PaperYarnGirl Blogs

We spent this morning going to yard sales, without much success. I scored a paperback Harry Potter 5 for a quarter, as well as an HP bookmark for 15 cents. That’s it.

This evening, we went to my friend Krista’s house for a picnic and “lame Maryland fireworks.” You can’t set off anything legally that goes into the air - basically just grand sparklers that are grounded. We put on a pretty good show, however!

The night began with delicious picnic food - burgers, dog, potato salad, deviled eggs… and great music via Krista’s computer. She had oldies from the 70s, 80s, and 90s playing, and once we started the fireworks, she had a cool “America” mix going. The kids started with poppers:

And more poppers -

While the moms sat around and chatted -

I wasn’t looking too happy when Emilee took my picture - probably missing Rachel, who was watching the fireworks in another town with her friend Laurel.

This afternoon, Katie just came home from a week at camp. She was pretty tired. She spent a good bit of time with Alex, quietly drawing -

Emilee doodled in her little Moleskine notebook. It was really cool to have her hanging out with the adults. I love having her around; she’s a lot of fun.

Becky practiced drawing as well - with sparklers! It took her a little bit of time to work up the courage to hold the sparklers. Every year, she’s very shy about them. But then she gets over it and has a blast!

Becky even tried sparkling with two hands -

It made me smile to see how joyous and happy and free the girls were, running around singing and shouting!

Then we got on with our lame Maryland fireworks. We had so many there! Everyone had brought a few things to light off, but the guys really went to town. There must have been 30 or 40 canisters and cones. I took a lot of pictures -

Unfortunately, my camera isn’t sensitive enough to show off the colors. They were so lovely and bright!

Krista was rather fearless in lighting everything. She did a great job on the show!

I was pretty impressed with how much and how big our little show was, considering we couldn’t light any “real” fireworks. Very nice evening!

The pretty lights kept going and going and going -

We finally did get to the end… that’s a lot of fireworks!

Once again, a lovely time spent with friends and family (most of them, though Chris was at home, and Rachel was in a small town a few miles away). I’m very blessed to have such neat people to hang out with and call my friends.

What a week. On my way to work Monday morning, the transmission of our 2000 Ford Windstar with 207,000 miles started acting very funny. Taking a long, long, long time to accelerate, and then clunking forward into a higher gear. Taking a long, long, long time to change to a lower gear when slowing down. Ugh. Long story short, the rest of the vehicle is too old and unreliable to put the money into fixing the transmission.

So - we began shopping on Wednesday afternoon. I left work early at 2:00, and we hit the Hagerstown places. Found a van we liked, but it was at one our first stops. We even drove it, but decided to wait until we checked out more opportunities. And check we did…

On Thursday, we headed to Waynesboro, Greencastle, back near Hagerstown, then north up route 11 to Chambersburg, east on 30 to Gettysburg, then south on 15 through Thurmont and Frederick, then around through Middletown, Myersville, and back to some more Hagerstown lots. This is in addition to several hours searching within 100 miles online, and making several phone calls to lots in Leesburg, Winchester, up in PA, etc.

Bottom line is that we really, really love the Honda Odyssey, but can’t get one in our price range. So we went back to the first van we drove, talked to the lady selling it, found two very happy reviews of the dealer online, and by lunchtime today, decided to buy it. The dealer is putting newer tires on it, fixing a busted tail light, and preparing it for us by Tuesday afternoon. I was running errands later, so I stopped and took pictures:

Very similar in color to our Windstar, but a little darker and greener. The left tail light is cracked, and will be replaced. There is a small paint scuff to the left of that tail light, and we will probably just live with it.

The interior is pretty clean. Everything is in good condition, and well cared for. The display on the clock radio has not worked for a long while, we’ve been told. The sound system is great, but you can’t see the station or track number, etc. It plays CDs and cassettes, so we can hook up an iPod with no trouble. And we’ll preset the stations to the same ones we have now on both vehicles, so everyone should be able to find their way around. That’s really the only probably with the van.

It’s comfortable, with leather seats. The back doesn’t have as much storage as we’re used to having, but we’ll figure it out. The back seat splits into left and right, so one seat can be folded forward, while a passenger can still sit in the other half. There is also an adjustable shelf that can be inserted in the back to make an upper and lower storage area… it’s just not very deep compared to our Windstar.

All in all, we’re pretty happy. For what we’re spending, it’s a pretty decent deal. We’re in our budget, rather than the stretching we were considering for a nicer vehicle. But this will server well for us. I can’t wait until Tuesday. This one-vehicle-for-three-driver thing really stinks!

So - the big news is the blowout that Emilee had on Thursday night. That afternoon, she and I spent a couple of hours at the lube place, getting both vehicles maintained - oil changes, new wipers, etc. That evening? A huge blowout for Emilee. Fortunately, she was only about 5 miles from the house, with no traffic, straight road, and a clear head. She pulled right off and called us. We were shocked to see the tire jaggedly split about 75% of the way around!

She was fine, but that tire was DEAD. As was the other back tire. And the two front tires. So four new tires were installed on Friday morning, and the three older girls headed for their annual sleepover with their Kiwi friends in Bethesda. More than once, I offered a prayer of thanks that the blowout happened BEFORE they were on 270!

Friday evening found Becky and I on our own, so we headed over to the carnival for a bit. It’s just two blocks from our house, and we treated ourselves to cotton candy AND a funnel cake. As Becky pointed out, the carnival *IS* just once a year! Around 9:00, we headed to Kim’s house to meet a couple of other homeschool families, and watched the fireworks, which were going off right across the alley from us, in the ballfield. I don’t think we’ve ever been so close to the origin. It was loud and bright and fun, though a bit short.

I wish the colors would show up - they were so lively!

We’ve spent time with friends here and there… some shot of the girls. I love this one of Emilee with Levi. We miss the Stones so much. Someone has moved into their little house down the street from us. The girls all wanted to stop and tell the new tenants to move out, but I suggested that might not be a good idea.

We spent a Sunday afternoon with Mike and Lynette and the kids at City Park. Cathy got some great pictures of the youngers girls. We missed Emilee; she had to work that entire day.

Katie smirking - don’t you love those blue eyes?

And another nice shot of her when we were visiting the Tuppers:

We got a kick in discovering that Becky can still put her feet behind her head with no difficulty at all!

While at City Park, she recognized the tree that the four girls climbed for a picture about five years ago. She’s a much bigger girl now!

Cathy took some very nice shots of Rachel:

I love the colors.

This one was the “deep thinking” pose:

This one is my favorite… what a lovely lady she is becoming!

We even got a shot of Chris and me together - not something that happens very often!

This week is pretty mundane… a tire alignment, orthodontic checkups for Marti, Emilee, and Rachel. Becky will have her first impressions done, as a prep for whatever work we’re heading into for her. Katie is at camp with her best friend Clara this week, so I’m missing her. The other girls are reading up a storm, as they compete in our local homeschool group’s summer reading contest. I’m thinking of having our yard sale on Friday the 3rd. The stuff is all piled and ready to go in the garage. All I have to do is move it out. I think I might do it!

So. Not much news to tell lately. Annyce and her family are settling in Colorado. I work. The kids hang out with their friends, doing things like eating donuts on National Donut Day:

We’ve been watching the later seasons of the West Wing, and I’ve been knitting. Finished a pair of socks - not enough yarn to make them as long as I’d like, but I learned a lot about how to shape the leg better for knee socks. And of course, I love the stripes!

Emilee has decided to pursue a GED. She took the pre-test, and did far better than any of us thought she might. Therefore, she’ll be spending July reviewing a bit of math, and then taking the test in August. She travels to Vermont in the fall for three weeks, and then will begin some classes at HCC in January.