The weekend

Doctor Who season 10 started a while back, but since we live in America and don't have cable, we don't really have a good way to watch it, so we'd not seen any of this season yet. Until yesterday! I was shelving movies, and a DVD of the first six episodes of season 10 was right there, so i immediately checked it out. (This is one of my favorite parts of working at the library - i can see and grab books and movies that i didn't even know existed!) And then Beth came over yesterday afternoon, and we all watched 3 episodes in a row. We didn't exactly MEAN to watch 3 in a row, but they were just so! good! There was much gasping and laughing and a bit of screaming, and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, with the possible exceptions of Zane and Juanito, who just don't love the Doctor like the rest of us do.

And then last night, our friend Karla was in town, studying for an exam and staying with Beth, so when she was finished studying for the night, i went to Beth's house, and the three of us sat up talking and talking and talking until about 1:00, when i finally just had to go home to get some sleep. I really love my friends!

Today, after church, we all went to my parents' house for dinner, and then to Jackie's house for swimming. It was a beautiful day - sunny and warm but not unbearably hot. The kids would have probably stayed in the water for the rest of the day and night, but we cruelly forced them to get out and go home at about 5:45.

So all in all, an exceptional weekend. 

Storm!

Our bed is situated so that our heads are right by the window, and so when it's hot and the windows are open, i sometimes sleep with my hand right up by the screen to get as much fresh (and hopefully slightly cooler) air as possible. And so last night, at about 3:30, i woke up when the temperature randomly and suddenly dropped a lot - i would guess at least 10 degrees. My first thought was, "Well, that's lovely," a thought that lasted about 10 seconds until the storm hit.

It went from not raining to an absolute downpour with no in-between. The wind started blowing, pelting the windows with rain. Most of the time - almost always - we can leave the windows open when it rains, because with the trees and the roof the way they are, it just never rains into the house. Last night, though, i had to run around the house closing all of the windows, because otherwise we'd have woken up to a lot of wet floors. By the time i got to Katrina's window, maybe 3 minutes after the rain started, there was already a puddle on her windowsill.

The thunder and lightning were amazing. There was apparently hail. This morning, there were giant branches and partial trees down all over the place, and a lot of the city was without power. My co-worker woke up to a trampoline in her backyard (and they don't own a trampoline). Happily, our house was untouched.

About half an hour before i got off work this afternoon, Juanito and Katrina showed up at the library. It was apparently "National Father-Daughter Take a Walk Day," so they walked downtown, and when Katrina got blisters (because she was wearing flipflops), they decided to just head to my library because it was closer than home. Yay!

Zane

Zane has always felt emotions deeply. Deeply and usually briefly. It does not take much to push him over the edge into misery. He'll be perfectly happy, and then suddenly he's in the depths of despair. There are times when he will disappear, and i'll find him curled up somewhere in a corner, weeping softly because his feelings were hurt. Even when he was tiny, he had the absolutely saddest sad face in the world. When he is sad, he is ALL THE SAD. He could not be any sadder. But fifteen minutes later, he's back to being completely cheerful.

Because the thing is, his general state of being is just really, truly happy. He's just genuinely gleeful as a rule.

I love this video, because it's such a perfect representation of Zaney. Bouncy and full of energy and just absolutely thrilled to be himself.

Recovering from the weekend

After a weekend full of going places and doing things, today was a much calmer kind of day. I went back to work. The boys all seemed to do practically nothing all morning/early afternoon. When i came home, i took Houston to get his hair cut because it was getting surprisingly long and shaggy again.

Katrina, however, went to the pool with her friends for a friend's birthday, where she swam like crazy, got a bit sunburned, and came home absolutely exhausted. She got home at about 4:30, took a shower, and spent the rest of the day collapsed in various spots around the house. She and Emma were practically having a competition to see who could lay around the most.

I read a couple of chapters of Harry Potter to the kids, and then a chapter of Masterminds 2. We watched an episode of Psych. And that was about it for the day.

Fourth of July!

Because it's the Fourth of July, i didn't have to work today, which meant that when Chellie asked me if i wanted to go to our grandpa's house for the night, we totally could!

We first stopped by to visit my grandpa, who is in a nursing home now. (He's almost 98 and healthy and completely mentally sound...but still almost 98.) While we were there, he gave us each a book that he'd made about himself and his life. I'm looking forward to reading it! And then we drove over to the house and just had time to bring our stuff inside before Chellie texted to ask if we wanted to meet them in Grand Haven to eat dinner.

We ate (Burger King. Because we are fancy.) and then went back to the house, where the kids immediately begged to go swimming. So they all threw on their bathing suits, and we headed down to the "beach." (There is no actual beach this year. There's a ladder going down from the bank to a lower part of the bank that's behind the sea wall that was put in back in the 80's, and which has been completely covered for 30 years, and then once you jump down from the sea wall, you're basically in the water. There's sand, but the waves keep it wet, so you can't actually put a towel down to sit on or anything.) The kids ran into the water which was not nearly as cold as i'd expected, and Chellie and i kind of stood around for a little while before deciding that as long as we were going to be not relaxing on the beach anyhow, we might as well take a walk down to our aunt and uncle's house. The kids swam along, out in the lake, while Chellie and i just kept gawking at how completely foreign the entire beach looked this year.

After saying a quick hello to our uncle and aunt and a cousin who happened to be visiting from California this week, we walked back to our grandparents' house, where the kids swam and swam until we finally dragged them back to the house at about 8:30 or 9:00. They all changed into pajamas, and before long we headed out to watch the sunset.

This morning, Zane, Chellie, her son, and i all woke up at about 8:00, walked down toward the beach to look at the glass-smooth lake, ate some breakfast, played piano, and finally woke the other kids up at 9:30. And as soon as breakfast was finished, the kids all got their bathing suits back on and begged to be allowed to go swimming again.

This time we brought chairs down to the beach and tried to sit in them, which sort of worked, except that every time a wave came in, the sand beneath us would get wet and our chair would sink a little deeper into the sand. So it wasn't ideal, but at least it was a place to sit. The kids swam until we dragged them out at around noon to go pack all of our stuff into the cars before everyone else showed up.

My parents, Jackie, Eric, and Cheyanne, and Jim and Alisha and their kids all came out for lunch, and then some of us went back down to the beach (i don't think my kids would ever choose to just ... not swim). Later we had a cornhole tournament (which Juanito/Zane and i soundly lost) and just hung out and enjoyed the company and the lovely weather.

And then tonight, we went to the fireworks, of course. We always go to the same spot - Juanito's favorite place ever to watch the fireworks - and this year Jackie, Chellie, and some of their kids joined us. And it was fun - we played games and did sparklers and the kids ran around a lot - but the actual fireworks were disappointing. They changed the spot that they shoot them off from, which meant that the fireworks were partially behind trees, were lower down, and were farther away from us. It was very sad. Sigh. (I mean, they were still fireworks, but they were just not as happy as usual.) Here's hoping they'll move back next year.

July 2

Beth and i went to Meijer Gardens today for a little while. The day was all bright and sunny and warm, and then the moment we got there, the sun suddenly went away and it started drizzling. It drizzled off and on while we walked around, and we finally went inside when it started actually raining enough that it seemed like it might start pouring at any second. And shortly after i got home, it did start to rain in earnest. But even in the rain, flowers are still pretty, so it was not a wasted trip. :)

Tonight we watched "Independence Day," a tradition around the 4th of July in our house. I have to say...it's completely ethnocentric and there are obvious problems with, y'know, physics, but i just love that movie. I think it's mostly because i love all of the actors. Jeff Goldblum! Will Smith! Bill Pullman! The guy who plays the father! Randy Quaid! They're all so lovable! (I'm a dork.)

It's July!

My brother Jim works in one of the tallest (maybe THE tallest?) buildings downtown, and he's way up on the ...something high-eth...floor. And since he's really nice, he let us all come up and stand on the balcony with him and watch the amazing downtown fireworks! It's really the absolutely best place in ... probably the entire city in which to watch the fireworks. Plus we don't have to fight through crowds of people and sit on the uncomfortable streets! Double-plus good!