Speaking Mykish

Over the summer months Myka has taken it upon herself to expand her multicultural abilities and take on a new language. She has chosen Spanish. I do not speak Spanish. I only remember what I learned during the two week preview in 7th grade, which included how to introduce myself and counting to twenty. (Now after 4 years of German I know many valuable things like "you are a vacuum cleaner", "have you heard [insert favorite rock band here]'s new record? It's great!", and "so, Monica, are you satisfied?" But that knowledge is not helping me now.) Kurt knows a little Spanish, but only about as much as Dora or Rosita from Sesame Street. So since Myka cannot read, her resources are limited. I am often asked, "how do you say __ in Spanish?" to which I almost always reply, "I don't know." However, rather than just give up, Myka takes her best guess. "Well, I think it must be gargula (or whatever syllables she puts together at the time). "I think you're right." This has gone on daily almost all summer.

The other language issue we have been dealing with is baby talk. (No, not Eli.) I know this is normal and we have a one year old who is trying his hardest to get a word in edgewise, so she is imitating what she hears. But she has spoken abnormally clearly since she was 15 months old. Let's just say I have no tolerance for the baby talk.

So last weekend we were at my aunt's house hanging out and enjoying the chilly July weather by the pool. Myka came in to ask a question just as I was cleaning up Eli's breakfast and had a handful of dirty dishes and a crabby kid strapped in a high chair. She walked up 2 feet in front of me and said, "gabolla falop." I bent down and asked her what she wanted, already frustrated that she was baby talking and I was busy. So she said "Gobumba talob." My response was "I'm going to ask you one more time what you want, and if you don't speak clearly I'm walking into the kitchen." And with 110% seriousness in her voice and on the brink of tears she shouted, "BUT MOM, I SAID IT IN SPANISH!"
Have you ever tried to look your kid in the face and take her serious when your whole body is shaking with the laughter that is about to explode out of you? It's not easy. So with tears running down my face I asked through stifled chuckles, "Can you ask me in English, I'm not sure I understood you?"
"I said, 'Can we go swimming now?'"
Ooooohhhhh.

I guess they forgot to teach us that one in 7th grade foreign language.

War Zone

No, I'm not talking about my living room, although on most days that title would be appropriate.

A couple of weeks ago we had a 4 a.m. wind storm that had it's way with our "Royal Oaks" neighborhood. I have heard that the wind speed reached 130 mph, but most reports said the equipment used to record the gusts broke after 100 mph. Because there were no signs of circulation in the storm, they say there were no tornadoes and are calling it a "downburst". Whatever it was, it was nasty. We live on a large horseshoe street with one other cross street, and I would say in our little neighborhood we had 100 trees or large parts of trees down. About a third of the houses here have a ravine in the back with older trees that had a lot of damage, but what was surprising was the number of 30 year old trees in yards that went down. I didn't think to take the camera out until the second time we walked the loop, so the pictures are about 60 hours after the storm. Chainsaws had been working non stop for about 40 of those hours, and a lot of trees had already been taken care of. Here a few things I was able to capture:





This house lost 3 of the 4 trees on their boulevard. This one was laying across the road when I tried to drive out at 9 am.



The owners had just finished cleaning this one up, but we had Myka stand next to the stump to show how big it was. It was perfectly healthy.

I should be able to see a house from here. This house had some of the worst damage. You can see the root system of the tree on the right compared to the blue car. There were 3 or 4 huge trees down in their front yard alone.

This house lost pretty much all of their shade as well. The National Weather Service was called about this tree, because where Kurt is looking is what's left of the stump, but the tree itself is 15 feet away from there. The owners said this tree is at least 75 feet tall. That is some serious wind to drag a tree that big that far.

And here is the base of the tree. You can see the path that was dug in the ground as it was drug to it's final resting spot.

I really wish we had taken pictures that first morning. It totally looked like a disaster area with limbs and leaves and entire trees everywhere. Luckily no one was injured and only a few houses had trees fall right on them and cause damage. We only lost 2 large trees in the ravine and half of two small trees out front. Our white house was plastered with green leaves and we have a dent in our fence where a large limb came down, but otherwise we were fine. And from the looks of things, we had the least amount of damage around here.
Kurt was a little disappointed as he loves using his chainsaw, but there was enough work in the neighborhood to keep him busy and be the helpful neighbor/pastor guy. He had a wedding Saturday afternoon, so after being up in trees all morning cutting down limbs, he quickly changed and headed off to church. Someone asked our neighbor where Kurt went and his response was "lumberjack by morning, Pastor by afternoon."

Splash Bomb

Since we decided to have a backyard party, I had an automatic excuse to upgrade our backyard waterfun equipment. We had the plastic baby pool that we got free in Montevideo, and the blow up pool we started using last summer, so I wasn't looking for just another pool. I looked into slip and slides, but those seemed geared toward older kids. In my "research" I kept coming across the Cannonball Splash Waterslide and decided it would work for us, even if the reviews were only so-so. It has been a big hit, although the weather has kept us from using it as much as we like. It has also survived a preschool birthday party, a 150 pound grown man and two incredible wind storms, so I would say it's pretty durable.

Here is how it looks at the beginning.

And here is how it looks after the ride.

And here is what happens in between.

After the kids woke up from naps on party day, we headed back outside since it had been such a nice day and the pools were almost hot by that time. Eli got his first dip in something other than a bath tub, and while he was not quite sure what to do or what to hold on to at first

it didn't take him long to figure it out.

Happy Birthsummersolsticefather's Day!

Yes, I know their birthday's were three weeks ago. Mother Nature and I have been successfully crashing computers (oh, yes, more than one) around here and the few minutes I had to be online on Kurt's computer during that time were not spent blogging. Sorry. But we are back, and I will do my best to catch up as quickly as I can.

Birthday weekend was a success! On Saturday, June 20, Myka had a little backyard party with some of her playgroup friends. As the pinata story may have shown, the theme was "sunshine". Since the kids were born on the first day of summer, it was fitting. And, even more importantly, the sun is round. I can make a round pinata. I can not make a pinata shaped like Dora, or Curious George, or a flip flop. Anyway, I quickly found that "sun" made a great theme, and we celebrated in style with plenty of summery things for the kids to do, party favors to give, and yummy summer treats to eat.

We set up Myka's pool, Eli's pool, and a new little water slide I found for the occasion. We lucked out on the weather, as the entire week, much like the entire summer so far, was filled with cooler than normal temps and lots of rain. The forecast for Saturday was 86 and sunny and actually held true! We filled the pools in the morning and they had even warmed up a bit by the time the little guests arrived.

They all splashed happily until lunch time, but the post lunch pinata unlatching was the highlight of the party.

A little more info on the pinata... Myka had been to a party in May with a pinata and was so excited about it she decided on the way home that day that she would have one at her birthday and made a list of all the things that would be in it. I think part of her excitement was the fact that she was the one that pulled the magic string to open the hatch and let the candy fall out. You see, some genius decided that blindfolded, bat-yielding three-year-olds do not make for a very safe party, not to mention the "don't hit your brother" lesson that is completely undone in a matter of seconds. So now pinatas come with a trap door and a bunch of ribbons to pull, one being the magic string to allow the candy to flow. Once I realized making a pinata would cost me all of 50 cents, as opposed to the 15 or 20 dollars I would be paying for one, I went to work figuring out the trap door concept. It worked great, and all the kids were able to take turns and pull two or three strings each before the candy came raining down. You can't even imagine the suspense.

Sunday was the actual birthday, but between church, Father's Day, Vacation Bible School, naps, a quick dinner at Myka's favorite "restaurant", and a tornado warning it went by very quickly. We managed to open presents during the 30 minutes we were all at home and awake. I had saved Eli a cupcake from Myka's party to eat on his big day, but there wasn't even a chance. I wasn't too disappointed, as I wasn't really excited about cake being in the top ten things he had EVER eaten in his life (with cookie already making the list) so we will pick a day down the road after he has sampled a few more tastes and let the kid have his cake. He did get a few presents, though.

As did Myka, of course.


She woke up the next day talking about what she wanted her next birthday party to be like. And unless I can talk her into a baseball or basketball theme, it seems I have about 350 days to expand my paper mache' pinata making skills.