Another time...

In honor of Flashback Friday this week, I thought it would be fun to do a bit of a comparison between our recent trip to the 1000 Islands and our previous trip we took with Nathaniel in July of 2007.  He was not quite 16-months-old when we took our first trip with him to the Islands and he has grown up SO much in these photo comparisons.  It's fun to see how he (and our family) has changed in two short years.  

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

I Heart the Islands x1000

I won't bore you with all the minute details of our recent trip to the 1000 Islands, but I would like to share some of the highlights and, of course, many of the more than 1,200 photos I took while we were there!  

I love the 1000 Islands!  It's a fantastic place with plenty for the whole family to find interesting.  

The shopping is great!

The fishing is intensely rewarding.

There was beautiful scenery all around us.

  

We got to see gorgeous sunsets every night.

Gigantic boats chugged down the St. Lawrence River.

There were family fun places galore, and it has a culture all its own.  

Every year we stay in the same state park at the same campsite.  We know what to expect, where all the amenities are located (close by!) and what time of the year to avoid if you want peace and quiet.  

We played in a lot of dirt and got very filthy.

We took a lot of walks around the park.  We walked to the beach, to the playground, over to the pier to fish or to the "store" to get ice cream.  We walked to get water to fill up the kids' pool for baths.  We walked to the "bath house" to use the potty or officially shower off the filth.  We walked over to the water to see the big boats go by and to catch a full view of the sunset.  Sometimes we just walked around to help the kids settle down or let Nate burn off some energy. 

We took in a lot of the beauty around us.

The kids loved the playground!

The beach was a huge hit, even on the "cold" days!  Nate loved to splash in the water while Alex preferred to play in (and eat) the sand.

Nate had so much fun fishing with Daddy!  

Here he is removing his own fish he just caught so he can "free" him back in the water!

Of course the week was not without injuries.  Within 5 minutes of us arriving Alex had his first head wound.  He stood up into the sharp corner of the door as we were setting up the camper.  (It's hard to see in this picture as I had just taken the ice pack off and the bleeding had already stopped, but the two raised lines on his forehead are the "cuts" he sustained).  

Here's Alex showing off his new head wound...he looks pretty proud, actually!  Believe me, it looked worse in person!

The next day Nathaniel fell off the picnic table and hit his face on the bench on his way down, leaving a fantastic bruise on his cheek that looked like dirt for the rest of the week.

We made many friends during our stay.  Another "Smith Family" moved in all around us on our second to last day and Nate was in his glory with kids his own age to romp around with!  

This cat wandered in from who knows where on our last day and Nate took an instant liking to him (dare I say he became an obsession?  Picture Nate running down the road yelling "Cat, Come BACK!" when the cat DARED to walk away!)

We rode a ferry to Boldt Castle where Nathaniel got to look for the dragons he insisted lived there!

By the end of the week, though, our smiles turned upside down.  A long week of bad sleeping patterns turned our children into cranky, non-listening, messes.  Temper tantrums were displayed with little prompting and melt downs were the fashion of the day.

So we were glad to get home.  Let the laundry begin!

Wordless Wednesday

Home Again

We're home from a 6 day, 5 night stay in the glorious 1000 Islands.  Our accommodations were luxurious (pop-up camper), our view was stupendous (the St. Lawrence River), and we were among fantastic company (many squirrel, chipmunk, and seagull friends).  I really do love it up there!  We go semi-annually (meaning almost every year with a few exceptions, like last year when I was 7 months pregnant with Alex) and it's a tradition I am thrilled to be starting with my boys.  I have a few tidbits to share from the trip and MANY photos I will be posting shortly but in the meantime I will leave you with this teaser of one of the many beautiful sunsets we witnessed.  And boy, am I happy to be home!

Wordless Wednesday

10 on 10 : July 2009

Since today is Flashback Friday but it happens to fall on the 10th of the month when I would normally do my 10 on 10, I decided to give this month's 10 on 10 a flashback theme.  Each hour I am to take one photo and my goal is to find nostalgic things that take me back and take photos of THOSE.  So, come with me down memory lane...

This is a photo board I have in my office at work.  It takes me back to when Nathaniel was little (which was just YESTERDAY, wasn't it?!?)  since I haven't updated any of the photos on this board since I started there and he was 6-months-old then!

After work I took the boys out to Geema and Geempa's to let out their dogs (since they were coming home late) and I let the kids (Nate anyway) run around for a while to burn some steam.  While I was there, I saw a lot that took me back.  Like this tree, for example.  I love this tree.  It stands in my parents' front yard and has provided hours of entertainment, solace, and education throughout the years.  It is here where my brother and I would swing from the branches pretending to be Indiana Jones swinging to safety over a pit of snakes.  My sister and I would spend hours perched on the tree's limbs, talking, laughing, and testing our limits as we climbed ever higher to see how close to the top we could get.  I remember finding the shells of cicadas stuck to the bark of the trunk after they had molted and left them behind.  What a lesson in nature that was!  Not too long ago the tree didn't seem to be doing well and my parents talked about having to cut it down.  I was devastated!  This old climbing tree holds a lot of special memories for me and for my whole family.  Miraculously, however, the tree has made a comeback (evidenced by these photos) and will thankfully live to see another day and a few more climbers from the next generation.   

Growing up we spent a lot of weekends in the back woods cutting firewood to heat the house with in the winters.  We each had our jobs.  My Dad cut down the trees and my mom would clean off the branches and make a brush pile of the unusable twigs and smaller branches.  My older brother got to yield an axe on occasion, or make a few well directed cuts with the chainsaw.  I got to mark off the fallen trees with a ruler and a piece of chalk so whoever was cutting would know where to cut so they were uniform in size (that made for easier stacking and helped them fit into the wood stove without a problem) and my sister mostly played out of the way of falling trees and flying wood chips.  We'd chop it up into manageable size pieces and then throw it in the back of my dad's old International and bring it up to the house.  There we would unload it, chop it up into smaller pieces and stack it to dry out before the winter came.  In the down time we'd make playgrounds out of grapevines that were shaped like swings or bounced really well.  Cutting wood was hard work but we all did it as a family and it taught me a lot about working together, spending quality time with those you love, and making the best out of what you have.  

Nathaniel was playing in what I call the "metal playground" (see photo below) when he said, "Oh, Mom!  BEES!"  Having been stung by one late last summer, he knows they are not to be messed around with. But at my Mom and Dad's house they are EVERYWHERE and hard to avoid!  I can't remember a summer growing up when I didn't get at least ONE bee sting.  They were in the ground when you'd mow over them and piss them off...they'd land on my neck or in my hair and I'd reactively pinch them by tilting my head down to my shoulder.  Finding this bee family swarming in a steel pipe in the "metal playground" did not surprise me and I'm just glad Nathaniel knew better than to try and pick up these "bugs" like he does all other "bugs" he finds!!

This is a barn at my parents' house which also houses a lot of flashback memories.  Going way back more than 20 years ago, I'd say, we built that barn (as a family) from the concrete slab to the roof.  My Aunt and Uncle came over to help with a couple of Dad's friends and we cranked that out in no time!  We even got to put our handprints in the cement floor after it was poured, leveled, and started to harden.  When it was new (and empty) we made it into our own personal roller rink.  We used to skate around the downstairs and dreamed about throwing fantastic Halloween parties in there.  As my dad settled in it had tools and old parts to things strewn about.  Then we put on the goat shed off the side where our goats and bunnies lived.  We spent many years trucking back and forth to that barn in the rain, snow, and freezing cold to feed our rabbits, change their water, and hold them.  The rabbits eventually all died and Dad sold the goats off to someone.  I hadn't been in there in quite a while.  Most recently I stop in to find my father when he's working "in the shop".  He added on to the back to make a blacksmith shop for his business.  It's pretty stinky when he's working but I love to watch him hammering out his steel, twisting it, turning it, heating it up again and banging on it until it turns into the beautiful candle holder or wine bottle display rack that he envisioned in his head.  There is also a treasure trove of memories stored on the second floor of that barn: Old dollhouses, kitchen sets that "Santa" brought me when I was 4 years old and ancient play sets that entertained us for hours.  With a weekend to explore up there I can only imagine the memories we'd uncover!

 

A walk down memory lane would not be complete without a glimpse at my childhood listening preferences.  Oh yeah!  NKOTB.  Need I say more?

While looking for something in my basement "junk/scrapbooking room" I found these.  Does anyone even still USE these old 3.5 disks (is that even what they're called?!?)  I don't even think computers have a slot for that size disk anymore!!  Now what good is all that info on those disks?!?

One stack of the thousands (no exaggeration!) of photos I have laying around in my "junk room".  Someday I'll get some of these scanned for future Flashback Friday fun!!

Wordless Wednesday

Dusting off the card catalog...

Today's Thinkbox Thursday question is :  What is your favorite book?

I have to be honest.  I haven't read an actual book in YEARS.  And when I say years, I literally would guess the last full book I read from start to finish was sometime in the mid 1990s.  And I couldn't even tell you what book that might have been.  Between working two jobs, going to college, then working two jobs while IN college, having a baby, having another baby, working two jobs (just kidding, I only work one right now), it's been difficult to find the time to read anything longer than a text message, a Facebook status update, or One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  So for me to tell you about my favorite book, believe me when I say, we're going WAY back.  

I read a lot of good books growing up (read:  back when I actually had time to).  Some that are forerunners include The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton).  In the Keep of Time (Margaret Jean Anderson), and Johnny Tremaine (by Esther Hoskins Forbes), among others.

However, the book that sticks with me the most...the tale that had a profound affect on me as an adolescent, and the story that I would read again in an instant (if, that is, I had time to actually READ books - see above) is Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt.  

It was a timeless story about young love, immortality, and tough choices.  Or at least I think it was, as best as I can remember.  I haven't read the story in decades, but I loved that book.  I loved the story, the characters, the writing, the whole feel.  Just thinking about it gives me a warm, nostalgic feeling.  In fact, it makes me want to go down in my basement and dig out the copy I purchased a few years ago, solely for sentimental value and salvage it from its dark hiding spot buried deep in a box somewhere and actually read the darn thing.  But wait, is that Alex I hear fussing in the next room?  Did Nathaniel just yell "Mommy!"?  Nevermind.  That walk down memory lane will have to wait for another day (or decade).

Wordless Wednesday