Elisa’s Day

on my way to get the mail yesterday i ate an apple of the tree in the driveway. delicious. last year the apples weren’t much, there are several trees around. but this year for whatever reason, the one in the driveway is full of good sized apples. now the lowest and most ripe ones are wormy, but the ones that aren’t are pretty darn good. so we need to get out there with a ladder and start picking. i also need to go pick the pears as well, there is a good lot of them, and i learned last year, they are better small and still kind of red/hard. i don’t know why, but once they turned fully green, they were kind of yucky. and i’m not sure if i spy a few green apples on the tree out the window just this minute, supposedly some kind of heritage apple tree according to the previous owners, but last year it didn’t have any apples at all, i’m definitely going to check it out this morning though.

our poor garden is much neglected and completely overtaken with weeds. this was just not a good year for us. ryan working so much at a new job, me pregnant and miserable or busy with an infant ( and so far from miserable about it ) but even in it’s completely neglected state, we still had some peas, beans, beets, and a lot of amazing potatoes. and of course the crazy garlic, all 150 of them or something like that. i think tomorrow if i can leave molly in grandma’s charge for a bit i’ll forage for anything else that managed to survive, who knows, i may find some squash or something.

but not today, because today is supposed to be the only hot day this week and we’re going to the cottage. when you only get one nice day every 10 or 15, you gotta take advantage of it ( aside from the fluke heat wave while we had our company of course, a whopping 6 days of hot weather in a row !! )

and then it’s sept. wow. sept is always a nutty month for us. with 4 birthdays, school starting and the fair which has become a bit of a family event. but this year we also have a wedding. crazy.

last weekend was my grandma’s 75th birthday. so we all got together and had professional portraits taken, which was hectic but cool. i wonder what the final head count was? i’ll have to find out, probably around 30……lots of good fun and good food. my girls had a blast dressing up fancy, getting their nails painted, and then changing back into their regular clothes to play basketball and football with all my teenage cousins. that’s some good balance ! and grandma laid out a whole table of random china and other bits and pieces she wanted us to all take. i took two tea cups for myself and one for each girl. apparently it was popular to collect single teacups so grandma had a lot of them, all different. i also took a cut glass pickle plate and creamer/sugar set and a china platter that was a wedding present. the only one i got a story on was the platter from her wedding, so next time she’s here i’ll have to see if any of the cups i took has it’s own story.

okay, must go pack for the cottage.

• sweaty babies dressed only in diapers
• waterlogged, sun burnt girls
• many many hours spent with family
• bbq or sandwiches for dinner, too hot to cook/eat
• melty ice cream cones

too bad it didn’t come until the end of august. but we’ve packed a lot of summer fun into the last week and a half. and we capped it off with some back to school shopping yesterday.

much fun was had with my SIL and little niece, though it has been a long while since i had a crawler around. since i’ve had to always watch my step and fish random floor flotsam and jetsam out of little mouths. it made it glaringly obvious just how not baby proof we are right now, but i have some months to get on top of that still. many, many hours were spent in the water, the girls are a full 180 from last year with water. it makes ever hour i sat in The Hottest Place On Earth through swimming lessons worth it. many hours were also spent cuddling sweaty babies who didn’t want to sleep. but who would in that kind of humidity? we were sad to see them on their way and hope it won’t be another two years until we see them again.

threw together a last minute trip to the cottage yesterday afternoon. my aunt, cousins and their kids were all up for the week, and i had planned to go one day, but bad weather continues to thwart us. but tomorrow we have company coming to stay for 6 days, so yesterday was our last chance to get up, bad weather or not. and ryan got home from work a bit early so we raced around ( a few of us may have still been in our pj’s at 1pm, so what? ) and got ready and headed off to visit. it was hectic and we were out late but it was worth it because the kids had so much fun. i grew up close to my family as i know i’ve mentioned before, i want the same for my kids, so i have to make the effort to give them these chances to spend time with everyone when they’re around. it was my cousin’s son’s birthday so we had a bbq and cake and there was some wii to be played, in between all the swimming to be done of course, kids do not care about the weather, as long as it isn’t thundering then they want to swim, i vaguely recall that same dedication as a child. in two weeks the whole family is together again for grandma’s 75th birthday, and a few weeks after that a wedding, so that’s fun too.

and the company you ask?

oh right, my sister in law is here, in the province from chilly ol’ winnipeg, manitoba. and we haven’t seen her in two years, since we flew out for her wedding. and we haven’t met her little daughter who is nine months old, so tomorrow the much anticipated visit begins. that will bring the population of our little house to, 4 adults ( my MIL will be coming too of course ) and 5 children, two under the age of 1 yr……..wow! but it’ll be so much fun, the kids are so excited they have been counting the days, and i can’t wait to meet my little niece. that leaves me with a day and a half to get the house cleaned and organized ( there are some sleeping arrangements to be sorted out, i have a working plan of putting SIL and baby in hannah’s room where there is still a crib, and hannah in the toddler bed in the older girls room……but hannah doesn’t like the toddler bed, and will she be able to sleep with the older girls there too? only time will tell. grandma gets her usual spot in the hallway of course LOL someday maybe we’ll have a spare room in the basement, but until then, it’s the hallway ) not to mention i have to do a big grocery shop, and my mom is away……does that mean i’m taking all 4 kids to the grocery store? possibly, or spending my evening shopping? more likely.

so i better get moving.

my house, that is. finally, from the chaos.

see, swimming lessons are only from 5 to 6, sure. but add in the travel and change room time, extra hour. and to be ready to leave by 4:30 i have to start getting ready at 3:30, especially since i need to feed the baby before we leave, partly in hopes she’ll sleep through the whole lesson, but mostly just to better the odds she won’t want to nurse in The Sweatiest Place On Earth.

so….subtract time spent feeding the kids ( breakfast, snack, lunch, snack ), subsequent clean up, and nursing and rocking/walking the baby from the earlier part of our day and that leaves precious little time for anything else. my house had settled into complete chaos. my dining room table had been thought lost forever under a mountain of crafts and various craft shrapnel ( and my children, not so good with the cleaning up after themselves……that’s normal right? )  there was laundry through out the house in various stages of completion and the bedrooms…..well they were a right off, my own the worst of the bunch since it is the hub of baby activity and all baby related mess, and therefor all the children are constantly wandering in and out dragging various children’s messes behind them. plus my collection of water glasses alone was pretty staggering.

add on top of that, the two days we spent driving and then chilling at family cottages, where absolutely nothing got done at home, well……it was pretty bad.

but hey, yesterday i spent the whole day catching up and have reclaimed my house from the brink. laundry was washed, or folded, or put away, which ever was required. the table was excavated. the bedrooms were cleaned. i even vacuumed some of the house.

i am definitely happy swimming lessons are over and am looking forward to just enjoying this month and spending as much time at the cottages as we can. at the beginning i was undecided about signing them up for the august session. but i’ve opted with not. summer is whipping by too fast. i’m sure the craptastic weather has a lot to do with that. and the baby. nothing makes time seem to rocket by like an infant does.