Summer Basket List

Summer is over. Well, not really, there is still a month of summer weather left, but summer break is over, and school starts this week, and so we have crossed off as many of the remaining bucket list items as we can. I needed this summer to be something redemptive after last year, which was a sh!t show of emotions and baby soothing and feeling like I was failing everyone around me, and then feeling resentful about the failing, and yeah. This year was better.

I had a page in my notebook where I jotted down ideas the kids named as things they wanted to do this summer (a few times, someone got ahold of a pen and added ideas himself), and we got to almost all of them.

We also renamed it The Basket List because at the beginning of the summer Anneliese could never remember what it was called, so she kept saying that, and it stuck for the rest of us even though she rolls her eyes and refuses to partake of the cutesy rename herself. HER LOSS. CUTESY IS FUN, YO.

And truthfully we didn't even look much at the list because we were busy just hanging out and having fun. Montreat was a freaking delight. Our family road trip was more fun than I ever could have dreamed. And lots of little fun things in between the travels too:

1.) Ride on a ferry. This list was born in April when Nathan, indignant that I would go to Seattle and ride on a ferry without him, made a page in my notebook and put FERRY as the first thing on it. We... didn't actually get to this. But we have Outer Banks camping plans next month, and we will ferry to Okracoke and then Hatteras. The ferry will happen! I promise, buddy!

2.) Visit Northfield. Check and check. 'Twas delightful. Here are all the kids at St. Olaf:

Oh Charlotte. I don't even know, y'all. She just doesn't stop.

Road trip blogs still to come. (They are all half written and still need pics and there's a lot to sort through so eh.)

3.) Crayon A. This is a craft I have been intending to do for years with Anneliese and we finally did it, and it turned out great, and she loves it, and I love it.

NAILED IT. Suck it, Pinterest, I own you.

4.) Go camping. Not yet - this will be with the ferry ride next month.

5.) Eat purple carrots. Okay so Anneliese asked for this for weeks, and I wrote it down for her, even though you can't get any carrots at the farmer's market, much less purple ones, until fall. So this is still to come also. We did, however, make several stews with parsnips, and Anneliese has a new favorite vegetable. (She is an odd child.)

6.) Strawberries. There were no carrots, but there were strawberries, and Anneliese used them to bake her very first dessert for all of us. Bisquick shortcakes, and warm strawberries, and cream she whipped herself, and oh she was so proud.

7.) Cinderella movie. Anneliese saw this with Grandma. That counts, right? (I still haven't seen it.) (I am totally interested, but secretly more for the Frozen short than for the movie itself. Don't judge me.)

8.) Rise Biscuits and Donuts. This is a place in Durham with apparently really great breakfast treats. We never made it there, but I am counting our Duck Donut outing as a check mark on the list for new treat places.

9.) Learn ponytails. Anneliese did it! This is a life skill, I mean really.


(If you can't see the embedded video, click here to watch it on YouTube.)

10.) Learn shoe tying. Yeah, no. This did not happen.

11.) Watch Jurassic Park (not with the girls). Yes finally, Nathan, of years-long dinosaur obsession, has seen the original Jurassic Park movie. It totally scared him. But I think he thinks it was worth it. (It still is delightfully scary to me too.) We have listened to the soundtrack a thousand times this summer since then. Currently the girls' favorite song to dance to. We are That Family, apparently.

12.) Tropical Pick'n Chicken. It's a new (to us) local chain restaurant near our house, with Caribbean food and such. Nathan is enamored with it. It's just okay for me. But! We went! Summer dreams coming true over here y'all!

13.) Build legos. Um, duh. Done and done.

14.) Sleepovers. Yes, Nathan and Anneliese, every Friday, all summer (all year actually, but the summer was no exception). These two are best buddies, and never moreso than on Friday nights. We don't understand how they spend all day every day together and still have things to talk about into the wee hours. They say more to each other than they ever do to any of the rest of us.

15.) Baking contest. This got added to the list in summer's eleventh hour, and we still did it!

16.) Read lots of books. CHECK. We have been very library busy. And library days are the best days, aren't they? Let's not forget the afternoon I found the kids all outside reading their library books sprawled on the sidewalk WITH THEIR BEDDING, why children, why?

Nathan at Almost 8

Happy July 22nd! It's Nathan's due date! Again! (No, I have not let go of due dates yet. Hush.)

I am full of feelings today, like every year, remembering eight years ago in the final days of being pregnant, before I was officially a mom. This year for the first time, it feels far away, a long time ago, a previous lifetime. Even just last year I would have said it felt like just yesterday, and now in some ways it does, but mostly it feels now like... a memory.

Pregnancy and babies seem far from my life now, suddenly. It's good and bad. Post for another day. Anyway! *brisk clap*

Sweet Nathan will be eight years old this weekend, y'all. EIGHT.

At almost eight he is still into ships, and dinosaurs, and reading anything non-fiction unless I pull teeth to talk him into a novel. Actually, speaking of teeth, he still hasn't lost any since waaaay last May, over a year ago, and one the Christmas before that. I suspect this time next year he will have a mouth full of holes, or maybe even a mouth full of grownup teeth, so this might be the last of his birthday pictures where he looks like a... little kid. *sob*

He is indeed still little; he actually hasn't gotten any taller since last year, and only one pound heavier, which hopefully doesn't mean anything other than 1- he has Mark's tiny tween genes for being the class shrimp, and 2- he is due for a growth spurt any moment now. He is strong though, and can run fast for a long time, and swim for hours, so his skinny little ribs must have some muscle around them.

He is still a tiny pedant, holding people to their time estimates down to the minute, and correcting anything he perceives as a mistake (I sent him a weather channel video of the biggest ship in the world, and was informed that the biggest ship in the world is actually in a different class and company, and *sigh*) (we are working on politeness). We have no idea where he got that know-it-all gene I MEAN REALLY NO IDEA.

He takes himself and others very seriously, but he also has a playful side when he wants to be silly (and then suddenly acts much younger than his age). He is starting to ask to be into The Things of Older Kids - movies he hears about from friends, and video games, and such. We had one painfully awkward but necessary conversation about birds and bees and the ways life is made, after he learned some wrong things on the playground. (Already!) (I KNOW.) (Recording here for posterity's sake: his notion of all of this came thirdhand via friends about Jack and Rose in the engine room on the Titanic YES REALLY.)

Some days it feels like we are on the brink of a new world, one I am in no rush to get to, yet one I know we can't and shouldn't keep him from.

He is a hard worker and gladly does chores and homework and helps his sisters. He remains one of the most generally compliant kids I have ever known. He loves one on one attention and outings, and is crabby when he feels unseen, and would get lost in internet videos about minecraft, and ship histories, and drawing classes, for hours if we'd let him.

He the moodiest person in our house and also probably the kindest. He is cautious and needs to observe things before he tries them, but once he tries something he keeps pushing until he can do it well; he is driven. He tells funny jokes and horrible ones, is ever better at the cello and ever more tone deaf when he sings, and he writes beautifully.

He is a tiny hoarder of all things sentimental: scraps of paper and drawings and postcards and things other people would consider trash are worth keeping, for him. They get pinned to his bulletin board or stuck in boxes and notebooks, or folded and taped and made into new creations, meshed together with legos and stuffed animals for some world he has dreamed up and decided to build. He is an introvert in the truest sense of the definition: only talks about things important to him, not good at surface level conversation, wants and needs lots of time alone to play and re-charge, and will play happily in his room for long windows of time before emerging to show us what he's been building or working on.

He is a night owl like me, and to wind down in the evenings we usually lie in my bed to read by ourselves together. He is also somehow an early riser, motivated more by the promise of having the house to himself, quiet for breakfast and his favorite youtube channels, than by extra sleep. (He is nothing like me in that way.)

He likes yogurt and candy and hot chocolate and coffee and cheese and crackers and oatmeal and mashed potatoes with gravy. He loves snuggling. He adores his sisters. He texts people the most precious and lovely parts of his heart, things he could or would never say out loud.

He is a wonderful little human, and it's an honor to be his mom, the one who made me a mom, almost eight years ago. Amazing.

Happy December! Or Something?

Hey it's December! And I'm still behind from November so let's take a journey through my phone and see what we have been up to, yes?

{HAAomg sometimes I forget I have a blog. Love, Erin in January.}

Anneliese and I had a lunch date after church. Everyone else was sick and/or crabby, and we wanted ZaxBEE's (that's how we pronounce it, we are just cool like that) and can I just say she is a delightful companion?

I have no idea exactly how this happened, but I walked away for three minutes and walked back... and clearly some toddler achievement has just been unlocked.

I'm not sure what's happening here either, but I'm pretty sure she is posing for her senior year pictures. The awkward, oh how she nails it.

I took Nathan to his school literacy night (and book fair) and he picked out several new things to read: a book of beautiful things people have built from Legos, and a biography about the Wright brothers. Why so opposed to good ol' fiction, bro?

Mark sits down with the girls, any evenings he is home, to watch Daniel. "Watch." I like to joke that Daniel is his unisom. Because... yeah, every time.

I took Ali and Charlotte to the (nicer) grocery store (with the fun carts) and they had a blast driving together. I can't believe Ali is old enough to play like this. Wasn't Charlotte just the baby?

Anneliese got her friend Beatrice a duplicate of her favorite shirt, for a birthday present. Yes, that's a half donut, half rainbow. No, I do not understand it. Yes, it is awesome. Yes, they planned ahead to wear them on the same day. Yes, they delight me.

This is Nathan's DNA bracelet, because of course it is.

Also, NOW that it is December, let's all enjoy some good holiday clothing. With a t-rex on it. Obviously.

We have now reached the "what am I even blogging about?" portion of today's post. The end.

Family Weekend in DC

So, before Anneliese's birthday, we took a little family weekend jaunt to Washington, DC.

why, with the monument and my head, random-passers-by-photographer? why?

Our impetus was twofold:

1- The National Geographic Museum's special rotating exhibit right now is a big thing about spinosaurus, and... yeah. I just realized that sort of explains itself. SPINOSAURUS. So, we knew we wanted to take Nathan to see that this fall.

2- Anneliese has been asking for an American Girl doll for months and months, so we wanted to surprise her and get her one for her birthday. Yes she's a little young, and yes they're too expensive, but she made a giant effort at keeping her room and toys organized to prove that she is a big girl five-year-old who can handle having nice things, and I find zero objectionable anything about American Girl dolls in general (history! dolls! characters! books! they're good toys).  Anyway, the closest store to us (which is more fun than ordering online) is in DC.

So we mapped out the calendar looking for a weekend after the spino exhibit opened, before Anneliese's birthday, and when Mark was actually off work -- and last weekend was it. So we went! It wasn't the most conventional "Washington DC Family Trip" but we had our own goals of stuff to do, and we live close enough that we didn't feel like we had to do All The Important Things this time. So here's what we did:

1.) Rode the Metro a Lot - as far as Nathan and Anneliese are concerned, this IS seeing the sights of DC. That dark tunnel. Right there. Super! Exciting!

2.) National Geographic Museum - Mark and I know DC well, but had never been to this museum. Fun to do something that's new to us too. Also, the look on Nathan's face here, when we saw the spino they had specially installed outside the museum = maybe worth the whole weekend away.

3.) American Girl Doll Store - oh man Anneliese was so sweet wandering through this whole store (we had never been in one! I was overwhelmed) and seeing all the dolls and books and outfits and such. She waffled a while but then settled on Kit, and seems really happy about that, and she was so happy I thought she would burst. It was lovely and special in a way that 5th birthday treats should be, and it was so fun to shop excitedly with her. So, meet Kit, from 1934.

PS I just realized why we can't find Anneliese's orange hoodie anywhere at home. :/

4.) Air & Space Museum at Dulles - another new place for Mark and me! This is an extension of the Smithsonian museum downtown on the mall, and we have heard great things about it for years, but have never gone out to Dulles to see it. We did this time, and we are so glad. It was very cool. Like, the other museum sort of pales in comparison (don't hate me, internet, I still love the original too!) -- it is really hard to overstate the massive numbers of planes housed in this one giant hangar out there. Like, hundreds. HUNDREDS. Including some tough ones (the Enola Gay? Hm I don't want to explain that history to my fascinated child, kthx) and some cool ones (space shuttle!) and everything in between.

There was also a section with a tower where you could go up and see what was happening at Dulles airport, and a small exhibit on radars and air traffic controlling, which Nathan found a little more fascinating than the rest of us, but he was cute. (His favorite lego things to build these days are airplanes; this trip was good timing.)

I will leave you with this oddly fascinating fact from the museum at Dulles: the space shuttle is covered in... thermal blankets.

THAT BEAST WENT TO SPACE COVERED IN QUILTS. That is all.

5.) Air & Space Museum at the Mall - it was the most crowded I had ever seen it, and it was hot inside, and the throngs of people were overwhelming, and also there was an area cleared for salsa dancing lessons, and I don't even know. We hit a few exhibits and climbed in two display planes and Nathan gleefully spent some allowance money at the gift shop, and then we were done. Basically I could not get us out of there fast enough. (And I love that museum! Just, not that day.)

we saw a lot of planes last weekend, y'all

6.) Carousel on the Mall - because obviously. It's close, it's easy, it's fun, it wasn't raining, so yes.

And then we sat and had a funnel cake, and let the kids run around and play, because sometimes unorganized fun is just... necessary.

Walking back to the Metro, Nathan wanted to take some pics with us and the Washington Monument. He clearly has a future in photography.

I mean. Yeah.

7.) Adorable Cosi Dinner - this is DC dining at its finest, right? HA HA HA. But it is a good place with kids, it's tasty and relatively fast and relatively inexpensive, and it ended up being a delightful dinner. The manager thought they were out of stuff for make-at-your-own-table s'mores, but then found more fire, and comped us the whole thing and extra brownies, for no reason at all other than he said we were sweet. SO NICE. It was all lovely. And cozy. (See what I did there?)

8.) Walk Around the Monuments - on Sunday morning we took a walk in a big loop around part of the mall - from the Washington Monument down past the White House and then over to the World War II Memorial.

It was gorgeous and sunny out, and the kids needed some time to run in circles where they wanted, instead of us clutching their hands crossing a million trafficky intersections, so they played in the grass and chased each other and had lots of big talks about being president. They somehow decided it would probably be Charlotte, because she's a lefty (?) and they kept asking her if they could visit when she lived in the White House. Adorable. (She said yes.)

Lying in the grass looking up at the Washington Monument. I totally remember doing this as a kid.

Aaaaaaand that was our weekend. Honestly, one of the best parts might've just been staying in a hotel all together. We had two big beds and a sofabed so it felt big, and who doesn't like hotels, just in general, right?

this is like a vision of my own childhood, right here

The second night wasn't great sleep, but a slumber party in one room was mostly really fun! I like having all my people close. Especially when get all angelic when they sleep.

One Normal Week of Summer. Including Shopping.

Well, here it is. Our first "normal" week of summer. Between camps and work trips and grandparent visits and church trips and road trips and such, every week so far this summer has had something, and this week doesn't, and it has been delightfully uneventful. It is also, incidentally, our last week of summer, and I am trying not to be sad about the fact that it has been so much crazyness that summer kind of happened not the way we wanted it to, but whatever, *brisk clap* this week has been good.

Want some mundane details? (I have been informed life is in the mundane details, and those are sometimes the things most worth remembering, so... say yes.)

Charlotte wore this shirt the other day and proudly proclaimed it her cello shirt! Uhhhh, no, little sister of an orchestra kid, that is a guitar. But nope. She will not be deterred. It is a cello, on her shirt, TELLO ON MAH SHIRT MOMMY. Okkkay then.

Anneliese came home from Lake Wateree with an old toy of Aunt Emily's, a Rainbow Brite sidekick named Puppy Brite, and she luuuuuurves him. This thing's tag says 1983 y'all! She has a like-new toy from 1983! But it is covered in rainbows and comes from her favorite 80s DVD set (yes we have the DVDs) and I will never sway her from this love, because it's adorable, and Rainbow Brite kicks ass. I'm glad she likes her. Also Puppy Brite, who is tackydorable and very Anneliese. I'm glad Emily was apparently never very attached to this thing! (Yet they somehow kept it anyway?)

Charlotte has been working hard on her pottying. Sometimes that means you need a quick break from the pool to poop with your goggles on. Wait is this the stuff we are supposed to, or we're not supposed to put on the internet for fear of embarrassing our kids? I can't remember.

Ali is doing just great, y'all. After a hard June/July, a few weeks away (for me), a new dairy-free diet (for Barbara), she is a sweet easy girl to have around, and I so love our morning snuggles while she drinks her milk and I drink my coffee and she grins at me and we both are secretly thinking thoughts along the lines of sweet nectar from heaven. Sometimes aunt life is just the best.

Daniel Tiger (who is not in our family but might as well be) has a baby sister! Even Nathan, who sometimes says he doesn't love Daniel that  much anymore because it is for babies (let the record show he is still obsessed with Thomas the Train, so....) was super excited for the new baby episode. And I don't have any shame in saying I cried and cried when that baby tiger was born. At a cartoon! For kids! I don't care, I love them. (My children were as riveted by this as they have been about anything on tv in a long time, which is probably why I love it too, and oh I don't care the reasons I just love that Tiger family.)

I did some back to school shopping with Nathan yesterday (I also got a slew of things for the girls last week when we were out of town), and he wanted to eat at K&W, which we did last year in a learning-to-use-a-cafeteria event, and he now apparently thinks is an every-year-school-shopping-day event, and he loved it and thought it was special, so I did too. He ate baked spaghetti, mashed potatoes, and blue jello, and if that's not a lunch of champions I don't know what is.

We also tried on lots of clothes for him, and he talked me into these brownish odd khaki-colored pants (he says they are the color of a train named Diesel 10) (see? Thomas obsessed) and also these lime shorts which he wants to wear for his first day of school. I have no idea what he will wear them with. I wanted him to pick a shirt for the first day of school, but he loves these shorts, so the shorts are what's happening. (I both love and hate shopping with him.) (Mostly love.) (And I do like the shorts! I do! Not that shirt with them though.)

Also yes I bought him a full-caffeine coke icee because back to school shopping makes me super indulgent, apparently.

Also look at his back to school supplies! Who doesn't freaking LOVE back to school supplies??

Anyway it's weird to me that he is starting second grade next week. (Wait, let me say it again so it sinks in properly: SECOND GRADE.) Weird because he is clearly still a tiny baby who was just born, who still sometimes falls asleep in my bed snuggling his tiger that used to live in his crib, and his stuffed Rex that has been his special animal for years.

(And also a sperm whale, naturally.)

How is this tiny baby going to SECOND GRADE??? Stay tuned for more sappiness next week when school actually starts okay? Okay.

Also, apropos of nothing, I still have wavy hair, which seems like I think I need to keep the internet updated about now (vain, what) and a fantastic new scarf full of my most favorite colors, from my most bestest friend, and those are things that make not-fun mornings way better. And also coffee.

And this is what my summer should have been like, all along. But at least there's this week.

Due Date Update - Nathan at Almost Seven

Yes, yes, you read that blog title correctly. It has been seven years, and I still remember/love/hate/notice due dates as much as I did when my babies were still quietly kicking away inside me. And it remains a good time for updates, so here's what's up with Nathan these days:

He is very bright. His love and obsession surrounding dinosaurs has branched out to other kinds of science and animal kingdom factoids, with a special fondness for whales and other animals that are as old as his favorite dinos. (We are very very into sperm whales in particular, these days. Did you know that sperm whales live in every ocean of the world? Did you know that they are the most fascinating kind of whale? Because they have about ten fascinating things about them and other whales have only about four or five.) (That is basically a direct quote.)

He is also newly re-interested in the friend cars, especially the second movie, which is totally not as good but does have cars from around the world and he likes to ask questions about different countries and their flags and languages and such. I remember sometime when I was a kid, going through a phase where I wanted to look up flags of the world in the encyclopedia (adorable right? you know that flag page was the best! it was!) and it seems so unreal to me that my own tiny baby is old enough to show his own interest in that kind of thing. It seems like such... big kid territory. I don't know.

Relatedly, he has learned that he can type almost anything into the YouTube search box and watch a video on it. Which could be dangerous for some kids but little adorkable Nathan is just high on documentaries about dinosaurs and whales and how trains are made, and African animals, and really boring (he denies it, but it is true) people who collect and show Disney and Pixar toys, which basically numbs my brain but he would watch forever if we'd let him. These are also the kinds of things he wants to read about. I have to really talk him into reading stories. He would much rather read fun! fact! type things, which... I mean, okay? Not what I would read (Ramona! Buddy! Get on board! That is good stuff!) but he is his own little creature and I like that he likes what he likes, yknow?

He is still a little on the small side, just below average on the growth charts for his age, but tiny next to his peers, considering he is one of the youngest for his year, and there are many (many) kids who red-shirted kindergarten and are more than a year older than he is. All of which is fine, he doesn't seem to mind, and Mark was always the tiny one in his class growing up, so they can bond over it. And maybe next year his feet will actually touch the floor when he plays his cello! One can hope!

He still loves playing with legos and trains and he loves doing choir and orchestra, and he is a braver and braver swimmer. He is a fast runner and loves to be outside. He seems to be somewhat outgrowing his need to "look cute" (or his definition of that has changed) and most of the time he wanders around in gym shorts and no shirt and no shoes. We keep it rull classy around here.

He remains a pretty sensitive kid, easily offended and hurt (and then crabby about it), but also quick with a kind word or note for people he loves. He is so. much. moodier. than he was a year ago, and I hear that seven will bring even more 'tude, so I am trying to brace myself, and also feel ready to just roll with it. He loves his sisters fiercely, and stays very glued to Anneliese's hip. They have sleepovers in each other's rooms every Friday night (I guess Charlotte will join them when she is potty trained?) and although there are times it pains me to see Charlotte struggle to keep up with them and be included (which is a post for another day, maybe), I would never ever begrudge those two their closeness and attachment to each other. I think Anneliese has maybe been the most important person in Nathan's life since the day she came home from the hospital, and still is.  I could do with less bickering most days, but he is just such a good big brother that is hard for me to remember a day when his life didn't include that role. Weird.

As I am writing this, he is reading over my shoulder and wants me to also say that his YouTube videos are definitely not boring.

So there's that.

Happy due date, sweet Nathan! Almost seven!

Eleven Questions

Okay apparently we are being meme-y on the internet this week and I am not complaining because these things are fun to read, fun to write, and easy on mah brain. Elizabeth tagged me. So. Here goes.

1. What is your favorite type of cheese? I have no real feelings about cheese. Maybe... any cheese that is not smoked? And preferably melted. For to dip things like chips.

2. What are you excited about? Hmmm I... don't know, actually. Sad. I have spent the last few weeks so filled with nerves and dread and worry that I don't think I have been looking forward to anything. Let's remedy that now! *brisk clap* Okay, I think I am excited about summer, at least the kids being home from school part. (I miss them.) I am alllllmost excited about my new iPhone coming this week. (I have never owned an Apple product, and now I will. I don't even know who I am anymore.) And I might get to go on a road trip in August to the midwest which will be weird but also fun and I could totally get it up to feel excited about that. Oh! Oh! And we are taking a day trip to the beach on Monday! Okay I just hit legit excitement. Good talk.

3. How did you celebrate your last birthday? What awesome thing has your dad done this week? (I think I answered the birthday thing in the New Year survey, so I changed the question, don't mind if I do.) Y'all! My dad is retiring from teaching! Teaching, which was a late-ish-in-life career change for him (when I was a senior in high school), after many years (and several master's degrees) in corporate America, which was after several years in the military, and anyway it turns out he is pretty awesome teacher, and has been for almost twenty years now. And he is retiring and his kids and colleagues love and respect him, and we do too. We are super crazy proud of his work and (warning: cheesy ahead) the difference it makes. You should watch this sweet and funny video some of his students made for/about him. Love it.

4. What is on your bedside table? A lamp I used to love and now find incredibly ugly, an alarm clock blinking the wrong time, a booklight, a baby monitor whose mate was abandoned months ago in Charlotte's room, a bottle of gatorade, and all these books. (I am currently reading all of these, save one I haven't started yet. Yes really. I tend to read one novel at a time, and nonfiction type stuff a chapter at a time, rotating through each of them once a week or so. I don't know why. Now that I am trying to explain why I have all these books on my nightstand it doesn't seem like a very good system.)

I am also reading another but I took it off the nightstand before I took this pic because some shiz is private from Some People Reading) (not to you, you can ask and I will gladly tell you).

NOT on my nightstand: my glasses. Even though they should be. I can't find them, again, story of my life, whatever.

5. What do you order from the movie theater concession stand? Small popcorn and the largest size of diet coke (for to share!) because only the largest size gets refills, and I want the option for the refill, even though I never actually get it refilled.

6. Do you have a garden? What’s growing? I have some flowers in some boxes on the deck, planted by the previous owners. (They couldn't pay their mortgage and a third of the house was termite-destroyed, but sure! Keep the flowers alive!) Other than that, I do not garden. Although, Nathan wants to plant some dinosaur garden this summer, some something about prehistoric plants that would have grown when dinos roamed? I might humor him on that. He put it on the summer bucket list! It is now sacred!

7. Any summer plans? Well, the dinosaur garden, apparently. Especially now that I have told the internet about it, I have to. Also learning to get into a rhythm with Ali. Also sitting by my pool and reading, hopefully a lot. Also, a week at Montreat with Nathan again for youth conferences. Also, probably more crying than in some other summers. Just putting that out there.

8. Which TV couple(s) are you rooting for? Julia and Joel. (And, in case we never get to see them again, I will put my emotional cheering into Mindy and Danny instead.)

9. What’s the last thing you bought? I can't remember, so I will go out on a limb and say... something from Starbucks? (Oh wait! The new iPhones. I bought those today.) If I wait til tomorrow to post this, I can maybe say new jeans. I think I might need to make a jeans purchazzie tomorrow, because none of my pants fit, because mono. (Not that I recommend the mono diet. I stridently dis-recommend the mono diet.) Hmm I should take a picture like in a diet ad. Should I do it?

(I did it.)

10. What’s one thing you are passionate about? I feel like I always answer this type of question about apostrophe usage, but that is mostly a joke. (Not really. I am dead serious about it.) But also, I think: inclusive language. I am more and more bothered/ranty/willing to fight about how we talk about things, especially in terms of privilege, and propagating stigma. I know that all sounds like a bunch of nothing but I don't have it in me to be more articulate about it right now. Friday! Lazy! Language! Passion! Something!

11. What are you grateful for this week? My awesome Marky who lets me be as chatty or as quiet as I need to be, always. Another Nathan who makes time for me and our creature-of-habit habits, even when his own life gets crazy. My sister who is always in my phone and understands me. My minivan. My guest house fridge full of gatorade. And warm spring weather that is freaking gorgeous. Oh! And a pool to sit beside in said weather.

The rules say I must now tag eleven bloggers: Emily, whose answers to these things always crack me up. Arwen, who hasn't blogged in too long for my taste. Elsha, who (apparently) already knew I would tag her. And Emu, who can use this bloggity survey to kill time while she is in labor any day now.

A Saturday

A bird flew into the house right as I sat down to write this post! But then like three seconds after I tweeted about it (and screamed like a little girl) (birds are gross), it flew right back out. So basically that was way less of an adventure than what just flashed before my eyes in a fit of dread.

Also I have officially closed the deck door.

In less exciting news, what I was going to type into this little blog box before nature invaded my space, was this snippet I overheard at the lunch table earlier: "Daddy, guess what's my favorite sauropod that starts with A? No, no, it's not apatosaurus, that's my third favorite." So in case you're curious where we are on the dinosaur thing these days, we're THERE. (Do I laugh or cry?)

Anyway, Mark and Another Nathan are at a movie this afternoon, so I thought this would be a good day to make a chocolate buttermilk cake (WITH COKE IN IT), because why not? Cake is good. This is from Maggie's favorite cookbook ChocolateChocolate, and the best part of how Maggie sent the recipe was the part of the email where she said HAAAA SIFTING! because apparently she and I are the same about that, and yeah nope. I sifted one scoopful, waited to care, still didn't, and sifted no more. It is my way.)

But look how fun baking is with new colorful measuring spoons! Everything good is always better in fun colors. That's my motto. Just go with it.

So basically I messed up in several ways (mostly the frosting, because I carelessly mis-measured, didn't have enough ingredients to fix it, and then compensated for that all wrong (you all want to bake with me now, right?) but it is still delicious! So good! I recommend this cake.

(You put the icing on right out of the oven when the cake is still hot, and apparently my family could not wait til it had cooled, hence the mess. But! Still good!)

*******

End of the day finishing-this-post update: I feel blah and tired, but we played outside, and the cake is still good, and by the time we did showers, Anneliese had bug spray, ketchup, bubbles, and play doh in her hair. Getting that mess detangled caused a sh!tshow of crying we better not re-enact this year, or ever.

Also, I found this picture of Charlotte taking an adorable nap in our bed. I have no idea when Mark took this, and she is doing no such thing now, so let's just pretend, shall we? Okay.