vanover central station: June 2006

Friday, June 30, 2006

time to bust out your kilt

July 1st- 2nd
Scottish Fest at Olde World Canterbury Village
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Pipe bands, dancing and family fun.
Call (248) 391-5700 x. 224 for more information

sadaam sighting at clawson park

don't be fooled by the rocks that i got
i'm just, i'm just sadaam from the block

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

apparently today is helen keller's birthday

and you all know how much i enjoy helen keller jokes. so, to you helen, on the 126th anniversary of your birth, here is a birthday card from me:

what? you can't see it? what, are you blind? that sucks.

two years old

my god it hit me like a brick wall. my sweet little girl is now a wailing screaming "mine" machine. unfortunately for me (and most of my neighborhood) i was forced to take her to our association meeting last night as adam was going to be home late. i bribed. i brought crayons and snacks. i brought toys. and yet we still ended up running down the hallways instead of sitting in the meeting.

the funny thing is, for some reason i chose to read my aap book today and the chapter on two-to-three year olds... and you know what it said? "do not expect a child of this age to sit through a lengthy town meeting... alleviate situations that will frustrate the both of you." damn. day late, a dollar short.

(me: circa 1982)

Monday, June 26, 2006

this place is a zoo

yesterday we took advantage of the beautiful weather to go to the detroit zoo. saturday was kylinn's second birthday party so some family downtime was more than needed. we packed a picnic lunch and spent a (mostly) relaxing afternoon among the animals and the butterflies.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

hatching butterflies

since my sparrows have grown and left their nest, kylinn and i started on our next life science project: painted lady butterfly larvae.

last year, i bought a butterfly kit and along with it came a coupon for five larvae (assuming only three would live). for about a week, my five (yep, they all made it) hairy worms crawled around their container eating, spinning silk and leaving nasty deposits all over. on saturday, they all headed up to the top, got into formation and began forming their chrysalides. today i'll move them into their new habitat where they will emerge as painted lady butterflies which we will then release into ky's butterfly garden.

voila! the miracle of life.

Friday, June 23, 2006

june poker cancelled!!!

due to an in-house miscommunication (and the fact that ky's birthday party is tomorrow!) tonight's poker game has been cancelled.

(although you probably already knew that because someone never invited you anyway...)

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

freddy is two!

Monday, June 19, 2006

alex is okay!

he did really well with the surgery and will be in recovery for the rest of the week.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

happy father's day!

two years ago on father's day i had my little freddy. this year we just got daddy a book and some silly stuff.

kylinn is wearing a "my dad can fix anything-even breakfast" shirt you can buy one for your kid here.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

birthday no. 2

for caeden (1) and cami (4) rosell at the lakeland high school indoor waterpark.

Friday, June 16, 2006

baby alex update

my little baby neighbor alex is having his big heart surgery today to try to take some of the stress off of his heart. please keep him and his family in your thoughts.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

tis the season for birthdays

we got through mine all in one piece, but there are plenty more in the coming weeks.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

ode to richard ferber

books and back-rubs
the monster we created
bedtime was painful

not even two yet
and yet able to control
our bedtimes as well?

the ferber promise:
problem solved in two bad nights,
goodnight kiss and go

one stubborn toddler
tried to delay her bedtime
five, ten, fifteen…zzz

oh, richard ferber!
words cannot express our joy
thank you for our sleep

sleepy little girl
five, ten and fifteen minutes

bedtime is good now

Monday, June 12, 2006

the organic sessions

the plants pictured below were purchased as 3-4" seedlings last month. most of them were from a local garden center, but the thai hot peppers were shipped from brewery creek in minnesota. everything that you see has been fed with garden-tone organic fertilizer and planted in a combination of dr subers living soil, peat, manure and baccto professional potting mix.

sun gold cherry tomatoes

strawberries in terra cotta pot

thai hot peppers in earthbox

celebrity tomatoes in earthbox (foreground)
tomatillos in self-watering container (background)

jalapenos in regular container

these celebrity tomatoes will be moving to this awesome container if it ever comes in. (it's been on backorder for more than a month) and then they will be planted with complementary basil and marigolds.

Friday, June 09, 2006

blooms, et al.

my sister-in-law (god love her) is absolutely crazy. she has the most amazing obsessive personality and puts all of her energy into one enormous project at a time. lately she has been inspired to garden, and she and i have been chatting regularly now that i can talk about something that temporarily interests her. (she usually loses focus and drifts off unless it's a conversation that she started... and even then... so did i tell you about...

so she started another blog about her maniacal gardening hobby, which made me ask myself why i never put up pictures of my flowers that i am so proud of. neighbors stop by to complement the gardens and ask questions and it just makes me feel so accomplished. (this year, adam and i went totally organic and chemical free using weird concoctions with mouthwash and earthworm castings. more on that later. and maybe next week i'll show off my organic vegetable garden.)

but for now, enjoy my late-spring blooms:

peony from adam's late aunts garden. it hadn't bloomed in years until it moved to my house.

three-year old peach bearded iris

white rhododendron and blue cloud geranium

flower seeds

my baptisia australis (false indigo) has gone to seed and i will be harvesting the pods in the next week. if anyone is interested, i will give some to you so that you can plant them this fall.

b. australis is a sub-shrub that has lacy green foliage and long purple spikes of flowers. it grows to about 3 feet wide by 3 feet tall. and yes, it is a perennial

later on i will also have colombine, black-eyed susan and echninacea (purple cone flower). just let me know.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

poo poo blogger

blogger was having schizms yesterday, so pardon me while i back-date.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

my birthday

thanks for all of the warm wishes. i can't believe that i'm (gulp) 27. gross. i guess the good thing is that 97% of my friends are older than me.

oh man, so let me give you some highlights:

my birthday this year was 06/06/06. i have fond memories of 06/06/86 when i thought that i was theee coolest kid ever going around saying that i was going to be six on 6/6/86 and then it dawned on me... damn. i was going to be seven.

and now, twenty years later... i'm twenty seven. i don't know why i didn't think about this oddity in 1996. probeblly because i was at adam's graduation or busy sorting apples. hmm.

my sister & josh met ky & i at p.f.changs for a wonderful lunch (photos forthcoming)

my dear husband spent most of tuesday saying that he was "married to lucifer." don't laugh. he's not nice.

my dad (crazy, crazy man) sent me a box of 21 stuffed birds with funny hand-written comments such as "we just flu by" "where's the wacky tabaccy?" and "we are the counting crows." one of them was holding a nice birthday check. for those that do not know my dad, he is a very serious college professor and works eighty-bajillion obsessive hours a week and is a total perfectionist. (imagine my sister on a much larger scale.) anyway, schools out for summer and he is at his house up north totally relaxing. he's always a new man in the summer, so when a beer glass box arrived wrapped in tyvek tape, i knew it was going to be good. (although i'm rather sick of tyvek tape!)