Almost done!

Pond, looking good!

Emma the Incredible and her sister, Mary the Amazing

You may have noticed, Internet, that there are quite a few pictures of Mary and maye a serious lacking in the Emma Grace photo department. You would be right, you amazingly observant frequent Journiers! (Wait - did I just coin a phrase? I did! You fabulous friends that visit are hereby known as Journiers! And I am in love with my exclamation points tonight! Aren't you glad you stopped by?) Anyhow, back to the subject, which is the elusive 5 year old living here. Two things to note: 1) she does not like her picture taken. She now hides when the camera (or camera phone!) comes out. She is a victim of a scrapbooking, web blogging mother and she fears being captured on digital film. Also, and almost more importantly, 2) she does not sit still or stop moving long enough for me to get a picture. Usually her fleetness requires me to run after her, stopping her from imminent injury (or worse) and leaves me little time to grab a camera and take a flash photo. I am sure that in a short period of time Mary will accomplish the same degree of camera shyness and pictures will continue on, consisting only of things the girls have done in the minute before I grabbed a camera to record the moment and not actually any little people. There will be evidence of them, but probably fewer actual instances of smiling, shining little faces. Until then, Journiers, you will get to see lots of sweet Mary (mostly from behind, I am noticing, but occasionally from the front). I hope you can live with this, this small piece of the children growing up, because that is what I see, increasingly - the back of their heads as they push forward and continue to explore the world Out There, always in front.

Early Morning Melody

Mary, composing a "pretty song about Nemo's Mama and Daddy getting
married" for my morning enjoyment.

Summer Ride

Mary flies along on a beautiful summer evening during a family bike
ride.

The Birthday Chronicles and Wii Fit

Well, Internet, we had a nice time yesterday, completing the round of birthday celebrations for Mary's 4th. In our house it seems that birthday parties must be spread over a week's time, with school celebrations, dinner at a place where they usher in your new year with a song and a sundae, a party for the friends and a party for the family. So while Mary has been celebrating for over a week now, we finally concluded it all with a day long fiesta yesterday. Phew! Both of the girls had a great time seeing their cousins, Aunts, Grandmas, Grandpas (and Great Grandpas!) and extended family. There were Easy Bake Ovens, fabulous Dr. Seuss books, cute clothes, sparkly cards, Webkinz frogs, kid Cranium games, Princess birthday cake, superman ice cream in fun cupcake liners, Nemo pinatas and loads of food. Oh, yeah, and there was the Wii game time.

After a bit of time we pulled out the Wii. Kids were enchanted. Adults were amazed. It was better than when microwave popcorn first came out and everyone WATCHED it while it was popping! Most of the adults gave it a go, just to see if they could manage around a Mario Kart race track and the 2 year old twins found it enthralling to hold the steering wheels to no apparent affect. But it really was my cousin Darrell who enjoyed the challenges the most. At 13, who wouldn't? He showed off his maneuvering potential for a while, playing against Emma and easily winning. Then he tried the Wii fit. Have you seen the Wii fit games?



Well, Darrell enjoyed a lot of them, including soccer. He did great! It inspired me to get on the Wii Fit board later that night and beat every one of his top scores. It was the first time I had stepped on it even though Hubby has been doing it for 2 weeks now. So, my Wii Fit age is below my real age (yippee!!!) and my BMI falls within the 'normal' category (hurray!) and I can do yoga ans ski jumps and all sorts of fun to be fit things that will help me get rid of some excess baggage while quietly squashing other people's high scores (including Hubby's!). I am finding this latest installation of Wii games to be very satisfying indeed...

After the Party

With no nap and extended celebrations, Mary took her bedtime into her own hands long before everyone left.

The Pond Man Cometh

Soon our rocks, our fish, and our plants will fill this hole (along
with 1,000 gallons of water) and our pond will have been completely
"moved" from our last house. Exciting times!

McDonald's Birthday Party

Birthday girl

Happy 4th Birthday, Mary

At our traditional Red Robin celebration for family birthdays.

Village Picnic Activities

Emma and Mary race thru the inflatable course at our annual family
picnic for the village.

More Chemistry teacher seminar

Demos!

Chemistry Teacher Seminar

Flame test ferris wheel

Nature Walk Sunday

Local trails

Ms. Competitive Update and a Namesake

Recently, I wrote a post about my inherent sense of competitiveness. Amazingly, it generated a lot of discussion between myself and many people. So, recently, when I was talking to one of those people, I mentioned that there was an update on the blog entry - a punch line, if you will. If you have not read the post, I suggest that you do that before reading the rest of this one. Back at the ranch, I worked on Claire de Lune for about a week. Now a week doesn't sound like a long time, knowing what you know about me. But what you don't know is that I found out that Mr. Perfect was not playing the piano that night. IT WAS A PLAYER PIANO. ****HE**** prefers Rhapsody in Blue, which I do not like and will not work on at all! So, after making some progress on the singularly difficult piece I wandered off to other tasks. (It bears mentioning here that I still haven't made it to run 7 miles, although I did get to 5). Mr. Perfect diverted his attention the past weekend applying an epoxy floor to his garage, which I independently decided to do with our garage as soon as possible. I am, however, secure in the knowledge that my garage is bigger than his. Take that!

In other matters, we lack an odd thing. We don't lack for much here - although sometimes I could really use a Twix bar - but we find ourselves coming back to this same discussion again and again [dramatic pause!]:

We need a name for our house.

We have a funny habit of naming things that aren't necessarily in need of names, such as pianos and cars, and, well, houses. Our last house was Crestmore Cottage (take a quick glance at your address bar at the top of the browser - And now you know). The house before that was Elm Hollow (a personal favorite, named after Agatha Christie's 3 act play The Hollow, which we converted into a murder mystery dinner and "killed off" a good portion of our guests playing the parts). ANYHOW, we are undecided over here in our new house, only down the block from Crestmore Cottage, as to what we should name the place. The past names have always included some permutation of the name of the street. For example, Elm Hollow was on Elmhurst St. The street we are currently on is named after a president and I don't like the idea of including the name in our choice. I looked to literature first, as I like to say I did with my daughters' names (one could say they both came from Jane Austen characters), and I immediately went to my favorite book of all times: Jane Eyre. Thornfield Hall was not exactly what I was looking for, especially since the place burns dramatically at the end of the book - although we do have a tower where we could lock a crazy first wife, if only I weren't the first wife. My husband did some research on Napoleon. Why? I wish I could see your face, Internet, while you TRIED to make a connection with a potential reason for this. See, the house is built in second empire style, which is a reference to Napoleon III's reign in France. Moving right along, he came up with the name Fortune (for-tun-EH), which is the name of Josephine's dog that bit Napoleon. For which he proposed Le Maison Fortune, which is a play on words, since it cost us what we consider to be a fortune, but could mean that it is a place of good fortune. I like everything except the Fortune part, because no one would ever realize that it is the French word. And so the debate remains, as we drink some French wine, in a French styled house, considering and debating a French name. And I bet the guy next door doesn't have a name for HIS house.

Zoo treat

Mary digs into a giant ice cream treat.

At the zoo

Emma, me, Mary, Mum at the zoo fountain.

Quaint fun

More time at Greenfield Village

Birthday Party

Patriotic friends, born on the 4th of July.

Watching glass making

The girls were transfixed by this demo at The Village

At Greenfield Village