Oh, hi!

I sort of disappeared, eh?  A few things have conspired against me in the last almost 2 weeks…1) I had a birthday and Monkey gave me The Sims 3, which is incredibly addictive; 2) Work has been very, very busy and my co-workers have been out of work leaving me to man the ship solo; 3) I am leaving for vacation myself on July 2 and there is way, way too much to be done before I feel comfortable doing so; and 4) It’s summer and our weekends disappear at light speed!

So, what have we been up to?  Monkey had his last normal school day of the year last Thursday.  His class put on a end of year performance for all the parents and siblings.  It was incredibly cute but I’ve had the lyrics for “Toe Knee Chestnut” stuck in my head ever since.  Let me tell you, I hate Toe Knee at this point.  Monkey will start his summer session next week, he’ll be with the same class but he’ll be in a new classroom (with a guinea pig!) for the summer.  The new classroom will stick after the regular fall session kicks in but I think the guinea pig will go back to whichever class she belongs too normally.

Little Cupcake has turned 2 and we went to her birthday party.  Cupcake looooves Monkey, she and Monkey yell to each other from the windows when the other is outside.  Sometimes Cupcake yells from her bedroom window when Monkey isn’t outside (her bedroom window faces our dining room.)  A while back, I forget if I’ve mentioned this, Monkey began greeting our neighbor (and now just about every man he sees) with “Yo mon!”  I have no idea where he picked up the Jamaican accent but it’s stinking cute.  Now Cupcake has started yelling “Yo, [Insert an incredibly cute mispronunciation of Monkey’s name]!” whenever she sees him.  The cuteness is just about deadly. Monkey has also picked up something from Cupcake… “Mine!”  Fortunately, he’s only used it in response to her claim that something (everything) is “No! Mine! No!”  He has also discovered that he can use his height to his advantage and he will just hold whatever she is trying to take from him over his head until she gives up, lol.  He won’t resist her if she gets her hands on it but he will now try to keep her from getting that far.

What else?  We’ve been gardening.  Our snow peas are coming on full steam and I can’t wait to have a big plate of them very soon.  Our strawberry patch has been producing very well this year and we’ve even managed to get a few despite the squirrel who thinks taking a single bite out of each ripe berry is funny.  Our garden experiment in Maine was mostly a failure.  Nothing sprouted but a single stalk of corn (which is useless, lol) and our potatoes.  We’re very excited about the potatoes though and we did toss in a few bush bean seeds and some squashes yesterday in hopes that we’ll get a bit more.  We’re really just trying to figure out what we can grow up there at this point.  The two late frosts really put a crimp in the, already short, growing season.  Duhdee is planning some sort of primative irrigation system for next year to continue to experiment with.

OK, I do believe that catches mostly up to speed.  I’ll have to post about Father’s Day tomorrow, I am just out of time now!