We Are the Champions

Last Thursday my good friend Jenn arrived. This was also the day I did the title transfer and registration for my new car, and had the dryer man in for an appointment. Our dryer has been causing us beacoup trouble since it first was purchased last May, so if you're considering one be wary. Jenn got here about 5:30 pm after being stuck in traffic in both New York and New Jersey. We had an early dinner and headed out for my hair appointment, then watched Ratatouille, which was, surprisingly, good and -- very surprisingly -- original. We enjoyed it very much. Friday was our field trip to the Aquarium in Balto. which was WONDERFUL. The highlight for the children was watching the scuba divers feeding the animals in the large central tank (rays, skates, sharks, and a turtle). We also saw their dolphin show which was good but I thought the sea lion show at the Mystic Aquarium in CT was better. That evening Jenn and I took a long walk down on the beach. Saturday was a family birthday party (my grandfather), after which we dropped the kids off for naps and headed up to the farm to get our vegetables. When the kids woke up we took them down to the beach. That night we watched Singing in the Rain (Jenn had never seen it!) and ate ice cream. :-) Sunday we made our fabric crayon-decorated tee shirts. Jenn got one with drawings from all three children, as a momento of her trip, and each girl also made one for herself. This was a fun and really easy project. You have to buy the crayons (which were $2.59 at Educate & Celebrate) and a white shirt for each girl. You need to also have on hand an iron, an ironing board, newspaper, and plain white paper for the original drawing. Jenn took me out to lunch before she left and then her little beetle headed off into the horizon line for Connecticut. It was a good trip but, sadly, too short. :-( Steve will take the children up to the dairy farm to visit her on her home turf at the end of this month while I am at my Waldorf teacher training.

Leah started her summer camp this morning with a creek wade-in. Janet took her (it's a hand in hand camp). From what I could gather, they read stories, painted bandannas, made homemade ice cream, waded in the mud at the creek bottom, and caught a fish. A good time was had by all. We didn't do as much of our Australia stuff as I had thought we would last week so I am going to continue that with Natalie this week in the mornings while Leah is gone. Then we'll begin with Oceans.

Yesterday I went downstairs to put in some laundry and the dryer was flashing error codes again (we got ONE load out of the last tech visit) and I hopped on the phone immediately with Sears to complain. And, finally, we are getting a replacement dryer! I am so excited! I was, in fact, so excited that I ran around the house singing "We Are the Champions" and lost my voice for nearly a day (I guess that is someone up in heaven subtly advising me not to sing). But it was worth it to croak for a day to have that moment of glory...