Local Customs

The McGaheysville Lawn Party . . . best Lawn Party around. What is a lawn party you ask? . . . I don't really have a definition. I have found that Lawn Parites are not a "southern thing" or a "northern thing." I believe it is just a "Shenandoah Valley thing." Everyone I have ever met, that moves into this area (my parents included) have never heard of a Lawn Party. It must be a local thing. Whatever they are, I like them! Lawn Parties are a lot like the Fair. Two big differences . . . . it does not cost anything to get into a Lawn Party (only costs to eat the food or participate in the goings on) like it does a Fair and Lawn Parties are always planned for fundraising. The McGaheysville Lawn Party was created to raise money for the McGaheysville Volunteer Fire Department. Since we live in McGaheysville, what better place to go than somewhere that benefits our local fire department. I have always loved Lawn Parties and try to go to as many as I can every summer. I found out about a year or so ago that I get this trait from my father. He too LOVES Lawn Parties. My mother always goes with him and likes them ok, but goes for my Dad. Mike is kind of the same way, he likes them but probably would not go if I did not like them so much:). Like father like daughter!

This past Friday night Mike and I took the kids to the Fireman's Parade and then to the Lawn Party. The parade was terrific!! It is so close to our house that we are always able to walk to where the parade is being held. Lydia and Emily rode down to the parade in the wagon and Ryan walked, but the kids collected so much candy while watching the parade that we all had to walk back home:). The entire bottom of the wagon was covered with candy and Mike and I DID NOT PICK UP ANY CANDY this year. The kids did it all!! The parade is always really great. There are, of course, fire trucks from all different areas as well as Rescue Squads (this year one received a call right before the parade started--they had to leave), area car dealerships put one or two of their cars in the parade and you always see Miss Rockingham County as well as Little Miss Rockingham County adorning their crowns and riding on the firetrucks or on the back of a convertible. There are marching bands and tractor trailer rigs, motorcycles and muscle cars. And finally, bringing up the rear of the parade are about 8 - 10 men and women on horses. It is a great parade and people come from everywhere to see it! We always see all of our neighbors at the parade each year.

After walking home from the parade, we put the kids in the van and drove to the Lawn Party. The Lawn Party is pretty close and we would potentially walk there too (it is not as close as the parade), but we always come back after it is dark and walking with kids that late, in the dark, etc. just not safe. At the Lawn Party we met up with my Mom and Dad. They went with us while we took the kids on the merry-go-round and they all rode the flying elephants together. After that, we had enough tickets for two more people to go on a ride . . . rather than having a fight over what two kids were going to go, Mom took Lydia and Emily for a stroll and Mike took Ryan down the larger than life slide. The slide is HUGE and you slide down on smooth rugs. We bought the kids a bag of cotton candy and let them eat it while they watched some other children riding ponies. By that time it was almost 10:00 and everyone was ready for bed.

If you have never been to a Lawn Party, you must go to one!! Come visit us . . . we'll take ya!

Uncle Paul

I have one brother, his name is Paul. He is three years younger than I am and for most of our childhood we had a pretty close relationship--as far as siblings go anyway. Since we have grown up, moved away from home, and started families of our own; we don't talk as often as we used to, but when the opportunity presents itself, we can talk for hours--and we do sometimes--just ask Mike:). My brother and I share some awesome memories from our childhood! I don't think we could have asked for a better one. I think my favorite memories are of our trips and vacations. Our parents would take us to Myrtle Beach every summer and we would play putt-putt and go to Old King Cole's for ice cream after dinner most nights. We loved the Water Boggan waterslide that is no longer standing and as little kids we really enjoyed making drip sand castles with our mom. In addition to the beach we went many other places throughout the years. We can both quote the movie Spaceballs and our favorite past-time is poking fun at our parents and our grandparents. I think there is some kind of unwritten law that states you have to make fun of those you love:). At times, Paul and I have been known to make fun of each other too. I can remember, as a kid, always wanting a sister. As it turns out, my parents did not care to have anymore children to make this happen for me. In the end I am glad. I love my brother very much and I think I will keep him:).

This past Sunday, after going to Arvetta's birthday party, we spent some time with Paul, his wife Allison and their daughter, Adella. Paul pushed my kids around the pool on Mom's swim chair (that was off limits to Paul and myself when we were kids--but the GRANDKIDS . . . . that is a different story). They loved it! Lydia and Emily are really taking off in their lifejackets now!! They both kick their feet, jump off the side, and move through the water without my assistance! Ryan is now swimming without his lifejacket and is jumping off the diving board!! We can't believe how brave he is. It was a great day!!

She Did It!!

Arvetta turned 100! Thursday, July 17, 2008 was Arvetta's 100th birthday. (In a previous post, I explained my connection with Arvetta). The following Sunday Arvetta's niece, Jackie and Jackie's daughter, Jane gave Arvetta a birthday party. Many generations of Arvetta's friends and family were there to celebrate this milestone with her. My parents and my brother and his family came to celebrate with her as well. It was a nice party. My kids brought her balloons and a card and they wanted to sing Happy Birthday to her, but with the crowd of people in the room and the amount of people wanting to talk to her it just wasn't fesiable. We love Arvetta very much and hope to celebrate many more birthdays with her! Funny note--there were three sets of twins at the party. There was a set of 8 year old boy/girl twins who had a 10 year old, older brother. There was a set of 3 year old fraternal girls with their 5 year old, older brother and our set of 2 year old fraternal girls and their 4 year old, older brother. There seems to be an older brother pattern in the twins that Arvetta knows:).

My Parents are Exhausted!

This past Saturday was ARCMOM's (Augusta Rockingham Counties Mothers of Multiples) 3rd annual Twins Club picnic. There were about 56 people there--the majority of them children. (several families had already left when we thought to take a group picture). Sue Frease's son Jackson arrived in a shirt with the words "My parents are exhausted" scribbled across it. I believe this should be our new motto.

Mike took Ryan fishing with his new fishing pole after we ate dinner. Lydia and Emily tagged along for a while. All of the kids played on the playground and everyone had a super time!! We had prepared for very hot weather, packing water toys and water balloons, etc. but when we arrived it became a little overcast and the wind began to blow a little bit. The weather was perfect!

I have been so fortunate to be a part of this group! All of these mothers are amazing women and I am privileged to know each one of them!!

A Camping we will go . . .

We decided to purchase a mini motor home. Due to the fact that we always have such a great time when camping, but neither of us really likes the tent camping idea, we decided to purchase a smaller motor home for our family. In people's busy lives, I think sometimes we don't spend the quality time with our kids and family as we should. Mike and I thought that camping would be one really great way to spend that quality time. Originally we had planned to go to Virginia Beach this past weekend. Not knowing what in the world we were doing, we decided it might be better to stay closer to home and not focus so much on "beach" for our first outing. For that reason, we decided to go to Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park in Natural Bridge. It was a really nice campground with a pool, a swimming lake with a beack area and a playground that was very close to our campsite. Yogi and Boo Boo even visited our campsite one night. It was great! The kids had a wonderful time and Mike and I did too. We are looking forward to camping for many years to come and hope Grammy and Paw Paw (Stacey's parents) come with us on occasion in their motorhome! Am attaching quite a few pictures with this one . . . enjoy.

To Grandmother's House We Go

Both of my Grandmothers are still living. They both live in an assisted living facility (two different ones). One of my Grandmothers suffers from Alzheimer's. She does not know who I am, but still knows my dad from time to time. My Mother's mother still knows what is going on, but has health difficulties. Yesterday, I took the kids to visit her. My friend, Dana and her little girl Katie went with us. It was a really nice day. My mom's mom has 6 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren. I attempted to get the kids to sit with "G" (this is what her Great Grandchildren call her) and take a picture with her, but could not get everyone to cooperate at the same time. These videos came out better than any of the pictures I took so I thought I would share them. My Grandma is "playing pool" with the kids. They love taking the cue balls and roll them back and fourth to see if they can get them in the pockets. This enables Grandma to play with them and not have to get down on the floor--which she can't do.

Lydia also decided to show her show tune talents. Grandma's friend, Myrtle, came in to see the kids. She plays the piano. She and Lydia played the ABC's and Lydia sang. Myrtle kept trying to get Lydia to just sing and not play the piano, but Lydia insisted on playing the piano with her--Lydia's playing ear is not totally developed yet:).

My Blog

I absolutely love this blog! I work on this whenever I have something to share and whenever I have a spare moment to write a little something. I feel it is such a great way to keep in touch with our family and friends and let them know what we are doing. This site is SO EASY and takes no time, so in a busy world it is such a great outlet. In addition, I love taking pictures, but don't always print the pictures out. Mike and I always talk about the wonderful digital age, but that we have the million pictures we have taken over the years that just stay on the computer. We have made photo album cds, but they are harder to show to people than an old fashioned printed out picture. This is a way I can share these pictures of my children I am so proud of and tell a little story about what we did at the time the picture was taken. I thank my friend and co-worker, Rabia, for introducing me to this wonderful new blogging experience. Rabia blogs on a much more regular basis than I do and does more than just picture posting, but I am still figuring out how to link her blog page to mine, so I am not as up on the bells and whistles of this site as she is.
Today I did jump in here and decide to change my template. I picked this template in honor of Emily. I believe Emily's favorite color is pink. Though Emily, being the age of 2, does not really have the concept of favorite colors . . . anytime she has pink to choose from among other colors . . . she always picks pink! She is the prissier of my two girls. She loves dressing in dresses and looking in the mirror at her dress while I tell her how pretty she is. Of my three children, she likes getting dirty the least. She is so funny, Mike and I feel, she is the only true girl we actually have:). For you Emily, we are now pink!

Memories

Having such great memories from my childhood makes me want to share all of these memories with my kids. Mike and I bought sparklers for the kids for the first time this year. We are very big firework fans and can typically see two or three firework shows from our house each year. We watched one show last night and two tonight. In addition, we pulled out the sparklers. I showed Ryan how my brother Paul and I used to light sparklers with our parents on July 4th and would write our name in the air with them. Ryan really liked the sparklers. Lydia and Emily (who is actually standing behind me) were not too keen on the sparklers and little fireworks, but enjoy fireworks that are far away:). I hope one day my children show their how they used to write their name in the air with their sparklers--of couse we have to get Lydia and Emily to actually hold one first:).

Make my day!

One of the parents in our preschool absolutely made my day yesterday. . . .Yesterday my class, along with the class down the hall from us (Ms. Treasa's class), held a 4th of July parade with our kids. Treasa is Lydia and Emily's teacher and has become a good friend of mine. We tend to join together on occasion for activities and events we do with the kids in our classes. We decided to have a parade using some of the crafts we had the children make in class this past week. Treasa downloaded Yankee Doodle and I brought a cd player to school. We invited the other kids in the center to sit in the school hallway and watch our parade. It was so cute!!! The kids had a great time with it! We even went so far as to give them each a piece of candy (thanks to Ms. Rabia) to "throw" to the children watching the parade. Several of the younger two year olds did not want to throw their candy or even let go of it for that matter--they wanted to eat it:).

A mother of one of our kids came up to me as she was picking her son up from school yesterday. Her son is in Ms. Treasa's class and they had already made their way up the hill to the playground . . . Ms. Stacey tends to take a little longer getting her kids cleaned up . . . anyway, this is the mother of a child I had when I first started working at this center. Very nice woman, but this is her only child, she is an older mom and she is a little harder to please than a lot of the other mothers. Plus, she and her husband are teachers:). In her son's cubby, Treasa had placed his Uncle Sam hat and construction paper flag he had carried in the parade that morning. She collected these items to take them home. As I was sweeping up the crumbs from snacktime, she passed my room holding this hat and flag, just looking at them. I looked up to say good-bye to her and she started to thank me for all the effort Treasa and I put into these kids. She said, "This parade must really have been a production." As she was talking tears welled up in her eyes. She talked about how difficult she knew this must be for us, but how wonderful it is for our kids to experience things like this. She went on to say how she was going to take the hat and flag home and see if she could get her little boy to have a parade at home with her and her husband. She must have thanked me three or four times. I told her I would be emailing pictures to her and to be on the lookout. She said she could not wait to see them.

I am thanked from time to time and told, quite often, how great it is that I do this and that I must have amazing patience. Funny, I really don't have amazing patience, but I love what I do so much that my lack of patience is focused on showing the kids the best way to direct their energy. I appreciate the things all the parents say, but coming from this particular mother was like receiving an award! Before I even reached the gate at the playgound with my kids, I began to tell Treasa of this good fortune. She said when this mother came up to pick up her son, she thanked her as well.

This made Lydia and Emily's 2nd parade. Back towards the first part of June Ryan, Lydia, Emily and myself were in a parade that was part of a local lawn party. The director of my center owns another center and we rode in the parade for that center--advertisement. It was really neat and the kids thought it was so great! We rode on a make shift float that was actually a trailer being pulled by a pick up. The trailer sat pretty close to the ground and at the end of the parade, in order to get back to our vehicles we had to get out on the main rode for about 2 miles. One of my co-workers was in the back of the pickup and yelled at me to turn around to look at Ryan and her son, Dylan. As I turned around I saw both of them leaning over the edge of the trailer watching the pavement go by rather quickly:). Screaming at them to get back before they fell off the trailer and hit by an oncoming vehicle, I realized this is the first time either of them had been able to see the road while riding in a vehicle. What an experience:).