Blueberries, Butterflies, Buddies, Bumper, Basement, and More!

See how I did that? It's hard to come up with a title for a blog post when we've had an action-packed 10 days. Life with these kiddos is just busy, especially in the summer! But I'll do my best to hit the highlights.

In the past 10 days, we've gone blueberry picking twice. When the berries are only $2 per POUND, and the kids will easily eat a pound (or more) a day, then it would be silly not to! And we will likely go at least once more. They are too delicious, so healthy, and this is the only time of the year where we can get them so cheaply. Anyway, here are pictures from both trips! The first was with Caryn and her kids, and the second was just the four of us (Gus' first time! awwww).

The blueberry farm is small-- it's on less than 5 acres, and it's in an elderly couple's yard. But they do this every year, and are such nice people to deal with! And the long winter and late summer have led to a bumper crop of berries, and they are ripening slowly. So we really lucked out, with a nice, long window for picking this year. Yay!! At least something good came out of that miserable winter!

And then the butterflies... I got the kids a butterfly kit for Christmas in 2011, but it had lived in a closet until recently. I finally pulled out the certificate inside and ordered the caterpillars, which arrived last Monday (the 21st). It's been eight days, and they have already formed their chrysalides and have been moved to their mesh enclosure. Now, we wait! I've taken tons of pictures, but here are the highlights. I'm pretty sure I'm more interested than anyone else, but that's okay. I know they will be super excited when the butterflies emerge!

And then, the buddies. We've played with friends plenty, of course. But on Friday, Niko was invited over to his friend Kam's house for the first time. And it was a DROP OFF thing. Like, that's never happened before! Yes, I've left him with Caryn and Miranda, but those are people he knows well, and we had played with them tons of times before. And I know Kam's mom really well, so I knew Niko was in good hands, but I think he and I both were a little nervous. But it ended up being great!! He had a complete blast, and Maya and I had girl time together. Kam's mom texted me a few pictures. Niko certainly got over his nervousness quickly!

Fast forward to this weekend... I don't know where it came from, but I suddenly felt motivated to work on our screenless screened-in porch. I'm STILL motivated, because now I can actually see how nice it will be when it's done. I can't wait!! I've actually installed 1x1 wood strips around the inside of each window frame, and now I am making the individual screens with wire frame screen kits. Two down, 10 to go! Then we just need a door, a good cleaning, and some fresh trim paint. Voila! If I can keep my momentum, I can probably finish in a week or two, yay!! (and no, "porch" doesn't start with a b. So I just skipped that in the title, haha!)

Then, yesterday, Gus took my car to work, since he planned to meet Ramzi for dinner and that meant more driving than usual (my car gets better mileage than the truck). And it was raining. So he left, and called me like 15 minutes later-- he'd been rear-ended at a red light. Argh!! Both he and the other driver were fine, but both cars had significant damage. My car is still driveable, but the bumper is totally banged up and sticking out on one end. And my exhaust pipe is bent. Thank goodness for insurance! Gus is taking my car in on Thursday, and we will be getting a rental. I'm curious to see how much damage was actually done-- I bet it's a lot more than it seems. sigh.

And that brings us to the basement! We had just baked blueberry muffins yesterday when my cell phone made that horrible emergency alert noise. And a message popped up saying, "SEVERE WEATHER ALERT: TORNADO WARNING IN THE AREA UNTIL 5:15 EDT. TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT WAIT TO SEE FUNNEL CLOUDS." Well, okay then! Commence freak out! We'd had tornado warnings before, but never anything quite so imminent! So I grabbed some of our camping chairs and the kids and I went to hang out in the basement. They were thrilled:

At one point, the warning was lifted, so we headed upstairs. I started to get blueberry muffins for the kids (just because of the trauma of the potential tornado. It was right before dinner! ha!). Then my phone went off AGAIN, and back down we went. We were down there for about half an hour total. Really, it wasn't as bad as the kids make it look in that picture. They played Simon Says, and Niko discovered a wiffle ball in the corner that we was very excited about. And, in the end, there was no tornado. But there WAS one in Revere yesterday morning (outside of Boston). We emerged from the basement to see beautiful blue skies and white, puffy clouds... a sharp contrast to the Black Clouds of Doom we'd seen when we went down! It was a crazy weather day, indeed.

Anyway... I think we are mostly caught up now! Maya's been doing swim lessons for the past two weeks, and will finish on Thursday. She still can't swim without a floatie, but I think we are getting there. And she still has two more lessons, so we'll see! Gus is also taking all of next week off, and we are surprising the kids with a quick trip up to Storyland in New Hampshire. I really hope they like it. I know Maya will, but Niko has always been a wild card with that kind of thing. Fingers crossed!

And now, I sleep. :)