The Phantom!

Yesterday we drove down to Boston to see The Phantom of the Opera! It was soooo good!!!

Here's the stage. The big thing in the burlap sack is THE chandelier.

Two beautiful girls, so happy to see the show. They LOVED it!!

Nina's wearing her new dress, too.

Ceiling in the opera house. Pretty!

Girls with chandeliers. We love chandeliers.

The opera house was really something else!

We got to Boston early enough to spend a few minutes at the frog pond before the show, too.

Such a great show. No traffic coming or going, either, so a perfect trip.

Look what I found

Nina made this for me... for Mothers' Day? My birthday? I don't remember when! But it's adorable!

That should say, "stuff mom is." She forgot to cross her t.

I got my own poem, too!

The second e is for emasing, by which she meant "amazing." The last one is "ein," German for one, just because she couldn't think of anything else. I told her it means #1!

Today I cleared some brush to open up our water view again. More to go, but I made some progress! Before and after pics one of these days!

Windjammer Days!

No photos of windjammers today. We didn't go into town until the parade, which was great! LOTS of CANDY!!

What's this?

A giant lobster, of course!

 Here's my lovely, making a dash back to us after collecting some candy!

Great action photo! I tell you, that little lego camera is the best we've ever owned!

 What's this coming along down the street now?

A boot car!

The fireworks were cancelled on account of the rain (you can see the rain clouds in the background up there, but it held off. The parade was HOT! The sun came out and it hit almost 80. Maggie said, "I'm roasting like a turkey!" Ha!). So instead of fireworks tonight we're having a dance party!

Best friends forever....

 The dogs just get weirded out when we dance, but that doesn't stop us!

Proud mama and her baby boy!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Landscaping update

Here's the back of the house, so far. You can see the hostas I've transplanted and the small stone border:

Trash can and old chair are kind of taking away from the pic. I must frame better!

 Here they are, closer up:

They're absolutely thriving in their new location!

 One more shot, since I'm so darn excited about them:

With a Marley photobomb. Hello Marley!

Also, knock on wood, the garden is really coming along. Meet my green bean seedlings!

Hello little friends!

 And one of my dozen or so zucchini seedlings.

She's a little blurry, mosquitoes were after me!

Very busy day today. First the girls and I went downtown to see the Windjammer Days festivities. Touch tank and a jellyfish craft on the library lawn, peach shortcake at the Ebb Tide, more crafts down by the bowling alley, Hannaford, then home to try to complete the lower unit oil change (fail), rebuild those last two carburetors (success!), start up the old engine (fail. New battery maybe? Or just a charge? I'll find out tomorrow), then cooked a birthday dinner for mom and continued project clean up the house. The girls' room is looking fantastic but boy am I pooped!

An oldie but goodie

I can't believe this never made it onto the blog! Maggie and I were playing hide-and-seek, and she wasn't quite yet two. I checked in Mom and Dad's computer room, and found this:

Where could she be??!!!


Aww, I miss these days!

Busy week!

I thought when it was summer, I'd have more time to blog. So far, no! That's because I've been busy with the girls all day. I'd forgotten how much work that is! But fun, fun, fun work. Swimming, kayaking, bouncing, crafting, and playing games. On top of that, I've been working on the boat with dad, doing a deep clean and organize in the house (which has been oh so neglected!), landscaping, and gardening. I moved the hostas that were still growing on the patio to the back of the house, and Nick and I build a small stone border around those too. Looks good! The vegetable garden is coming along as well, everything has sprouted, fingers crossed!

Today was an exciting day for Nina: she got her first pair of heels! Well, wedges, but still. Look!

Zomg, she's growing up!

 Some marketing genius somewhere decided to start making heels in toddler and little girl sizes about a year or two ago. Developmentally ridiculous, and I fought it for a looooong time. Then we went to Kaler's for dinner tonight, I had one glass of wine with dinner, we saw these afterwards, and I just couldn't say no any longer. Wedges MUST be better than heels, right??

She just loves them so much!

 Earlier this week, Nina and I had hit up the children's place online. They had a 50% off sale going on, and we stocked up on a few staples. Kid is growing so fast, almost nothing fit!

Maggie is modeling a homemade, statue-of-liberty-esque mumuu.

 Yesterday was all about cleaning and organizing the family room, and when it was all done, it looked so dreadfully bare. So I put up some of the girls' artwork. Much better!

The handprints are all Maggie's, the large matted piece is Nina's.

 I spent today trying to get the girls' room cleaned and organized, including going through their outgrown clothes. Big job! It's not totally done, but I think tomorrow I'll be finished. I also made a little headway sorting though clothes in my and Nick's room, but there's much more work to do there. Sigh... good thing summer is so long!

Here's the sunset tonight. It was a perfect weekend and perfect evening!

Trimming back that brush, that's another thing on my to-do list this summer...

More tomorrow!!

Landscaping work

A few weeks ago, I asked Nick to pick up some compost for the garden, and he brought home mulch. So close, and yet so far. But that's ok, I put the mulch to good use! The hostas and lilies! Once I mulched the lilies, I decided that I should use the stones we pulled off of the old patio to nicely frame them in. Look!!

Ohhh, classy!

You may recall that several years ago, when I first thought we were going to put in a new patio, I moved some of the hostas to the island in the driveway. Every year they've been eaten up by deer as soon as they emerged, but I think the dogs have kept the deer away this year, and they're back. Yay!

I might put stones around here too, but they're not very tall, so I don't want them to be 
overwhelmed by the stones... still up in the air on this one.

Here's another view of the front of the house. Lookin' good!

Finally, I got new window boxes and some plants for those, which you can see off to the left there. Underneath that I've planted some cosmos in the ground, we'll see if those come up.

Five week old Joey and SUMMER VACATION!!

Zomg he's just too cute!!

So happy!

Even his papa wants to eat him up!

Just chillin, wondering when his crazy auntie is going to stop singing...

The girls love going down to Newburyport. Somehow fatherhood has made Erik go crazy with the hammocks, and they now have three. This one you see below, which is an atypical "upside-down" hammock:

Just kidding. It's just the user who's "atypical."

 This hammock chair, which you can't tell is a hammock chair from my ultra-up-close photo:

Cuteness, out of control. You also can't tell it's only like, 0.004 inches above the ground.

And a third deck hammock. So needless to say, there was a great deal of hammocking.

Before that, the four of us treated Nick to an all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast at Sea Dog for Father's Day. It was amazingly delicious.

Today didn't even feel like a school day. There was an assembly for the kids, they got their report cards (perfect!), and found out next year's teachers (Mrs. Andrew's for Maggie, a mystery teacher to replace the one who's leaving for Nina).

Now, SUMMER!!!! Hooray!!!!!

Almost done!!

We're almost done with the year. Boy has it flown by!! We've had finals this week at school, but those are done by 11:30 every day, so I've had tons of time to clean and organize my classroom, and I'm almost ready to be out of here. Just a few hours Monday morning and I'm done! Woo hoo!!

The girls are ready to be done for the year too. They're both going to miss their lovely teachers and friends, but they're so ready to spend the days just playing and swimming. Today, however, has been pouring all day. Windy too. Kind of great weather for the last full day of school I guess; it'd be terrible weather for the first day of summer vacation!

All that rain is good news for my garden anyway, which I finally got planted up (for the most part!) this week. Later than ever, but it was a cold May and busy week last week, so it had to wait. Peas, green beans, turnips, beets, zucchini, cucumber, and sunflower have gone up in the back, and I got some cosmos for the front. I've also been weeding and mulching the hostas and lilies like crazy, I'll put a picture up this weekend if I can remember. It looks great!

Meet Dorhu

Nina drew her

I love the feminine touches!

Isn't she adorable? Dorhu is an amalgam of dog-human-frog-rat-hedgehog-alligator. Nina's such a fantastic artist.

Maybe that's why life is so hard for Maggie, she has a super-talented sister casting quite the shadow. No wonder her life is "tortured."


She really said that today. Well, wailed is more like it. Her life is tortured. Because I won't let her eat candy and watch TV all day. How horrid is that? I am the worst mother ever.

School's almost out!!

Wow are things busy and exciting around here! Yesterday the high schoolers graduated, it was lovely! The girls' sitter, one of my physics students, was valedictorian so they got to see her make a speech, and then we went to her house for a party. Next we party-hopped over to our friends the Alamos. Their son graduated (also one of my physics students). They have a daughter the girls' age, so they played until the grand march.

The grand march! It's the same as ever. Marching music, long white dresses and tuxes, the serpentine. It's one of a kind!

The day had started with Field Day for the girls and Class Day over at the high school, so none of us had to do any real work today. This morning Nina woke up complaining about how she hates Sundays and I reminded her that it's Saturday. It's just that yesterday was not a typical Friday.

Today is mostly slated for house and yard work. It's sunny and warm out there, finally!