Geocaching with the fam

Yesterday, L and I took my mom and my brother geocaching with us.  L and I love to go geocaching; the big draw for L is finding caches with "treasure" to trade. We have found all of the caches in the area that are big enough to have fun treasures to trade, so we decided to branch out into the next county, and it seemed like a fun day to invite some company along.  We picked up Nana and Uncle Scott at 9 a.m., printed out the cache info, and headed out for our adjoining county.  Typically, I write the coordinates for our cache goal on a notecard along with any clues that I've read in the notes on that cache's website, but the 2 caches that we were going after were both a little atypical.  They were both part of the Santa Fe trail - historical markers and landmarks - so I wanted the background information to take along.  You know, my teacher side doesn't turn off in the summer, so this was like a little history lesson just sitting there, waiting for me to pluck it!
Anyhow, once we were near the first location, we pulled over on a side road and had a little lesson on using a handheld GPS - how the numbers get smaller/larger depending on your movement, how to decide where to travel based on the numbers, etc.  My mom was surprisingly good at this - I hadn't been sure how comfortable she would be with this new technology tool, but she was a great navigator!

We drove to the first location - a one-room schoolhouse, made from stone that was originally part of a trading post created by some of the first settlers to create the Santa Fe trail.  We found the cache, traded a box of Jolly Ranchers and some magnet bookmarks for a Sonic coupon and FAKE NAILS.  This was, apparently, similar to the Holy Grail if you are a 9-year-old whose mother doesn't really condone fake nails.  Ahh, mom can't really say "no" since we aren't paying for them - they are a prize!  (What she doesn't know is that they take special glue or something, which we don't have!)  

The pictures above show our little geocaching group - Uncle Scott, L and Nana in the top picture, L with me in the middle picture in front of the stone schoolhouse, and some random cacti that we found growing in the prairie grasses.

Our 2nd cache was a multi-stage cache - three caches that "connect" to each other. You go to the first cache, and use some numbers found there to lead you to the next one, etc.  We found the first 2, which were signs, and we knew that the last one was the Marker Cottonwood.  It is a 200 year old cottonwood tree that was spared on the prairie, although trees were scarce and important, because it was the northern marker of the Santa Fe trail.  However, we couldn't find the darn thing!  You'd think something like that would be visible - and we even had been GIVEN the correct coordinates - but by golly, it just wasn't our day, apparently.  That was a pretty big disappointment...so we drove through Hutchinson on the way home and stopped for milkshakes.  You know, in the "sugar makes everything better" school of thought.

L's unexpected plant

Last year, like always, I took L with me to the plant nursery and let her choose some of the plants for around the yard.  She chooses by texture and general prettiness, which is just fine.  She found this unlabeled plant that reminded me of lamb's ear -that same fuzzy, pale green type of plant, about 3 inches tall, maybe 5 inches around.  So we got two of them to plant beside the driveway.  By the fall, they were still fuzzy, soft plants, maybe 10 inches across and about 5 inches tall. 
This year, they unexpectedly had an explosive growth spurt - the larger one has a  4 foot tall spike, which is still fuzzy and is also covered with small yellow blooms.  We did a little internet research and I think they are mullein plants.  The good news is that they are attractive to butterflies and goldfinches.  The bad news is that they get larger each year, up to 8 feet tall.  It has been growing about an inch a day!

May 30, 2010

Somehow it is already summer vacation.  I guess that, technically, the kids have had one week of vacation already.  However, in the stinks-to-be-a-teacher's-kid category, I had meetings all of last week, so L had to spend the week at school with me.  No escaping that place...
It hasn't really hit me that it is vacation time yet.  I am super-compulsively-Type A and typically have a list by now of things I want to accomplish each week of the break and what "extra-curricular" type things I want to do with L each week, etc, etc.  That just hasn't happened yet. I've re-read the entire Twilight series and I've weeded my garden and caught up on laundry and done a little baking - all of this in the evenings, mind you.  And that's IT.  I feel a compelling need to deep-clean my house.  And I think I'm going to dangle a little carrot in front of myself for motivation - that when I get the house really, really clean, then I get to paint the laundry room.  Which is really not sounding like motivation as I type this, but I truly want to change my laundry room and just don't have time during the school year.  I want to paint it teal and brown.  I do NOT, however, want to strip the wallpaper, so we'll just see how that goes.
Anyhow, I'm feeling a little more like myself already after this week.  By the end of the school year, I was feeling the stress of state assessments (3, count 'em, 3), end-of-year-big-projects, my partner teacher having a baby (so I was planning for her sub as well as myself) and helping the teachers near me move into new classrooms (I'm getting a new teaching partner), as well as becoming the president of our library board, running the social committee at work, AND planning some technology presentations for our district staff and two state-wide conferences - it was like I couldn't even really remember who I really was.  My poor family.  I'm lucky my husband stuck around through that.
Fortunately, baking and working in the garden are like really cheap therapy for me, so I'm feeling much better.  I am covered in chigger bites, however, so I'm going to have to find something fabulous to ward those suckers off.  Those are one of the mysteries of life for me.  I buy into the theory that everything has a purpose within God's creation, even if I can't figure out what that purpose might be, and let me tell you that chiggers have me stumped.  I'm sure God uses them for something - right now they are making me crazy, though.  However, not crazy enough to stop weeding the dahlias.

I love this kid

I don't know if you ever have days like this, but this was a day that just affirmed how much I love my kid's personality. Some days really seem to grab me with what a great kid she is, how curious and thoughtful and just thoroughly delightful to be around. We went on a walk tonight after dinner, delivering some fruit salad to my mom and meandering around town because the weather was nice. I adore just hanging out like that, discussing inconsequential tidbits. I realize that some day in the not-too-distant future, hanging out with Mom is not going to be on her list of life's pleasures. I hope that I can stave that off for a while. I've never done this parenting thing before; I'm hoping that my kid will have a short rebellious period because I truly delight in her company and personality.

Monday night we took the dog to the vet. Somehow she had gotten injured, probably out at the shop, but that part is kind of up in the air. She had a gaping wound in her chest, about half the size of the palm of my hand, where we could see her muscles. It wasn't bleeding really, just open to her insides. So Stuart called a friend whose wife is a vet and checked to see if she would examine Muddy. Yes, on a Monday night at 8:30. Bless her heart, she said yes, so we all loaded up and headed over. L was so excited to go meet a "girl vet". Anyway, long story short, L got to help put stitches in the dog. That vet is AMAZING, a wonderful person - once L told her that she was interested in being a vet, too, she took L under her wing. She let her sterilize tools, explained every detail of what she was doing, let her help shave Muddy's fur in that area, offered to let her help clip off the dead skin around the wound (L turned that down in a hurry), and let her help put in the stitches and clip them. It was like L's own little glimpse of heaven on earth. She delighted in watching Muddy come out of her sedation and in listening to the vet talk about dog care. The vet showed L how dogs have a third eyelid, let her feel some of Muddy's bone ridges and her teeth while she was sedated, showed her parts of the ear canal, etc, etc. When we finally loaded up the L and the dog to go home, she collapsed against her seat and said "I DEFINITELY want to be a vet." I guess an experience like that will convert you to one side or the other!

Surprising my kid

One of the side effects of owning our own business is that L and I often get recruited to help run errands for the shop. This typically is no big deal; L actually likes going into many of the car parts stores for parts or delivering things. Yesterday, Stuart had to deliver a car to Wichita to be tested on the dyno. He had to drive the customer's car there, since it was lowered so significantly that it couldn't be loaded on the trailer. So L and I followed him in our car so that we could drive home with him. However, what we did not tell our dragon-obsessed child was that we were going to stop at the Warren Theater to watch the movie "How To Train Your Dragon". L has been fascinated with dragons for about 4 years, creates her own, collects stuffed animal versions of them, miniatures, etc. So she's been dying to go see the movie. And she's never been to the Warren, with the comfy plush seats, the tuxedo-wearing staff, the malt shop, the cool lights...an experience. So we pulled into their parking lot and she didn't even seem to notice - she was reading a magazine, and was apparently in her own little world. However, it was PRICELESS to see her face when she focused on our location and realized what we were doing - her little face seemed to actually shine with excitement. She was feeling a little car sick, so we went in and got a root beer and some popcorn to settle her stomach. I love being able to surprise her with new experiences like that - as an only child, she is privy to way more of the adult world than your average child, and as a teacher's kid, she goes with me to work every day. There is very little that goes on in our lives that she is not part of, so the experience of surprising her with a genuine "I-have-no-clue-this-is-coming" surprise was memorable.

Homemade Macaroni 4/2/10

So today was a rather lazy day for us - it is Good Friday, so we didn't have school. L and I slept late, played on the internet checking out funny Google map photos, etc, all morning. We went to town this afternoon, ran errands, stocked up on groceries for the next week - all of the necessities, which L tolerates, but not well. We stopped at the shop on the way home and dilly-dallied there, too - the point of all this is, we didn't get home until about 6, when we usually eat. And I had my heart set of making a specific new recipe tonight for dinner, one from The Pioneer Woman. Everything on her blog is amazing, and none of her recipes have ever failed me. I had my heart set of making her "Fancy Macaroni", so I gave L a banana to tide her over and made the macaroni. We wound up not eating until 7, but it was so worth it. Homemade macaroni with bacon in it - made from scratch with egg yolks and cream and butter and all of that good stuff. It was heavenly comfort food. So my family pitched in to help create it and then watched Cars on TV while it baked. I took dinner out to them in the living room when it was ready - yes, I know that isn't actually great parenting to eat dinner together in front of the television, but that's real life around here sometimes. At any rate, L cleaned her plate before I even sat down with my plate and my book. She asked for more, so I directed her to the kitchen to serve her own. She returned with a helping of macaroni bigger than her own head and said "This will do for now". I laughed so hard I couldn't eat, but she actually proceeded to eat every bite of it. I guess I'll chalk that up to appreciation for the recipe!
My other funny moment with L today was as we were sorting through her school papers from the week, deciding what to keep in her file box and what to recycle. There was a drawing that I could tell wasn't created by her, but it wasn't signed by anyone else. I put it in the recycle pile, thinking it was a note from someone or a mistakenly-picked-up paper, but she said, "Actually, I'd like to keep that. (Boy's name) made it." Well, that got my attention. This is the same boy that told her he really liked her a few weeks ago, and she told him that she thinks he's a really nice person, but she doesn't think she's old enough to like boys "that way" (thank goodness!) Anyhow, I was intrigued that she'd want to keep the drawing from him; I just said okay and moved it into the file pile. Then she said, "Actually, I was thinking we could give it to cousin G for his birthday - the drawing is kind of monster-ish and G likes monsters." Ahhh, that's better - not keeping it for the sake of sentiment, but RE-GIFTING it...