Summer Fun

When we aren't snapping 12 gallons of green beans or shucking 14 dozen ears of corn for the freezer, we're having fun at parks and the nearby lake.

Tall Ships

Last weekend my dh was traveling so the rest of us went to a nearby town for a Tall Ship Festival.

There were 11 tall ships plus the two tall ships that are teaching vessels and always in town.

It was a lot of standing in line. You stood in line to get on the shuttle bus, you stood in line to get tickets, and you stood in line to tour the ships. We toured two large ships and one small one.

The Bounty was here but the line to tour that was way too long for us. The Bounty was made for one of the old Mutiny on the Bounty movies and was in Treasure Island and one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Nathan spotted this picture opportunity and called a juxtaposition between the old and the new.

Besides the tall ships, there were pirate shows...

... knot tying demonstrations...

... pulling up sails ...

... and a cool place where they displayed all the weapons and armor of the company that put on the pirate shows.

Our Woods

Sometimes I get a little time just to enjoy our woods.

Boys and Flying Things

I took these pictures as soon as I could but believe me, they were much more spectacular in real life.

First, Nathan's fat lip due to a baseball...

... and Stephen's black eye. Really more of a purple and red eye.

Stephen's wasn't caused by a baseball. It was a water balloon. And why would a water balloon do that much damage? Well, a normally thrown water balloon wouldn't but one launched from a giant sling shot (one that requires three people to launch it) would.

No, his parents didn't shoot him in the face. The children brought it to the park yesterday to impress their friends. Which they did. They went for distance shots and accuracy shots. Then they decided to shoot it up in the air and see how high it would go. So two of them stood on picnic tables and the third person crouched on the ground and shot the balloon straight up. It went really far. Nathan estimates 100 ft in the air.

The other children were trying to catch it when it came down. They were unsuccessful except for one boy who caught one in a lacrosse net. After that, Stephen was trying to catch it with his hands and it came through a tree so he lost track of it. It hit him straight on in the face and bent his glasses (glad we were going to get new ones this week anyway) and gave him that great black eye. I was thankful that the glasses didn't break and cut him. I guess I neglected to tell the boys not to catch 100 ft high water balloons with their hands. Silly me.

Stephen's Birthday

Stephen turned 12 in May! He had a long birthday with the birthday pancakes on his real day...

... and his cake and presents 3 days later when his aunt and uncle and cousin were visiting.

Stephen's cake featured the Lego theme of Space Police.

It was a lovely warm night and we celebrated on the porch. And Stephen got more Lego's! He was so excited to get this Lego set.

Aaron's Birthday

Still on catch up pictures. Aaron turned 10 this May. We started the day with our usual chocolate chip pancakes.

Aaron's cake featured the Lego Agents theme.

He was excited with his new Bible cover. It has the map of Narnia on it.

Lots and lots of Legos.

Garden Update

We've had an unusually wet and warm summer. The garden is just exploding. Everything is at least a week ahead of schedule.

We tried a radish mix and were fairly pleased by the outcome.

These are asparagus ferns after we were done eating asparagus. They get huge and ferny and have to remain so for the rest of the summer. Take a look at the very wide asparagus stem. It looked like 4 stems growing all together.

We've never seen anything like it. The asparagus came up just fine when we were harvesting it. It will be interesting to see what comes up there next year.

Here are some June 30th pictures. We started harvesting beans about a week later.

Stephen in the corn. This was also taken June 30th. Our corn was way past knee high at the fourth of July. I think we'll get corn a full two weeks before we usually get corn.

Baseball, Baseball, and more Baseball

Sorry for the long break in posts. We've had birthdays, baseball, vacation trip, baseball, garden, and more baseball. Aaron and Stephen were on one team and Nathan was on a junior team (for 13-14 year old boys). Aaron's and Stephen's team was very good this year and won most of their games. Aaron pitched this year and really had a great year.

Stephen improved tremendously and really came into his game this year. He loved playing third base and assisted in making a lot of outs this year. His coach said he had improved the most of all the players on the team.

This was the first year there were enough boys for a junior team. They had a rough season. They almost won two games, tied one game, and beat one team. Nathan pitched again and played first.

Nathan sliding into second. His personal goal seems to be trying to wear out a pair of baseball pants every year.