Boxelder Bug Days 2024

Elena's year of being Boxelder Bug Day royalty went by faster than we expected. She had a blast going to all the parades and events, but she says she's looking forward to not having to wear the crown anymore!

One of the funniest things was at the Parade, when the Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator came by. Every year he comes and he typically makes some joke asking for rum. Seth was ready for him this year and had a couple of mini bottles of rum to give him. "Captain Jack" got a huge kick out of this - he said in 20 years that has never happened and it really meant a lot to have someone go that extra mile to interact with him. He stayed by our group for quite awhile interacting with Elena, the kids and Seth. After the parade, we met up again downtown where he got a few more pictures with Elena. 

     

Captain Jack wearing Elena's crown

Old and new royalty together

With Father Tanner!

Joining the marching band for a bit

Milestones (and a few quotes)

This summer has been full of milestones for Olivia - most notably that she learned both how to swim and ride bike. Once she started to get the hang of both, she insisted on practicing with every spare moment she had until she had mastered each task. By the time the pool closed, she could go off the diving board without a life jacket and get back to the edge, and she goes on bike rides daily. Every time, she proudly yells "I'm riding without training wheels!" to any pedestrian within a 100 foot radius of her wherever we go. I didn't take much for pictures of her biking or swimming, but here are a few pictures from the fair. 

And now for the quotes!

We were recently visiting friends on a cattle farm, and Olivia wanted to go see the cows. Seth took her to show her, and she had lots of questions. She started asking why they had so many cows and what they were for. He explained that they would become things like hamburger and steak. She was a little taken aback and said, "They're going to kill them??? That's rude!!"

Last week, the boys watched a TV show in which someone was hypnotized. The next morning, Frank came downstairs to breakfast and said, "Mom, I think Charlie tried hypnotizing me in my sleep last night because this morning he clapped twice and said, 'Who are you?' And then I just didn't say anything." A minute later, Charlie came down, clapped twice at Frank and again asked him who he was. "Charlie, did you try to hypnotize Frank?" I asked. Charlie responded in mock surprise, "Whaaaaaat? I would never try to turn Frank into Luke Skywalker?" He followed this by quickly clapping once again, asking Frank who he was, and then quietly muttering "Dang it!" to himself. 

Olivia put on her cowgirl boots to wear to daycare the other day. Seth put on his sandals and they were ready to go. As they were leaving, Seth said, "Let's go, cowgirl!" To which Olivia replied, "Ok, sandals!"

Oh, Frank!

Frank had a couple of quotes recently that are too good not to put on here. However, he's at an age where he's a little self conscious when he says things that come out funny so I'm hoping in 5 or 6 years, he can read these and be glad I saved the memory. In the meantime, maybe don't mention these to him. He's such a sweet, helpful, caring boy with a great sense of adventure and curiosity. As fun as it is watching him grow up, I don't want to forget these moments that only happen while kids are still young!

#1 Frank was spending the day with my Mom when he suddenly said, "I'm going to be an uncle soon!" "You are?" Grandma responded (more than a little taken aback since none of our teens are even dating). "Yeah, cuz Elena is 17, which means she could be married before too long and then I'll get to be an uncle like Reed!" (Reed is his cousin who became an uncle around age 8). 

#2 For Mother's Day, Frank was so excited to give me a coupon booklet he had made at school. It had coupons that said things like: "Clean my Room," "Free Hug," "Pick up Toys," etc. He said, "You can use one right now if you want!" So I told him I wanted to use the Free Hug coupon and he gave me a huge hug. 

The next morning, he handed me the booklet again, asking if I wanted to use another one. I said, "Well, your room could use a cleaning so I think I'll use that one, and you can go clean your room." He looked at me confused, and said, "What do you mean?" I explained that when I gave him the coupon, he would have to clean his room and then that coupon would be used up. His smile completely disappeared and he said, "I thought it meant you were going to clean my room."   That would explain why he drew long brown hair on the person in the picture....

Summer fun!

Elena went to Girls State in June. She had a great time, made a lot of friends and learned a lot. One thing she learned is that she definitely does NOT want to go into politics. All the meetings were long and tedious. In her words, "If you agree with someone, just say 'I agree.' You don't have to repeat everything they just said over and over again!"

I already posted about Olivia's 5th birthday in St. Louis, but we did have a follow-up party with an actual cake after returning. She wanted her cake to look just like last year's cake. And she did all of the decorating herself, which explains why there are way too many candles.

One of the biggest June highlights was a visit from Uncle Joe and the Boston cousins!! All the cousins except for Alex (who had a baseball tournament) were able to get together. The girls were reintroduced to life in small town Minnesota. They were shocked by things like driving on gravel roads and the way we knew practically everyone - and waved even if we didn't know someone! 

Hoku accurately pointed out that this view looked just like the original Microsoft background. 
In case you forgot, here it is:

Grandma and all the granddaughters

And of course, we've gotten in lots and lots of swimming. Olivia has been working hard on swimming without help or a life jacket, so she asks to go to the pool almost every day no matter the weather.

Frank's friend, Teddy, successfully buried Frank up to his neck in sand at Camden Park!

And Charlie's baseball team won first place this year in the championship! There were enough 5th and 6th grade boys in baseball this summer that they had 3 teams. Thankfully, they put these 3 cousins all on the same team. 

And here's one random quote from Olivia: 

I don't know what you're talking about....but I do know what my coffee is talking about: drinking coffee!

Summer work

As usual, summer is full of work and projects to be done. Sam has been getting up at 5:30 every day this summer to work a full day of construction, then coming home to lift weights and squeeze in a round of golf before bed. Recently he cut his head at work and it was bleeding pretty badly so he wrapped it in a t-shirt and finished out the day. Fortunately, once he unwrapped it, he discovered it was a much smaller cut than suspected so no hospital visit was required. 

My summer projects have been primarily tending the garden and painting. I just finished painting the front porch (minus the floor - that will have to wait) and a stairwell at St. Ed's school that was peeling. Unsure of how to reach the high walls, Seth told me he could just "build some scaffolding quick." He went to the school and finished in about 2 hours. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this! It worked really well and covered the whole area without needing to be moved so it made for a quick and easy paint job.

 

In addition to the weeds, some of our grapevines have been getting out of control. In one area, they had completely taken over our gooseberries and yellow raspberry bushes. Frank was complaining that he was bored on the day I had decided to tackle the grapevines so I told him I would pay him to help me with them. He worked outside for about an hour while I did laundry, and when I went to check on him, I was blown away by the work he did. He had gotten right into the thick of the (very prickly) bushes and pulled out most of the grapevines including some very thick vines that required a lot of hacking and tugging. Then he made several trips to the compost pile and packed them all down. This was our conversation when I got outside:

Me: I'm really impressed you did all of that! That was really hard work.

Frank: Well, I pretty much got that from Dad. Dad's really strong and works hard so I got that from him. And you're good at cleaning (this is debatable), so I got that from you. And that's why I was able to do it! 

After thinking about it for a minute, he added: "...but my dance moves. That's just all natural." 

More of St. Louis

 I hadn't gotten to the picture on Seth's phone yet when I wrote my last post, so here are a few more snapshots:

Looking up from the caves to the big slides

The caves area 

Out for supper! We had delicious seafood and the kids enjoyed their mocktails

On top of the arch

Under the arch

In front of the arch (I'm starting to feel like a PBS kids special on prepositional phrases)

Sculpture garden

The Spirit of St. Louis (which I had to explain to the kids - that's one old plane) 

Busch stadium 

St. Louis

We settled on St. Louis, MO for our family trip this year. Our main goal was to see the City Museum and it did not disappoint. It was like a dream come true for kids who like to climb and explore (and what kid doesn't, honestly) - and it was fun for all ages. It's hard to put into words so if you really want to get a feel for it, just watch a video on YouTube. We put in a full day there, and were exhausted by the end of it. We also hit up the zoo, the Arch, a ropes climbing course, the botanical gardens, sculpture garden and lots of good places to eat. 

We stayed in a nice Airbnb in Dogtown, which is the Irish district of St. Louis. At first we thought someone had just forgotten to take down their St. Patrick's Day decorations, but soon we realized every house and business was decorated with shamrocks and Irish flags. On our last evening, Olivia wanted to go for a walk so I strolled her around. After about 45 minutes, Seth send me a text saying "A little Irish goes a long way. You can't go 50 feet without stopping to talk with someone." And he was right! I think we walked 2-3 blocks and had 8 conversations with people who were also out walking with their dogs. Olivia was telling everyone that the next day was her birthday, and amazingly, of not one but TWO of the people we met had the same birthday!

Charlie is the one climbing in the center of this picture. If you look, there's a similar structure even higher up. 

Everyone (including Sam and Seth) had fun in the building room at the Science Center

Friday was Oliva's birthday. We went out to eat at an Italian restaurant, but she fell asleep on my lap after eating so we had to bring her birthday treat (cannoli) with us and sing to her in the car. She did not like the cannoli, by the way.

That evening we had "ice cream cake" with friends of ours from Kansas City who came to meet us.

The boys favorite feature from our Airbnb - an arcade machine!

This was some of our kids' very favorite thing in St. Louis. At the City Museum, there was a tank of little flesh-eating fish. If you put your hands in the water, they would come nibble all the dead skin off of your hands. This is Charlie. Olivia took a few hours before she finally put in just one finger - and that was enough.

The person we asked to take a picture of our whole family at the arch did a terrible job so this is all we have from that site. Oh well.

Freak Shakes! One has an entire brownie, peanut butter cup and chocolate dipped pretzel in it. The other has a cupcake, a snickerdoodle cookie and lollipop. They were delicious! 

Olivia with our friends' son, Ameson.

Charlie and Frank going down a 5 story slide:

And this is Sam going down a slide. He thought it would be fun to pretend it was absolutely terrifying. Unfortunately there was a young girl behind him about to go down and after watching him, she absolutely refused to go. He tried telling her he was joking, but she wasn't having it. Sam apologized to her mom, and fortunately her mom thought it was funny. Her poor dad had to climb all the way back down with her through narrow tunnels and climbing structures. 

Best quote of the week: 

On the ride home, we were working on getting onto the freeway, and the kids were requesting that we put in a movie for them to watch. We needed to focus on driving and had to keep telling the kids to wait. One of them asked again for us to start the movie and Seth, getting frustrated, said "Just wait! We have to get on the damn road first!" And Olivia piped up in a completely sweet and innocent voice, "We are on the damn road, Dad." Of course this triggered all the other kids to start giggling. We were trying really hard not to laugh, but she caught on that she had said something funny and was laughing, too. Fortunately she didn't repeat it!