Hello everyone! I hope you had a great holiday weekend if you are in the U.S., or just a great past few days if not! We had a pretty relaxed few days, with the exception of our July 4th celebration with my family. We actually celebrated on the Monday instead of yesterday and it was nice to have yesterday as a rest day. Because we needed it!
I have not seen a few of my cousins or their families since the fourth of July party last year! My cousin has been hosting and his house is absolutely gorgeous and perfect for parties, and the day is just so perfect and filled with laughter. Wyatt (and by default Billy) spent hours in the pool, where the kids just swam and splashed and used squirt guns, while the rest of us adults caught up with each other in the shade. Other dads did duck in and out of the pool, as well as a few moms. I loved being able to hang out with my brother and cousins – we had an hour or so where it was just the five of us sitting around the table, chatting and laughing and remembering. And all the food!! So much food. Everything was delicious but my sister-in-law made some sort of ooey gooey peanut buttery thing and oh my gosh, it was amazing.
The weather was a bit unpredictable – we would have a few hours of straight sun, then a stray rain downpour would unleash itself on us all. The first few the kids just kept on playing in the pool, and the last one was just crazy and we all ran off for the various areas of cover. Billy and Wyatt and I ended up in the best spot – we headed for high ground and the pergola covered patio – also where all the food was.
Tiny Bebe girl met the next youngest little, my cousin Mike’s youngest son. Little kiddo was slightly alarmed to see his mom holding a different baby. Lol.
By the time we left, full of sun, memories, food, and pool time, we were exhausted and ready to clean up and put on our pajamas. It had been a fantastic day though.
Saturday and Sunday were so rainy! We did do some fun stuff over the weekend leading up to the holiday though, despite the storms that kept rolling through. Between the rain and the air quality (again ugh) we were stuck inside but we made good use of it, playing board games and reading and completing our tiny art for our library’s tiny art show!
I am not an artist but I had fun anyway. It was a great way to spend a rainy afternoon, painting our “submissions” to the show. Billy and I have a few details to add to our paintings but I will be turning them in later this week and they will be displayed in the library the whole month of August, along with everyone else who registered. From left to right – Wyatt’s sun and moon, Billy’s Panda King isopod, and my little brown snail. Lol.
All this rain has been good for the garden and the plants though!
We managed to squeeze in one bike ride before the rain and air quality got bad this weekend. And we took lots of drives and ate lots of watermelon.
And that was that! How about you all? What have you been up to?
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date
Hello everyone! Another week, and here we are in July already! We are off to a rainy start this July and that is ok, Michigan needs it. We also were dodging extremely unhealthy air quality last week and spent so much time inside. We were among the worst in the world for air quality – it blows my mind that a fire 500 miles from us could have effects here but it shows how small the world really is sometimes.
Read Last Week:
We read more Wyatt books than mine last week, since we were trapped inside. I did manage to read one, and started listening to another.
I have been waiting and waiting for The House on Prytania to come in for me at the library and let me tell you, when I got the email, I headed directly there and did not pass go. It was so good, y’all~ I love Nola and Beau, but the other characters are just as interesting and fun to read. Jolene in particular is a hoot!
I also started listening to The Living Great Lakes on Libby, and I am really enjoying it! I mean, living in the Great Lakes state it is of particular interest to me, and I am learning so much about the lakes as I listen.
Reading This Week:
I am so excited to read this! I bought it all the way back in January but have held onto it until summer, because I am a nerd and since the book takes place in the summer, I wanted to read it in the summer. It sounds so good!
In TV land, Billy and I got sucked into the world of School Spirits. We were expecting something a bit cheesier or just not as well done as it is, for what it is. It is so good! And now we are out of episodes which is a huge bummer. I love Simon and Wally, such good characters!
We also have been filling in here and there with Death in Paradise, and we are on the Humphrey episodes. We had just watched Beyond Paradise in the spring, which is about Humphrey who is back in England after his stint on the islands so it was neat to go back and rewatch his origins again.
This week we also start our shark month movie marathon! Well, I guess not really marathon since we are spreading them out over a few weeks, but still..lots of shark movies beginning with Jaws on Tuesday!
In my YouTube world, I have been watching a lot of With Love, Kristina, and Alexis Dahl. With Love, Kristina does a lot of vintage (mostly vintage) videos but also declutter videos which are my weakness. They are so relaxing, just to watch things go from super cluttery to all nice and organized. Sigh. Alexis Dahl is a Michigander whose videos are all about science and history and they are awesome! I loved her most recent video about Henry Ford’s “utopian” towns in the U.P. It was so fascinating!
I already mentioned that I am listening to the audiobook of The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis, which is fantastic. I have also been listening to the podcast Sinisterhood, which is true crime/horror but the two hosts Christina and Heather are hysterical and I actually laugh out loud at some of their comments. So far I have really enjoyed their episodes The Stanley Hotel and The Nain Rouge, which is a total Detroit thing!
“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape…” ― Harper Lee
Summer should be whimsy. Summer should be about these small things that stick with you forever, and feel like those endless lazy days, filled with what you love, surrounded by all the life and color that summer brings. Listening to the songs of crickets on hot nights, watching the fireflies perform their flickering dance in the twilight, the sweetness of a strawberry straight from the garden… these are summertime thoughts. I was watching the YouTuber Desi last night, and she talked about how we all have glimmers, which are small little things that make us happy, that give us joys, that glimmer in our soul. The sound of a storm rolling in with the distant thunder booming, picnics in the park with my family spread out on our blankets with books in the shade of the trees, butterflies flitting here and there in my yard, landing on the flowers I have planted for them. The scent of my lavender, the buzzing of the bees, watermelon, walking barefoot, taking Wyatt on his bike rides. Summer road trips and northern Michigan. Planting sunflower seeds and watching how tall they grow. Iced cold tea, that has been brewed by the sun.
I try to make sure that Wyatt has all these experiences that will become his glimmers. I try to expose him to the world, to nature, to different places and people and things and sights. I know some things that he loves, like seeing and hearing a blue jay call outside, riding his bike, drawing with sidewalk chalk, playing in his little play house while I garden around him, picking peaches, going to the library, spotting the moon, playing with his cousin Mermaid Girl around a backyard fire, swimming in his grandma’s pool.
One summer when I was a little kid, my mom and dad set up a giant tent one year in our yard. I loved taking my books and notebooks and pencils out there and just spending hours in there reading and writing and drawing, like my own little hideaway. I am actually going to have Billy put one up today in our yard, so that Wyatt and I can hang out in there reading and playing games and drawing, building new memories for Wyatt while I live out old ones.
I often wonder about what will stick with Wyatt as he grows older, become a core memory, those memories that are forever memories; will it be our moon parties we have with his cousin? Those nights around the fire? Watching our butterflies emerge from chrysalis and the tadpoles turn to frogs? Ice cream dinners or movie nights at home with popcorn his dad made?
Desi also made something I thought was sort of cool – a summertime mood board, filled with these glimmers. So I made mine. It is sort of neat and wild to think about how these small things that fill people up, these little shimmery glimmers, will be different for everyone. As soon as I post this, I am off to the other room where my husband is drinking his coffee and Wyatt is watching cartoons, to ask Billy what are his small things of summer that make him smile.
What about you? Any you want to share?
(And If you make a mood board and want to share, let me know! I am so curious and intrigued!)
At the start of this month, I set a goal for Wyatt and I for a summer reading challenge. I counted all books, whether he read them, I read them to him, or we read them together. For some reason, I felt like 20 was an appropriate number. I must have been crazy, because the challenge has already been completed and he received his first reward today, which was the Ghosts in the Attic Game from Peaceable Kingdom, his pick. The last week or so we haven’t really been able to do much outside, it has either been raining or like today, the air quality is too bad to leave the house for any length of time. We have been filling our time indoors with board games, and books, and of course, painting. However, this post is about books, so let’s get back to those. I can get carried away.
It was a pretty good month! So many insect books, I love it! There were some standout favorites out of this bunch, of course. Wyatt absolutely loved, loved, loved Snake’s Big Mistake, for many reasons. One thing we love to do is find characters in wheelchairs in books, and we were excited to spot a little hedgehog in a wheelchair in this one. But Wyatt also loved this book because it was about art and pottery. He loves art, and his grandma is a potter, with her own wheel and kiln and everything. I rarely read the author blurb to Wyatt in these books, but this one caught my eye. The author Sarah Kurpiel is herself a wheelchair user, and get this, a LIBRARIAN and an ARTIST. Wyatt’s two big loves, art and the library! It was very exciting. I saw that she also has a book, Lone Wolf, which of course Wyatt and wolves, so I will make sure we pick that up for him.
He also really loved Are Pirates Polite?, which was super cute, and now when he does something I can say “Is that how pirates act?” or “Do pirates interrupt?” Interrupting is such a thing for him right now. He is finding his words and adding to his speech everyday and is in a hurry to say them all to us, at all times. We have not had to address interrupting until this point so it is a new struggle for us all. Hopefully pirates help us. And finally, his final favorite of the month, What About Worms? This was a cute book, where the tiger was afraid of worms and worms were afraid of spiders and Wyatt found it absolutely hysterical.
As for my favorites, let’s start with the book that made me teary. Does this happen to anyone else? We were reading “Love Makes a Garden Grow” and ugh, it was so beautiful and sentimental I started to tear up and cry. Wyatt stuck his little face in mine, and asked me if I was sad. I had to tell him not really, but I was more just overcome with emotions over the story. Garden books that get sentimental will probably forever make me cry; my uncle Art and I had a special bond over gardening and now he is gone and you know how these things sneak up on you and hit you in the heart. It was a very beautiful book, especially for those who garden with family. I also really enjoyed The Red Tin Box. It is about a little girl who buries her treasures in a little red tin box, and goes back years and years later with her granddaughter and digs it up. It was just very sweet and I loved the whole idea of it. We loved reading Evergreen together too! It is a longer picture book, with little chapters almost, and is about the adventures of Evergreen the squirrel and her quest to get her acorn full of restorative soup to a sick family member. It was really well done! Firefly Hollow is actually our current read aloud, so we are not done with it yet. It just seemed perfect for the summer. We read a chapter before bedtime every night, and I probably look forward to it as much as Wyatt.
And that just about wraps up June for what Wyatt and I have been reading! Every book we read was amazing and special, it was a great month spent with great books.
Every homeschool mom starts researching like a madwoman starting in the late winter, deciding just which curriculum they are going to use the next school year. It is hard not to get distracted too, and just buy something new to finish the year with as well, to be perfectly honest! All the shiny new curriculums, full of new topics or projects or ways of teaching and learning. Some people have curriculum they love and stick with every year, some have curriculum they use for every subject, some follow different schools of homeschool styles, like Charlotte Mason or Waldorf or unschooling or roadschooling and there are people like me, who maybe do a little of everything. Our homeschool is a bit more eclectic, much like the people in the home, so I guess that makes sense!
Anyway, after MUCH deliberation, I finally decided on and have purchased all of our curriculum for next year! (well, with the exception of our extra language arts – I will get to that in a minute)
Math:The Good and The Beautiful
The Good and the Beautiful is an open and go type curriculum, that doesn’t require any extra planning on my end, which I love, because that is one subject I don’t really want to do that for. Wyatt struggles in math, and halfway through first grade I chucked the curriculum we had been using and started completely over from the beginning, with the Kindergarten level of The Good and The Beautiful math and he seems to be understanding it a lot better. The lessons are easily digestible for him, and math is no longer such a chore for us to get through. He is technically “behind” since we started over, but Wyatt is Wyatt and we don’t worry about constraints like that too much. We learn where he is, which is what he needs! He will get there, and I always say Wyatt does things in his own time.
Reading Mechanics, Grammar, Etc: The Good and The Beautiful
This is another one we actually started over with, like math, for the same reasons. The only difference is that Wyatt loves words and reading so it wasn’t like his attitude toward math. I just felt that The Good and the Beautiful had such a great, simple delivery system that made learning easier. The Good and The Beautiful is a non-secular, religious curriculum so there is mention of non-denominational faith in both subjects. Oh! I forgot to mention, The Good and the Beautiful also offers FREE curriculum as downloads! I think it is wonderful that there is such a fantastic resource available to anyone who wants it, since homeschool curriculum can really add up!
History: History Quest
I am so excited about my pick for History this year! We are going to use History Quest from Pandia Press, which is a secular history curriculum. I did a ton of research for history this year, it is a favorite of Wyatt’s and mine, to be honest. I love how this one is laid out, with reading and discovery and projects, as well as built in “hygge” weeks where we just read one of the suggested books that week, nothing else. It seems very inclusive and sensitive which was something else that I was looking for. I have been spending time this past week working on lesson plans and I am excited by what we will be doing. Our second week of school, Wyatt will be researching a local Native American tribe, first by searching the native lands database to find what lands we are on then following up with the research and project. This curriculum is very comprehensive, and I can actually see us slowing it down, spending more time on certain times and topics, and extending this curriculum into next year. We are actually still working on our Traveling the States curriculum from The Waldock Way, which Wyatt absolutely LOVED this year. We will be adding in the states we haven’t covered yet here and there throughout the year until we finish up.
Science: Blossom and Root Year Three
I have always loved Blossom and Root for science! I feel it is their strength, their science and nature curriculum, and we have enjoyed it every year! Sometimes we need to break it up a bit with some rabbit trails into different areas, but for the most part it is awesome. They have so many options and approaches for every learner, and every “wonder” (unit) has options for the basket book families, the minimalists, the visual learners. Then from Wonder we move on to Explore, which is the hands-on part, with labs and projects and demonstrations, and again there are multiple ways to approach exploration for each unit. There are ideas for the arts and crafts crowd (usually our choice!), the table top learners, the outdoor explorers. I usually opt for the arts and crafts version but sometimes we mix it up, or do all three, the same as I do for the Wonder part of the week. It is very comprehensive, so sometimes I skip over some of the information (like when we learned about vascular and non-vascular plants last year! I mainly skimmed it) but that is what I like about it. You can pick and choose. It is a secular based science curriculum and I think it is very affordable for all that you get with it!
So this is the first time that I have ever purchased a music curriculum, and we haven’t started this yet so I can’t really review it. However, it looks very approachable for us, and is designed for homeschool parents who are not musically inclined. Like me, that is me. This description sold me on it: “No instrument purchase necessary! High/Low, Fast/Slow, Loud/Soft… using only your voices, you and your child can explore the foundation of music literacy together in a wonderfully holistic way.” I am also looking into music therapy for Wyatt as an additional tie-in, since he loved music therapy camp this year!
Art:
Here is where I start going it alone! We had such a good time last year in art, learning about so many different artists and styles of art and architecture and so so much, that we are going to continue along the same lines this year. We are also going to have art on the weekends so that Billy can join in! We loved when we had art with Billy!
Last year, I designed Wyatt’s language arts myself, choosing all the books, the copywork, the comprehension questions and discussions, and accompanying projects – and we loved it. We are doing it again this year, but instead of all picture books like last year, we are doing all read together/read alouds. Some of the books I will design my own book study, for other books I will purchase unit studies online. I have two lined up already – Children of the Longhouse by Jospeh Brucach (which actually aligns perfectly with hygge week in History Quest!), and Paddle-to-the-Sea by Holling C. Holling. We will begin the school year with these two and then see where the year takes us although I do have some ideas already.
Phew! That was a lot just to type out! I am so excited about our upcoming year, and am busily putting all of this together and planning weeks and field trips and projects! I think it will be a great year!
I am soo tired this morning! I think it is all this rain! We need it though so I won’t complain. Everything has been so dry and parched that a few days of straight rain will do everything good – for the farmers, for the gardeners, all manner of flora and fauna.
I can say we have some very happy bees! I have no idea where these ladies live but they are loving our lavender. It’s amazing how alive a yard can be when you stop and look. Sadly Billy told me that if you pay attention to your car’s windshield, you can tell just how reduced insects are these days – remember road trips and having to wash the dead bugs off the window? Do you still need to? Anyway we try to do our part over here in helping the insect and animal populations – we have so much life out there in our yard. Sometimes too much, but that is a story for another time. But we have little baby praying mantids, katydids, grasshoppers, jumping spiders, a blue jay nest with blue jay fledglings, possums, and I am sure some other nighttime creatures I don’t know about. And of course, butterflies and caterpillars. I do give them a helping hand, we have established a pretty good food chain out there so I bring some in. Some for the predator insects, some to help grow and release.
Speaking of little creatures, my little tadpoles are all tiny tiny toads now! We only have two left, and I have named them Simon and Garfunkel. They are still way too tiny to release, so for now they live here. We are enchanted by them and how very wee they are. How do these things make it in the wild? I am sure that is why they have so many eggs and tadpoles, it is definitely a numbers game.
Last night I spent a rainy, relaxing evening with my friend Kelly. We talk everyday but don’t always get to get together in person and it was good to just hang out. I got to visit with her daughter Tadpole girl, who showed me some of her new cool things she made, and then Kelly and I got to just sit and chat. I also got to check out her tadpoles and toads and insects and plants. She has a bunch of cats but has a large house and you never even realize there are more than one or two or three most of the time. I only saw three last night, Cecil, the buff old guy in the first photo, Buddy on the chair by the window, and then Pal, who is still sort of new to the house. Buddy and Pal were stray cats until this winter when it got really cold and Kelly let them in to warm up. I said, well, they are yours now, they are going to get comfy and that’s it. And she was like “No, no, we have enough cats, these are my outdoors buddies I feed..” Mmm hmm. Looks like I was right, and these cats have landed in the lap of luxury. Buddy in particular looked super cozy. And those toads are both girls, nothing going on there in that photo!
This has started already – homeschool planning for next year. I have a pretty good idea of how our structure and routine is going to work. I have all of the curriculum bought, and I am busy reading through it and looking at what we can do to enrich our studies in the fall. We are going to start a small version of summer school July 10th and do that for about a few weeks or so, then take another small break before we start up again for good in September. We are not super hot day people and it keeps us busy inside during the hottest hours. We have zero shade in our yard and it feels like the surface of the sun in the summer! We won’t be going all out schooling but it’ll be good for both of us. And I love my new planner from Schoolnest, and I also very nerdily like that the tabs match so well.
Annnd my cup is empty! Time for a refill! So not too much exciting happening around here, just…life, I guess, and that is perfect honestly.
How are you all doing? What is going on in your world?
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date
Hello everyone! I hope the past week treated you well! We had an easier week, just one specialist appointment for Wyatt, and lots of playing, and nightly evening walks for Billy and I while Wyatt rides his little Rifton adaptive bike! Guys, he loves it so much! It took a doctor, a therapist, a social worker, and me a ton of paperwork to get it, but once that was all completed, we got it in two weeks! It was absolutely crazy how fast it was approved and got here!
Read Last Week:
This book was such a hoot! It cracked me up and also gave me a little anxiety. LOL.
Reading This Week:
I am waiting for this Karen White book to come in. The library shows it “in transit” on my account so it should be here soon, so I will start with This Wicked Fate, the sequel to This Poison Heart. For some reason all of my YA and Middle Grade holds are coming in to the library like crazy wildfire and piling up and my actual adult books are slowly trickling in.
Billy and I watched School Spirits, which was actually a lot better than we had thought it was going to be. I am sucked in and need answers! We also finished up the American version of Ghosts, which we also really like. (we were all about ghosts apparently this past week) We also are still continuing our rewatch of Death in Paradise. We are in the Humphrey Years right now.
We didn’t watch any movies but we have a fun cheesy campy July of movies coming up. We decided to fully embrace shark week this year, and are doing like a shark month. Jaws, The Meg, Shark Night, Deep Blue Sea… we are just going shark wild. Wyatt and I are starting a bit of summer school starting July 10th and we are going to do some shark stuff as part of our studies as well. I am pretty excited, I love a campy summer movie binge!
I am behind on some of my favorite YouTubers! Darling Desi, who I have mentioned before, Forgotten Way Farms, The Cottage Fairy, among others all have new videos that I haven’t watched. I am thinking Wyatt might get a trip to Grandma’s this week and I can stay home and fold laundry and catch up. Or I will tell Billy to go play video games at night or something and catch up. Either way, I am catching up!
Listening. Old stuff still mostly. Wyatt has decided this is a new favorite song of his. Pretty sure I loved this one at his age too. I mainly put on a playlist and roll but Wyatt has actual requests, and this is a frequent one. Sometimes at 7 am.
And that is from around here! What has been going on in your world?
My husband was bound and determined to get us in a tent camping this summer. The idea did not thrill me, I am not a camper. It’s too much outside. Like, I like to be outside and do outdoors things but at the end of the day I like to be in a house or a cabin or a lodge or hotel room or something. Not a tent that is basically like being outside, where it is hot and stuffy or cold or just smells weird or bugs can get into or bears can take out the side with one swipe of a mighty paw. But… the guy puts up with all my whims with barely any complaints so… I made a reservation for a campsite through hipcamp. Baby steps guys. This one is on a farm nearby and looks super cute, and is only two sites, and they are not close to each other. I thought it would be a good starter camp for us – well, Wyatt and I. Billy camps all the time. Just not with us.
Of course, this meant though that I had to browse the internets to see if we needed anything for our overnight camping trip. Which led me down a path of adding things to a camping list. I mean, we don’t need all this for our intro trip, but if it goes ok and we do more camping, we may need to add to our stuff. Billy has all the actual things we need, those things that are useful and actually needed for camping – my list is more…. extra.
Note: This list does contain affiliate links that would provide a small compensation to me if you were to purchase something, at no extra cost to you.
This nifty neat picnic table cover that is fitted is calling my name. I love a citrus fruit pattern in the summer, and I am always a bit squeeged out by picnic tables. They always have yuck on them. This looks perfect to cover up the yuck and keep the table area clean while we are camping.
Um, fun right? I would like to see unicorn flames in our fire. Not like burn a unicorn obviously, but just pretty unicorn and mermaid colors. These magical flames would probably be cool for Wyatt to see too!
If you read here, you already know that coffee is an important part of my morning. I am a literal zombie until I get at least a cup in me, so the coffee situation needs to be a high priority. I really like this percolator! I love that it is stainless steel, a good sturdy material, has a lifetime replacement guarantee, and the company is veteran owned. This is something I am probably going to get for our upcoming trip, for sure, because I think we could even use this on the stove in our kitchen, so dual purpose! Or what about in case of a power outage? We could make a fire in our firepit in the yard and still make coffee! Coffee is so important! LOL.
So this is something else I am thinking about getting before our little trip. I can’t decide though between the quippy little phrases or the names. I think it would be a fun surprise. I mean, it would be even better over magical flames, do you agree?
Remember, I said this list was going to be a bit extra. Look at this! A cutesy little s’mores caddy!
And for a little in-tent comfort…. a tent fan and a giant mattress. Confession: Billy purchased a giant mattress already for camping. He did it last year in hopes that I would agree to go. So we do have this already. He used it alone on his last camping trip and he said it was really comfortable!
And just for me things! If I make it through this camping overnight, I could definitely wear that shirt. The headband might be a necessity though! With my insane hair I will 100% have camping hair and sometimes I just don’t feel like braids or a pony.
So are you a camper? Or an outdoorsy non-camper like me? Or are you more of a city or beach vacationer?
We had a very vintage Father’s Day. Every year on Father’s Day, Greenfield Village has a Motor Muster, and is jam packed full of classic cars, vintage style refreshments, and historic re-enactments. We have been going for a few years now, and this year by far was the absolute busiest we have seen it. There were also three times the cars on display as well!
I took fifty billion photos but I will refrain from sharing all of them – I really took a million. We all had favorites though, and favorite areas! Billy loves all things VW and they had so many this year. Our favorite was a 1977 Camper Van that has been in the same family since 1981. Wyatt wanted to get in it so bad – he is apparently a new fan of them as well. They would be pretty cool to tool around in! One of my friends in high school had an orange one and I didn’t appreciate how neat it was until much later. The green one pictured is the one that has been owned by the same family since 1981 – it is even the perfect color!
This year Hagerty Driver’s Club had old Broncos on display, and they were a huge draw, especially since the new Broncos are out. This is the Motor City all, so we are all about cars here. I dream about owning a vintage Bronco, they are so awesome and massive.
I settled for a polaroid of my guys posing in front of it.
Wyatt and I both also liked this crazy looking van. It was so super glittery and colorful how could you not like it? Wyatt also wanted to get in there and play too. Apparently we need some sort of van.
We all loved the historic re-enactments – they were all CCC and Forest Service related, so of course we did. Billy and I love that whole era so it was really neat to walk around the CCC encampment, and meet the women of the “She-she-she”. I loved that they were teaching women real skills so that they could get jobs, things like refinishing furniture and sewing. Eleanor Roosevelt did not like women being left out of the opportunities that were presented by the CCC so she started her camps for women to learn these skills. There were also “Forest Rangers” from the 40s. During the war, these men were usually out managing timber for the war efforts.
However Wyatt’s favorite moment of our time there? Meeting the pack horse librarian who gave him a library card. Prepare for us to go exploring a new rabbit hole together!
Ok and finally, the Vernors truck!! Vernors is the ginger ale choice in Detroit. It is the cure all you know. It can heal any ailment! And look at that mischievous looking imp on the logo.
Ok last photos just for fun…
We left after lunch and headed home for a quick little nap. After nap, Billy wanted to go to our favorite picnic spot, where we like to just go and relax and enjoy the shade and breeze that we always get there.
It was a very full, outdoors kind of day and was completely wonderful!
Good morning everyone! (or afternoon or evening or whenever you are reading this!) I felt like just having a chat this morning while I drink this wonderful, lifegiving, cup of coffee.
I’ve been sharing about so many of our big events lately, Wyatt’s EEG, RicStar, but I haven’t shared many of our small moments or just small joys – even as simple as just this cup of coffee, which is nothing special, but still one of the best moments of my day, that first sip of that first cup.
Every morning, I get Wyatt his breakfast, make my coffee, and check on all of my little creatures. Our tadpoles have made some exciting new developments!
They are now teensy tiny little toads! Well, except one late bloomer. That one is still hanging onto its tail and is still very tadpoley. It is swimming around in the water. This container is pretty small and the water shallow because they need more land right now and don’t necessarily have the strength to swim in deep water yet. Sadly, I learned that the hard way. These little ones are the size of my pinky nail, I swear. They are so small. I am going to raise them a bit longer because they will just get eaten or drown if I release them now, they are just so baby still. Although I told Billy it will be hard for me to let them go, and I do have two giant tanks still, just sitting in the basement…. I could name these three Peter, Paul, and Mary! Or Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Or Huey, Dewey, and Louie. So many options. Toads are more of a pain to take care of than lizards though, at least for me. So, they will probably end up being released into the pond when they are big enough.
My caterpillars are getting huge too. Monsters! They are at the eating machine stage right now and have quite a few that have already gone into chrysalis. I also still have some wee little baby caterpillars too. I am at capacity with caterpillars right now! So many!! These are Black Swallowtails, I am not doing monarchs this year, and after this little group I will probably be done with caterpillars for the season too, although caterpillars will keep being born on my rue and lovage until fall.
My strawberries are going like crazy too!
We took Wyatt to a city street festival the other day. It occurred to us that he has not really ever been to one, and our city has them constantly. He was pretty excited. It was the BBQ and whiskey fest, so we went early and had macaroni and cheese that was delicious, and left before the crowd got crazy. We also got a blue-raspberry slush from this super ornate tent with slushes. And seriously, we are terrible parents because this kid has never seen an amusement park ride apparently in his life. He could not get over the Ferris wheel or little mini tiny kid roller coaster these things always have set up. Wyatt is not allowed to ride anything that can whip his head around due to his shunt, so it just never entered our thoughts to even take him to things like this before. He was content to watch, and didn’t ask to ride it, he was pretty blown away by watching it rocket around. He also enjoyed watching people come down the big giant slide – thankfully not like the Belle Isle slide debacle from last year!
Annnnnddddd…. the most exciting news of all! Wyatt’s adaptive bike came on Sunday! Two weeks ago the clinic where Wyatt goes to therapy, the social worker there, and I all worked on his application for an adaptive bike. One week ago I got the email that he was approved, and then Sunday, we got the bike! We were all shocked that it came so fast!! Wyatt was so excited that despite being super exhausted from our super fantastic and very full Father’s Day (more on that tomorrow) he wanted to get on it immediately, no shoes, not properly hooked up, but just on it. We were all super excited, honestly. I am so happy that we got it so fast, now we can use it for months and months before winter comes.
And that is all from my little corner of the world this morning! How are you all doing?
Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.. 