i learned something about myself today

today in the swimming pool, maggie asked me:

"why when we're sleeping at night do you have to snore?"

awkward!

no one ever told me i snore! nick, what the heck, this shouldn't be news to me. well since nick sleeps like a rock, i guess i shouldn't be surprised.

so i said to maggie:

"do i snore at night?"

and she said:

"oh yes yes yes."

then she tried to imitate my snore for me, and it was kind of a "doop, doop, doop" sound, which i think isn't true. but she sounds like she's telling the truth, and i don't want to be like mom and live in denial of my snoring, so i will embrace it and prepare to accept that i snore. gently. like a robot.

haha!

we have visitors!

our friends from the old co-op are visiting. maureen, ricky, and their son gabriel. we're having a wonderful time! the arrived yesterday afternoon, and we just relaxed around the house and had some BBQ. today we took them down to the harbor, had lunch there, then went swimming at mom and dads, and finished the day with some lobster. i'm not sure what's up for tomorrow. maybe a hike or a trip to ocean point?

maggie loves lobster by the way! she ate an entire lobster for dinner! i think whole "dipping in melted butter" thing is a big part of it for her. or maybe it's just that lobster is so "delicious-y!"

this is going to be a short entry, i'm sorry. it's late and i need to get to bed for our big day tomorrow. maybe we'll do a boat ride, we didn't get around to it today. i did get to take the boat out with dad and get a feel for it and practice docking, which went pretty well, so maybe i'll take it out tomorrow. none of the kids are interested in going on of course, so it'll probably be an adults only cruise.

oh, and i know that haven't updated on my garden in forever, you must all be wondering what's going on with it (ha!). well, it's not all that impressive. it looks pretty good and green, i'm just not getting much in the way of vegetable production. a few green beans and peas, a zucchini here and there, some really, really small cucumbers, and some fennel that's pretty much all bolted. there are green tomatoes that should be ripening up one of these days, and the brussels sprouts are slowly getting bigger, so i still have some hope, but i'm certainly not overflowing with home-grown goodness. i have a feeling that if nick had picked up that compost for me like i'd asked, i'd have some more to write about. sigh, maybe the year after next (since i'll be taking next summer off since we'll be gone).

just chaos as usual around here....

not much to write about really. the weather got cold all of a sudden, and now it's raining. which is good for my poor garden, i really didn't water enough through that heat and some of my plants aren't looking so well. ah, so it goes. my tomatoes and green beans are still looking good, so i'll get something.

we rented the witches from netflix on saturday, and nina has watched it like, 4 times. it's kind of scary too, when angelica huston took off her face mask and revealed her true, witchy face, i thought it might be too much for the girls. maggie was a bit scared, but still wanted to watch, and nina LOVED it.

here she is:


scary!
but, no nightmares, and nina wants to buy the movie. this all coming from the girl who used to be afraid of herons and woodpeckers!

hot hot hot!!

it's 8:40 am and it feels like it's 80 already. and humid! it's supposed to be in the mid-90s today, so the plan is pretty much to sit in the pool all day. we might even go see a movie.

yesterday we went out to dinner at the ebb tide, and then we went to get some ice cream at the ice cream factory. we ate most of it inside, but then moved outside to finish. maggie (wearing pink strawberry pajamas and pink cowgirl boots) sat down at a picnic table on the wharf with three biker guys. the conversation was hysterical.

first biker guy: i like your boots!
maggie: they're cowgirl boots, not just boots.
second biker guy: i have cowboy boots. (shows her his biker boots).
maggie: and who are you?
second biker guy: (he said his name but i forgot it)
maggie (to first biker guy): and what's your name?
second biker guy: (says name but i forgot that too. i'm sure maggie remembers, i should ask her).
maggie: and who's he? (pointing to third guy)
second biker guy: that's larry.
then biker guys 1 and 2 asked her if she liked her ice cream and told her they had gotten some earlier, and they'd eaten it all and were soooo full.
then maggie says: and did larry get some ice cream too?

and i just busted out laughing. i can't remember someone's name for 10 seconds, but she remembered larry! they were laughing too, she's just too cute. then her friend ariel came along and we went over to sit with them.

nina's reading fire has been lit

i never would have guessed it, but it's horror. horror! she jumps for books about warewolves, vampires, witches, you name it. she is so grandma's little girl. she finished the witches tonight, and next she's moving onto RL Stein's Goosebumps series. so cute!

bucksport bridge!

it was so, so cool. nina was a little hesitant to go up, and i was afraid maggie wouldn't like it up there, so i wasn't sure how it was going to go. nina was worried more about the elevator ride than being up there. she was afraid it could get stuck in the middle. a very valid fear, considering that there's no way to get out of that elevator if it were to get stuck in the middle! i told her i would ask the guy, and he said it's only ever gotten stuck at the top or bottom, never in the middle. that did little to reassure her. still, she went up, but she got freaked out about making the trip back down again, so we caught the next elevator back down. nick and ethan stayed up, and then when they came down, maggie, ethan, and i went back up. ethan loved it, and was psyched to go up a second time with me.

we didn't do fort knox because we were all too hungry and nick wanted to make it to the mexican restaurant we'd seen on route 1 in northrup. we did, and it was excellent. then we raced home to get into mom and dad's pool. ahhh is it nice in that pool these days!!

camping was great!

we left on saturday morning at about 9:30 and headed straight for Orland, Maine. well, we did stop on the way at a walmart in rockland to get our tent! fortunately they had a few in stock, and we got a nice 6 man and a queen-sized air mattress. phew! if they didn't have a tent, we would have been in trouble!

(here's the tent, with me and my big fat butt!)
just that one stop though, then we were back on our way. the drive took about 2 hours, and then there we were. i guess i'd driven through orland before on my way to bar harbor, but i never noticed it! the campground was beautiful though.
it's on a beautiful pond with a little pebbly beach, it has a cute little playground, and the kids just played and swam nonstop. oh yes, and the monkey bars. nina and maggie LOVED the monkey bars.
maggie would do this thing where she would climb up a 3/4 of the way to the top (they weren't very tall, maybe 4 feet high), and sit down on one bar, grab the bar in front of her, and then drop down. i couldn't watch! i was so afraid she was going to hit her face or dislocate an arm or something, but she didn't. and she loved it. so i let her keep on doing it, but i pretended it wasn't happening.

ethan had a great time too. he went kayaking on the first day, and fishing and canoeing on the second. he was in charge of our fire, too.
plus, he got to sleep in his own tent when our friend jenn left early because the her kids weren't falling asleep.
sleeping in our tent went well though, as well as sleeping usually goes for us anyway. maggie and nina and i were on the air mattress, and nick was on a mat that jill loaned him.

on sunday, we played for a while in the morning and then headed back to boothbay. it was so hot that we couldn't wait to swim. we did stop at the bucksport bridge on the way home, which was so amazing, and i'll put pictures up tomorrow.

i complained about the cold all winter....

so i really should be talking more about the wonderful weather we're having this summer! wow has it been gorgeous! last weekend and the beginning of this week were hot, hot, hot, and humid to boot. the pool got into the 80s, so swimming as been absolutely heavenly. we can stay in all day at that temperature (and the girls do!). then on wednesday some storms came through and the weather was a bit cooler behind that (low 70s and thursday morning, with low humidity). that felt just fantastic! the cool seemed to kill some of the mosquitoes, so we went for a hike around oven's mouth early thursday morning. it was just perfect! betsy and the kids came with us. the blackberries there aren't ripe yet, but they will be soon, and we were scoping them out. i think us and our friends the mosses are the only ones that go to oven's mouth to pick blackberries, because we always get a lot there. a few more weeks, maybe a month at the most, and we'll be making some blackberry pie or blackberry jam. mmmm!

today was warmer, low 80s, but the humidity was still low and it was amazing. i know i'm going into too much detail about the weather now, but i plan to re-read this in january or february, and re-live the warm sun and delicious breeze, so forgive my indulgence.

also, while i'm indulging myself, my garden is looking absolutely lush. well, my new beds are. the older beds are looking a little rougher. my potatos aren't flowering yet, which has me slightly alarmed, and my peas, which i didn't trellis, don't seem to be yielding what they did last year. or maybe they're yielding the same, but i planted so many more... next year, or the year after since we plan to be gone, i'll have to put a lot of compost in that bed. i wonder if i can convince our renters to compost too... maybe i'll take some money off the rent if they do!
but anyway, my brussels sprouts look amazing. i should take a photo. my best zucchini plant already has a small zucchini, and the others aren't far behind. i have a few small tomatoes starting up, some tiny tiny cucumbers coming, and the fennel (the ones that aren't bolting from the heat anyway) also look great. no green beans yet, but i'm hopeful!

i love summer!

a few more photos from vanessa's visit

yeah, i really didn't take enough pictures. but that's probably because there were too many kids running around to keep track of a camera! that and we were just having too much fun. hopefully there are some good one's on mom and dad's camera that i can steal.

i'll get some pictures of ethan and the girls this week and next. we're having a great time with him! we were hoping to go mini-golfing tonight (the girls both napped for like, 2 hours, so it's not like we have to worry about being out past bedtime!), but it's been raining all night (which is great news for my garden), so instead we stayed in and played wii bowling. they really need a wii mini golf! so we'll have to hit up the mini golf another night. ethan tells me he's terrible, so i'm getting my hopes up that he's someone i might actually beat. we'll see, and i'll be sure to let you know!

maggie is back in the pool

she didn't want to swim yet this summer. every time she almost got in, she'd scream and demand i put her PJs back on. no explanation as to why. finally today it was SO hot, and the pool was SO warm, that i told her if she just came in with me and gave it a try i would let her watch TV. i'm not above bribery. haha.

so she agreed, got in, and didn't get out for hours! hooray! she swam with her little floaty and had a fantastic time. she got back in after dinner too. she's just adorable in there, bicycling her little legs under the water. at one point she and nina were playing some kind of mermaid game and they were supposed to be going somewhere. someone asked, 'where are you going?' and maggie paused, then answered, 'talahasee!'
haha!

also, nina is reading the witches by roald dahl right now. she LOVES it. i thought it would be too scary for her, but no, she can't get enough. it's really a hard book (i looked it up online and it's 5th to 6th grade level), but she keeps shocking me with the number of words she knows! she has read some of it silently to herself, but mostly we're taking turns reading it aloud because there are probably a dozen words per page that she doesn't know. but she does amazingly, even when reading things that the grand high witch says in her accent (she'll say something like, "vitches of inkland!" instead of "witches of england!" and nina does an amazing job with it.) anyway, she's so excited that it's a scary book because she loves scary. she is totally grandma's little girl!

last night was my 15 year high school reunion!

it was fun, good times had by all. the highlight though was when i was carded to re-enter the bar (mcseagulls). i was excited enough that the bouncer asked to see my ID, but then he quizzed me on my birthdate. i wanted to hug him! i told him i was there for my 15 year HS reunion and that he'd made my night, and he said i certainly looked much younger than that. before that i was telling some classmates that i remember babysitting for a woman back in high school while she was going to her 15 year high school reunion and thinking 'wow, she's old!' hahaha!

mom and dad and ethan watched the girls while we were out. they rented toy story 3, and maggie got scared at this one perilous part at the end. mom reassured her that everything would be fine, the toys wouldn't fall into the furnace, and she said, 'i know, the aliens will rescue them.' and mom and dad were like, ok whatever. and then a few minutes later, the toys were rescued by the aliens! and mom and dad said, 'maggie, how did you know that was going to happen? have you seen this movie?' and she said, 'no, i read the book!'

haha! it's true, too. we read the book (a short children's book version), i think we even bought it but i haven't seen it in months... must be lost somewhere! i can't believe she remembered the story and realized that they were the same story. she's so smart!

busy busy busy!

fortunately, the long silence here on the old blog is due to fun busyness, not sickness.

and what fun we're having! on saturday night erik, isabelle, and chester came up, and on sunday night (late, so we didn't see them until monday morning) vanessa, micah, ethan, wyatt, and bider came up! we're having such a great time!!! the weather is perfect (actually kind of hot, but it's finally heating up the pool), so we're swimming and boating. yesterday we took the kids to the railway village and wyatt got his first train ride. it was the nina's first ride of the year, and maggie didn't want to go. the whistle was too loud and really startled her.

today i took the girls into town in the morning. we hit up the library (nina checked out the witches by rold dahl. i had seen it on the shelf and told nina that it was the scariest book i'd ever read, and she insisted on getting it. i'm not sure if it's too difficult for her, but she's pretty determined, so we'll see!). then we rode the trolly and did our (boring) errands. but we got to spend the afternoon in the pool! nina can stay in all day, she loves it so much. maggie's spent a total of maybe 5 minutes in there, most of that yesterday while she was riding on the inflatable alligator (serena is her name in case i reference her again).

monday of course was the 4th, and we all went to the town common where we drank lemonade and browsed the craft fair. there were some kids activities that we didn't get to, because the kids mostly just ran around. maggie wanted to throw balls at the dunk tank and dunk someone, but we forgot about that. sorry maggie. no wonder she's such an angry child.

maggie has been quite the handful lately. a few days ago, when nick tried to put pants on her (the horror!) she told him to die and stay dead forever. nice. she just turned 3. then today she called me an "old dummy." ouch. when we were home and she did something, i don't even remember what, and i scolded her, she yelled, "fine, i'm going into frikkin' time out!" as she marched over to the bottom of the stairs (which is where i make them sit during time-outs). i'm not actually sure what f-word she used the first time she said it, but when she repeated herself (in case we missed it i guess), she definitely said frikkin'. we all managed to totally ignore it, which hopefully means she won't repeat it. she really does like to use words that get a reaction. sigh...

oh, and today at hannaford she stuck a sticker on my dress, right on top of my bosom, and said "you have a sticker on your nipple!" and i told her, "it's just a dress sticker" and moved it a little higher. she repeated "nipple, nipple, nipple" for a few minutes, i told her not to, it's inappropriate, perhaps i threatened or raised my voice, i can't say for sure but it's certainly not out of the question... regardless, the incident blew over and she forgot about it, until i was paying for groceries and the cashier (who of course i've known my whole life) says to me "oh i like your sticker!" and maggie says, loudly, "it's her nipple sticker!" and the cashier bursts out laughing as i try in vain to explain that i don't know why she keeps saying that... sigh, the woman's going to think i wear pasties around the house or something.

that child!

nina has been a perfect angel though. wyatt LOVES her, it's too cute. and she's so adorable with him. she was pushing him on the swings today and tickling him, and it was just too much cuteness.

well, nick's home with the new laptop (the old one is finally done for. it was a fan issue that did it in, but the broken screen didn't help keep it out of the junk pile). the girls told nick to get a good color and he said he'd try. maggie said if he got a boring color she'd paint it pink. i told nick to see if the warranty covers that kind of thing, since she probably will try. good thing she's so darn cute!!

ok, more sooner than later i hope! i've got to take some pictures too.