monday mash up, June 25

Well, we had a great weekend, how about you? Y'all were so sweet to wish us a great dinner party on Friday night. We had a really lovely time with some new friends. I said to someone that if these were old friends who were coming over, I wouldn't give cooking a meal for friends a second thought, but new friends...then I have to do a little planning. I couldn't plan for a six-hour thunderstorm that dupmed over four inches of rain over us, but who can plan for things like that? Poor Neel had to grill in the shed. But we had fun. I took some pictures, but these were new friends. They're not quite used to my camera in their faces. So no smiling happy people. I can't take pictures of everything, you know! Did you see the trifle on twitter? I'll try to post on that later this week.

By Saturday morning, Cal was on sleepover number three for the week. That boy is tired! So much of weekend, when we weren't scrambling to locate a free canoe (it was already in the dumpster, so no canoe for us) was spent scrambling to recover. Why am I so tired after he stays up until 3 a.m.? He threw the ball in the front yard that morning with a friend who's trying baseball for the first time, but by Saturday afternoon he was crashed out on the sofa watching The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Once he got his second wind, we headed to our friend's pool for a bit (and I keep meaning to tell you Annie, much as I wish it was, sadly, that's not our garden), but for us, Saturday was an early night. Since all my mornings tend to be early, I like early nights!

We had Callum's baseball party on Sunday, and now the season really is over. One mom asked if we weren't all grateful, and I'm not. It's all still so new to us, that it could have gone on for me. Cal too. After the party, Neel and Cal headed straight across the street for a poker party. This cracks me up. Two 12 year olds, two 14 years olds, and a few grown men all playing poker until about 10 on a Sunday night! They played a bit in our backyard on Saturday until we insisted that Callum needed to be tucked into bed. I'm glad to see it. These kids played poker a lot summer before last, and it's nice to see them reinstate the tradition. It gets hot here, really hot, and sometimes playing outside is just not possible. When they play poker, they're not playing video games or locked into the iPods. And, in my book, that's a good thing.

So I did some research on the Disqus thing, and it's just not going to work. That's the bad news. The good news for Squarespace users is that version 6 is coming out (and is usable now, apparently) and it does have threaded comments. Let me say, this whole, "Schedule computer time" is hard when you get absorbed in projects like this. They can get absorbing. So I'll be doing more research on that in the coming weeks. And thank you so much for your comments to Friday's Five Things. Aren't lists great?

Did you guys have a great weekend? We're scheduled for more storms today, and I dearly love thunder storms. And a busy week. I have mixed feelings about those. But some fun will creep in there for sure. Since it's summer, I've been doing our grocery shopping on Mondays and so far I have nothing on my list and no idea what I'm going to cook this week. Hmm. And isn't Violet sweet? That's her favorite spot under my computer when I'm working, but how can it be comfortable?

monday mash up, June 18

Hello my lovelies! Welcome to a new week! First, I have to get this out of the way. Our boys lost a heartbreaker in the championship game on Saturday. A heart-breaker. I'll spare you the details (Erin, I'll tweet you if you want.), but they held their heads up and played hard and it just didn't work out. Callum hates that it's over most of all. I do too.

It was, otherwise, a lovely weekend, however. If you follow me on Instagram, (or Twitter for that matter), you might have noticed that I cleaned out our refrigerator on Saturday morning. When we discovered that we had five different kinds of mustard (not to mention the two half-filled jars of sliced Spanish olives), Neel decided that he wanted German sausages for dinner. When we were in California, Neel's immediate mentor was German and we all developed a Christmas Eve tradition of German sausages dipped in different mustards along with a huge bowl of potato salad. It's been a long time since we've done that, but as soon as we moved here, we located a great German deli and restaurant. So Weisswurst, Bratwurst, spaetzle, the first beans from our garden and potato salad for Father's Day Eve dinner. Father's Day Eve? Who celebrates that? Apparently we do. 

Before dinner, we rode bikes with our neighbors up to the kickoff to a summer Saturday concert series that is put on at the university near our house. These concerts are awesome. I'll have a post about them later in the week, but let's just say that it was the perfect way to start off the weekend and the summer.

We did have our Family Planning Meeting, and I'll post about that too. I think we have a lot in store for us, including at least one trip on a plane for my kid, a fact which makes him very excited, and me as well!

Father's Day was, as it should be, Neel's choice. We went to Historic Jamestown. We're lucky to live in a part of the US that gives us easy access to so much of our nation's history. I took tons of pictures so guess what! There's a post coming about that too! Let me say something here about Father's Day. I am lucky in that I was raised my an amazing father (who was raised by an amazing father) and that I married a man who became an amazing father. Neel's dad is an amazing father who sacrificed a great deal for his family. His heart is huge. I am also surrounded by wonderful men every day who are great fathers. My neighbors are great fathers, my friends Mark and Fred are great fathers, Cal's coaches are great fathers and I have many many friends who are great fathers. How lucky am I? How lucky is my son to see a host of men who are role models for him simply by going about their day-to-day lives. I think Father's Day should take place more than once a year. Really, I do.

After Jamestown, we came home, and guess what. Rescued another dog who was wandering the neighborhood. Happy Endings all around. Cal has been in the mood to ride bikes lately and he's outgrown his old bike. We let him try my beach cruiser, and it fits. Fits well enough to rescue wandery doggies. It's so flat here, a beach cruiser is almost a must.

How was everybody's weekend? We never made it to the pool on Friday. Can you believe it was too cool here? So Callum and I went for a run together (how can something be both so miserable and so delightful at the same time?) and made our first farmer's market trip of the season. We jumped into our summer reading and did some Food Network watching. What a kid, I tell you. He wants to cook this summer. I can't wait. We'll get to the beach finally this week too. I can't wait for that either.