I think I've seen this before . . .

IM, summer of 2006

IM, summer of 2009

She fractured the wrist end of her distal radius. The cast should come off on June 26.

SCA

The kids and I spent the day at a gathering of the Society for Creative Anachronism. EM spent several hours at the youth combat arena. He's been itching to fight since he watched some adults back in November, but this is the first time he was able to suit up. He ended up winning his division, but as he pointed out, this might have something to do with being the oldest in his age group and the tallest by several inches.

Here he is in one of his first fights. (His opponents did get taller than this.)

NB spent some time in combat as well.

We ended the day on the archery range. All three of the big kids did well. EM especially impressed the instructor, but all of us hit the target at least once. EM and IM are both left-eye dominant, and so shoot with their left hands.

LW was disappointed that he is too young to fight or shoot. He consoled himself with turning a wooden stick from a children's game into a spear.

As we left, all the kids were trying to convince me to make the hour-and-a-half drive back for the fun tomorrow. "But they're having a woods fight! And a dragon hunt! Pleeease?"

Just call me the chauffeur

Here's my day:

8:00 leave house to drive EM to school so he can catch the bus to his track meet
8:40 arrive home
11:15 drive twins and LW to town. Buy present for birthday friend and browse farmer's market. (The first market of the year!) Return home at 12:15.
12:45 leave to drive to EM's track meet so I will be there at 1:30 to (hopefully) watch one of his events.
2:30 leave track meet so I will be home in time to . . .
3:30 drop twins off at birthday party. Depending on whether other girls are sleeping over . . .
7:30 Pick IM up from party.

I'm hoping EM is finished with his track events by 2:30 so he can come home with me and I don't have to toss in another trip up to school to pick him up.

Designing the addition

We're in the process of trying to add on to our living space at the inn. This is going to be a long process. I've been trying not to think about it, out of fear I'd get my hopes up and then something would happen and we wouldn't be able to add on. However, we have to submit a site plan to the town as part of getting the building permit, so I have to make some decisions.

We want to add a living room, bedroom, and bathroom. Because this doesn't make much sense from a business perspective—future owners are unlikely to need four bedrooms, and even our need will change as the kids get older and head out on their own—we are designing the new piece in such a way that it can connect to our space now but be closed off and rented separately later.

This means we can't just plunk it on where our current porch is. That would work great for now, but it wouldn't work at all for renting the space out separately. Our back door would open into the new space, and I don't want to get that cozy with the guests.

So we're designing a connecting piece to join the new addition to our existing space. There are just a few constraints: Nothing can be closer than ten feet to our existing well cap, which is very inconveniently placed. We have to enclose the existing entrance into the basement. We have to work with the placement of the back door out of the existing space.

I had graphed out a plan that did all of that while letting more light into the kitchen window.

And then the contractor came.

He thinks it would actually be easier and cheaper to enclose the entire existing porch (of course, that would make it impossible for me to have a door that opens into the mudroom from outside). So I have two choices: I can have my kitchen window open into my mudroom, or I can create an oddly sized space between the mudroom and the wall and have the kitchen window open into that.

I'm not found of looking at the mudroom all day long, since the whole point is to hide the mess. I get to look at piles of boots, coats, and ski pants under the current system. I won't miss it.

On the other hand, I don't quite know what to do with a 5.5 x 10 foot space. Computer nook, maybe? I want to figure out how we're going to use it before we start building it, so I can be smart about placements of windows, electrical outlets, phone jacks, etc.

What would you do with a small open space near the entrance, mudroom, and new living room?

It doesn't take much

Because I was in Oregon for Mother's Day, I got my Mother's Day presents today. LW gave me a potted pansy, a picture of a yellow blob labeled "Spaceship," and the following card: I love my Mom because we have tables and chairs inside our house.*

There you have it. The key to your child's heart.

A dining room set.

* And no, I have no idea what sparked this comment. We haven't purchased any new furniture lately. We have the same table and chairs we've had since before LW was born.

Now for the fiction

One weekend when I had a cold, I read Dead Until Dark. It was described as a more adult version of Twilight. It actually reminded me more of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, it reminded me a little too much of it. As in, "this idea was developed so much better in Buffy." Not horrible, but I won't seek out the sequels.

Then I read The Time Traveler's Wife, a love story with an intriguing premise. The writing is beautiful and the story touching.

I took Dune with me on vacation. Michael said there are two kinds of people who read Dune. Those who think it is the best book ever (or right up there) and those who don't see what all the fuss is about. I don't know that I agree, as I'm in the middle. This was not one of my top 10 reading experiences, but I did find myself wanting to reread it almost as soon as I finished it. Interesting ideas about politics and religion and the interaction between the two. I can see how it could be someone's favorite book, even though it isn't mine.

Michael brought Duma Key home from Mexico and suggested I read it, so I tossed it in the suitcase when we headed to Virginia. I already had a book to read after Dune, but it's always nice to have a book in reserve. As it turned out, EM inhaled his books and was all out of reading material with five days left in the vacation. So he read the book I'd planned to read, and I read Duma Key. It's 771 pages of can't-put-it-down story. Not too scary by Stephen King' standards, although I did a little nervous walking back to our cabin in the dark by myself.

A bunch of books

I didn't blog much in March and April, but I did read.

In honor of our trip to Virginia, I started with His Excellency: George Washington, by Joseph J. Ellis. Ellis, a Pulitzer winner, is a fantastic and extremely readable author and his biography of Washington is very manageable. Exhaustive it isn't, but it provides fascinating insights into the development of Washington's character. I was amazed at how much I didn't know about Washington.

I'm having a hard time restraining myself from typing all the quotations I copied.

When historians debate Washington's most consequential decisions as commander in chief, they are almost always arguing about specific battles. A compelling case can be made that his swift response to the smallpox epidemic and to a policy of inoculation was the most important strategic decision of his military career. p 87

Lafayette was the major outlet for Washington's human side, and their letters provide the clearest evidence that he had one. p 116

Most tellingly, the outcry over the society [of Cincinnati] forced him to realize, probably for the first time, that the American Revolution had released egalitarian ideas that he was at pains to understand, much less find compatible with his own version of an American republic, which was elitist, deferential, virtuous, and honorable—in short, pretty much like him. p 151

I also finished The Virtue in the Vice: Finding Seven Lively Virtues in the Seven Deadly Sins, the basis of my church's Lenten study group this year. It was a pleasant, but unremarkable read.

I picked up Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 at the library, in an attempt to shore up my very weak economics background. (It's not my high school's fault. They tried to require two economics classes, but I kept finding loopholes.) This is an engaging and interesting, if ultimately depressing, look at world economics.

The point is that because speculative attacks can be self-justifying, following an economic policy that makes sense in terms of the fundamentals is not enough to assure market confidence. In fact, the need to win that confidence can actually prevent a country from following otherwise sensible policies that would normally seem perverse. p 113

I'll talk about the fiction books in another post.

April Vacation--Part 5

After a week at the condo in Williamsburg (during which we also spent a day at the Virginia Beach Aquarium and a day at Busch Gardens), it was time for us to say goodbye to the Utah relatives and head back north.

Our first stop was Mount Vernon. Unfortunately, Saturday was the end of the very pleasant weather we'd been enjoying. It was hot. Very hot. None of us felt like waiting the required 35 minutes standing in line to get into the tour of the house. (And LW struggles a bit with house tours at the best of times.) So, we looked at the outbuildings, sat on the verandah overlooking the Potomac, saw Washington's grave, and headed for the air-conditioned museum. It was the one day on our trip that our touring suffered because of the weather.

By the time we'd checked into our hotel in Washington, the day was starting to cool off, so we walked by the White House before dinner . . .

and saw the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial after dinner.

We spent two days in Washington, visiting some of the Smithsonian museums, Arlington Cemetery, the other monuments and memorials on the Mall, and the Capitol. Then we went to New York state for two nights in a cabin at a KOA campground. While in New York, we stopped by the Storm King Art Center--a large outdoor park of modern sculpture. The rest of the family enjoyed this somewhat less than I did.

April Vacation--Part 4

On Wednesday, we visited a plantation on the road to Richmond and then spent a couple of hours at the Maymont gardens. We especially enjoyed the Italian and Japanese gardens.

April Vacation--Part 3

We spent a day at Jamestown, which is only a short drive from Williamsburg. We saw both the original settlement site (not a lot to see there) and a recreation next to the original site. NB and Michael's mom sit in one of the Native American dwellings.

LW takes a turn grinding corn. At 20 minutes per person per meal, kids his age probably would have had to help. Kids as young as 2 learned to make rope.

Grandpa and the kids on a recreation of one of the three boats that carried the original Jamestown settlers. The third boat was the smallest, and EM was amazed it could cross the Atlantic. Those early settlers had guts.

LW couldn't wait to try on the armor, but once he felt how heavy it was, he couldn't wait to get it off. Not even long enough for the group picture.

April Vacation--Part 2

We spent two days in Colonial Williamsburg. We put all three of the older kids in the stocks, but IM's picture turned out the best. Finally, a use for the pout she's been practicing.

Did you know it took about 20 minutes to grind enough corn for one person for one meal? It's a wonder they had time to do anything else.

All six of us fell in love with the newest cousin (Michael's younger sister's daughter). LW was particularly taken with her. The first thing out of his mouth each morning was, "Are Persy and her mommy up yet?"

April Vacation--Part 1

April was all about vacations. First, holding down the fort while Michael was in Mexico and then a family road trip down to Williamsburg, Virginia, for a week spent with Michael's parents, sister, and niece. With stops on the way down and back, we were gone for two weeks.

Our stop on the way down was in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. It's not really beach season there yet, but my poor sun-deprived northern New England kids didn't care.