Fall is Here

Fall being here generally means I can update my kid ages.  Indy turns 10 a few days after the first official day of fall, and then the 95-day stretch in between the beginning of kid birthdays and the end of kid birthdays is over.  June, July, August and finally, September, knocks 'em all out.

Like this:

Chaser turns 12.  12!!  Omg. 

He is too cool for home-baked cake.  Cheesecake Factory gets a visit. 

 Riley turns 5, and requests Red, White and Blue Rice Krispie treats for her friend celebration.  

RJ turns 3, big sis Indigo decorates his cake special with Thomas. 

She is pretty good with that icing pointy-thing. 

Indy turns 10. 

I have no cake pic because we took it with our other camera that I don't know how to get pics off of yet. 

So now we have fully upgraded - in 95 days, from 11, 9, 4 and 2 to 12, 10, 5 and 3.  I can stop stumbling over their ages now. 

Cross that off the list.  Done.  

Also somewhere in those 95 days (also mostly called summer, as Chase's birthday falls a day before Summer begins and Indy's 2 days after Fall begins, so yeah, summer), we did some other stuff.

The gardens produced for us.....

...and we ate well....

....and we made pickles, sweet and spicy, mmm, mmm, mmm!

The best-tasting potatoes ever!

This is called Plant-to-Mouth Gardening.

Cleaning and snipping green beans.

More cucumbers anyone??? 

Some people slept during local town fairs.  Don't worry, I ate his platter of delicious Polish fare, as to not be wasteful.

We threw in some school for good measure:

This tiny traveler hopped on a plane with her grandparents to visit her great-grandparents in SC.  

And this shaggy-headed tot scoured Pinterest for the perfect new 'do:

Lookin' cool, RJ!

We worked on the farmhouse.

Somehow I still end up like this before 7am on most days (view clock in background for proof)...

Soccer started for Riley in town and Chase out of town.  It wouldn't be nearly as much fun if they played in the SAME town, you know.

RJ still finds afternoon grocery shopping to be an ideal time for a nap. 

Let me explain this cart for a minute, lest we look bad - the Lunchable is for Riley, it's been explained that this is the only one she will ever get because they are fake and nasty (she heard about them and was curious, and for $2 I let her experience it), the Boston Market frozen meals are for my neighbor, who has a love affair with them and can't find them in his regular store anymore, and the Potato Chips are mine.  Because I deserve them, dammit.

Another nap in another store. 

I visited an allergist for the first time in, oh, 28 years.  I thought a few things might come up. 

Confirmed.  Nature hates me.  This here back of mine, which came up in less than a minute, caused quite a stir in the allergist's office, and I did not have to go the whole 20 minutes, because I was maxed out on everything in about 5 and they were starting to worry, standing by with epinephrine, and clipboards, they all had clipboards.  They brought interns in from another part of the hospital to have a gander at the Super-Allergic Patient in Room #2.  Glad I can be so helpful.  See that non-reactive spot on the left side?  That's feathers.  I can be around feathers, out of all the environmentals.  That's it.  Feathers.

Since my back was filled up, they hit my arm for some more.  This here's me reacting to the entire Farm, and some foods that I already suspected because they make my mouth super-itchy, like Avocado and Apples.  It was a fun time.  I'll post more about that adventure later, mostly because according to the test, I'm SEVERELY ALLERGIC TO PEANUTS.  Except I don't react and I eat peanuts all the time.  So, ha, take that all you Bumper Sticker Moms - I was right!  Most of you don't actually need to teach your kid to hassle Moms with Granola Bars that are in a 1-mile radius of them. 

And, more excitingly, we rode THOMAS! (I'm also not allergic to trains.  Good thing.)

Peep, Peep!

Is Anybody Out There???

Yeah, it's been two whole months since I've been here.  It's more than a little dusty.  Coincidentally, the blog drop-off and the start of baseball season have a significant correlation...

This is what late April and May looked like:

Softball practice, softball game, keep smalls engaged without getting into poison ivy or falling off bridge into creek or blowing $30 at the snack stand or losing my mind, softball practice, softball game, run into field after bolting toddler, redirect, redirect, redirect.   Repeat.  Girls' Minors' Coaches were awesome, they all learned a lot about the game and true sportsmanship.  Softball players are boisterous, cheering, chanting little ladies and it is a joy to watch their togetherness.  I love when everyone cheers for everyone.

And our First Year Majors Player, "Bulldog."  Some of the kids' games were at the same fields, at the same time, or only an hour overlap.  Some games were at the same fields, but hours apart (which in parent terms, means your whole day is F'ed anyway, because you're either getting ready for baseball, waiting for baseball again, or recovering from baseball).  And some fabulous-o games were at DIFFERENT fields at the same time.  These were terribly fun.  Chase made some great plays in the outfield this year and enjoyed being on the White Sox with a super-fun coach.  Majors Baseball Players are serious about their game, they have mad skills (most of the just-for-fun kids have dropped out by now) and make some really awesome plays from all angles of the game.  At the end of the season, the team went to one of the coach's Karate studios, and Roger drove them all in the bus, which either made us the Cool Parents, or the Really Weird Parents, we're not sure...

But the crazy baseball season was worth it....

Because, in June:

"WE.... ARE..... THE...... CHAMPIONS.... MY FREH-END..."  Sing it, Freddie!  

Yeah, both teams won big.  Very exciting stuff.

A few other things happened in May:

 Our peas and other things started to grow.  This made us very happy.  We watered them everyday, since none of that stuff was coming down from the sky at all... 

We tried (and tried and tried and tried) to patch our animal-in-the-shed-eaten pool.  The kids enjoyed the 10 inches of water for a while before we gave up.

We grilled.  Until the grill caught on fire.  Then we nabbed another one out of someone's trash.  Then we caught that one on fire, too.  There's usually a reason when people throw their grills out.

There was some of this.  I would tell you what "this" was, if I knew... 

We played in mud.  Okay, correction, THEY played in mud.  I just got stuck with laundry duty.  For the ones wearing clothes, that is.  That RJ, he's just so thoughtful...

This one pottied his heart out, and his pee and poop out.  He's completely independent some days, and doesn't care at all on other days.  All this time I thought that was a hat on his head, it appears to be a pair of underwear... I have no explanation.  

And in early June (besides a shit-ton of play-off games and bringing home 2 championship trophies): 

We supported by brother's non-profit by participating in the 2nd Annual Glo Run in Harrisburg, which raised money to replace street lights in the city.  It was a late night for us with the race starting at 8:40 (so we could all GLOW, duh!).  Riley at 4 was the youngest runner and got a time of 66 minutes.  She ran some, she walked some.  She stopped to watch the fireworks three times.  She stopped to watch the band play.  She stopped to make it echo under the bridge.  I guess we'll have to work on continuity... 

They Just Wouldn't Understand...

All parents have this feeling every now and then, some more often than others.  The one where they stop and think about something that just happened, and ultimately determine that people who don't have children just wouldn't understand.  These feelings occur when something goes down in your house that is usually less than socially acceptable, perhaps gross and disgusting, and probably involves your younger children but may or may not also involve your husband and older kids.  And it is definitely something that you KNOW your childless friends, either those by choice or those who just haven't procreated yet, would absolutely be shocked by.

If you've been a Mom for a while, you're not phased by these things at all, in fact, you respond to them in the same tone and manner that you respond when someone tells you it's 11 o'clock, or the coffee's ready, or the trash is full (again).  

Here's some recent examples from our house:

Riley to Mom - "Look Mom!"  I made a birthday cake for you!"  She holds up some collection of food-style toys with pride.
Mom (while chopping veggies for dinner at the counter) to Riley - " Oh, wow!  It's so... wait.... why don't you have pants on?"

Mom to RJ - "Can you PLEASE get your head OUT of the toilet??"  For the zillionth time today.  I'm not really sure why.  And of course, it's usually not one of our toilets at home I'm talking about, it's some other really interesting toilet out in PUBLIC.  Ewwwww.

Roger to Mom, after chugging the nearly-full glass of water on the kitchen counter - "Was there something in this water?"
Mom to Roger, after turning away from whatever it was she was doing to analyze the situation - "Oh. Yeah.  Chase's Mirilax....."
I nearly died laughing.

Mom to RJ, who appears to be chewing and is not at the table - "What are you eating?"
RJ flashes Mom a goofy grin.
Mom to RJ, as she bends down to inspect - "Are you eating your boogers?"
RJ bats his eyelashes, smacks his lips, and runs away.

Children are in the yard watching an ant family try to move their stuff after being disturbed by a rock that moved.  RJ is trying to catch ants. He gets one on his arm and is uber excited.
Riley to Mom - "Look, Mom, RJ got an ant!"
Mom to Riley - "Great, hon."
Riley outloud - "Wait, not anymore."
Mom to Riley, trying to make conversation - "Did he hop off?"
Riley to Mom - "No, RJ just ate him."

Mom to kids - "Why are the pretzel rods mushy?"
Riley to Mom - "Because I only like the salt, so I put them back."


So as I'm writing this, I realized that I should mention that these 6 examples are just from the past 4 days.  I just had to write some of them down.

FARMHOUSE UPDATE

Beyond that, we've been at the farmhouse a wee bit, making slow, steady progress.  Now that it's almost fully enclosed, it should pick up pace soon.

Roger's been working on modifying the bus, so that the kids can hang out in it when we start spending evenings and weekends over at the farmhouse to get the inside done.  More than 16 passengers means one of us had to get a CDL, so we took out ten seats.  We created storage space in the back for when we're road-trippin', and flipped some seats around, Roger made tables to go in between for hours of games or hours of school.  A visit to the junkyard is in order to pick up seat belts, not required but Mom-requested.  Back-up cameras are in transit and one of our spare monitors will become a TV screen for movies on long drives.  The auto tag place apparently doesn't stock Omnibus license plates (who knew?) so we're still waiting for the state to come through on that one, even though it is technically legally licensed and registered.

HOUSE RENO UPDATE

The trim in the new hall bath got a coat of paint, and it looks AWESOME!  I have photos to share another time.  

HOMESCHOOL UPDATE

School has been happening for 9 months.  9 months!  Whoa.  Crazy, right?  It's been kind of a whirlwind.  We added pieces slowly into our routine over the course of it, and now have a generally regular list of Phonics, Reading Comp, Daily Journal, Creative Writing, Spelling, and Math on most days. Phys Ed is at least twice a week formally at the YMCA and more often informally with bike riding, running around with friends or throwing a ball outside, Science and Social Studies (including Geography) happen a few times a week or sometimes for days in a row when we're really into something, iCivics.org has been influential especially for Chase who has taken a real interest in the Constitution and Civil Rights.  Creative Writing was a struggle to get in the habit of.  Neither older kid seemed to have come away from public school with a general know-how for writing fluently, so we had to backtrack and work on that before we could really start producing anything.  Art is different for everyone, Chase prefers more hands-on mediums and Indy has been doing a lot of sketching with different types of chalk and charcoal.  Music is lessons at school, and spring concerts are in a week or two.  Somehow it has all come together, and it's not weird anymore.  Warmer weather days are sometimes a blessing, as in, motivation to get done and get outside, but sometimes a curse, as in, no one can concentrate because that strange-thing-that-was-gone-for-SO-long-called-the-sun is shining brightly and beckoning to everyone to forget school and enjoy it.  We have 16 "official" more days to log before, in the eyes of the state, we can be "done."  This works out great, in that I'll have plenty of time to have my evaluator review our little homeschool and get her letter into the district with plenty of time to spare.  It seems to have gone by so fast!

That's all I got for now, except that I noticed when I view the page from a different computer, there's random words in the recent posts that are linked to ads, which is really pissing me off.  I don't know why it's doing it, and I haven't had time to look into it.  The next time I accidentally drink two cups of coffee at 7pm, I'll hit the 'net and find out why.  Except that wasn't fun the other night, being up until 2am not on purpose and being so tired at the same time.  I eventually got out of bed and completely cleaned out my side of the closet - which then led to a 3-day event of attic, kid-stuff and clothing clean-out.  Two trips to the thrift store with the back of the Excursion full... oh yeah, I feel a whole lot lighter!

A Little Bit of Everything

"In cleaning out your basement, you will find great and necessary things!", said No One Famous.

We've been on a warpath to attack some of the projects on our Master List during the last few months.  Me and my husband-who-never-sits-down.

Plans around here are always tied into, well, everything else, and we can't get one thing actually finished without starting or ripping out something else that is somehow necessary to completing the first thing.  I'll give you an example - the basement (which is really more of just a lower room, halfway under the ground in our split-level home) has been slated to become a family room for years now.

But first, we have to address the water problem.  The one where water comes in the bottom door and the crawlspace in copious amounts when it rains a lot, or the snow melts a lot.  And that means digging a trench and laying a pipe and having stone, and etc, etc, etc.  So, in the middle of Frozen January, when you all of a sudden want to get hot-to-trot on your new Family Room, well, it just ain't happenin'.

Then, we also know that the crawlspace will be less likely to take on water if the back addition gets walls and a roof.  Can we borrow some TIME from you?

There's also the minor issue of how the basement is filled with CRAP.  Okay, maybe not CRAP.  Stuff.  Stuff that is mostly needed on some project, either at our house, in our garage, for our newly planned outdoor living space, or for the farmhouse project, all of which will likely save us lots of money.  So, not stuff to get rid of.

Yeah, we've been moving (slowly) on that.  The trench is mostly done, with a little help from a small man with a red shovel.

We've been cleaning and clearing that ole' basement.  We bought an enclosed trailer to store stuff in for now, which will eventually serve its purpose in the business.  We managed to find, in the process, a whole bunch of useful things that we forgot we had.  There were some leftover or extra (i.e. FREE) cabinets from some of our vendors that I absorbed into the homeschool room and my new laundry area.

So we took out Indy's old Pirate Ship themed bed, love it tho we did...

...and of course, the walls were ruined, so we spackled and painted... 

...and then put those cabinets to good use.  

The best gift a man can get for his wife is STORAGE!

We found the brackets to fix the fence panel that got whacked down by a tree limb a few weeks back.  We found the tub of Easter eggs and buckets in the basement, too - ha, right?!  Just in time!  And what the heck was it doing down there, anyway?  We (finally) moved the big filing cabinet up to the office where it belongs.  It's like a whole different house in here!

Beyond that, our winter can be summed up like this:

It snowed.

It warmed up.

Snow melted.

It rained.

It snowed.

It warmed up.

Snow melted.

It rained. 

REPEAT.  

We ping-ponged between snow and mud.  My washing machine groaned and moaned at the increased laundry from all that Splish, Splash, Splooshin'.  I got smart and added screws for hooks in the exposed ceiling joists in the half-cleaned out basement above the fireplace to dry the snow gear that continually got soaked from the wet, slushy, muddy, sort-of, almost snow.

The children delighted in the mud and I delighted in them.  For the few and far between snowstorms that actually produced anything worth writing home about, we decided that Snow Blowers were SO 2014, and Roger helped cleared part of the road, too.

But Spring is FINALLY here.  I can tell because my head is chock full of snot every damn morning.  This is normal for me, unfortunately for like 3/4 of the year, and I don't bother going to a doctor about it because they'd probably either recommend meds (which I don't want), or a head transplant, since this one causes me so much trouble.

My spring bulbs out front have burst through.  Our early crop seeds have turned into little shoots sitting on our windowsill.  We are outside (without MUD) more and more.  Baseball practice is in full swing, after many weeks of drowned out or snowed out practices. We are thankful our league starts at age 5, because Riley wanted to play this year, but she has to wait.  Next year we can run around on 3 different teams...

Riley plants more seeds for the kids' flower garden this year.

The farmhouse has a back wall and a REAL DOOR.  This is huge.  :)

Homeschool is going well, we are in our groove more than ever.  RJ is starting to nearly, almost, maybe normalize, or perhaps I have just learned better ways to manage him (it sometimes takes A LOT), so we get out more to homeschool meetups and events.  We are doing some cool side stuff with school, like making Stop Motion videos, and the kids are writing and illustrating their own books.  We sort of float back and forth from sit-down learning, book-learning, and hands-on learning and it works really well for us.  Indy has been doing charcoal art projects from here, and she's actually pretty good at it.  Musical instruments continue, with the big two taking lessons and performing with the local district kids, and Riley practicing making noise on her trumpet.

Don't mind the spackle in the foyer and downed curtains... this was probably one of the last days that our living room was bright orange.  I can't tell if RJ is singing or crying...

RJ demands often to be included with school, and we've been learning about Steam Trains and Steam Engines so in-depth it makes my brain hurt.  I never really thought trains were that great.  Ever.  And I still don't think they're that great.  But RJ does.  And so, I know more than I ever cared to know about trains, tracks, train parts, and train terminology in general.  But it is really fantastic to see him so excited by something he loves.

Since we are still living without that family room, sometimes triple-table train set-ups end up in the Master Bedroom.  Thank You, Craigslist, for  connecting me with all those people who darn-near GIVE AWAY really cool train stuff.  More spackle in the background and a ladder waiting for us to get in the painting mood again.

So that's about it.  Business is good, Rog has been out doing estimates like crazy and the phone rings often.  Customers are concerned about getting on our schedule, as they've heard about us and know that we are busy.  This is an excellent sign of Roger's workmanship quality, since we don't actively market the business.  We rely almost solely on word-of-mouth referrals, and it also seems to help that people see him literally all over the town working on local jobs. I don't know for sure exactly what it is about him, but people get REAL excited when they see him... "Hey! Roger!  Yeah, I see your truck all the time!  You were working on my neighbor's house!"  Local vendors love the crap out of him and even share their company lunch with him.  The one guy working at the T-Shirt place nearly falls out of his chair when he sees me coming in.  Me.  Not even Roger.  He just knows I'm married to Roger.  So excited, I tell you.  And Rog deserves it, because he really does put his heart into every job he does.  No half-assing, no short-cuts, no trying to rip people off because he thinks they can afford it, and no taking on anything he can't handle.  He's genuine, with an excellent work ethic and a knowledge base that is rarely matched, and I'm sure those are reasons why everyone from the town to the customers to our vendors loves the crap out of my Roger.  But for small Roger, well, we'll need to work on his motivation and work ethic a little bit, because as of right now, he still sleeps through lunch...