Free Day

Today is Friday Free Day. It’s only the second free day we’ve had all summer and the first was last Friday and I quickly filled it with a trip to a beach an hour and a half away. It’s 1:00 and the kids and I are still in pajamas, laundry is getting done and the kids have been playing well together. Most of the times my kids get me fed up is when they are giggling and goofing off together. A real first world problem, right?! I told them I would take them to the pool to beat the 90+ degree heat, but first I told them they had to write two letters to the people of their choice. Honestly I was looking for some peace and quiet. While they were writing I stared at the computer screen for 10 minutes thinking about what the last time I wrote a letter to someone. I, in turn, decided it was time to blog about something. Hmm, guess I accomplished that!

Little House on the Prairie

A few years ago; well, maybe only one since I don’t have the kind of brain that remembers that sort of thing, I learned how wonderful audio books (free from the library nonetheless) are for long car trips. Back in June the very weekend school ended we headed on a 3-hour ride to Green Bay with the first Little House audio book in our CD player. The reader is phenomenal at expressing the words that Laura Ingalls wilder so descriptively put on paper. There is also a fiddler player to bring Pa’s music to our ears.

We were so hooked on the book that we spent the next three months listening to the other eight books in the series. We listened while we drove to swim lessons, baseball/t-ball, tennis, soccer, the pool, a few more longer rides and sometimes even as we sat in our driveway after coming home from a drive, our ears glued to the speakers. It amazed me how much time we spent in the van just driving around town. It was also a relief to not have to find something on the radio to listen to.

Tonight we celebrated finishing the last book about a week ago and checked out the 90-minute Pilot episode/movie of the television show Little House on the Prairie. I’d almost forgotten how adorable Melissa Gilbert was, I blame Dancing With the Stars for that.

Next weekend we will conclude our Little House summer by driving an hour and a half north to the town where Laura Ingalls Wilder was born; Pepin, WI and the site of her first book Little House in the Big Woods. The first weekend after Labor Day every year the town holds “Laura Days”. The festival lasts Saturday and Sunday, but we will only be able to go on Sunday. Maybe another year I will run in the 10K race on Saturday morning and earn a shirt with my daughter’s name on it, but if we are to go any year this is the year.

If we were to finish these books with enough time to drive to De Smet, SD; about 7 hours away, before school starts on Tuesday I think I’d be at the library looking for audio books to listen to on the drive west. We’ll leave that for another summer; hoping my kids will still be as captivated by her life as I am.

www.lauradays.org

Swimming Pool, Lake, River?

I grew up swimming in a lake, entering either at the town park or off of my parents’ boat. I have memories of playing in the sand at the beach; digging holes and building castles, but as far as the water goes I mostly remember having little fish nibble at my toes. I enjoyed spending time on the lake onboard the boat. Swimming off of it was even fun, or tubing or being with my dad in a raft paddling off the boat. Mostly I spent hot summer days swimming in friends’ pools. This was much more enjoyable for me, no fish, no water plants and I could see the bottom.

I now live along the Mississippi River (my town, not my house). Although I think the river is beautiful in its own “Big Muddy” kind of way the idea of swimming in it or another river in town that has a town beach does not appeal to me at all. I’ve been to both beaches a few times for the sake of my children, but I rarely get wet up to my shoulders. I take them for the lure of the sand. I much prefer to spending hot summer days at our city’s pool with a zero depth entrance, two water slides and a few other water attractions.

Last summer my in-laws gave us a great inflatable pool for our backyard (8’ x 4’ – totally guessing). It wasn’t inflated this summer (which I swear began in March this year) until my husband suggested it. Although the kids have enjoyed it, as has my husband, and myself too on a few occasions, I am still drawn to the city pool. Our pool has been emptied and refilled once or twice this year. Two days I took a look at it and to my utter disgust the bottom was covered in algae! Yuck! I began draining it, which soon proved to be a bigger job than I had the patience for, so, my one chore for today was to clean it. I went outside, began draining it and all I could think of was how I never swam in ponds. Then I thought about the lake I swam in as a child and I remembered preferring to swim in pools. Then I watched the water I was draining turn to green and watched it run over my feet with a disgusted expression on my face.

The pool is now empty, I used the hose to spray some algae out (much less came off than I had hoped), then I began scrubbing the algae out with rags. Of course, that also didn’t go as easily has I had hoped. So, for now the pool is in the driveway in hopes that the underside, where there is no algae, will dry. I scrubbed for as long as I could stomach. Between a child throwing up this morning and scrubbing algae I have successfully lost my afternoon appetite.

When my husband (then boyfriend) has a fish tank with three large fish my favorite was the plecostomus, the algae eater. If only one could be put in my pool, when my toes weren’t in it.

As I type this, the rags are in my new washing machine on the “sanitize” setting and I wish I could put myself in there with them.

That house down the street that I sometimes fantasize about living in one day, the one with the above ground pool, I think would look great with a fifteen-foot (another total guess) round garden with a deck attached.

Slowdown and Enjoy the Summer

Feeling on top of the world, okay town, with my kids. 

“Summer is going by so fast.”

I can’t agree with this statement, not to mention most of the people who have said this to me have added something like, I can’t believe it’s already June 24 (when it’s really only June 23) or I can’t believe it already July (it’s not it’s only June 28). I just want to shout, “Slow down people!”

Maybe this is the first time I can’t agree with this feeling and I think it’s simple. I’m enjoying every moment and every day. I honestly think I’ve been good at doing this since my kids were born. My secret? Every now and then I stop and stand back from the moment (sometimes literally, sometimes it just resembles me pressing the imaginary pause button on my nose) and just LOOK at what is before me. Yesterday it was capturing my children’s faces full of excitement and fun during a trip to a waterpark.

It may also be because this summer we have no big trips plan. There’s no focusing on weeks and months ahead of time, there’s no, we leave in two weeks, or in one month we’ll be in…

So, you’re summer may be going by too fast, but over here I’m just livin’ the life savoring my summer one moment at a time.

It’s taking the cliché, “Stop and smell the roses,” to heart. You should try it some time.