Poem of the Week

The Vacation

By Wendell Berry

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly

toward the end of his vacation. He showed

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees,

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

 

HT: Poetry Foundation

We're Back!

Did you miss us? I had intended to post that we were leaving for a beach vacation. Alas, the logistics of planning an extended vacation for nine (Grammy was the ninth) and packing up Blue Streak took an astounding amount of time.

On the plus side, by the time we got there, I really needed a vacation!

We had a lovely time! We hit the beach in the early morning. The sun was just up and dancing a golden path on the water. Dolphins played a little way off from the nearly empty beach. The shimmering sand was festooned with garlands of shells.


Oob ate quantities of sand and then splashed his toes in the chilly, tickley surf.

Choclo wallowed in the world's largest sandbox (OK, technically that would be the Sahara, But the beach looked that big, so don't tell him!). What could be better? Well, if they had a bunch of skid steers every morning to push the sand around... Sand and construction equipment? He was in heaven!

Leena and I built sandcastles and watched the waves fill the moats then devour the castles.

We all collected tons of those little iridescent shells called jingles (we are hoping to make wind chimes from them).

The older Zoomlians made up an entirely original game which involved chasing the waves and then running like crazy and getting soaked whenever you misjudged.

And they all turned a delicious golden brown like fresh chocolate chip cookies.

I love the beach. There is a deep beauty in the wind and waves and vastness of the deep that sings to my heart about the love of God. Sharing that joy with my dear ones made this particular vacation a season of delight.

Back From My Summer Blog Vacation

I'm back!

And no one died and I wasn't really sick, and there weren't any major life crises!

I hadn't actually intended to take a giant blog vacation, I was just busy and tired, and then busy relaxing so I wouldn't feel tired.

And now I don't feel tired, and I have a huge backlog of photos and fun things to write about.  My hope is to do a bunch of posts and schedule them, so there should be a post a day for a while.

We went on vacation, Scout camp happened, a big birthday happened, we sorted every book in the house, I'm gearing up for a brand new science class, and a Geography class, and we got a new pet!

So, more tomorrow!

Fairy Tale Vacation Part 2

While we were up at the cabin, we checked out the local town of Bedford, PA.

We started out visiting the local parish, St Thomas.  The Emperor had looked it up, and it looked like it had very beautiful windows.

Well, yes, actually, I think they were the most beautiful stained glass I've ever seen! 

It was like a combination of the lovely faces I've seen in German windows, along with the swirling colors in Tiffany's glass, inset with 3D cut glass "jewels."

 But what actually dropped my jaw, was that they had an illusion of depth which I have never seen, and which was impossible to capture on camera:  it looked as if you could see a foot or more into the glass- far more than the actual (quite ordinary) thickness.

Even more astonishing was that the windows were not the "special" thing about the church!

The parish's claim to fame (besides, you know, Jesus being there), was the amazing carved wooden altar triptych!

It was, in fact, from Germany, carved and gilded.  The two side panels are doors!  It is a very old tradition to cover statues during Holy Week, but here they literally close the doors on Good Friday, and the outside of the doors forms a casket topped with the symbols of the Passion!

The people who built the church must have been German immigrants: the side altars matched the main altar, the windows were indeed from Germany (but from the same time period as Tiffany).

And did I mention the ceiling?

 Those are carved angels!

We were pretty blown away by the church.  And then the pastor showed up and told us that the church had the Holy Doors for the Year of Mercy for their diocese!

So we had an impromptu pilgrimage on our vacation. :D

Tomorrow I'll finish up the vacation photos and you will learn what happens when Choclo and Oob borrow the camera.  Also, The Turkey.

Vacation Day

Can you see the spider web?

 It's finally summer vacation!

I know what I said before about summer starting when the portfolio review is done, but summer vacation doesn't get going until the Emperor's school year wraps up.

This year that was the agonizingly late June 24th.

 Where I grew up, school started after Labor Day (the first Monday of September) and ended the first Friday of June.

I thought this most unfair.  School after Memorial Day (last Monday of May)? What were they thinking?!

In Maryland, it turns out, they are thinking that you should be in school from mid-August to mid-June!  This is clearly a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Wait, maybe you don't understand how I feel about this.  I'd better start typing in all caps and use more exclamation points.

IT'S A FREAKISH DENIAL OF BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS TO MAKE KIDS GO TO SCHOOL IN THE SUMMER!!!!!!!!

Which brings us to the last day of the Emperor's school when I saw someone's dahlias blooming.  I wondered what they had done to get them to bloom in early June. Then reality hit me: It's almost July!!




I dumped the sensible plan for the day and we took a hike instead.

If you need me, I'll be over here with a cold drink in the hammock.

More Vacation

Klenda Stylin'

Lest you think our vacation was all lolling about on beaches, it was not so!

We also went shopping with Grammy!

 We exercised! 

This was unexpected.  Next to a very nice playground was an exercise park for grown ups and teens.

Mxyl took full advantage!

 We rented a surrey!  This is like a big bike that will fit 8 people.  We've done this many times since the kids were little, and each year it gets more squished.

But we keep squishing in there, and now we have many more active pedallers.

 I got to fulfill my lifelong dream of riding in a surrey without pedalling! 

For a little while anyway.

And we lolled about inside and read!  I read the entire Glamourist Histories trilogy.  They are rather like Jane Austen with magic: very fun and relaxing.

Of course there's no Austen like actual Austen, so I ended up reading Mansfield Park when I got back.

It was a practically perfect vacation!

Seven Quick Takes: Summer Daze

1.  The thing about summer is... I always think it will be mostly like this (lounging about at my friend's pool) and it always turns out to be mostly like cleaning up the back basement. And going on vacation! 

I'm super happy about the going on vacation and honestly glad we cleaned out the back basement, but I am planning a solid day of doing nothing as soon as the Emperor goes back to school!

 2. Oob and I went off on a rambling adventure, looking for some red mushrooms he had seen a while back.

Those were gone, but we found some mushrooms growing in our own yard, and eventually, we called everyone else over to see!

I'm pretty sure I'm the only home owner on the block who hopes to get mushrooms in their yard.

3. Another summer project has been touching up  a large nativity scene.  I recently finished the larger pieces (and stored them in the newly organized basement!), and I decided to have each Zoomlian work on one sheep.

My theory is that if all the Zoomlians ever grow up and move out, every Christmas I'll have a sheep from each of them.

The touch up is not too hard since the sheep started out with a really nice paint job.
 
Although some of their eyes give them a bit of a crazed look. Curiously,  I think this was the look some of my neighbors gave me when I was working on the whole nativity outside in August.

4. Speaking of neighbors, we have a very dear couple of neighbors! 
The gentleman loves to fish- and I mean in a boat on the ocean or bay fishing- and his wife does not like to eat fish.

His solution is to give us (and others) loads of fresh caught rockfish! Truly the best fish I've ever had!

This time he had leftover crabs.  This is a regional delicacy, and I think it's mandatory for Marylanders to love Chesapeake Blue Crabs. We sure do, but usually it's out of our price range!

Which means we hadn't had them in a few years... and Choclo and Oob hadn't really done crabs... I had forgotten how intimidating they are!

But we helped out and everyone got to enjoy crabs!


5. While the older people have been working on projects, Choclo and Oob have been left to their own devices. They always have devices.

I found this on one wall.  It says "Join the Cody Club today!  Awesome outdoor activities, cool coloring stuff and more!"

In another area of the house I found this. 
"This Cody Club game demo should get your attention... MR FILL!  How to play: Fill in the blank spots!  Your pencil is above this sign."

Pretty fun! Mine is the one in the upper right.

6. Leena and I  did the flowers for our parish this weekend!

The flower thing is very fun, but it also is a reminder to me: the only reason we do flowers is that someone asked us one day if we would like to give it a try.

As it turned out, we loved it! 


It's also a direct way for Leena to offer her beautiful creative gifts to God!

The whole experience has made me want to look for other people who have gifts, but are waiting for someone to ask them.


7. This is Oob with his "Summer Drink." 

A Summer Drink has 4 parts:
1. It must have ice.
2. It should have a straw, preferably a bendy straw in a tropical color.
3. It needs a little paper umbrella (you can make one with paper and a toothpick).
4. There ought to be some kind of drink.

And this is Choclo with his look alike sandwich.

Have a great weekend!

More Quick Takes fun with Kelly!

Ocean!

We had a great vacation! Every morning at the crack of dawn, Oob would wake us up and get us out of bed.


Off we would go to the beach (a block and a half walk).




We spent a lot of time chasing waves, looking for shells and digging.








This was the first year we had three confident swimmers, and they had a marvelous time!













Choclo loved to play in the waves.



Oob preferred digging in the big sand box, but he liked the water if the Emperor played with him!









Leena and Klenda were mermaids.

We found lots of shells and a very strong jetty. (Why so strong? It was covered with mussels...)

We also had a great time at the beach house.

We had brought the Eyeclops (a portable microscope that plugs into a TV), and we looked at all the shells and sand and other things we found at the beach.


We did a few experiments, mostly looking at sand and shells reacting to vinegar. We determined that most of the sand was composed of rock.

I had hoped to do a bunch of stuff with seaweed (we had found 5 kinds of seaweed at this beach last year), but we couldn't find any!

I had wanted to see if we could find plankton, but we never got the Eyeclops and the seawater together while it was fresh.

I did bring back some sea water to do density and salinity experiments, but I haven't gotten to it yet...

Thursday, we visited this very cool shipwreck museum on Fenwick Island and ended up talking to the owner, Dale Clifton. As it turned out, he was the one who had actually collected all the stuff we were looking at!

He let us hold a fork he'd recovered from the Titanic and a gold chain made for the Queen of Spain in the early 1600s. After we had all held it, he casually mentioned that the chain was worth three quarters of a million dollars. Wow!

The museum is a fantastic set up that really shows the history and the science behind the treasure seeking. I loved this quote describing his first find (from his website) "I picked up the small, blackened disc from the sand and gently rubbed at its surface. There looking back at me was the image of King George III of England. I had found my first treasure - the stuff dreams are made of! To actually hold in my hand one of these legendary coins and know that the last person to touch it had died over 195 years ago, on a stormy night on September 1, 1785, was an extraordinary feeling. This was truly a gift from the sea."

We also got some new shells for our museum while we were there (the museum is on the top floor of Sea Shell City), as well as a nice big (dried) porcupine fish.

We did a few other nice things: we visited a Japanese steak house.

And we built (and demolished) a gingerbread house!

Mostly we relaxed. We spent a lot of time comfortably doing nothing in particular. We enjoyed our Grammy and each other.

It was the perfect vacation!

Vacation Round 1: The Great Outdoors

 This year we went back to Crimora Mine Retreat, and it was still beautiful and secluded and amazing.

But this year, I wasn't relapsing from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, so instead of rereading all of Jane Austen's novels (which admittedly was fun last year), I spent the vacation hiking, kayaking, taking pictures, and otherwise having fun with all the Zoomlians!

So beautiful!


So relaxing!
 And I found manganese!  The "mine" part of Crimora Mine Retreat is that the lake is an old flooded manganese mine, and many of the hiking trails are old mining roads.

Which means that there are plenty of roundish red lumps of manganese ore lying around!



We had a great time exploring the paths.  Someone must have a paper map somewhere, but the lure of, "where does this unknown path go" is nigh irresistible.

 There were also hundreds of tiny frogs in a hundred yard radius from the lake.  Super cute!

 Plus butterflies, large frogs, turtles and...two largish adolescent bears that  (fortunately) went crashing off into the forest when we startled them.