A Summer Saturday

The day started off chilly and wet, but the sun came out after lunch, and we took advantage of a Saturday in Summer.  While Austin & I installed our new rain barrels, Emily & Lincoln had a bike wash in the driveway.  I didn't give them the hose since neither of them were wearing swimsuits and it was still not that warm, but soapy buckets worked just fine.  The primary goal of this activity was to clean up the classic Radio Flyer tricycle I snagged at a garage sale of one of my MOPS friends yesterday.  It's still a little wobbly, but much better after some screws were tightened, the wheels oiled and the dirt washed off.  Emily had a ball speeding up and down the front sidewalk.  Lincoln can't reach the pedals yet, but he enjoys being pushed around.  I figure by the time he can reach the pedals he'll actually care about the fact that this trike is red and the one he rides now is pink & purple. ;o)

 

While the kids were zooming around the sidewalk and Austin was mowing the yard, I was trimming all the bushes.  This monstrous boxwood in front of our house is a bit out of control.  It was this bush that got me last summer and caused all my foot/leg problems.  I have been avoiding it ever since partially because of that and partially because of indecision about what to do with it.  I finally just got sick of it today, grabbed a hedge trimmer and started whacking away.  I took this picture after I had already squared off the right side of it.  Below is the after.  The "bald spot" should fill in.  It honestly should probably be cut back further, but that would take a lot more time and effort.

BTW, here are the new rain barrels:

After all that hard work, we took a popsicle break.  This was Lincoln's first experience and the first time Emily actually finished one.

And what summer day is complete without some sidewalk chalk drawings?  Here are Emily's creations for the day:

Beating the heat

The last three days have been a near-record heat wave with temperatures in the mid-90's and high humidity.  Those of you who know me well know I don't do heat and humidity well.  We have been beating the heat with pools and sprinklers in the mornings and avoiding going outside during the hottest part of the day.

The little ladybug sprinkler did not hold the kids' interest very long.  I have a different one on order.  Emily was more excited about trying to make rainbows with the spray nozzle.

We made our first trip to the Waverly public pool on Wednesday afternoon with some friends.  I forgot my camera.  Lincoln did not really enjoy being in a blow-up ring or wearing arm floaties.  He mostly liked to walk/run around the edge of the pool and randomly try to climb or jump in, which means you have to follow him around and watch him like a hawk.  Emily is still content to float around with both a ring AND arm floaties--especially in the big pool.  We'll have to see how future trips go.

The installation of our central air-conditioning is in Week 3.  The old wall unit in the living room kept the main floor tolerable, but the upstairs was almost unbearable (I recorded 87 degrees with 60% humidity at one point).  We sold our window air unit to a friend last week.  Austin worked upstairs in his office, but it was just too hot for Emily to possibly sleep up there.  So she has slept on the couch in the living room for four nights.  This means staying up way past her bedtime.  After the heat broke last night I sent her up to her room at 5:30am this morning.  I had to wake her up at 9:45am.  It will be good to get back to normal again!

Home again

We made it back home safe and sound on Saturday.  I'm sure glad we decided to stay an extra day, because Austin killed four bats the last two nights--all of them in our bedroom.  Eeek!  I'm pretty sure they were disturbed by the air-conditioning work being done in the attic and probably flew down through the hole in the closet ceiling.  I'm just glad we weren't around to witness it!

Austin also showed me the results of a little thunderstorm that went through early in the morning.  I had noticed a lot of leaves on the lawn.  Apparently it hailed for some time.  When I got home at 2:00pm it was 88 degrees and there was still a pile under the front hostas.

Farm day

Today was farm day.  This morning the kids & I went to go visit Grandpa on the home farm where most of the animals are.  The highlight was helping Great Uncle Kevin (my dad's brother) feed the calves.  Emily & Lincoln were quite the helpers.

Emily liked touching the horse's soft nose.  Lincoln enjoyed peeking in on the pigs.

We also drove down the lane and around the cut alfalfa field on the Mule.  Another item checked off the bucket list!


It turns out that I wasn't quite done farming.  My dad and uncle were in the middle of chopping hay and a little short on help, so I went back in the afternoon and spent 1.5 hours cutting hay.  I like to think of it as extreme mowing.  I was pretty impressed with myself considering the fact I haven't sat on a tractor for over 10 years and still don't know how to drive a manual.

We ended the day sitting outside with my grandpa at the nursing home while the kids pedaled bikes & trikes around the sidewalk and parking lot.  We were originally planning to drive home this afternoon, but it was so hot and humid in Waverly today we decided to stay an extra day in my parents' air-conditioning.  I'm so glad we did!

It has been an incredibly fun and busy week.  Tomorrow it will be back to reality.  I'm going to miss sleeping in later than the kids, naps every afternoon and my mom's cooking (it's the best).  But we have lots of fun things waiting for us at home and more things to check off the bucket list! :o) 

Lazy day

Today was definitely a lazy day.  The kids got up at 9:00am.  I got up at 9:30am.  We walked back to the dinosaur park in the morning.  Everyone took a nap at some point in the afternoon.  It was hot and windy again.  We tried getting out the sprinkler, but the kids weren't very interested.  Lincoln had more fun "painting" his feet while Emily did some chalk drawings.  We ordered pizza for supper.  Lots of board games.  Good day.

Cousin day

Today we took a road trip to LeMars to visit cousins and great-grandparents.  We decided to do a picnic lunch in Foster Park.  It was an absolutely perfect day for it.  The kids had fun playing with each other and other kids at the park.  I enjoyed visiting with my SIL and Austin's grandma & aunt.  We also stopped at Austin's other grandparents' house for a quick visit.

The kids & I picked up a water table at Wal-mart before heading back to Hull.  It was a huge hit with Emily, Lincoln and Cousin Ryan!

After she was done with work, my sister & I took the kids on a walk to the "dinosaur park," which was recently added item to our summer bucket list.  We stayed long enough for a few pictures before having to run halfway home to beat a rain shower.

After supper the "little guys" enjoyed a bath together in the new, deep soaker tub in Grandpa & Grandma's remodeled bathroom.

May 2011 videos

Day 2

Day 2 at my parents' house had no particular plan, and it was a great day.  Everyone slept in.  Lincoln took a 4.5 hour nap in the afternoon.  I spent 2 hours mowing and trimming the yard.  We tried to identify new birds at my parents' bird feeders.  Emily played board games with anyone who would sit down with her, and when no one would, she played them with herself.  She beat me at Monopoly Jr. (which she calls mo-po-ly).  It was one of my favorite games growing up.  One of Lincoln's favorite places to play has been under the dining table in the sun room.  I guess it makes for good pretend roads. :o)

Emily got to check off an item on the summer bucket list by going golfing with Uncle Wade & Auntie Abbie.  She made it through 7 holes.  She said her favorite part was driving the golf cart all crazy.  I can only imagine!  Can you tell that Uncle Wade is Emily's hero?!?

I ended the day with a good soak in the hot tub on the back deck while the sun set over the freshly mowed lawn.  It would have been completely perfect if it hadn't been for the swarm of the mosquitoes hovering just above my head the whole time.  But life is good--especially when you're on a mommy vacation. :o)

4 years + 7 months

 

It has been another busy month for Emily as she finished preschool and probably attended her last MOPS and MMO (her new preschool schedule will interfere in the fall).  She is ready for summer, though!

Here are some of the interesting tidbits from the last month:

• Dirs had another birthday (ironically the day before Lincoln's) and is now 14.  Maybe going that quickly through the tween years isn't such a bad thing. ;o)
• Emily has another "new girl" named Brecken because Dirs is reportedly currently on vacation in Mexico.
• During the month of May, Emily temporarily changed her favorite color from pink to black because she was a bit disappointed that the color of the month at preschool was black instead of pink.  The book Purplicious may have had a little to do with it, too.  However, she has since changed back to pink again.
• Emily's new favorite pajamas are her pink and black Hello, Kitty shirt & capris.  However, she usually wears some kind of crazy combination of the many sets of pajamas in her drawer.  She rarely matches at bedtime.
• Emily has only grown 1/2" since her birthday.  I don't think she's gained much weight, either.  Her feet are definitely the same size as last fall.  This is actually quite convenient, because many of the clothes purchased at the end of last summer still fit.
• Her latest little habit has been an annoying lip smack as she says, "Um, [smack] excuse me" every time she has something to say.  She also swishes her spit and makes other weird noises with her mouth and throat.  Drives me nuts.
• Emily has become quite ruthless while playing Sorry!, so I don't feel bad beating her most of the time.  Her primary goal is usually chasing down your pawns to knock them off the board.  This oftentimes distracts her enough that I come from behind to win.  She always wants to play with Daddy before bedtime, but for some reason it usually ends badly.  She has a tendency to either get silly and start really cheating or just want to quit as soon as she thinks she's going to lose. 
• Emily's favorite new show on PBS Kids Go! is Wild Kratts.  She pretends to talk to Martin & Chris on the phone.
• Emily has inherited her vocal volume from my dad's side of the family.  The DeJong's are infamous for talking very loudly.  At family gatherings you can tell who are the blood relatives and who married in based solely on volume levels.  I am completely guilty of this, too.  I could never figure out how other girls could talk on the phone in the hallways of the college dorms and you couldn't hear a word they were saying as you walked right by them.  These days I find myself asking Emily to speak softer and not yell directly in my ear.  Yikes!

Memorial Day

Emily has been looking forward to Memorial Day for quite awhile.  She still hasn't quite gotten the name right, though.  It has gone back and forth between "Re-morial Day" and "Meer-mol Day."  Here is a picture of the flag she made.

The kids & I are in NW Iowa for the week.  We started off with the traditional pancake breakfast at the church I grew up in.  Then we headed to the cemetery.  We were glad my Grandpa Vander Kooi was able to make it to the service courtesy of the nursing home shuttle.  He is a WWII POW veteran, so Memorial Day has always meant a lot to our family.  The kids did quite well during the program--including the gun salute.  It was so incredibly windy, though, they weren't able to put up the Avenue of Flags.

Emily was super excited to wear her special new dress.  She had tried on several patriotic dresses, but ended up picking the red & white ladybug dress.  She insisted on wearing her purple frog flip-flops because they had blue in them so she could be red, white and blue.  :o)

While everyone else (including me) took naps after lunch, Emily got to go swim in Uncle Wade & Auntie Abbie's backyard pool.  They just filled it up yesterday, and it was freezing cold, but she loved it and they had to make her get out after an hour.  They found a cool Cozy Coupe float thing at a garage sale.

Later in the afternoon Lincoln had fun shooting baskets with Uncle Wade, playing tractors in the driveway and learning how to share a tee-ball set with Cousin Ryan.  He also got a little too adventurous with the little tricycle down the long driveway!

Emily got to stay up late playing a farm game with Grandpa Boote that resembles Monopoly but uses cows on a dairy farm instead of hotels on real estate.  They kind of made things up as they went. ;o)