More Crab Racing

As I have been scanning in these slides the story becomes clearer. They call the crab races the National Hard Crab Derby. You buy a crab and they put a number on their shell and you name your crab. I was number 99! "Whitney". I don't know how well I did as my dad didn't take any photos of the standings. Oh well.

Back to the races. They then take your crab with your number on it and put them in these troughs with little dividers on it. Then when the race begins they dump the trough and out come the crabs and the first one over the finish line wins. I want to say they win a trophy and money.

By looking at the crowd it is quite a popular sport!! I believe they still do this in Crisfield today. I remember something on TV about it last year.

This is a picture of me with my mom.

Up and Running...

I am up and running on scanning in old slides. This one is from the Crisfield Crab Festival in 1971. It is a yearly festival in Crisfield, Maryland. We used to go most every year. Crabs are big in our family. From when I can remember summer meant being at the shore with my grandparents and crabs. Catching crabs in traps, moving the crabs to the live box, my grandmother getting in the water with a big basket and getting the crabs out of the livebox, and steaming and eating the crabs. Summer life revolved around crabs. We steamed them and ate them. My grandmother made "She Crab Soup" which was a vegetable soup with big pieces of crab in them. No not crab meat but chunked crabs. You ate the soup until you found a claw or a piece of crab, shell and all and pick it out and suck the crab meat out of the shells or pick the meat like you would steamed crabs. We had crab salad, like ham salad or chicken salad. We had crab cakes and fried soft crabs. And on and on. We all loved being at the shore. The house was on the water, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. We would take the boat out and fish. We would fish off the dock. We would swim and swim and swim. We would jump off the dock and swim around to the shore or to the ladder and climb back. We would jump off the dock and swim down three more docks to my other grandparent's home. I was lucky because both my grandparents summer homes were just down from the other. My cousins would come and we would swim.

Back to Crisfield. At the festival there were many events including a crab cooking contest, pig catching contests, crab picking contests and the highlight-crab races! You would buy a crab (live of course) and they would paint a number on it and enter it in the races. Then they would race the crabs down a specially designed track. The fastest crab wins. All crabs get cooked at the end or you can take your crab home with you. We would take ours home and cook him there.

In 1971, as a child of only one year, my crab came in 99th!! My father's came in 83rd.

The crab picking contest was also fun to watch. The contestants were usually the women who picked crabs for a living right there in Crisfield. They worked in the factories and did this day in and day out. They can pick some crabs!

My Cuddly

This is a picture of me with my Mutsy. the other day I wrote about favorite snugglies or cuddlies. I felt you all needed to see me with mine. This is my monkey. I do still have him but he is packed away in a box. The picture was taken by my father. He dabbled in portrait photography when I was young and took most of our portraits in the early 1970s. This one was taken in August 1970 which would have put me at 8 months of age. Wasn't I cute? My monkey looks pretty good too. In this picture he still has his ears!

Over then next several weeks I hope to be able to get out our family slides and start scanning them and printing the photos so they can be put in photo albums. It is interesting that in the 1960s and 1970s the fashion was to take slide photography. But it makes it difficult to look at the pictures when they are in slide format. My kids want to see what I looked like as a child their age and I can't show them that many photos because they are all in slides. So I am going to transform them all into photos and in albums.

Does anyone know why slides were taken and not photos?

Things You Cling To

As a child many people have a favored blanket or bear or something that they use for comfort. I had "Dolly" and "Mutsie". Dolly was a doll made from a patterned material which my mother cut out and sewed together. She used panty hose that had run to stuff my dolly. I dragged her around by her leg because it was easy to grip for a little hand. I still have dolly somewhere but I gave her up in my early childhood. I also had a little monkey called "Mutsie". He has survived the ages also but I long ago gave up taking him everywhere too.

My son has many stuffed animals and used to have a favorite blanket, well two. My husband had a talk with him when he turned 7 and Nicholas gave up his blankets. Now that they are out of site he doesn't ask for them but I know if I pulled them out again he would snuggle with them again. My middle daughter has no real favorite animal or blanket. She never really has. Caroline, the youngest, has a bear, called "Bear". She loves him and sleeps with him most every night. She takes him to sleep overs at her grandparents' houses. But even at 5 there are nights she could take him or leave him. Just last night she didn't bother to get him out of her suitcase, after returning home from Gram's house, to sleep with Bear.

My sister on the other hand still has her bear. He was also made by my mother and cut from a patterned material. She sewed him together and he got real stuffing. She carried him everywhere. And I mean everywhere. He would get dirty and my mother would throw him in the washer and dryer and Jennifer would wait right there until he was dry and the buzzer when off on the dryer and she would open the door and take him out. Then she would work hard to make him smell right again. While Jennifer sucked her thumb she would rub his nose and she eventually rubbed a hole in him. After that it was harder to wash. My mother searched everywhere to find another bear just like his. At that time I found out that when I was little I actually went through three Dollys. When one wore out she would replace it with another one. When Jennifer was 7 or 8 years old my mom found a Bear to replace hers at a yard sale. She brought it home and washed it and presented it to Jennifer. She seemed excited at first but when it came down to real snuggling Jennifer preferred the one with the hole in the nose. By now the hole went straight through the bear and you could put your arm through him, which Jenn would do and then swing him around and around her arm. I am not sure what happened to the new Bear, because he just wouldn't take the place of the old one.

Jennifer is now 34 years old and she still has the Bear. He is now shreds of material held together with threads. He no longer has any stuffing left and he resides in her pillowcase. So, yes, I believe she still sleeps with him. In her adult years she has moved along to a stuffed dog with a red ribbon collar but nothing compares to Bear. I think when we were young, I pretended to marry Jennifer and her Bear. I had no idea that the marriage would last this long.

Summer Reading

Today is the first day of my summer vacation. I am excited that I have my 5 weeks off until we start back up August 1st, but I also feel the end of my summer is very near. I want to have accomplished something and am not sure what yet.

Anyway, I have just begun my summer reading list. It is chosen by me and they are all books I have been wanting to read for a while. The first book I am very excited about because I had read an article in our local newspaper about it about a month ago and the book just came out last week. I hunted for a while in the local bookstores with no success until someone was nice enough to tell me that it hadn't come out yet. So I ordered it from Barnes and Noble and low and behold it arrived on my doorstep yesterday! Perfect timing.

The book is See you in A Hundred Years, by Logan Ward. It is about his wife and 2 year old child. They are frustrated with the pace of life in New York and they decide to sell their apartment and buy an old farm house and land in the mountains of Virginia. This is a true story. They not only buy this property but they decide that they will farm it and live like people did in 1900, without electricity, cars, TV, refridgerator, and washing machine. They get the idea from the PBS shows Frontier House, Colonial House, etc. They decide to do this for a year. So far I am about 50 pages into it and laying in bed last night reading it I was laughing so hard I was crying! It is an easy read and with the kids behaving I should have it done by the weekend.

Also on the list is a trilogy of books by Debbie Macomber. The first is The Shop on Blossom Street. It was also a hard find in the bookstores so I ordered it too and it came in the box with the Ward book yesterday. The second in the series is A Good Yarn, and the third is Back on Blossom Street. They are girl books, about women and their friendships and bits of romance intertwined. I anticipate them being read by the middle of July. Then I have a Nelson DeMille Book, Wild Fire, that I have not read yet and can't right now remember the title but it is his newest one. Kenneth gave it to me for Christmas but I haven't read it yet.

Has anyone read a good book recently that should be on my list? Got a classic suggestion? Let me hear 'em...

Reading

Today at work I took out my book carts from my closet and offered the kids to come up to the book cart and choose a book to read. On the cart are novels, encyclopedias, non-fiction books, reference materials, biographies, and cartoon books. I try to have books of all different reading levels and all different subject matter, however, most are historical by nature. I figured this would be a good day to do this because for the next three days the kids would be down on their housing units (jail cells) while we are at a conference.

"Why don't you head up to the book cart now?", I asked one tenth grade girl.

"I don't read books.", she tells me.

Don't read books! I think. I have heard other people say that too and it always strikes me a odd. "I don't read books.". I just don't think that there is another statement that could so fully define you than "I don't read books". Everyone should read books. It makes you sound uneducated, impatient, and unwilling to learn. It doesn't say "I don't read" it says "I read other things but just not books". Why books? I just don't understand.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all fathers out there happening upon my blog. Fathers are very important in a child's life. They give the family strength and security as well as unending love. They help pique the sense of adventure, curiosity, and constructivism.

My dad was all of those things to me. He fostered a love of history, travel, and curiosity. He could fix anything or at least had a bunch of ideas on how to make it work. He was the greatest fort builder using furniture and blankets. He loved camping, cooking, and his sense of roughing it was a canvas tent, a cooking box with tons of spices and food staples, steak or crabs, and a gourmet grilled dinner. Our camp kitchen had all the supplies to produce homemade spaghetti, steak oscar, and eggs your way. We always ended the evening with a campfire to beat all others in the park.

Dad always encouraged us in the sciences and I remember having long talks with him about space, the universe and our role in it. He wasn't much of a religious guy but he supported my mother's views and supported our participation in the Episcopal church. He was more of a science guy. Dad was very well read. He read everything that came into the house including teen magazines, home and gardens, and handyman. He had a long running subscription to Playboy and swore he liked it for the articles. We had two newspapers coming to our house daily and on Sundays he would wake up early and head out to the newspaper truck and purchase usually 3 additional papers. Dad went to the University of Maryland but never finished college. He knew everything and could converse on most any subject.

Dad had his quirks. He kept a very neat and clean house. He did almost all the cooking and cleaning including the laundry. When we would leave a half empty glass in the family room, run out of the room to get something, when we returned the glass was gone. It was not in just in the kitchen, it was emptied, rinsed and placed in the dishwasher. This became a problem when you were having a snack or bowl of cereal on a Saturday morning. If it was left unattended for any amount of time, it was GONE! I found myself taking my drinks, snacks, or cereal bowl to the bathroom with me. Dad never let us cook. He didn't like people in his space. We could help from time to time but it was rare. He also didn't like us to help with the dishes, laundry, or other cleaning chores. I literally didn't learn how to do a load of laundry until I went away to college and my roommate taught me. If we did help with the dishes we weren't allowed to stack them in the dishwasher. He had his own way of doing it and no one put the dishes in like he liked them. So we just stopped helping.

Dad took care of us. He rented a little house every year for the month of August in Nags Head, NC. We would go down there and he would return to work Tuesday through Thursday evenings and return to spend a long weekend. He would only burn up 6 days vacation time that way but we would have 3-4 weeks! This house was literally a shack by today's standards. No A/C, no telephone, no TV reception. Two bedrooms a bathroom, kitchen and a living room. No carpet but it had a great back porch, one block to the beach, and a wonderful continuous breeze. When he left to return home he would leave the refrigerator stocked with food, wine for mom, and enough clean clothes to get us through the days without him. With no TV reception for the months prior to our vacation Dad would video tape our favorite TV shows. We would go down with hours upon hours of the Muppets, Fraggle Rock, and MR. Rogers for my sister, our favorite sitcoms, Who's the Boss?, One Day at a Time, Andy Griffith, The Facts of Life, and PBS cooking shows and This Old house for himself. They were our best vacations.

Dad and dating as a teenager didn't mix well. He enjoyed opening the door when my dates would come get me, staring at them without saying anything to them, and then as we would be heading out the door he would call out to us, "home by 9, right?" just playing with him. However, even though my curfew was usually 11, I had many a first dates return me home at 9 for fear of my father. He was a tallish man standing 6 ft 1 inch. but he was rather large weighing about 250lbs. He used to tease me that he needed a "score card" to keep track of all the boys. Dad also enjoyed playing with us when my date would return me home. I would open the front door and cut off the lights to the porch so we could kiss a bit. Right about mid-pucker Dad would turn on all the lights including the spotlights hidden in the bushes for Christmas time. This gave the effect of stage lights turning on for all the world to see. This usually scared my dates away.

Dad fostered independence in me and my sister. He thought it was fun when we turned 21 to give us a 6 pack of good micro brew and say, "so I guess you are your own now." He supported us in OUR decisions, would listen to us and give advice when we asked for it. He let us fail on our own and succeed. Luckily, he never had to bail us out of jail for I think he would have let us sit there for a while.

Dad died too early. He was only 61 years old. He got very sick and died a month later. He wouldn't have wanted to linger in sickness and we didn't let him. He knew we loved him very much and I knew he loved me too. I miss you dad.

I am not as Traveled as I thought I was.

Apparently I need to get packing! Only 4% of the world has been blessed by my presence.

More Jamestown

Someone asked me the other day why the settlers chose the swampy north side of the James River to settle when directly across from Jamestown was a nice broad hill which receives good breeze in the summer. First when the settlers came to Jamestown they knew that the Spanish possibly would attack their fort. They wanted to be prepared for the attack and looked for a broad river which their ships could come up and be safe from storms along the Atlantic as well as a place along the river where they could see a ways down the river for the Spanish. Second, The location of the fort would provide a bit of safety also as the Spanish could not fire directly on the fort from the deep channel in the river. Third, during the April that they arrived (1607) there was one of the most severe droughts in many years. This would have left the river very low and had exposed much of the side "walls" of the river. This place on the north side must have looked like it was higher land than expected. Looking on the southside, it must have looked like a very steep hill on which to haul their supplies. Thus they chose the north side.

In fact, not too many days after the fort had been erected the Spanish sent a scouting group to spy on the new settlement. They camped across the river on the hill (amongst the trees) and drew a hand sketch of the fort and its relation to the river. This was not much more than a modern day sketch on a bar napkin. But with this sketch Dr. Kelso was able to venture to guess that the fort ruins were still on land and not in the middle of the river. When the Spanish reported back to their people they determined that the fort was temporary and the settlement probably wouldn't last very long.

Check out this link. It is a very good site that was created for the 400th anniversary.

Did you know that the Pilgrims of Massachusetts had originally set sail for Virginia? Topic for next time...

The Birthplace of Our Country

This is a photo of Historic Jamestown just outside of Williamsburg, Virginia. I took this photo while on the ferry from Surry County to James City County crossing the James River. This is a rare view because if you are going to Jamestown you would come to it from the land behind this beautiful scene. Until 1994 it was believed and written in the history books that the original fort was located in the James River. Over the years they believed that the riverbanks had receded and the river overcame the fort. There was some remaining archeology on the land which included a church bell tower, which you can see in the photo as the only brick structure. There was ruins of the New Jamestown, a village of houses which is to the right of the photo also. Because the original fort remains were believed to be in the river the parks service created Jamestown Settlement about a mile away from the original site. There, they have recreated the fort, replicated the boats and made a mini Indian village also. There are reinactors who "work" in the village, sawing logs, building houses, working the boats. At the settlement there is a nice museum with some artifacts from that time period to help round out the history.

Back to Historic Jamestown. On the Historic Jamestown site there are two groups of people who own and control the land. Looking at the photo, everything to the east (right of the photo) of the white obelisk monument (Washington Monument looking thing) was owned and controlled by the National Parks Service. Everything basically left of the Obelisk including the church is controlled by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. For many years the National Parks Service felt they had the better deal. They controlled the few artifacts that had been found on the property. They had the New Jamestown Village and they controlled the small museum, gift shop, and theatre which they showed a 15 minute video on the settling of Jamestown. The APVA controlled and maintained the church bell tower (the oldest brick structure in Virginia and the east coast outside St. Augustine, FL), the church, and the Civil War earthworks. Yes, on top of all of this was a Civil War encampment of soldiers to watch for those Yankees coming up the James River. This was a perfect view of the James River and from that vantage point one could see far down the James. This also was the reason our settlers chose this point as well. The National Parks Service had rights to give tours all through the park including the APVA portion. They did a great job. They would have you imagine the land, the river, the fort. You had to imagine everything. Most people never toured the Historic Jamestown or the "real" Jamestown as I would tell my students. I had much success taking students there and they always seemed to have a good time. To me, it was sacred land. There was a different feeling that came over me there. I could almost hear the early settlers working, talking, cooking, panning for gold. I could see the fort, watch the people, search for Indians. I have yet to find anyone who gets as excited about this place as I do.

In 1994, after much research Dr. William Kelso from UVA had a hunch that the fort was still on land. He believed that some if not all of the fort was there. He convinced the APVA to let him dig some trial excavations. In literally his first shovel-full of dirt he found artifact dating back 400 years. He knew he was on to something. Much of his first couple years he dug alone or with his graduate students. They had anticipated finding maybe a couple hundred artifacts. 13 years later he and his team have uncovered over a million artifacts and all but 10 feet of a corner of the original fort. I was lucky enough to be allowed to go down there and spend a day with one of his archaeologists. I was with a group of teachers and we weren't able to dig but we learned so so much about the process and their discoveries thus far.

In the photo you can see the re-creation of the original fort and the beginnings of a re-creation of a longhouse inside the fort. The re-creation of the fort sits just off the lines of the original fort and is not completely enclosed as the original fort was. This way the new structure will not harm the evidence of the old structure beneath the ground. With the new evidence of the fort's location, the APVA has just opened a multimillion dollar museum which is located left of the photo. It is beautiful and it not only tells the story of the settlers but it tells the story of the archeology behind it. Now there is no reason why a tourist would skip over Historic Jamestown in lieu of Jamestown Settlement. It just makes me even more excited and I think the APVA has the better deal now.

More Silly Stuff

What Mythical Creature I Am...
Actually I think they got this one right.

You Are a Centaur

In general, you are a very cautious and reserved person. However, you are also warm hearted, and you enjoy helping others in practical ways. You are a great teacher, and you are really good at helping people get their lives in order. You are very intuitive, and you go with your gut. You make good decisions easily.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

Peddle Tractor Pull

Here are some pictures of the kids at the peddle pull. It is a fun little tractor pull for peddle tractors.

Nicholas and Alexandra waiting their turn.


Alexandra trying her best! She was in the 6-7 year old group.


Nicholas participated in the 8-9 year old group.


Caroline watching her siblings. She didn't want to do it.


My lovelies with their certificates and Nicholas won a ribbon, coming in third place. There was some tough competition out there this year and lots more kids participated. Last year, both Nicholas and Allie won first place.

How Sagittarius Are You?

I am Sagittarius, so I took this quiz. I guess I have lost some of my "joi de vive" since having kids...or just become more practical.

You are 87% Sagittarius

How Sagittarius Are You?

It's Swim Season!!

Swim season has officially begun. We had our first swim meet yesterday evening. I had forgotten how exciting it is for kids. We swam against two other teams and after everyone warmed up in the pool each team got together for the team cheer. Nicholas and Alexandra were excited and I think a little nervous because it was their first meet ever. They swam in the 25 yard freestyle and the 25 yard backstroke. Alexandra swam first and in the freestyle she did very well. Our biggest fear was that they would hang on the lane line or the side of the pool and not make it down to the end of the pool. But Alexandra did well. She came in 2nd in her heat and 12th overall for the Mite Girls division. Nicholas jumped in and he swam all the way down without stopping. He came in first in his heat and got the "heat winner" ribbon! He came in 9th overall for the Mite Boys.
Alexandra did really well in backstroke. She didn't flip over on her belly at all and she made it down to the end of the pool again!! Yippee!! She came in 2nd in her heat again. Nicholas also competed in the backstroke and he came in 2nd in his heat. We thought he would win his heat again as he maintained the lead all the way to the end and then started veering off to the side and he got slowed up by the lane lines.

"Honey you were Right!"

There are times when you just have to say "Honey you were right!". I will gladly say it when it is due and it can be quite often in my house. My husband and I have a great relationship and are usually on the same wavelength on most everything.

This weekend we planned a camping trip to Chippokes State Park. They were having an antique gas and steam engine show. Basically the festival consists of two full days of antique tractor pulls and a bunch of antique cars on display and a bunch of old steam and gas engines, which I am not exactly sure what they do. Chippokes State Park is an old plantation and it is one of the few working farm museums on the east coast. It lies directly across the James River from Jamestown. There is an old farm house and there is a "summer house" that the family would move from the old farm house to the summer house in the summer. The two houses are about 600 yards apart but the summer house sits on the hill, and apparently there was a better wind in the summer house keeping it cooler in the summer. They have a working garden and a farm where they plant hay, soybean and some other crops. They have a kitchen garden but I was too hot and sweaty to walk down and explore. Chippokes State Park is also known for its BIG bugs. Now I am not a bug person and I particularly don't like those that buzz around your head and then land and bite the crap out of you.

Back to my story. So we pull the trailer down Friday evening and set up just before sunset and bed down for the night. Saturday we wake up and pack up the car with a cooler, the wagon, a bunch of folding chairs and a new item...a 10x10 canopy. I told him that I didn't think we needed it, I wondered that we would be looked at as a problem because we were going to erect this along the tractor pulling competition, I worried that others would tell us to take it down. I told my husband that I didn't think it was necessary. I worried when we took it, I worried as we were pulling our large wagon across the grass. Most people who were visiting or enjoying the festival didn't bring with them such a set up. We weren't competing so I thought it wasn't really necessary. We set it up next to another tent and I was surprised at how many tents there were. I counted 8 other tents that I could see from our tent. We settled down and set up the chairs and sat down and started watching the competition and I realized, "honey you were right". We did need this and it was nice and cool under the shade of our own personal canopy. It was a nice home base for the day and what a hot day it was. The high for the day was in the 90's. The humidity was high too. The shade and chairs made the kids much more pleasant too. They didn't complain too much, which in turn, made the day nicer too.

More to come tomorrow with photos of the kids competing in the peddle tractor pull!

If I were a work of art, what would I be?

Apparently this website says that I am this work of art today:

You Are Best Described By...

From the Lake, No. 1 by Georgia O'Keeffe

What Famous Work of Art Are You?

Let's Talk About Rain!

We got the remnants of the Tropical Storm on Sunday. It was a well needed full day of steady and sometimes heavy rains. Our big garden needed it so badly. One of the yucky things about having rented this piece of land for our garden is that we don't have water access to the plants. We truly have to rely on the heavens to open up and grant us water for our plants. We did try to water the garden once. We filled up 2 55 gallon trashcans in the back of the pick up truck at our house and drove over to the garden, literally 3 minutes away and less than a mile. When we got there our son hopped in the back of the truck bed and held a hose in the trashcan and I walked along behind the truck as my husband drove the truck through the garden and controlled the hose. It worked, sort of. We got the water to the plants but in the process my legs and shoes became wet and muddy, my son got soaked every time the truck hit ruts in the ground and my husband ran over a bunch of plants with the truck. We abandoned the idea and started praying for some consistent weekly rains.

We had been reading about rain barrels and thought it would be "fun" to try to make one. My husband found a heavy duty plastic barrel at a local middle school. It was used to hold a floor stripper, mainly made of ammonia. The custodian gave him the empty barrel and we cleaned it out and installed a spigot in the bottom of it on the side. We also drilled a couple of holes on the sides very close to the top for overflow. We hooked it up to one of our rain spouts and placed it in our garden next to the house. Within an hour it was full of rain water and the water was pouring out of the overflow holes. It rained all day. By afternoon my husband was a bit frustrated that we had no other way to capture this rainwater that we were "allowing" to pour out of the overflow holes. Poor guy. His idea worked and worked well but we had so much rain that he wanted to capture it all. He is now talking about an underground storage system. Come on now, we don't live in the desert! We get rain fairly regularly. AND we have county water coming to the house that we pay for. Just how much water do we need? Unfortunately, we need it not here but at our big garden. If only there was some way we could get it there.

I did a bit of research on the rain barrels and they range in price from $70-200. You can get them on wheels and with the attachments already installed like spigots, hoses, etc. So here is my thought. Why pay that much money when you can make one for so much less? If we didn't have the gift of the ammonia barrel we would have probably used a 55 or 70 gallon trashcan. If you want one with wheels you can buy a trashcan on wheels. A metal spigot and some pipe tape for adhesive worked well for us. Just drill a hole on the side near the bottom and then screw in the spigot. Next cut a hole for the rain spout in the top and place near your rain spout and use a flexible spout and attach. You would have to seal the trashcan lid with an epoxy. Many people use a screen in the spout to filter out the trash(leaves and stuff). We put the screen at the top of our gutter. The only other thing you need is a piece of hose to hook to the spigot. We are putting in a bit of bleach in our water to keep the mosquitoes away.

The picture is very similar to our barrel. The hose at the top is the overflow hose which would be connected to another barrel to store the overflow water. We will be adding this hose when we get another barrel. Many industries use barrels for large quantities of cleaning supplies and other liquids. You may be able to scavenge one or two of them for your use.

How cool is that!! Oh, for those who live in a very arid climate, think about your AC unit condensation pipe. A few years ago we had a drought here and were asked to conserve water and not to water our flowers, gardens and shrubs. We placed a Rubbermaid 55 gallon trashcan underneath our condensation pipe and collected the water that dripped from it. We filled the trashcan in just a couple of days!! We dipped our watering can in the collected water and watered our shrubs, washed our car, and kept all our flowers and veggie garden going all through the drought. Now we have a birdbath placed under the drip and there is fresh cool water all the time for the birds. They love it!

Don't get me Wrong!

I had a comment from Agent of Entropy and he said "A[n] intresting post. My wife are about to begin to have kids soon, and we were just discussing how they should be spaced. Your post provided another intresting presepective on this issue"

Please don't get me wrong. I love having my kids close together and I wouldn't do it differently if I had the choice. They are each others' best friends. They play so well together. The first two act and probably should have been twins. The youngest is just as much a part of the mix as the others. They seek each other out first to be with or to do things with and they always remember the other siblings when they are getting something special like candy at the store. They always ask if they can get one for their sister and/or brother.

There are days though when I feel overwhelmed but it is usually self-induced. I will have scheduled too many things to do or I get them overtired. Their interests are similar and their maturity levels are similar so I don't have to worry about a younger one watching inappropriate stuff on TV because an older one is watching it. They all watch the same shows.

I had a fear when Nicholas was one and Allie would be learning to walk that they would run in different directions but the reality was that Nicholas would run and Allie would run after him. Then I had the fear that I wouldn't have enough hands to hold each of them when we would cross a parking lot but the reality was that they were just as comfortable holding each others' hand when crossing the street so I would hold one or two hands and the third would hold a siblings' hand.

Currently our biggest problem is who gets the favored green cup to drink from. None of the other rainbow colors will suffice. They all want green. So we just take turns.

For the record: we would definitely have another one if it was possible. We tried three times for a fourth but it just didn't work out for us.

Happy Birthday, my Son!!

Today is Nicholas' 8th birthday. Yes, if you are doing the math right I had three kids in three years. The day I came home from the hospital with Caroline was Nicholas' 3rd birthday. So technically I had three kids under three years old. (for a very short time). So each year this time we have two birthdays back to back.

So back to Nicholas. He is so cute. Last night I asked him if he was sad that it was his last night going to bed being 7 and he said, "yes". I asked him why and he said, "I like being 7". So I told him that we could skip his birthday and he could be 7 for another year and he said, "Mom, I can't do that, I will just keep on growing and growing and I can't stop."

Oh well, I tried to keep him little for a while longer.

It isn't fair that kids grow up so quickly. So many people have stopped me in the supermarket or out and about and they say, "Enjoy them while they are young" or "enjoy them now because it will be too late later" or something to that effect. Usually it is when the kids are acting up or crying or fussing in some way. And at that moment I really am not enjoying them and would have difficulty enjoying their fussing or crying. So I just give a fake smile and say, "Yeah I will" or something like that. But I understand what they mean. We have our children just a short little time and they grow up so quickly that we hardly know it is happening until it is too late.

A Detour

Today I send you to The Little Things. It is a great blog that anyone can post on. I like reading some of the entries. They are all little stories which teach us great life lessons. After reading many of the entries I had a "life lesson" yesterday in my classroom which I posted on the Life Lessons Blog. Please go and read and enjoy!!