Back to School

As it does every year, summer came to a screeching halt this week. Yes, we packed it full of fun! Yes, we swam! We golfed! We camped! We ruined our dinner with ice cream! We acted! We rode the Scrambler! We played baseball! Heck, we even met Millard Fillmore!!! But wait! There's more fun to be had!!

We're not ready for summer to end!!!

But alas, despite our best efforts at all-out denial and a nearly total lack of preparation, school started this week. But fret not! Heading back to school was not all bad news..... O got the teacher he has been hoping for since Camp Invention '08!


And his Ghostbusters t-shirt was clean so he could wear it on the first day of school!



And we got to walk to school with his BFF Katie.

After I dried my back-to-school tears, I met friends for breakfast, read a good book, puttered, and generally enjoyed a nice relaxing day in my way-too-quiet house. Before I knew it, it was 3:30. And as I met O on his way home from school, it was all smiling faces, all "I love my teacher", and all "you'll-never-believe-how-great-this-is"...

And just like that we were back in the swing of things.

Oh, Canada!

I know, I know.... I promised pictures of each day's fun. And I took MANY--daily!--until the whole new job-sell house-move family craziness began. Perhaps some day, I'll post a summer-o-fun II retrospective of sorts. But for today, you get Canada.

On our latest trip to the Empire State, we took along our brand-spankin'-new passports, and they burned such a hole in our pockets that as soon as we were within just a few miles of a border crossing, we had to go!!

Turns out, the Canadians frown upon the spontaneous international trip with your child. Something about making sure that the child in the backseat actually belongs to you, and that the other parent is aware of your taking him across the border, and why aren't you all traveling together today, and why aren't you traveling with a note from his father?!? Oh, but by the power of the dimple in the backseat, we charmed our way into Ontario. We spent a total of 30 minutes and $4.62 US in the great white north, but judging by O's smile and pure joy, you would have thought we were on and all-expenses-paid trip to the moon.

Here he is at Old Fort Erie, the nearest tourist attraction we could find. (We passed on the Duty Free shop).

And with the ironically named Peace Bridge,

our point of stressful entry.

Fun o' Plenty in Week Two

June 11th--Because it was O's BFF Jeff who staged this shot, I'm pretty sure one clone trooper is telling the other clone trooper some kind of poop joke. Just a guess...

June 12th--These clowns were my lunchdates. Then O & I headed to the First Ladies' National Historic Site for a(nother) tour of the Saxton House. Happy Birthday to Mrs. McKinley!

June 13th--Where else can you get face-painted with a Village People fumanchu moustache and retrieve giant Pez from a paper-mache Barack Obama Pez dispenser?

Parade the Circle+festival+the Hursts=GREAT FUN!!

June 14th--O got to have tons of fun today, but all we got to do was paint the dining room.

June 15th--Who ya gonna call? Your buddy Alex, whose grandpa has a friend who owns THE Ghostbusters car. O and pals got to go on the ride of their lives!

June 16th--Checking out the swimming lake with Baba.

Verdict: squishy and stinky. Digging in the sand on the shore is tons-o-fun, though!

June 17th--Maggie's SpongeBob birthday fiesta!

Week One, Summer of Fun II

This year I want to better document our Summer of Fun II by taking a picture everyday that sums up where we found our fun. Here is week one...

June 4th--Nothing says summer like a big pile of dirty shoes by the door :) O had friends over today for a fun day of Legos, Star Wars & backyard ball.

June 5th--First dip in the FOHA pool. Very, very, very cold!!

June 6th--SandO at Niagra Falls

June 7th--Chatting with President Millard Fillmore in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, NY.

June 8th--Celebrating a great play. Go Giants!

June 9th--Watching Journey to the Center of the Earth. The 3D glasses didn't last long, but we enjoyed the show anyway!

June 10th--Hiking Chippewa Rail Trail

When did this happen?!?

Life's pace seems to be quickening. I blink and the school day is over. It seems like days have passed, but in reality it's been a month. Christmas was just yesterday, but all of a sudden it's June. Every year seems to move faster, and faster, and faster. It wreaks havoc with my to-do list, and when the passage of time suddenly catches up with me, it wreaks havoc with my heart.

Today was one of those times. I have no idea when it happened, but there is a fourth grader living in my house who ...

• is nearly up to my shoulder in height
• routinely remembers things better than I do
• says "please" and "thank you" when ordering in a restaurant (without prompting)
• gets my jokes without explanation now and only occasionally rolls his eyes at me
• pays attention through an entire baseball game, gets base hits more often than strike outs and makes awesome plays at first
• can use a jump drive to save his webpage project from school so he can independently work on it at home, too... as if I'd be any help with that, anyways...
• cries on the last day of school because he doesn't want it to end

These are the days I want to freeze in time. To put the cork in the bottle to save for later. It is the sweetness of life in balance with the bitter of knowing that time is fleeting. I know that soon I will have blinked again and there will be a teenager living in my house. But for now, I am so thankful for the awareness of The Here. The Now. The Today.

And today meant that O became a fourth grader. We celebrated the end of third grade with good friends and big smiles. With limbo and cheese puffs and Hawaiian nametags. With fond remembrances and sad goodbyes. With bunny ears, big hugs, and deep, deep gratitude.

Signs of Summer

Memorial Day Weekend is the official start of summer around here. We managed to pack in lots of our favorite people, places and events this weekend, and I'm going to save several thousand words by using pictures to tell the story....

First baseball game of 2009

Here's O with Orbit at the FCC outing to the Aeros game on Friday night.

P enjoying the game and the company!

First Buehler's $1.00 cone/cup of 2009... but certainly not the last!

First cookout of 2009!
We had friends over after going to see Night at the Museum II,
which got 30 thumbs up from our crowd of 15.


Marching in the Memorial Day parade

Spectating at the Memorial Day parade. Did I mention I love parades?

Celebrating Gumpa's birthday with Blizzards at DQ.

Hooray for SUMMER!

Time flies...

How is it possibly September?? Our summer-o-fun simply flew by too quickly! We squeezed in one last trip to the pool today on the last day of the season, topping off a fabulous Labor Day weekend. O even made several great dives off the side of the pool, something he's been working really hard to master this summer. Yeah! Here's what else the Labor Day Weekend held for us...

The weekend began with my fabulous husband arriving home from work on Friday with an industrial-strength wallpaper steamer that he rented from Home Depot. Now that's true love! Friday evening while O was out with friends and again for most of the day Saturday, we steamed, and scraped, and steamed some more. I still have some bits & pieces to tackle this week, but for the most part the walls are clear. Hoo-stinking-ray!! We are even feeling so good about our progress that we bought paint today... a lovely shade of yellow called "Pale Daffodil."

Yesterday we spent the day at the Toledo Zoo with our Michigan buddies the Boersts. It was a visit that was long overdue. It was a beautiful day and the kids had a blast exploring the zoo together while we parents sort of tagged along behind chatting. For those of you who met these guys years ago when we were still in Ypsi, you won't believe how grown-up Margaret is now. I still remember the day she was born like it was yesterday. She would have you know that she'll be 11 this year! Crazy how time flies, and flies, and flies... Here's a picture of the girls & O and then a great family shot that P took of them.

On the way home, we stopped in Milan to see if the Edison's Birthplace Museum was open (for the edification of the self-proclaimed "history buff" with whom we travel). It was not, but we stumbled upon the Milan Melon Festival and just couldn't pass that one by. It was the quintessential Ohio small-town festival. We did some world-class people-watching while we munched our kettlecorn, then O rode the most spinniest ride he could find, got a skull tattoo, and it was back on the road. As a side note, can you imagine being the Milan Melon Queen? A delicate moniker you'd have to explain to anyone outside the metropolis of Milan, I'm sure...

That brings us back to today. In addition to the pool outing, P&O rode 10 miles on the towpath this morning while I went to work for awhile. Yep, it's back to life, back to reality around here! While Melissa & I cleaned and organized at school this morning, we talked awhile about the incredible summers we had... She had set out to have no regrets this summer, to have done all she & her boys wanted to do. I had declared this the "Summer of Fun." We would have as much fun as we possibly could, every day. We both agreed it was a terrific success of a summer, and that it sure is hard to see it come to an end. Somehow declaring this season the "Fall of Fun" just doesn't sound the same!

Two Peas in a Pod

O and I got to spend some quality time with our good friends the Goodwins today. Their son Zach and O have been two peas in a pod since about the day they were born. Somehow summer schedules proved even busier than school-year schedules, and we hadn't seen them since Spring.... gasp!!! But these two picked up right where they'd left off, filling their afternoon with Legos, baseball cards, pretending and generally enjoying each others' company. Mere & I got to talk the afternoon away while playing with Elena... what a treat! Ryan even got home a little early from work, so I got to see him, too. He's about the only person from high school I see with any regularity, and I'm particularly proud to say "I knew him when...." given that he's a hall of famer now. (Couldn't resist it, Ry!)

This evening we headed up to school for "Meet the Teacher" night. Mrs. Bryan is super nice, the trailer classroom is awesomely air-conditioned, and O is psyched for school to start on Thursday! I still can't believe how quickly our Summer of Fun has flown-by...

Mrs. Bryan, Foul Ball & Clone Wars

We've had a busy fun-packed 24 hours here...

Yesterday afternoon we trekked up to school with our neighbors for the ceremonial posting-of-the-class-lists. O was so very excited to learn that he will have Mrs. Bryan for third grade (his #1 choice) and that he has a really great group of kids in his class. This will be his first year in a trailer, and he is especially excited about the air conditioning! He also received a letter in the mail from Mrs. Bryan today, and we got excited all over again for school to start on Thursday!

Then last night we went to the Aeros game with a group of friends from church. (It was so much fun last time, we figured we'd do it again, this time with fireworks.) We sat really close along the first base line, and O managed to catch a foul ball (with an assist from dad)!!! He was so stinkin' excited. He held on to that thing all night like it was his Wonka Golden Ticket. We also took pictures with Orbit, chowed on yummy pricy snacks, and got some autographs from the stars of the future of the New Britain RockCats.

Today we rounded out the big 8th b-day celebration by taking some buddies to see the new Star Wars movie. I'm being kind to say that cinematically, it was lacking, but the boys loved it. O really was thrilled to celebrate with his good friends and the entire galactic alliance. Here's the crew at DQ before the movie and then with all their testosterone a-blazin' afterwards...

"Nice Gorge!"

That was the exclaimation from O as we & the Brubaker Herd entered Brandywine Gorge this morning, and what a nice gorge it was! It had taken longer than anticipated to reach the promised water because when we tried to go to Blue Hen Falls we were foiled by construction projects. So we backtracked to Brandywine Falls, where we got to meet up with Baba, too!! But it was about half-way through our hike by the time the boys got to play in the creek, and they were more than ready. We played for quite awhile... exploring, skipping rocks, looking for fish, making ginormous splashes with big rocks, and just getting good & wet... and then we hiked up to Brandywine Falls, where we had started our day. The boys are still really fast on the trail, not nearly as apt as Mom, Melissa & I are to just take in our surroundings, but we all had a great time! There wasn't much water going over the falls today, so we promised to take them back in the spring when they're really roaring. Can't wait!

New link for pics

Heard from Aunt Lynn that the new Smugmug link I tried did not work afterall. Bummer. So here's an old-style link...

http://spando.smugmug.com/gallery/5637735_Esifa/1/346662548_qvtpL

Have a great day!

Great 8th Birthday

Having a summer birthday is really a lot of fun!! This year, O's big 8th birthday coinsided with some McFamily coming into town (Nana & Grand-dad, Auntie E, Uncle Ry and Sophie). So we invited a few good friends and Baba & Gumpa to join the McCrowd to celebrate on Saturday afternoon. We had a few of O's favorite foods for lunch-- pizza, watermelon, DQ cake--and then headed outside for a big giant water battle and some slip'n'sliding. As you see in the pics, kids of ALL ages had a ball!

On the actual birthday day, Baba & I took the b-day boy to the Science Center. We got to explore the exhibits, watch an IMAX movie, learn about Einstein, and explore the Mather. We topped the afternoon off with a humongous sundae at the Honey Hut. In the evening we had dinner at Applebee's, ate some more ice cream, and opened presents with Daddy. We even managed to squeeze in a little Playstation Indiana Jones between birthday greeting phone calls. It was really a great day. We'll continue the celebration in a few weeks when we go to see the new Star Wars "Clone Wars" movie with some buddies (the movie doesn't open til the 15th).

There are, of course, more pics to see on Smugmug. Both grandma's are having trouble viewing pics, so I'm trying a new way to link... leave us a comment to let us know if this works!

http://spando.smugmug.com/photos/346662548_qvtpL-Th.jpg

So far, O thinks 8 is pretty great! I'm still a little awed by the fact that he's eight years old!! And a third grader!! Frankly, it's a little much for mom at this point. This of course is confounded by the fact that summer flew by entirely too fast and school starts two weeks from today. We are so not ready for that...