in the community garden and by the time we got it, there might have been one or two clumps of crabgrass. Or a few more. I spent some hours turning over the soil and trying to get as many of the weeds as possible out.

Two of the kids helped a lot, one of them spent time dancing around...

But in the end, the plot was ready to plant.

Erik planted pumpkins. This is a good time to tell the story of how we ended up with two plots in the garden.

I decided on a garden spot sometime this spring and was mentally planning all the vegetables I could be growing. I excitedly shared it with the kids, and Erik said 'Oh! Can I grow a pumpkin?!' Naturally I wasn't going to say no to enthusiasm like that, but experience has thought me that pumpkin plants tend to grow ginormous. In my minds eye, I saw Erik's giant killer pumpkin crowding all my cute vegetables, maybe even the zucchinis!

Luckily I found out that there were still other plots available and I managed to get an outside spot for the kids garden so they can grow pumpkins and as many flowers as they want without killing my poor perfect tomatoes. Here is to a great gardening summer!

Turning over the soil was good exercise, I woke up with nicely sore muscles the next day.

Rain Rain Go Away

2011-06-12T20:56:00.000-04:00

Argh, the weather is crazy! It has been a wet spring, followed by very hot and humid days with severe thunderstorms. But this weekend, just in time for Dawn's birthday and Sylvia's birthday party we are back in the RAIN. Yes, I know, it is good for the garden. But I was darned cold during the party at the park.

We had a wonderful day yesterday celebrating Dawn's birthday. Amazing to realize that she will be an adult only three years from now! She got her braces taken off, so there is much happiness about that.

Today we had a cold and wet day for Sylvia's birthday party, but the kids didn't seem to mind. They ran around, ignoring the rain and had an awesome time.

I am done with rain now though, even if it's good for the garden. Hmmm, hope I can get over there soon and see how my plants are doing.

Nine days of school left. Not that we are counting of course...

Life is Good!

2011-06-08T11:18:00.001-04:00

Spent a wonderful Saturday geocaching. I told you guys all about it but then picase ate my post, so a quick summary. We met mosquitoes, erratics, salamanders, toads, mosquitoes, dogs, mosqitoes oh and black flies.

Not only was it a wonderful caching day (found seven geocaches) but in addition there was a fair amount of hiking involved, which fits in perfectly with my 'Get my butt back in shape!' plan.

We climbed hills, ridges, visited ponds, and an ancient family cemetery. Did I mention the mosquitoes though? They were just as happy as we were that they had NEW food in their territory!

It is days like these which give me strength for the days that I am just running around in circles and never getting anywhere.

I hope for a long summer with many of these outings.

One of the cache locations was an outdoors church, very tranquil. I sat on the bench and meditated for a while looking out over the valley and the other mountains in the distance. I am blessed to live in an area where we have such an abundance of beauty and quietness. I am double blessed for having friends and family to share the goodness.

Sylvia SEVEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-06-05T12:01:00.000-04:00

My baby has grown up into a little girl! I hear 'Sunrise, sunset' playing in the background.

She is a well rounded young lady, proficient at math and learning to read. Next school year she will enter second grade!

She has totally recovered from her skull fracture and her psoriasis (did you know that that can be a rare strep throat complication??!) has greatly improved.

She is active and happy and loves life. Her biggest present was a doll which is as big as herself and she can even wear Sylvia's clothes! This will mean many many many hours of play I bet.

Sister Smokes No More

2011-06-05T09:06:00.002-04:00

I am very proud of my sister for stopping smoking. This is how long she has not smoked and how much money she has made!

Quit Smoking Countergreat free widgetsWidgetboxMore info

Send her good anti smoking energy, this is not easy at all! But she is doing it, woohoo!

Fiddleheads

2011-05-31T10:29:00.000-04:00

It is that time of the year. Fiddleheads!

Before I moved to New England I had never ever heard of fiddleheads. But here local farmers markets have them every year, so a few years ago I started eating them and have enjoyed them yearly ever since. They don't taste very strongly but are a cool way to celebrate that spring is here!

Fear of Vampires?

2011-05-31T08:17:00.000-04:00

This sign found at a Starbucks in my weekend travels. It makes me wonder.

Are they worried about vampires coming in? There are no strings of garlic hanging around though. Werewolves then? But they would have mentioned something about the full moon. Intriguing sign it is. Anybody else with ideas?