That's My Girl!

We bought our home from a couple who did not have young children. Because of that, they decided that they could actually landscape the yard. Which means that smack dab in the middle of the yeard is a (pricey, I'm told) Japanese Maple tree. I have never liked the tree as it messes up my own personal Feng Shui in the backyard, but I tolerated it because I really don't spend much time out there, and when I am, I am not the one tossing a frisbee or riding my bike. I am the one in the hammock.

Enter Cash.

Cash is a dog who likes to run around like a crazy person. He has a very long rope that allows him to do this, but, because he is NOT a credit to the intelligence of his breed, that means he spends most of his time outside twisting himself up on knots on the Japanese Maple. It is BEYOND ANNOYING to have to get him untwisted which is one of my essential dog-care jobs. So I asked Rob to cut the bush/tree down. Or transplant it, if he's got some attachment to it.

As usual, Rob has ignored my request.

So this weekend Hannah and Lizzie were riding their bikes around the house and Cash was chasing them and he's gotten better at it, so they have to be really quick to escape him. They also have to be ready to make hairpin turns or even jump off their bikes. Which this weekend meant that Lizzie kept getting herself tangled up in the Japanese Maple tree.

And everytime she did it she'd say, "Who plants a tree in the middle of a backyard?" or "Why is this bush still here?"

To which I'd reply (from my place on the hammock), "I told Daddy to cut it down, but he won't."

After about 14 of these exchanges Rob came into the backyard just as she was complaining. When I said "I told Daddy to cut it down by he won't," she turned to him and yelled,

"DADDY YOU NEED TO OBEY YOUR WIFE!!!"

That's my Lizzie!!!

Mish Mosh

Okay, so even I can't believe that it's been two weeks since I last blogged. That should give you some idea about how busy it is around here. Or how lazy I am. But I'm going to stick with the very very very busy. So here's a round-up of some of the things we've been doing since school started. (Some with pictures, some without...)


First, this is Hannah doing her favorite thing to do this past summer: Give me a heart attack. She's jumping off the swing almost at the top of the arc in case you couldn't figure it out from this photo:
Then, I have started to shave Cash's face. Here's my handiwork after my first attempt. It's nice to see his big brown eyes and I suspect that he's pretty happy to see, well ANYTHING, since his hair was pretty long on his face. I also tried clipping his feet, but for some reason he's very sensitive about that and he kept biting the clipper, so his face it is. I also trimmed some of his other hair, but you can't really tell the difference:
I took this picture in the Poconos. It's better if you blow it up big, but it's basically a play on the light and dark in the woods where we took a short hike. And speaking of the Poconos, we have made our plan to go to Great Wolf Lodge for the girls' birthday, although we will be going significantly BEFORE their birthday to save some moolah. Just in case you were interested a weekend night at Great Wolf Lodge in November is more than $500 by the time the taxes are added in. So we're going in October and spending that money on pedicures in the kid spa (you didn't think I wouldn't spend the money, did you??)
I started another year as Brownie leader last week and already I am enjoying this year. We changed our meeting place and time and nearly all the girls decided to follow with the troop. We are doing a water journey which is kind of like badgework, but you get badges all about the same thing. Since we're meeting in a nature preserve I thought water would work out well. So far, they are MOST interested in the water conserving toilets in the building that squirt out water to wash your hands (fresh water) when you flush the toilet.

Here's another artsy fartsy picture that I took in one of our drives out in Lancaster. I like the black and white look of it:
Cash is giving Lizzie a congratulatory kiss because she FINALLY lost one of her top front teeth. Oddly, I had her eat an apple because the OTHER tooth was really loose, but then the apple bite loosened this one and so I yanked it out first. THEN she refused to have me pull out the other one because she'd "look weird" with no front teeth. It's been hanging on by a thread for past week and she won't let me touch it. But here she is with one missing front tooth and her (sorry Giants fans) Eagles shirt. They had a football Friday event so I had to buy them Eagles shirts. And then I had to tell them what football actually is.
Another picture from that same hike in the woods in the Poconos: We are in the full swing of fall activities now. Hannah is taking a drama class and dance and Lizzie is taking dance and piano lessons (she's practicing as I type this). They are both going to be in the Nutcracker in December so there are rehearsals every single Saturday between now and then. They'll be angels.
Oh, and speaking of angels, I'm assistant teaching 1st grade CCD, which mainly means I fetch crayons and pick up construction paper off the floor. It's God's work, you know.

I may have already posted this picture, but I just really love it, so it's possible I'm posting it a second time. I like the way the tree is bending over as they walk underneath it. That's Lizzie and Rob in the Poconos:
Rob and I enjoyed Back to School Night last night and got to visit the girls' classrooms and meet their teachers. They had each left us a note thanking us for coming. Hannah's note ended with "Love, Your Name" which is what I'm sure the teacher wrote on the board. I could NOT STOP LAUGHING...

2nd graders get a lot of homework. They need to read every day and do these word sort puzzley things and then they have a whole new math curriculum called Everyday Math, which I have renamed Everyday Math HOMEWORK.

And finally, since I started with a picture OF Hannah, I thought I'd end with a picture BY Hannah! I told her she could take a picture or two with my camera and she took it outside and came back in with mostly pictures of rocks and the car bumper and the handlebars of her bicycle. And this:

I've Loved These Days

Summer's over. School's in session. My house is quiet. Very. Very. Quiet.

I can't say I particularly like the quiet -- at least until Hannah and Liz get off the bus and make it all noisy again. Then I kind of miss the quiet.

Our summer was decidedly UNquiet and I loved every loud moment of it. I remember loving summer as a kid, and then looking forward to the start of the school year even though it meant that, after two-and-a-half months of going barefoot I was going to have to shove my tough and calloused toes into stiff, leather shoes.

The summers of my childhood basically consisted of playing with neighborhood children -- children played outside all the time back then, running from yard to yard like unleashed dogs -- or fighting with my sisters. When I got older, summer meant going to the American Legion Pool in Katonah, eating Italian Ices or blue Popsicles at the pool, or watching game shows and soap operas on warm afternoons.

By the time school was getting ready to start I seriously missed my out-of-the-neighborhood friends and really wanted to see them. For a day at least. And that meant putting on the stiff shoes and waiting until the leather broke down and began to feel comfortable. There was always a day or two of limping.

I pretty much wear Crocs most of the time now, so the beginning of the school year isn't so much literally getting my feet conditioned for the start of school, but rather ready for a pair of figurative shoes. Summer is fun around here and it takes a few days for me to break in the fall.

You've read the highlights from our summer: vacations, Hershey Park, tent camping, etc. etc. But summer for me is really in the details. The time spent laughing on the hammock, eating the giant ice cream cones at Kolb's Dairy, learning to dive in our community pool, trying to keep the dog from eating our dinner before we get to barbecue it. Laughing. Lots and lots of laughing. Just last week I was talking to Lizzie about the summer and she told me that she liked everything about it and added, "we sure like to laugh, don't we Mommy?"

And we do.

I'm sure the fall will have a lot to laugh about, too. Although getting up at 7 a.m. again is simply not fun no matter how I try to spin it.

So the first day of school was not happy for me, although the girls loved it, anxious as they were to see friends, meet new teachers and wear their new clothes.

They happily stored their summer memories somewhere in their brains and pushed forward, coming home with stories of classmates and art and music and the invisible bucket their teachers told them they'd spend the year filling with good works and friendship.

It's been four days they've been back in school and I've begun to remember that I do love my work, my friends, my volunteering, too. It's hard to give up my languid Mommy-only summers for the brisk, challenging rhythm of fall, but there is joy there, too. Already, the shoes are pinching less.

Because I've learned that soon enough, with time going at break-neck speed as it does with kids in the house, we'll all be barefoot on the hammock telling jokes (and hope springs eternal that Hannah will actually GET the jokes then...) and laughing in the lazy sunshine again.

For now I will embrace the quiet, rev up for those new fall rhythms, and just keep putting one foot in front of the other until these new shoes are a comfortable as bare feet in the grass.

Lion Sing

(This is the same as the Facebook video, for those who may have seen it there...)

We watched the Lion King and the Lion King 2 (Simba's Pride) no less than 4,000 times this summer -- most of it in the weeks just before we went to the Poconos. Sometime during those couple of weeks Hannah learned this song from (I think) LK2, "Love Will Find a Way," which she performed at the Split Rock Talent Show.
Here she is singing it for all of you, and Frank. I don't know who Frank is, by the way.

Oh, and Lizzie will get equal time on the piano at a later date.

But Wait, There's More

You know, the Poconos (and this is the final of three posts) is not all about family and fun. It's also about ICE CREAM. Here are three children who happily enjoyed their ice creams at Hog Heaven despite the frigid temperatures. I would like to say that I actually DO occasionally comb my children's hair ... just not (apparently) on vacation:

The lagoon is always a lot of fun, too. Here's my niece Brenna building sandcastles with a friend she made at the beach.

Tommy and Lizzie building their sandcastle. Or just getting ready to dump sand and water on each other. They did both...

Now I know this looks like Brenna is going to dump water on Lizzie, but the truth of the matter is that she filled up this cup over and over again and dumped water on herself:

Oh, and then there's Piggys. We love Piggys. I love it because I can get an onion and pepper omelet with amazing homefries. Rob loves the price. Hannah and Lizzie love the fact that if they are very good during the week (or if Grandma tells me I have to) they get to choose a gift from the pig-themed gift shop.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we had a Garrity Family Talent Show. In fact, because we are all so talented, we had TWO Garrity Family Talent Shows. Here Tommy is doing a demonstration of Karate. I know it doesn't really look like it, but every time he came near me doing a pose or a kick or something I flinched in fear and didn't get a picture:

There was also lots of relaxing. Here T.A. and Tommy try to catch some rays once the sun came out:

Here's a picture of Hannah singing in the Split Rock Talent show. Hannah has a beautiful voice, but she was very shy about singing in front of the family. In fact she refused to do it until I promised her one of Aunt Tina's very delicious chocolate chip cookies. And THEN she refused to sing in front of the men. However, later that evening she could not wait to sing in front of about 150 strangers. Go figure. She got a whole bunch of cheers and a standing ovation from the crowd - s0me of them not even related to her (but I have t0 admit that I was clapping the loudest -- I was beyond proud of her!) She wants me to videotape her and put it on my blog, but I'll save that for a later day:

Dominoes is a huge game for us. We play just about every night. I have yet to win, but it's still fun. Oh, and even though T.A. is standing there, we don't let men play:

Here's a picture of a waterfall. It's a little hard to see because I photoshopped it up and then lost the original (but I like this one when it's bigger so I don't care). The reason I am posting it is because in order to take pictures of the waterfall I had to hike deep into the woods (at least 1/2 mile!) on uneven terrain (at least a couple of rocks) to get to the spot:

Here are Rob and Lizzie walking ahead of me:

And here are the rocks I had to climb down and then up again to get the shot. I am happy to report that I did not kill myself on the rock and not just because Rob told me every three seconds that in two more steps there was a sheer drop:

Here are Rob, Hannah and Lizzie at the top of the waterfall.

Here's one of the celebrities we got to meet at the Country Junction store. I originally thought this should be my Christmas Card this year, but decided to put it on the blog instead:

We also met a camel at the Country Junction ... I'm tell you that only so you don't think we went to Egypt or something on our trip.
And with that, we come to the end of another exciting trip to the Poconos. We already (and by we, I mean ME) can't wait until next year!!

Water! Park!

This is the second of my Pocono posts. See below for post number one.

If you ask Hannah and Lizzie their favorite activity in the Poconos they will tell you in no uncertain terms that it's the indoor waterpark H2oooooh! It opened last year and the girls had a blast running around in the temperature controlled (82 and humid which did WONDERS for my hair!) playground. This year the water park was also Rob's favorite activity, since he didn't go. :)
Since the girls are almost eight and they (not I) were feeling brave I let them try several of the rides and slides that were off limits last year. That included the Flow Rider which is this huge wall of water upon which you ride a boogie board. Here's Lizzie waiting in line for her turn. She's looking at me with that sort of resigned smile on her face because I am yelling, "NO MATTER WHAT, JUST HOLD ON."

Hannah gets her lesson from a David Cook (at least I thought so and if you don't watch American Idol you don't know who he is so you'll just have to take my word for it) look-alike. He's telling her how to push herself off the sides with her feet and I am yelling "NO MATTER WHAT, JUST HOLD ON...":

Hannah was so steady on the Flow Rider that one of the life guards came over and started to shoot the water different ways to see if he could shake her off. (yeah THANKS for that...) He even bounced up and down so that the board would bounce, too. Hannah loved every single second of it, and rode for quite awhile:

Uh-Oh, looks like the ride is almost over as she starts to bounce towards the side of the wall...:

CRASH ... Hannah drifted over to the side of the flow-rider and hopped off to the applause of those watching, except me, because I did not want to encourage another ride (although they both did the Flow Rider twice!):

Lizzie's turn! She hung on for dear life just as suggested by her mother, and managed to get a good long ride:

Until... This is starting to not look good. Once you drift to the left or right of the Flow Rider you get stuck in the rapids, white water, swirling vortex and usually get tossed out. Lizzie managed to hang on a while longer:

Ooops, Lizzie lost her board and started to swirl around in the waves. Should I jump in and save her?:

T.A. and Tommy did not look concerned as they watched the action:

Finally the waves took her back UP to the top of the Flow Rider and deposited her there (all under the watchful eye of the lifeguard who could see she was having fun, but could NOT see that I was NOT having fun...)

This is more my speed as Lizzie hangs out under the mushroom water sprayer:

Tommy working the water guns:

Lizzie getting off one of the slides:

Hannah getting ready to go up the stairs (three flights of them at least) for another turn on the slide. Last year they weren't allowed to go down the slides alone so this was a huge treat for them:


Tommy getting ready to drag a double innertube up the stairs:

Up, up, up, up, up they go:

Here's comes Hannah down the slide:

Then Lizzie came down (this one was in total darkness):

Then Tommy and Lizzie:


I did go down the Family Slide a couple of times, but am grateful there was no one taking pictures! We spent a good five hours at the water park after which I needed a nap. The girls were ready to go back! And are already talking about next year. And with the joy on these faces:

I could hardly say no:

Back Home and Broke

We're back from our annual vacation in the Poconos with the Garrity side of the family, so in honor of my mother's father I used his favorite phrase to title this blog post. He was likely referring to a trip home from the track, but it works here, too.
And speaking of family, this first (of at least two and possible three) Poconos post is all about family, which, for me, is what this vacation is all about. (That and the ice cream at Hog Heaven...)
For the first year ever we were all there (five kids, four spouses, six grandkids, Grandma and Grandpa) at the same time and my mother's sister Brenda and her husband Dick visited too. We were a huge, happy and probably quite loud family group. So I'll take this time to introduce you to my huge, happy and definitely quite loud family as I describe our vacation.
First, the matriarch of the clan... my mom. Mom lives in Florida where it is apparently normal to wear a shirt, a sweater and a jacket to the beach. ;) Seriously, it was cold this week in the mountains so it was actually all the small people in the water who were crazy:



The Patriarch ... my dad, relaxing by the lagoon with his children, grandchildren and gin and tonic:

Sisters! This is my mom and my Aunt Brenda. Brenda lives in Florida, too, which is why she is wearing a sweatshirt jacket indoors:

Aunt Anonymous ... I could tell you more, but then she'd have to kill me:

My brother T.A. and his beautiful wife Ann at Hog Heaven, where we ate lots of ice cream and almost got into a fist fight (okay, not really) with one of the other people in line.

My nephew Tommy at the Lagoon where, since he is under 10, he is not wearing a snowjacket and boots. I heard the water was about 4 degrees about freezing, but since I was so busy taking pictures I ran out of time (ha, ha) to jump in. Tommy, Lizzie, Hannah, Rob and T.A. all swam out to the float, though, and suffered only a little hypothermia:

My niece Brenna charming her Great Uncle Dick with her rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

Great Aunt Brenda and Brenna ... they were singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" as part of the G-Family Talent Show:

Aunt Anonymous teaching Hannah and Liz "Stop in the Name of Love" for the Talent Show:

Hannah tries her first fried pickle under the watchful eyes of Aunt Tina and Aunt and Uncle Anonymous. She loved it. Lizzie was next and she did not like it. But she doesn't like pickles. And a fried pickle tastes, well, like a pickle...

The ladies who lunched: Aunt Brenda, my mom, my sister Beanie, my sister Terry and my niece Shelby. This was at Sunset Grill at the resort where we had a delicious meal despite the lack of cranberry juice (although when we left we saw them carrying in a case of it, so that problem was remedied for next year...):

The boys who golfed: My brother T.A., my nephew Casey and my dad. I have no idea who won the game, but I did hear a rumor that Casey won (for most balls lost...):

Hannah and Lizzie at the Francis Walter Dam. They are not from Florida, but needed sweaters (that I had to go out and buy for them because I'm such a great packer - not) because the temp was in the low 60s when this picture was taken:

Me and the Mr. Lizzie took this picture and I'm sure Rob loves it extra because she managed to get our car in there, too:

The whole gang:
Stay tuned for more photos (maybe even later today!) about the activities, including knock-down, drag-out dominos and the WATER PARK.