Fun with birds and Maggie

Although I’ve been spending the majority of my time this summer reading a book or ten, (morning runs notwithstanding) I have done a few minor adventures.

Last week, for example, I accompanied Lizzy on a bird club field trip for the first time. Wow, those people are seriously good at birds.

Here, we have a bluebird: 

Here we have a bluebird eating a giant gross grub:

Here we have a bird that is blue sitting on a tree, but I’m not sure if it’s a bluebird or an indigo bunting or the other bird-that-is-blue that they were talking about:

Various other birds:

Goldfinch sitting on the tree:

Flowers, because they’re pretty:

Sheep (I nailed that identification):

Some more birds that they were excited about:

Sunset.

Bluebirds.

A swallow, I think:

Not sure if this was the bird they were all really excited about and came out to see…but probably not:

The next day we hosted four-year-old Maggie, who took one look at Lizzy and imprinted.

They played critters.

They played in the sand pit.

They pet the bunny.

That was all before lunch. We had a picnic

and then they went to the playground and Lizzy pushed her on the swings.

We chased each other around the skate park, where the floor was lava, or the bumps were lava, or possibly Maggie had magical dust that made both of them, or neither of them, lava. Although I can attest from the brief moment I kicked off my flip-flops that the concrete may, in fact, have been actual lava.

Then we went to the pool while Lizzy took a break at home, where fortunately Maggie made some new best friends who were enamored with our rainbow unicorn floatie and played very nicely with her for an hour.

After we got home and changed, I set her up on the couch with a tray, Cheerios, and a stack of colored paper.

“I like my office” - Maggie

Just before her mom picked her up, I escalated the art to glue and glitter, in which I overestimated the fine motor skill of a tired four-year-old with an open jar of glitter. So now our whole house has a fine sheen of magical purple glitter dust that just may cause or prevent the floor to become lava.

the kids and Charlie making mocktails for FFN

The better part of humanity

I’m enjoying my summer with nothing to do oh so much. It’s hot enough to go swimming and I’ve read several novels and my to-do list is paltry and my skin is brown. I’m working every morning toward my goal of running a sub-30-minute 5k. Most mornings it’s already hot by the time I get out there from sleeping in, except two days ago when it was pouring rain; my shoes still haven’t dried out completely. My 5k time now is around 33 or 34 minutes and I hope to break 30 by August.

 

Jed and Maddie came over for FFN last week and we had a fire and watched Hoppers outside.

engineering minds making a fire

And on Saturday was our town’s Fourth of July fireworks show (we get the early bird discount special). Jason and I walked over to the elementary school hill and settled into chairs, and then Liz and Caleb walked over, avoided eye contact with us, and found a spot suitably far away to put down a picnic blanket. Half the town was there, adults chit-chatting on lawn chairs and the beds of pickup trucks, children running up and down the hill, playing with footballs, until the fireworks started and we all ooooed and aaahed in unison. It was straight from a Charles Wysocki painting—an example, as Jason said, of the best side of humanity.

HHI Thurs-Sat

On Thursday I got up for another beautiful beach sunrise.

And dolphins. There was a whole herd of them also enjoying the sunrise.

At lunchtime we decided to bike to South Beach again, this time for lunch at the Salty Dog.

We saw this guy along the way.

But made it there alive.

Some of us biked back along the beach instead of on the shady, paved bike trails. I’m not sure if it was supposed to be a shortcut, but it didn’t feel like it. It was beautiful though.

After that a cool-down in the pool was in order.

We had a birthday party for a birthday boy.

He requested, and received, Carolina barbecue.

Jason and I were whupped by our long day, but some people made it out to the beach at dusk.

Personally, I waited til dawn to see it again.

On the last day everyone’s always motivated to spend the day on the beach, which we did, until the beach patrol came tearing down from the lifeguarded section in a pickup truck, shrilling her whistle out the window for us to vacate the water due to sharks passing by.

We complied. 

She said “Give it half an hour,” which isn’t terribly confidence-inducing even after 45 minutes of staying on the sand. The kids built a sand castle and we sat in two-inch-deep water and no one felt much like going back in.

Jason caught a fish in the shallows with his bare hands—undoubtedly a descendant of Caleb’s old friend Alex. This one was still alive, though.

Later that evening we gathered ourselves for one last walk on the beach. Grandma always likes a glow-stick party.

We were out the door at 8:30 on Saturday morning, rather impressively. It helped that Ada left a day early (for a youth group road trip to Maine!) and so we had already packed most of our messy water toys off with her.

That meant that Jed, Maddie, and Potato rode home with us. Maddie wanted Potato to have a good view so he rode up front with me most of the time.

We arrived home around 6:30 in the evening with only two kids with us. The car was unpacked and everything put away in no time. 10/10 having big kids who are so very, very much more helpful than a passel (a fever? a roll?) of little kids. See our last-day picture from the beach in 2013, wherein my fake smile is holding back tears and no one else even tried.

This picture makes my heart physically sink. Darling though they were, my relief is profound that now I’m the needy one and they can help me carry in the suitcases. Plus instead of crying all week for no discernible reason, now they can cheerfully put on their own sunscreen, unpack the car top carrier, and cook a frozen pizza when we get home exhausted. 

10/10.