July and August 2013

Well, we slogged through summer!  Because of all the rain we had this summer, almost every day was spent pumping water out of the pool (so it wouldn’t run over and get behind the vinyl liner) and making friends with the two turtles and countless toads who took up residence there, probably because I couldn’t keep the green algae in the pool down to respectable levels.  We ended up having a lovely pond with a diving board feature.  Who cares if you could only see two inches below the surface?

Mmmm. Algae.  The slide is Jim's latest red-neck addition to the pool.  The neighbors were going to throw it out.  It launches the kids a good three feet.

After I admitted defeat with the pool (much to the kids’ disappointment as they would have swam in it with black algae and all sorts of brain-eating amoeba) we did the only thing a sane family would do, which is to visit central Texas in July.  There it’s not only hot, but the humidity is so high it feels like you’re drowning as soon as you step out of doors.    Jim’s sister and her family put us up (or put up with us), while we ate at Chuy’s (Tex-Mex), Mighty Fine (burgers), Rudy’s (barbecue), and Chez Myer’s – the dining room of my brother and sister-in-law, both of whom are pretty mean cooks and served up fish fry, ham melt sandwiches, and STEAKS.  Of course we did other things, like eat donuts from Round Rock Donuts.  And cookies from Central Market.  And bread from the local farmer’s market.

Woody and cousin Lydia

But the kids will most likely remember playing with their cousins, Lydia and Brody, exploring the caves outside of Austin, their first attempt at kayaking, swimming in a clean pool, and making duct tape wallets with Aunt Jen.  Actually, they watched Aunt Jen making wallets, and then they watched TV while Aunt Jen made wallets by herself.   

Brody and Jack

Bets and Jack

Watermelon!  Lucy, Betsy and Brody

Uncle Eric

It's all good!

Uncle Eric, Jim in the back, Woody

Lucy

Deep conversations

Betsy tries a hand at kayaking.  On the beach.

Yes, that's ONE donut in the box.

Jim said they were as big as toilet seats.  Hmmm.

Going to the farmer's market in Pflugerville.

Looooong day.

Once we got home I started nesting.  No, I’m not pregnant, but I’ve gotten so used to being pregnant every few years, and I felt compelled to completely move the dining room into the family room and vice versa.  My aim was to get us to eat at the dining room table where we could practice table manners and conversing instead of cramming ourselves in around the kitchen island, scarfing down food and watching Futurama.  This announcement was met with groans, in general, and I will overlook the fact that Jim’s were kind of loud for a supportive co-parent to be making.  It has had a few drawbacks: namely, now we have to look at each other.  And also we have to come up with things to say that don’t include reciting all of what the kids consider to be the funniest moments from the last episode of Futurama.  Now that we are looking at each other, I get to see that none of us chew with our mouths closed, and Lucy considers clothing optional at meal times … or always.  I’m just glad I convinced her to keep her underwear on this past summer (the sand from the sandbox chafes if you don’t wear underwear, I told her).  So while she is standing at the table, rubbing her derriere across the back spindles of the chair, at least the spindles are getting cleaned.  I should probably spray her pants with Endust, just to get some added benefit out of it.

Our garden was somewhat disappointing this year as the grasshoppers stripped everything bare that was edible.  So while it has rained so much that it looks like Washington in September out here, with tall, green grasses, massive tomato plants, and humongous bean and squash vines, there is nothing to be had from them.  Our blackberry bushes produced four luscious, fat blackberries that the grasshoppers somehow missed, but Betsy didn’t, and she picked them before they were ripe. 

The green, green grass of home ... in August?

This apple tree in front was stripped of its leaves. Only the apples are left.

The boys have moved on from reading every Garfield comic ever printed and are now devouring Calvin and Hobbes, which I always loved, but find somewhat altered when the comics are being read aloud by an eleven-year old boy who is following you around from room to room (or from the back seat of the car), reading through his braces (which necessitates slurping to avoid drooling), running the words hopelessly together because he’s already anticipating the punch line and laughing so hard all the while that he can’t enunciate.  But we’re all laughing by the end, anyway, even if we have no idea what Calvin and Hobbes did.

I was getting Lu ready for church the other morning, and she noticed the headband in my hair (a change from the usual ponytail). 

“Mommy,” she asked, eyes glued to the headband, “do you have a bow?” All hair accessories are "bows" here.

“Yes,” I said, surprised by her intent look. 

“Are you married?”

And then I remembered some of their Barbie dolls have wedding veils that attach to the dolls with headbands.

“Yes.”

“BETSY!” She gasped, “Mommy’s married!”

By the way, an informal study has shown that the most frequently asked question at the Manry house is “Mom?”  Jim has informed me that the next-most asked question, asked whenever I am gone, is “Where’s Mom?”

School started last week, and suddenly it’s a chore to get up at 7:30 a.m. for the kids, even though they were up and outside playing by that time all summer.  Woody is the worst and has to be dragged out with the promise of a cup of an adult hot beverage, now that he is over the Ovaltine stage.  Sometimes he can even be persuaded to take some coffee with his sugar and cream.  Both boys decided something needed to be done since getting up at the last minute wasn’t working, so yesterday they both got up early.  I came across them a half hour later.  They had made it as far as the living room, where they were sprawled out on the couch and chair, buried under blankets.  Asleep.

First day of First Grade

Once Betsy’s school is done, the girls alternately play and fight all morning.  How do other home school parents do it?  The whole keeping-everybody-happily-occupied without feeling like all the parents do is run back and forth between age groups all day at 10-minute intervals, explaining, expounding, refereeing … is this what one-room schools were like?!  

Anyway, I overheard Betsy instructing Lucy to “Count to 21, and DON’T PEEK!” Neither of which Lu is even remotely capable of, in the case of the former because she is her mother’s daughter, and the latter, because she is her father’s daughter. 

In completely unrelated news, Woody gave me his Christmas list yesterday.  

Lucy will be turning three next week.  How the years are flying.  I guess that’s it for now.  Sorry to be so late on this one.  I think I can guarantee to be the same on the next update.  You all take care!

Summertime and the Living is Easy

Why does summer have to fly?!

June started with Betsy turning 6 on June 1st.  I can never celebrate her birthday without recalling our friend and preacher saying rather mildly, "Do you know what else begins June 1st? Hurricane Season."  And then after a pause.  "Do you think the two are related?" 

Betsy had an apple pie for her birthday, with three kinds of ice cream.

I also had a birthday, and received what I (apparently) always secretly wanted: a Ridgid 18-Volt Compact Drill and Impact Driver Combo, with a bonus of a Battery-Powered Radio.  I got a lump in my throat as I opened it, similar to the one I get whenever the girls are watching me primp in front of the mirror and one of them asks tenderly, "Mommy?  Why are you so old?"

Lucy has begun assisting Betsy in collecting the eggs each day, a task which requires them to race with multiple eggs in their hands through our obstacle course, er, garage, pushing and hollering, "Me first!" as they slam the back door into the wall and plunk the eggs onto the counter.  Well, except for that day when I was straightening up their toys and came upon one of Lucy's purses which contained an oddly bulky, yet light, cargo.  Sure enough, it contained three eggs, unbroken, but who knows how long she'd been carrying them around in there?  I dropped them in a bowl of water, and they didn't float, so I assumed they were good.  At least nobody got sick from eating them ...

Most mornings the girls and I go out while it's still cool to weed in the garden.  By that I mean I pull out weeds and sometimes legitimate plants,  and Betsy stands one foot away and showers me with her latest "stories" involving orphans, widows, and umbrella birds (she saw one on a pack of Go-Fish Animals of the World playing cards).  One morning she talked for 45 minutes without stopping.  Lucy, meanwhile, proceeded to strip down to her underwear and stand patiently next to Betsy, or else chased after the chickens, trying to force feed them bugs she caught in the garden.  They wisely refused. When I announced it was time to go in for Lucy's nap, Betsy broke off from her latest story, sighed heavily and said, "FINALLY!  I can get some peace and quiet!"

While this is going on, Jack and Woody are finishing up short school indoors.  I recently had to get onto Woody for asking for help on his math problems before he even attempted to get the answer, so his diplomatic approach to a multiple-choice question was this: "Mom?  Can you help me with this math problem?  It's pretty easy, but there's a lot of good answers."

We took a break to go to Wyoming last week, and stayed in a cabin at Half Moon Lake Resort in Wyoming, which boasted hiking trails, boat docks and a fully-stocked fishing pond.  They also, Jim observed after a few fishing trips, stocked their own mosquitoes.  Luckily, they preferred Jim and Jack's blood to Woody's and mine, so at least the two of us didn't suffer much.

Half Moon Lake

Oh.  And the resort was in "high country" which is code for "bears".  So Jim spent much of his time looking over his shoulder when he was outdoors, and locking cabin windows when he was indoors.  Fortunately, we didn't see any bears, even though we drove through the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone with our eyes peeled.

Chipping away at rock and looking for fossils in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

I got one!

Lucy "helps" Jim

We hiked a couple of times with the kids and on both occasions Lucy insisted on carrying her Dumbo stuffed animal, which meant Jim ended up carrying it, along with her, and Betsy when Betsy got tired.  He also got to carry Woody's sweatshirt and sweatpants, which Woody stripped off 5 minutes into the hike, bottles of water, a bottle of mosquito repellant, and some juicy, heavy oranges, which nobody ate while on the hike.

Is that a bear I hear?!

Touching the Grand Tetons

Every time he saw bark peeling off, Jim told the boys it was "bear sign".

Hiking is FUN for dad!

Break time

I'd like to apologize to all the hikers we encountered that day in the Tetons, the ones who anticipated communing with nature in a peaceful environment.  You see, we had Woody with us.  Which is kind of like hiking with Daffy Duck: you know, when Daffy bounces head over heels down the hill hooting and hollering, "Woo!  Woo-hoo!  Woo-hoo!"  That's Woody on a hiking trail.  On the brighter side, we probably saved countless hikers from bear encounters.

I think Woody may have learned his hiking technique from Jim (running away in the far distance).

We finally saw a moose in someone's back yard when we were playing in Pinedale's public kiddie park.  Naturally, Jim took this as his cue to creep stealthily up behind it with the camera, and the children crept up behind him (not so stealthily), and I hissed ineffectually at all of them from a safe distance, "You have flip flops on!  You can't run in those!"

At Yellowstone, Jim and Lucy were the only ones to witness the miracle of Old Faithful since the rest of us were in the gift shop, picking out pocket knives, plastic binoculars, stuffed animals and tee shirts, but Jim did offer to buy the kids geyser-flavored soft serve as a consolation prize.

Not Geyser-flavored after all.

Hurry up and take it before the mosquitoes come back!

There's only so much outdoorsiness we can handle, though, so Jim wisely chose to stay in a cabin close to the town of Pinedale, which has its own fitness/aquatic center where the kids could swim in the safety of chlorinated water, and scale a rock climbing wall while tied to someone other than me.

Notice Betsy's creative approach of not using her own legs, and probably hands, to haul herself up the wall.

Slam Dunking with Lucy

And then there was the last day where we woke the kids up at 4:30 a.m. for the 15-hour drive back, which prompted me to inform Jim that sometimes I fantasize about a vacation when I'm not strapped in a car within five feet of all our children, their video games, the latest "Winnie the Pooh" movie playing, and they're not all saying, "Hey, Mom, can you get me ... (insert any random request here)" at 20-second intervals.

But in all, it was a good June.  Hope you all are having a great 4th of July.  Try not to blow too much up!

May (and possibly a few previous months) 2013

Well, we finally finished school (insert Hallelujah chorus here).  The boys, who thought that they would be on summer break, discovered that Jim had time off and instead they’ve spent the past two weeks moving furniture back in once the wood floors were in, walking the fence line and trying to find and fix where the donkeys get out, building a skeet-shoot platform, mowing the lawn, cleaning the cars, cleaning the chicken coop, and cleaning their room.  I helped with the wood floors until I had an allergic reaction to the sawdust.  So while I was taking the girls in to get their vaccinations up to date, I convinced the doc, who is a friend of Jim's, to write me a medical excuse which exempts me from any further home-improvement projects, now and forever, real or imagined.  I think I will have it framed and hung in the bathroom, next to our diplomas and awards.

Prepping the Girls' room

Almost done!

In the hall

The garden this year is HUGE, probably because once Jim got behind the wheel of the tractor, he just kept plowing and plowing, and once that was done, then he figured he might as well plant it all.  He and the kids have planted corn, sunflowers, pumpkins, green beans, tomatoes, and onions.  They planted, but I don't know if we'll actually harvest anything.  Betsy and Lucy, whom the chickens adore because they go randomly during the day and pour out scoop after indiscriminate scoop of chicken feed, insisted on helping drop the seeds with Jim.  Naturally the chickens hiked up their skirts and came galloping out to the garden plot when the girls appeared, and happily followed them, pecking up any seeds the girls dropped on the way.  Jim did plant me a patch of lettuce, which looked delicious until Betsy decided it was time to pick it.  ALL.  Now I have the equivalent of six heads of lettuce in the refrigerator and the lettuce patch looks like it was hit by a tornado. 

We did take a long weekend to go to Silver Dollar City, in Branson, Mo., where I grit my teeth and went on Thunderation Rollercoaster (at Woody’s request) twice.  I haven’t been on a real roller coaster (Fire In the Hole doesn’t count: it’s fun) intentionally since about 12 years ago when it suddenly hit me that only crazy people, or people without young children, go on roller coasters.

Our kids don't get annual school photos.  They get the coffin photo every year.

In spite of the fact we have every animal under the sun, anybody else's are more interesting than ours.

Lucy in the Fun House.

By lunch time, we're all exhausted.

Oh, my!

Onward and Upward

Dipping candles is almost as thrilling as Thunderation.

Panning for gold.

I got a rock!

The kids are doing great.  Before we finished up school, Betsy and I were reviewing shapes, and after correctly identifying several triangles, I pointed to a rectangle.  “Um, NOT a triangle?” Betsy offered hopefully.  Then while working on some logic exercises, Betsy was supposed to select the correct object among a bicycle, glass of milk, a rabbit, and a book.  “You ride on me.” I read dutifully out of the instructor’s guide.  Without a second’s hesitation, Betsy pointed to the rabbit.  Heaven help our animals. 

Lucy is talking non-stop now, which is not to say she has an expanding vocabulary.  One 30-minute ride back from town was filled almost exclusively with this age-old, thought-provoking question: “Mom?  Mom?  Mom?  Mom?  Mom? Mom?  Mom?”  She staggers out in the morning, tripping over her fleece blanket she wraps around herself, even when it's hot, and says, "I lake up!" (I wake up!)  Her prayer list at night changes, depending  on the day (unlike Betsy, who consistently prays for "people we love" -- but not those we don't?), but usually she remembers to thank God for "Daddy and Tylenol."  Lucy still loves eating everything, and Amanda nailed it when she compared her to a baby robin, following you around with head upturned, mouth wide open.

Now that school is out, Jack is devouring books that have no literary value whatsoever.  You know: fun books.  So far he's finished more than a dozen Hardy Boy mysteries, some Madeleine L'Engle (the non-Newbery winning ones), Rick Riordan (thank you for the suggestion, Dallas), and Mr. Popper's Penguins.  Again.  Jim had to get onto him a few times while they were working on the floors because Jack would absent-mindedly hand Jim whatever tool was right next to him, instead of tool Jim asked for, and sometimes didn't even hear Jim talking to him, because he was so absorbed in his latest book.  Heh heh, I thought.  That one's definitely my child.

Woody is as attentive to Lucy as ever, and I had one of those "Awwww!" moments when I looked out the kitchen window to see him placing her in the swing and giving her a gentle push.  But then he raced off to the porch, grabbed his Nerf bow and arrow set, and proceeded to use Lucy as his moving target, aiming just a couple inches above her head, and maybe a little to the right.  So much for the moment.

For our 17^th anniversary, Jim and I left the kids with Jim’s parents and we went to Kansas City, ALONE.  We weren’t quite waiting at the end of the driveway with the car packed and running, and the kids back at the house with instructions safety-pinned to Lucy’s shirt, but it was close. 

We rediscovered the joy of NOT stopping every 15 minutes for a potty break, NOT choosing restaurants based on whether or not they had chicken strips and barbecue sauce, dinner conversation NOT made up of quoting line-for-line the latest Futurama episode, or the last Garfield comic book read in the bathroom, and I got to wear a dress all day without the fear of a certain 2 year old sticking her head up underneath the skirt and then whipping it open like a cheap shower curtain.  Yep.  It's the little things that count.