Sunday Paper Tidbits

It's been almost a year since my last post, but I just love a couple items I saw in the paper today.

- A cabin in South Jersey was built between 1638 and 1643 and is designated the oldest standing wooden structure in North America.  The couple that owns the cabin live in a newer part of the structure that was built in the 1900s. Visits to the cabin are free and will be for as long as the couple owns it; tours are available by appointment but they won't turn anyone away that just shows up. The husband is 85 years old and still repairs the cabin by hand using clay dug up from a farm in a nearby county because it was identified as being similar to the clay originally used to build the cabin. The couple is hoping to find someone willing to take over the cabin when they can no longer take care of it that will care about it as much as they do and keep it accessible to anyone that wants to see it.

- What is gleaning?  Volunteers go to farms after the commercial harvesting has been completed and collect the surplus crops left behind. The farms always plant extra crops and hate seeing them go to waste. So groups like New Jersey Farmers Against Hunger coordinates between farms and volunteers to get that surplus food donated to food banks from June to December. From the 40 farms they partner with, about 4,000 pounds of produce is collected each week. They help feed about 7,000 people each year.

So a little history and a little volunteerism - much nicer to read about than Ebola

Real vs. substitute

A simple but striking thought hit me as I was packing up Christmas decorations.  As I was tying 24 buttons back on to the button Advent calendar, my mind started thinking about how this isn't the "real" button calendar, which of course is reserved for the one at my parents' house. This one is just a substitute for the real one - a very good substitute, but not the real thing. Much like the little ceramic nativity scene is a substitute for the big glazed white one. And the quilted stockings are substitutes for the felt(?) ones with the embellished pictures on them.

Then it hit me - to my kids, these ARE the real things. And they will always have the memory of the specific decorations we put up each year. There is some overlap - the little felt wreath hanging in a doorway used to be in my parents house, as did many of the ornaments on the tree from my childhood. But even the magnetic-mitten-on-the-metal-picture-of-Santa Advent calendar we have is now a "real" decoration. My kids don't know I picked it up on a whim a couple years ago when I saw it at a Hallmark store. It's now something that they will remember doing every day leading up to Christmas.

It made me very happy to stop for a minute and remember that we are every day making memories for our kids. And the tradition of putting the same things out every year is part of what makes our house a home, and becomes what our children will remember long after they have moved out and created homes of their own.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

(A post once a quarter? I need to do a little better than that)

I'm ready for Christmas. While I was rushed for a while, it seems so easy now that the gift-buying is done. AND the gift-shipping to Texas is done - that was a big sigh of relief to get out the door.

Since holidays are now just our little nuclear family, there doesn't seem to be very much pressure. No worries about where you need to be by when. Jim and I don't really give each other gifts, and gifts to grandparents tend to not be elaborate (hey, they don't need more "stuff" in their houses any more than we do!). I had one day a week or so ago where I just pounded out all my shopping online. The only thing I'm behind on is getting Christmas cards out, but for some reason I've gotten very lenient the past few years on getting them out on time. I figure people will still like receiving them even if they don't arrive until Dec 28.

I can't really do any baking because I no longer have a stand mixer.

So here's to kicking back and enjoying time off with my kids and my husband.

We have had a few snowfalls already this December, but this one last Saturday was the coolest. Individual snowflakes could be seen. 

Our new little snowmen decorations. Toilet paper rolls and tube socks!

Advent calendars. In addition to these three, we have the button one and a snowman one. Definitely have to trade off between who does the Lego one and who gets the chocolate.

 Our stockings are hung by the chimney with care.

Grace said she didn't care about figuring out her presents early. Until they showed up under the tree. Now she is going crazy shaking boxes.

Merry Christmas!

Year of the Cicada

So as most everyone knows, we had the emergence of the 17-year cicadas here in the Northeast this Spring. Creepy things - a couple of inches long with weird red eyes.

We dreaded the arrival of them. Tolerated them when they were here. I can't say I miss them now that they are gone, but looking back on it I'm glad we were here to experience them.

They were all over the place. Making Grace and her friends squeal on the softball field when they flew into them.  All over my tires when I came out of the eye doctor office (can't explain that one). Hanging all over plants around the neighborhood. We were expecting there to be swarms of them that would keep us in the house. There an incredible amount of them, freaking some people out, but at least at our house they weren't overtaking us (though I did have one friend tell me she had so many at her house that at one point her ground was "undulating" with so many crawling across it - ick).

This is a video I took of the sound they made. For weeks the droning noise was constantly in the background. This was taken near the end when it was so loud you heard it not only outside but also in the house with the doors and windows closed. It was very much like an alien invasion movie was playing outside.

But after a couple months of no-bug silence, the last phase of the cicadas have shown up. All of a sudden these dead branches started appearing in trees around town (if you enlarge the second photo below you can see them better). I thought it was stress on the trees from the heat wave we had a few weeks ago, but it's apparently where the females had laid eggs in the trees. The babies are now dropping down to bury themselves into the ground to wait out the next 17 years until they once again emerge to mate, lay eggs and die again.

It was creepy and weird but utterly fascinating, and something to talk about in 17 years when we get ready to see them again.

Happy Mother's Day to me

 Love these kiddos that allow me to celebrate this day...

 Wouldn't trade them for anything!

Last Florida post

Of course you can't go to Orlando without giving some money to Disney.  We hit Magic Kingdom one day and Epcot the last day.  We didn't get as many photos these days - since the hurricane had passed, these days were starting to approach typical Florida-in-August weather, and we were starting to get worn down from all the walking we were doing on the trip.

 Had to get a photo of the castle.

 Jim and Alex on the Dumbo ride. 

 Grace was always game for a silly photo.  The Toy Story ride was lots of fun for all of us.

A great photo op that we somehow missed on the way in that morning.

  

 Our final day was at Epcot.  We really didn't get to take full advantage of the park since it was so hot and we were quite worn out.

 Grace was up for getting her photo taken with just about every costumed character we ran across.

 The kids worked together to get through a game about saving money.

 

The kids and their piggy bank before the end of the game.

 

Grace and Jim took off on their own, so Alex and I completed as many of the Phineas & Ferb/Agent P Adventure segments as we could.  You got a cell phone that played programmed messages (cartoons) that gave you clues of things to find in each of the World Showcase areas in order to find the evil Dr. Doofenschmertz (it used to be a Kim Possible adventure, but has been updated with the newer cartoon). Once you found a particular spot you used the cell phone to "connect" to it before you got your next assignment.  My stick-in-the-mud kid really got into it and took it very seriously, even going so far as to ignore his shyness and going up to a person working in a tea shop in the United Kingdom area and saying "Danger is my cup of tea" in order to get the Twinings tea packet with the next clue on it.

And just before we left Alex FINALLY found a costumed character that he wanted to take a photo with.  Duffy the Bear has only been in the United States Disney parks since 2010, and was who Alex had chosen the day before at Magic Kingdom as his souvenir (because he didn't have enough stuffed animals as it is, the mother comments dryly). We saw him as we were heading on the way out and couldn't pass up the chance to stand with him.  You can see from the photo how happy the boy was to be with the bear.

More Florida

So if Legoland was Alex's favorite park in Florida, Universal Studios was Grace's (and mine, too).  I think if we ever did an Orlando trip again we would maybe blow off Disney properties and go to both of the Universal ones.  We only did the Islands of Adventure, mainly because we needed to make sure we went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Alex wasn't in a great mood that day, so most of the photos I have are of Grace.

We went straight to Harry Potter, and Grace was greeted by the conductor for the Hogwarts Express.

 

 I was so impressed with the detail given to the entire area.  The snow on the roofs in Hogsmeade was wonderful - almost making you forget it was an August day in Florida.

 The Hogwarts castle which houses the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride.  Fantastic ride, but it FREAKED Alex out.  Enough so that I felt bad about taking him on it afterward! 

 If the Hogsmeade detail was cool, the Forbidden Journey detail was amazing.  Here is one of the Mandrake plants you pass by while waiting in line.

 While he didn't care about the Harry Potter stuff, Alex loved all the Marvel Hero things.  Unfortunately most of the Marvel-based rides were way too big for him.  

 The Dr. Seuss area was fun too - Grace's second favorite area after the Harry Potter part.  Alex even cheered up some.

 The Lorax area was really big since the movie had recently come out.

 Truffula trees!

 

Grace is always game for chasing down a costumed character to get her picture with them.  Alex, not so much.

 

 Grace and I decided to ride the Harry Potter ride one more time before leaving because it was so awesome.  And we had to stop and try a butterbeer before we left.  It wasn't too bad - butterscotchy ginger ale with a foamy top.

This sign cracked us up.  This specific one is from the Harry Potter ride, but they used the bottom portion of it for any ride applicable.  We thought the cartoon of the guy barfing over the side of the boat was funny!