Tuppence a Bag

Wow! It has been a LONG time...! It reminds me of what happened a couple of years ago. I had put up a bird feeder in the back yard, and had built up quite a following, bird-wise. I had hordes and hordes of finches and such always swarming about, livening everything up. And then, somehow, I stopped filling the bird feeder.

I don't know what happened - if I lost interest, or just ran out of seed and kept forgetting to get more. Doesn't matter, I suppose - as far as the birds were concerned, there was just no reason to come back. So they didn't.

Even after I filled the feeder again. Weeks and weeks, and then months - and the feeder didn't get any emptier. I NEVER saw birds back there. It finally got to the point where the birdseed was so wet from staying out there in the rain that it sprouted and rotted in there, and the whole thing became a festering toxic mess that probably killed any birds who might have happened onto it. Through an extended period of neglect, I had wrecked a perfectly good thing.

The blog, of course, is the birdseed. And you, my dear readers, the birds.

But 90% of you were here for the weeks when I didn't write anything, so you know exactly what was going on. And the rest of you are about to find out. I'm in a bit of a dead zone here, time-wise - I'm back from work and errands, it's the first day the kids are back in day care, and Janneke and her mother are still at her office, where they're moving her in to her new space. So I take a few minutes to write the briefest of updates.

First, the visit: Janneke's mother, her sister Sonja and her husband Christophe and their kids, Natasha and Steven, as well as Janneke's sister Dominique and her husband Octavio, and their four kids: Milena, Adrian, Stefan, and Flavia. All in the house for all waking hours, unless we were out having fun.

Crazy busy, super entertained, and happy as clams swimming in the great hot sauce that is family. Many, many photos were taken, most of them, luckily, by someone much better than I at photography. (Which is to say: anyone at all who is not me.) Here are a few:



The three sisters at Coyote Flaco, a popular local Mexican restaurant, run by an Ecuadorian. What a great evening that was.



Almost everyone who came, plus the natives. Octavio is the only one not in the photo. (He wasn't here as long as the others, having places to go and things to do. Don't worry: No one forgives him.)

There were many fun activities - bowliing, both candlepin and standard; ping pong (at which the non-Massachusetts members of the tribe excel to a much greater extent than those of us who live here year-round); white-water rafting; vegetable-picking; backyard soccer galore; and lots and lots of Olympics on the telly. It was just plain loads of fun, and I cannot, in this brief update, do it nearly sufficient justice. But I have to admit that the motivation for so doing is low, since almost everybody who would care to see the details, was present. And there's the time constraint. But rest assured, it was much nicer than this telling.

So there you are, birds. A handful of seed. Please feel reassured and return often, for I promise to be more consistent in the future. And you should know, that in the actual, non-proverbial backyard, the birds have returned. I am about to go and refresh their larder now. Besides which, the robins on the front porch are about to fledge their second batch of youngsters, which grew up while the family was visiting. So we've turned into a veritable bird sanctuary again. You see? Dreams CAN come true!

Just lucky, I guess

Granny's here! She arrived Thursday night, rolling in pretty late (1:30 AM) with Janneke, having been awake for over 24 hours on her long haul fro Geneva, and has since claimed, in the three nights she's been here, that she's never slept so well. She's in Tess' room, up on the Big Girl Bed, so I guess it's to be expected. The kids have been loving having her here - in fact, Quinn half wanted to skip his last day of soccer camp so he could stay home and hang with Granny. But we said he should go, because we were going to show up toward the end of the day and watch a couple of games. This convinced him.

But you can't blame him for wanting to stay home and do stuff like this:




And we did show up and watch two games, during which time Quinn was aggressive, assertive, and very skilled. He scored a goal and assisted on another, and was easily his team's defensive MVP, shooting from one end of the field to the other, as has become his style. And at the end, they had their awards ceremony - and Quinn won the award for best attitude on his team for the second consecutive week. A film of the event exists, but Youtube isn't uploading it very happily today, so it may pop up later on.

He's crazy about soccer now, and I'm fijnding all sorts of videos on Youtube for him to watch. One on Johan Cruyf, the great Dutch player, after whom a move in soccer has been named. I'd not heard of him until a year or so ago, and his story is fascinating - and his style of play is really fun to watch. Going to try to keep Quinn's interest level up. He's playing on a third and fourth grade travel team this fall, and his new-found courage on the pitch should serve him well. The last piece of the puzzle is the ball-handling skill, where he still lags behind some of the other kids. Hope he sticks with it, honestly - football is just not a sport you play your whole life the way soccer is. Oh, and also: I'm going to be an assistant coach on the aforementioned soccer team! Probably won't involved too much thinking. Just the amount that needs to be done to let players know that screaming for your teammate to pass you the ball when there are three players between you and him isn't the best of ideas. That sort of coaching, I got covered.

Tess is fascinated with the movie "Howl's Moving Castle", another from the director of "Kiki's Delivery Service". It's really a fantastic movie, with no violence (or almost none), a plucky young female protagonist, and a lot to say about life, all told through the most vivid fantasy world you can imagine. The guy is an incredible font of ideas. I'm sure we'll end up owning the film soon.

Ran twelve miles yesterday! Magnus and I spent six minutes shy of two hours on the road, chatting pretty much the whole way. It's been neat, getting to know him better. He's in Iceland for a few weeks now, so I'll have to keep up the crusade on my own. Shouldn't be too difficult - running every other day and keeping the pace reasonable means I actually enjoy it. Since it doesn't hurt - knock on wood, no injuries yet. Come on, calves! Hang in there!

Back to the day - updates as time allows, what with more relatives arriving in the next few days. The first is Milena, tonight!




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