Questions that keep you awake at night.

"Dad, what is the opposite pole from Antarctica called?"

Sunday afternoon blahs

Get everybody's clothes changed, feed kids cheese sandwiches for lunch, rush off to choir, play impromptu choir accompaniment since pianist is gone, come back and load the dishwasher, and then start lasagne. Where can I find the energy?

The answer: chocolate. Like the Boehm's bag of 1/2 price assorteds I bought yesterday. (And by the way, the Newman's-knockoff story printed on the back of their new licorice-chocolate bag is nearly incomprehensible, as well as badly punctuated. It offends me.) With chocolate, I can do just about anything--except maybe save room to eat dinner when it's finally out of the oven.

First of the season: Pratt Lake

Spencer & his two kids--Henry, and Oliver--went on an overnighter to Pratt Lake with K and I. The trip is ~6 miles each way, with 2100ft vertical rise and fall.

The view on this hike is awesome, after the first 3.5 miles, anyway. Nobody else was at the lake; we had the entire place to ourselves. There was a little snow on the trail above Olallie, but not as bad as it would have been if we had continued on to Rainbow Lake, where other hikers reported post-holing up to their waist.

All the kids did awesome. After the hike we stopped in at the Triple X for hamburgers & rootbeer. We've earned it, right?


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Priorities

Yesterday's evening priorities:

1. Feed children
2. Take children to swim lessons

Somehow these priorities morph, evolving these sub-priorities:

1. Let my overnight poet transcribe her rhymes before she forgets them--before she helps with dishes
2. Have children help clean kitchen in interests of self-discipline and contribution
3. Prepare and serve tasty, healthy salad to use up vegetables and fortify children
4. Serve meal outside to take advantage of sunshine

The result?
Late to swimming again.

Our collection of lawnmowers

1) Our own power mower, bought from the previous owners of our house, which died when Laramie pulled it out for spring mowing
2) A hand-mower, inherited from the neighbor across the street, which cuts fragments of short grass but only flattens the tangled jungle in the backyard
3) An old power mower which our next-door neighbor just pressed upon us, since she now has a lawn service. ("We'll borrow it," I tried to clarify. "No, take it," she insisted. "I don't need it back.") Generosity, or perhaps a commentary on our sad landscaping.

Think that's enough?

Cleanliness Can Be Its Own Reward

...especially when you find the chocolate fragments that fell on the counter. Woo-hoo!

On Chores

Nothing makes you catch up on a backlog of cleaning like company coming.

Free Books with Summer Reading

Earn free books for summer reading through the King County Library System, Barnes and Noble, and Half Price Books. I've put more details online at
http://www.loraleeleavitt.com/2010/06/free-books-with-summer-reading.html

Rediscoveries

--The baby gate, with which I realized I could confine my recalcitrant toddler in the hallway when she won't stay in bed. It's the only place in the house that will hold her.
--Time bake, which allowed me to have lasagna hot and bubbling when we returned from gymnastics class. Somehow it still took me 30 minutes to get dinner on the table, though.

And a new discovery

--Climbing wall "features" (the ledges and holes) which I have never used before because they look too small. The instructor for the climbing class I took tonight made us try going up the wall without looking at our feet one time, and our hands the next time, so that we had to feel for the features and use them. I felt pretty smart until the last climb, which was using just features. They're still pretty small!

The camera likes the cake.

 
 

Loving the L's

Our alliterative family has always had a special fondness for the letter "L." Now Rebecca's taking this love to a new level with words like these:

"chloc-late"
"chlalk"
"flamily"
"lellow" (the color)