The cats were tormented by the birds while playing in the catio this morning. They came in for lunch and then took up watch from the window.
I sent Ben a cute photo of them falling asleep together at their post:
When I looked again and hour later, I found this:
I texted Ben to see if he agreed that we had reached cat-cuddling stage. He confirmed, saying “they’ve been through WAR, now is time for love.” Then he wrote a fitting diary entry for the occasion:
“The great corvid war of the 14th day of the parched grasses was harrowing for all involved. As for myself, I learned to love a little more that day.” — Captain Nimbus, 1st battalion
There’s a flock of these birds cawing loudly as they dare to approach the catio. Nimbus and Freddy are absolutely riveted; still as statues but bursting with excitement.
It’s finally here! The boys are starting their 2019 year of school. Jack is in 4th grade, and Sam is in 1st grade.
It’s hard to keep your eyes open in the morning sun.
Jack is excited that he has one of his best friends in class this year. Sam is excited to have a BOY teacher! Actually, they both have male teachers this year, but Jack says it’s not important to him. They have a lot of familiar, fun classmates in each class. I’m sure it will be another great year of learning.
Another summer goal was to get Sam off the glider and onto a pedal bike. He has good balance skills, but stubbornly refused to use the pedals whenever I suggest it.
I mention this to Ben today, that getting Sam to bike was my last goal. After we finished watching Thor together, Ben took the kids out biking. He beckoned me out on my phone and I saw this:
Yay Sam! Yay Ben!
I asked Ben how he did it. He said he knocked on the door of Sam’s classmate, a precocious kid who has been biking since at least age 4. The kid’s enthusiasm and confidence (and maybe some intimidation) must have goaded Sam into trying. He was flying in no time!
One of our summer projects was to build a patio for the cats to use outdoors, a “catio,” if you will. I thought it would be a fun and enriching way to get the kids outdoors and working this summer, create some lasting memories and get some hands-on skills.
After drafting a couple designs (reminding the kids to aim SIMPLE for this first project) we were ready to buy supplies. This was the first of MANY trips to Home Depot this week. Hooray for minivans fitting 10 foot poles!
We measured and cut the poles down to size.
We got distracted by an enormous caterpillar. My nature app tells us it was a sphinx moth caterpillar.
All hands on deck for sawing.
They kids put together a preliminary cube.
Once we had the cube made, we decided how to cut in more attachment points to add levels.
So much sawing.
Yup, that’s even Sam lending a hand with the tools.
Working all day in the July heat makes you HOT! Snow cones were well-deserved.
Once we have our final form, it was time to color. Both for looks, and to prevent UV deterioration of the PVC pipes.
Jack became quite adept at drilling.
It took us three days of work, refitting, getting more supplies, trying different things, waiting for paint to dry. It took about two days for me to cut and sew the netting in place. In fact, I gave up on giving a nice finish to the joint into the door frame, instead sloppily tacking and taping it into place. At some point you just need to sprint to the finish! Maybe when the weather cools I’ll go back and finesse that part.
(Also, I had another back spasm in yoga class on Tuesday. So between working on the project I was popping ibuprofen and icing my lower back. Didn’t let it deter me from accomplishing out goals!)
Saturday we declared it finished! The pet door was already present in this house, we just never used it before. We put in a log for fun and Sam added netting scraps “for comfort.”
Finally it was time to release the cats!
They LOVE IT. It was even sprinkling rain, but they stayed out feeling the sun and the breeze for a long time.
As I write this post, they’ve been in the catio for 1 1/2 hours. Freddy goes in and out but Nimbus settled down for a nap. We take turns keeping an eye on them in case they find a way to escape or get caught in the net.
I’m glad the cats love it and have a space to get outdoors. But I’m also proud of myself and the boys putting in all this hard work.
Twenty years ago Ben asked me out to dinner at a Chinese buffet. Twenty years later we are still very much in love and going out to dinner as often as we reasonably can 🙂
Jack’s summer has been focused on mythology. He devoured the Percy Jackson series in the first two weeks of summer break, then set upon all its companion books, as well as other mythology series by Riordan. While we were in GJ, he enjoyed being quizzed by our family about Greek myths. Although Jack knew every god we could come up with, He was disappointed to find out there was a book called The Odyssey, and his knowledge from the Magic Treehouse version apparently wasn’t strong enough.
Ben recently got Jack a copy of D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths to encourage his newfound interests. This afternoon Jack bounded downstairs and proclaimed that he was ready to make up for losing the quiz on Helen of Troy. I offered to film a video response, and he readily agreed.
I decided to break-in the minivan with a quick trip to Grand Junction. The van served us well. Comfortable drive, good gas mileage, and fun movie watching (until the kids got too nauseated).
We had a great time, visiting mostly with Waterhouses, and Saturday morning with the Masons. I got to help out at the soup kitchen with my folks. It was a chilly weekend, so the boys couldn’t jump into the pool immediately. By Sunday it warmed up enough and they spent a good chunk of the day being fishes.
We had a picnic on the Monument and were excited to see a whole herd of bighorn sheep gathered there. We went yarn shopping (my parents are enablers 😉 and Lego shopping. We got the telescope out to see Jupiter and her moons. And more swimming 🙂 These pictures are exactly in order, but I think you get the gist. It was a great summer indulgence!
Learning to read and write is hard. Sam made great strides during Kindergarten. I’m trying to keep his brain in the game with reading and writing over summer break. There are two letters he didn’t master in reading. He complained yesterday that he was still frustrated by identifying b and d. Whenever a word starts with one of those letters he pauses, hesitant to sound it out, because he’s not sure which sound to make.
I did some research to see if there was a good trick to help kids remember the difference. I found this great idea and, as I suspected, Sam took to it with gusto after lunch.
Focus on which part comes first, the line or the circle. For b the line, or “bar” is first. For d the circle, or “donut” is first.
Now replace those with a Twix bar and a chocolate donut and suddenly the kids are eager to form d’s and b’s – d starts with a donut, b starts with a bar.
Even the third grade grad was excited to practice his b’s and d’s.
The memory device seems to actually work. Sam wrote “sudway,” noticed his error, and changed it to “subway” without me pointing it out!
They were engrossed with writing until Freddy started toying with my flower. Not even chocolate can compete with a prancing kitty.
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