I’ve no idea if anyone still reads over here. I know that once google reader went away, I lost a LOT of blogs I’d otherwise followed. I’ve since continued onward in my blogging travels, elsewhere. Seeking a little bit more anonymity and, honestly, just something new. This last year has been a real doozy.
If you’re wanting to continue following, please message me through the form below, and I will send you the new link!
The last time Truman was home, we went exploring a little bit around the local area. A place that I used to go to a lot during the summer as a child was Pilsbury Crossing, just outside of town. We were finally able to take the kids out there and let them explore some. It was a lot of fun, being able to tell Logan about how we used to swim down between the rocks, and how, if you weren’t careful, your slip-on shoes would go right over the waterfalls and you most likely wouldn’t be able to find them ever again. I’m convinced that somewhere in the rocks there is a large shoe graveyard.
While we were out there, we saw lots of tadpoles in various stages of development.
The kids waded through the water, observing and exploring.
Even Calliope got in on the water fun – She Who Shuns The Bathtub.
A view of the waterfalls. They aren’t very big, but they do have quite a current going toward them. Down below is emptied out and, while I don’t recall playing under there very much, I know I remember seeing a LOT of other kids doing it. (My older cousins included!)
Down the stream a little.
We would swim around those rocks, and then walk down the creek a bit. It widens in parts, gets somewhat deeper in others, and in other parts got much narrower and shallower. There are, or were, quite a lot of snakes in this area especially before a lot of people start coming more regularly during the summer. Mostly once the weather is nicer college students flock to this area, which means a lot of noise and traffic.
The month of May saw us traveling, quite a bit, it feels like. The first of May saw us in Tulsa, OK where we saw Truman’s grandmother for the last time before she went up to live in Nova Scotia. She’s going to be living in the beautiful old house that his mother and step-father own that we stayed in last summer for a month. I’m not going to lie, there’s a decent bit of jealousy there! That house is truly my dream house, set in a dreamy location. (Lots of water right there, on enough land to do fun things, a fabulous little town with a great many wonderful people in it. Close enough to a larger town (Truro, NS) that it wasn’t totally isolated. Perfect!)
Then toward the middle of May, my grandmother and I took a road trip with the kids up to Niagara, WI to look at a house. It turned out that we actually qualified for a USDA rural development home loan, and we initially thought this house was perfect. Well, the house ended up needing more work than anticipated. A lot more work than anticipated. It was situated on 10 acres and basically snuggled up against the border of the Upper Peninsula. In any case, the house didn’t work out. But we’ve decided that we’re going to move to Wisconsin in August anyway, and for the first year or so, we’re just going to find a nice little rental home somewhere in the Wausau/Marshfield area while we figure out just where exactly it is we want or need to be.
At the park in Iron Mountain, MI (which was just on the other side of the Menominee River from where the house we were looking at was) the kids were enthralled. There were tons of semi-tamed wild rabbits, a large deer enclosure, Bocce ball courts, more bicycling paths than you could shake a stick at, and more. Truly, it was a great area, and this park was fabulous.
I didn’t get much of a chance to take photos of much of the rest of the trip – I was the one who did all of the driving, and I regret now that we didn’t do much sightseeing.
On our way back home from Wisconsin, we stopped in a little park on the south side of Madison, which met up with the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. We stopped there and had a picnic lunch while the kids played. It was an awesome little park as well. The general feel I’ve gotten is that Wisconsin really likes their parks! Which is awesome, because I really like having nice parks, too.
I can’t wait until we’re back in Wisconsin on a more permanent basis! It reminded me a lot of Nova Scotia, with how green it all was. The north eastern part of Wisconsin, up by the Upper Peninsula, made me think of how the wooded areas felt around the New Glasgow area. In short: perfect and beautiful!
Lilly’s Tea Leaves cardigan. Its coming along pretty well. I’m on my second skein, and have probably another 3-4 inches left to go on the body, and then the sleeves. I try to pick it up to knit a little bit on it every chance I get. I’m going to need to go by the yarn store over in Manhattan to pick up the correct size DPNs that I’ll need for the sleeves.
Yesterday Logan got to try his hand at climbing a tall(ish) ladder in order to clean out the gutters. We knew that they needed to be cleaned out, and as we’re expecting quite a bit of rain today and tomorrow – yesterday seemed like the perfect day to do it! Needless to say, Logan had a BLAST and he was able to have fun while doing something that helps everyone out.
He proudly showed me a large clump of what he’d taken out of the gutters, before moving on to another section. After he finished pulling what he could out, we all teamed up on raking and then sweeping the front porch clean. All in all, he declared it one of the best days ever!
On Friday we went to Topeka on something of a whim. Truman had gotten home the night before, and we wanted to go and do something just for fun. So off we went to the Kansas Childrens Discovery Center! I am head-over-heels in love with this place, and if we end up staying in Kansas for much longer, I’ll be getting us a family membership there, and I’m hoping to be able to send Logan to a day-camp there this summer. I think he’d have a blast! They have some for Lilly’s age-group as well, and I might look into those for the same week that I’m hoping to get for Logan. (Save on gas, if nothing else!)
Calliope dominated this slide. Some kids came around the stairs going up into the treehouse, where you get onto the slide at, and she held her hand out at them and shouted, “NO! Mine!” and stomped up the stairs. She is a goofy butt.
Somehow we went from a day that was pushing the upper-70’s the day before, to a day that was in the sixties and stormy. And from the thunderstorms, we went right into freezing rain and temperatures below freezing. Which is translating to more time inside again, lounging on an ottoman that has been laid on by virtually every grandchild and great grandchild in the family, creating crazy things with duct tape and cardboard, drawing, and baking. Some nice laid back days!
Tonight, we get to go pick up Truman for 4 days at home, and then later this weekend Grandma and Grandpa are driving up from Texas to see us all!
Dyed on blank Blue-Faced Leicester worsted weight wool, using Greener Shades dyes. 500 yards total, divided into two 200 yard skeins and a 100 +/- yard skein.
I kept thinking about doing the one portrait a week of each child project. And I kept putting it off because “eh! its not the first of the year!”. And then I realized just how silly that sounded. So I’m going to start this week!
*****
Youngest to oldest. I am going to miss these crazy little faces that Calliope makes at me while she yells at me. I think here she was saying “mama!” repeatedly. My beautiful middle child – she is ever the epitome of a pisces. And Logan, always making or doing something. (He made a dump truck in the above photo.) He’s told me, repeatedly now, that just about all he wants for his 7th birthday is a huge pile of duct tape. He might just get it, too.
mamaunfurling.wordpress.com 