Tales of a Shoebox Princess

This morning I went for a walk with Hayley. It was surprisingly easy to get her to come with me. All I had to do was yell down the stairs, "Who wants to go on a walk with me?" It wasn't a very vigorous walk since both of us had our electronic devices with us. I took flower pictures and Hayley looked up geeky meme funnies. She didn't complain once or whine in any way. The only disturbing thing she said on the whole walk was "Mom you have a bug on your back." She didn't even laugh as I flailed and shuddered while trying to remove it. Aside from the bug, it was a nice walk. Here are some of my flower pictures. And a shoe picture. You'll have to guess whose shoes are whose.

Sometimes I forget how nice it is to leave the house and go on little excursions. It is really hard to leave the house sometimes when I'm not working. I get stuck in a rut and think that I have to do "this" or "that" first before I leave and then if I finish "this" and "that" then I'm too tired to go anywhere. But somehow today, Jim and I left the house. 50% of the children we coerced into going with us didn't really want to go, but in the end, the child was pleasant and didn't fuss too much. It helped that we promised ice cream. We went to a little gem of a park in Minneapolis--Minnehaha Falls. With all the rain, it is greener than I have ever seen it into late June, and the creek was running at high capacity. Minnehaha Creek I've never seen it this full. I've been here a couple times, both during drought years when there has been but a trickle and a stinky smell. Not this year--it was lovely and refreshing....

Scout camp looks fun. Jim took a few pictures during his short stay at Many Point with Matt, and I wish YW camp when I was a teenager was more like scout camp. In fact, I wish YW camp NOW was more like scout camp. Matt makes his wilderness survival shelter He has to sleep in this shelter for one night.  Granted, I might not want to sleep out in a shelter I made myself unless I was able to make it spider-proof, but I would love to have had to MAKE a shelter at camp. Sticks and I got along pretty well when I was a kid. My mom always said kids don't need toys, all they need are sticks and dirt and they'll have plenty of fun. Matt gets ready to kayak I suppose I didn't need scout camp to tool around on a lake in a small paddle-powered watercraft. Julie, Jenni and I went out in mom's canoe on Lake Minnewashta plenty of times so I do feel I fulfilled the "spend time paddling around a body of water" aspect of scouting. There are more adventures to ...

Yesterday, Friday, I was off work and decided that Matt and I needed an adventure out of the house. The weather was pleasant and we had no obligations to keep up home. I decided it was time to look for something in Savage called Boiling Springs. I had looked for it once before, without success. The first time, I gave up after about 15 minutes of following a trail because I had flip flops on and, from wearing such idiotic footwear, I hurt my left foot so bad that it took a good three months for me to be able to go on walks. (My foot still hurts a little every so often, especially when I walk. Never wear flip flops. They are miserable excuses for footwear.) So I never found the so-called Boiling Springs. I had looked up Savage Boiling Springs on Google, but there was little said about it, and nothing on the precise location and trail one would take to get there. The websites I consulted gave a general location and terse description, terse enough to make me want to fill it out with pe...

Last week I came home from shopping one weeknight and Jim told me that there had been a huge moth on the deck. He added that it might be there still. I dropped everything and went out to have a look. Lucky for me, the moth was still on our deck. I sat and looked at it for a while, and then went for my camera. Look at the legs on that thing. The legs seem tarantula-like The undercarriage, or as close as I dared to get to underneath it without scaring it It's a polyphemus moth. That's Paul's hand as a comparison. Paul got close enough to pet the furry patch on the body, although the moth didn't like that very much and jumped back a few inches--but didn't fly away. What a pretty insect! The moth just sat there for a few hours. It was gone the next morning. I wonder where it went. I would have liked to see it fly.

After the convention mixer on Friday night, Jim and I stayed overnight in Sioux Falls. Our kids are growing up and Paul was more than capable of being the man of the house for one night while we were away.  We didn't have to hurry home anymore than we had to hurry there. We met Jen and Mike for breakfast at the hotel in the morning. They were able to stay overnight because they have a compound apprentice (niece Morgan) on site for a bit and were able to utilize her as a babysitter. We drove up to see the Compound and have lunch with the Hawleys and Ms Smith. Since I was there last, Mike has added a calf, two pigs, several dozen pheasants, some guinea hens and a couple of barn cats. I had to see the new additions. I can't get enough of Mike's birds, and these pheasant babies are no exception. I had to dip my hand in the vat of peeping chicks and grab a couple. They are so cute. This is a post Morgan helped install. She dug the hole and helped insert the pole i...

I just got back from a refreshing walk. The sun was shining, a brisk breeze kept me from getting too hot, and butterflies and baby geese provided little moments of "Squeeee!"  And no icky insects flew down my throat--always a plus on any walk.  And I stayed on the cement at all times so hopefully no ticks were able to hitch a ride on any part of my clothing or body. Paul's running updates: Latest meet, he ran personal bests in both the 3200m and the 1600m, 10:14 and 4:34 respectively. He has 10 days off until his next meet. He doesn't have many more after that. He also is done working in 2 weeks. He graduates in less than a month. He leaves in a month and two days. It is too weird a concept to comprehend.  Must take more sunshiney walks to compensate for mind-blowiness of Paul growing up.

Matt and Hayley have been working hard on new projects. One kid did it for a school assignment, the other is ignoring school assignments to work on her own personal idea. Remember the post I wrote about Matt looking for bugs for an insect collection? He finally finished it (a week early, so technically he could still find some more bugs and add to his collection, but he was tired of all the killing). Yay! I am done forever with dealing with kids who need to collect, kill, pin, and label insects! Here is Matt with his assortment of insects: He didn't go much for decoration and layout; he just wanted to get the buggers pinned and labeled. Personally, I am proud of two of the insects. If you looked very closely at the picture above (with a microscope), you would see my name on two of the labels signifying that I caught them. I will have no one think I am a pansy when it comes to bugs (spiders are a different story completely because they are murderous beasts with only one thoug...

I have very limited time today because a) I'm teaching seminary in less than an hour, b) then I have to go to work, c) and make one more lasagna for the d) pasta dinner tonight that we are hosting here and my house and e) I have to still bake the 6 lasagnas that I made yesterday and f ) cut up several pineapples snf g) clean this messy house AND 7) I teach seminary tomorrow too. So time...not so much of it to be found around here (I might have left some extra time under the bed or something. I hope I can get my hands on it). But I have these pictures of the fall drive Jim and I took last Saturday and I like them and want to put them up on my cyber wall to show everybody. On our trip, we took a few minutes to explore a burned out restaurant. We wondered when it burned, and wondered why. After the burned out restaurant, I went closer to the beach (we were driving around Lake Mille Lacs) and snooped around an abandoned shack. while Jim strolled on the beach.  Then we dro...

Yes, it's just a piece of nonsense. But I do hear hints of red, yellow, and orange in the breeze. Fall is coming, and I am eagerly waiting for a Saturday drive through the leaves of Minnesota. With my camera, and with Jim, of course. Speaking of Jim, he and Other Jim are at a Twins' game. One of the last games of the season. They left without tickets, but with every confidence that there will be good seats available from scalpers or even the ticket office, if necessary. The Twins are bad, with a capital B, this year. It's a father/son outing. It would have been a father/son/mother outing, but somebody's gotta work. And it ain't the cats. Or maybe I wasn't invited. Oh well. I'll heat up some water for hot cocoa and sit at my desk and putter while I watch the yellowing going on outside my window. I am currently on a break from work. The boss, with a capital B, is out of town, and there are few matters for me to deal with so I gave myself a 2 hour bre...

I have no title for this post because I haven't thought about what I'm going to write. I guess I'll start off with a big ol' hug 'n thanks to Jim. Not my Jim; his dad. Hugs for coming out all this way to visit us. Hugs for enduring getting in and out of cars, Hugs for not pointing out my lack of organization and lack of attention to household matters. Hugs for coming to Paul's race.  And thanks for the candy. It didn't last long. Also last weekend, and completely unrelated to the visit from Granddaddy, we learned that there exists a parasite that lives in grasshoppers and they emerge when the grasshopper dies. Matt was dismayed this past weekend when he opened his container of dead insects for his insect collection and found two long writhing whitish worm-like creatures where there had previously been none. He was even a little panicky. "Mom, there's something in my bug jar," he said with an uncharacteristic complete lack of humor in his ...

The dreaded 7th grade science project known as the insect collection is upon us for the last time. Matt came home from school yesterday moaning that he has to collect bugs. I don't know why he's moaning about it; he loves bugs and fiddling around in the grass, which are two main components of collecting insects. I guess doing it for fun is one thing, but being graded on what is normally something you do for fun kind of makes it a chore. Anyway, he made a makeshift butterfly net out of an old pillowcase and a hanger. He attached the pillowcase by stapling it around the end of the hanger. It seems to be functional. We went out for an evening walk, he and I, with the intent to do bodily harm to several insect orders. Some pictures please, maestro? you say? (dunno why I'm calling myself "maestro" other than I was called "muestra" in seminary today. I like to think it means teacher) I can provide pictures, for I was not without my camera on my walk. I...