A visit from Nana and Papa

 My mom and Dale came out to visit this Saturday.  They were able to stay for lunch, a bit of fun at the beach, and for ice cream.  The day was hot, but we had plenty of cold beverages to keep us all hydrated.   I know the boys love seeing their Nana and Papa Dale.  Jude loves to snuggle up with Nana for short cat naps and Tamlin was pleased to show off his improved reading skills.

It was great to see mom and how much better she is doing since her latest round with the doctors.  We were able to all go down to town beach to enjoy the sun and waves.  The boys had fun playing in the water...though I know it made mom anxious each time they went in a bit deep. 





 They had so much fun that both boys wanted to have a bit of a rest...

We had ice cream at Granny's afterward.   Big scoops of the treat for us all, though Jude opted for a rocket popsicle.  I love this photo of everyone looking in a different direction.  What a wonderful visit.

Harvesting from our garden

 The garden has become a jungle of potatoes, tomato plants, leeks, peppers, and beans.    




 The tomatoes are too tall and strong for our little bamboo poles and have toppled them over.  Brian has reinforced them with stick poles but we'll have to make our own tomato cages for next year.  The yellow pear varieties have begun to ripen, and we have fruit on all the others as well.

 The pepper plants have fruit ready to be plucked.

We have been eating green beans all week; I doubt I'll have any left to freeze since we have been enjoying them so much.  (Note: more bean plants for next year). 


The second round of radishes did better than the first batch.  The slugs didn't get to them as much and I was a little bit more rigorous with the thinning while they were young.  We'll have roasted radishes this week and next.

 

 We have four golf-ball sized watermelons growing.  The boys are thrilled to have watermelons soon.  We are keeping a watchful eye on them just to make sure the rabbits or squirrels don't get them.  Supposedly they are small watermelons and sweet.

Lots of plant =  lots of watering.  We've had a streak of little rain of late, so we have schlepped water from the rain barrels for the plants.  This morning, I had a mini bucket-brigade with the help of Tam, Jude, and neighbor Liam.  The boys helped immensely at keeping the empty buckets under open water spigots and bringing them via wheelbarrow to the garden.  Great job, little men!

Dress for Ciearra's Seventh Birthday

My niece requested a fairy dress for her birthday.  I told her that there are all sorts of fairies, so she would have do some research into what type of fairy she wished to emulate...woods fairy, tree fairy, fire fairy, snow fairy.

With a little bit of prodding, I got her to settle on a frozen sparkly fairy, with a short skirt with panels/petals and a corset-like bodice...all in blue and white and NOT puffy.

Okay...I've got this.  I only bought the snowflake material and JoAnn's, and the blue with sequins was a curtain from the thrift store.  The rest of the material was from my stash.   I mashed together a few patterns with a bit of creativity...circle skirt, bodice top, puff sleeves with drapery, velcro back, and "petals" of various material cut on angles. I had to burn nearly all the raw edges of this synthetic material since hems were out of the question, which took forever.  And the stretchy velvet of the bodice was a bit of a pain to sew with.  However, the end result looks great and is nearly exactly as I envisioned it.

And it twirls wonderfully.

 

Journals

I had the boys pick out journals this week.  I wanted them to have somewhere to write about their experiences and collect stamps / stickers from various places we visit.  Tamlin was all about this and couldn't wait to start one.

At the store, Jude found his choice of journal right away...a bright colorful one.
But Tamlin...was another story.
Sigh.
I see myself in him in many ways...one way is that we don't do well if there are too many choices in front of us.  Tamlin had too many journal choices.  He had three that he wanted, really wanted, really really really wanted all three.  He didn't get that he should only write in them one at a time an he worried that which ever ones he didn't choose would not be there later.
There were tears.
Tears!
After much debate, he choose a cool one with a magnetic clasp. 

Once home, both boys took to writing in them right away.


Update:
Well, Jude lost his journal at the campground on Kelly's Island.  Sigh.  He is only four. But, he was Quite disappointed that he couldn't get the Marblehead lighthouse stamp...so I ordered him another one off Amazon (thank you 2 day shipping); This one had little owls and birds peaking out of the pages.   So, once again both boys are writing in their journals about once a week...and we are collecting passport stamps ...just like I use to do.  (I had started writing in a diary at around 7 years old and more seriously around 7th grade through starting this on-line blog).