A note to my tomato plants

Dear Tomato plants,

I have planted you, lovingly watered you, given you a nice cage to support your growth and pulled the weeds from around you.

Would it be too much to ask for one itsy bitsy teeny weeny ripe red tomato?

I can see that you have been working hard, as I can count approximately 1.5 million green tomatoes on your vines.

I have suffered major mosquito bites in my almost-daily venture into your leafy midst to see if any of those green tomatoes are starting to ripen. At this point I'd be happy to even see that they are starting to turn red.

Just to prove that you've tortured me enough, these are things I have done within the past two days:

1) Have woken up from a dream involving a hamburger and me slicing a ripe, juicy tomato on top of it
2) Have walked down to my mom's house and helped myself to a ripe tomato from her garden
3) Have refused to share said stolen tomato with anyone else because I wanted the whole thing for myself.

So, in closing, my dear tomatoes.....if you could see fit to turn red anytime soon.....well, I'd really appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Your tomato-crazed caretaker,

Jaci

A day I've been dreading has come....

Yep, my darling daughter has seen some of her preschool (soon to be Kindergarten) classmates out and about riding their bikes sans training wheels.

She asked us if SHE could have her training wheels taken off. Alex and I have skirted around the subject as much as possible trying to placate her with sayings like, "Not all kids are ready at the same time" and "I'm sure by next summer you'll be ready." But she'll have none of it. Ready or not, she wants to try.

So......our first try was at home, on the flat street. It was a complete failure. Then Alex got the idea to try on grass, on a hill. For the simple reasons that 1) the grass is soft so when she falls it won't hurt too much and 2) on a hill she won't have to worry about pedaling, just keeping her balance.

While she's still not riding around on two wheels, Alex's method was more successful. She was able to go down the hill several times keeping her balance.













Up next? Working on balancing while pedaling. My guess is it will take until next summer. But you know what? For a kid who didn't learn to pedal AT ALL until she was nearly 4.....we've made some great strides.

Of course "me too" (Andrew) thinks his training wheels should come off as well. Heck, why not? If you can pedal a bike starting at age 21 months I suppose at age 3 you're ready for two wheels.

A conversation with Andrew....

So my 3-year-old came up to me today and we had the following conversation:

A: Mom, did you know first I was one, then I was two, now I'm three, next I'll be four, then five......(he did every number up to twenty).

(pause)

A: It will be quite a long time until I'm twenty.

Me: Yep, buddy, quite a long time. (and inside I'm thinking, THANK GOODNESS FOR THAT!)

A personal best!

First of all, my blogging has been totally lax lately.....SORRY! We've just been too busy enjoying summer activities. It seems like by the time I round the kids up from a hard day of playing outside, clean them up and get them off to bed.....I'm just too tired to do anything but go to bed myself. (Is that a sign I'm getting old?)

I did want to share that I achieved a "personal best" this week.

You see.....I'm a "sort of"runner. I say that because I never ran a step until college....when one of my roommates coerced me into doing a little running. She even convinced me to do a 20K race (for those of you who don't do the metric system that would be 12.4 miles) one time and I lived through it!

I ran a bit after college, then pretty much took my mid-to-late 20s off from running to have my babies. But now my "baby" is 3.5 years old and for the last year I've been back into running again. I've done a few 5Ks (3.1 miles) and a couple 10Ks (6.2 miles) and even repeated that 20K in June.

On Saturday night I ran Midnight Madness in Ames, IA. It's typically the HOTTEST night of the year (last year when I ran the 5K it was over 95 degrees when the race started) but this year it was absolutely gorgeous, unseasonably cool weather. It was about 70 degrees when the race started and fell into the mid-60s by the end.

I ran the 10K this year and finished in a personal best time of 56:48. Prior to that my best time was 1:01:25.

And now my "sort of" being a runner may just turn into being an actual runner. You know...the kind who thinks maybe she should run a full marathon this fall.

I'll keep you updated......

Fireworks!

Our town did fireworks on July 5 out at the lake. We went early and had a snack while watching the boat parade, then let the kids play at the playground before dark. It was a LATE night for us (usually the kids are in bed by 8:30 at the latest, but we didn't even get home from fireworks until 10:30!).

This was my first attempt at taking pictures of fireworks. I think I did OK, especially since I'm still using my point & shoot, not a nicer camera. I did take my tripod out to the lake....I don't think I would have gotten ANY shots to turn out without it. I took about 60 fireworks pictures, and these are the only ones that came out worth a darn. LOL!



Watching the boats....





This is an Andrew.



This is an Andrew eating M&Ms.

Moral of the story? ALWAYS carry wet wipes!




The boat parade....













Hope everyone had a great 4th!!!!!!!!