Fog Tea

Since I wrote that we had not had any fog, it rolled in. I am optimistically making Fog Tea today because I gave up waiting for the sun.

First week in Maine!

A whole week of real summer has already come and gone. Nonnie and Bobo have already come and gone. We have had much better weather this June than in years past. No fog to speak of (so far) and many afternoons at the town pool. J went to the mainland today to delivery my parents to the airport and get a few things that we were missing our here like the cord to download photos from camera to computer. So finally here are some pics...

Zippy on neighboring, privately owned, uninhabited Sand Island:

5 in da boat:






starting the summer off right with S'mores on our beach:
The girls crowding in on Nonnie's lap with lots of giggling:

Iker LOVES the beach:
Nice hat! Came with the house.
sunbathing sisters:



There are more pics of the girls this week because the boys have been enjoying hanging out with their best-est summer buddies and loving having a little more freedom & independence since we are on a small island where all the kids bike around and row their little boats and everyone looks for out for each other. Kids' day camps start tomorrow with tap dancing for The Spark and Theater Camp for Zippy and The Spark who have decided at the last minute that they do want to give it a try. The production this summer is 101 Dalmations, and luckily they both want to play the role of a dog.

We've been boating a lot, took my parents to dinner in the boat one night and out to see some seals too. Our favorite new lunch spot is the island store & cafe on the next truly inhabited island over where they make a great veggie burger and the water at the ferry dock seems clearer and therefore more fun to jump off the pilings into (for the boys, none of us girls have braved it yet). We are glad to be here, catching up with summer friends, and yelling less since the house is smaller. We can hear each other and keep track of everyone much easier in a smaller space with less entrances and exits. Plus, less to clean!

Feels like summer.

Sunny and hot. Spent the morning at a really cool playground in between us and our slightly far flung friends, so a great meeting spot for our eight kids (one of theirs was otherwise occupied today or we would've had nine). It is always fun to hang with them- similar aged kids, etc. even if Kj and I could barely sneak in a quick grown-up conversation during the 2.5 hours we were there together. We'll do it again. Maybe involving dads and dinner next time.

Go Cupcake! This one has very little fear of physical challenges.
The Spark. You can still see the bump on her head from a collision with a friend's forehead THREE weeks ago. Luckily it only hurt for a couple days, and that was ages ago.

All that gymnastics training really helps a kid make the most of a playground.

The team.

You can't see it here, but the Tooth Fairy FINALLY paid us a visit last night for this one. It'd been about 2 years since she'd visited for him. The tooth came out in a pickle at lunch yesterday.

Summer has begun.

A tiny fawn found it's way into our garden the other day since we've been planting fruit trees in there and had one side of the fence rolled to the side for the planting process. S/he couldn't find the right way out though and kept leaping toward the momma deer with fencing in the way. J had to run down to the garden and show the fawn the way out.

The Spark being silly on a slide:

Cupcake climbing:

#1 swinging:

Trying out the new piece of equipment at the town playground:

No pics of Zippy b/c he was zipping all over the park with his friends. (I got one of him, but it was too blurry.) No pics of Princess Eee b/c she was still at school the first three days of this week. More photos to come b/c tomorrow we are meeting friends at a big playground, and then tomorrow night is Cupcake and The Spark's gymnastics show. No flash photography allowed during the show, but we'll see what we get.

The Spark's graduation

After two years in the Toddler Room and three years in the Primary Room, The Spark has completed her tenure at our beloved Montessori school. She is our third graduate of this fine institution and is as well prepared (comfortably above grade level) as her big brothers were when they graduated. It has been sad for us every time one of them has to leave this wonderful, little school. But she is very excited to join her brothers next fall. Especially since that school spent yesterday at a water park. She so wants to go there now. No great pics from her graduation unfortunately. It was raining so they had to hold the festivities in one of the classrooms, and J with the camera was not in a very prime photo opportunity spot. So all we have is from before we left, and luckily our sitter was still here so we have a whole family shot. Bummer that Cupcake was NOT happy to have to change clothes and be photographed and wisked out the door. Have I mentioned that she does not like to do anything that she does not want to do when someone might NEED her to do it?!?!?! First stop: the boys' end of the season baseball BBQ also being held indoors thanks to the rain. And also, no good photos were taken there either.

So baseball is officially over (yeah!), and The Spark is officially ready for big kid school (sigh).

Well, it's good of the two middlest, easiest of the gang.

The snowball effect

We knew we needed to replace the warped, wooden, front door in Maine. We knew it let a little moisture in during bad storms. We are very excited to have a sturdy, insulated, tight fitting, new door installed. We are less excited about the newly exposed pieces of the puzzle that will also be new. New copper heating pipe running through the house in the correct place rather than under this sill. New subfloor in the foyer, new tile in the foyer, new insulation in the basement wall and ceiling below the foyer where the old leaky door leaked for years, new sheetrock to cover the new insulation, new paint to cover the new sheetrock. And we thought we were simply replacing a door. It is all very good to know now though and to fix because it was all full of black mold, YUM. Mold be gone! And luckily we love our contractor. He may work on island time, but he is knowledgeable, skilled, and honest.


The paper covering on this insulation is not supposed to be black.
This is not what you want going on under your marble tile.

Yuck!

Black, soggy plywood subfloor = bad.

Attachment Project

Not to be confused with the Attachment Challenge posted by Christine at welcometomybrain.net and successfully completed by several parents in the adoption world, our attachment therapist had me do a little project. I am not ready for Christine's challenge, but it is/was a beautiful idea, and I loved reading about everyone's experiences. My project involved learning what my five core strengths are as a person and then working on using those since they are at the forefront of my personality, to help my relationship with Princess Eee.

First we took the survey which was fun to find our core strengths. There are lots of interesting surveys/quizzes on this website developed by a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Like a quiz in Oprah Magazine but x 100. Then I was supposed to take my top five core strengths and create something to show how my relationship with Princess Eee will grow by banking on my five core strengths.

I decided to sew, of course. I made her something to wear, five somethings actually, over the next year all done in fabrics that I chose to represent my five core strengths. Here they are:

1) Kindness and Generosity. A shirt to wear next November on her fifth birthday. The fabric is covered with gifts to represent generosity.

2) Love of Learning. A Back-to-School dress for next fall. The fabric is obviously school/learning themed and was all I could find that had books on it but was still cute.

3) Citizenship, Teamwork, Loyalty. A Fourth of July dress for this summer. Red, White, & Blue peace signs was my interpretation of patriotic. After having to hire a lawyer to go up against the USCIS, I couldn't stomach the stars & stripes flag motif.

4) Capacity to Love and Be Loved. What shows this better than hearts and a Valentine's Day skirt?!

5) Humor and Playfulness. Meet George Jetson! Here's a dress for a whole year from now done in silly cartoon fabric with awesome Super Hero ribbon accenting the denim trim.

Guatemala

When natural disasters hit a small, poor country, the country is reeling for a long time and set back even further than it was before the disasters. It reminds us that we are lucky to live in a large, prosperous country. Our country is big enough that one natural disaster can't cover the whole thing. We have enough big cities that one natural disaster can't close our only international airport down for days. It would be like if the whole USA was the size of Louisiana and Katrina did what she did. Little Guatemala is a mess right now. Here's some of the scoop. And here is how we can help:

http://www.cliniclink.org/

http://www.commonhope.org/

http://www.mayanfamilies.org/

http://www.behrhorst.org/