Kids, Cranes, and a New Piano

Over the past few weeks we have spent some time with some of the young people in our life, specifically our niece, nephew, and my cousins. And they're all pretty great.

First, there's Bo, who just graduated from pre-school. Yes, you read that right--he just graduated! Whahooooo!

Front of the line, ready to get his diploma

All right--what can I do with my brand new diploma? Nothing? Okay. Where are my toys? Also, have you seen my shirt? It's great.

To celebrate this graduation, Bo's pre-school class sang an amazing song, "We Recycle," which was done to the tune of Frère Jacques.

 Then, there's Sadie, who is counting up a storm and showed her Uncle Trevor her new skills.

Two basketballs and a bunch of footballs. Why can't I count mermaids or something fun instead?

All right, Uncle Trevy-trev: one picture and then it's back to hide-and-seek. No, I will not negotiate.

And finally, there are my cousins Erica and Carly. They're smart young college students (DePaul University and Elmhurt College) who just so happen to be gorgeous. Is there a connection between their smarts and the fact that they're related to me? Well. Let's just say that there might be. (yes. the answer is yes.)

We are Boscos. We need no other explanation.

Now, I can't leave out our niece Destiny, who, although we haven't spent time with her in the past few weeks, is also smart and gorgeous. So, for a pre #TBT, here she is (and I couldn't decide which picture to post, so we have a variety [Destiny, this is what you get for not hanging out with your Aunt Laura lately...(we miss you)]):

This is Destiny, mid-dance and mid-song, at our wedding in 2007

And there she is at her mom and Neill's wedding in 2012--she's such a grown up! (this is what aunts do, Destiny...we humiliate you)

And here's D. with some more smart and gorgeous young ladies. Check out the paparazzi!

Now, on to the cranes that live in our neighborhood.

As some of you know, we moved to a neighborhood that is full of woodland creatures: flying squirrels, gophers, geese, turtles...

Yeah, this exists. And it's the best thing in the world.

...and recently there have been two sandhill cranes hanging out in the neighborhood.

We are cranes in the neighborhood. Hello. We're cranes.

But the other day they ventured away from the main hangout, and Roo and I ran into them on our afternoon walk. They were wandering through a backyard--a backyard, I might add, that is inhabited by a basset hound who is a fan of Roo.

Here's a short video of the cranes:

 And here's a slightly longer video of the cranes, the basset hound, and Roo:

Grandma Madel, our very own bird expert, told us that we should see a baby crane wandering around soon. And when that happens, I will probably crane-nap it and make it my new best friend. Pictures to come.

And here is one last video to finish this post. Last month we had my old piano moved from my brother and Paula's house to our place (G&P have been piano-sitting for the past five years since my parents moved to the city and didn't have room for it in the condo). And I discovered that I can still (sort of) peck out a tune!

So, enjoy all of that and look forward to my next post celebrating Trevor, who is very hard to pin down for a photo.

BOOM.

But I will pin him down. With words. (ha!)

See ya.

Monumental Weekend

Well, maybe this weekend wasn't exactly...monumental. But it was pretty darn nice.

Saturday was the Power family's annual excursion to Sonny Acres Farm. We've been going there every fall to ride the rides, go through the haunted houses (not me), eat caramel apples (absolutely me), and check out the Halloween shop; and this year was no different.

We rode the rides...

Daredevil Power

Dad, Sadie, and some elephants

...and went through the haunted houses, although Sadie was relegated to the Spook Shack instead of the real haunted house that only Sean and Destiny would go through. She gave it the old college try convincing her dad, though.

Dad, come on! They've taken emergency precautions, so what's the big deal?!

The cousins decided to paint their faces to finish off the afternoon.

Favorite cousins = Matching skeleton faces

I am very serious about face paint.

I made them take another picture after this because they weren't being very scary (um, Destiny, skeletons don't smile).

Much better

We left the farm and headed to Pal Joey's for pizza. By this point Dest had gotten rid of her skeleton face, but Sadie was still going strong. And as everyone knows, skeletons are really big into roaring.



Trevor and I also enjoy making faces at our favorite niece, so we spent some time doing that, too.

We called it a night to get home and take care of Roo, whose belly was grumbling and who was having a hard time sleeping because she was so excited about today's Hound Town Halloween Bash.

Yes, that's right--today was Roo's first costume party! Her costume has been ready for over a month (I did some early shopping), but I had to get my costume ready, too, so that the two of us could participate in the neighborhood dog park's parade. She was a hot dog and I was a bottle of mustard.

Her costume was store-bought but was the perfect costume for her:

Our little hot dog

 But I decided to make mine, so I added some iron-on letters to a yellow t-shirt and knitted a goofy mustard hat.

 

There were lots of dogs there--two bumble bees, a cheerleader, football player, and umpire, Superman and Supergirl, an alligator, a Home Depot employee, a banana split, a witch, and even another hot dog (although Roo was the cutest hot dog. obviously).

Roo found a plate full of spaghetti and meatballs to play with before we walked in the parade:

Don't play with your food!

Mustard!

My friend Lisa and her two daughers in pumpkin shirts walked with us

Not only did we have a great time, but Roo won "Silliest Costume"! She is so very much my dog.

When we got home, Trevor tried out his new leaf blower and I baked some pumpkin pies from the pie pumpkin I got a couple weeks ago. The pies turned out to be pretty tasty--though a little clovetastic--and they were a good companion to tonight's episode of The Walking Dead. And now I am typing this post and watching Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (I thought it was the original and am disappointed but still watching it [because of laziness]).

I've been working on Halloween decorations for the house, and that will be my next post. Here's a little taste until I get it up:

Um, a little help here?

Until then, stock up on candy and get ready for trick-or-treaters coming soon to a neighborhood near you!

A Summer of Lakes

Earlier this month we took our annual Power family vacation to Door County, WI. We've been taking this trip with the Power clan for about five years now, and every year it gets better.

This year we stayed just outside of Fish Creek in Juddville. The house we rented is called Kinney Farm, and it was a pretty spectacular place for a group like us. It had plenty of space, all the kitchen utensils and appliances we needed to make dinners for the whole family (plus Grandma & Grandpa Madel and Jim, who came for dinner one night).

The front

The back

The barn (the silo soon became a target for water balloon launching--keep reading)

The windmill

 And it was covered in wallpaper. Amazing, wonderful wallpaper.

 

Did you count? Nine. Nine flowerific, plaid-tastic, dot-mazing wallpapers.

But of course, we had fun outside of the house, too. Our first full day together, we went up to Washington Island to tour around and see what all the fuss was about. John and Fran had been there before, but none of the Power kids had memories of it, so even if they'd gone, years and years ago, they were too little to remember.

We took a ferry to get up there...

...and then we hopped on the Cherry Train (which is not actually a train) to see some of the Washington Island sights.

Sadie and Uncle Trevy-Trev, on the "train"

The Powers, heading up the caboose

We stopped at a little farm and Sadie hung out with this fellow.

He seemed a little vain to me.

This is the kind of rain barrel we're going to get for the new house.

Rae and Fran, getting real up in the Do-Co.

Uncle Neill, trying out the horse

Um, why is no one watching?! This is tremendous!

Aaand, Sadie shows us how it's done.

We headed back home that night, sun-burned and happy. Sean hooked up his giant projector screen, which he'd set up in the Kinney Farm's huge screened in back porch, and we watched cartoons, stand-up comedy, and episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia until we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer.

The next day we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's place to spend some quality time with them. And Grandma immediately set us to work pulling grass out of her beach walkway. We didn't mind at all, and it turned out that we're really good grass pullers.

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to pull we go!

Sadie's hands are too small to be good at pulling (yet...), so she and Sean hung out down at the water.

Who's cool? These three.

The finished, grass-free walkway

After we worked, we relaxed with Grandma and Grandpa. The day was warm and breezy, and we had a cooler full of beer and some of the best company I could have asked for.

Sean, Angelique, and Sadie, hanging around

This is one of my favorite places in all of Door County: the Madel's back porch

The only thing that was missing was a big meal, so we decided to meet out that evening for dinner at Cooper's Corner in Fish Creek.

The whole gang!

The youngest Power sibs

After dinner, we wandered up to Dippy's Ice Cream Shop for a couple of cones, and spotted a fish boil. Of course we stopped to watch.



Our second full day on the farm was a pontooning day. We rented a boat from a place in Sturgeon Bay and headed out at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning. We'd packed beer, sandwiches, and cookies, so we had all of our bases covered.

Captain Neill

Angi and Fran as we headed out onto open water

Fran, contemplating the day ahead (and looking good doing it)

The crew

Roo, unwinding after her adventures in the water (she did not like it and almost drowned Neill as he tried to get her back on the boat)

We returned to the farm that evening even more sun-burned than we'd been after the trip to Washington Island, but--I think--even happier: our bellies full of Coronas and egg salad sandwiches (a better combination than you may think), our arms tired from swimming, and our eyelids a little droopy with vacation fatigue.

But were we too tired to have more adventures that evening when we got back to the farm?

Hell no.

We all wandered down to the water to watch the sunset that night (we'd tried a night before, but missed it). The waterfront was rocky but serene, and we were the only people there. We watched the sun go down, skipped some rocks, and tried to ignore the hundreds of alewives on the shore.

The sun goes down at Kinney Farm

Who's that maniac in the middle of the picture?

That's us.

Auntie Rae and Sadie, just hanging out

And we couldn't end the night there, so we headed back up to the farm...

  ...and onto something that was essential to our stay in Door County: launching water balloons.

I'd gotten a water balloon filler-upper at the store the week before our trip. It was purple and came with about a thousand little colorful balloons, and I knew that we needed it for our vacation. So, coupled with a giant slingshot that just happened to be among our vacation supplies, the balloons became almost better than fireworks.

The Power boys get ready for the shot, as Roo looks on.

The next day, before T. and I headed back home, we all spent a bit more time together at the farm...

...hanging laundry...

...drinking beer...

...running with a tennis ball...

...knocking over Laura...

...goofing around with Letty...

...pretending we're a puppy...

...and being an amazing family.

We stopped by Jim's place on our way out of town, where Sadie and Grandpa John got some final minutes of quality bonding time.

So, Grandpa, here's how this game works...

Got it? No? Okay, I'll explain it again.

And Trevor dug up some of his old scouting gear (or was it Sean's? that point is still under contention).

It should still fit. Yep. I'm sure of it.

And then T. and I left the rest of the gang--who were staying until the next morning--and got on the road back to Crystal Lake.

The weekend following our Door County vacation, T. and I joined the Borks for our family vacation to celebrate G.B. senior's birthday. But that is a blog post for another day, so look for it later this week.

Until then, enjoy this weird July autumn!

Bye, now. Gobble gobble, and such.