Family Camp

Once again Camp DuNord exceeded all expectations. Eli thinks it was his best week at DuNord ever, and he does capitalize on the offerings, completing the polar bear swim, nature notes, triathlon, soccer, counselor hunt, and all of the age-group activities. If DuNord offers it, he does it. Here are some photo highlights:

This was our home for the week. It's the perfect combination of roughing it and living in comfort. We get to sleep in beds but spend all day, everyday, outside. This year we ate lunches in the dining hall but cooked breakfast and dinner at the campsite.


This was the family taco night buffet. All three families gatered at our cooking shelter and we had many a delightful burrito, or taco, or fajita, or whatever you wanted. The last shot is of Eli with the grand finale dessert: Banana boats. There were those among us who did not go for the mushy banana treat that is cooked in the coals. But the rest raved.

Once again, we had fun with fire. The boys introduced the new art of pie-maker leaf cooking this year. They had little creations percolating at all hours of the day and night. They spent the week running from campfire to campfire, tossing in 'fireworks' (dry pine branches) and generally getting dangerously close to the flames.




The best part of the week is undoubtedly the time spent outside with my lovely boys and the fabulous NeskeMoen and Nielsen families.

Jon's "Strip Down to Your Skivvies" Hair Salon

They let Jon take the razor to their heads. After a little resistance of course. And after stripping down to their skivvies.

Old Max

He's one and couldn't be more loved. The cousins think he is da bomb, as Amy would say.

Bounty

We transplanted some raspberries from Rollie and Sherry about 3 years ago. Each summer since then we have been able to harvest about a cup of berries each morning for a few weeks in July. Enough to enjoy on our breakfast cereal. This year was a bit different. We were overrun. I even got a little panicky about it because it was hard to keep up! But we enlisted several neighbors and friends to help and things are back under control. Recently it has all slowed down back to the cup-a-day, but our freezer is entirely full. Theo raids it daily to make one of his world famous smoothies. Come over some day and have him make you one!

Ciao-Ciao Wars

Both boys are currently otherwise occupied so I thought I'd take the time to update this old blog. I just uploaded some pictures from the camera and realized that I have been remiss is documenting a few things. The first and foremost is to record the last (but not final) battle in the ciao-ciao wars. Eli started this with his kindergarten teacher back in 2005. He and Mary (the teacher) have this thing where they shout 'ciao ciao!' at each other when they see each other at the end of the day. Who ever gets the loudest or last or boldest ciao ciao wins that round. The rules seem to change. Anyway, Eli moved on from kindergarten but the wars continued. Then Theo landed in her class this past year and it all intensified. But Mary got the final victory of the year with a piece of brilliant military tactics. On the very last day of school she came prepared with two secret little signs she had taped to rulers. She was so excited about her plans that she had to let me in on them. During her prep that day she took off from Expo at a run, signs in hand. She plunged them into our front yard and then returned to finish off the day with Theo. At the end of the day, in a driving rainstorm, we walked home. Eli was weeping about the end of a great two years with his teacher Ulla, and Theo was thinking about being sad. Then we got to the front yard and they saw the signs. Eli approaced cautiously and when he saw what they said he jumped back like he had been burned. But a smile cracked through the tears and he admitted that Mary had really gotten them. They do have a very sinister plan to get back at her and I have to say it is a good one.

Horse Man

A while back Eli and I happened to be walking past Horace Mann school, where a couple of Eli's friends attend. He saw the sign and said, "OH!!! Horace Mann! I always thought people were calling this school 'horse man' and I have always wondered why they just didn't call it 'Centaur' instead! I mean, it is shorter." I love that everytime Eli heard the name of the school he pictured a half man/half horse and wondered why in the heck they had gone with the pedestrian name, Horse Man, instead of the real, proper, title.

A watched caterpillar never chrysalizes

But it did! It did! Our two caterpillars (one who continued to try to escape) have been hanging in the J all day and I have been doing periodic checks to see if we could catch one of going into a chrysalis, and we actually caught one! Eli, Theo, Eli's pal Sam, and I all pressed our faces up to the screening of the cage and watched it writhe and spin and pop its skin off. After it was done, I think Sam summed it up when he said, "Gretchen, if you see the other one start to do its skin popping thing, maybe you shouldn't call me down." That's how I felt. It was amazing and cool and nauseating. And the whole time I thought it was going to lose its purchase on the bottom of the leaf and plummet to its death and we would be watching. But it didn't. I'm off to watch out for number two. And I am calling Sam down.

Looking forward to DuNord

I told Eli and Theo this am that we are leaving for DuNord in just over a week. Eli quickly exclaimed, "Great!! I love DuNord!! I especially love it when we get there after that long long drive and you get out of the car and you stretch and you think, ah, I'm here for a week!" I'm so tickled that they are so excited this year. I was also asking Eli about his week at Daycroix that just finished up. I asked him which of his friends did he think had the best time out there. He thought about it for quite a while and then asked, "Well, can it be me?" He's become a Y camper and I couldn't be happier.

The things they say

Theo is apparently allergic to everything that grows in the summer. He's wheezing so badly and so regularly right now that I swear I am living with Darth Vadar. It is a bit unsettling to have Darth Vadar come into your bed at night when he can't sleep- the dreams get weird. Anyway- we have him on a quite a lot of drugs and it boosts his activity level to way past hyper. By 6:30 this morning he was literally bouncing off the walls. Luckily it is a beautiful summer day and I can put him outside. The drugs don't seem to be doing much for the wheezing, and he keeps ramping up his activity level and sleeping less and less as he coughs more and more. It harkens me back to when he had a super high fever and I thought to myself, "This is not going to end well." That episode ended with a very theatrical seizure. This episode seems to be headed toward more dramatics. Earlier today he came into where I was working and said, "Mom, do you know where the marbles are?" I told him to look in the chinese checkers game. His response, "But I already looked in there!!!" Then he collapsed, crying, and yelled, "Oh....I've lost my marbles." I agreed, but I was talking different marbles.

Made my day

On Monday I was slogging through Cub with my boys- usually I make the grocery store run without them, and they easily manipulated me into buying many things I should not have been buying- when we came around the corner and saw Mr. Hinkle, their science teacher at Expo. He looked up and saw Eli and Theo and said, "Hey, I was just thinking about you guys the other day." I asked, "And all the trouble they cause???" and he replied, "No, about all the light they shine." Wow. Great guy. Great kids.