History repeats itself

So Grace, while attempting to stall going to bed last night, came in to say she had something to tell me when I tucked her in. Jim of course wants to hear what the secret is, so he convinces her to tell us both right then.

"At our last Girl Scout meeting (aside from Julie - meetings are held at the school), Anna, Elie and I, when no one was looking, went into the BOYS bathroom!"

Look on her face was priceless - all big eyes, proud that she'd gotten away with it.

So we talked about how different boys bathrooms are from girls bathrooms, with urinals and all that. Grace loved to point out how weird they are.

And then I got to surprise Grace (and Jim too) by pointing out when I was her age I did the SAME EXACT THING at my Girl Scout meetings. I'd almost forgotten about it, but we would dare each other to run into the boys bathroom at the church our troop met at. Wonder if my mother did the same thing at her Girl Scout meetings...

Sunday paper tidbits

I felt the urge to share a couple of the interesting things from my paper today. Haven't done this in a while and I don't know if I will start doing it regularly or not. But here goes.

A woman was able to catch the thief who stole her iPhone because of an app she had installed. iGotYa will snap a photo if someone enters the incorrect password to unlock a phone. She was able to take this picture to the police department who recognized the man from a warrant poster and made an arrest. Makes me think I should get this one. Of course that means I'd have to password-protect my phone again. And I'd probably end up with a lot of photos of myself from trying to enter my number in too quickly.

A new book out called "Is Marriage for White People?" states that more than 70% of black children are born to unwed parents. The author says that this is not due to differing sexual mores between whites and blacks, but because black women are living what he describes as a "segregated existence." Asians, Latinos and even black men are much more likely to marry outside their race, but black women are socially pressured to marry within their race - encouraged to marry "down" before they marry "out." Black men aren't held to such standards. The article states "Their problem isn't so much frequent pregnancy as a dearth of appropriate partners." Interesting theory.

The Star-Ledger has a "Knucklehead of the Week" area in the editorial section. So many this week that they had five listed, but the one I liked was about Martha Stewart's daughter's new tell-all book: "Martha Stewart's daughter, Alexis, has written a book to let people know just how tough her privileged multimillion-dollar childhood was. Exhibit A: Martha often left the bathroom door open when she peed. Unbearable." To me that just sounds like every other mom I know, due to habits formed when you have toddlers who don't want you out of their sight!

Texas trip

So, so far behind in posting...

We followed up Cousin Camp this year with an extended visit in Texas. Jim was with us for a weekend and the kids and I stayed a little longer.


With Jim we hit our old Dallas haunts, which of course means hot dogs and custard at Harry's.


And a visit to Northpark Mall (which is what we HAD to do to kill our afternoon hours while staying away from the Texas heat). The kids are so big now they can just about get to the top of the planters in two steps. Go look in my July 2006 archives to see what the kids USED to look like climbing this planter (in fact most of the photos are of the same exact side of the same exact planter).


Alex imitates one of the Hammermen.


Jim wanted to visit with an old buddy. Alex stayed in Ft. Worth with the grandparents and Grace and I dropped Jim off then went to have a lovely afternoon at the Nasher Sculpture Museum. This was an exhibit where an entire room was filled up with balloons. You were allowed to go in, and all you could see around yourself was balloons. Bit too claustrophobia-inducing for me, but Grace loved it.


Grace next to the Spoon Woman sculpture that we have a shot of her next to from the first visit we ever made to the Nasher (that picture is found in my May 2008 archives).


Headless men with a silly girl.


Once Jim headed back to New Jersey the kids and I did a little more visiting with people, including a side trip to see the cousins in Austin. So I finally got to see the bats flying out from the Congress Avenue bridge.


We went to Barton Springs. No matter how hot the Texas weather is, this water is always almost too cold to swim in! But I'm glad we got to let the kids experience it. It's just totally cool swimming someplace with natural stone ledges all around it.


Thanks to Kathy and David graciously watching the kids, I got a fun night out with old college friends. So much laughter to catch up on when you haven't seen someone in 20+ years.


And when we made it back to D/FW, Grace got to catch up with her old friends too.


Made it to a Ranger game this year. The kids lasted the entire game, which was a BIG surprise.


And we managed once again to take a quick trip to the Water Gardens after a breakfast at Paris Coffee shop. I just love pictures like this one where my kids are being sweet and walking hand-in-hand.


Now my sweet kids are being goofy and wanting me to take their picture looking like they are falling into the pool.


Always a wonderful trip.

Sweetness

I love how Alex will still respond every time to my "I love you" with "I love you more."

Cousin Camp #2 - the beach!

Alright - beach pictures now. As I said, I didn't pull the camera out as much as I'd like, but here's at least a few pics.


Alex is silly.


Lonely Jim on the beach. Of course not really lonely, but I do like pictures of people walking on the beach.

Alex and Cole playing their game where they draw an impenetrable circle around Jim, trapping him.


Grace and Joey doing their own beach decorating.


My girl is getting so big!


Sweet picture of Emma and Eva.


Self-explanatory.


Alex of course had to do the same thing as Grace. Only he got very specific - I was not allowed to take the picture until he had finished writing and actually stood in the circle. Then he stepped out and said "NOW you can take the picture."


Love these kids!

Cousin Camp #1

As always, Cousin Camp was a wonderful time. I had so much fun that I didn't bother to take too many photos, but did get a decent representation of a fun week had by eight adults and nine kids.


Alex discovered that he loves chocolate pizza. And we discovered that an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet is a pretty good idea for feeding 17 people.


Probably the best Cousin Camp craft ever thanks to Grandad. Incredibly cool birdhouses with Texas license plate roofs. Even better was that since it involved building and power tools, the dads all shooed the moms out of the way and handled it themselves.


For my family, the week isn't complete without a visit to the Texas State Aquarium. Many of our group opt out of the trip (unfortunately sickness caused Cole to miss, much to his dismay), but those of us that go have a wonderful time. This year Grandad posed up on the whale statue (we couldn't get Emma to get up there with the kids).


We see the same fish every year, but it still is a good time.


Our shopping trip always involves a photo op in the shark mouth. As you can see, Eva (on Emma's lap) wasn't so keen on getting her picture taken. And you can barely see Joey in the shadows of the mouth in the back on the right side.


About to go spend Gramma's money. Yippee!


We had a very nice visit from Grace's friend Audrey and her mother and brother. They were best friends in kindergarten, and the summer before we moved to New Jersey Audrey's family moved to Houston. Since they couldn't make it up to Dallas to meet up with us when we normally visit with old friends, they made a special trip to Port A so the girls could get together.



And as usual, there were cutthroat domino games going late into the night.

Next posting will have some actual beach photos.

Very belated last day of school #2

Never posted Grace's last day of school photo, so here it is:



Compared to her first day of school below, I think she grew up a bit this past year!


Never posted Grace's last day of school photo, so here it is:

Last day of school #1

Alex's last day of kindergarten was today. We are so happy we kept him at his school for kindergarten rather than sending him to the public school. He got a full day vs. half day, and got to stay at this wonderful, caring place one more year. We think it did him a world of good - his reading is fantastic, he does great with math, and he got art, cooking, geography, science and French (!) classes every week without taking time away from the kindergarten classroom learning (benefit of the full-day program). Plus he is so resistant to change and slow to come out of his shell in new situations that he really benefited not going to one school this year and then having to switch to another one for first grade (kindergarten is in its own school here).

What a fun day today - the last day of school consisted of a party just about the whole time (they got out at noon).


In addition to our craft and snack, we had a limbo contest.


Hot potato game.


And MANY rounds of freeze dance.


It was a really good class, and with only 16 children it was a perfect size.


Guess he's a first-grader now!

Beautiful beautiful floors!

So in addition to all the craziness that comes with the end of the school year, we also finally had the floors replaced in the house. One thing we loved about this house was the oak floors in the living room and dining room. They had an amazing pattern on them and were original to the house.

We discovered after moving in and starting to fix up our house that the 100-year floors had 100-years of sanding and refinishing, meaning that they'd reached their limit (when you can see the tongues in the tongue-and-groove floor and have spots where you can actually see into the basement, you know things have gone a little too far). So we realized that what we need to do is replace the floors, but we definitely wanted to keep the uniqueness of the pattern. Luckily there is a flooring company right here in Westfield that right off the bat gave me a "Sure, no problem!" when I asked if they could replicate the pattern (the other company I talked to tried to talk me into a regular hardwood floor with an inlay around the edge instead of giving us the same thing).

The project kept getting pushed back by other more important and immediate projects, and then right when we were about to pull the trigger last summer Jim lost his job, so one more pushing back. Once Jim got employed again and we still had the money earmarked in the bank for the project we were raring to go.

So now it's time for some pictures, pictures and more pictures! I don't think they do the project justice, either in seeing the shape of the former floor or the glory of the new one, but it will at least get the idea across.


This is the old floor. Here is one of those instances where it actually looks better in the picture than it did in real life. If you look closely you can see in the bottom left corner of this photo how the wood was getting old and discolored in some parts. You can also see if big gaps between some of the boards, which are just impossible to get dirt and dust out of.


Unfortunately the only picture I got of the cross-hatching in the doorway came out blurry. But this is where Alex and I would have to periodically get on our hands and knees and find popped-up nails to hammer back in, otherwise our socks ended up with holes in the bottom of them.


Demo of the old floor. This was the worst part of the project, as 100 years of dirt and dust flew up and coated everything in my house. I'm still trying to get everything clean again.


Sub-floor, original to the house. I just get amazed at how long things have lasted in these old houses.


The new floor begins to get laid down in the dining room. They started in the center of both rooms and worked out. The pattern is almost exactly the same, but boards these days are about 1/4" wider than the old boards. The overall effect is the same though (the cost of custom-milled boards was not something we wanted to add into the total).


Living room floor getting started. Of course adjustments came along the way. They were going to trowel down glue under the new boards until they realized the glue would then drip all over our basement through the sub-floor, so things were modified.


More floor.


Floor all laid, but unfinished. Of course nothing goes as planned - the "3 days" promised for the job was two days then "it needs to sit for few days" that ran over a holiday weekend, plus a few more days, finally finished after almost 10 days.


Replicated cross-hatch pattern in the doorway (still unfinished).


Finished living room (spots are reflection on my camera lens). They nicely framed in the tile in front of the fire place, which had been a weird no-mans-land of broken out tile and no wood).


Finished doorway between rooms.


Finished dining room. But now the walls look like crap, so the next project is to get someone in to paint the living and dining room. This is the one portion of painting we need to hire out - the living room extends up the stairway to the upper landing, and the ceiling height on the landing goes all the way up to the top of the house, which we'd NEVER be able to reach to do. Plus we want to see about getting a new mantel built for the fireplace that better fits the house, and to paint the weirdo paint job on those fireplace bricks. I guess eventually we will be done...someday...