Goodbye to Grandma, and Taking Things in Stride. With Beer and Butterflies.

Boy, are we going to miss this lady...! Grandma Jayne got Finley to poop in the potty, made sure we didn't become buried in our own laundry, snuggled Ford out of more than one temper tantrum, and endured work social events (like this boat ride) like a champ. It was with great sadness that we bade her farewell early Sunday morning in the driveway.

Especially since Seth was headed straight to Walter Reed with a seriously painful and infected leg after dropping her off at the airport.

It looks like he's going to be OK with just a minor surgery, but the logistics of it are nuts (I'm flying down Wednesday and packing overnight bags for Ryan Family Sleepovers for the kids at 11pm) and we hate not being together any time we have to face Walter Reed again. Seth is hanging in there. But it sucks, and I'm torn. Kids just change the aperture.

Suffice it to say I was miserable after the Original Niemans left Sunday, and lasted exactly 45 minutes alone with sleepy, cranky, out-of-routine kids before I packed us all up and headed for the Catskills. 

Which was, of course, idyllic. We went to Big Deep, one of my favorite swimming holes, where the kids spent a Sunday summer afternoon exactly as they should be spent: stick fighting

futilely "fishing" with one's hands

running through the woods

and rolling around in the dirt.

We stopped for beer (local "Freak Tractor" ale) and sweet potato fries and live music at the Commune Saloon in Woodstock, one of the most fantastic places to while away a summer afternoon I've run across.

Afterwards, we caught up with work friends at a raging backyard barbecue complete with a swimming pool, bounce house, and "moka-cycles."

And then we had to tackle the week. It's only Monday, but it's been nuts so far. Today we are thanking our lucky stars for great friends and neighbors who let us interrupt their dinner- and then serve us hot dogs and ice cream and bust out the dirt bikes.

And this week is a doozy. I was jogging home with the stroller from daycare dropoff this morning, late for work and hoping for a 3 second shower and a power bar scrounged from somewhere before racing to my early meeting, kind of thinking I was nailing it with the two tiny terrorists on my own.

And that's when the front tire of the jogging stroller, for no apparent reason, freed itself and went bouncing off the stroller, rolled across the road, and wobbled down a hill covered in snakes and poison ivy. I hope it wasn't a sign, but it might've been. Later, it seems that Finley ran over to see Ford at recess and stuck her hand through the little fence that separates the playgrounds to say hi. And then... he bit her. It's definitely a #parentingwin when you get to sign reports for both sides of the incident.

So, the belly laughs have it. This photo of the week is not particularly flattering but makes me laugh- of Ford and I at the butterfly exhibit at the Nature Museum this weekend.