Hello all, I'm still here!

I got home about 2 a.m. yesterday from a really wonderful trip to Boston. I went with my two sisters to visit my brother. We had a great time and we packed in a lot! Here's the quick rundown:

Saturday a.m. - arrived in Boston around 11 a.m. and headed straight for the No Name Restaurant for lobster. We had a waiter named Nick, from Greece, who was a hoot. A good start. Then we drove to Maine and went to the beach. Sister, that water is cold. We got pie at Pie-In-The-Sky. Excellent. On the drive back to Boston we stopped at Stonewall Farms and sampled away. Then to Boston to the North End (Italian) for dinner at La Conte's and followed by Gelato as we strolled the cobblestone streets.

Sunday - We went to Rhode Island where a friend of my brother's and his wife took us sailing on their beautiful sailboat. It was a gorgeous day and we enjoyed it tremendously. My brother, a chef in his free time, made some awesome roast pork shoulder sandwiches for us to eat on the boat. We went out for lobster again on Sunday night.

Monday - my brother had to work, so us girls rented a car and went to Cambridge in the morning. We shopped at the best children's bookstore I've ever been to - Curious George Goes to Wordsworth. Went to Harvard, touched John Harvard's shoes for "good ruck" as the Japanese tourists informed us, and strolled the campus. Then we drove out to Sturbridge, and visited the village set up as it would have been in the early 1700's. Very fun and educational. We played PDQ that night (a game where you make words from letters in the card deck). My sister is apparently in need of some churchin', as she came up with many obscenities. We laughed so hard that night that our sides were sore the next day.

Tuesday - we drove into Boston and went to the Public Gardens, the setting of Make Way for Ducklings. So neat! Then we took a (very)leisurely stroll along the Freedom Trail before heading to the airport.

It was good to get away, fun to bond with my sibs, and great to come home! Bud and the kids had a wonderful time while I was gone. Lots of swimming, pizza and sleeping in Mom's bed. No camping. They were still happy to see me though! I feel like a new woman now. Refreshed, rested, and a few pounds heavier!

Well, today it happened. Rather than playing together as happens on most evenings around here, the girls split off from the boys, (or vice versa, not really sure) and it was girls against boys until dark. The girls commandeered the "clubhouse", which is actually the sideyard between our house and our neighbors'. They developed passwords to gain entry to their clubhouse. Bud asked, "What are the passwords?" Peyton's was "Princess Aurora". Cute. The other girls' passwords were "Boys are Mean" and "Boys Stink". First of all, the boys weren't being mean. In fact, they didn't realize the girls had split off. Alas, that was probably their crime.

Bud told the other girls not to teach Peyton to be unkind to boys. But the lesson is learned, I'm afraid.

My boy and girl adore eachother and play together all the time. It is one of the things I treasure about my children - how they adore eachother.

Where does this come from? I know boys aren't totally innocent, but I'm sure it's 90% a girl thing. And I'm mad about it. I don't want my children to be adversaries in any situation - even when they are playing.

And that's really the end of this post. I've got no conclusion, no sweet ending, no moral to the story. Just frustration with The Way Things Are.

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OH! I just thought of a sweet ending. Peyton's new bed arrived today. Her room is now decorated in pink and mint green with flowers and quilts and all things girlie. She is so excited to have her own girl bed instead of sleeping in the bottom bunk of her brother's bear beds. So she showed Luke, my all-boy boy, and he said, "Oh, Peyton, it is so pretty! You are going to love this room!" But then, the reality of not having Peyton 5 feet underneath him set in. I told him Peyton's new bed has a trundle that he could sleep on. "Sweet!" was his response.

See, boys are not mean!

I do think Bud had a good one, and I hope all the other Dad's out there did, too.

We started the day at church where we sang "How Great Thou Art," which is Bud's favorite hymn that he feels we don't sing nearly often enough.

After church it was off to Market Street where we stocked up on all of Bud's favorites. At home, I cooked spicy Italian sausage with peppers and onions, yellow squash with onions and parmesan, buffalo burgers, grilled zucchini, and sliced cantaloupe. We pigged out, went swimming, and then I made peach cobbler, which was our dinner - a la mode, of course.

The kids showered Bud with gifts of whole cashews and homemade cards, and they just generally loved on him for most of the day.

I've thought of my dad today, and Bud's dad too, though I never met him. Bittersweet, those thoughts.

It's so right to have Father's Day, Hallmark notwithstanding. These men - who go out and slay dragons for us everyday, who worry quietly so we don't have to, who are the ones to do without so no one else has to - deserve their day. I'm so glad they got to have it.

How'd you spend your day? Don't forget to mention what you had to eat!

Donna asked this question on her Friday Feast today. Where do I begin? Most of you probably don't realize this about me, although you may suspect it. I am an extremely disorganized individual. In an organized sort of way that is. So this has been catch-up-week for me. I spent about 8 hours doing paperwork for my businesses on Tuesday (some as much as a year old...shhh) after I sent Bud out to "do something fun" with the kids.

Then, on Thursday, I got the curtains hung in the family room (6 months old at least) and hung some other home decor items that have been leaning against the wall where they should hang for at least a couple of months.

Today I set up an IRA on ETrade and arranged for transferring my 401k's from my working days to this new fund (Bud has been bugging me to get it done for about a year). I actually had to go to the bank and have them sign a letter stating that it was really me requesting that the funds be transferred, because I have done nothing with one of the accounts for a very long time - it still has my maiden name and our address from two houses ago on it.

After that we went to buy Father's Day gifts, to sign the kids up for science classes for the fall, to purchase a bed for Peyton whose room has been painted and ready for her new bed since March, and then to buy new drawers for Luke, which is actually something we just decided we should get.

I almost have nothing left to do! Besides cooking and cleaning and taking care of two children and running two businesses that is. Seriously, I feel like a new person now that I have taken care of all the junk that has been hanging over my head for so long! In fact, I feel so good that I took pictures - of my flowers, of the crazy lopsided tree in our front yard, of my kids, of my new curtains - to post here and share with everyone. But somehow, and I'm not sure how this could be possible, I can't find the camera cord. Stop laughing. I hear you.

So, instead, I will leave you with a wonderful book I happened across at the library on Wednesday.



This is a great collection of essays about trees. I have been thoroughly enjoying it. Lembke's writing is a pleasure to read, and it just seems right to consider trees this time of year. She tells the stories of southern trees, from the botanical to the mythical to the edible.

One of our favorite children's books is



and there is an essay in Lembke's book about the Persimmon tree, the indirect cause of the opossum's hairless tail. I can't wait to try some of the 'simmon recipes this fall.

I'm on the lookout for some good reads for the summer, as are the folks who stop by here I'm sure. Please leave your suggestions for us all to share!

Tonight I'm gonna be sprucing up the place. You know, working on the sidebar, adding some pictures, and general tidying. So comment if you'd like to be linked. I'll probably link you anyway, but let me know just in case!
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Have you read "Night of the Moonjellies" to your children? You really, really must. This is one of my favorite children's book. Any story about childhood memories of summer has got to be good. Mark Shasha is the very interesting author. While looking at his website and I came across this painting:





Isn't it beautiful? What a blessing to experience summer through the eyes of our children.

We've just instituted using the Stewardship Street earning/savings system that Doorposts publishes. We've modified it a bit for our purposes and implemented it here, with mixed reviews. I'll share what we're doing, then tell you the issues we are having with it, and then hopefully some of you smarties can give me some input.

First off, the kids have a basic set of chores that they must complete each day to get their allowance (this is not part of the Doorposts plan, but Bud felt there should be some accountability for the daily stuff). These are non-negotiable and must be done. After the daily chores are done, there are additional jobs that can be done to earn extra money. These are optional and age-appropriate.

Any money Luke earns gets divided this way:

10% - tithe
5% - charity, probably to be used for our Operation Christmas Child boxes, unless a need comes to our attention in the meantime
15% - short-term savings, mainly for buying gifts
5% - sock fund - just so they learn that money you earn has to pay for basic necessities before the fun stuff
20% - dowry - at first I thought this was an antiquated idea, but now I like it because a) it causes both my children to plan for the fact that the wife will be staying home with the children, and b) it will make it less tempting for the wife to go out to work if there is a little nest egg for "setting up house"
25% - long-term savings - college or house down payment
20% - spending money

I've set the amounts so that Luke can reasonably get $5 of spending money each week if he keeps up with the basic chores and adds a couple of extra jobs each day. I know that adds up to a lot of money each week, but much of it is money that I would be spending anyway (charity, socks, gifts...).

Peyton basically tithes 10% and then splits the rest between saving and spending money (she earns less allowance, and there are fewer age-appropriate jobs available to her). When she is old enough to grasp it better, we'll break it down further.

Why I like this plan: it gets the kids thinking about how to manage money, learning about how money earned must be allocated, and accustomed to saving.

Issues:
1)Luke is very freaked out when he sees his $5 that he worked hard to earn shrink to $1 that is available to him to spend.
2)Luke is really struggling with how to spend his spending money. Before we started this we had no allowance or anything similar going, so he would ask for something, we would say yes or no, and that would be the end of it. We don't watch much commercial tv or shop much, so it really never crossed his mind too often to ask for anything. But now he has spending money! How to spend it? "The ice cream man is out front, but if I buy ice cream I may not have money for that really cool toy I might have the opportunity to buy tomorrow." Tears of frustration flow. Obviously making choices with money is a very important lesson to learn, but this is really frustrating the kid.

So, what do you think? Is this too much pressure for an almost-7 year old? My gut says no, but when I see him struggling over these decisions my mommy heart sure doesn't like it.

I'm curious to know what you think of our approach, and what, if anything, you do at your house in the way of chores/allowance. Thanks!

Nobody wears layers in summer. Jeans are unusual. Sweatshirts and pants are nowhere to be seen. What you have are t-shirts and shorts. Small clothes, that take up very little space. Which means, of course,

THAT THERE IS VERY LITTLE LAUNDRY!!!

How could you ask for anything better than that? Oh, I know! Those small pieces of laundry are easy for little hands to fold.

Amy here, loving summer...

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Seriously, laundry is my least favorite chore. What's yours?

I love summer. I love the hot. I love the blinding sunlight. I love the smell of sunscreen and chlorine, the sound of crickets singing, the endless days. And I love the food of summer.

When I was growing up, my parents kept a garden. It measured around 30 feet wide by 80 feet long. We had food overflowing our kitchen from July till I-don't-know-when. It was a rare Sunday that we went to church without a bag of produce to give to someone. My dad was always running around out there with his black socks, bermuda shorts and fisherman's hat pulling weeds and moving the sprinkler around. This was in Central Texas, so we're talking about a lot of sprinkler moving! My mom was always shelling some sort of pea or putting up something. She wore a floppy orange sunhat for her junkets into the garden, and my sister still has that hat resting in a place of honor in her living room.

My memories of food come from summertime. Thanksgiving was good, and mom's dressing was to die for. She made great candy and baked amazing things for Christmas. But summer is where my culinary heritage rests.

My dad was an airplane pilot and would be home for four or five days, and then gone overnight for two or three days. The youngest of my siblings is 10 years my senior, so I spent much of my childhood as an only child, and several days a week with just Mom. When Dad was home, it was a feast. Fat tomato slices, cucumber salad, buttery blackeyed peas, creamer potatoes, squash (a lot of it), fried okra, cantaloupe, and, in my memory, homemade fried chicken on most nights. That last part is probably not true, but it's how I remember things.

Mom fried her chicken in a big, old cast iron frying pan. When I was littler, and most of my brothers and sisters were still at home, she fried chicken every Sunday after church, and served it along with scrambled eggs, bacon and homemade biscuits. Later, Sunday lunch became a less celebrated meal in our home, but fried chicken still figured prominently in our weekly diet. My point here is that the woman could fry chicken.

But, where the food became amazing, was when Dad would be gone to fly. Mom wouldn't want to heat up the kitchen so much, so the two of us ate pretty much straight from the garden. BLT sandwiches were a common dinner. One of my favorites was a hard-boiled egg with cold asparagus and mayonnaise. Sliced zucchini and yellow squash with dips were always available, as were the ubiquitous tomato slices, sprinkled judiciously with salt and pepper. There was always sliced cantaloupe on the table.

My favorite, though, was the Vegetable Sandwich. First off, all summertime sandwiches were on white bread. Unfortunate as it may be, there is no other way. This goes for BLTs, egg salad, chicken salad, or whatever else you can come up with. So, you start with two slices of white bread - homemade is preferable if you have it on hand, but soft Mrs. Baird's is acceptable in a pinch. Put butter on one slice of bread, then pile it high with slices of tomato, cucumber, and onions. Top the vegetables with a slice of Monterey Jack cheese. Place it open-faced under the broiler until the cheese is melty, then spread Hellman's mayo on the other slice of bread, top the sandwich and place it back under the broiler until the bread is toasted. This is best served with fresh-from-the-garden cantaloupe and a glass of sweetened iced tea with lemon.

One of the treats in my life is sharing this food with my children and watching them love it. It is a bit crushing when they don't like something I loved. But this is easily remedied through a trick of my mother's to which I was blind, but that Bud picked up on soon after joining our family, "Just add a stick of butter like your mom did, and they'll love it. It worked on me."

Since I haven't been around for a while, I thought I'd just give y'all a quick run down of recent happenings.

The store is still cooking, I've got my hours to about 10 per week at the store/gym and probably 5-10 more at home. It has kind of sucked the life right out of me, so it's nice to have the hours back to a manageable level now.

I've gained weight. Blah. I need to get about 12 pounds off in the next month, because we booked a cruise for September based on the understanding that both Bud and I would lose 10 lbs. Bud already lost his. I've gained a couple. But, but, it's time for summertime eating. I'll be blogging about that very soon, but suffice it to say that this is a difficult time of year for me to diet. The deposit on the cruise becomes non-refundable next month, so I've gotta get the lbs off!

I've quit Diet Coke. Yep, I know none of you believe it, but it's true. I will order one at a restaurant, but I don't have it at home anymore. Pretty big improvement over having 6-8 cans of what I consider the Nectar of the Gods each day.

I've replaced Diet Coke with iced tea. Ah, well.

Luke has hair that rivals any rockstar any day. It is long. And he shows no signs of wanting a haircut. Bud told Luke he could grow it as long as he wants, and now Bud is regretting it big time. Luke also had two teeth pulled because the permanent ones were coming in behind the babies. This kid is almost unrecognizable from his pictures six months ago! It's heartbreaking really.

Peyton is just puttering along, doing things her own way. She just moves to her own rhythm in life, and I really admire it. I don't think peer pressure will ever have any allure to her. Right now she is learning to read by sheer willpower, because she is not ready to do it by any criteria you might find from any homeschooling resource. But, she has decided it's time to read, so read she will, even if it kills me.

We had a great year with Sonlight. It saved me really. I was pretty much depressed and overwhelmed for much of the year, and school was the light of my day. We had such a good time with it. The great thing that Sonlight did for me was to teach me what amount of work is appropriate for kids this age. When I started with Biblioplan last year, I had so much scheduled, it was just crushing us all. Sonlight seemed light and enjoyable after that! Now that I have a better grip on things we'll be starting with Ancients using SOTW1 and the Activity Guide, but also reading fun books we just *want* to read. I like the concept of literature complementing the history study, but in real life we need other books, too, and lots of them. So our history may not get all the fleshing out it could, but I think our education will be better this way. I know our attitudes will.

Bud is Bud. Sure and steady. His business is good these days which is nice for him. Next year, 2006, doesn't look as promising, so we're laying in stores right now, getting ready for the drought. He's been getting a lot of good guitar time lately, which generally makes him a happy camper. Now that it's light till 9 pm here, he spends a lot of his evenings teaching the neighborhood kids less violent versions of the games he and his friends used to play. (He's an inner city kid, so censorship is prudent here.)

All in all life is good. And IT'S SUMMER! Yes!

I remember tormenting my poor mother with cries of "I'm bored" throughout my childhood. Poor woman just wanted a little peace and quiet, but she had me bellyaching, so there was very little of either.

I don't recall my mother ever saying, "Just wait till you have children of your own!" She must have thought it, though, because Luke is avenging her with gusto.

This is how Camp Gitche Gumee* has come to life. Camp Gitche Gumee is my silly summer plan. I figured if I give the kids a bit of a schedule, include their friends in some of it, and make it sort of a game, then they will play happily on their own when I need to get some work done or, more importantly, read a book.

So here is the schedule of events for Camp Gitche Gumee, subject to change without notice, of course. Items marked with an asterisk are open to other neighborhood children, under 4 must have a parent accompany them. (Note: self-directed play is a polite euphemism for leave-mom-alone-for-a-little-while.)

Mondays & Fridays: Breakfast and Bible time, Nature Walk*, self-directed play, lunch and read aloud time, swimming 1*, independent reading, games*, swimming 2*, dinner.

Tuesdays & Thursdays: Breakfast and Bible, Science in the Park*, self-directed play, lunch and read aloud time, My Gym Camp, swimming*, dinner.

Wednesdays: Breakfast and Bible, library or other field trip on alternating weeks, swimming*, independent reading, and of course some self-directed play. Some of our field trip plans are the Science and Nature Museum (already done), blueberry picking, a trip to Heritage Homestead in Waco, the Fort Worth Zoo, and others. Bud's mom joins us on Wednesdays.

I put a dry erase board out front, and each day I list the activities that the neighborhood children may join us for. I place a cooler full of ice water on the front porch each morning with plastic cups labeled for each of the neighborhood kids. When I'm feeling particularly kind, I fill it with lemonade. This way I don't have 15 kids in my house for a drink of water.

Let me tell you, the response has been overwhelming. We've had between 8 and 15 kids on the nature walks, at least 10 for science, and any number for swimming. They are all enjoying the activities tremendously, especially the nature walks. And I am having a wonderful time. The schedule has helped me get disciplined about getting my stuff done and I am like a new person mentally with all the sunshine I've had.

You may think I'm crazy, but I love having the kids around. Not just my kids, but the neighborhood collection as well. Nobody ever really wanted to come to my house as a kid, and I was really bothered by that. I hope it will be different for my kids. It may mean a few more footprints tracked into the house, or higher grocery bills over time, but our family is blessed, and it is a joy to share our bounty with these precious creatures.

*The name Gitche Gumee is what the Native Americans called Lake Superior. It was referenced in Longfellow's Hiawatha and Gordon Lightfoot's Edmund Fitzgerald. Bud has been teaching Lightfoot's song to Luke on the guitar, and Luke and Peyton love to sing the part about Lake Gitche Gumee. So that's where the name for the camp came from. We had to look it up though, to make sure it didn't mean Sea of Death or somesuch. That would not bode well for a children's summer camp.