Beating the Heat

Soccer is over for Merrick and Grace and it ended with medals and ice cream. Sophia is heading into the last week of her league.  She did take a ball to the face in the last game but came back to play. The weather has been hot,  reaching near ninety.  With soccer finishing up, Grace has switched gears to swimming lessons each morning and is easily progressing to the next level while she splashes around Merrick and I play a little frisbee golf and even found an old Geocache.  Other times Amy and I take a little coffee walk around the downtown area. Merrick and I had tried to find that geocache treasure about three years ago but couldn't do it so without the snow and ice we succeeded this time.  Turns out the snow and ice wasn't the real problem last time.  We are spending our afternoons trying to beat the heat and making good use of our pool membership.  A few days ago we did skip the sun and pool and opted for an afternoon of painting in the garage instead.

Making the fourth a perfect ten

Summer school finished up with all smiles.  Ella was able to perform the play she had been working on for the past several weeks.  She was the butterfly narrator to guide us through the twisted world of Alice in Wonderland.  Grace also had an exposition for her gymnastics class.  With the final day of classes wrapped up we headed home to prep for an Evenson invasion.  Eau Claire and Iowa were coming over for a few days and everyone was pretty stoked.  We headed out for a pretty long bike ride over to Green isle park and with all ten of us on the trail we looked large enough to be a pack.  The way home required a stop at the ice cream store for floats and a box of Beanboozled....the kids spent some time daring each other to eat dog food flavored jelly beans and other assorted flavors such as skunk spray, boogers and barf.  We tossed some Kuub while the grill churned out kabobs and the fire pit was slowly stoked.  After a solemn and wonderful balloon release we headed down the road to play some footgolf.  Muncle Arky had only flip-flops so his foot was pretty swollen by the time the nine holes were done.  Each hole was played a little differently, some times there were drop kicks, some times there were shotgun starts or all out sprints, one hole we deducted a stroke for the first person in.  Grandma was plenty competitive and was a hoot to watch running through the course and kicking her ball.  Ella did put a ball into the water hazard but Grandprize helped get it out.  Another night on the patio, looking at the fire and looking for satellites and then the next day we headed to the Wildlife Sanctuary.  The Iowa 'kids' were eventually deposited back at the airport and the Eau Claire care headed west too but our weekend kept on.  We headed downtown to watch the fireworks.  We spread our blanket on the ground and played catch the fly and hackysack with others in the area as we waited for the sky to exploded.  Grace worked on her serve and was all smiles.

Always on the go

 
 
 

 
Plenty busy!!  Busy enough that even the little tastes of summer, like backyard watermelon, can easily be forgotten as mundane, we are fortunate.  We have had to celebrate some 'days.'  There was Sophia's birthday as well as Father's day.  The kids greeted me with an earlier morning breakfast in bed with cards and gifts.  I couldn't have been more proud.  There was birdseed and a new badminton set.  We managed to relax on the patio and play a few games until it got too dark to see.  Sophia's birthday was an adventure as well, she choose to head to Two Rivers and eat dinner down there, so after summer school was out we headed south for large plates of french toast and then off to the strawberry patch to pick and sample a little early summer sweetness.  We made some strawberry shortcake that night and froze up about 10 quarts of berries for later.   Ella had her last regular season game that day and plays tonight for the third in the tournament.  Soccer leagues will continue for a few more weeks.  We have been to the library three times already this summer and the kids are coming home with arm loads of books.  Grace and Merrick quickly reached goal to get a yard sign and are still plowing through the books and proud of what they are reading.  It is fun to listen as the four of them talk about the plots and characters of the books and series they have read, so many of them being in common.  Friday Ella, Grace, Amy and I headed up to Penninsula state park and had a beautiful bike ride on a maze of well groomed trails.  We had a few stops along our 7 mile route that include gorgeous overlooks and places to skip the ancient dolomite rocks.  The weather was perfect and as the day faded away we figured we need a wood fired pizza.  The girls were given dough to play with and after making a pretzel were allowed to toss it into the restaurants oven and bake it!  The pizza was great and not wanting the day to end we decided to walk the city streets and shops and then made our way over to the local drive in theater.  We pulled the bikes down from the roof and nestled into the car with tubs of popcorn to enjoy the double feature before heading back home and sleeping well past nap time the next day.  A couple of nasty sun burns have kept our pool time limited but we will be heading back soon and start working on the rest of our summer bucket list.

summer times are here!

Well summer is officially here and has been for about a week.  The last day of school was appropriately celebrated with ice cream from the neighborhood shop.  The temperatures have been on a roller coaster swing from the low 60 to expected high 80's today.  Grace and the neighbor girl did a rain dance in the rain and our little garden is reaping the benefits of their choreography.  Softball starts it tournaments this week and soccer is still rolling along.  The carp spawn has come and went and Grace and I sneaked out a few times trying to land a couple.  She did get close to big river pig but missed it.   We hit the local pool for the first of what will be many times this summer and Merrick pulled a flip off the high dive.  Age prevented me from doing a flip off the lowest board.  We have already swung by the library too and the girls left with seven books each.  The summer reading and summer school are helping to balance the body and mind of this tribe.

Almost here....!!

The school year is creeping to a close and we will soon have weekends that last all week.  Spent some time at beach and the water was warm enough for some in the family....clearly not the best.  Ella and I spent 50 cents on a good laugh.  A guy was using his metal detector so I game Ella two quarters and had her run about 30 feet in front of the guy and drop them in the sand.  Then we just hung out and watched him shift through the ancient silica to retrieve his treasure.  Plenty of Softball games, Ella took a nasty pitch to the arm but we hadn't had the "charge the mound' talk yet so she just politely trotted to first base...next time though.  Merrick and Grace had their opening nights of Soccer and that season is underway now.   Grace had some great passes and Merrick played in a hayfield and scored twice in his opener.  Sophia officially starts this week but did win her scrimmage last week against members of her old team, so she felt some pride in that.  The garden is mostly planted although there is still some seeds to go in the soil.  Each kid has a 2'x2' plot and was able to pick out some seeds and seedlings.  We should have plenty to eat...Grace planted 3 tomato plants, 3 kahlarabi and some peppers along with corn, a watermelon, carrots and peas.  She might have found room for a couple rows of beans too!!  We did drive through a massive storm cell that forced us to pull off the highway on our way back to Eau Claire.  Saw Grandprize and Nancy for an night.  Sophia and Grandma baked and frosted the whole time except when we had a great tour of the ever improving downtown area.  Sunday was almost normal with a little more moving and rearranging of bedrooms.  The older two got their lofted beds and Merrick now has bunk beds.  The baking continued last night two. Merrick and Amy cranked out the family favorite chocolate eclaire torte to take to school for an end of the year celebration and Grace and I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies for the same purpose.  The older girls were still gawking and rearranging their room.  

Birthdays, Burgers and Buddies

It was time for Ella's Birthday week, we headed out to the "big field" for a dinner out.  There were plenty of burgers but we could have used a few more cheese curds.  She had a softball game scheduled but it was rained out, but there was still other games to be played and laughs to have.  She spent a lot of fielding time on third base.  The weather is still unseasonably cool and while it sprinkled early in the week, there were flurries in the air on the weekend.  We spent some time on a JDRF walk and raised a good amount of money for our team "sweet soles."  Next year we are going to have more people, more funding and better t-shirts....there are some very creative people in the area.  Didn't see the total raised for T1D but saw one guy alone had raised over $12K...so we are setting new goals!  Ella was able to walk it with some of her friends which was a great show of support. It also made an enjoyable weekend for her as she spent the night at a sleep over and then rounded it off with some family birthday celebrating.

A Mother of a Week (or two)!!

Temperatures have hit the low 80s and summer is here, although we are no less busy. We try to get outside and sweaty as often as possible but we are not so uncouth as to not enjoy the fine arts too.  Ella had her art work selected for a district wide art show and we were able to sneak into the overflowing crowd for the showing.  It was a very cool piece made with plenty and great to hear the pride in her voice when she talked about make it.  Add to that her Jazz concert.  She is in the 'regular' band too, but it is easy to see that she really enjoys the jazz band and sees it as a step (or half step) up!  It was great to watch her play a solo that she wrote for the jazz piece.  Grace had a friend stay overnight too for that girl's first sleep over.  It was fun in that she lives a few blocks away and we had lost her number so Amy and Grace just walked down to the house and introduced themselves and then brought the girl back to our place...it was a little like the Pyed Piper and a great image of the three of them strolling down the sun-filled street with sleep over gear in hand.  Soccer has started for Grace, Merrick and Sophia, but no games yet only practices for a couple more weeks.  Ella's softball team has taken a different approach and after only two practices was ready for opening weekend.  Friday night we packed in hot dogs to celebrate the great sounds of summer and the opening pitch was hurled.  Ella took a ball to the leg but shook it off enough to take her base.  She also had a couple of balls hit to her, so she was getting plenty of action.  Not only did she start Saturday's game, but played the whole game.  She is a fielding animal and nothing gets by her.  While she was hitting the batting cages on Friday we did head over to the river to watch the spawning Sturgeon.  Always impressive to watch fish both ancient and old.  There were several sturgeon and most greater than 4-5 feet long.  For every sturgeon we saw there was likely 45 carp right behind them sucking up the eggs in the strong current.  Soon it will be time for bowfishing so we will get out an give the sturgeon a little help.  Sunday of course was Mother's day and Amy was awoke to breakfast in bed from all the kids.  It was great to watch them surround her with food and gifts.  The had made her cards with letters inside that were really touching.  We then hit the bakery for some additional doughnuts before a little backyard Kubb.  Fittingly the series ended in a tie.  We hit the green house later in the day to fill in some of the flower beds and Ella decided she should walk to a neighboring store to get supplies for a koolaid stand and raise money for juvenile diabetes.  After three pitchers of cool aid I think she netted a real nice contribution.....of course it is a good sign when the ice-cream truck stops at your kool-aid stands.  It had all the the makings of a Norman Rockwell painting.