Lids Up!

v



With Sophia safely away at Y camp, Merrick and I have the run of the house and we are just hanging out and doing dude stuff. Yesterday we were able to head over to the Packers training camp for more than an hour. The stands were packed but we found a nice shaded place on the bleachers that was no more than 20 feet from the quarterbacks tossing balls to Finley. Then the recievers came down to do their drills, so great seats and great players to watch. Could even hear Driver giving Cobb advice on turning without slipping. Merrick sucked down a can of pop and used his Clay Matthews mask for a fan, and kept asking when they were going to score a touchdown. It had also been a little while since Mitch had been fed so we head to a nearby field and tried to score some grasshoppers. I think the grasshoppers have gotten much faster and less plentiful since I was a kid, and we caught exactly none. We did score just short of a dozen Asian beetles so Mitch had some sustenance. Every other waking minute of the day was spent playing driveway hockey. We played about "thousand Million" games of pig and I think we played about 6 or 7 hours of hockey. Merrick slept through the night but crawled in bed with me about 6am to chastise me for not getting up early to go fishing. I didn't respond quickly enough so he said he was going to look for his rollerblades. I suspect there is more hockey in store for today.

Beaches and bonfires

The weather has again been great and we are spending some time outside as usual. I did have the kids out in the Oconto again as a friend of mine had to sight in a new gun. It was also a good chance for the kids to try shooting the SKS. This is not an ideal training gun and was done with the utmost of caution. They both got to shoot it one time, albeit that we left the bayonet in. Merrick smacked the wooden stick of the target just below the target itself and the sent the target swirling about 10 feet in the air. It was pretty cool, and the guy I was with concurred in true guy fashion, "that was cool." We hit Bay Beach again with some friends and as always had a great time. Still didn't get on the big roller coaster but plenty of other rides that go in circles. Thursday night we spent around the campfire and had some smores. Although Sophia is about to get plenty of this as she heads off to camp next Sunday. We finished up our smores and then hung out on the blue blanket and read old travel/outdoor stories from the journal. This has become one of the more pleasurable past times of the summer, and the kids seem to equally enjoy the stories they are in as well as the ones that occurred long before they were here.

4, 8, .22

Proud day for dad, when the kids were quite young, Merrick only a year, I bought small combo youth guns for them, .22 caliber and 20 gauge. Small framed with a lot of safety features, I thought these little break actions would be great learning and teaching guns. Today was the day we took them out to the woods. After working through all of the safety aspects including checking the barrel for debris, in true Barney Fife fashion, the kids individually were given their bullet. We were shooting at a small spinning target, that suffered very little damage today, but as we swatted away horseflies and mosquitoes Sophia did manage to put a little hurt on the plastic gopher targets. Her face lit up when she made the middle gopher do spinning back flips. Merrick was farther off, but not much. With his gun registering nearly 20% of his weight, I thought he did very well. It was nearly an hour on "the range" but I don't think either of them shot more than eight times. As I had suspected, a great teaching and learning combo.

Shark week

Sophia was making her own videos today and one of them began with her saying that her family was pretty active and they didn't watch much TV. I took this as a positive sign and a realistic representation of our day to day lives. That being said this week is Shark week and it has reached almost holiday status complete with the yearly shark week hats. This year I was a little closer to having greeting cards sent out to the family with the kids in their toothed hats and smiles. In the spirit of Shark week we have been spending plenty of time in and on the water. The kids are making great use of their snorkgoogles (Merrick's phrase) in the round rubber beach and each of them is getting quite good at holding their breath under water as they continue to challenge each other. We are also trying to spend some time on top of the water and in the canoe. We drove a little ways to Krohn's lake which had enough panfish to keep us entertained as we paddled around the 20 some acre spring feed glacial pond. Sophia out fished both of us boys hauling in 3 and letting twice that many get away. Merrick and several bobbers gasping for air but was unable to cordinate the hook setting with the reeling in order to land any lunch. We also made it back to the library for story time, the first return in almost two years, since Merrick punched the hungry caterpillar thrice on our last visit. We met Merrick's friend there and he came back to our house for a few hours. Today was a big day for Mitch as his cage was cleaned and redecorated but the real highlight was the new stilts. Instead of tossing or burning an old head board footboard combination I turned it into a pair of stilts for Merrick. Soon to be followed by a set for Sophia. If you look close you may notice that Merrick's are actually solid walnut stilts, painted but still walnut. Trust me the helmets were not my idea but the Sophia's.

Rockin in LaX

Early in the week we sneaked out for some excellent kite flying but the highlight was a trip to LaX to hang out with the Bryan boys and it was a great time had by all. There were evening concerts given by each age group and plenty of laughs. The kids even managed to fit about 73 neighborhood kids into the tree fort, some dressed in garbage bags, and repainted the inside of the fort. This of course required a massive hose down effort upon completion and the youngest of the group were just washed down outside. We did a great morning hike, with a spectacular view of the bluffs, in Myrick park and were able to watch schools of bullheads slurping the surface of the water. Becky also played guide and lead us to a massive cottonwood tree for the kids to 'hug on." The sprinkler park was a literal hit, with Becky in command, the two youngest collided head-on after only about 5 minutes in the sprinklers resulting a massive nose bleed and much swelling for Ole. While his face was swollen most of the weekend and the two blackened eyes made the crash hard to forget, we did our best by spending the day at Lake Wazee. Wazee is an old iron mine with depths in excess of 300 feet and clarity that screams for a scuba tank. It was a bit of a drive and an equal wait time in the parking lot as we huddled between the two vehicles under a massive umbrella to wait out a passing rain/wind storm. It was well worth the wait. We spent about 5 or 6 hours at the fine sand beach with the kids snorkeling the majority of the time. Sophia only came out of the water to scrounge our picnic staples as a source of bait for the schools of small sunfish in the shallows. The kids found fish, frogs and even a small turtle. They also found the sandman on the way home.

beatin' the heat

It has been a very hot week, and we are doing are best to not find ourselves trapped inside, but also recognizing the beauty and necessity of a siesta culture. There have been plenty of freeze-pops, ice cream cones and wrestling in the round rubber beach. Even turned a cavity filling trip to the dentist into a positive by attaching our address to the helium balloons in hopes of a return to sender notice after sending them into a scorching sky. We had a couple of play dates with kids coming and going, but most cool was a surprise multi-night stay from Munkly-Arky. He even brought his bike and as such was able to keep the kids cool by putting some wind in there hair on several bike rides. To that end we knocked the training wheels off of Merrick's bike and he easily got up and going on two-wheels. This is of course now an obsession increasing our daily bike rides an entire order of magnitude. Needless to say Merrick is pretty proud of his new riding skills and was ear to ear smiles at getting to take a ride with Munkle Arky. As mentioned we can't be outside all of the time, as there are only so many freeze-pops, so the indoor time is mostly spent playing cards. Poker has become the game of choice and Merrick seems to follow his Sister's luck at cards. My pair of twos and ace high always subcumbs to there three of kinds or the occasional full house. Merrick even drew a nice ten-ace straight missing the royal flush by having an ace of diamonds rather than the ace of hearts--I have no intentions of playing either of them for real money any time soon. We have found some time to fly the kites and hit the neighborhood park as well. As always it is nice and cool in the library as well.

Almost a Junk week

Enough time outdoors and it will put you under for a while, as was the case this week. It slowed us down but we still managed to sneak in a little edutainment. Spent some time on the bike trail and hit the library, although Sophia forgot to bring her books and if I recall was just doing cartwheels in the backyard and telling me that she was ready. We also had plenty of play-dates, with Merrick getting his first out of the house experience. I dropped him off at his friends house for four hours of four-year-old frenzy and told the not-overly-excited babysitter I would see her at noon. He had a blast. Sophia had her normal twenty some engagements including some friends over here, during which Merrick cut her hair and then chased her with the scissors (oh, he is busy sometimes). She then spent the rest of the afternoon at the friends house and pool. Tuesday we went mini-golfing and being the first ones on the course there was nobody in front of us to slow us down. Merrick took this as a challenge to run through the course. I think we finished 18 holes in about 16 minutes (excellent expenditure of twenty bucks). I could barely keep him in frame for a picture. No rain, which is a first for us although no hole in ones either. Wednesday morning found us at the Botanical garden, which has added a lot of new features. We chased/hid from each other in the maze and the world's fastest slide is still holding rank. I try to catch the kids when the came out, but was told Merrick was coming and then the kids switched. It is a blind catch at best and Sophia's additional mass came shooting out and through my hands. She only bit her lip a little. The kids spent plenty of time in the children's garden area watering the topiaries. We did stop for a picture opportunity in which the kids put their faces cut-out flowers. Merrick kept looking over the top, and I eventually just took the picture. He walked up to me all smiles, "hey dad, did you get a picture of my junk?" Yep, he is busy. We hit the bikes again this morning in search of grasshoppers--Mitch is getting hungry. We didn't find any grass hoppers big enough to catch for him but had a nice ride and lit off the last of our three fireworks. These were the parachute flares that shoot about twenty feet in the air and then parachute down with magnesium flares. The same ones I accidentally shot into my own trees on the fourth.