Summer Bucket List

 I'm kind of a list person.  I feel an inordinate sense of satisfaction by checking things off lists, and, so, I usually make daily lists.  The problem is, those lists spawn other lists.  Soon, I'm biting off more than I can chew and paralyzed by the very activity that was supposed to make me more productive. 

With summer just around the corner, all sorts of list-making opportunities loom ahead.  Travel, school for me, camp, and a rising kindergartner in our midst are all events that necessitate detailed, multi-page lists.  So, like everybody else, we have a lot to pack into a very short amount of time.

In an effort to keep our very busy summer FUN too, I made a list of course.  

But, this list has been neutered.  This is a list that will NOT beget more lists, nor will it spawn the evil twins guilt and regret for not completing every single activity.  It's simple, straightforward, and just detailed enough to give us purpose and direction. 

So, here goes:

Summer Bucket List
 
1.Go berry picking
2. See a baseball game
3. Check out the farmer's market
4. Set up a lemonade stand
5. Have an outdoor movie night
6. Make a water blob or splash pad in the backyard.
7. Make Ice Cream in a bag
8. Go on a fossil hunt and make dinosaur eggs
9. Watch Fireworks
10. Make flag T-shirts
11. Make Snoopy Sno-cones
12. Attend a Zoovie night.
13. Picnic at a concert in the park.
14. Play at the Parthenon and feed the ducks.
15. Host a backyard camp-out.
16. One word says it all: DISNEY! (Probably will regret doing this one in mid-June with a few hundred-thousand of our closest friends.)
17. Make lanyards
18. Go fishing 
19. Take a family photo on the beach.
20. Go ice skating or roller skating (Might regret this one, too.)
21. Go to the planetarium 
22. Take baths outside (Kids, not parents).
23. Ride a ferris wheel.
24. Host a firefly hunting party!

Sarah's Mother's Day Interview

Let's see how well Sarah knows me. 

Sarah Tells All!

I'd like to think that the "wind" superpower she talks about is influenced by all of the Ninjagos we've been watching.  But, maybe she just thinks I nag and yell too much...

I like to cook, huh? 

I like to eat.  Cooking is just a side-effect. 

By the way,  I'm intrigued by this "discussion" Sarah had with a little girl at school.  I hope it didn't involve scratching or hair-pulling...

Have a happy Thursday!

Will's Mother's Day Interview

I did some interviews like this last year for Father's Day (here and here), so I thought I'd try it this year for ME.  

I love the little surveys that kids fill out about their parents, but only one of my kids can write.  And she can't spell.  

So, here's Will's interview all about moi!   (It's in two parts because a fight broke out in the middle, and the interviewer had to referee the match and put interviewees in Time Out.)

I wonder if that ever happens to Barbara Walters...

Will in the Hot Seat, Part One 


And here's part two.  Don't even ask why one is a link and the other one is up here.  
                                                   Me + technology + my kids = mess

Sarah's in the hot seat tomorrow.

 Happy Wednesday!

Eight Years

Today is our eighth wedding anniversary.  

I was looking for pictures on the computer, but I guess they all got moved over to the backup hard drive.  Since I'm a little bit afraid of that device, I had to settle for taking pictures of pictures from our wedding album.  

First and last time that's happened.

Favorite picture from that day

One of my most vivid memories from the wedding festivities was actually at the rehearsal.   We were up at the altar, and I was repeating my vows when my voice hitched and my eyes welled, and the enormity of the pact we were entering into hit me full-force.

Our wedding cake was an enormous strawberry shortcake, fresh, light,
and the best cake I've ever had.

It was a great day, but we've had even better days since.  

Sarah and Will get kind of offended that they weren't invited.

Here's a little trivia for you:  I approached Mike first and asked him to dance 

at a bar in Ft. Lauderdale.  

He turned me down.

At first.  

Then he came back over, we started fresh, and the rest is history.  Or current events.  

Grillin' for Girls

The roles at our house are pretty traditionally broken down: I take care of the stuff inside the house, Mike takes care of the outside.  In other words, I don't cut grass, I don't get on the roof, and I don't kill varmints.  

As the sage Suzanne Sugarbaker once said, 

"The MAN should have to kill the BUG."

Blame it on my upbringing, but that's how the work broke down when I was growing up.  I scooped the dog poop; my brother cut the grass.  Dad grilled the meat; Mom made everything else.  The dogs took care of the varmints; Dad removed them from the porch.  Mike gets on the roof; I keep the kids from knocking over the ladder.

Lately, though, there's been a shift in my way of thinking.  At least when it comes to grilling.  Everything tastes better when it's grilled.  My kids (Sarah, in particular) will eat ANYTHING off the grill.  We all eat healthier, fresher, and lighter meals when the grill is involved.  But, if we have to wait for Mike to get home to fire things up, then it's really only an option one or two days a week.  Not cool.

So, the other night, I took the bull by the tongs.  We had chicken about to go bad, and hungry kids to get ready for choir practice.  I grilled up that chicken in a total of 30 minutes.  And it was gooooooood.

With that one quick decision, I discovered the truth behind the best-kept secret in the 
Guide to Being a Guy:  Grilling is just not that hard.

Seriously.  

Every time we grill, Mike (and most men I know) go through this intricately choreographed dance involving precise temperatures, exact timing, and resting meat.  They are completely at the mercy of fire and protein, offering sacrifices and prayers 
for a good sear and crisp grill marks.
  
My version of grilling is much simpler than that.  Here are a few things I learned in my first few forays into grilling:

1. Start the fire and then wait awhile.  Apparently, you don't want to stick the meat on right away, in the middle of a bonfire.
2. Just like oven cooking, resist the urge to crank up the heat, or in this case stick your protein directly over the flames.  Direct heat = food that tastes and looks like a charcoal briquette.
3. Don't forget to close the lid.
4. Hamburger patties cook a LOT faster than chicken.  I learned this the hard way, with a phone call to my dad.
5. Contrary to popular male belief, it's ok to multitask while grilling.  And I don't mean having a drink in one hand and tongs in the other.  It IS possible to make your sides while grilling the main course.
6. Don't forget about the stuff on the grill.  (Another learning-by-doing lesson.)
7. Your hair will smell like grill.  Just go with it. 
8. The under-4-feet crowd will want to "help".  Between the raw meat and open flames, about the only thing mine could do was add the seasoning, which makes for interesting flavor combos.

Mike told me my burgers were a little crunchy.

I think he was mad because I went all Myth Busters on his grilling.  

I still think he should have to kill the bugs.

Lemony Lemonade Clothes

Remember how Will asked for his own lemonade-selling uniform?  

Ask and you shall receive, my friend.  

The perfect t-shirt to wear while drinking more product than you sell.  I just appliqued a little lemony-fella onto a shirt I already had for the man, and drew on a face and the stem-thingy. 

Of course, Sarah Jr. wasn't off the hook for a uniform either. 

I used one of my favorite sundress patterns ever (and it's FREE) found here.  

Now, before you get all like "Seriously, lady, get a hobby and stop sewing doll clothes," know that from start to finish, this dress took a YEAR to complete.  Not because it was so complicated, but because I'm that distractible.  

And most of the time I should be doing something else besides sewing.  Like getting a job.  Or making sure my kids stay alive.  But sewing is so much more relaxing than those other pesky activities. 

Have a great Friday!

Laundry Day

Sarah goes to kindergarten next year.  I know she'll rise to the challenge like she always does, but it still doesn't seem possible.  I mean, we just brought her home from the hospital, like, YESTERDAY. 

Since she'll be among the youngest in her class, I want to try to prepare her as much as possible.  But it's kind of hard.  If she gets the slightest whiff of teach-iness from me, she goes into Evil Twin mode and all bets are off.  

There are some ways around her resistance to be taught by me.  The first involves an elaborate Cold War-esque ruse to wrap a lesson in a mystery inside an enigma, but I don't really have the patience for that.  The alternative is to sneak a little learning into playtime.  That's so easy with this age group, since the lines are still blurred between learning and fun.  

One thing I've noticed we need to work on with Sarah is fine motor skills.  Girlfriend is a triple-threat in dancing, baseball, and pool-noodle sword-fighting, but not so much on buttoning, snapping, or Legos.  If a tiny Barbie shoe gets stuck in a toy truck, she'll pass it off to Will "Meat Hooks" Brown, because, for whatever reason, he's got the hand strength
 and fine motor skills to fix stuff.  

Mostly because he breaks stuff in the first place. 

I've been giving her a lot of sewing, beading, and Play-Doh playing to do, and I've been looking into some other ways to sneak fine motor in. One of the activities
I've been meaning to do for awhile now is to have her hang clothes on a clothesline.  Simple, right?  But all of that pinscer-gripping is perfect for building strength in those little digits and getting them nice and strong for writing.

The other day, I finally got around to setting up a clothesline in the back yard. I gave her some clothespins and clothes, and away she went!

I'd seen Busy Bags with felt clothing for kids to string up, but I figured we'd use the real thing.  So, I hauled out some old baby clothes that I can't bear to part with, put them in a laundry basket, and brought them outside.

Both kids thought it was HILARIOUS that they could have been small enough to fit in some of those newborn onesies.  
Sarah thinks Dreft is the second-best smell in the world.  

Right behind cookies.

Will wasn't amused to the point of being motivated to abandon his mud pie.  

However, Sarah had a blast "hanging the wash" and practicing whistling while she worked.  

Believe it or not, it was a fun little activity for her, and it required minimal setup and zero cost for me.  I count that as a win-win all the way around.

Next up on my to-do list is to start a Mommy and Me journal, where we write/draw notes back and forth.  She's going to smell the lesson in that one a mile away.