A double treat...

One of my best friends, Anne, from our Stanford days was in town for the weekend.  We managed to put together a breakfast get together before she left for the airport this morning.  Ann had three of her four kids with her and we had all five of ours.  We ate breakfast and caught up as much as we could.  

I love Anne!  She is so warm and kind.  She is genuinely interested in what you have to say and what is going on in your life.  My favorite thing about her, right now, is how much she loves my kids.  She applies all of those qualities she uses in her adult relationships to my kids.  She asks about their day and school and life.  When the kids answer, she listens with interest.  She loves them!  She compliments them!  She hugs and kisses them!  It is wonderful.  I wish I was her next door neighbor so whenever I was mean to my kids they could go over to her house to be hugged and loved.  It would be a daily occurrence.  

Too bad she lives on the other side of the country.  It was a great breakfast visit!  Next time we will meet in Boston.

After breakfast with Anne and her kids, we drove up to Six Flags.  The little girls had earned a pass by reading during the school year.  We didn't go up last summer so we were over due.  Lorien, Wyatt and Clare went off together to ride the big rides (like at the fair) and I stayed with the little kids on the little rides.

Six Flags met all of our expectations.  We ate a packed lunch and bought a soda cup.  It was fun and not to hot.  We also met up with a few friends there but didn't get to see them very much.  Too many kids going too many directions.

Random Bits of July

Crap happened in July.  

Summer time crap.

Here goes.

Colter saved these two bottles for about two months wanting to hot glue them together to make this.  We finally got that all done in July.  He loved it.

Adell has been asking for a swing in our yard since the day we moved in.  One day she would ask for a lemonade stand, the next a swing.  We finally got a swing up in the olive tree out front in July.

We bought a bunch of paint and canvases at the end of the school year.  We finally took a Sunday afternoon to work on some canvas painting creations.

Colter figured out how to pump and load a Nerf gun.  We are all enjoying the rewards from that.

Our town bowling alley has free bowling for kids all summer long.  We've never been...this summer we went twice and the big kids went with friends a handful of times.

Adell bought and gave a friendship necklace to her friend Maggie.  They are in friendship heaven.

Lorien went to EFY in Utah. A week later, Wyatt went to tennis camp at BYU and the week after that he went to Scout camp.  It was three solid weeks of four kids in the house.

I figured out how to make steamed pork buns.  They were SO good and not impossible to make!

Adell cultivated her green thumb by watering neighbor's plants...because we still haven't started a garden of our own.

We finally made our way over to visit our friend's the Fifes.  They have another baby I hadn't met yet!  My kids love their kids and their house...they have cooler toys than we do.

Splish Splash

Community splash parks have been hit or miss over the last five years.  Droughts stink.

We got loads of rain this winter so the splash parks have been open for business this summer!  Except for the first splash park we went to...that was closed for maintenance.  Not our lucky day.

Fortune favors the persistent.  

We hit a home run at our next park.  The kids played for hours!  No exaggeration.  The weather was warm but not uncomfortable.  I just sat in the shade and watched them play...for hours.  

I won parenting today.  

Spa Day by Lorien AKA There is oatmeal every where...

Summer boredom provides fertile grounds for creative kids.  Lorien decided to give the little kids some pampering this afternoon.  

She made coconut oil hair masks.

She made oatmeal face masks.

She made a mess.

Everyone had fun...and cleaned up most of the mess.  I am still finding oatmeal in surprising places.

To all the beautiful people, I salute you.

Fair grounds not for the faint of heart

Growing up we had a county fair that rolled into town every year in the teenth week of July.  It was the illustrious Ossipee Valley Fair.  A day bracelet was six dollars and with it you could ride any and every ride at the fair.  I nearly threw up more times than I care to remember...and I remember throwing up once.  We would work for weeks to earn the money.  I could walk to the fair grounds from my house, it was a couple of miles, but totally do able.  We would go and ride the rides all. day. long.  My Mother was a member of the Keswick Club (a group of women who did good in the community) and she worked their ice cream booth a few times during the week.  It was always hot.  I never had extra money for games, food or trinkets.  It was rides and barfing, exclusively.  What can I say, it was a treat?  

Since living in California I have only taken my kids to the fair one other time.  You can read about that adventure here.  I was had a stronger knack for descriptive writing back then...

This week some friends told me there was dollar day at the fair.  Admission price was a buck and rides were a buck!  That sounded like a great deal so we all went.  It was another scorching hot day...just what you want when wandering around fair grounds.  

We checked out animals (something I never spent a second on as a kid going to the Ossipee Valley Fair) and farm equipment.  

We found silly props to take pictures with.

Lorien, Andrew and Clare all went off with the older kids to ride more hard core rides.  No one threw up and no one was thrown to their death when a bolt came unscrewed.

We spent a good part of the day at the fair, about 5 hours.  We were hot and sweaty and tired.  We collected all of our Anderson people and headed to the car.  The kids piled in and I looked up the nearest McDonalds on my phone.  Once I had a big gulp of Coke and a fist full of french fries in my belly, I sighed a deep, exhausted and satisfied sigh.  Lorien, who was sitting next to me, wanted to know why doing outings with all the kids was so exhausting for me.

I tried my best to explain.

Being a mother is pretty much constant stress and worry when we are out of the house.  I worry about injury and abduction above all.  It is stressful to listen to the wants/demands/interests of all these people.  Bathrooms...don't even get me started on finding and using public toilets.  The list of items that pull my attention all over the place is long.  Most of the worrying things are irrational and I know that, but even irrational fears you can explain away take up mental space and energy.  And when we are finished with an activity, and everyone is safely buckled into their seats in the car, I can finally breathe a HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF!

Lorien was not completely satisfied with my answer.   She couldn't see or fully understand all I was mentally freaking out about...so I shared a couple of stories about my childhood fair experiences to help her understand my anxiety in this particular situation.

Scary Story #1

When I was 11 or 12 I went to the Ossipee Valley Fair.  I cannot remember if I went alone, with siblings or friends.  I think most likely I went with siblings.  I went straight for my favorite ride, I cannot remember what it was called.  I was riding alone so I think my siblings must have picked a different first ride.  There were not a lot of other people on the ride and I got a seat alone.  The ride was made up of three long octopus arms with three spinning seats on the end of each arm.  You basically went whipping around like you were on an elastic band bouncing back and forth in a contained circle.  If you've ever been on the Tow Mater ride at Disney California Adventure, it was just like that...but held together with rust, spit and curse words.

As I made the first pass by the ride operator's booth I saw the ride guy step out from behind his barrier and stand in the ride part of ride.  As I whipped past I thought: "That doesn't seem safe." but I whipped by too fast to figure out why he was there.  On the next pass, a few seconds later, he was still standing outside the booth.  On the third pass, (and now the sensitive and young should stop reading) he had unzipped his pants and was exposing himself to all of the riders who passed...myself included.  I remember thinking it was weird and gross.  Why would he do that?  But having zero understanding of more serious issues around this kind of behavior I hopped off the ride and spent the rest of the day at the fair, unmolested.  When I was a bit older, thinking back on the situation I realized how creepy and scary it was.  Moreover, I realized what kind of awfulness could have happened to me alone, elsewhere at the fair.  Bad news.

Scary Story #2

When I was a teenager, I went to the Fryburg Fair with a friend.  The Fryburg Fair was further away from home (almost in New Hampshire) and you had to pay to get in and pay for every ride.  It was too expensive for me so I didn't go as a kid.  However, in high school, I played in the marching band (calm down, we were not that good).  The band played at the fair one day in the week it was running.  We got free admission for being participants.  So I went around with my friend looking at everything and buying nothing.  Somehow we came up with some money to go on ONE ride.  It was similar to my old favorite ride...except it was up in the air.

We climbed into a metal box and had a cross bar loosely attached over our laps.  The ride lifted into the air and we started spinning.  On the second or third rotation, our lap bar came undone...this is not a drill.  I was closest to the opening and my friend, Eileen, was on the inside.  She was a few years older than I and so a bit bigger.  The centripetal force pushed her against me...and pushed me against the now open lap bar.  I was screaming "Eileen, the bar is open!" and "Stop the ride!" over and over again.  Eileen didn't think I was serious and the ride operator could not identify my screams for help from the whoops of fun.  As we whipped around I wrapped my hands around the bar and tried to keep it down while centripetal force tried to push us out.  I remember feeling the bar fly open with each whip.  I remember thinking "I cannot hold this down for one more whip.  We are gonna die." and then the ride stopped.

I burst into tears and choked breaths.  I showed Eileen the open bar as the slowing ride lowered to the ground.  I think her face went white.  We were seconds away from being a six o'clock tragedy story across two states.

So...fairs are pretty fun...and scary...for many reasons.  AND I totally deserved that large Coke and fries for keeping my kids alive and unmolested.

Winning.

Summer time...or just June

After falling down several times Colter declared our house too dangerous because he was always getting injured!  This was our solution:

After more than six months of asking every day, I finally let the girls have a lemonade stand.  A million thanks to our kind neighbors and friends who stopped to buy a glass.  The girls were over the moon and made about $20.

Will and Wyatt properly finished the trampoline carve out.  They just needed to build the bottom and side retaining walls and drop the trampoline in.  SUCCESS!

We did our annual double whammy in celebrating Father's Day and Will's birthday.  I may have under did things this year...the kids didn't even know it was Father's day until the talks started at church.  I didn't do much better with Will's birthday.  Next year...42 is a better age to celebrate anyway...right?

We had a crazy heat spell to start off June.  It was over 100 degrees for the better part of a week.  Colter escaped to our gigantic bath tub.  Wyatt and Clare got to escape with friends to Water World.  Bless these amazing mommas for taking them!

Did you know there is such thing as cotton candy grapes?  One morning I was surfing facebook and there was a post from Miss Jenny, Lorien and Wyatt's Kindergarten teacher.  She said cotton candy grapes were at Costco.  I had never heard of such a thing.  Later I was at Costco and remembered Jenny's post.  I figured I'd try to find the grapes.  I found them and cracked open a case to try them...as soon as I chomped down I exclaimed out loud "OH MY GOSH! THESE TASTE LIKE COTTON CANDY!"  I couldn't believe it.  I promptly put two cases in my cart and headed to check out.  At home the kids were equally amazed.  I think they ate both cases in a matter of hours.  You win Costco...

Lorien headed off to Girls Camp the second week of summer.  She had a great time. This year the level five girls participated in several adventures: horse back riding, a wicked high ropes course, kayaking and hiking.  We were so happy to have her home safe and sound at the end of the week.  She was so happy to go out to dinner and fill us in on everything.

Clare has been missing her favorite Stanford sweatshirt for months.  It wasn't at school, friend's houses, church or dance.  I figured it was long gone...but miracles happen and she found it the very last week of dance!  It is a small thing that feels like a big thing.

Middle School Swim

Clare is a lucky girl.  She has a large friend group with a variety of types of kids.  She has church friends, school friends, dance friends, specific class friends and lots of kids over lap in those groups.  Today, a church friend organized an "incoming sixth graders" pool party.  It was mostly her church friends, boys and girls.  The mom who organized the event has four sons and was looking forward to putting together a fun and funny photo shoot.  Naturally, the boys were not interested in participating but the girls were happy to oblige.  Out came the floppy hats, sun glasses, pink lipstick and magazines.  The girls took turns posing as glamorous movie stars.  It was adorable.  

Most of the time was spent swimming and playing yard games.  I am so glad Clare has a good group of friends.  I am so glad she mixes with a variety of kids.  She has had some ups and downs with friends but because she is friendly with all she has never felt alone or left out.  

Clare will be my third kid to start middle school in the fall.  My kids are growing up and there isn't really anything I can do about it.  I am thankful to have had two positive experiences with middle school for Lorien and Wyatt.  It makes me much less nervous about Clare.  It will be a good year!  

Girl row left to right: Clara Hagen, Clare Anderson, Gwen Newport, Emi Porter, Sammie Lou Edgren and Sydney Smith.
Boy row left to right: Cole Mckenna, Austin Shelton, Gavin Chromy, Ethan Shelton (not a 6th grader) I don't know the next kid, Drew Thompson and Davin Rees

Can you see all the red lipped sass happening with this group of pre-fashionistas?

Good Bye Vacation Land...

My flight left Wednesday morning at 5:30 am.  So, I booked a hotel for Tuesday night so I could be closer to the airport and make it over in time.   This meant I had to leave my Mom's house a day early.  But I needed an Italian sandwich, a whoopie pie and to sit by the sea one more time.  It was so heavenly!  I miss this kind of Maine so much!  I miss woodsy Maine too.  I bought a book for the kids called "The Wicked Big Toddlah".  It is full of funny Maine stuff that all makes me homesick.  I love it.

Anyway, we sat by the beach and ate our Italian Sandwiches and whoopie pies.  I soaked in the smell of the air and the feel of the sand.  It was lovely.

Then we went into the Old Port for ice cream and souvenirs...and silliness.

It was a great way to end the trip.  I could have used a few more days with my Mom.  I wanted to ask her some more family history questions (I got a few in) and soak up the rural Maine setting.  But I love the Maine coast and Portland.  I just want to listen to oldies music and eat familiar food at the beach.  It heals my soul and feels like home too.

This is a water bug.  They are all over the place in Maine.  You stand on one, hit your friend and say "water bug" I don't know why...it is a Maine thing...or just a My Family thing?

The kids and Will were still alive after a week of no Mom.  I needed the trip home and was so grateful they all pulled their weight to keep the house running so I could go.  Next time they can all come too.

I love creepy old things...in the day time...

Maine is full of old houses.  Most of them are inhabited by crazy people who love to live in historic places.  Some are abandoned...and when ever I drive by an old house I wonder who lives there and what is on the inside.  

Luckily for me, my Mom has a friend who owns an old empty house near her home in Wilsons Mills.  So on Monday we headed up there to explore (with the owners permission of course).  My Mom checks in on the house every once in a while.  The owner lives down in Massachusetts and can't get up as often as she needs to check up on the place.  The house was owned by her Maiden Aunts who lived in Philadelphia and summered in Maine.  When the Aunts passed away they left their summer cottage in the exact condition it had been in their living and vacationing years.  The house passed to their younger brother who was the current owner's father.  He moved up to the summer house a few years ago and just lived in it in its old/original condition.  He carefully moved his diseased sister's stuff to closets and lived in a couple of rooms with what was left.  He was sick and passed away in the house, after his daughter came up to care for him in his dying months.  And now the current owner, Caroline, is trying to weed through a lifetime of summer vacation home things and get the house sold.  She has pulled out what she wants and the rest will be sold at a yard sale or estate sale.  

We stopped at camp to check in on the place before going up to the old house.  I haven't been up to camp in ages!  I probably wont go up again.  The property was sold and just a few of my mother's siblings went in on buying the camp.  It wasn't practical for any of my Mom's kids to go in on it.  We all live too far away.  Anyway, we can visit...some day...maybe?

Now this creepy, amazing, old house!

It is like a deteriorating time capsule.  There is this large room over the garage called the "drying room" where clothes lines are strung from wall to wall so you can hang laundry to dry when it is raining.  There are old Adirondack chairs matching the green shutters that would be placed on the porch in summer.  There were flower arranging vases, frogs and floral wire, one of the aunts must have had an eye for flowers.  It was awesome.  We found old news papers and letters dating back to the 50's and 60"s.

The interior rooms were in bad shape, it was awesome.  I wouldn't have gone inside for a million dollars if it was dark, but in the light of day...and with my Mother...it was so cool.  The history and decor, the architecture, wallpaper, dishes and furniture...it was wonderful.  

Don't you wish you could buy it and fix it up?  It would be such a lovely summer cottage!  Heck, I'd raise my kids there year round if I didn't have to shovel snow or swat blood sucking flies away.