Hiking (and a little bit of swearing)

August 29, 2011 //

We’ve been enjoying summer, getting plenty of outdoor time and exercise. But we haven’t had as many occasions for family adventures as I’d like to. So with a free weekend on the horizon, and decent weather in the forecast, we planned a roadtrip. We packed tons of snacks (although we forgot the sunscreen) and headed to Ludington. The plan was to hike out to Big Sable Lighthouse and then take a trail back that I’d been told was bee-yoo-ti-ful.

The trip up was easy, and it only took us a few minutes to locate the trail. The path to the lighthouse was mainly a dirt road that wound behind the dunes. It was a crazy, windy day* and you could hear the surf crashing to the left. The sand was gorgeous and irresistible to the 7-year-old who kept asking if he could climb. But his mean mom kept saying no because we could do those types of fun things after we got there. Mom ended up giving in after half a dozen stops along the trail with the same request. Sure, why not? Go ahead and climb the dune. Get it out of your system. Just for kicks, I climbed up with him.

Then we walked a bit farther and saw the sign for the “historic shipwreck” and we veered off the trail again and onto the beach to find it.

(The shipwreck, by the way, is buried beneath the sand so there was nothing concrete to see.)

And our hike turned into a driftwood-collecting excursion.

Driftwood. Driftwood. Driftwood. A few steps. Driftwood. A couple of more steps. Driftwood. Driftwood. It took us probably an hour to walk 1.5 miles. But I wasn’t cranky at this point. Just slightly impatient from having to stop every few feet.

We made it to the lighthouse and climbed up all those steps and took photos and ate some snacks. Oh, and made a pitstop in the quaint restrooms.

Then we found the other trail and headed out. Through the dunes, of course, because they were everywhere. What I didn’t know was that the dunes were also endless. We waded through the sand FOREVER. And the scenic trail I’d been eagerly awaiting became a LIVING HELL. Hot sand. Hot sun. Sandy shoes. Sweaty back. Whining kid. Glaring husband. Several stops to dump sand out of shoes.

Still the sand went on. And on. Every time we came up a slight hill or around the bend, I thought for sure we’d be closer to solid ground. I was wrong every time. At one point, Devin tiredly said to me, “Mom, I think I’m going to die.” Oh, sure, kid. I already feel like a jerk for dragging you down this TRAIL FROM HELL and you lay on even more guilt. Sigh.

You should have heard his shout of triumph when we found the connecting trail and saw the campground that signaled the end of the road. I was yelling along with him in my head. My muscles were throbbing and I had blisters between my toes and a rock in my shoe. So we trudged tiredly back to the car, dumped more sand from our shoes and drove off down the road. To play putt-putt golf in Pentwater. We Smiths don’t let exhaustion get the best of us!

*The wind was whipping the sand at us so hard that I refrained from photography for the majority of the trip. I missed some lovely shots along the beach, but I wasn’t taking any chances!

That moment

August 25, 2011 //

I experienced what I’ll call “that moment” this weekend as Dev was frolicking at the beach.

I should say that I’ve had other “moments” like this before. But this one kind of struck me dumb for a few seconds.

He was galloping down to the water to grab some wet sand when I just noticed how not small he was. Yes, not small. No longer a baby. Or a toddler. Or a chubby-cheeked tot. Not hardly. He’s tall and lanky and bony and kid-like.

He’s worn bathing suits all summer long, but as he was building his sandcastle and then running amok in the splash pad, I felt like I was seeing him for the first time. The lean-ness. The kid-ness. In some ways, I probably am. I’ll never get the baby, the toddler or the little munchkin back. (Thank goodness I take tons of photos!) But I’ll embrace the kid, the tween, the teenager and the adult he’s going to become.

After the shock wears off, that is.

And these are just for fun…

You win some, you lose some

August 20, 2011 //

It was Friday night, and we had nothing interesting in the refrigerator. And, honestly, I had no desire to cook. So I proposed dinner out to the guys. And Scott, to weasel out of any decision-making responsibility, put forth the idea that Devin and I would each write our top three choices on a piece of paper and he’d tally the one with the most points.

Did he honestly think Dev and I would have the SAME restaurants on our lists? Silly man.

Devin’s top three consisted of Jet’s Pizza, Panera and Olga’s. (I was excited that Panera was on the list, in second place even!)

My list was One Trick Pony, Peppino’s and somewhere in The B.O.B. Just to be downtown and do something different.

So, yeah…nothing in common. A standoff, as you’d call it.

Scott decided that, once again, he’d shirk any decision responsibility and he flipped a coin. Heads, Jet’s. Tails, One Trick.

It was tails.

Devin cried. Yes, honestly, he did. He’d been going to Gymco for summer camp all week long and he was exhausted. Every night when I picked him up he was totally quiet on the ride home. Contrast that with the constant chatter I’m used to and there was definitely a difference in being in a gymnastics center eight hours a day with never-ending exercise on the curriculum. He was slightly pathetic and I kind of wanted to give up my position of superiority, but it was one of those “teachable moments” they tell you about. So Scott informed him that the contest had been won fairly and that we’d be headed downtown. After a few more, “I’m going but I’m not eating anything!” wails, he pulled himself together and we headed out.

It was a nice night and there was a table open outside, so we sat down and had a lovely dinner. Devin even pronounced the pizza he ordered as better than Jet’s (thankfully!). And we just fun sitting and chatting and watching the traffic and pedestrians go by.

After dinner, we walked down Monroe Center and checked out the new City Flats Hotel, stopped at the bookstore and then went over to Rosa Parks Circle. I’d completely forgotten about GRAM on the Green so we wandered into music and fun. There were some people playing a life-size game of Jenga and a chess game was set up. Devin beelined for the chess game. There was a 20-something guy there who saw him looking at the board and asked if he’d like to play. Dev managed to overcome his shyness and nod yes.

It turns out the guy he was playing teaches chess at a local middle school. He was pretty complimentary of Dev’s chess skills. He’d learned the game during summer camp from his favorite teacher, but I had no idea of his skill level. (Although he did have a little bit of prior experience.) It was kind of amazing to me to watch him pondering the moves and playing against an adult.

Afterward he took to one of the easels and drew a pastel picture that’s now hanging in his bedroom.

I think I convinced him that going to One Trick Pony may have been a better idea. He’ll admit to it if you ask him. Grudgingly, maybe.

Pirates and quesadillas

August 11, 2011 //

How’s that for a blog post title?

I used to do this thing with Devin’s blog where I’d go a couple of weeks between posts and then just plaster it with photos. (If you click on that link, be warned that I don’t update the site anymore. It’s in limbo at the moment so the most recent post is from last fall.)

I may have to subscribe to that same strategy here with the amount of time I’ve found to blog lately.

I do have good excuses for not finding time, though. Like sitting in an 8-hour workshop today. And when they say workshop, they really do mean WORK. So then I run over and pick up Dev from summer camp, get stuck in loads of traffic on the way home, try to get started on dinner while facing a sink full of dirty dishes (our dishwasher’s been broken for three years), realize I still have real work to do that I couldn’t do because I was at a workshop (irony) and start on that, then smile a big smile when Scott comes home and takes over the dinner duty, finish up work except for a broken blog page that I can’t reconcile and am fretting about still, eat dinner, do dishes, agree to play trains with Dev, get Dev started on his bedtime routine, brush my teeth and such, wrangle him a little bit more, read to him for half an hour (The Silver Chair), scoop the cat box, give Lucy her medicine, refill the water bowl and add ice (because Maggie’s totally spoiled) and then…here I am!

So isn’t that a good excuse? And I now leave you with photos from this past week of, as I mentioned before, pirates and quesadillas (which the little one helped me make). Oh, and a flower photo too!

The new addition

July 31, 2011 //

My mom lost her yorkie a year and a half ago. Since that time there’s been a big debate about if and when she’d be getting another four-legged friend. Over the last few months the chatter has increased. So I had a feeling something would be happening soon enough. Still, she had so many excuses for NOT getting a dog (we need to finish the fence, it’s going to be expensive, I want an older dog and they all seem to be puppies). Then she started up with all of the requirements she had for whichever pup she ended up with (5-7 years old, 15 pounds, can’t shed, shouldn’t have any medical issues, female, yadda yadda). I was beginning to wonder if there’d be a canine companion after all.

Finally, the wait is over. Meet Abby (the 5-lb. yorkie-shihtzu mix)!

Puffy

July 13, 2011 //

I love it when there’s nice light in the kitchen when I’m cooking dinner. I should take more advantage of that in the summer months. Because when winter rolls around it’s not a pretty picture. Ha! Get it? I crack myself up.

I bring you a spontaneous pizza crafted from puff pastry and topped with chicken, monterey jack cheese, feta cheese, spinach, pears and cherry tomatoes.

Oh, for pete’s sake!

July 12, 2011 //

Every day I say, “I’m going to update my site. Yes, I am.” Obviously I’m not a woman of action these days. I have, though, been snapping way more photos than I had been. So at least one of my creative outlets is being nourished. I have no idea of where to start with sharing those. I’m kind of OCD about things being out of order date-wise, but I’m going to throw up my hands and just go with it, starting with the East Grand Rapids Fourth of July Parade. We biked over with our neighbors, Chris and Billy in what Chris called our “bike gang.” Devin brought his mitt to catch candy, but ended up going with the old-fashioned method of scrambling after the pieces within five feet. Good times!

I want more days like these

June 24, 2011 //

It’s funny how it happens every year: I think, oh, yay, summer’s here! I’ll do THIS and THIS and THAT and THAT and LOTS OF THIS. Oh, how much fun I’ll have!

I do indeed have fun. But there’s never the time I imagine that stretches ahead of me. I don’t get half of the things done, if even a quarter. This was, in fact, the worst year ever for my garden and I swore I was going to be so productive. Instead I have half of my containers filled and didn’t put any vegetables into the raised bed. We threw wildflower seeds in there to at least have something nice to look at instead of empty boxes of dirt.

I just want more days for bubbles, sprinkles, putt-putt golf, beach adventures, hiking (without the darn bugs), taking the bus downtown to explore, catching fireflies, making s’mores, getting together with friends and grilling up a storm. Is that too much to ask?

I done cooked

June 6, 2011 //

It used to be that I cooked a lot. Lately, though, it’s become a bit of a rarity. Dinner, you say? How about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Or some dino-shaped chicken nuggets? Or (gasp!) McDonald’s? I’ve made a couple of homemade pizzas here and there, but the stove and oven have been woefully under-utilized.

Inspiration struck yesterday, though. Some purty tomatoes and fingerling potatoes were eying me from the counter, in need of some cooking before they passed along to the Land of the Spoiled Produce. Oh, and I also bought a big ol’ log of goat cheese at Costco the other day that was begging to be used. (Oh, how I love goat cheese.) So I cranked up the stove, the oven and the grill and had dinner on the table when Scott pulled in the driveway.

Oh, Shenandoah!

May 27, 2011 //

Tonight was the presentation of the opera Pearl by the kids at Devin’s school. And I have to say I was very impressed. It’s a workshop run by Hollis and William Bokhout. They somehow manage, in just one week, to teach the songs and dances to the kids for a Friday-night performance. Booyah! The costumes were awesome, the kids had a ton of fun and we were the totally proud parents watching Devin in his stage debut (if you don’t count the preschool holiday singalongs). Sheepishly, I had itty-bitty tears in my eyes when he took his bow.

Beachy keen

May 24, 2011 //

The weather this weekend was delicious. Saturday morning we had sunshine and lovely breezes for our cystic fibrosis walk through downtown. It got a little hot, but I think that’s to be expected when you’re walking full-tilt to catch up with a 7-year-old who’s basically running the whole way. He thought that being at the front of the walk was the goal. So he used his drafting skills to pass as many people as he could manage.

Sunday was supposed to be mostly rain. But it was one of those moments this spring when the weather surprised us for the better. Sunshine! And to me, that really called for a trip to the Lake Michigan shoreline. We packed up some snacks and headed to Saugatuck to climb Mt. Baldy. We used to make this climb a lot when I was a kid. I have a lot of fun memories of these stairs, although every time I set off on the ascent I forget just how grueling it can actually be. And since they redid the steps a couple of years ago the number has gone from 282 to 303. Small change, maybe, but it feels significant when you’re on that last bit before the top. Huff. Puff.

Of course Devin did none of the huffing or puffing. I go to the gym three to four times a week, walk my dog, ride bikes and all sorts of stuff and I was seriously out of breath halfway up the darn thing. Him? Big grin on his face and running up every section. Stinker.

Then we descended the other side on the dunes, which I warned the youngster would be difficult to climb back up. But he was determined that this was the best course of action. So we trekked through the sand, climbing a couple of hills, to reach Oval Beach. It was a beautiful day and we hung out for a while, he building trenches in the sand, me simply enjoying the view.

The climb back up the dunes was a bit harder than Dev had bargained for. He grabbed a “walking stick” from the side of the path and commenced to what I’d already been doing…huffing and puffing. But we inched our way upward and finally reached the top where we high-fived each other, drank some water and had a last snack before heading back down the stairs and over to the town for lunch and ice cream. Definitely a great way to spend the day!

That white ball on top of that hill is the summit of Mt. Baldy. We’d walked to the beach from there and now had to return. Which included climbing back up the dune!

Chatty Cathy (er, Devin)

May 21, 2011 //

He’s such good company. Really he is. Today he strolled (and ran) 3.2 miles with me during the local cystic fibrosis walk we participate in for his friend Hayden (and my friend Patti). All along the route he chattered. And chattered. And chattered. It’s exhausting sometimes, but it’s also fun because he says the most interesting things. Plus, we get to have random conversations about the IMF, tip jars and their purpose and how to get someone to the hospital fast if the medivac helicopter runs into a lot of traffic in its airspace. (That last one is still a mystery.)

I wonder sometimes when he’ll decide he doesn’t want to chat with me anymore. Sometime in the teenage years, maybe. Or sooner? I’m scared of that moment, to be honest. I’m hoping that all of this early communication will make it such a natural thing that he’ll forget altogether that I’m uncool at some point and just keep talking. One can only hope, right?

Oh, and he can tell jokes too. During a scene in The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship is running for their lives across a very, very narrow bridge. He turns to me and says, “Mom, wouldn’t it be funny if there was a sign on the bridge that said Single File Only?” Why, yes, Devin it would definitely be funny!