Snippets of Life

Life is going good around here. So good, I just can't find the time to post to my blog! So here's some snippets of our life lately.

Weekend before last we headed up to Grandpa and Nana Yates' house for the weekend. We saw Nana Pam, Grandpa, Nana Rose, Aunt Stacy and Uncle Todd! And Miss Stephanie stopped by for a chat and Missy did too! We swam and played and had lots of fun. Leda told me "I love you, even when you're cranky." It was a great weekend.

Drawing with Grandpa:


We went and saw fireworks and a band play music in downtown Phoenixville for First Friday/Independence Day. It was lots of fun and the fireworks were awesome, even if some buildings were in the way. I mean, how can fireworks not be good while the band plays "Free Bird" (very well, I might add) behind you! It was great.

We spent 4th of July with the Aunt Jennifer, Uncle John, Aunt Karen, Uncle Chris and Paige at the Durhams. Lots of swimming and good food and good friends. And a fine home fireworks show by us and the neighbors!

Tonight, Leda got out of bed and asked me what I was doing up, when was I going to bed. I asked her why and she said, "Because it's past your bedtime." How do they grow up so fast?

This weekend Brock will race in the 24 hours of LeMons in CT. Leda and I are going to go, but luckily, we booked a hotel with a pool, in case a little one gets bored being at the race track! For her sake, as there could be more trips to race tracks in her future, I hope she doesn't get too bored!

Hopefully I'll post more in July than I did in June! I may have to start doing Tour de France updates! That's what I'm spending the next several weeks drooling over! Go Lance and Team Astana!

Oh, and my Garden, it's just blooming away...my glads...

Blame it on the Rain

I know, no posting = bad blogger. But it's been raining here for 40 days and 40 nights most of the month and we've seen the sun so rarely I believe that I am suffering Seasonal Affective Disorder in JUNE!

Besides that, we really haven't done anything fun since I last posted, except for this past Saturday night when we went to the Jimmy Buffett concert! That was a blast and a half! Leda stayed the night with Paige so Brock and I had the evening to ourselves, didn't have to worry about getting home to relieve the babysitter, so we even stopped on the way home for a beer. At a bar. A real beer in a real bar. Exciting stuff!

The weather people keep telling us that the weather pattern will be changing soon. Which means we will go from REALLY WET to REALLY HOT and feeling WET (humid). Well, at least everything is green (of course, most of it is moss and mildew!) so things look pretty!

My garden has exploded, so I apparently planted well for monsoon season. I'm thinking, when I have a good weekend (i.e., not raining!) I might be moving some things around. We'll see about that. I definitely have ideas of how I will plant things next year! I'm quite happy with how things are growing. I will have to start coming up with more recipes that use tarragon though, because I have a TON of it!

We are going to head on up to visit with Brock's parents this weekend so I expect I'll have some fun things to post next week. Until then, I will refrain from giving my review of Real Housewives of NJ (Oh.My.Goodness, what a mess!)

Parenting FAIL

DISCLAIMER: If you haven't seen Marley and Me and have no idea what the movie is about and plan to see it in the future, please don't read any further. There are spoilers!

So Friday night, after dinner, Leda asked if we could watch a movie. We said, sure, let's see what is available On Demand...Look, Marley and Me is available and we haven't seen it yet, would you like to see that. Leda would LOVE to see the movie of the book she got for Christmas (only her Marley book from Christmas isn't quite the same as the book the movie is actually based on, but what the hay, it's a PG movie, doesn't look to be too bad and isn't a movie that Brock and I have seen a billion times already!

Here's the first failure of the night. I read the book the movie is based on (it's is a good book, I recommend it!) so I am quite aware of what happens at the end of the movie. Not even thinking that this is a bad idea! That was the first failure!

Anyhoo, we get the movie started and we are all quite enjoying it. About, oh, maybe a half hour in or so, there's a montage while the lead character voices over about all the things they did in a year...a quick 5 minute review of a year to get you up to speed for the next scene. During this montage, there is mention of Disney World. This is a place we have not as of yet told Leda about. She is clueless to the existence of Disney World. She's totally aware of Disney, but not that there is a place that you can go visit and spend lots more of our hard earned dollars on Disney paraphernalia. And we are quite happy about that for the moment. Anyway, so Disney World is mentioned. Leda perks up immediately and says, "Disney World? Mommy, what is Disney World?" Oh yeah, we are screwed now!

The movie is moving along, it's got some good parts. It's not as good as the book, but no movie is ever as good as the book for me...some come close, but, I just am picky about movies that are made from books...I happen to believe that no one could make a movie better than my imagination. I'm a snob that way! Anyway, so the movie is okay for the younger family member...no real bad language (I think there was one bad word in the whole movie) and no real 'adult situations' that embarrassed the kid's parents!

But, then, there was the end. See, here's the spoiler, Marley gets old and sick and well, he dies. Thus leaving the three Yates blubbering idiots! Brock was the first to start crying, me following pretty soon after and Leda, well, Leda became hysterical by the closing credits. This was the complete failure! I knew exactly what happens at the end of the movie and didn't THINK that this would throw my child into hysterics when I KNEW it would cause her father and I to cry! So, for 20 minutes I tried to console and calm down my poor child who was just beside herself that Marley had to die at the end.

I finally got her to stop crying, "But, Marley dies!!" over and over again and got her to focus on some good stuff and for a good 5 minutes she and I giggled about all the funny stuff in the movie. Of course, she followed up with, "But, then Marley dies" and lots more crying for the next 10 minutes! I finally got her to calm down enough to fall asleep.

Her father and I braced ourselves for the kid to come in to our bed at some point during the night after nightmares of poor old dogs meeting their maker, but she made it through the night without any nightmares and the next day was just talking about the funny stuff in the movie, never mentioning about how Marley dies at the end. So maybe it wasn't as bad as we thought, but I will definitely think twice before I let the kid watch a movie where a beloved pet dies at the end!

Beauty School Dropout

What a weekend. It was a lovely one here. Not humid, but warm and sunny. Perfect, really for the weekend we had.

I woke up Saturday morning needing to get some work out of the way and after I did, I relaxed by tending to my garden and reading a book. We then got ourselves showered and dressed and off to the barn we went to join the Durhams in helping Ms Virginia with her post and rail fence - the boys dug the holes (well, they had already been dug mostly, they dug what they needed to to get the posts in) and centered and leveled the posts and the girls put the rails in. The little girls hung out around the barn and with Ms Virginia's puppy and were very good!

After we finished up what we could there, we loaded up Ms Virginia's tractor and took it over to the Durhams to dig holes over there! As the boys were playing with the tractor and digging the holes, the little girls were playing on the playground and in the field with the dogs until they apparently got tired and headed up to the house. I followed to check on them and they were playing nicely in the den. I saw nothing amiss and told them I was going to go back down to where the other adults were (bad move!) and that if they were going to leave the den or the house, to come tell us where they were.

So, I left them there, walked on down into the backyard. Jennifer was ready to come back up to the house, so we walked back up. The girls were left alone for 7 minutes tops. We walked in the kitchen, yelled for girls who told us they were in the den. Shortly after that, Leda was crying, she had climbed under the coffee table and had gotten her elbow stuck in the rungs. So we extracted her and as I was consoling her, asked her what she was doing. "Hiding," she said. Didn't occur to me to ask from what, assumed it was some game they were playing. Then I got a look at her. And hair was coming out in clumps. "Leda, what did you do?" "Cut my hair."

Can you say devastated? Oh my I was just beside myself. She isn't as bad as I am going to make it seem, but BANGS? She had to cut her bangs practically down to the roots! And not all the way across, mind you, just half way! Then, she cut some off the sides. And not even either, one side is shorter than the other.

Seems she and Paige found some scissors and decided to give themselves haircuts while the adults weren't around. Oh, Leda and I have had talks about scissors before, but apparently those talks didn't do anything! So we had ourselves another little talk. She is banned from scissors unless she has adult supervision. And if she is found with scissors or having used scissors without prior permission, she can kiss using scissors again until she's able to move out of the house on her own. And that was drilled in over the next 10 minutes or so as I brushed out her hair and tried not to burst out in tears.

Oh, and the girls won't be allowed unsupervised playtime for quite some time.

Of course, I had to take the obligatory picture of Daughter's handy work to embarrass her with the rest of her life!

Being 4, she has no concept of embarrassment, so she'll go to school tomorrow with not a care in the world! Oh well, I just keep telling myself that it could have been worse...if we hadn't come back in 7 minutes, what they might have done to the rest of the hair on their heads!

Well, a few drinks (for me, that is!) and all was better a little while later! And after a good night's sleep, we got up on Sunday morning, got showered up, got our hair fixed up (as well we could) and we headed over to the Durhams to meet Aunt Jennifer, Aunt Karen, Paige and Sydney for a trip to Longwood Gardens! The girls had a great time, as did the adult girls! The tree house features were a blast! Except the second one, I didn't like the second one, too high up and they had a glass floor - didn't do well for my fear of heights! But I did climb up there, so give me a bit of credit!



See more pictures from Longwood here!

After a whole morning and early afternoon at Longwood, back the Durhams for some pool time and some dinner and home again in the evening. What an exhausting and fun weekend we had! Even if we did make it through with a little less hair than we started it with!

Florida Trip - "Go Faster Daddy!"

When Brock told me that he booked Daytona for the 2009 One Lap, I instantly knew I was gonna wanna go there! It's been 5 years since I had attended any One Lap event and I had been itchin' to get back out to South Bend to see some friends I hadn't seen in quite some time. But a 9 hour car ride by myself with a 4 year old (or an 1 year old, 2 year old or 3 year old) wasn't what I thought would be an "awesome" road trip! Love my kid, but 9 hours in a car all alone with her was probably just the ticket to throw me over the edge of insanity!

So, I contacted my Mom who lives 1 1/2 hours from the track and planned a week long trip with Leda - two-fold, Leda got to spend a week with her Grandma and Granddaddy and we all got to spend a day at Daytona hanging out with the One Lap. Oh, yeah, and maybe there might be a ride around the track thrown in there somewhere!

That was the plan, and it executed perfectly. Leda and I flew down to Florida on Saturday, the start of the One Lap and we had a wonderful couple of days hanging out with the 'rents (or the g-rents!) and going to the beach, and shopping, and playing in the hot tub! I had to work most of the week, one of the 'perks' of working remotely, I can work anywhere there is wifi. So, to save some vacation time, and having lots to do for work, I worked. But Leda got to spend time with her grandparents and that was most important.

On Wednesday morning, we got up, packed up the van and headed to Daytona. We got there just as the first session was winding down, so Brock could spend a little time with us. He mostly scooted off on the motorized bar stool with my child!



Believe me, the look in the picture is because she doesn't want her picture taken. She LOVED riding around on that thing with him!

Between sessions, Brock was going to do some hot laps with the MotorTrend guys - they covered the One Lap this year. Anyway, he told Larry to hop in back of the BMW and off they went! Larry got a hot lap of the full 24 hour course - top speed was 152. Larry was totally psyched! He loved it! He got a great picture from the backseat:



The MotorTrend guys took a great video of it as well!

After all that, Brock loaded us all into the BMW - Larry in the front, Me, Leda and Mom in the backseat (after we loaded Leda's car seat into the car!). And we lined up all the cars participating and took several parade laps around the NASCAR track. It wasn't near as fast as Larry's trip around the track, but we hit 100 a few times. The track was amazing. You don't realize how steep the banking in the turns is until you are on it! The slower we went, the more I had the sensation that we were going to roll down the hill, side to side! It was enough for me to join in Leda's chants of "Go faster Daddy, Go faster Daddy" just so that sensation went away!

We loved it! It was the most fun I've had at a track in quite some time!

We walked around and visited with several of the One Lap competitors, friends we hadn't seen in some time, some who hadn't yet met Leda! And we got to see Granddad and Fay and Uncle Wayne! They had fun on One Lap once again - my father's 20th! What glutton's for punishment! ;-)

We headed home after a while, Leda was complaining and wanted to go play in the hot tub some more! We had a great (HOT) day at Daytona. Hopefully we can do that again - or even better, Brock can some how convince Indianapolis to rent One Lap the track next year! ;-)

We had a great couple more days with Granddaddy and Grandma...Leda spent some more time in the hot tub, the Grandparents took her to the zoo and they had lots of fun feeding birds and the giraffes. And then we took Grandma and Granddaddy out to dinner for Mother's day on Friday before we left. I finally got them to take me to Whitey's Fish Camp. Awesome dinner!



Before we headed home on Saturday, we stopped by Uncle Tony and Aunt Diane's house and visited with them and Lisa and Randy and Brad and Kate joined us for lunch. Randy and Kate then took Leda and I on a Gator Ride around the farm. It was lots of fun! I think Leda and I are trying to come up with ways to talk Daddy into buying a big ole farm so we can get a Gator and ride around on it! ;-) We were so lucky to get to see some family, even if for a few hours, before we headed home!

Home we came on Saturday night and on Sunday night, Daddy came home and we had a great dinner of Thai takeout. It was good to be home and all together after a busy week!

More pictures from Daytona and our fun in Florida here. Courtesy of Granddaddy (Larry) Sweat and Grandma (Maureen) Sweat!

Festival Weekend

May really snuck up on us and slapped us upside the back of our heads! One Lap and a trip to FL in the same week really messed us up. We weren't prepared for the Dogwood Festival to be here last week!

The past two years we have gone with the Flogaus's but this year, the Flogaus's and the Yates's had different plans...the kids got to stay home and the parents went out to dinner and a show. No festival, but man, was it good.

A few weeks or so ago, on a family outing (meaning we had the kids with us), we got to discussing Spinal Tap, which lead to a discussion of Mighty Wind and then a light bulb went off, hey, weren't those guys touring and weren't they going to be playing at the Keswick (Brock's and my favorite venue!)? And would we all love to go? So tickets were purchased and reservations for dinner were made and a babysitter was procured and off we went to see Shearer, Guest and McKean play in their Unwigged and Unplugged tour and man, it was good!

Side note...we got to Glenside and parked and were walking over to dinner at Brock's and my favorite restaurant Plush when lo and behold, who but Michael McKean goes walking by us. Pretty cool!

Concert was great. These guys, even though they are funny as all get out, really play great music together. So the night was just awesome. And we got the added surprise of two songs sung by Annette O'Toole, Michael McKean's wife. Bonus!

So, no festival for us during the week, but Brock and Leda and I did head down on Saturday afternoon to watch the parade (because, I LOVE a parade). Leda was getting a bit mad about having to wait for a parade when she could have been riding the Ferris wheel, until I reminded her that they throw candy from the floats and such and then she was all, "so when is the throwing of the candy going to start??" We didn't make it all the way through the parade, we ended up going to ride the Ferris Wheel (clarification, I WATCHED while Leda and Brock rode the Ferris Wheel!).



We headed back later after dinner to let Leda ride a few rides and spend obscene amounts of money to win two 50 cent stuffed animals. And then, there was the fish game.

Oh, how I would like to wring the neck of the person who put the idea into my child's head that festivals were places where you got fish! For some reason, ever since I had mentioned to the kid that we were going to go to the Festival on Saturday she's been talking about winning a fish. I had spent that time ignoring these statements, hoping against hope the kid would forget. But she's descendant from elephants, she NEVER forgets.

So, the entire night I was steering her away from the fish games and on to other games, games that won us 50 cent stuffed animals that I didn't have to clean up after or feed! Until at last, we were getting ready to go and the only way out was to go past the fish game.

I figured, what are the odds Leda or I would actually get one of those ping pong balls into one of those little bowls of water? Not good, in fact, $2 and 10 balls later, whew! No winner! Awesome. And then..AND THEN...the kind lady (read: I want to wring her freakin' neck) handed Leda a small fish..."He's a little one and it's the last night of the festival, no harm, no foul." EXCEPT YOU HANDED THE KID THE FISH!!! Now, what crazy mother is going to tell the kid no and then drag her through the whole darn fair kicking and screaming????? So, we took the darn fish.



So, Puddle the Fish joined our family. Leda wanted to sleep with him by her bed! The kid is enamored with the fish. And so I dug out the small aquarium I had from a few years ago and cleaned it up on Sunday and Leda and I went out and purchased a buddy for Puddle, Toot. And now, Leda wants to feed Toot and Puddle ALL DAY LONG!

I swore after I saw Finding Nemo I would never again have a fish aquarium. I swear the fish are yelling "GET ME OUT OF HERE!" at me. Then again, when we purchased Toot, he was in an aquarium all by himself with really big fish. I asked the pet store lady, "is that a gold fish," and she replyed, "yes, he's the other fishes's meal." So Toot could be a bit more grateful, we did save him from certain death!

So that was our week and weekend. It was awesome!

Catch Up!

Okay, trying to catch up with some stuff, then hopefully I can get back to normalcy around here!

So, I've posted some new pictures to flickr!

Leda and I went on her school trip to a local farm - the Milky Way Farm. We had a blast. It was really interesting. I think the parents got more out of it than the kids did, but it was fun and ended with some fresh made ice cream from the farm creamery while taking a hay ride! Lots of fun!

For Leda's birthday, we took an afternoon off a few days prior to the big day and took her to Adventure Aquarium (formerly the Camden Aquarium). Another fun day! We saw lots of fish, some sharks, got to pet sharks and rays and starfish, saw penguins and seals and HIPPOS! It was a lot of fun and Leda really enjoyed it. Especially the mango water ice at the end!

So, now that I am caught up on April photos, I'll catch up later with a post about our trip to Florida and our lap(s) around Daytona International Speedway with Daddy! Awesome!! Stay tuned!

Click the links to go see the pictures!