A Berry Adventure

This week I finally gave in to the kids' pestering and took them back to the pick-your-own farm for some blackberries. The main reason they were dying to go is that they like the dogs and cats at the farm. They are very nice dogs and cats (can you see the cat in this picture?)

Bean is such a dog person. I wish I could get him one. The thought of having a dog right now makes me want to curl up in a cardboard box and suck my thumb. I hope in a few years when the kids are a little older and less chaotic I won't feel that way. I also hope that happens while Bean is still young enough to romp and play with his dog.

Myself, I would like a cat. This one wanted to come home with us. It thought our stroller was just fabulous.

The blackberries were huge, plentiful, and delicious. Oh, and thornless too-- does it get any better than picking and eating thornless blackberries on a warm, cloudy summer day with your entire happy family? The Rabbit doesn't think so. She was constantly trying to snitch.

Roo picked at least a pint, which is pretty good for someone who spent most of the time shrieking in terror because a cat or dog was coming near her.

Fish picked a gallon, Bean picked a gallon, and I picked about a gallon and a half. That's about how many berries I was planning on, but I vastly underestimated the picking power of the Badger. All these dozens of times we've been berry picking over the years he's never gone with us. That's going to change. He caught the berry picking bug big-time. He picked an enormous amount of blackberries and I nearly had to drag him away from the bushes. We ended up with more than 30 pounds of berries. They were $3.25 a pound. You do the math.

I don't care. It was worth it. We could have spent that much easily on a family trip to a theme park, which might have been slightly more exciting but wouldn't have created as much family togetherness as this outing did. Plus we wouldn't have had 30 more pounds of luscious berries to add to our stockpile. Filling our deep freeze with high-quality fruit is a major priority for our family. I haven't bought any popsicles or soda pop this summer, but I have spent probably at least $400 on berries (that includes a shipment of 70 pounds of frozen Oregon blueberries and marionberries that will arrive in August.) What can I say-- we like berries!

The Rabbit's First Ice Cream Cone

My Squid is a Huggable Dear

On our last trip to the candy store (aka the library) we picked up a wonderful children's picture book called "I Love My Buzzard" by Tres Seymour. It's a charming account, in rhyme, of a boy who has so many unusual pets that his mother finally flees the house for the sake of her own sanity. (Then of course he realizes he likes his mother more than his pets so he gets rid of them.) It's a darling book, but the line line that totally tickled my funny bone was near the end where he says:

"I love my buzzard, my warthog, and bat.
My squid is a huggable dear.
I prize my iguana and cherish my slugs.
But I wish that my mother were here."

That's how I've always felt about squids-- that they are huggable dears.

We have an unusual number of squids and octopi around our house due to those feelings of mine. Let me introduce you to one of them. This is my Power Squid.

He serves the same purpose as a power strip: many electrical outlets from one. He's fabulously useful and wonderfully squiddy.

Not quite a huggable dear, but pretty close.

Egg Carton Fun

Fish asked if he could have an egg carton this morning. I said yes. Half an hour later, this is what I saw:

My Sewing Corner

I haven't sewn much over the last year and a half, but that's going to change.

When my dear friend Julie Schmoo moved far, far away a few weeks ago (waaaaah!) she left her sewing cabinet with me. My machine and all my sewing stuff fit neatly inside it and when it's closed it looks nice enough to be in the living room. Plus, the doors are hard enough to open that the kids can't get into it. So, for the first time in forever, I have a sewing corner!

Having the machine set up in the living room actually works a lot better for me than in some remote corner of the house. It's still tough to sew with a toddler, but it's easier when I'm centrally located and the kids can come and go with their toys. With the cabinet, I can quickly shut things up when I need to, but then it's not a big deal to get them out again. Oh, it's wonderful!

So what did I make, you ask?

I've wanted for a long time to make pioneer costumes for the 24th of July, particularly for myself but also for whichever other members of my family want one. I have long had the pattern and the fabric for mine, and I'll tackle that tomorrow. Today, for a practice run, I made one for Roo. She's madly in love with it and won't take it off.

I hope mine turns out as well as hers did!

One Year Later

It's been a year, and I'm still crazy about my cloth diapers. Look at this darling Fuzzibunz I recently bought:

Sometimes I think they are a lot of work. Sometimes I think they are kind of yucky. But I love being able to take them out of the wash and use them again. I wouldn't switch back, even for the convenience, because it just seems like such a waste of money. Especially now that I have so many darling pocket diapers in my stash.

They have held up well. The Aplix (velcro) closures are a little worn on some of them, so I try to only buy snap closures. I love it that bumGenius! now has snaps on their organic all-in-ones because I love their colors but I don't like the Aplix. They are some of my favorite diapers. I wouldn't buy Rumparooz again (bad side stretchy tabs, bulky), nor Haute Pockets (my only diaper that is starting to look ratty), nor Rocky Mountain diapers (big-time side leak embarrassment episodes). Fuzzibunz is the latest brand I've tried and I love how "fuzzi" they are inside but I don't like the placement of the snaps. My all-around favorite by far still remains Mommy's Touch and I intend to slowly buy more of them in nice colors and phase out the screaming neon ones.

My philosophy is that if I'm going to diaper the hard way I deserve to have fun with it. However, despite my collection of cute cloth, I still have saved a mountain of money over the last twelve months.

Look Out, Cub Scouts!

Here comes Bean!

His birthday isn't for another 12 days, but Bean can't wait to be in Cub Scouts. He's been going to pack meetings with me since I got called to be Cub Committee Chair last October and it seemed to him like this day would never arrive. Cub Scouts just seems like it was made for Bean, and Bean just seems like he was made for Cub Scouts.

Someone gave us an old shirt and I need to change some of the insignia on it, but he couldn't stop himself from trying on the whole ensemble anyway (yes, I know his neckerchief still needs to be tucked under his collar). Since I didn't need to fork out for the shirt I bought him a cap and a belt even though they're optional in our pack.

Yep, he's definitely ready to be a Cub Scout!

How Birrd Singleheadedly Ended the Prairie Heatwave

We had days and days of hot weather during the last part of June. Sitting at baseball games in 100+ degree heat, I was constantly wiping my sweaty hair off my neck. One afternoon, I decided to get my hair trimmed. Just a trim, nothing unusual. So I drove the Badger's car to the local Great Clips. His A/C doesn't work. By the time I got there, I was nearly cooked. They said there would be a 10-minute wait. I started flipping through the hairstyle book. Looking at the really short cuts I thought "Oh, that would be so nice!" So I made an impulsive decision.

Now, you know how whenever you wash your car, it rains? Well, within 2 hours of my Big Hair Chop a nice cool breeze started wafting over the Great Plains. We've had cooler temperatures ever since. Right now it is 80 and cloudy.

And every time I look in the mirror I say "AAAAH!!! WHO IS THAT????"

Fourth Frog

As if we hadn't had enough fun with the fireworks on the 4th, our evening ended with even more excitement. The Badger was taking some of our firework debris back to the trash can when he found this enormous frog in the backyard. He generated just about as many "ooh"s and "aah"s and dancing, squealing kids as the fireworks had.

Fabulous Firework Fun

This ended up being one of the funnest years for 4th of July fireworks that I've ever experienced. It was the first time I'd celebrated the 4th on the prairie, since last year we were in Utah during this time. I wasn't sure what to expect.

My cousins came over and we went out to the end of the driveway to light off the fireworks they brought over.

Then we discovered that there was a big fireworks show going on over at the country club, which is less than 1/2 a mile from our house. By moving our chairs over to the neighbors' driveway, we could see the big ones and still do ours at the same time. I had fun playing with the "Fireworks" setting on my sister's camera:

The boys were in boy heaven.

And when I say "boys," I mean the Badger too. Here he is doing his wacky sparkler dance:

But what really made the evening extra fun for me was all the illegal fireworks my neighbors were setting off. There were 4 or 5 people within half a block of us on all sides who were constantly shooting really cool stuff into the air. It would suddenly go off right behind us, right in front of us, or right off to one side or the other. We were right in the middle of it, instead of watching it from a distance. I've never experienced fireworks quite that way before, nor has any other place I've lived done quite the volume of fireworks that I saw and heard in my neighborhood that night. It was really fun.