And it is so grand.
With all the tutoring I am doing, and many scheduled (but wonderful!) events coming quickly on the horizon, this summer is not really feeling like a vacation just yet.
Rather it has the tone of an extended weekend-- just long enough to squeeze everything in, just short enough for every moment to be savored.
Here are a few moments from the most recent "extended weekend" of Summer 2014...
Mornings at the pool... We've bonded with our soon-to-be new neighbors, and look forward to lunch each day with our "matched set" of kiddos. Jack and friend S. are two of a kind and make strange noises and chase one another and wait eagerly for open swim at 1:00 each day, when they swim and swim and swim and swim together. Ivy and A. seem to enjoy one another's company in that way 4 year olds have, kind of ignoring each other and copying each other at the same time...
Here is a little moment that happened at 12:45 the other day, when all the kids needed a break from the wading pool, where they splash about for an hour waiting for open swim... That's Jack, reading to the assembled company...
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| Here's the girl, a week later, still obsessed with that book of fairy tales... |
Wade Oval Wednesdays... Our first WOW of the season wasn't quite as "wow" as we would have hoped, due to rain that arrived just as we were putting the final touches on picnic packing. So, we had our picnic on the living room rug and then trooped down to the Oval when the rain stopped. Things were actually pretty hopping there and Jack, Ivy, Corydon and I had a nice time walking the strip, playing spinner games and listening to music. Cor made about 12 friends and we ran into 3 families we knew. Nat, who'd been driving around in circles looking for street parking, never did find a spot... but this ended up being fortuitous, as about 2 minutes after he picked us up, the skies opened into a fantastic summer storm. We drove home and watched the lightning from our candlelit porch, smelling the rain and reveling in the cool wind.
Garage sales... Friday we joined forces with M and W and company to sell some of our old junk at their garage sale. My little helper, who you see below perched eagerly on a crate, was so very excited at the possibility of making money. He helped to arrange everything and then hovered, waiting for the customers. Of which there were very few. We did entertain ourselves by spending half of our day's profits at the other two sales on the street, so that was good.
Then, we stole N and L and took them to our house for a playdate. Jack had a friend over too, so for a time our house was full of the noise and vibrance of 5 children on summer break. Then Jack and F. settled in for Jack's new obsession, Battleship..
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| No, that's not Jack's friend. This photo is from earlier in the afternoon, during round one of Battleship: Nat teaches Jack how to play. |
... while I took the three little ones to explore the new Cain Park splash pad.
These girls! Can you handle the cuteness??
It was a little drizzly the whole time we were there, but no matter! We splashed and played and snacked and then climbed and went on the swings. In bathing suits. I took home three little girls with woodchips all over their backsides. Not pictured: all three of them squeezed into our shower once we got home...
We had M and W over for supper and enjoyed the lingering evening light by grilling out. As we're not really good at sitting around doing nothing, we decided to go ahead and start turning the stage Nat is building for July 4th karaoke (what, your street doesn't do karaoke during their all-day block party on the 4th??) into a large American Flag. The whole gang got involved in measuring, lining up the 2 by 6 we used as a straightedge, and tracing all the stripes... We've since started to add in the color and I have to say, its pretty rockin'. Cause you know, we needed another project... Oh, wait.
Here are the girls being idyllic on our swing.
This photo was taken moments before the swing flipped over backwards and spilled all three girls onto a screaming heap on the porch floor. So that's how the evening ended.
Just thought I'd put that out there lest you begin to think that all of our days unfold perfectly.
Saturday, the longest day of the year.... We'd already planned on two festivals and a birthday party, and not only did we make it all happen, we even added in a bit more time at the garage sale, taking full advantage of all those daylight hours.
Shaker Arts Festival. Neat booths of expensive non-crap to admire. (Including the my little pony puzzles being ogled by my children, above). My favorites were the rings made from re-purposed silver forks. The kids favorite thing? The RTA booth where they got to take a quiz and win a prize. Of course.
The birthday party: Little J is the third daughter of a lovely family who are both longtime Parent Center friends and fellow Boulevard parents. Also practically our neighbors. We had a wonderful time enjoying their giant garden and the inflatable tent and "waterbed" they had set up for the kids. The day day treated us well, with mid-seventies dappled sunshine begging us to stay and soak it up. We were at the party a good hour past it's slated end time.
Because of this, the third event of the day, the Larchmere Porchfest, was severely truncated. In fact, we kind of just drove through porchfest, as our kids were too tired to get out and walk around. We saw two bands playing as we drove around, though, so I am totally counting it.
Sunday... Life's a beach! Again, we overplanned ourselves, hoping to soak up another beautiful day by visiting two of the most beautiful places we know: the Gardens and the Lake. Because the museums don't open til 12 on Sunday, we hit the lake first.... and stayed and stayed. We had a picnic, we had the sun, we had happy children-- why would we want to be anywhere else?
By the time we made it back to the east side, it was 3:00 and we were too sun-soaked to do much else besides watch some My Little Pony and work on painting the flag. And the back porch (another project that wasn't on our list, but why not do more?) I did have one of those glorious, fleeting moments of parenting success, though, when I realized that I was sipping iced coffee and relaxing as my husband grilled chicken and my daughter happily painted the porch steps for me. Doin' it right, oh yeah.
The weekend continued today, with more swim lessons and then.... Discovery Day!!!
This is going to be a thing for us. Every year, June 23, we're going to celebrate Discovery Day right along with Newfoundland and Labrador. Lord knows what they actually do on Discovery Day in those provinces, but for us, it's going to be all about doing some crazy adventure that's brand new to all of us. Ideally in the future we're going to drag the kids out of bed before dawn, bundling them into the car and taking off for points unknown. But, with swim lessons taking the first part of the day, we had to stay closer to home. This year: we explored our local National Park by riding the towpath trail. It would have been a WAY cooler Discovery Day if I'd managed to read the dates right and the Bike Aboard train had been running. And I think Jack would have been a bit more impressed with the adventure had it involved a train and not just a lot of bike riding on a pretty hot day... But we were committed and so we rode-- we went about 5 miles and saw a few locks and a really cool old spillway and the historic Frazee house and the last operating mill in Cuyahoga County. So that was cool. And, it smelled heavenly on the trail. I had a great time. I am not sure about the kids.... but (and this is probably going to sound awful) that's totally OK and maybe even the point. I am hoping that in 15 years the two of them will think about Discovery Days gone by with a lot of fond eye rolling. "Remember that one year mom and dad made us ride down that boring path for like, twelve hours????" Good times....
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| we also saw this young deer, who regarded us for quite a while before continuing into the woods. |
Happy Discovery Day, everyone!
