Missy's blog: A turtle some Good Knights some fishing and a Hitathon...plus a little Mothers Day to boot

It rained and rained all week. It was cold and gray but also wet and green everywhere I went.

On Tuesday during a break in the weather I went outside to take a walk and to appreciate the green all around.

I walk around parking lots most of the time for my work walks and there is usually a fair amount of gravel in them. This time I saw a big piece of gravel with tiny legs. I found a just hatched baby Painted Turtle working her way across the parking lot.

I picked her up with the idea of putting her down closer to a pond and further from the road but then thought about how much Megan would love to see a baby turtle.

So I carried it back to work and gathered twigs and berries and worms and clover and set her (males have curved undersides and females have flat undersides) on my desk for the rest of the day.

So when we made it home she went into a fish bowl.

This week due to a fair amount of anxiety I went on a cleaning jag. Kiernan also possibly for reasons of anxiety wouldn't be separated from me so he did a lot of cleaning too.

Here we are setting aside outgrown baby things in the garage.

Car seats anyone?

On Wednesday I was not feeling very well but David was way way worse...Megs wasn't so hot either.

David thinks we may have gotten the Listeria that is currently in every fruit and Veg frozen section in the state.

I stayed home and took it easy and fed David medicine and took Megan for walks and hung out at the gym .

We even went to the library.

I also spent a little while preparing for my big Cub Scout presentation.

I was the leader in the den meeting and taught the boys how to be Good Knights.

We did a little heraldry. This is the Kuehnert Coat of Arms per some website. I printed out one for each of the boys (of their own families per the same website) and then brought in some books on heraldry so that they could design some for themselves.

We built some rockin' castles. We did a little community service and a fine time was had by all.

Earlier in the month when I was thinking about the community service that we could do I decided to ask the principle of Twin Ridge if there might be anything she wanted done. It was a good choice because she has an exact feel for who the boys are and what they are capable of.

She gave us some grass seed and straw and I brought some rakes and tools. We dodged in and out of raindrops and seeded two newly cleared areas near the schools bus entrance.

We all got muddy and I split the boys up into teams (they stayed in teams for the rest of the evening and that worked very well) and each team took over one side of the entrance.

As you can see from the picture above they got a bit wet but also a bit pumped up.

It was a good food week for me.

Usually at work Thursdays are picnic days (my idea enthusiastically adopted) but with all the rain this week we decided to go out for German food.

It was good. My work group is a lot of fun.

I put this here to balance out my feelings of floundering expressed on and off in this blog.

Kiernan has been starving-hungry all week. I am not sure if this is due to being off his stomach meds or a growth spurt. He has eaten full meal sized after school snacks every day and then cleaned his plate at dinner.

After school on Friday I took him over to California Tortilla.

He even asked for hot sauce. I think 7 is a major year for him. He has been gaining so much confidence in such broad areas that his personality is shining through in a lot of new and interesting ways.

Also I like hot sauce so that was fun.

Thanks to the generosity of Uncle Chris and a few helpful hints form cousin Kaleb the turtle (Karai? Tiny? My sweet baby turtle?) has moved into a big tank with a heater and some spiffy lighting and food contraptions. She has survived for about a week and has begun to eat and poop like a baby turtle should.

This weekend was the annual Mount Airy Lions Club kids fishing Derby.

Both kids have expressed a great deal of interest in fishing lately (this is good because we are going on a trip next weekend where fishing may make an important appearance), so I signed them up for it.

I went to my potato/onion/overgrown water-logged mushroom patch and dug up some worms for them. I dragged poor still sick David off the couch to fix Megan's reel and then off we went to the derby.

Fishing was not what the kids expected. David used to fish so he helped them with the nuts and bolts and I (being almost entirely unsqeemish did the worm thing). At first all the casts went into the grass (or into the back of Megan's jacket). Then Kiernan got to close to the waters edge and had to be pulled out. Then I helpfully got his line crossed with that of the boy next to him who was quite sad to see it. Then Kiernan got offended that he wasn't catching anything when another kid did.

So I took Megan to a less crowded area and things turned around. She caught a log and some duckweed for the turtle. The Lions Club began giving out free chips and drinks and hot-dogs. Kiernan figured out how to cast cleanly.

By the end we had 0 fish but everyone felt pretty good about our overall progress.

We shall see.

Kiernan asked to go fishing again tomorrow as soon as we got into the car. Megan agreed that it was a good plan.

We went home and got warm and admired the new fishing derby participation certificates.

I ran around trying to get lunch read only to realize that Megan was due for team pictures and Hit-a-Thon in 10 minutes.

She did her duty by that ball and looked adorable for the camera.

She got free Rita's Italian ice.

Then we went home for her nap.

Then it was Kiernan's turn.

He took a picture for his future baseball card. Then the Bulls lined up for their hits.

He got 9 chances to hit the ball into some white circles out on the field.

He got 3 into the right spots (the maximum allowed for the prize pool) and was 1 of 2 on his team to do so.

He was quite pleased.

I was impressed.

Then he got his Rita's and collected his prizes and entered the raffles for Keys tickets.

He had me put his cool tattoo on straight away. Apparently this punch is as powerful as a baseball.

Super hero quality punch right there.

On Mothers Day the sun came out to stay.

It was so beautiful.

I got some beautiful flowers and cards and a present that I really wanted (its not here yet but I am very excited).

Papa and Grandma Mary came up for lunch and I made Cuban food that turned out pretty well. We went to the park and the kids rode bikes or climbed on the enhanced jungle gym depending.