If it seems as though there have been a lot of posts with beach pictures lately, that’s because I’ve been going to the beach a lot! I can’t help it. I love the waves. I love the rocks. I love being able to see the horizon. It’s such a relaxing thing to do in the late part of the day. In fact, one recent sunny week we ended up at the same beach four times. There is always something new to do at the beach, and space for everyone to spread out in. Summer is short, so we have to enjoy it when we can!
I might have mentioned that The Banana and Mr. SP went to nature classes at Hartley a few days ago. They have such great experiences there each year, and this year was their favorite year ever. The Banana learned about all sorts of water animals. They caught crayfish and tadpoles, observed turtles, found all sorts of water bugs, minnows and fish. Mr. SP had a wonderful time building walking sticks out of buckthorn. He chants often, “The only good buckthorn is a dead buckthorn!” There is a lot of buckthorn at Hartley, and they’ve been trying for years to eradicate it. It’s a big job. He also built an awesome bird house.
I keep repeating the mantra: “Stay calm. Stay calm. Things go more smoothly if you just stay calm.” It can be super challenging to get everyone on board for leaving the house whenever we need to go out, whether it’s to swimming lessons, to drop someone off for an activity, or to pick something up at the grocery store.
The other day (on the way to the beach . . . again) we decided to do a grocery store supper. We have a really nice grocery store in our neighborhood, with all sorts of amazing options. It even has a seating section where you can lunch on your purchases next to a fire that runs in the winter. Of course, it’s not winter now, so we gave each person a budget of five dollars to use to buy anything they wanted for supper, with plans to take the food to the beach for a picnic. The kids had a blast coming up with all sorts of combinations. Some family members pooled their resources together and then split the goods. Other people went off on their own. Everyone stuck to their budget except for me, ironically, and I’m usually the sticker for budgets around here. However, I did share all of my choices with everyone.
Mr. Trouble on Feet has discovered his running legs. He loves going on “big walks” and running the entire way. Tonight he ran more than a mile, probably almost a mile and a half. Of course, there were stops and starts to his running. He’d run to catch up with The Banana who was also running, and then he’d stop and wait for me, and then take off running again. Still, that’s a long way for little legs to run, and I kept up a nice quick walking pace the entire time. I was pushing the empty stroller. I brought it along because I thought for sure he’d tire out. He didn’t. He is sleeping pretty soundly tonight though!
I have a post brewing about some fun books we’ve been reading.
Two days ago I found myself all alone in my house, after Dr. Peds took kidlets with him on yet another trip to the hardware store. Harvesting my vermicompost and adding the compost to my houseplants has been on my to do list for quite some time, so I spent a few hours with my worms got more than a gallon of rich wonderful compost from just one of the trays in the worm bin (I usually end up having two trays operating at once. It’s so fun to see the masses of worms up close. They are busy little guys. It’s amazing that there are so many in the bin now, probably ten thousand or more, when I started with just a hundred worms, just a tiny little pile of those wiggly guys, when I started the bin about five years ago. The bin is a healthy, working place right now, and I’m happy there haven’t been any catastrophes for several years in a row.
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