My friend Luke

My mom has one of those home movies from the early 80s of my oldest sister tearfully playing with puppies and showing them off to the camera in the kitchen of our California house. The only light for the movie comes from a lamp. She tells the story of a heart-broken 7- or 8-year-old who was losing puppies the next day and couldn't sleep because she would never see them again, and she "didn't even have pictures to remember them by."

Enter Luke.

F and I found a grasshopper in the tomatoes one day (really it was one grasshopper giving another grasshopper a piggy back ride) and he took it to preschool to share and set it free there. S was sad he didn't have a grasshopper to show so he went outside with his papi and caught one. The poor grasshopper lost one of his back legs in the process. But S was so excited, he named his grasshopper Luke and took him to school the next day. Then when he got home, we decided to let Luke go free.

The next day he caught a caterpillar of some kind. And it died.

Two days later, S looked for Luke again, found a grasshopper (who might have lost his back leg in the catching process or he might have really been Luke), dumped out the dead caterpillar, and caught it in the jar he had already labeled with Luke's name. 

While he was working on his homework, I heard the poor grasshopper jumping into the lid and the glass wall, trying to escape his confinement, or maybe trying to get away from the stench of death, and encouraged S to let Luke go back to his family. S was sad. "I never get to have anything little to love," he said.

I told him the story of his aunt, and we decided that we would take a picture so that he could always remember his pet grasshopper, Luke. 

Even with the picture, he cried himself to sleep. But Luke didn't commit suicide trying to escape the wall of his glass house.

A Pet Show

On July 6, 2011, a pet show was held in the middle of corn country. The hosts, F and S, were proud to show the talents, and beauty, of the multitude of animals they have in their home.

The began preparing for the show, a first in the neighborhood, by making prizes and signs for the different animals. Both boys cut out and drew the pictures for the prizes.

They then prepared the venue, moving furniture and strategically placing the animals in the best place.

Although the entry sign listed dogs, cats, birds, dolphins, frogs, and bears, the show also included magical creatures, other amphibians, sharks, farm animals, and insects.

This is Pongo and Perdita (aka Puppy and Azul), whose marriage today was the inspiration for the dog show, according to show organizer, S. They are accompanied by Santa Frog and their son, Bill.

Taca and the twin sharks, Bill and Ben, began the show. The twins shared their special talents of spinning on their noses and bouncing on their tales.

Show organizer, S, took the time to advertise the show by knocking on neighbors' doors and showing the visitors each of the animals and their special talents. Here he explains to AB about Pongo and Perdita's recent marriage.

Visitors were also able to pet, hug, and cuddle with the animals in the show. Each of the animals, even the sharks, were good with people.

S, F, and their younger brother A, enjoyed the pet show so much that they hope to have another in the near future.

Georgia on my mind

I hate to sound like a a license plate (tag), but we've had Georgia on our mind. So we decided to take a somewhat spontaneous trip to Georgia over spring break. We planned to visit friends, visit friends, visit friends, and maybe visit dissertation advisors. It was all we planned. Thanks to some wonderful friends (hi, guys) we were able to reconnect with most people we wanted to, and thanks to some wonderful advisors (don't worry, they aren't reading), I was able to get some ideas for the dissertation.

We took wonderful pictures, more than can be posted here, but I'll give it a shot.

(While the moms were downstairs talking, the children maintained silence while cleaning out a certain cedar closet.)

(Watching the "Beavers" movie. None of them lasted too long.)

(This was hilarious. The candy lollipops had "YES" stamped on this. Z kept saying, "Yes!"
and F kept retaliating, "No!")

Even Superheroes Cry

We missed a birthday party for some friends the other week because the party was on Sunday, so we decided to throw the birthday boy an impromptu party at our house. I threw together some superhero capes for all the siblings (total 6), made cupcakes, and decided to have a ball. Superhero M (birthday boy, aged 4) wore blue and orange, Superhero W (older brother, aged 5) wore yellow and red, Superhero I (birthday girl, aged 2) wore pink and green,

Superhero F wore orange and green (he wanted to be like his friend),

Superhero S wore purple and yellow (he had insisted on me changing his cape around so that the purple would be on the outside, and then wore yellow on the outside the whole party so he could be like W),

and Superhero A wore green and red (because that is what F originally picked). Superhero A thought the cape was wonderful, even though he missed most of the party due to his afternoon nap.

I didn't take many pictures, and I didn't get the dream picture of all the children's backs in order (W, S, M, F, I, A), but I did get some.

The one thing I learned from this afternoon with superheroes, is that even superheroes cry.

Galina

Some friends invited us to join them in Galina, Illinois for Labor Day weekend. Galina is in the three corners area (the corners of Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin) and is nothing like the parts of Illinois we regularly see. It is hilly and quite fun, I've heard, during the winter. (There are signs everywhere that proclaim "snowmobile crossing.") The first night we hit downtown Galina with a crowd of about a billion hungry people. As we walked down Main, looking for a place to eat, we were confronted with restaurant after restaurant with waiting times of well over 1 hour. Finally we found a fun little burger joint that had space, was roomy, had decent food, and kept the boys entertained.

On Labor Day, we went hiking in the Mines of Spain in Debuque, Iowa. The boys loved climbing down to the ground level. There was one moment of stress when S-- and the F-- pronounced that they needed to poop. (This was of course on the lowest level, the furthest from the outhouse.) My dear husband came to the rescue and taught the boys about wiping with leaves.

We recovered, cleaned off with hand sanitizer, and were sufficiently away from it when we were passed by a family on the return trip. (Such relief that no one was squatting in the trees.)

When we had crossed a train track, we were at the Great Mississippi. The older boys had a ball throwing rocks, pebbles, and small boulders into the water. We separated them a good distance to make sure that no one hit anyone else (though we still had our close calls).

Moo-ve Over

We visited a dairy farm the other day. I've been wanting to go for about 6 months, but kept putting it off until finally we made it there. It was a great trip. The farm is family run, and they started bottling their own milk about a year ago. Since it is family run, they were so excited to have the children there and to let them be children. The children got to spray the hoses in the milking parlor, go out to meet the cows as they came in, get their shoes sprayed with milk, feed the goats, pet the calves, etc. Carmen, who led our tour, also let them go at their own pace, moving the ice cream cones to the middle of the tour, and pausing at the swing set for a while as well. She loved that S--was so curious of everything.



F-- got terrified by a tractor near the beginning (I don't think he'd realized how loud tractors could be), and anytime we were outside near the milking parlor, he would cry, "I scared, Mama," and climb into my arms. It was a little hard because I was carrying A-- as well.

The greatest thing was we paid $2.50 for fresh milk, picked up some fresh ice cream, thought about getting some fresh meat, and planned a return trip for a Farmer's Breakfast. All in all, it was great fun!

A Visit from Friends

We were lucky enough to have friends from Georgia visit us after Memorial Day. We had fun visiting a spray park (which they don't have in Georgia) and playing. It was great fun for all of us, and S-- wants to return to Georgia so that he could visit these friends again.

The oldest, still friends.

The middle children, both now much more talkative than when we left.

The babies.

Here's one of all the children together. (You can see our new couches, the new paint on the walls, and the new kitchen table in the background).