Fairs, rain, and French toast

Home, sweet, home.  The week snuck by without me writing a post.  Oops!  I wasn’t taking pictures, and I thought about posting several times, but without beautiful pictures to insert, it seemed a little less than ideal.  Oh well.  Maybe I’ll pull other images to spice up this post.

So our week was a good one!  Tom helped watch my kids on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  I’ve been hard at work on Althea Dotzour Photography, and having a few hours to focus on that during the day makes such a difference.  I’d had a horrible incident of photo disk corruption and had to re-shoot a session, but my clients were lovely and understanding.  Here’s a favorite picture from the re-shoot.

On Wednesday, Andrew had his four-year-old doctor’s appointment.  He now weighs 37lbs (61 percentile), and is 3′ 5.5″ tall (70 percentile).  The kid’s growing like a bean.  He had fun showing the doctor how he can snap and hop and skip.  It’s neat to watch him grow.

Syliva went back to Donna’s for a morning of daycare on Wednesday.  She was happy to go back, and went happily into Donna’s arms.  I think she has so much fun there!

On Thursday, I decided we needed an adventure, so I piled the kids in the car and gave them some clues about where we were going (“Moo” “Weee!!” and “Yum!”).  We drove to Milwaukee for the Wisconsin State Fair.  I wanted to take neat pictures of the rides and animals and crowds.  However, I’ll count the fact that we went and had a good time and that we all left relatively unscathed to be the limit of what I was able to accomplish.  No photography.

Andrew and Sylvia loved the rides.  Andrew had fun going on several by himself, and Sylvia adored the carousels and the train.  While the rides were going, she squealed and vibrated in delight.  She flipped out when they ended…she wanted them to go on and on and on.

Both kids loved seeing the animals.  We wandered through all the livestock barns and even got to see some camels.  Then we enjoyed some fair food before things totally melted down.  Sylvia got her fingers pinched in a bathroom door while I was washing Andrew’s hands, and then Andrew’s leg got stepped on by somebody (it was really crowded!).  Holding two sad kids, and pushing the stroller, we high-tailed it out of the fair.

So we didn’t get to eat one of these:

cream puff!!
cream puff!!

Oh well.  My pants are a little tight since getting back from Sweden, so I guess a cup of whipped cream wasn’t really necessary. mmmm  whipped cream.  mmmmmm

Yesterday (Friday) was a rainy day.  Jessica, Eli, and Celia came over in the morning, and we decided to walk to the library even though it was drizzling.  By the time we were ready to head home, it was raining, and the girls didn’t want to be in the stroller.  So the boys got in the stroller, we propped the umbrella over our books, and Jessica, the babies, and I walked home in the rain.  I like a good walk in the rain.  Reminds me of when Heather and I used to wear long peasant skirts and run and dance in the whooshing rain together.  Makes me smile to remember.

Vicki and Alex came over in the afternoon, and the boys had fun pulling out costumes.  There was a wedding.  We played Johnny Cash’s Jackson.  Such cuties!

This morning, I made Berg’s French Toast from the book A Homemade Life. It’s pretty much normal French Toast except cooked in oil in a cast-iron skillet.  Oh, so good.  You’ll want to try this one.  Believe me.  Here’s the recipe!

makeawhisk.com
photo by makeawhisk.com Note: I omitted the butter since the toast was fried in oil!

I’m off this afternoon to my first APT play in their new indoor Touchstone Theater.  Terry, Jack, and I are seeing Old Times. If the rain and thunder stop, we’ll also be seeing Hay Fever in the outdoor theater this evening.  Many thanks to my stellar husband for taking the kids all afternoon long while I enjoy some theater!

Photo by Zane Williams
Photo by Zane Williams

If the weather is fair tomorrow, Andrew, Bryan, and my dad are going to a Mallards baseball game.  I bet they’ll have lots of fun!

Feuf!  That was a long post!  I’ll sign off now.  Hope your week was good too!

Oh, PS.  I wanted to share that Sylvia is very nervous about thunder and other loud noises these days.  When an airplane goes over or a big truck goes by, she runs to me, wraps her arms around me, and buries her sweet head in my neck.  This in turn gives me no incentive to convince her that she shouldn’t be afraid.  In fact, as I feel her little hands clinging to me, I am tempted to tell her that she should, in fact, always come to me when she hears those bad, scary noises.