Another Birthday Boy

Isaac is the next in our series of birthdays.  He turned the big 13!  He was thrilled to have coffee and Dr. Pepper as is the privilege of 13 year olds in our household.  For his birthday he asked for a friend party at an escape room, a Card cake with homemade strawberry icing, and to go to Olive Garden for his dinner.  We told him the party would be his gift this year, but I did get him a very cool camping coffee mug (with a carabiner handle to hook to a backpack) in Red River that I saved for this occasion.

They escaped!

Brian took him and his friends to the escape room, and I had his cake and pizza ready when they got home.

He's as tall as me now, and way taller than his friends of whom he is the youngest.

The party was a few days before his actual birthday because this year it fell on the day of orientation for school.  When dad got home from work, we went to Olive Garden, then gave him his home-made cards, and his gifts that had arrived in the mail.

Bob drew that Captain America all by himself!

 I must have missed taking pictures of the girls' cards for him.   He got a wallet, some money, and a whittling set that he has been practicing with.  Happy birthday, Isaac!

A Friendly Visit

A Time to Talk

by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road

And slows his horse to a meaning walk,

I don’t stand still and look around

On all the hills I haven’t hoed,

And shout from where I am, What is it?

No, not as there is a time to talk.

I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,

Blade-end up and five feet tall,

And plod: I go up to the stone wall

For a friendly visit.

This visit reminded me of this poem.  The plan for our friends to come stay with us was somewhat of a last minute thing.  While we were visiting them in Arizona, this trip was born out of a conversation following a chain of events that cancelled their other summer travel plans.  This poem says it perfectly.  There's always lots of work to do, but when a friend visits you pause the work because the work is all just a means to an end anyway.  Relationships and friendships are what is truly important at the end of the day.

While they were here we went hiking at Enchanted Rock, to Fredericksburg for German feast, a museum, and shopping.  We went swimming both at our pool and my sister's, to Mexican food one night, tubing on the Comal, and we even went bowling.  They left for a few days in the middle to go to the Gulf Coast as a family.  

Contemplating these isolated ecosystems with little shrimp-like creatures that don't have any awareness of the many other similar creatures in other miniature ponds on Enchanted Rock.

It was very windy up here.  The little boys really liked playing in the water.

Most of our group went to the Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg while Hannah, Quin, and I went shopping and wandering through the town.

Bobby made this sometime during their visit after a friendly poker game.

 

Our nights were filled with family trivia games and card tricks!  It was so very loud, but so, so much fun!  Almost every body had a card trick to perform and Quin and Isaac practiced new ones during the day and taught Bob a couple so we had new tricks all the time.  There was also some dancing to Rah Rah Rasputin, but I won't put those videos on here.  ;)

The Birthday Bob

Bob is super cuddly, but usually not with his daddy as much as with me.  Daddy always relishes when he comes up for a spontaneous cuddle.

Bobby's birthday requests this year were a Ninjago cake (which I have done before for Drew), a birthday party with his cousins at Aunt Kristen's pool, an ant farm, bowling, and our family restaurant dinner at MOD pizza.  The kids had never been to MOD pizza and they loved getting to choose their own pizza ingredients.

His Mimi made a somewhat last minute visit to come to his party.

He wanted to put his own candles on the cake.

One of his cousins couldn't make it, but we almost gave him just what he asked for this year.

 Although I haven't taken a picture of him with his ant farm, we did get it up and running no thanks to FedEx express shipping and the cold pack I paid even extra for.  I paid for two day shipping and it was delayed over a weekend so I got the ants in 6 days instead and all but 6 of the almost 30 were dead.  Unfortunately, the company hasn't responded to any of my emails.  The 6 we wrestled into the tiny whole have been with us about a month now and are tunneling away.  Just two days ago, we had one die, but otherwise they are going strong.  They do not have names like our string of caterpillar visitors this year.

These were the first two, but I think we are on number 13 or something now.  I feed them lettuce leaves and they grow huge and then die for some reason.  I imagine it's the kind of leaves I am giving them that makes them die eventually but feeding them the tomato leaves kind of defeats the purpose of hunting for them everyday and pulling them off my tomato plants.  These two were nameless, but we've had the likes of Gerard, Herbert, Dot, and still have Stripey, though we usually call him Fatso now.  We've had to silk worms perhaps that did cocoon, but these Hornworms just keep dying in our care.

The swimming, cake, and cousins, happened on our regular Sunday Family dinner day and then on his actual birthday Brian got home early from work and we went bowling as a family.  Then we headed to MOD pizza, and then home to get homemade cards and his ant farm.

We had the two lanes right next to each other that share a cock pit.

Happy birthday 6 year old!  I told him he needed to let me rock him and cry because I am so sad he's growing too fast, but he said no to that request.  Sigh.

Life Beyond Quarantine

This picture is perfect to describe our quarantine.

And this one describes the rest of it.  Luna doesn't show up well on camera though.

Sure enough though, we did our 10 days out from last active symptoms and reentered the world once again.  July 4th was our first day out of quarantine.  We went to my sister's house for some smoked meat and swimming.  We had a really competitive water basketball game between the parents and kids.

The boys were doing some kind of poppers.

We came back to our house afterwards , bringing her family along with us because we live outside the city limits and can do our own fireworks.