Here they are, making the lines to cut along:

             And here are Kristin and I making balls out of the middle of the cross melon.  We were using Juli’s camera, since Daddy had taken mine to the Raingutter Regatta.

            The finished products:

            And a close up of the little mousey:

            Tomorrow morning Kristin will make a fruit salad with the watermelon balls, cantaloupe, strawberries, pineapple, blueberries, etc., and put that into the carved-out melons.  It will be so pretty! 

It's so fulfilling to have a big job well done.

            I discovered how fun it is to vacuum a room that has no furniture in it.    It’s especially enjoyable when the carpet is nice and thick, so you can easily see your lines as you go along.   

            Let me see if I can even remember all the stuff we got done…  The Collard's had already vacuumed the carpets upstairs, so we didn’t have to do that.  We cleaned all the bathrooms; vacuumed and dusted all the blinds; used the vacuum hose tip to go around the edges of the carpet; vacuumed and wiped down all the shelf cabinets (in the bathrooms, closets, kitchen, etc.); vacuumed the tile and the areas of carpet downstairs (except for the front/dining room, because it was full of toys  ); put down that no-slide lining stuff in the kitchen drawers and cabinets; washed all the windows; disinfected the kitchen counters; cleaned the two ceiling fans; vacuumed out the fireplace; vacuumed and wiped down all the baseboards; cleaned out a refrigerator….  I think that was all that was on the list.  At any rate, we got the whole list checked off (except for power-cleaning the garage, which I guess Mr. Collard can do).  As we were leaving Mr. Collard was out front with some of his children, laying mulch around the plants in the flowerbeds. 

            So we got a lot done.  And since there was a team of us, no one person had too much to do.  While the older ones were cleaning, the kiddos played around with the toys and with each other (you can’t beat a game of hide-and-seek in a big, empty house!).  The Collard’s want to get the carpet cleaned and the grout in the tile treated before they move their stuff in, but they have all next week to do that.  Praise the Lord for how we can work together!          

Cat has not been having a good day...

… and it is mostly her fault.  

            Our cat, Dandilion, is the only member of the household who does not work for her keep.  We may joke about her providing stress relief or a homey atmosphere, but when you get down to the bottom of the matter she really doesn’t do anything.  And that’s okay; what are cats for?

            The problem is when they start taking advantage of this whole “you-work-for-me-and-I’ll-let-you-pet-me business.  We are having to wash sheets today because she wet on Laurie’s bed.    To make matters worse, last night she gave us a horrible time trying to catch her to get her to the garage.  (She goes to the garage at night so she isn’t prowling around in the house.)  She went and hid under Gretchen and Heidi’s bunk-bed, and it took a long time to “broom” her out.  I actually wasn’t in the room (I had gone to bed) but there were all sorts of thwacking noises coming through the wall that joins our room. 

            Needless to say, she wasn’t in high favor this morning.  Because she wouldn’t go eat last night, we decided she just wouldn’t get any food this morning.  So she’s been sulking all day, mostly in the garage or under my and Juli’s bunk-bed.  And she is always in the wrong place at the wrong time.  At about 10:15 she was in the garage, and that was when Mama left with the youngs for park day.  She shot out of the garage as soon as the car started… right into the tile room, where I was vacuuming.  Now, she hates the vacuum too, so it was like she got out of the frying pan into the fire. 

            Then this afternoon, as I was dusting our room, I discovered that she was again under the bed.  Sorry, cat… dusting means vacuuming (you’d think she would have discovered that by now…).  As soon as I turned on the vacuum, *POW* she was out of the room and headed down the stairs.

            Perhaps it’s not so easy being a cat after all…. 

            I am amazed at the creativity God has given to children.    The other night Gretchen, Reagan, and Heidi put on a puppet show for us.  Of course we knew about it all day – the girls’ room door was shut, with strange and mysterious noises coming through every so often, and every time I tried to go in there to put away laundry they would shriek at my knock.   

            All their “secrecy” paid off, though.  That evening, as we were ushered into the darkened room, it felt rather like a theater.  There were sheets hanging from the ceiling to hide the bed but allow a space for the puppets to come down from the upper bunk; a light was shining from behind the curtains to give enough lighting to find our way; there were chairs arranged against the back wall; and some quiet music was playing. 

            The puppet show was an improvisation of Rapunzel.  Kirsten starred as Rapunzel, Fuzz-ball (Gretchen’s bear) as Mr. Turnip (Rapunzel’s father), Elaine (Gretchen’s dolphin) as Mrs. Turnip, Alice (Snoopy’s wife) as the witch, and Earl (Reagan’s hound dog) as the prince.  Oh, and there was a bevy of other stuffed animals who starred as cabbages.   

It was soooo hilarious.  Mrs. Turnip really looked like her labor was really painful, because she kept flopping about.  The prince’s tail kept wagging in such a quirky way that I couldn’t look at it or I would bust out laughing.  At one point something really turned over Mama’s funny box, and she actually had to go out of the room for a moment.  Though we tried hard to conceal our laughter, it was contagious and the puppets’ voices couldn’t keep themselves from laughing either.

One funny moment was after the refreshments.  Evidently one of the actors had his mouth full of cracker when he was supposed to say a line, because we never did hear what the prince was supposed to say at that point.  Another part that nearly turned me over was when the narrator was talking about how Rapunzel’s tears washed all the scratches out of the prince’s eyes.  We are a very book-literate family, so our vocabulary is not small, but when it comes to pronouncing the words we read in books we sometimes have problems.  The narrator very confidently said, “And as she watched, her tears started washing all the dee-bair-is… euh… debris out of the prince’s eyes.”  Oh, my goodness, that was so funny!

It was all such a treat.  You could tell that they had worked hard on their presentation, because there were so many interesting details.  When the narrator was talking about how Rapunzel was locked up in the tower, one of the behind-the-scenes people shut one of our bike locks.  And of course the lights went on and off at the proper times to signal changes of scene. 

I love how our youngs like to work together on things like this! 

Congratulations, Heidi!!!

            Last night we celebrated (at long last!) Heidi’s completion of the reading program.  She really finished it several months ago, but with Daddy travelling on business and other things that have come up we haven’t been able to do the formal celebration.  In the past, our tradition has been to commemorate this event at Chuck E. Cheese’s.  I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve gotten older, or if the atmosphere of that business has actually gone downhill, but for whatever reason I no longer find a delight in going to C.E.C.’s.  Obviously my opinion is not the only one that counts in a celebration like this, but most of the other olders are of the same mindset as I am. 

            Since we now live near a big city, Heidi had more options of where she could go to celebrate.  There are two or three C.E.C.’s around here, but there is also a putt-putt golf place called Putt ‘n’ Funn.  She decided that she would rather go there (so now Gretchen is petitioning Mama for a trip to C.E.C.’s before she gets too old). 

            It was so enjoyable, for everyone involved!  The youngs had a great time playing putt-putt, and we older ones were involved with the activities instead of sitting around wishing we had ear plugs.  We picked up Joel on our way out to Putt ‘n’ Funn, because Heidi wanted him to celebrate with us.  He had helped her with the reviewing of the books, so she felt that he deserved to be along. 

            It’s kind of difficult to document a game of putt-putt, so I’ll only write a little bit and post pictures instead.  There were 10 of us playing.  We don’t fit into the nice “family deal” slot that Putt ‘n’ Funn offers, and we’ve got a weird age range to be a group, but Daddy worked it out somehow.  There are two courses, one called St. Thomas and the other called Augusta.  Daddy bought enough balls for two rounds, which meant that our two teams of five people each got to play both courses.

            On my team were Mama, Gretchen, Reagan, and Joel.  We think that we had more fun, because it took us longer to get through the course.    Reagan and Gretchen went first, then while they were waiting for we older ones they would run ahead and do “trail runs” on the next green.  We weren’t keeping any kind of score.    We supposedly limited ourselves to five hits, but we weren’t scrupulous on that (until a group of people started catching up behind us ). 

            The two courses had similar, but not identical, obstacles to get around.  On the very first run I made a hole-in-one!  That was the end of that, however – afterwards I had quite a hard time getting my ball into the proper place.  Well, okay… there were a few more that I got in with only 2 shots, and one other hole-in-one, but some of those greens seemed determined to keep me from making a hole!  My problem was that I would swing too hard; on the greens with hills, I would get the ball over the hill but then it would hit against the back wall and come rolling mockingly back at me. 

             Now for the pictures...  Here's Reagan, trying to get his ball to behave between two tricky hills:

And Gretchen, preparing to whack:

Here they are, getting ahead of we "slow" older ones:

How much advice can a guy handle?

Putt-putt is such hard work...

This one was really hard to get through.  It had three holes at the top of a hill, and each hole lead through a different tunnel.  Of course I went through the wrong one and ended up on the side of the hill away from the hole...

At the end of the course, on the last green, the hole lead to a ball-collection point.  Somehow the youngs figured out where it was, and afterwards they all had to watch the balls come tumbling down. 

We didn't have time for the Go-Karts and we didn't want to do the arcade, but Heidi and Reagan did want to jump some in the Moon Walk. 

So that was our delightful evening!