What My Children Liked Best at their First Real Concert

Guess Stephen Ambrose and E. L. Konigsberg were more interesting than Roseanne Cash.
(Oh, and they liked the colored spotlights too.)

Rhubarb and Blackberry Pie

Alex, Great-Grandma Bassett, and the aforementioned pie. For breakfast.

Why I Never Called You

Dear friend,
I was going to call you today and catch up.  I really meant to.  But instead...

1) Alex and I stopped to talk to a neighbor holding a garage sale, and he offered us some rhubarb.  Though I demurred, saying my dad had some in his garden (an understatement), Alex jumped on it.  The neighbor advised us to make blackberry rhubarb pie, with this guidance: "Well, you take some blackberries, and you take some rhubarb, and you add some sugar.  And you should put in some flour to thicken it."
2) We went to my parents' house for a family dinner and cooked chicken for the tortilla soup pot.  Mmm, tortilla soup!
3) I reauditioned for the Ave Renaissance choir.
4) I talked to Alex and my grandma (who'd been visiting for our beach trip) about making aforementioned blackberry rhubarb pie.  We agreed to meet up the following morning before they started driving east, but then grandma thought she would make the crust right away, and Alex seemed interested, so I suggested he help her while I pick blackberries.
5) I roped my dad into the project, and he and I went picking berries along the side of the street.  Ever try to stop two Bassetts berry picking?
5) By the time we got back, Grandma had mixed crust and cut rhubarb, and so we decided to put the whole thing together, let it bake, and have tomorrow's meeting be for pie-eating instead of pie-making.  That meant washing fruit, calculating fractions to triple the recipe, and practicing rolling out the pie dough under Grandma's strict supervision.  "Gently, gently, gently!"  For all I know, she's over there still, assembling our leftovers into one last dish.
And there went the day.
But I'm thinking of you, honest!
And I'll be missing you especially as I enjoy tomorrow's pie.

Measuring time

Alex: There was a decade between World War I and World War II.
Me: It was more than that.
Alex: A decade and a year.
Me: 1918 to 1939, right? That's two decades and a year.
Alex: No, a decade is twenty years.
Me: A decade is ten years. 'Dec' means ten.
Alex: Then a decdec is a century.

How a mile jog ends up taking an hour and a half

Plan: go for a quick jog before we spend the morning doing laundry and packing.

What happens:
-Decide to throw in a load of laundry before I leave, so that I can come back and put it in the dryer (since we have the world's smallest washer/dryer combo, we really have to maximize drying time.)
-Must stain-treat all the stained laundry first. This includes the slow process of coaching Alex through hair-spraying the pen marks off of his Sunday clothes, as well as boiling water for berry stains
-Start load of laundry
-Ask if any children would like to go out with me on bikes. All children volunteer. All children must then get dressed and find shoes.
-Ask for route ideas. Children beg to go to park. Children beg to go play at school. Agree to five minutes at each.
-Bike/jog to school at good speed. Finally have left the house, heart rate up, things are looking good!
-Kids park bikes at school. I lead children around our last driving trip route across the US map painted on the playground. Alex then decides to visit every state. Must pull up a Google map to remember which state is Kansas. Five minutes passes, but how can we leave when he's learning geography?
-Finally visit and name all fifty states. Veto another cross-country trip and summon children. Bike helmets get buckled on. On to our next destination!
-Sidewalk leads uphill. Must push Rebecca, must remind the dramatically flagging Alex that he'll be faster than me even if he walks. Point out to Rebecca that her machine (the bike) is more efficient than mine (my feet). Rebecca soon starts complaining that her machine has run out of fuel.
-Reach park. Alex promptly decrees that I must follow him along his climbing route through the play equipment. Touching the ground is forbidden.
-At four minutes, I give the kids a warning. Katherine complains that I haven't followed her around the play equipment. We try her route, which includes swinging feet upwards to land on curved monkey bars, which I must then wiggle between feet-first.
-At six minutes, I decree it's time to leave. Katherine whines that I haven't followed her as long as I followed Alex. I relent and swing to the rotating circles (slipping and stepping on ground on my way. But it turns out that then you can't swing the things without touching the ground anyway.)
-Head towards home. As we turn onto our street, Katherine spies blackberry vines poking out of a laurel hedge. Must stop to pick the ones within reach.
-Finally re-enter house. Still have to shower and eat breakfast, while kids are supposed to pack but mostly don't.
And that's the morning!

Bedtime reading

When Lar checks the bedroom, half an hour after kids have been put to bed, here's the status:
Alex: reading to Rebecca from Citizen Soldier by Stephen Ambrose (he's read five pages)
Rebecca: asleep

The new family accessory

Hand-carried shoes. The kids don't want to wear them at our house, or in the car, or in grandma's house, or at the park, but we make them bring shoes "just in case." So they carry them back and forth.

Our new family sport

Competitive praying. You have to refuse to pray when you're asked, wait as the next person refuses their turn, then start praying really fast and loud just when they're starting. Minus points for restarting repeatedly, extra points for volume.

A Song for Scout Lake

Inspired by, if not based on, actual events:*

I hear that you've settled down
That you've found a site
That you're camping now
I hear that your dreams came true
That your tent's set up under the starry blue

Old friend, why can't you just share
Both our tents would fit in if you'd scoot over there

I hate to turn up along your trail uninvited
But you said you knew the way, and I was tired
I hoped you'd use your light
To get us safely to a camping spot
Before we dropped...

Never mind, I'll find someplace like you
I'll be looking for a flat spot too
While I'm searching ahead
I'll remember you said
Sometimes it's flat at night
But mostly there's rocks instead**

You know how the time flies
Only hours ago we were starting our hike
We've climbed rocks and trees
Tripped and scraped our knees
Had bugs blown down our throats by the summer breeze***

I hate to turn up along your trail uninvited
But you said you knew the way, and I was tired
I hoped you'd use your light
To get us safely to a camping spot
Before we dropped...

Never mind, I'll find someplace like you
I'll be looking for a flat spot too
While I'm searching ahead
I'll remember you said
Sometimes it's flat at night
But mostly there's rocks instead


*fictional campsite hog added for dramatic tension
**changed at my daughter's insistence from "sometimes there's rocks instead" because she told me: "There are always rocks."
***both me and Lar

A Photo From Scout Lake

Ah, Issaquah!

Boehm's tour, with taste testing and ladies who hand-temper chocolate (living thermometers, says the guide) and stained glass and glockenspiel music and a replicated 12th century Swiss chapel

Mom introduces me to Champion Grocery, the end of the line for all sorts of ethnic and gourmet foods at cut-rate prices

Searching for the Issaquah historic train museum, with old train cars and telegraph equipment, which would have only slightly better if it was open (hint: you turn at Mills Music, not the retirement home, although the retirement home's volunteer gardener gave lovely directions)

Library visit (where once again I failed to remember Rebecca's reading program sheet that she needs to pick up her blinking barred glasses--and why do kids like those, again?)

and a park where I could read my library book while kids played (Rebecca and another boy of equal diminutive stature teamed up to push each other back to high ground so they wouldn't get stuck dangling from the sliding handle at the end of the line)

Low tide

Taking the kids to a low tide at the beach has been on my summer list for ages. Today, we finally made it out. And what a day!

This, though you almost certainly can't see it, is a sea pen. It is also the first sea pen I've seen at Golden Gardens in more than a decade (with visits spaced every few years.) We used to see tons of them when we explored the sandbar off of the beach, as fat as carrots and maybe a foot long. This one was more like an inch tall. I hope it survived Rebecca's digging it up. (Hint: it is the orange blob in the center.)

I don't remember seeing all these tiny snails before, but they were everywhere today. They even come in stripey!

I don't remember hermit crabs either, but we found several tiny ones. This one had a shell smaller than a corn kernel.

After searching through seaweed for sea stars and crabs, we picked up rocks to find limpets, mussels, baby clams and crabs, and chitons like this one:

Here are the girls, who, even though they'd been complaining they were cold and tired and ready to leave, fell in love with this anenome-covered rock:

and, aside from poking anenomes, this was Alex's favorite part: