Making Hay While the Sun Shines

 By that, I mean I am turning all that camp energy to lunches and suppers and Playdates and cleaning.  I like the lunches and suppers and Playdate.

I really like attending to the little details of things, though I seldom get to that.  I believe I was divinely gifted with a good sense of time.  When I have an event, I start with all the things that must be done, like cooking if you've invited folks for lunch, then cleaning, boo, hiss, then the little things I love.  For this lunch I used the very last of the stubborn pansies that managed the awful heat of these past few weeks, picked most every flower ready for picking and started on the details.  Originally my hope had been to have this lunch outdoors, but alas, the heat and humidity was more than I could manage. 

Each guest had a tiny flower arrangement, molded butter in the shape of flowers, glass topped cheeses, and a good time was had by all I think. 

The charcuterie tray was virtually untouched.  It was a salad lunch, grilled chicken with strawberries, lettuce, pecans and poppy seed dressing, a new barley/pesto salad, grape salad and street corn salad. Of course, little loaves of bread for the butter plates and berries with white chocolate cream for dessert.  

In the last couple of years of summer camps, Gideon has made fast friends with one my students. She joined us for an afternoon, so I reassembled the charcuterie tray and they ate it all!

I've been taking an art class online.  I really enjoy learning new things that I can do in the classroom and with the Gramerlings. One of things was a concertina book.  It is great to try it out here at home with my kiddos and then I have an idea what I am up against trying it with 20 plus.

We worked on them throughout the day as the watercolor had to dry in between.  It was fun and everyone's turned out nicely. 

It has rained and rained. I love having flowers till frost, so I went through and cut most of my cutting flowers (which encourages more bloom on must cutting flowers), then headed to the thrift store to purchase a few small containers.  So instead of a salad bar, or hot chocolate bar, we had a flower bar and the kids picked and created their own arrangements.  Then we made WooHoo's. It was time for our gifted Storyteller, Emmeline, to read the requisite story while everyone ate fruit chews and whatever other snack they wanted.  I imagine the amount of fruit chews we've consumed in the past 16 years would be impressive. 

Ceece and Bean and Bugg joined us later. The flower bar was then looking pitiful after having been  gone through with lots of hands and a couple of rain showers, so I gave Lilli the scissors and had her pick her own bouquets.

Much spaghetti, salad and garlic rolls were consumed.  

The summer always goes so fast. One more summer Playdate. 

Also, this week, my long time partner in teaching crime started a new career.  I posted this on FB yesterday morning of her new start. 

As is often the case now, I turn the camera over to Lilly during Playdates.  So I  never really know what I am going to get when I sit down to load them on this Mac.  When this picture came up, memories by the dozen came along with tears. I wasn’t expecting you on this Playdate, the tradition we started that summer, sixteen years ago, after we taught together that year.  You with your little ones and me with my first two gramerlings.  How many times girl, have you been right there, riding shotgun on whatever new idea I’d conjured.  And just like the hundreds of times we’ve taught and Playdated together, you walked right up last Tuesday,  and joined me in the cyanotype printing, like it was no thing for six year olds to be making prints on chemically coated paper with some old glass window I didn’t throw away.  We’ve walked a lot of miles, eaten a lot of apples, and maybe some chocolate, faced a lot of losses, laughed till it hurt, and gave each other the space we needed to share our hearts, hopes, disappointments and victories of our classroom and our lives. We’ve shared a love of Jesus and family and, umm, chocolate.  Today, you begin a new career and I am so happy for you.  I love knowing some person like me, who has issues with all things doctor, will find a sympathetic ear, a cutest face,  and hand to hold.  Sending prayers, hope and love for a best first day Ms. Glitzy. 

I know that it is going to be strange. Seventeen years is a long time.

Three new homes, all the same family, are going in behind us, so I decided to do something I've never done, have a neighborhood party.  I only know a few of my neighbors. Somehow that just seems wrong.  I think we've become a world where people keep insulating themselves more and more and maybe, who knows, no one will even come, but at least I can say I tried.  We shall see.