What a great summer night at the beach

 #94- Ride 4 of 8 Antique Carousels in MA

Massachusetts is home to 8 antique carousel rides. Some are far away so I put our goal for this summer to ride 1/2 of them. Maybe next summer's list will be to ride the other half.  Tonight we drove to Hull to Nantasket Beach. The old amusement park that used to be there is gone but this carousel remains from those long ago days. The inside of the building was crowded with overpriced souvenoir crap to buy. Really crowded with it. Maybe I'm spoiled from Pawtucket's Looff Carousel down the street from us. Their rides are 25 cents each and go super fast. The rides in Hull were $2.25 and lasted a while but didn't go nearly as fast. Not fast enough to keep you cool on a hot, summer day. At least not this momma.

#73- Ride a carousel horse

A nice thing about this carousel is that 3 out of 4 horses in each row moved up & down. On some carousel rides, the horses don't move which is kind of poopy. This one in Hull had 4 horses across each row and the only that didn't move up & down was the outside one.

Becca, with her love of horses, had a grand ole time. She kept hollering, "Horsey, horsey!" The boys both enjoyed the ride also. Joe rode another horse and Dan rode in one of the chariots. Each time he'd go around, by the time he got to John who was taking pictures, he'd move to another spot within the chariot. It was funny.

# 81- Go to an old beach

Last summer when we went to Nantasket to go swimming, it was disgusting! Absolutely disgusting and I said we'd never go back. I didn't bring anyone's bathing suit, partly for this reason and partly because we didn't leave our house till 4pm on a Friday afternoon to head down route 3 to Hull. After riding the carousel, we walked around the cheesiest Harborwalk in New England. There were signs designating it as a Harborwalk, but basically all it was was a walk through a parking lot and marina.

From our cheesy walk, we headed back across the road to the beach. Becca had begged to see the beach. When we got up to the seawall, we saw it was high tide. Just like it always is when we go to the beach. (I really need to start checking the tide times before we head out). Some people were in the ocean swimming but a bunch of teenage boys were standing in the water, holding onto the cement wall of the ramp that brings you down to beach level. They had their backs to the ocean, waiting for a wave to come in. When the wave crashed into the wall it would send a wall of water straight up about 10 feet that would come crashing down on the boys, soaking them. It was a riot watching them. The way they were standing against the wall, waiting for the wave, made it look like the cops had pulled them over and they were waiting to be frisked. When the wave did crash down on them, they would burst out laughing and chuckling.

Of course, watching this made the kids want to do it too. Being a mother, all I could vision was my children either getting smashed into the seawall and getting really hurt or a giant rip tide sucking them out into the open ocean, drowning them because I was too far away, being up on the sidewalk above and 50 yards away from the beach access entrance.  Finally, I pushed my anxiety aside and let John take them down the ramp with explicit instructions not to get wet.  Well, you can see from the photos how well he listened.

It was hard to get mad when they were all having so much fun. Giggles, laughter, big ear-to-ear grins, shrieks of delight. It's times like this that make me happy to be a mom. And happy to be the mom of these three kids.  It makes the sibling bickering and yelling and fighting and tattle-tailing, the "mom, she touched me!, "mom he poked me!" "mom, she looked at me!" comments disappear. I'm reminded that nothing is as important as a child's happiness. And that sometimes all it takes for a child to be happy is family love and togetherness and the bending of some rules.    

My Joseph, future heartbreaker of America.



School Year Albums

Yesterday was a yucky weather day. I was woken up at 8:30am by my daughter coming into my bedroom crying about a thunderstorm waking her up and scaring her. Sure enough big bangs of thunder clapped 2 seconds after she finished her sentence. That was enough to propel her over the footboard of my bed, under the covers and lying next to my head in 1.2 seconds. 5 minutes later my middle child comes in saying the thunder scared him too.

The thunderstorm managed to stick around, terrorizing my children and dog, for 3 hours. Just as I thought it had moved away another clap of thunder would ring out. On top of the lousy weather, Joe started complaining of a sore throat and had a slight fever. Off I sent him back to bed.

I didn't really have anything planned to do from our list of 101 Summer Things to Do and now between the thunderstorm and the sick child it didn't look like we would be doing anything.

Instead, I worked on the boys' School Year albums.

Dan's is the brown album on left. Joe's is the green album on right.

I made Daniel's after his kindergarten year. I wanted a simple album about his school years.

I used a 8x8 top loading album that came with 10 page protectors. I used the same layout on every page with one page for each grade K through twelve grade. I gathered a few pieces of paper that coordinated together, some cardstock and chipboard numbers. I put a 2 inch piece of pattern paper at the top of page, added a strip of cardstock to mat each  year's school photo with. On top of the mat, above the photo is a strip of cardstock with the grade level and a chipboard number to match. To finish it off, I print out the same set of questions (Questions are listed at end of this post.) each year about the school year with Dan's answers, cut them into strips and adhere them around the photo.

At the end of the book in the extra pages, I put his class photos, report cards, and awards he received.

For Joseph's book, I used a different set of coordinated school papers and followed the same layout design.

I did add a twill ribbon border between the pattern paper and cardstock.

One thing I did differently from Dan's book is the background cardstock. In Dan's book I was trying to keep the bulk down so I only used 1 sheet of background cardstock per page protector and used both sides of it. One grade on one side and the next garde on the backside. After I designed it I realized it would be nice to be able to slip his report cards, awards and photos behind the grade instead of putting them at the back of the book. So for Joe's book I used two separate sheets of cardstock in each pocket which allows me to slip things in behind each page.

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As I was working on these albums yesterday, I realized this time next year I'll be doing three of these albums. I knew I'd want to have the alike so I've had the same type of album but in pink for Becca since I made Joe's-three years ago. This summer I'll work on making up her pages so when she goes to kindergarten in the fall her school album will be ready and waiting for her to fill up with many school memories.

List of questions:

Grade/Year:

School:

Teacher:

Transportation:

Grades:

Friends:

Memorable class(es):

Memorable awards, projects, papers, field trips, performances, etc. :

Sports/extracurricular activities:

World news:

Other notes & memories:

Signature:

(I love to see how their handwriting changes and improves each year.)

This was so NOT my idea...

#78- Go on a scavenger hunt

I planned on doing another scavenger hunt like we did last year with a list of items for things to be found in the neighborhood or maybe around town. That was the plan but we are participating in RI Great Outdoor Pursuit. An optional part of this program is a Clivus Scavenger Hunt. A what?!? you may be asking or "What's a clivus?" Well I'll tell ya. Clivus is a company that makes  Eco-restrooms or environmentally friendly porta-potties. Several are located in various RI state parks. If you do their scavenger hunt and find three of them, you can be entered into a contest to win a trip for four to Block Island.

None of us have ever been to Block Island, and we need to visit an island for our list so I decided to replace my original idea for a scavenger hunt with this one. And that's how we spent our Sunday afternoon, driving around RI state parks in search of porta-potties. Those Kardashians have nothing on us! Keepin Up with the Kardashians-pssh! Let's see if they can keep up with the Callery's in terms of fun and excitement.

One of the parks we went to in search of porta-potties was Pulaski State Park. We had gone here with the parks department back in February on a guided tour of beaver dams. Back then, John and I said we'd have to come back to go swimming in the summer. In researching the parks that had the porta-johns we were looking for, I discovered this one was one of them. In addition to our scavenger hunt list, we packed swim stuff and sand toys with us and ventured out to cross of more than # 78 off our list.

#49 - Build a sandcastle

Joe and Becca making a sandcastle at Pulaski State Park.

#80 - Go to a new beach

After we left Pulaski State Park we went to down the street to George Washington Memorial Camping Area. At this location, we found two out the three eco-friendly porta-potties they have there. While hunting for them, John, Becca and Joe took a swim at this new beach on Bowdish Reservoir. John liked this one much better because it was warm. The one at Pulaski State park he said was too cold. Which, if you know my husband, means it was cooler than a hot tub.

 

# 22 - Swim in a pond

Here's Joe swimming at Peck Pond located within Pulaski State Park. With his new mohawk haircut, he looked like a shark when he was swimming under the water.



Something NOT on the List!

Saturday, June 23rd

Today we tried something new, actually 2 new things. Go-karts & bumper boats.

The boys loved both of them. Joe said he liked the bumper boats better. Personally I think he said that because he could see over the boat's steering wheel but not the kart's that well. Becca liked the boats but not so much the go-karts. She didn't go on for their second ride.

This was surprisingly not on our list of 101 Summer Things to Do. Oh but it will be going on next year's!

#32- Go to the drive-in

At night

Saturday night at the drive-in. What a great way to spend a summer's evening. We were going to go Friday night but then the thunderstorms rolled through. I'm so glad we waited until Saturday night. The weather was much cooler. (66 degrees on the ride home.) It was more comfortable sitting out in our lawn chairs. Of course, the children were snuggled up tight in the five fuzzy blankets and every pillow we own,

By the way this is NOT a crooked photo. Our screen had a steep slope to it. John isn't just leaning to his left to be in the photo. Nope, he had to lean that way or risk tumbling down the hill, plowing down lawn chairs & flattening small children alike. I braced my chair up against the right side of the car, I wasn't going anywhere.

We saw Madagascar 3. It was cute, just as cute as the first two. We all came home singing, "Afro circus, afro circus, polka dot, polka dot, afro!"

Rockin' the 'Hawk

Another 95 degree day, another day of summer fun.

Today started off by getting the boys their summer haircuts. Joe had been asking to get a mohawk for a couple years. Last summer, I finally allowed Joe to get one. I realized it's summer time and there was worse things he could ask for so what the heck. This year Dan requested one too.

Today's Summer List Items

#33- Run through a sprinkler.

 New swimsuit, new goggles, new haircut, same old summertime fun.

#60- Make homemade ice cream. 

 3rd day straight of 95 degree weather, we needed something to keep us cool.  I've heard about making your own ice cream using ziploc bags, ice and rock salt before, but I've never tried it. Until today. It's a relatively easy task. The shaking the bag for 10 minutes was the toughest part. While shaking his bag, Dan complained, "Why can't we just use the ice cream maker?"

"Because I've already scrapped that kind of ice cream making before." I thought in my head. Aloud I said, "Because I thought this would be new and fun." A scrapper's mind never stops working. LOL

Once he tasted it though he changed his mind. We all liked it. It wasn't super hard and it melted pretty fast but it was still a unique spin on this summertime activity.

Here's the recipe:

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 cup milk or half & half

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

6 tablespoons rock salt.

1 sandwich size Ziploc freezer bag

1 gallon size Ziploc freezer bag

ice cubes

1. Put milk, vanilla and sugar into small bag and seal it.
2. Fill the large bag half full of ice and add rock salt. Place the small bag inside the large one, and seal large bag carefully.
3. Shake the bag until the mixture is ice cream consistency, which takes about 5 - 10 minutes.
4. Wipe off the top of the swmall bag, open it carefully and enjoy!

School's Out for Summer!

Yesterday was the last day of school for the boys and the first day of summer of fun. My husband is the cake decorator in the house. For past last days of school, he's made a sandcastle cake with ice cream cones & crushed graham crackers and a fish cake with scales made from smushed Starbursts.

Unfortunately he had to work yesterday so I was delegated the job of summer cake decorator. I made these super cute 'sno-cone' cupcakes that I saw in last month's Food Network's magazine. The actual cupcakes were easy to make. You bake the cupcakes, take the paper off of them, put them in the ice cream cups. Frost them and then sprinkle on the sanding sugar. I cut a paper plate in half to get the straight lines.

 The part that was difficult was finding the supplies. I had to go to Michael's & Target to get the right colors of sanding sugar. For the ice cream cups, I searched all over before I found these ones at Jo-Anne's and even that took me a half hour before finding the right size to fit the cupcakes. I had to buy another package of larger ice cream bowls to get the little wooden spoons. But they came out so cute that it was worth it.

 

Here's the boys after their last bus ride together till Joe becomes a high school freshman. The middle school is right across from the end of our street which means Dan will be a walker for the next four years and Joe will join him in September 2013. I still can't believe that Dan is going to be a middle schooler next fall. It seems like just yesterday that I took him to his kindergarten screening.

In Family Fun magazine this month I saw an idea for this memory wall. In the upstairs hallway I installed three strings of yarn. Each day of summer vacation has it's own clothespin and the date on it. Right now they hold different ideas for where we might go and different things we may do during the summer. It's main purpose though is to each day put a memento of the day's activities on the dated clothespin. Could be a ticket stub from a movie, a napkin from a new resturant we tried, a brochure from the museum we went to or the score card from a round of mini golf we played. At the end of summer, we'll have a visual reminder of what we did and it'll be easy to know what we did on each day so we can make our summer end scrapbook.

After having our 'sno-cones' and checking out the memory wall with the finalized list of our 101 Summer Things to Do, the kids were off on their annual first day of Summer of Fun scavenger hunt. Another one of our traditions to celebrate summer starting. The boys love scavenger hunts and I love making them. I told the boys they were getting too old for easy clues so this year they worked together to figure out the clues. Here's some examples:

This sentence holds the key to this location. (Key rack)

Some where Buzz & Woody would never want to get stuck. (The toy box)

Where something Becca can't have gets delivered. (The milkbox. Becca's lactose intolerant.)

My personal favorite:

Whee! This is fun. (The basket that holds the Wii games & controls.)

 Daniel got this one right away. Joe thought it was the slide out back. When he turned around and saw where Dan had stopped he said, "It's the slide out back." and repeated the clue, "Whee! This is fun." Then you could see the realization dawn across his face. It was priceless.

The end of the hunt is where they found their prize, brand new water guns. With those we set off to cross off the first item on our list:  Have a huge water gun fight.

It was boys vs girls. Dan & Joe vs Becca and myself. Lots of fun! No clear winner was determined as everyone was soaked down to their underwear. For some reason the kids think it's more fun to have a water gun in your clothes as opposed to in swimsuits. Could it be because I am usually unhappy when they get their clothes wet?? Yeah, I think so.

Mommy's Sanity Break

I spent last Friday night and all day Saturday at a crop in Taunton with some new scrapping buddies. What a fun time! It's just the kind of crop I love. Plenty of space, 8 feet of table space!!! Not crowded, there was plenty of room to move around. Great company, lots of laughs.

I got all the journaling I had pre-written for my summer album done. I'm up to number 64. I'm feeling more confident that I'll get it done by Thursday.

I got to put together some of my page kits for the May Scrapbook Generation

In addition to those I got two layouts done. Dan's experience paddle boarding and Penny, our new puppy.  I love how Dan's layout came out. I love the colors in the papers, the funky seaweed looking blue ribbon and the embellishments.

I used a paper kit for Penny's album. Isn't she adorable? She's much cuter in person. She has the most lovable little face with great beagle coloring.

I was happy with what I got done but more happier to have had some Mommy time off.

In memoriam, Joseph Thomas Kelly

I was 21 years old when you passed away. Today it has been 21 years since that day. Tomorrow you will be gone from my life longer than you were in my life.

I miss you, Dad.

I miss:

-the feel of your flannel shirts when you hugged me.

-the smell of Old Spice in the room you were in.

-sitting on your feet, untying the laces on your work boots.

-the warm summer days we spent fishing on Neponset Reservoir in a boat borrowed from Heaton's.

-the sound of your foot on the bottom step, threatening to come upstairs if we didn't get out of bed to help rake the leaves in the fall.

-you complaining to Mom about the price of cereal.

-seeing you sitting in the lawn chair out back by your garden.

-hearing you grumble at the TV if someone on it cursed while I was in the room.

-the sight of your tan fishing hat on your head.

-playing poker with you and the rest of the family around the kitchen table.

-seeing your cup of tea with the saucer.

-hearing you say, "It's OK." when I came home crying from my first fender bender.

-the twinkle in your eye and your ski slope nose.

-the Christmas breakfasts you would make with anything and everything that was in the fridge.

-Mom ironing your white undershirts.

-the handkerchief you always had in your back pocket.

-you sitting at the wooden picnic bench under the huge oak tree in the backyard watching us picking, trimming and cutting the green beans on Green Bean Saturdays.

-not hearing you say you love me but knowing and feeling you loved me by all the things you did for us.



But most of all, I miss being one of Daddy's little girls.

I love you, Dad.

Crunch Time

I have 10 days left before the boys get out of school for the summer. That means 10 days left to finish the album from LAST summer's 101 Things to Do. I've been trying to work on it a little bit each day (or each night I should say since that's when I really have time to scrap.) I've spend the last week or so on the number titles and deciding on each slot's background papers. I'm up to #89, so a few more to finish and then on to the tough part...the actual journalling of each item. I had journalled up to #15 before so that gives me 10 days to journal, print and finish 86. That's what I call crunch time. I'm sensing some late nights in my immediate future.

Here are supplies I've used in this album.

I used a Recollections album from Michaels that holds 400 4x6 pictures.

For my embellishments I used card stock stickers from BoBunny (Backyard Bliss & H20+Sun Collections), Sticker Sentiments by SRM Stickers and K & Company stickers.

For papers, I used Simple Stories 100 Days of Summer collection (How could I not use it with a name being so similar to my project?!?!)

I chose the Recollections album because I knew I would have lots of pictures from the summer and needed to have a simple layout to get them all in. Using this type of album with all 4x6 photos pockets made it super simple to scrap a lot of photos, plus it still left room for my journaling and embellishments. Another reason I liked this particular album is that the pockets allow for both horizontal and vertical pictures. I tend to take a majority of my photos vertically so I needed an album that would accommodate both types.

Album's title page

Close up of page title

To give the album a casual, fun feeling I chose to doodle around the card stock backgrounds for my journalling and item number titles. Each page got a pocket with background paper that had strips explaining the item number for the photos on that page.(above)  

In the journalling (below) I circled the title for each item number to have them stand out a little more.

After completing my Europe trip album, where I used a TON of memorabilia, I felt more comfortable including it into my scrapbooks. In this album I used tickets, brochures, a subway token from the Trolley Museum, postcards, and a souvenir ride picture from one of the amusement parks we went to.

I'm really liking how the album is coming together. So much so that I've even gone ahead and purchased another one of these albums in red for this summer's scrapbook. Also picked up papers & embellishments for it. All I need now are the photos and stories.