Molly helps Austin workout

Molly is definitely Daddy's girl, at least lately. On Monday she was so much more content sitting in a stroller watching Austin workout than having my undivided attention inside. Austin took her interest in stride and let her help him pull the sled with weights on it.

Visiting the Salt Mines

Austin and I went to Williamsburg for a night away from the kids (thanks Helen and David!).  We didn’t actually go into any of the Colonial Williamsburg buildings, but enjoyed walking around the town, and even stumbled upon a glorious Christmas concert at the Bruton Parish Church.  Since we were late, we got the only seats left—front row! 

One of the highlights was getting to visit a salt spa the next day.  Basically, it’s a room with 15 tons of salt making up the walls and the floor, simulating a salt cave.  You sit in chairs in the cave, and it’s supposed to purify the lungs and help all these respiratory ailments.  Apparently the idea originated from the Polish salt mines in the 19th century—all the miners were so remarkably healthy that a doctor started examining why. 

I’m not sure one session has cured Austin’s asthma or my allergies but we definitely emerged feeling very relaxed and refreshed.  I highly recommend visiting a salt spa if you have the opportunity!

Garden of Eden

A month ago our garden looked impressive, but we weren't actually doing a lot of eating from it. The bounty arrived a couple weeks ago, and we are striving to keep up. Austin is an amazing, devoted gardener and Tucker is his little apprentice. Tucker can't help himself but spend his days in the garden. Every opportunity he is out there checking for raspberries and corn and cucumbers.
Amazing corn...

Next year we'll do bush beans so it's easier for Tucker to pick

Raspberries and blackberries are threatening to take over the world!

We planted lettuce in a pot on the north side of the house this year so we can have some even when it is really hot--we need to do more next year because it worked!

I love winter squash!

Good thing we have a whole field of it!!!

These are our cukes starting to climb a trellis (we succession planted them after the sugar snap peas).

LOTS of tomatoes. I think I have some canning to do! We are especially loving the Roma tomatoes.

We actually have peppers this year!

Tomatoes and blackberries from today...


Tomatoes from yesterday (plus the pot of tomato soup I made in the fridge!)


Carrots galore!


My gardening efforts with the flowers are so sad compared to Austin's green thumb in the vegetable garden. But then again, my "efforts" are just about nonexistent!

Heat Wave

It's hot here today. The heat index was supposed to be 118 degrees because of the unprecedented humidity (and this is Virginia, it's always humid here), though the actual temperature was "only" in the low 100s.

What I really want to say, though, is that my beloved husband is crazy. He worked out today, outside, lifting weights, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The temperature in the weight shed? 107 degrees. Really? Who does that?

"Cute Little Fella"

-Austin, talking about the four inch gecko/salamander-esque lizard that has gotten into our house.

I don't appreciate lizards inside my house. Let's rephrase that a little more accurately: I hate lizards in my house. But Austin has a point, and here's why:

I was downstairs on my computer last week and I heard Austin say "Oh, crap!" as he went up the stairs. Since he didn't call for me, I stayed put, wondering what was going on (if it was something about the kids, I was pretty sure he would've called for me). I heard a small racket for about thirty seconds and then he rushed down the stairs and outside.

At this point I got up to determine whether Austin was doing some sort of home improvement project and had severely injured himself. Instead, I found him coming back in with a bath mat, looking a little sheepish. Apparently, it was crossing his mind not to mention to his wife that he had just pinned a medium-sized black snake down in the upstairs hallway with the Swiffer, and then captured it and took it outside with the bath mat.

So, there you have it, the gecko (or whatever it is) is a lot cuter than a three foot long rat snake.

P.S. We suspect that the snake got into our attic by climbing the big trees that hang over our roof, and dropping onto the roof. It's anyone's guess how it got into the living space, but I am insisting that we get that investigated by a pest control somebody in the very near future.

And yes, we are

Playing songs for Jesus

A couple weekends ago, Tucker and Austin had man time while Molly and I went to the gym. First he helped Austin go pick up firewood from a friend, but it was really cold and even the manliest men need time to warm up. Once inside, Tucker decided that they were going to play church together. When I came home, Tucker was playing "hymns" on the piano, had collected assorted implements for the altar (the dining room table), and was making Austin kneel on the prayer kneeler I made Austin for Christmas.

Unfortunately, Molly was sleeping so their service got nixed as the piano is right outside Molly's door. Tucker was bereft, and so Austin got his guitar from storage and Tucker found his recorder and the two of them played songs for Jesus.

He's wrapped around her little finger already. Literally.

Molly has her daddy wrapped around her little finger, or at least the cord of his sweatshirt. No sense in letting some good attention get away from her!

Look at my new tricks! I can sit in a Boppy seat and bounce in a doorway jumper... sort of, until I decide it's more fun to lean over and suck on the side of the seat.

Benedict the Yellow wins it all

My fantasy football team, Benedict the Yellow, pulled through a tough match up last night to win our league for the season. Thank you. I know, it was an impressive performance, probably made possible by the imposing picture of Ben that I have as my team's icon on Yahoo.

What I really want to talk about with this post, though, is my husband and fantasy football. I have been merciful all season long, choosing not to blog about the truly ridiculous things Austin says about it. But as the newly crowned winner of our fantasy football league, I think it's time for that to change.

In fantasy football, there is something called "smack talk" in which you apparently try to impersonate an ego-inflated NFL player and post insulting comments for all your other friends in the league. I am pretty sure this is Austin's favorite part of fantasy football, or at least the part that he is best at.

Here are some of his smack talk season highlights:

"John, does he have compromising pictures of you or something? How could you lose to someone who started 2 people who didn't even play?"

"No playoffs for you, husky rusky."

"Fantasy football is not supposed to bring a marriage together." (This he actually told me in bed one night instead of posting it on the league message board.)

"8-2, son." (In response to someone pointing out that he had just gotten lucky being in first place at that point as his actual number of points scored was 6th out of 8 in the league.)

"You better worry about even making the playoffs first. On an unrelated note, did everyone see that i already clinched a spot?"

When a good friend failed to make the playoffs like Austin did (top 4 spots) he rubbed it in, saying, "Great job on securing the 5th seed in the playoffs. I look forward to playing you. . ."

And of course today he tried to rob me of my hard earned victory, saying, "I taught her everything she knows." That is, of course, blatantly false--he's so competitive he has not offered me a word of help all season long!

But the very worst thing he said all season was the week we had Molly and we happened to play each other. While we were in the hospital his friend posted "what are the ethics about beating a women about to have your baby? Should you throw the game? Just a thought." Austin replied, "if she had bore me a son, I would have let her win."

Now do you see what I live with???!!! :)

Of course, the one redeeming factor of Austin's ridiculous bravado is that everyone in the league was glad when I soundly stomped him last week and went on to win it all this week. After all, they figured, who better to rub his loss in but me?

Football

This video is of Tucker trying to change the channel on the TV so he could watch football... on Monday at 6 pm. He has become convinced that if he holds the remote to the VCR pointed at the TV and chants "football" that football will come on. This crazy belief has nothing to do with his father's tendency to secretly hold the remote that changes the channel and change the channel back to football when Tucker does his football/remote chant....

Quote of the weekend

"Daddy, can I kiss your toes?"
-Tucker

This weekend Tucker was suffering from a severe case of I-love-Daddy, needing to follow Austin everywhere and help him with everything he did. It culminated yesterday afternoon with Austin reading the paper in the recliner and Tucker playing by his feet, offering to help him rock in the recliner, and yes, to kiss Austin's toes (did he get this idea because they were up in the air on the recliner???)

Bricks are heavy

Helen and David ripped up the bricks in their driveway and put in a nice new concrete one, freeing up more than 300 square feet of bricks. We've been thinking of making a patio, and decided the trip to Annapolis was worth the offer of free bricks.

So to celebrate Father's Day we rented a trailer and loaded it with 5000 lbs of bricks to take home. Austin and David managed to encase the bricks on the flatbed trailer with an impressive wooden box of sorts. Besides having to load 1000 bricks in the 95 degree heat on Saturday, the job wasn't too bad... until we hit the road on Father's day.

Thankfully we got an early start so there weren't a ton of cars on the highway when the trailer started violently swaying, shaking the truck. Thankfully Austin was able to remain in control of the truck and maneuver it gingerly over to the side of the road without any damage to any of us or the equipment. We were only about half an hour outside of Annapolis so we turned around and limped back to town on back roads, sick to our stomachs, hoping the trailer wouldn't try to turn us all over again. (It didn't.)

We weren't sure whether we would have to unload all the bricks back into the garage and leave for home with the trailer unloaded, or if we had other options. Thankfully, Austin was able to reach his boss and an excavator they work with who both routinely pull and load heavy trailers, who advised us to shift the weight on the trailer to get more tongue weight on the truck, and to shift some of the bricks to the back of the truck.

After two hours of agonizing in the 95 degree heat and the sun playing stack the bricks again, we hit the road again... this time, the back road back to our house so we wouldn't need to drive at highway speeds and could make a quick pull-off if necessary. It turned out not to be necessary, thankfully. It was a long, slow trip home (Austin is proud to say we passed two vehicles that were going slower than us, the whole four and half hour trip!). And then when we got home we had 5000 lbs of bricks to unload (which takes a little more than an hour and a half in 90 degree heat with two people working).

In case you were wondering, I'm not sure this was Austin's idea of a relaxing Father's Day.

Like Father, Like Son

When we came home from working out on Saturday morning, Austin was mowing the lawn for the first time this season. Tucker immediately entered a lawn mowing frenzy and ran off to get the necessary equipment, which included finding both ear protection and a dust mask (the pollen is really bad right now) so that he could be exactly like his daddy. He proceeded to mow the hill with Austin, who admitted later he was trying to figure out a way to hand off the real 54" commercial mower to his son because Tucker is a much more enthusiastic lawn mower than Austin is.

Twins

Austin and Tucker happened to wear the same thing today, independently of one another. Tucker and I were thrilled, Austin not so much... apparently he doesn't like the idea of matching father-son outfits. Hmmmmm.

Bye bye winter!!!!

It's pouring today, but I'll excuse the weather because of the sheer fact that it's WARM, and the rain is washing away those last little piles of snow... I hope. Austin and Ben are still in mourning for the winter, while I am exuberant about the possibility of Spring.

On our walks this week, Ben made it a point to roll, dig, and eat snow from every little patch of snow he could find.

Austin still is going on the AccuWeather chat forums wondering if a March storm could come our way. Apparently, the snow geeks on the forums are still discussing epic April storms from years past. But there's no activity on the weather models that give anyone any hope... and Austin finally admitted last week that the snow is over for the year.

It's been so cold and snowy here that we have not had any rain since December until yesterday. We had above average precipitation, of course, but none of it in the form of rain. It's oddly comforting to hear the missing rain on our metal roof at night, and thankfully not too much seems to have leaked through our roof... yet. :)

"I always liked ski jumping"

-Austin, making excuses for why he's intently watching the Olympics again tonight, despite insisting he doesn't like the Olympics because they are a bunch of sports nobody cares about

So far the list of events he's watched include:
-biathlon
-downhill skiing
-snowboarding
-ski jumping

Which, of course, is just about every event that's been televised so far apart from figure skating. I love to see Austin's nationalistic fervor emerging--I guess I am a good influence on him after all. :)

Collecting sap for our own maple syrup

We are making our own maple syrup this year. Really. I gave Austin 8 taps for Christmas, and he put them out today, attached to gallon jugs to start collecting the sap. By the end of the day we already had 4 gallons of sap.

Sugar maples don't grow well in our part of Virginia but apparently you can tap any variety of maple, and a couple other types of trees as well. What our property is lacking in sugar maple, it makes up with gigantic old silver maples, and so our maple syrup experiment is in business.

Apparently it takes about 10 gallons of sap to make a quart of syrup, which means we have to figure out how to store all these gallons of sap in a cold place before undertaking the monumental task of boiling it all down to make syrup. Austin bought a food grade 5 gallon bucket for the storage task, but we filled just about the whole thing up in one day. Hmmmm.

Also yet to be determined is exactly how to boil the sap down as there is a burn ban in effect in Virginia, and you really need to boil the sap outdoors so that all the moisture boiled off isn't released into the house. One solution would to build a cinder-block enclosure so that the fire can be technically argued to be enclosed, but that stills begs the question of what type of container to use. Anything from inside the kitchen would get fouled up with the creosote of the fire, and you also need something with a lot of surface area.

I'll let you know how all of this goes!

Citrus mouthwash

When I bought us some new mouthwash the other day, I knew Austin would raise a stink about my new choice in flavors - citrus. It was the only flavor available in the generic brand, and I thought, what the heck?

I don't think it's too bad. It's a bit like orange soda meets mouthwash, which is to say, bizarre. But not necessarily bizarre in a bad way. According to Austin it's like brushing your teeth and drinking orange juice at the same time, which is to say, awful.

It took us at least 3 months to go through our last bottle, probably more. That's a lot of time for Austin to learn to like it. :)

Austin's dreams fulfilled

We got a new wood stove this week. It's pretty nice, but wood stoves are not really a thing I think a whole lot about. Austin, on the other hand, has been salivating over this wood stove for ages. Our old wood stove in the kitchen had a small firebox which meant it was really annoying to operate and couldn't keep a fire going all night. Opening the firebox all the time decreases the air quality because it's when you open the lid primarily that particulate matter enters a room. Our old stove had a great antique charm, but it also was broken which made the particulate matter worse than it was rated to be, which is not as good as they make nowadays anyway.

So, for the sake of Austin's sanity, having a warm kitchen/main living area, and our lungs, we have a handsome new wood stove.

Pics

Here's Tucker enjoying Daddy's old quilt and bunny.

More trucks

Here is yet another truck item of Tucker's, a truck tote bag. I made it last weekend out of some fabric I found in a thrift shop, and it has been very enthusiastically received. The only problem is that it's a bit large for Tucker to really carry himself... I need to shorten the straps so that he has more success when he wants to help me.

In other truck news, Helen and David brought over Austin's quilt from when he was a toddler, which is full of trucks. Tucker is in love, of course.

And speaking of saved Austin items, this is Austin's old lovey, Bunny, which Helen found cleaning out a closet a few weeks ago. They brought Bunny down to see Tucker this trip and it turns out that Bunny and Ducky are fast friends. Tucker really doesn't have much interest in stuffed animals, but he immediately decided that Bunny is really special. Pretty cute.