Fathers Day week

This week was full of sunshine and growing things. The grass grew too much and the tomatoes haven't grown enough. Ha!

I mowed early in the weekend for a change. This way Fathers Day Sunday was clear.

I think the grass seed did work. Its hard to say what was extra growth from seed and what was extra growth from having the trees out but the yard is generally looking more and more the way we have been hoping.

We have a few new deck plants (some hot peppers for David's Fathers Day gift) and a few finally sprouting herbs.

Kiernanhas a set of tomatoes he has been babying since seed and they are the first to fruit this year.

He is very excited and if you come to the house this is one of the first things he will show you.

 

The kids built a lemonade stand in the driveway and then hired everyone in the family to work for them, and then paid them in lemonade.

It was a little circular but very refreshing.

Mom's beach tent arrived and we set it up too.

Until the rain we had a regular campground going in front.

I brought the big bow to work. Almost the entire group has purchased a bow now and we are shooting daily.

Several of the girls are going to join an archery club to pursue the whole thing further.

It has been a great deal of fun and my eventual goal of turning scientists into rednecks is well on its way.

Inspired by the heat and the lemonade stand I made Mango Lassi popscicles.

My Mothers Day gift arrived this week. It is an Amazon Echo Dot. I have been using the Echo in the living room quite a bit and find it both amusing and useful. My next scheme is getting a hub and hooking up some light bulbs to it so I can turn of the lights and turn on the music from bed.

Smart home here we come.

I have heard some funny and not so funny stories about how this may turn out but still its fun to imagine a smoothly working version of this fairly simple system.

Stay tuned for updates. 

For Mommy and Megan day this week we went to Brookside gardens to smell the flowers.

We brought Grandma Scearce with us.

Megan did a thorough survey of the rose garden. She reported the tea roses to smell the best and particularly like a large yellow and white one.

I think Grandma was just happy to get out for a walk (she is hardcore about her fitbit steps) and for a chance to see any garden.

It was uncrowded and sunny and Megan was pretty much free to wonder to her hearts content.

She wondered pretty fast so mainly I got lots of pictures of the back of her head, with lovely scenery to accompany it.

The advantage of having an extra adult was not wasted though and I managed to wrangle her for a few Mommy and Megan pictures.

This was our last routine Mommy and Megan day for the year as net week Kiernan will be off school and join us.

I don't know yet if Megs will get into school for next year. She didn't get into the first 3 we applied to and there is only 1 left but we wont hear bout that one until August.

Megan's future is up in the air.

She really wants to go to school. She is a month too young for Kindergarten and 5 days past the appeals age for early admission.

boo.

I hope she gets in to the last program because she is very read and she wants to go but I would hate to lost mommy and Megan day.

We do so many activities with Kiernan and some with both the kids but very few with just Megs. She deserves 1 on 1 time and we both enjoy it.

We shall see. 

On Friday evening (thanks to my very kind boss (thanks Krishna) excusing me from work, I was about to join the family for a Cub Scout Fishing and Ice Cream Social night. Twin Ridge's last day of school was Friday so all the kids were ebullient.

Some fish were caught some ice cream was eaten and lots of games were played.

Megan got to see Kiernan's best friend Alex much to her joy.

They are so cute together.

We brought all the fishing gear and I caught a few worms but it turned out to suit the kids to play instead.

Many of the older kids fished and most of the younger kids ran around the playground and spun and slid and hopped on each other.

A very nice way to start the summer off officially.

The next morning we went to picnic number two for the year.

This time it was the Four County Little League picnic. This was to be the award ceremony (trophies etc.) and the family meal (all meat minus the apple sauce).

The kids were excited and rushed it with enthusiasm.

Kiernan was most interested in the wrecking ball. His shyness won and he retreated to the inflatable slide.

There was a huge wiffle ball game between the older boys and all the smaller ones. It was a team of 5 or 6 against 30 or so little ones.

Just like last year it was nearly completely unsupervised and things went chaotically but fairly well until a bouncy castle collapsed. I was pretty worried about the weight and the little kids trapped with in but everything turned out all right.

Both kids over heated and we left much earlier than I had expected.

Picnic number 2 was not the success we had hoped for.

For Fathers Day we had kind help and babysitting from both Scearce's and Aunt Lore so after a quick breakfast from Ihop I took David away to Spa World and a massage.

We met up with my friend Michelle there and after a few hours of soaking and luxury we headed out to the German Gourmet for lunch and import shopping.

After that David dropped me off for the orientation session for Cub Scout Day camp.

I will be a Den walker for summer camp of 3 days. This is well more than I was hoping for when signing Kiernan up for camp. Unfortunately no other boys in his den will be attending so he is being put into a small group with other boys in the same situation.

The theme of the camp is Jedi advancement so I am sure he will like that.

I sat through an increasingly confusing set of directions and felt my heart sink at the prospect of this upcoming week of "fun".

I am still not feeling too keen on it.

I fear being put in charge of other peoples children when I don't really know whats going to happen or what is expected of me.

I fear that Kiernan will melt down and that I will have to deal with it while watching strangers.

I still have some hope that he will have fun.

I signed him up because he wanted to go to camp.

I hoped that this would be a good opportunity for him to shoot some BB guns. He has been asking to try BB's and the supervision of camp might be the best place to do that.

Camp will take place at the Frederick Airport. I got to see some cool stuff on the tour.

The hangers are hot so I have to remember to make sure we both have lots of water.

After that I went home and watched David and the kids playing with the little drone that was his Fathers Day present.

It takes videos so even at bedtime they were busy, watching the images of themselves and the kitchen, that it took.

In other news here is a picture of the turtle snubbing her meal-worms and giving me the stink eye for a significant lack of the turtle pellets she prefers.