Renaissance Faire Photos

Here's a handful of pictures from our trip to the Renaissance Faire.

Am I a wench, or what?  Son #2 shows off his costume too.

The boys get ready to watch the human chess match, after enjoying the rankout session prior to that (fans from different sections hurl insults at one another, aided by coaching of Faire employees).

The pickle vendor sets up shop before the event, and hawks his wares.  "Wouldst thou like a large spicy one, m'lady?" "My pickle's larger than yours, squire!"  "This young lass has excellent taste in pickles!"  etc.  You get the idea.

The chess match pits Robin Hood's band of merry men (and ladies) against the Sheriff of Nottingham and his crew.  When one piece threatens another with capture, hand to hand combat results to see who will actually win the square.  

Staffs, knives, swords, shields, verbal daggers, and other weapons are used.  No gender discrimination here:  women and men do fight each other.  Plenty of acrobatic skill goes into these demonstrations.

Naturally, one builds up an appetite after seeing such sport.  There is an extensive foo

d court including turkey legs, mead, boar, stake on a stake, dragon wing chips, an

d some of the usual fast food kind of nonsense that one must have in modern times when traveling with small and/or fussy children.  One of the food huts was of particular interest this year...spicey thighs?!?

Who could survive all that eating and drinking without a visit to the privy?  Many secluded places to create one's own privy in the forest, but we luckily didn't need to use that option.  Many locations in the Shire had port-a-privies, but some actually had real flushing privies!   How exciting!  A wondrous day by all accounts.

Change of Season

Here on Long Island, we still have much of the summer humidity but the fall temperatures are sneaking in slowly.  It will be October in a couple of days.  Tonight begins Rosh Hashanah, and we will be having a holiday dinner at home.  I'm working today, so yesterday morning I prepared most of the holiday meals (for tonight and tomorrow night).  I made the batter for the matzo balls (using my mother-in-law's secret ingredient, seltzer).  Two kinds of noodle pudding:  one with raisins and one without (for the kids, natch) but both with plenty of cinnamon.  An apple honey cake with bananas (sort of a variation of my usual banana bread) for dessert.  A casserole (traditionally called kugel) with mashed butternut squash, sweet potato, apple, and carrot.  There's enough sugar free maple syrup in there to keep the kids happy and to make it accessible to Diabetic Man.  He will roast the chicken tonight and the turkey breast tomorrow night before I get home.  The holiday foods have a bit of sweetness in the ingredients so we will be off to a good start for a sweet New Year.  I'm all for that!

Double Fours

I feel very lucky to have received so many emails and Facebook posts and phone calls and cards to help celebrate my birthday yesterday.  Thank you to my loved ones!  You're the best.

At my office I was brought chocolates of different kinds, a fall candle lamp, a neat bobble head scarecrow, a spa product ensemble with orange scented goodies, a homemade apple nut bread, three gorgeous pots of perennial mums, and two sacks of my favorite white whole wheat flour.  I collected quite a few birthday hugs too.  Last night I got some roses and some birthday cupcakes at home.  Can I wait 365 days for another event like this?  Sigh, I guess so.  

I am still smiling!!!

Is This How a Ping Pong Ball Feels?

Yoicks!  I've just returned from my middle school child's open house.  Ten minutes in each of nine classes, with five minutes in between.  I don't know how these kids do it.  I guess they need this to stay in shape.  There are two buildings.  One has two floors and the other has three.  I had to go from the second floor of one building to the third floor of the other, and I could feel my heart pounding from taking all those stairs at a good clip.  Well, I finished the parental exercise.

What a pleasure to see the enthusiasm and excitement in the way the teachers spoke.  The math, social studies, English, and science teachers all said that they have a deep appreciation for the work ethic and commitment of the kids in the honors classes (OK so mama geek was an honors student too) and they said they were skipping a great deal of their usual spiel about turning in homework on time, studying for quizzes, and extra help.  It's also lovely to see that our tax dollars have paid for "smart boards" in most of the classrooms I visited tonight.  The art teacher explained that, with a touch of the screen, she can zoom out to the Internet and call up an image of a famous painting that comes up in class discussion (for instance, the students were incredulous when she mentioned that the Mona Lisa does not have eyebrows).

Ninth period (the last of the day) is Technology, what we in my day would have called Wood Shop.  The teacher seemed very nice, and very competent at what he does, but he spoke in an even monotone.  I could have kept time using my son's metronome that we bought for his clarinet lessons.  Not too loud, not too soft, but just flat.  The ends of the sentences didn't even drop off.  He just began a new sentence and we had to be paying attention to break his words into groups logically.  I amused myself by trying to imagine how these kids maintain focus; they're either falling asleep or they're dying to get outside at the end of their school day.  Hopefully they can concentrate on using the tools correctly.  They're going to make a gumball machine, a marble racetrack, and a paper towel holder.  Well, I guess we all endured this rite of passage.

I do feel a bit gypped that I didn't see the Home Care Skills teacher (that's an A day class).  For the over 40 crowd, that would be Home Economics.  :-)

A Faire Weekend

The time between Friday afternoon and Monday morning went unusually fast.  After work I fetched the little guy from after school care and met up with the rest of the family at the elementary school.  They were having a fundraiser for St. Jude's Hospital.  The local Chili's donated burgers and franks, local parents donated desserts, a supermarket donated the drinks, and one of our gym teachers entertained us with his rock band.  A fun time was had by all, but as soon as we met up with hubby and the other two kids, they took off to go on an evening fishing trip.  They caught seven large weakfish (yum) but of course didn't arrive home 'til 12:30AM.

And now...we left the house shortly after 8AM Saturday to go to the New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo, NY (a.k.a. Sterling Forest ski resort).  It's not a terribly long drive for Lawn Guylanders and it's an awful lot of fun.  Expensive day to be sure, but worth it.  They are there weekends from the end of July through 2/3 of September.  This was their last weekend this year.  Son #2 already had a Renaissance outfit, and we bought an outfit for Son #1.  One year we might get the dad to do a warrior kind of outfit.  Rumor has it that the mom makes an attractive looking wench.  I might have to post some pictures after I load them from the camera.  We stayed late to watch the end of the joust, so didn't arrive home 'til almost 9:00.

Sunday was filled with chores and errands, basically everything I would have spread out between two days on an ordinary weekend.  Many loads of laundry squeezed in between a supermarket trip, a COSTCO run, a soccer game out east, and meals.  Dinner was very good, actually.  Hubby barbecued some of the fish they caught, and then we mixed it up with a pot of whole wheat spaghetti and tomato based sauce.  All three kids liked it (somehow that makes it taste better to Mommy).

This morning it was back to permission slips, PTA fundraising tally sheets, school picture order forms, clarinet cases, and backpacks.  Seems like I could use another weekend to recuperate!  

The Cuteness Factor

Isn't technology a hoot?  Last night, a few minutes before 9PM, the phone rings.  Nowadays, when we hear the phone ring, if we're in the kitchen we can just glance over at the wall to see which number comes up on the display.  OR...if we're in the living room or the grups' bedroom, we can glance at the TV set to see the name and number as displayed by Optimum Voice.  But I digress.  When I heard the phone, I looked up from my reading to see the name of the second grade teacher displayed on the television screen.  Uh oh.

As luck would have it, my husband picked up the phone.  After a few minutes of what sounded like animated conversation, he walked in and asked, "Is our little darling still in the shower?"  He was.  It wasn't too difficult to hear what happened next, even over the sounds of water.  "Your teacher says you haven't been handing in much homework."  Thunder clap.

Seems our seven-year-old cutie pie has been smiling, shrugging, hiding, ducking, and doing just about anything to avoid direct questions from his teacher...and if we don't know he was assigned the work, we can't check it.  Now, I warned this teacher at the open house on the fourth day of school:  don't let our little con artist con you, as he can be incredibly evasive when he doesn't feel like doing something he should be doing.  When my husband reminded her of this on the phone, he said she giggled like a schoolgirl.  Sigh.  Swoon.  If they don't have a cuteness category on the report cards this year, with its own rubric, they ought to add one just for my son.   Little Mr. Sneaky Pants is now going to have his homework book checked before he leaves the classroom, to make sure all the assignments are making it in there.  And more rigorous checking will be done at home until he is deemed trustworthy.

Can we buzz forward ten years in our imaginations to picture a teenaged Lothario and the effect this will have on his female classmates?  I have only a halfhearted confidence that his forty something teacher will have the resolve to get tougher with him, considering my own daily struggle.  Sigh.  Swoon.

When You Care Enough to Do Your Very Best

Wouldn't be the first time I sounded like some sappy commercial jingle, would it?!?

Last night, after the two older boys came home from soccer practice, ate dinner, and showered, I discovered that our fifth grader still hadn't completed his homework.  (Thunder clap.)  Naturally at this point in the evening, one hour before bed time, he wanted to rush through.  Eleven math problems, twelve English questions, and a spelling test that had to be signed by one half of the parental unit.  

My attention was piqued when he was struggling aloud with the analogy "cool is to heat as soothe is to..." having to select the correct word out of twenty new spelling words for the week.  Turns out it was "excite" which is not obvious to a kid who only knows soothe in the context of putting aloe on a sunburn.  But we got past that by having him write all the verbs on a separate piece of paper so he'd have a shorter list to contemplate.  

Frustration mounted, naturally, as time grew short.  I decided to check the math problems.  One obvious error, probably due to haste, in the "place" section.  The 2 in 72,999,999 isn't the ten millions but the one millions.  Fifteen minutes before lights out, he didn't want to be corrected, so Taurus the Bull emerged.  "So what, Mom, it's only one mistake!"  Trying to explain that anything less than his best effort is not acceptable fell on deaf ears.  Sigh.  He has the brains but not the focus or patience.  Finally we moved past that with ten minutes to go.

Sign the spelling test, put everything away, take one last potty break, and under the covers.  Right?  As overheard in Sarah Palin's backyard, "Nyet!"  He's upset about getting a 95 on the test, because he's used to 100 on spelling tests.  Can't blame him for transposing the i and e in neighbor, but he may not have been doing the daily review of the weekly words.  Can't change that now, but here's the final chutzpah.  The teacher had the temerity to point out that his cursive d looks an awful lot like a c and l that are not quite joined, so she drew some very lovely cursive d examples.   Towards the bottom of the page was written:  Practice.  So I informed my son that I would sign the test after he'd done some rows of cursive d.  You'd think I asked him to saw his foot off, or something.  After some whining and grunting (on his part, not mine) he sat down and wrote several lines of near perfect lettering.  And then I gave him my autograph.

To his credit, he's also stubborn about good causes, such as sticking up for the underdog.  But I have to admit I was feeling pretty worn out before I retired for the evening.  Maybe part of that was because I had to fold laundry and make lunches after El Toro went to bed.  

Fromage

How wonderful that I can learn some things right along with the kids!  My seventh grader had to research French cheeses as a side project for his French class.  He made a poster with pictures of nine different cheeses and a fun description of each.  Who knew which are made with goat's or sheep's milk, or which date back to the early centuries A.D.?  (OK if I were a chef I'd probably know, but anyone who's eaten at my house is aware that I'm kind of a hack in the kitchen.  Good news is:  I haven't poisoned anybody...yet.)  

I actually have been of some use...because I studied French during my senior year of high school and during my undergraduate days, I have some books around the house.  So I was able to give my son some extra vocabulary words.  He felt he wanted to learn more than the teacher was providing.  Sigh...makes this geek mom so proud!

Guess the Weekend Activity?

Did you guess that we had soccer games this weekend?  Ding ding ding we have a winnah!

Yesterday's game was the fifth grade group.  We left the field with a sour disposition because the coach of the opposing team was trash talking.  Towards the end of the first half, he yelled at his players to gang up on one kid because "he's the only good one."  Can you imagine how the rest of the team felt?  The other coach thinks we all suck.  Our coach, who had been remarkably patient, finally called asked the referee to curb the tongue of the opposing coach.  The referee was visibly annoyed at this.   Is it that tough to get coaches and referees that the league allows such unsportsmanlike conduct?  I'm not usually on a soapbox but it was truly appalling.

Today's game with the seventh graders was played in extremely hot and humid weather.  They were impressively energetic.  They were also enthusiastic, considering that the game was not an official one because a) no referee showed up, and b) the other team was short two players so we lent them two of ours.  I really enjoyed watching the guys who played with the other team come back into our huddle during half time and at the end of the game.  They got high-fived and congratulated by their teammates even though they helped the opposing squad.  I wish one particular soccer coach could take a sportsmanship lesson from these kids.  

Hubby is watching House M.D. in the other room (kids are playing Over the Hedge on Playstation in here) and I think I'll go in and join him with my crocheting after I shut down the laptop.  I'm about two thirds done with my latest afghan, a mix of mostly maroon and hunter green that should be festive for the fall equinox.  It's a neat way to be mindlessly productive while sedentary but it's also a labor of love.  Every time I finish one of these four foot blankets, I think of my cousin's daughter who lost her battle with cancer last June.  A bunch of ladies where I work donate handmade afghans to a local children's hospital and other humanitarian organizations.  I'm happy and proud to help.  

Dragons and Anniversaries

Last night, our oldest was revising a rough draft of an essay on names for his English Language Arts class.  Because hubby is Jewish, the kids have Hebrew names too.  So he wrote a paragraph explaining his English name, and one on his Hebrew name.  He also wrote a third paragraph explaining how the class did an exercise for fun, with all the kids choosing new names for themselves.  He chose Dragon because of its strength.  He definitely could have done worse.  Apropos, maybe, as I could swear I've seen him breathe fire at his brothers on occasion!

Today is our fifteenth wedding anniversary.  Gadzooks that went way too fast.  I called a local seafood/steak house to make reservations for the family for dinner tonight (yes all the kids get to celebrate with us).  The hostess asked whether we needed any highchairs.  I laughed and said thank goodness our youngest child is seven.  And I volunteered that my 44 year old husband didn't need one either.  I think she was still laughing when I hung up.

I didn't comment on 9/11 yesterday because I hadn't spoken with hubby all day about it, and wasn't sure how to gauge his feelings.  He'd been working in the post office in Church Street Station that morning, and ran with his helper once they saw the second plane hit.  Luckily all he got was a bunch of horrible memories and some shards of glass in his shoulder.  Last night, he said he didn't feel so badly about this anniversary of 9/11.  I hope the healing process is happening everywhere else too.

I Get a Kick out of You

My soccer fiends are just loving life this week.  At yesterday's practice for the older boys, middle son tagged along and was invited by the coach to scrimmage with the team.  (And boy was he thrilled to be asked!)  He held his own, too, from what I saw.

Son #1 was asked to be the assistant coach for his brother's team, since he shows up to all the practices and games and always seems to be helping out with something.  So his little chest is puffed out with pride over that honor.  (Puberty has not yet begun, so there is currently no other reason for his chest to be puffed out!)

Tonight we do the soccer field cha cha that was supposed to be done on Tuesday...so of course I precooked part of tonight's meal.  Spinach croquettes, using a stupidly easy recipe involving two boxes of chopped frozen spinach and one box of Stove Top stuffing.  The kids actually eat it...and I found a way to make butternut squash last night that they all like.  Whip the cooked squash with a little butter, a little sugar free pancake syrup (so hubby, a.k.a. Insulin Man, can eat it) and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon.  It's these small victories that matter...

50 Cent

No, not the rapper, the coin.

My second grader is doing a unit on money in the classroom.  The teacher asked that we send in a container with our child's name, and the following denominations of money:  30 pennies, 20 nickels, 10 dimes, 4 quarters, and 2 half dollars.  Well, it isn't that easy to find half dollars, at least where I live.  They're not too common in circulation, apparently.  I had to call around to several banks, and luckily found two banks which each have one.  I reserved them in my name and they must be picked up at the bank.  It was almost as if I were tracking down the latest fad video game..."oh no, we don't have any"..."you could try one of our other locations"..."oh yes, we do happen to have one, but only one."  Whew.  The things we do for our children.  

My Life Is a Circle...

Or how did the chorus of that Harry Chapin song go?  I feel like I'm going around in circles today.  To my horror, this morning I thought about today's timeline and realized I would have no chance to cook dinner while shuttling back and forth between work and the soccer field and my second grader's after school program and home and the wake for my mom's neighbor.  So I cooked a pot of rice and a tray of fish fillets at six o'clock this morning.  Whew, now hubby will not have to feed the kids junk food for dinner (he is a good cook but usually doesn't feel like cooking).

Mother Nature sent us enough rain to have soccer practice cancelled so at least I don't have to rush and cook dinner now.  Good thing.  I'm feeling a bit weary!

Step Right Up and Greet the Teachers!

Long night, but the elementary school open house is over.  Both of my sons' teachers seemed friendly, energetic, and utterly delighted to have my kids in their classes.  What does that mean, other than the obvious?  Time will tell.

Hubby has the boys at the baseball game tonight.  I am reveling in the peace and quiet as I finish making all of the lunches for tomorrow and figure out what I'm going to wear to work.  Yeah, I know, I'm compulsive.  I'm good at it, though.

New Beginnings, and One Ending

This afternoon began soccer season for my oldest.  His team had a scrimmage against a team of older girls from our town.  They looked to be a year or two older, which made them quite a bit taller, given what puberty does to girls at this point.  The twelve and thirteen year old boys actually beat them 4 to 2.  Impressive.  Official games will begin next week, I think, against other boys' teams from other towns on Long Island.  Wonder what the boys will think of that after having faced the older girls, who were pretty fierce competitors.  Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?

A friend of ours from New Jersey, whom we met on a Club Med vacation before kids (now that's definitely another story) called to tell us that he'd just gotten engaged.  He comes from a beautiful, salt of the earth kind of family.  His folks are originally from Cuba.  His now-fiancee hails from the Philippines and seems to be from the same kind of traditional warm family.  How fantastic for the both of them.  How wonderful if we will be able to join them at their wedding!

Later in the evening, my mom called to tell us that our neighbor in my old home town had passed away at the age of 85.  She'd been suffering from dementia and believed that she was dying of incurable cancer, so she'd gone on a hunger strike for almost six weeks.  Doesn't seem medically possible to live that long without food or fluids, does it?  The hospice people were baffled.  But at least our old friend is no longer suffering from mental anguish, and her family can take comfort that she is now in a better place.  

Tomorrow is the open house at our elementary school.  I've got to fly over there after work, and be there for various sessions, hopefully leaving by 8:30PM so that I can make lunches etc. for Tuesday before my energy runs out.  The boys have tickets to a baseball game with my husband tomorrow night, with a fireworks display to follow.  I wonder whether my mom's neighbor is enjoying her fireworks.

I'll take a moment to recall the sunny spots in between the rainy weekend weather, as I attempt to prepare mentally for another week.

Wet and Wild

Soccer season began today.  My ten year old had the honor of being the first to have a game.  When we woke up this morning we hadn't known what to expect from the Tropical Storm Hanna wind and rain which I heard at about 1 AM.  It was a pleasant surprise that the entire soccer field was not under water, and between 10 and 11 the sun actually tried to emerge.  Humid and sticky morning, even for spectators.  Depending on whom you ask, my son's team won 4 to 3 or 4 to 2, due to a highly contested call by the referee, who was standing mid field and called a goal for the other team based on the other team's players screaming that the ball went over the line when the goalie caught it.  Sigh.  At least the win itself was undisputed.

My Saturday morning weekly grocery trip was delayed until 3PM and it is now raining again.  We'll see what we get tonight.  There's to be another soccer game tomorrow afternoon.  I have to go back out because I forgot the frozen waffles (favorite breakfast food of my seven year old) and by then it will be time to attend to the chicken cutlets and corn on the cob for dinner, and to choose another vegetable.  This domestic goddess mystique is really a unique animal.

Another School Year and Soccer Season!

Welcome to the scattered thoughts of geek girl turned soccer mom!  Thanks for taking the ride.

My three boys have just begun their new school year.  My seventh grader, who ought to be called Mini-Me because he's even more anally retentive than I am, already had his middle school class order and classroom numbers memorized the weekend before school began, and was working on memorizing the teachers' names too.  My fifth grader is completely at the other end of the spectrum.  He's happy go lucky and very honest and primal, but suffers from attention deficit (which he partially tried to blame on poor eyesight but that's another story) and just conquered his first homework battle last night, completing a simple assignment six hours after he arrived home.  The youngest, a big shot in the second grade, is every bit as smart as the others but knows he's cute as a button so tries to exploit that whenever possible.  He is taking a break from soccer this season because he was really never interested in playing the game last year; his interests instead were socializing with his teammates, sucking up to the coach, and checking himself out in his soccer uniform.

I'm glad this is a short week!