Blue Yonder

Nevermind the Lack of Fish

I don't know how many of you know that Mr. Blue Yonder is a serious fisherman. He catches, cooks, eats, poses alongside, talks about, text messages about, emails about, posts about, films and otherwise lives and breathes slimy, scaley fish. 

So when he came home announcing that one of his fellow anglers had given him THE recipe for easy fishing with kids, who was I to argue? 

Of course when he wrote down the list of supplies for the magic bait concoction, I began to have my doubts... 

Wheaties. 

Cream Soda. 

Big Red. 

Seriously?

Basically, you pour a bunch of Wheaties in your hands, 

 

throw in the sugar-y beverage (gulp some down until your mama says, "Gross! Don't DRINK that!"), 

 

 and then mash it up. Then you let it sit on the dock for a few minutes to harden a bit while you get a nice visual of what this kind of thing must do to your arteries. Then, you sort of clump it around your fish hook and voila, instant fish!

Or not. 

I think we've been had. I think this may have been just an excuse to get messy, play with your food, sit by the water and drink disgusting goo disguised as soda. 

Then again, look at this face. 

He says that it works and frankly I'd believe anything he told me. Anything. 

Bird -O- Vision

Happy new week y'all!

Our Ryder is much better now. Thank you so much for all your well wishes! No one else is hugging the green bowl yet, so, so far so good. 

It's still too dang hot to go outside though, well or not, and we are missing our romps in the woods so much. 

So, we decided to cash in our change jar and splurge on a few bird feeders to hang outside our schoolroom. 

We can sit, half dressed, and watch the birds. 

We can sip lemonaid and watch birds. 

We can read and look up between pages to watch birds. 

We can eat ice cream, fan ourselves and watch birds. 

We can paint and draw and glue and color... and watch birds. 

We can play checkers or Uno and in between shouts of "King Me!" or "Draw TWO, punk!", we can watch birds. 

Or we can just, you know, watch birds.   We're calling it "Bird-O-Vision."

In the last hour, 7 hummingbirds have visited our feeder (or maybe just one gluttonous bird, for all we know). But as of yet, we've had no visitors to the seed feeder. Apparently the feathered residents of our yard are not yet aware that there's a new cafe in town. 

That's okay. We aren't going anywhere. 

In other news... 

If you'd like to hear more of my incessant whining, know what I"m making for dinner, how much I owe in library fines, what blog giveaways I'm hoping to win or other completely unnecessary information, you can now join me on Twitter. 

Just so you know though, I refuse to say that I've "tweeted" or that I'm a "follower." A girl, even a girl who stays in her pajamas, stares out the window and eats popsicles all day, must have her standards you know.  

Down To The River

My boy is back!

He was happy, full of good stories about camp, but also really ready to come home. What more could one ask? I'll admit it... I was sort of nervous that we'd get there and he'd ask to stay longer. I'm going to choose to believe that it was his dear mother that had him ready to come home, and not the fact that he was SO looking forward to air conditioning and showers made just for one. 

We spent our Saturday baking bread and cookies, cleaning up, unpacking (oh the laundry!) and more or less lounging in our pajamas most of the day. By Sunday we were rested and ready for adventure, so we headed to the lake (which is really the Colorado River). 

This particular body of water is fantastic on a summer day because it is fed from the bottom of a dam. It stays VERY cold no matter the weather. 

Usually, we visit "our" lake during the week when it's like a ghost town, so at first I was rather put off by the multitudes of weekenders. 

Add to that the fact that I forgot my camera (the muddied photos here are from my phone) and the plates for our picnic, and we got off to a rough start. 

But when I settled in on my blanket with my book (My Antonia - so so good!), looking up between paragraphs to see all of my men splashing in the water, all together again, it was like exhaling. 

In the end, it was kind of nice, the ragtag band of souls come down to the river for respite. 

In the air was the smell of cigar smoke, charcoal and cooking meat. There was Tejano music and teenage boys bobbing their heads in time. Their contrived nonchalance was a show for the whispering, giggling girls who gave them sideways glances. 

There was a father, taking seriously his post at the grill and a grandfather looking over his shoulder in obvious skepticism over his son's ability to produce an edible dinner. 

There was a pink-cheeked baby asleep, mouth open, on a towel beneath a grandmother who fanned herself with a Reader's Digest. 

In the lake a young papa reassured a tearful, reluctant swimmer in pink arm floaties. Her mother waved a bottle of sunscreen at them and called out a familiar reproach in an unfamiliar tongue. 

Sparkling ripples circled a man who stood shoulder deep and pushed his lady along. She lay stretched on an air mattress. He dribbled water from his finger tips onto her stomach until she opened her eyes and gave him a smile that made me look away. 

The cicadas sang overhead, their songs mingling with the sound of boat motors, the laughter of my children, muffled conversations and contentment. 

On this day, summer doesn't seem like an oppressor. On this day summer is a timeless, hazy, coconut-scented dream. 

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You can read all about cicadas, the official minstrels of summer, today at 

The Magnifying Glass. 

The Happy Post

... in which I say nothing at all about the fact that I think I actually heard my skin sizzle yesterday... 

So what's making me happy these days???

1. I get to go pick up my boy from camp this evening. I'm going to try, really I am, not to embarrass the livin' crud out of him by swooping him up and crying and slobbering all over him. I'm going to soak in all his stories and then I'm going to tell him that I'm so glad he had a memorable time because he's never, EVER going to camp again. No, not ever. Scratch college from the list too. Nope. Not going. 

2. The little campers that stayed home. First the middle boy spent the night at the cousin's house, then the cousins came here while boy number three had his first sleepover at Grandmother's house. 

(He was even MORE full of swagger than usual over his big sleepover-ness. I think he rather enjoyed being the center of attention and  having the mac and cheese all to himself.)

THEN two of mine + one cousin were HERE for a sleepover. Oh my. There was Pokemon trading (I don't even try to understand this), a visit to the Children's museum, popcorn and ice cream, late movies, a water park, tree climbing, a cicada skin hunt and oh so much more. Camp Goofball (as they named it) was a raging success, evidenced by some very happy but very tired campers. 

3. This cake that we had last night to celebrate my Dad's birtday. I love you Dad, Happy Birthday. And... Ms. Paula, I am your devoted follower. No one can work a stick of butter and a pound of cream cheese the way that you can. No one. 

4.

Two young lepidopterists, a whole country apart, finding wonder in the same very brightly colored winged thing. This is a Rosy Maple Moth. My butterfly and moth enthusiast was beside himself over it. He had been staring at it for some time in his Golden Guide to Butterflies and Moths and hoping to one day see one. So it was a very exciting day indeed when one fluttered into his life. As it turns out, sweet Dawn's little lady had her own brush with yellow and pink greatness. 

And now, we're off to have lunch with yet more cousins and then make a big whoppin' "Welcome Home Brother" sign. 

I hope your weekend if full of reasons to be happy too!

To Know them By Name

We've been working on this little project that I thought I'd share with you here.

 

It began as an effort to help me remember the names of the wildflowers that we see along the trails and roadsides, but it has become a way of passing them onto my boys. 

You know the way your heart fills up when you are in a full congregation singing the Doxology because you realize that those words are heavy with the hopes and prayers of generations before you? 

You know that feeling of one-ness and spirit that makes your skin go all goosebumpy when you sing the national anthem with a stadium full of fans? 

No? Well maybe it's just me... 

Anyhow,  I get a little bit of that same feeling when I see a flower in the wild and can call it by name - the sense that I'm communing with all the folks that have trod this soil before me and loved the wild things that live in it. 

And I want very much to know that those names are stored up in the hearts of my men too, because a flower is just a flower, but when you can say its name,  Rain Lily or a Primrose, it blossoms into a memory of the hot sun on your neck, mosquitos and lemonade and sunsets. 

So when we come home from our walks, I upload my photos. Then we seek out the names of any flowers that I don't know and label them using Picnik.

 

All these photos get printed and slipped into a little photo album that we carry with us. 

Later, in the fall, when all the flowers have gone, we'll put these photos into a Blurb Book so that we can linger over them through the winter and carry them with us next spring because, as Lady Bird Johnson so perfectly said, "they're the stuff of our hearts."

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For a few more wildflower resources and a peek into our trip to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, visit the Ranch!