Splish Splash!

It’s certainly warming up (which is obviously to be expected in Minnesota in July), but with that extra bit of humidity it always makes it seem even more hot.  We don’t really play in our front yard on hot days because it gets hot, especially the front door, which requires oven mitts to open.  Note to self: some kind of front door awning is a necessity if front door is going to be in the sun all day.

 

Thankfully, though, our back deck is mostly in the sun in the morning and early afternoon and it slowly is covered in shade.  That in addition to the nice size of the deck means Enzo has plenty of room to play with his water table.

 

Granted, now all I hear when Enzo is outside is, “Water, Mommy!” followed by “More water, Mommy, more water!” It’s hard to say no on the hot days, and really I don’t mind all that much if he gets soaked.  He just has the worst timing, you know?  I swear he only ever wants to use the table minutes before dinner.

 

Thankfully at day care they have one water day a week, and though he does have swimwear it’s so much easier to just strip and run around in a diaper (unless he’s out with no shade). I’m kind of envious of the kid’s tan, actually. I feel so pasty in comparison. Gone are the days when I used to sunbathe outside… bring on the fake tan with its slightly orangey glow!  Funny… I just don’t care as much as I used to. Now I’ll wear shorts regardless of whether or not my legs look tan or not and I have spider veins that never went away from being pregnant. Meh. Anyhoo…

One thing about Enzo and water is that he doesn’t necessarily appreciate water in all forms.  Showers and spray of any kind is discouraged and he’d rather burst into flames than to succumb to the gentle mist of cool water from anything that isn’t a standing pool. We’ll see how he does at the ocean, and we should probably get to a lake soon to introduce him to gentle waves again. Last year it took a while to warm up.  Plus, this year we’ll get to see how Toots does!

Enjoying the deck.

Weather in Minnesota this year has been… interesting.  Winter seemed to drag, and we’ve been getting so much rain.  I haven’t taken any pictures of the flooding, but we’ve definitely had to take several detours so far.  It’s hard to complain about having too much water when other parts of the country are going through droughts… it’s really too bad we couldn’t just share. Aside from rain, we have had some really nice days, and we’re making good use of our deck considering playing in the yard hasn’t been much of an option because of the amount of mosquitoes. I think we’re going to have to call someone and just have the yard sprayed because it’s getting kind of ridiculous.

(Before plants)

Anyhoo, we have been able to take advantage of the deck, and are really glad we decided to get a larger table and umbrella for the space. Enzo still has plenty of room to run around, and it’s nice to have the option to eat outside.  At the very least, having the umbrella means we can easily sit with Phoebe so that she can watch her brother splash around in his water table and not have to worry about putting sunscreen on her. Since she’s sitting up so well, we can probably see about just putting a blanket outside for her too.  Our old deck didn’t have a lot of room, but we had a little tent that we’d put Enzo in if we were out on the grass.  Granted, when we tried that with Phoebe earlier in the year, a TON of gnats got inside anyway.  Definitely thinking about spraying.

A Tale of Two Squirrels

A rather short tale that began when, while camping, I foolishly left a bag of food unattended. I blame my thoughtlessness on lack of coffee. It was early and we wanted to be on the boat no later than 5:30, so we decided to forego coffee and just head out immediately. It was a nice day on the lake, and while we only caught a couple of small perch (pictures on Josh’s camera), we still had fun and returned to camp around 12:30.  I realized something was wrong as soon I walked over to the bag to pull out hamburger buns for our lunch. Our hamburger buns and bread had been fairly chewed on, and I figured that might be the extent of the damage.

Oh no. These squirrels were not satisfied with bread alone. As I pulled the bread items out, I noticed a hole had been chewed through the bag (one of those reuseable ones) and they had found my cookies. The cookies that were in a well-sealed container, and well-sealed it was. The thick plastic lid was still attached to the glass base, however, a nice big hole had been chewed through the lid and the squirrels hit pay-day. I estimate at least a dozen cookies were pulled out before they either ate their fill or saw us driving up.

So, lesson learned, and you can bet we made friends. The smaller squirrel, whom I called Stinker (seen below) returned often, looking for leftovers and wasn’t the slightest bit bothered our presence. Several times I’d look up and he’d be watching me at eye level in the tree next to our table, while I was looking for food or cooking. He also had a (camera shy) friend, whom returned often as well, and whom I expect to have eaten the majority of the cookies. Chunky Biscuit was morbidly obese and not a good climber, so there’s no way he pulled it off on his own.

Lesson learned.

Grilling Season

It’s finally starting to feel like Spring with the snow melting and warmer temperatures. We even got to hear the first thunder of the year last night while we got a bit of rain, but unfortunately missed seeing the moon.

Yesterday was a little chilly still, but we opened up some windows until it got too cold and got our weekend cleaning done and some baking as well.

 

Tracy and Jenny (Josh’s mom and sister) were in town so they came out to see us and we grilled up some steak and asparagus and got more use out of our deep-fryer from Dave & Buster’s – that’s right – when we win, we win big.

 

Then we watched some Planet Earth, which we picked up on BluRay for an awesome deal, and that was Saturday.  Today it’ll be some shopping, including a new vacuum because it seems ours bit the dust yesterday after eating a sock (it never recovered), but I’d say 6 or so years is good for a vacuum that cost under $100 and cleans up after 2 cats.  😉

Camping Pics!

Finally I get around to posting camping pictures!  It’s only taken how long?  We really ended up with an amazing campsite right on the lake, and the dragonflies!  You should have seen how many there were – there were always around 50 at any given time, except for the really hot part of the day, so no mosquitos!  Hooray!