Trip to New York

A few weeks ago, our family went to upstate New York to visit my family. We had a very relaxing and enjoyable trip, and were lucky enough to come in just between 2 waves of very high humidity. As you can see, we played in the cool creek, relaxed outside, visited a few places (including a nursery that had a bunch of old farm equipment that Oliv*er is still talking about), and had lots of nice meals together. The boys are good travelers, the only significant challenge being that they don't bunk together that well. No*ah just needs a lot more sleep, and after waking up with his brother for a week, he was pretty exhausted. It's good to be aware that for now, we'd better keep Ollie downstairs in what we hope will eventually be the guest room. But they had a great time anyway, as did Jo*el and I. We I just celebrated our tenth anniversary, and to celebrate, we left the boys with my parents for a couple of days and went to stay in a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont. The boys did great with their Omie and Opa while we were gone. We explored a bit, perused bookstores (which we've been doing together for about 13 or 14 years) and hiked a bit of the Long Trail. The Green Mountains are among the most beautiful places I've ever been. The soccer games were very closely followed by the men, even Jo*el, and Holland hadn't yet been delivered its crushing defeat. Below, a couple of them are still in orange, hoping for a win.

I hope you all are also having some lovely trips and time with friends and family this summer.


































This is very typical No*ah! He waters our garden regularly, and knows the names of a lot of the flowers.












There's a wonderful organic farm right near my parents' house. One of these trips, I need to offer to do a bit of fieldwork in exhange for asking all the questions I want, because I get some great ideas and tips every time we stop by there. For example, they just pull a few spuds from the edges of the beds when they need them instead of harvesting the whole plant at once. My little farmers liked that approach too.






















(Forgive me, I have a bit of a mushroom obsession going at the moment. The bottom one below was as big as a dinner plate!)




Can you believe this is my husband at a bed-and-breakfast? I will say that we got lots of time to talk, and that there was a book of spanish poetry on his nightstand. (No pics, but we also visited the Farmer's Diner, which will be familiar to anyone who has ever read Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.)







My parents had some sand hauled in, which the boys loved so much that when we got back, we asked Grandpa (Joe*el's dad) to help us put together a proper sand-box. I was going to get the wood and do all the hauling of sand, etc, but St*eve built it, delivered it, then helped me get all the sand. So nice of him, and the boys are so happy playing in it.






Goodbyes....






Thank you for a lovely visit, Omie, Opa, and Oom (uncle) Kean! We hope it's not too long before we see you again.

summer fun

I uploaded some pictures of what we've been up to here. Hope you're enjoying the summer as well!

sad Holland

We cobbled together a live feed (between the all-Spanish live feed from Univision and the radio-only feed from ESPN) and actually watched the last half of the game. The boys were very into it, surprisingly. They've not had much ball-sport exposure yet, but seemed to get the idea and rules pretty well.

Sorry, Holland. At least one citizen was rooting from all the way in Minnesota, on a tiny screen with a five second delay, with two very excited little boys in orange. When No*ah asked if all the Dutch people are sad, Oliv*er said, "they've still got all those cows and things".




(I think they're getting "hup, Holland, hup!" mixed up with "hip, hip hooray!", but oh well...)

growing, growing, everywhere

We've had lots and lots of heavy rain this season after 4 years of drought, so much that mushrooms were popping up everywhere. So we went on a mushroom hunt and found 12-18 distinct kinds of mushrooms, just on the boulevard on our block and the next one.





Among other interesting things for the Nature Basket...


We are not experts at mushroom identification (though there's an app for that, it turns out, and I'm learning a little about them).

Did you know that lichen is in it's own kingdom, neither plant, nor animal? It's very sensitive to pollution, so in the city, it only grows high in the trees. When we have storms, little bits or even whole covered branches come down, and the boys are fascinated by it.







The boys are often interested in helping out in the kitchen. They're very cautious and precise around the hot stove, so I'm starting to trust them a bit more.






Mmmm--curried rice and greens. They are indeed getting to be "good cookers"!

2010 spring

Heavens, I'm behind on sharing photos. Here are a bunch from spring, and hopefully I'll start catching up. Happy summer to you all!







Chicks we "chick-sat" from school.



May flowers!


Skyping with Omie

bikes!

I don't have pictures yet, but each boy just learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. They need a little help getting going, but they can ride and stop without us. It was actually very easy to teach them, which I didn't anticipate, because I remember that teaching them to ride a trike 2 years ago was rather torturous for all three of us.

With her fabulous sense of timing, Auntie Mea*gan picked up a discarded library book all about bikes at a sale. As you can see, it's been a favorite, and I confess that I even learned a thing or two about bike anatomy. No*ah is convinced that the ideal job would be to sell iced cream out of the back of a bike cart, "and have some anytime I was feeling a little hungry for it". Indeed.

now we are five

A few pictures of the boys' actual birthday. (My parents came a week later for their birthday party - more on that when I'm more caught up).



The boys received hardcover "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and "Alice in Wonderland" with beautiful illustrations. We're all the way through "Wizard" and half-way through "Alice". I love the chapter-book stage; half the time I enjoy the book as much as they do.



The "Gig*gly Hi*lls" by the river.




And one Giggly Boy.



No*ah requested a "short boy haircut". Once I figured out what he was talking about, I took him to the barber's.

I think he looks great, but somewhat predictably, Jo*el was less pleased.



Ollie is so capable and sweet with his "ladies".