Pioneer Day

"Pioneer children sang as they

walked

and walked


and walked."

I don't think we would have made it out of Nauvoo.

Phone Issues

A couple people have commented to me (directly and indirectly) that I'm difficult to get in touch with via telephone. Well, just a little explanation on the matter...

We only have cell phones.

Cell phones are small and camouflage well in the toy bin where I often find my phone (sorry to anyone who gets mysterious calls from my children who happened upon my phone).

Diapers, wipes, fish crackers, etc. damper my ring tone when my phone is in the bottom of my diaper bag.

If I had a third arm I could answer the phone more often.

Finally, yesterday I found my phone in the garbage can. Not the garbage can in my house, the garbage can that was ready to go to the curb for the garbage truck to pick up and haul away. It was wresting on a messy diaper...but it still works, so you can try calling me, but if I don't answer, leave a voice mail.

What We've Been Up To

If anyone needs to get in touch with me, I am at the pool. We have turned into amphibians. Every morning we head to the pool with our little picnic. We come home for James' nap and then head back for an afternoon dip. Ahhhhhhhh, this is the life.

In other happenings, we are starting to enjoy our farm's bounty. Just today we picked two heads of lettuce, a tomato, 2 squash, and a handful of sugar snap peas. Sugar snap peas are garden candy. We ate them all on the way home from the farm. I'm new at this whole farming thing. I'm so amazed these things grew from tiny seeds.

And finally, the little lug is walking!

So This is Love

Last night, I beat Christian in our tennis match. There was a lot of LOVE in the game...love on his end....fast fireball serves on my end.

$.50 Costs $250

The CD player in Christian's car stopped working about a year ago. He recently had it replaced for $250. After the mechanic replaced the CD player, he walked in to the waiting room where Christian was sitting, and asked while rattling the CD player

"Do you have kids?"

Christian brought the old CD player home. We took it apart to find the cause of the broken CD player...2 Quarters. Chalk it up to "Life's Tuition" (we should add that as a category in our budget).

I Love the Mountains, I Love the Rolling Hills

Last weekend we packed our car up to the gills, threw our bikes on the back, and went camping. Daniel gets so excited about camping, I hesitate to tell him we are going before the actual day we go. He gets more excited about camping than he does about Christmas.

With bikes in tow, we drove to Vermont. Our $10 yard sale bike rack squeaked and complained the three hour trip up and back unless we drove about 63 mph. Temperamental thing. Our Saturday morning bike ride was well worth the pain of hauling the bikes though (Christian may differ on this). We rode 5 miles on a beautiful trail and Daniel rode the whole way...5 miles! I couldn't believe it. The only break he took was a stop to play in the river.

He did have two over-the-handle-bar accidents this weekend on his bike. The one drawback to learning how to ride a bike with a balance bike is, not learning how use the brakes. Daniel has been relying on dragging his feet to stop. Since the accidents he has learned how to brake. Now he understand why I've been a broken record about using bike brakes. I guess some things you just learn the hard way.

Stowe, VT

Have you ever seen anything this magical?

I felt like a little kid again...all the wonder, color, and magic of life in one little valley.

And then they were
up
up
up
and
away!

I used to practice flying as a kid, I would jump off of things and flap my arms real hard. Imagine if I could really fly. I would definitely fly off into an evening like this.

Sail Boston '09

The wind that blew the tall ships in, blew the relentless rainy weather out.

The tall ship regatta starts in Vigo, Spain. The ships race to the Canary Islands, then on to Bermuda, Charleston, Boston, Halifax, and finish the race in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The ships port in the Boston Harbor for a couple of days for all to gaze upon.

Daniel and I searched for real pirates on every ship we walked past. All the pirates must have been out in search of Boston booty, but I think we spied some pirates in disguise. They were hairy and tan, like real pirates, but were wearing Tevas and bermuda shorts. Not much of a disguise if you ask me. They could have at least de-haired.

Daniel is secretly signing that he thinks a pirate is in that ship behind him.
That hand signal is what we decided to use to alert each other of pirates.

Captain Hook was no where to be found....but we did hear the tick tock, tick tock of the alligator.

Happy 4th

This year we did the "AM" 4th of July celebrations. Childless patriots could do the AM and PM celebrations, but our little buccaneers need their beauty rest, so we skipped out on the fireworks...lame, I know.

The AM celebration begins with a flag raising ceremony. After the flag raising ceremony, a small parade proceeds from the flag area to a nearby burial ground. When I read about the parade online, I was picturing floats, loud music, lots of shiny things, and salt water taffy. Well, this parade consisted of some men in uniform carrying the flags, a small group of people dressed as colonists firing their muskets, a small band, the mayor and a few other Boston politicians, and the rest of us. Everyone in the crowd, became part of the parade. It was more like a procession.

James and I at the flag raising ceremony

The small parade

At the small burial ground, wreaths were laid at each of the graves of John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Robert Paine (signers of the Declaration of Independence). The trumpet also played "Taps" at each grave.

The procession made it's way down to the "Old State House". There, the Declaration of Independence was read from the balcony just as it was 233 years ago.

Reading of the Declaration of Independence

After the reading, we hurried to South Boston so we could see the USS Constitution or "Old Ironsides" on it's turnaround cruise. They only sail "Old Ironsides" on the 4th. It journey's to Castle Island and shoots off it's cannons and then returns to it's port for another year. Well, "Old Ironsides" only went half way this year, so we didn't get to see the cannon shoot off. At least we got to meet up with some friends and the kids had fun just doing their thing.

Then we had a BBQ and listened to the fireworks from inside our house. Maybe next year we'll do the PM celebrations.