Overgrown.

Sometimes, it's obvious when things in our lives are overgrown. Take these two nameless shrubs off our deck. They have had a good time growing this Spring but clearly, their growth was out of control. By the time I realized I'd need to give them a serious trim they were just starting to bud. They produce sprigs of tiny white flowers that smell so good!
Sitting in the kitchen on a breezy day, you can breathe in their sweet-smelling goodness. So I'd need to wait until after they'd bloomed to cut them back.

Sadly, they were still blooming when I pruned them. They were so overgrown that we were left with barely 1' of clearance on our 4' wide steps. Stepping through that jungle was really beginning to interfere with our daily lives. They screened most of the yard from our view out the kitchen doorwall and were shading my plants on the deck.


Here's the larger of the two shrubs in process. It was amazing how overgrown and out of control it had become.

The after. They're still a bit too tall; I like to be able to sit on the deck and see the entire pool and yard. Taking off too much more would've made them look pretty mangy and I'd rather them look nice.

Things get overgrown in nature and they can get overgrown in our lives. We have a lot of overgrowth in our family that could stand some pruning. Ranging from the crazy school-year calendar, the time spent on video games and computers and TV, the amount of food we eat and even  time spent worried about what we can't control, the things in life that require pruning are numerous and varied.

What's overgrown in your life?

Quotable Kids

The kids are enjoying Day Camp at our church this week. Day Camp is run by 4 able-bodied, God-loving college age kids who travel from congregation to congregation, teaching the children all sort of fun things about God, nature, crafts and of course, crazy camp songs.

One of the leaders is from Latvia and the kids have been all abuzz about her accent and that she can do "a really awesome British accent!" Interesting.

I asked the boys yesterday after Day Camp how did this counselor come to be at Day Camp? I was wondering how a young college aged kid leaves Latvia to be a Lutheran Day Camp counselor here in Michigan.

Brett's response--totally serious, mind you--"Mom, she took a plane."

Gotta love Brett.

Power-less.

It's amazing what a difference a little power makes.

I Googled the word "power" and came up with a few interesting definitions:

In physics, it's the rate at which work is performed or energy is converted
In math, it's an exponentiated number, such as in xn
In philosophy, it's the ability to control one's environment or other entities

I stopped when I got to the philosophical definition of power. When I think about my environment, there are a few things I have power over. I have power over what shoes my kids wear. I have power over what gets planted in my perennial garden (pinks, purples, whites and true yellows, please). I even have power over the remote.
 
Yet I truly do not have power over my environment. I have no power when it comes to the weather. I have no power over Bryce's food allergies. This weekend, food allergies and weather crashed into each other, rendering me exrememly powerless. Food allergies and severe weather--really, do they have anything in common?
 
We are powerless over both. We can't predict the weather with 100% accuracy just as we can't predict an allergic reaction. We can't control the weather-although we do cloud seeding to try to make it rain-we can't control those clouds.  We can't control food allergies-although we clean and wash and worry-we can't control the allergies.

We have to deal with their aftermath. When severe weather strikes all you can do is hold on for the ride and pray . When an allergic reaction happens all you can do it hold on for the ride and pray. (well, and give appropriate medications).

We were powerless this weekend, due to severe storms that blew through our area. While is it not fun for anyone to be without power, it's especially not fun to try to feed a toddler when you don't have power. Bryce is used to certain foods at certain times prepared certain ways. When we lose power, we lose the ability to prepare the foods we know he will (and more importantly CAN) eat. We can't simply order takeout. His food has to be homemade. We survived the 40 hours without power. Bryce ate. We tossed a lot of spoiled food-but we all survived.

I've started a list of items to have on hand for Bryce to eat should the power go out. Because I don't ever want to feel so power-less over being powerless again.

Parties, Not The Calendar, Mean The End of 6th Grade.

It is with great authority that I say, "School is different from when I was a kid." My children attend the same public school system that I did. That makes me an authority, I guess.

I don't have a lot of vivid memories of my elementary school days, but I remember enough to know that we didn't close out the school year with 47 parties of varying complexity and massive parental involvement. I seem to recall the "big event" which celebrated the end of the school year was Field Day.

Field Day itself is different. When I was in elementary school in the 70's and very early 80's, Field Day was a COMPETITION. Kids LOST. Kids WON. We didn't all get ribbons-only the WINNERS got ribbons. Field Day is now fun activities like ring toss and everyone gets a participation award. Huh.
I think we might've enjoyed popsicles outside after Field Day. Or maybe it was watermelon. Or maybe we got to sit in the dark and watch a filmstrip after Field Day was done. Or maybe it was just being excited about spending a day outside & ending the day with the big TUG OF WAR between the classrooms. I don't remember. I don't feel scarred due to lack of end of year parties.

I do know that we didn't have a picnic for 1st/2nd graders, a Math Club popsicle party, a 5/6th grades pizza party, a 6th grade sendoff w/cake & "yearbooks", a 5/6th grade swim party (again with pizza), an all school picnic and a 6th grade "clap out". Wow.

June signals the end of the school year, but it's the parties that make it official.

New Look--Same Ol' Blog.

It's summer spring, so I thought I'd try a new layout for the blog. I've felt that the old background was nice, but might be a little dark & hard to read, so here's the new sky blue layout. I like it! Watch for other changes, like monetizing, adding feeds and email options, too. See that little envelope thingie down there by the labels? You can click that to email my words of amazing wisdom to all of your peeps.

Hold on to your hats, this old 40-something girl is learning new tricks!

FAAN Responds to Department of Transportation Proposal - FAAN

This is an ongoing battle--how to keep peanut allergic travellers save while flying. For our family, the answer is simple: no flying. D.O.T. is working to come to some sort of resolution regarding peanuts/tree nuts and air travel. My hope is that they just prohibit them like cigarettes.
FAAN Responds to Department of Transportation Proposal - FAAN

Quote of the Week.

Heard in the backseat of our van:

Brett: (pushing open disc drive on laptop computer) "what's this?" (hands Brendan a 3.5 floppy)

Brendan: "It's a floppy disc. Wow, this computer is REALLY OLD!"

All we could do is chuckle. The computer is an old one given to the kids-is it that old if it's from this decade? I guess if you're 12, anything with a 3.5" floppy IS old.

Bryce At School

Bryce qualified a few months ago for the Early On program, which is aimed at helping the preschool set gain skills they are lacking. You have to be at approximately 1/2 your age behind in some way in order to qualify. Bryce qualified not because of his speech, but because of his eating, or lack there of. His eating skills, at the time he was assessed, were equivalent to a child of about 6 months of age. Services are interesting, he receives speech at our home every week, OT at our home every other week, and then once a week we go to "toddler group" with other 2 year old children and their caregivers for 1 hour of "school".

I have to admit, going to his school is NOT the highlight of my week. I'm a nervous wreck, first of all, because of his food allergies. They do have a school nurse which is nice-and she seems to be on the ball-but there are hundreds of people trekking through that building every day. Touching things. Licking things. Breathing peanut butter breath and spilling cups of milk. I almost need a Xanax just to attend. Bryce is in the group that does not receive snack, so that is one less thing to worry about.

I'm also not convinced that going to toddler group is going to help. Bryce is a lot different from the bulk of the children there. He ONLY has feeding issues and speech issues. There are children there who are autistic (and toddler group is very upsetting for them, poor things), there are kids who have shunts and kids who have very obvious fine/gross motor issues. Many of them are tiny. I'm not sold on this idea that going to a class for 60 minutes per week with children who don't talk will help him talk. But he seems to be liking it a little, so that's good.

Here's some photos of Bryce, doing his thing at school.

Veggie Garden

I'm kicking myself for not planting more onions. I planted about 90 or so sets of yellow and white and they are doing great! We've had TRIPLE the amount of rain we normally receive, so I think that's part of the reason. Plus my superior gardening skills, hee hee.

I can't even say how pleased I am with the strawberries. I'm seriously considering letting them spread and take up the entire 4x8 bed. If I did that, we'd have enought to freeze or make jam-PLUS some to eat. Protected by a net structure, we've lost ZERO to birds. Hmm, where to plant rasberries???

Another pint picked!I should add that my strawberry connoisseurs, Brett and Brendan, initially balked at the size of our strawberries. They are TINY compared to what you can purchase at the store. I explained about genetically modifying all produce to make it grow bigger, grow faster, go bad slower. I also explained that you lose flavor when you do that. The boys agree-homegrown taste better and have better color than store bought!
The asparagus. Ugh. The asparagus. This stuff is just ridiculous! For reference, that is a 6' wood fence. I literally take a hedge clipper to it and slash it back to a manageable 4'. Left unchecked it will grow upwards of 8'. It's ugly and blocks out the sun to the rest of the beds near it.
Now the peas, on the other hand, are a keeper. Even with some trellis malfunction issues (the string we used as a cheapie trellis rotted out!), the peas are happily doing their pea-thing. I'll plant more in July for a Fall harvest.

How Does My Garden Grow?

I don't know how it's growing because some pesky varmits are EATING IT!
This is varmit #1, the smallest. I've named him IVAN. Yep. Ivan the Terrible Rabbit.

This is the worst year for rabbits, EVER. I truly can't recall such an abundance of the little long eared suckers. They're everywhere. When I pull into the driveway in the late evening, I usually see 2, sometimes 3, hopping away.

They are living the high life in my lavender. Literally-IN my lavender. They've made themselves a nice little LIVING sachet, all bedded down in the wood chips. I know that's where they are sleeping because when they scamper out in the early morning I always get a waft of lavender.

They are mocking me.

They nibble just enough from my petunias to wreck the blooms and let the plant live. Barely.


They nibble at my perennial bachelor buttons. They even had the GALL to nibble off a blossom AND LEAVE IT LAYING THERE, mocking me.

They nibble my asters down to nubs. Goodbye, late summer blooms.


I do miss our pooch. A combo of his "morning constitutional" (thanks, APP) and his daily brushings kept the rascals out of sight. I've had offers of a wrist rocket deadeye, suggestions of blood meal and human hair. Hmmm.

For now, they are safe. They can mock me-as long as they let my garden grow.

1st Class Scout!

In his Troop's Court of Honor last night, Brendan and his Patrol-mates were all awarded their 1st Class rank. They went from new Boy Scout to 1st Class in 1 year. Pretty amazing! Brendan's on the end, wearing his sash. His Patrol won the Patrol contest & a pizza party for the best attendance/uniforming/activities contest. This is a 3-peat for them-the third time in a row that they've won. Cool stuff.









Here he is-home from his COH. He's now earned 6 badges, 3 of which are req's for Eagle. He received his First Aid and his Environmental Science last night. He'll earn 5 more at Summer Camp and 1 at Bass Pro Shops this summer, so he'll start off the year with 12 badges. Not too shabby. He's wearing his Gr. Grandpa's neckerchief and slide. The slide is from the 50th BSA Jamboree, the 100th is this year. He likes to wear this necker/slide combo for COH, a more "formal" occasion.

My Baby Can Read. Sort Of.

Have you seen the infomercial for the "Your Baby Can Read"? It shows these youngsters in diapers, "reading" flashcards of words they've seen on a DVD and on the flashcards. The kids memorize the shapes of the words in order to "read" them.

Case in point-Bryce. I do not see the need to constantly flashcard a baby/toddler to train him to "read", but sometimes that just happens in life-accidently.

I have to chuckle, as a friend recently posted video of her son "reading" the animal names on some sturdy cards & matching the word to the right animal. Good for him. But Bryce-can he "read" animal cards? Nope. He "reads" STORE LOGOS. Nice.

A Meijer ad was on TV and they show the logo at the end of the ad. Bryce starts pointing and saying "Muhmuh" which we FINALLY figured out was Meijer. Great. First word the kid says spontaneously is Meijer. Guess I should cut back the shopping.

Strawberries, Part 2.

Ok. The strawberries have been given a reprieve and they can stay. I might even let them spread a little more. The strawberries were mounded quite high in this bowl; the kids have really made a dent. There's more ripening so in a few days we'll have another large bowl to pick. So far, we've picked about 2 pints and 1 quart out of our little patch. With a little spreading we could end up having enough next year to make jam. Or just to eat until we never want to eat another strawberry again.

Splash!

The soccer fields were a bit wet today after last night's massive storms. Ok, they were downright SOAKED. And so were the kids-who really enjoyed splashing the ball through the puddles.


Everyone scored today-Brett got 2.

June Means Baseball!

Coach-pitch baseball, to be exact. This means the coach pitches to his own team and the coaches are also in the field defensively helping the kids with where to throw the ball, who covers 2nd, that sort of thing.

MUCH different that when I was little when you learned by the big girls yelling at you. The neighborhood I grew up in had (and still does) a pretty nice softball league, not co-ed. It was for 1st-6th graders and every team had an even distribution of little kids and big kids. They even had a "draft" of sorts where they made sure each team wasn't stacked too heavy with big kids. My Dad was my coach & I remember him coming home disappointed or happy about which girls he had or had not gotten. He was always stuck with me, though, ha ha. When I was one of the "big kids" I recall being on-deck and thinking "great. A 1st grader. I'm not gonna even get up." And I can vaguely remember being a 1st grader, a tad afraid of making a mistake for fear of the big girls hollering at me.

But it's different in 2010. Kids play t-ball and then coach pitch and both are co-ed through 2nd grade. Teams are divied up by birthday, so there are no 6th graders yelling at 1st grader. In 3rd grade, it's same gender teams and the kids rely a little less on the coach. I'm still a bit old-school, prefering the "throw the kids to the wolves" method of instruction. Sink or swim.

Brett had his first game last week and did well. We need to tweak his swing a bit and work on his baserunning, too. He seemed right at home at 2nd base (my own home for many years) and just loves playing.







Taking a swing-got a solid single. If you look closely, you can see the shadow of the ball. Yeah. I got that on purspose, ha ha.




Waiting (impatiently) for the throw for the force-out at 2nd that never came.

Memorial Day Weekend

Was spent outside at home. It was hot, sunny and perfect for the kids to swim and play and for Brad and I to get a LOT of yardwork completed. The neighbor joked with us that we were trying to get a summer's worth of yardwork completed in one weekend. Partially true. Bryce limits my ability to take care of heavy yard work during the day and our crazy schedule the rest of the time means we put off a lot of projects.


These are purple iris, taken from my Gramma's garden in West Virginia many years ago. I've have a rough time with these guys, they seem to be very picky about being thinned out more regularly than I tend to do. I thinned them heavily early this spring and was rewarded with a lot of blooms.










Bryce enjoyed doing scrubbing work and playing in his shallow wading pool. The big boys spent 5 or more hours each day playing IN "their" pool.


Here's Bryce in his little pool. He was so great about leaving his hat on while outside. It was beastly hot and the UV index was at 9. He's so fair, we worry about him getting sunburned. He initially balked at putting on a swim diaper, but as the weekend progressed he got upset if we DIDN'T put him in a swim diaper.

Strawberries!

The 4'x4' section of strawberries is FINALLY producing this year, after threats from me for their immediate removal if we were berriless again. The kids picked about 8oz last night and ate all of them. Bryce couldn't keep out of them. He ended up with the red juice all over his hands and face-very cute. The big boys ate their fill (amazingly, they're not as messy as Bryce!) and they should be able to pick more today. Organic, ripened on the plant. Good stuff.

Grapes. Rice. Strawberries. Blackberries.

The title says it all, but it truly started with the banana.

Over Memorial weekend he "ate" some grapes. I say "ate" because he mostly gnawed out their insides. See photo.

He ate rice. One grain at a time-but he ate it.

He ate 1 whole strawberry, cut into sections. He licked a blackberry. Didn't much like it, but he licked it.

This is blog-worthy because whenever Bryce eats it's blog-worthy. We all sat at the table with him while he ate that rice, grain by grain, and ate that strawberry.

I can't wait until writing about Bryce eating really is NOT blog-worthy.

6th Grade Band Concert

Brendan had his final Band Concert of his elementary career last night. For a group of 6th graders, they have a great sound. They played 9 pieces and have only had 4 full practices on several of the pieces. Good job, Wildcats!

I didn't manage to snap a picture of Brendan alone at the concert. So here's one out front of the school afterwards, with Bryce.

Welcome, June!

June is our busiest summer month. The boys have, including today, 12.5 more days of school which means a sprint to June 17th. Hold on to your hats-here's what is on our calendar:

A 6th grade band concert, 6th grade send off, the 6th grade clap-out on the last day of school, a 1st/2nd grade picnic, a 5th/6th grade swim party, a polar animal exhibit and all of Bryce's OT, speech and school. Add in soccer practice, the final 2 soccer games, baseball practice, the start of baseball games, Cub Scout leadership meeting, the Rouge Clean Up day Scout service project, camping out at the Toledo Mudhens, Court of Honor for Boy Scouts, Day Camp at church, Cub Scout Day Camp and prepping/packing Brendan for Boy Scout Camp. Oh yeah, throw in a few birthday parties for good measure.

I'll be ready to welcome July by about June 17th.