Tag: Kids

Campfire tales

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So, after my last post, how about something a little lighter?  I’ve been camping three times in the last month and I don’t think I’ve recounted any of our grand adventures!  How the heck did that happen?!

Okay.  Enough exclamation marks.  Maybe. 🙂

So in June, we had planned to visit the (I assume, having never been there myself) lovely Volga Lake.  Thanks to Mother Nature, we were forced to change our plans and we wound up visiting scenic Pine Lake instead, right smack in our own backyard.  It was such a nice park that we decided to return in July, which turned out to be perfect because I got called into work (our camping trips straddled the week-weekend divide).  So in June the weather was lovely, the river was perfect for tubing, the hiking trails were excellent, and we had a great time.

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But our first trip in July was a little more eventful…

A super moon for the birthday boy!

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DSC_0531Yesterday was Cricket’s birthday.  Can you believe he’s three already?  I can’t.  How did this happen again?  And how do I make it stop?  If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know – I’m also open to options for keeping the older two small. 😀

It’s been quite the week at Casa Kauffman, which made for a grumpy birthday boy yesterday morning.  He was up pretty late (for an adult, never mind a two-year-old) Sunday night and didn’t nap on Monday, so you can imagine the fun I had that night.  By last night, he was in a better mood, but I still had to coax him into the car when I went to pick him up from daycare.   This is how the conversation went:

Keep reaching

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When we’re little, we … dream big.  We look up at the stars and we imagine that we only have to grow up in order to reach them.  Most of the time, we grow up and never look at the stars again.  –Cristian Mihai

Cassiopeia Star trails

Cassiopeia Star trails (Photo credit: weatherphotography.co.uk)

I read that quote earlier this evening.  If you don’t follow Cristian’s blog, you should.  He writes the most amazing posts.  Anyway, as I was reading the post I linked to above, it got me thinking about all the ways in which I used to look up at the stars as a kid.  I remember studying them in Girl Scouts and learning all the myths that went with the different constellations.  It was fascinating stuff, but eventually, I, too, stopped looking up at the stars.  My eyes had turned to the heavens of my own making instead.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to do great things.  I’ve always wanted to be a famous author; I can’t remember a time when that was not what I wanted to do with my life.  And I’m frustrated right now because as I’ve gotten older, other aspirations have crept in around the edges of my one burning desire, fighting for room to live and grown on their own, leaving less and less time for my passion.  It’s not that I’m not passionate about the rest of my life – I am – it’s just that, right or wrong, I feel my time growing small.  I feel I’ve not done what I was sent here to do.  And I feel like I’m suddenly ill-equipped to pursue my most cherished lifelong dream.

All that said, I’m not giving up.  They don’t make ’em much more stubborn than me (except for maybe my kids, but that’s another story :)).  Recently I’ve been looking up at those same stars I used to gaze upon as a little girl and I’ve found my zest for this writing life renewed; the drive I thought was flagging has suddenly dropped into a whole new gear I’d never before been aware of.  So here’s hoping that somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, the right agent and publisher are ready and waiting to take The Lokana Chronicles and me under their wing.  Mentor me!  And help me whip my story into shape, no matter how much I might whine, please. 😀

Keep reaching for those stars, people, whatever your particular star might be.

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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I’ve got sunshine

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It’s another beautiful day here in Central Iowa!  We’re still dealing with some flooding, but at least the rain has stopped coming every darn day.  Unfortunately, that happened a little too late for a lot of people, some of my family among them.  I’ve been adding pictures to my Flood of 2013 Pinterest board – the water levels are just amazing.  Even now that the constant rain has stopped, more or less, the rivers and creeks are still awfully high.  A lot of fields still have standing water in them.

But that’s not what this post is about.  My brain is currently being pulled in three different directions, so today’s post is going to be light and pretty.  That’s right, it’s another photo post!  After all, who doesn’t love pictures?

“What? Haven’t you ever seen a guy eat cake before?”
A little bit of sunshine on a cloudy day. 🙂
No, it’s not blood. Someone had fun with the ketchup while Mommy’s back was turned.
And Cricket’s frown got turned upside down…literally! 🙂
Gotta love silly father-daughter pictures. She makes the best faces. 🙂
I don’t know why my face is in focus and Thumper’s face isn’t, but it’s still super cute.

So that’s a brief look at what we’ve been up to lately – eating cake, playing in ketchup, and making faces (and writing like mad when I can find a few minutes of silence).  This weekend we leave for our first camping trip of the season and I’m looking forward to family togetherness and more camera fun.  And my Tomcat will be returning from two weeks with his dad, which will make it extra special.  So if I’m even more absent than normal in the coming days, zat’s why, my lovelies.  I promise to return with pictures a-plenty and perhaps even a fish tale or two!

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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Bedtime stories

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ssI hope everyone’s staying dry tonight! As far as I can tell, the rain has finally stopped for a while, thank goodness. It was nice not to have to talk over the rain as I read Cricket and Thumper their bedtime story tonight.

I grew up watching Reading Rainbow. Anyone familiar with the show may remember that they read the title of the book, followed by the name of the author and the illustrator. I watched A LOT of Reading Rainbow as a kid and, as a result, when I read books aloud, I read them the same way: I start with the title, then the name of the author, and finally, the illustrator.

Seymour teases me about this particular quirk; clearly, he did not grow up watching Reading Rainbow.  But I don’t really mind.  I’m not going to change the way I read any time soon.  But that’s not really the point of this little story (I can take a little good-natured teasing, after all – my grandpa was known among our family as “the big teaser,” after all).  The point is that tonight, all my bedtime story efforts paid off in a surprising way: Cricket asked for a bedtime story by name.

One of the stories we’ve been reading at bedtime is A Sleepy Story by Elisabeth Burrowes.  I’ve always loved Richard Brown’s illustrations for this story and when I ran across it one day as we were preparing to move our bookshelf, I pulled it off so that I could read it to the boys.  It was one of my favorite stories when I was little and now they love it, too.  Or at least Cricket does – Thumper doesn’t really seem to care what story we read, just as long as we read something.  They do both love Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, though.  Not that I blame them – who doesn’t love that book?

Anyway, I thought it was adorable that my two-year-old asked for a book by name and I had to share.  At first I was just going to post this on Facebook, but then I kept typing and typing and then I decided that maybe I should just make a blog post out of it after all. 😀

So there you go.  Cute kids, books, cute story.  Happy Thursday, everybody!

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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Garage sale thirty

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Score one for the savvy garage saler!

Score one for the savvy garage saler!

So today was the City-Wide Garage Sale in Reinbeck.  No, we didn’t have one, as we’ve done in years past, but I had planned to actually go this year.  It started off as such a glorious morning: I slept in, then woke up to find that Seymour bought the kids an old (and by old, I mean antique) school desk to keep their coloring books and things in for a decent price.  When I realized that it was garage sale day and that he was out looking at things instead of working, I decided to get the boys up and do the same.  I haven’t gone garage saling in years and it was a beautiful morning for a walk.

And that’s where things went downhill.  Seymour found a train table that he wanted me to look at, so I tried to get the boys ready in a hurry so I could go look at it.  Bubbles packed some milk and cereal to go for the boys and we were off…till Thumper dropped his all over the bottom of the stroller.  The back seat of the stroller has a crossbar instead of a tray, so when he tried to set his cereal container down on it, it tipped over (and he refused to hold onto it).  Then he screamed all the way to the sale and half the time we were there.

I finally managed to calm him down, and then Miss Tadpole tried to give him back his cereal, which started the whole thing over again.  By then I wanted to scream, so we ended up going home.  Seymour had some errands to run out of town and promised to stay with the kids when he got back so that I could still hit some garage sales early this afternoon, but by the time he got home, the garage sales were only scheduled to go for another half hour and at that point, either people have closed up or they’re starting to. *sigh*   So much for my glorious garage sale adventure.

Sunday Sunday Sunday!

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So this weekend I wanted to get a bunch of different writing projects squared away between a surprise party and visiting family.  No problem, right?  Wrong!  Well, I got one of them taken care of, anyway, but a visiting headache kept me from the others.  Our weekends are always so busy, it seems, yet they’re the only time I really have a chance to get caught up on things at home.  So this morning is going to be catch-up time till the family arrives.

In the meantime, I acquired a shiny new DSLR a while back and have been having loads of fun with it.  For your viewing pleasure until I return with a post of more substance, behold, the things with which I’ve been filling my weekend: behind the cut!