First Day of School

There are signs of summer lingering everywhere in our house:  a bag of sandy seashells hanging up in the laundry room, yesterday's beach towels still drying after a trip to the pool, and temperatures soaring into the 90s all week.  But, believe it or not, it is Abby and Caroline's first day of school.  With watermelon in Abby's lunchbox, we officially said "Goodbye!" to summer this morning promptly at 8:17am.

Caroline's First Day of Kindergarten

Abby Showing Off her Bookbag Loaded with Supplies & Lunch

And They're Off! 

(Caroline practically sprinted on, so I couldn't grab a photo)

While I am ready for a bit of a break from constant togetherness, I must admit that I am a little sad summer is over.  We had so many nice adventures and giggles together over the past two months.  Now, we're back to being bound by schedules.  It's a good thing, but summer freedom was nice too. 

The Last Day of Summer?!

I cannot believe it. Today is the very last day of summer (as counted by full days I spend by myself with all the kids).  Just today, then the weekend, and then school starts.  We all made it!  We even had a lot of fun along the way.  Of course we had a lot of other feelings towards one another that I'm now going to selectively forget.  POOF. Now, there's just a rosy memory of glorious summer days filled with laughter. (Not really, but maybe in 5 years that's how I'll remember this summer, right?)

Yesterday, before the exciting engagement news, we headed down to the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia to enjoy one last summer day of summer fun together.  It was a surprisingly pleasant trip -- no traffic, free parking, happy and well-behaved kids, tasty lunch...you name it.  Delightful.  Almost good enough to make me sad that the summer is ending. 

Today, we're going to finish all of our back to school preparations, including the homework that arrived in the mail for Abby from her teacher.  Homework.......sigh.

Maybe I actually am a little sad that summer is ending?!

My Children, The Actors:

WEDDING BELLS!

Scott's brother Andy and his girlfriend (and our very, very dear friend) Trish GOT ENGAGED TODAY!!!!   I am so happy for them!!!!  I'm practically crying right now, I am still so happy!!!   

Trish and Andy have been dating for several years, and she's become a much beloved member of the family, and now it's going to be OFFICIAL!!!!!  Aunt Trish will forever be Aunt Trish!

MORE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MORE GUSHING!!!!!!!!

MORE JOY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Behold -- The Closet

Since it was raining yesterday, Scott and I decided to tackle the laundry room closet transformation project, the goal of which was to change the messy laundry room closet into a "mud room" for the kids' shoes and bookbags.

We wanted to finish this project before the school year started, so that (hopefully) the kids will no longer walk inside the front door and immediately drop their coats, shoes, bookbags, and other stuff right in the middle of the entryway.  I am hoping they will get into the habit of putting things into their little own space right from the beginning of the year.  The reality will probably be that the kids will still throw their things into the middle of the floor, and then I will "ask" (read "repeatedly nag") them to put their things away. BUT, at least there is now somewhere to put it where they can reach. And, who knows, maybe they will surprise me. 

Before:  "Bag World" (Scott's term). We were using the closet to store recycled paper, reusable bags, and a few other miscellaneous things. 

After:  Behold!  I feel like I've finally channeled Martha Stewart.  And, I like it.  (And, the kids like it too. They had a great time simulating coming home from school and hanging up their bookbags.  The hooks are low enough that everyone can reach.)

Believe it or not, but this project only cost $34!  I bought 3 colored plastic crates ($3.99 each) and 3 of the cloth bins ($6.99 each) from Target.  Scott used some scrap lumber for the shelf brace, and the shelf itself we just moved down from above.  We also already had some spare hooks.  The recycled paper went into the garage with the other recyclables since it is single-stream recycling, after all, and the other bags went onto another hook right in the garage doorway-- still handy. 

As is usual with any home projects, the kids made a mess of several other rooms while working on this one space.  So, I must now ask (again, read "repeatedly nag") the kids to clean those other areas up.  While they are doing that, I'm going to go stand in the closet.

Vines Round 2

Let's all take a moment and marvel at the wonderful evolutionary adaptions that have enabled vines to be so successful in the plant kingdom.  Unlike mammals with our limited single method of procreating, vines can reproduce sexually or asexually. And, since vines don't have to waste precious energy on structurally supportive stems or trunks, they can focus their energy resources on growth.

Are you finished marvelling?

Now, let's gripe about vines.  At length.

Holy cow.  Scott and I spent hours and hours and hours clearing vines from our somewhat overgrown property only two months ago.  I'm clearly remember digging out the roots out during this effort.  I thought we had put a fair dent in each of the eight species of vines growing in the yard, although I knew at the time, that the battle was not over. 

Armed with clippers, a spade, and 15 paper yard bags, we went into battle with the vines again on Friday and Saturday.  I am not exaggerating when I estimate we cleared at least 1/2 mile of vines and roots out of the side yard (that's >2500 feet).  I was routinely pulling 30 foot stretches of Virginia creeper up off the ground or out of the trees.  Scott cleared hundreds of feet of kudzu roots from under the holly tree.

On the bright side, I didn't find any more honeysuckle growing.  One the bad side, there was much, much more bittersweet than last time.  Fortunately, the bittersweet had not finished forming its berries, so at least one method of reproduction has been squelched for a season. And, while we were working, we inspired our neighbor to come out and pull vines from his side of the fence, so he removed huge amounts of poison ivy and wild grape too.  (The jury is still out if I will escape getting poison ivy after this efforts...I'm not optimistic though, considering how many different places I found it growing.  But, at least all the patches of poison ivy were very small.) 

Sigh. I just can't believe how much invasive stuff was still out there, considering how much we removed only two months ago.  So...I guess should schedule Vines Round 3 this fall?

Round 2 - 15 bags of Invasive Yard Stuff

FANCY!

LOOK!!! Do you like the new look of my blog??  I think it looks pretty snazzy!!

Now that I have written over one hundred entries for my blog, I felt it was time to spruce up the header of my blog a bit-- a least make the top picture less than gigantic. Although I've written a little HTML before (a while ago), I was completely unable to figure out which part of the code was controlling the photo size since there were a lot of pre-set template definitions.  And, I was getting frustrated.

So, I asked my friend Melissa of Girlymama (her awesome blog HERE) for some design advice, and she not only fixed the header problem, she went one step further and made my blog beautiful (while she was sleep-deprived, no less)!  Thank you, Thank you!!!

Now, it looks like one of those "real" blogs.  I guess I should stop gushing and start writing...

Superhero Training Program

If I were trying to really impress Ben, I would give up this whole mom thing, and starting training to be a SUPERHERO.  Then, I could spend my days making cool sound effects and "booming" the bad guys.  Right now, Ben is living and breathing superheroes.  When he goes outside, he finds sticks and fights the bad guys.  When he is inside, he builds legos into ships to carry lego superheros to fight the bad guys. When we play under the covers in the morning (i.e., when mom is just trying to sleep for just a few more minutes), we fly in very claustrophobic rocket ships to go fight the bad guys.  Although Ben is improvising very well, our superhero collection is currently limited to a spiderman motorcycle, a couple well worn superhero T-shirts, a few books, and some spiderman pajamas.

Our neighbor on the other hand is swimming in superheros -- a whole big box full of superhero action figures -- which is why Ben wants to go over to their house at 6:30am every morning.  It's not to go so see his buddy; he wants to visit the toys.  

Which got me thinking.......

Maybe I should modify our potty training regimen in some way to incentivize Ben with Superhero action figures IF he would start using the toilet and keeping his pants dry.  Finally.   

We've been working on this toilet training thing for a while now.  Actually, a long while.  I just did a search on the blog and am a little shocked to see we started back at the end of May (see NAMREDIPS).  Clearly just being able to wear Spiderman underwear hasn't been enough of an incentive for Ben.  I didn't want to have to resort to any kind of reward system for the potty training, but then one of my friends reminded me that I used m&m's for Abby.  I know I used Hello Kitty stickers for Caroline.

So, I decided to offer Ben one superhero action figure (the ones we've been "visiting" at Target for a while) if he could go in the potty 15 times in 3 days.  Each successful visit gets a hand-drawn star; accidents mean a star is erased.  I went to target and plunked down $12 for one Iron Man figure and one Batman figure. 

Worth it? Probably. Although I don't know the long-term ramifications of this approach, Ben is now the proud owner of a very flexible Iron Man figure and is on Day 3 of bone dry superhero underwear (which, yes, he still insists on wearing backwards). 

Maybe this is really it for the daytime diapers?  Dare I hope???