Flag Day, Fergus the Feline, and Father's Day Fun

After much consideration, we added a new family member this week. More on that later. On Monday Hallie had a doctor’s appointment, so Mike had the children in the morning. Although the weather didn’t cooperate very well, we went to Greenfield Village anyway for the old-time baseball themed Macy’s Second Monday. Eliza was screened for a summer speech program at the Beaumont family wellness center located in the same building as Hallie’s work. Once again, we feel the hand of providence has put us in the right place at the right time for our kids.

  

Hallie persuaded Mike to join her on Tuesday at the Drums Alive! class at the YMCA. It kicked our hind ends, but it was fun.

Landon has fully embraced the idea of not going to school. We have supplemented the review work he does indoors with ample outdoor time and opportunities to express his creativity.

We had the sister missionaries over for dinner in the evening. The sisters were on divisions, so we got to visit with Sister Jones, who at one point happened to be a master’s student in the same program at the University of Utah as the one where Mike got his PhD.

We went out to lunch at the Milano Bakery and Café near Eastern Market on Thursday after Hallie and the kids accompanied Mike to Wayne State while he conducted some business there. While he was at the university, Hallie took the children to 3Dogs1Cat, a new pet store also near Eastern Market (hence the return trip to the café), where she let the cat out of the bag (so to speak) regarding the new addition we have been considering for the last couple of weeks. We had a couple of delicious sandwiches and a pizza that lasted the kids for three more meals.  We ate outdoors, enjoying the breeze and watching the poofy cotton ball clouds change shapes as they drifted by.

Hallie didn’t have to work on Friday morning, so she and the kids took some time to kitty-proof the bedrooms, playing all the while. 

She did work in the afternoon, so Mike took the kids outside to play and to walk with him and the front screen door down to the local hardware store so it could be repaired. We’re replacing the nylon screening in the frame with aluminum screening. Hopefully we’ll be able to will keep the cat from tearing it apart. We happened to run into the sister missionaries on the way home, and while Mike was chatting with them, Landon and Eliza played with the next door neighbors. Everyone was having a good time until playing turned into roughhousing. We missed out going to the pool as a result. Bummer!

Festooned for Flag Day

On Saturday morning we drove over to Audry’s house where the kittens were staying. Audry’s mom, who lives up north, had brought down five kittens born on or around May 2, making them a little over six weeks old, so they all were still teeny tiny. We had seen pictures, and Landon had picked out the one he liked, the light red tabby (apparently cats’ colors are the same as people hair colors, so he is red, not orange. Who knew? (Well, beside the cat fanciers, that is.)). When we got to the house, we had a chance to visit with the kittens, and the two orange ones (both male) seemed the most alert and ready for fun.

First impressions at four weeks via Facebook

Based on his coloring, we had tentatively opted to call the kitten Fergus, after considering a bunch of orange and/or Celtic options. We ended up sticking with the name, although he has mostly gone by “Kitty” for the moment. Mike carried Fergus as he and the kids walked home while Hallie got a couple of forgotten pet supplies over at the local pet store. Just as an aside, we really appreciate having so many small businesses and other attractions so close on a week like this.  

  

Eliza has received a couple of new clothing items she wanted to show off. 

Patriotic skirt!

New gymnastics leotard/short combo

Sunday was Father’s Day, and Hallie and the kids celebrated by getting Mike some fun gifts: a breakfast sandwich maker (woo hoo! Homemade Egg McMuffins! Yes!), a fishing pole to go with the ones we have for the kids (Awesome! Now we can go down to the park and fish the lake from the pier!), and a meat thermometer (Terrific! Let’s grill some more steaks!). Very nice. Dad made everyone breakfast sandwiches in the morning before heading off to branch council. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. Then at church, the Young Women leaders passed out bags of Trader Joe’s caramel corn. Yumm-o! Happy Father’s Day to all our dads!

Fergus slept for most of the day, as kittens are wont to do, but the kids got plenty of play time in. Eliza even managed to read the kitty a story. We loved having Leo/Huck, and we’re glad he is in a good home. So far for us, though, having a kitty seems a lot easier with the two small kids and all. Fergus has already managed to get himself lost (and found), and he has given Mike a scratch that broke the skin, but otherwise he’s mostly just eaten, played, and slept, all while being completely adorable. Landon has shown a tender, gentle side around Fergus that is comforting to watch. He wants to play catch with the kitty, but we’ll have to see about that. 

First Forays into Science, and Things Are Looking Up

Landon had an extra enrichment week at preschool starting Monday. The kids had activities based on the theme of bugs. He brought home projects related to insects and other creepy crawly critters. 

Eliza received new hair ribbons in the mail and modeled one.

On Tuesday, Landon showed off his thuggish side.

After he dropped Landon off at school on Wednesday, Mike took Eliza to the Rotary tot lot across the road from the Neighborhood Club while they waited for Hallie to get off from work. We had taken Landon there more often, but for whatever reason, we have not used the tot lot in a while. Eliza got into running around and enjoying all the equipment.

Later on in the afternoon, Hallie decided she wanted to go to the opening day of the new Whole Foods Market in Detroit. Mike was excited to see Ye Olde Butcher Shoppe open last fall. Hopefully a second larger national chain grocer just three blocks away will mean positive things for the neighborhood and the city generally. Considering we shop at Aldi and Honey Bee already, Whole Foods becomes another close-to-work choice for Mike if he needs or wants to pick something up on the way home from Wayne State.

As you can see from the boy's attire, it really was a last-minute decision. 

We got there in time to see the last performers, a local ballet folklórico group.

Bit of a line at checkout. Later on, we found out there was a shorter line. 

On Thursday morning, Landon brought Mike his explorer compass/whistle/thermometer and an idea for an experiment. He asked, “What will happen to the arrow [the red dial/pointer/whatever-it-is] if we put my thermometer in the freezer?” So, we did an experiment. Here’s the reading on the dial before we put the thermometer in the freezer, . . .

20* C or 68* F

. . . and here it is 10 minutes later:

~ 6.25* C or 43.25* F

He now knows that the dial reads a lower temperature after 10 minutes in the freezer, and his dad knows that the freezer cools items at a rate of about 1.4* C/min or about 2.5* F/min. So, who cares? Mike does. Now he knows about how long it will take for his freeze pops to freeze solid, assuming they start out at room temperature (about half an hour on a good day). Science! And Math! Of course, if we put a bunch of them in the freezer in the morning before we want them in the heat of the afternoon, we won’t have to worry about all that silly thinking and calculation. . . .

Eliza had her last day of Play and Say on Friday, and we also had her IFSP/IEP. She’ll start going to Barnes five mornings a week in the fall, so that says we’ll have both kiddos in some sort of school in September. Weird.

Dee had looked after Landon after school, so Hallie met up with them, and they all did a little shopping. Elisabeth is smitten with the boy. Landon is behaving like a typical clueless male. His other girlfriends are going to have to get strategic.

Later in the day, Hallie took Landon to a make-up gymnastics class. Mike went with Eliza to pick up Hallie’s prescription at the local pharmacy, and as we rounded the corner onto Kercheval, we heard easy listening music drifting through the air. Mike tuned his ears to the source and found these:

Things are looking up in our little downtown!

Landon had a ball game on Saturday, and while he was there with Hallie, Mike and Eliza checked out the farmers market and then went up to Lowe’s to get this week’s Build and Grow project. No one was selling starter plants. This does not bode well for Mike getting a garden going this year. Frankly, other issues, like preparing tenure review materials, have taken up his time to date. Later in the afternoon, he took the kids to the baptism of some new converts to the branch while Hallie worked the concession stand for baseball. After the baptism, he took the kids to play for a while at the school playground and say hi to Mom. The kids mostly avoided getting injured. Eliza only nearly fell off the horizontal ladder, and Landon only nearly knocked the wind out of himself leaping out to grab a high bar. Good times!

Mike took the kids down to After 6 on Kercheval, an event that will take place three times over the summer. We mingled with a few friends who also came out to taste the fare offered by local food vendors and listen to tunes played by a ‘90s cover band (piped straight from their mics on stage through the new lamppost speakers. Convenient!).

Sunday after church the kids and Hallie attended a birthday party for one of Landon’s school friends.

Hallie ended the evening by putting the Build and Grow project together with the kids.

The Fast and the Dexterous

What a great, exciting, adventurous, and always on our toes (thanks to Landon being athletic and Eliza being two and very curious) week did the Owens have this last week.

We spent the morning of Memorial Day Monday on the island before hitting the road for home. 

This year we followed the Lake Huron shoreline, taking US Highway 23 from Mackinaw City through Cheboygan, Alpena, Oscoda, Tawas City, and Au Gres before heading inland and catching up with I-75 outside of Standish. We passed through some mighty beautiful territory and watched early spring blooms transform into more mature spring foliage as we made our way south. As we did not get started on the road in earnest from Mackinac until after noon, we still had at least a couple of hours to go by the time we hit major traffic (road construction) near Saginaw.

We opted to stay the night in Birch Run at a Best Western that turns out to have a bit of local history, located as it is where the I-75 ended in the 1960s. We had been blessed with sunny weather through the weekend into Monday afternoon, but we started getting rained on just as we unloaded the car. We stayed in a unique family suite with bunk beds, and the kids (almost) managed to stay the night in their own beds before migrating into ours. Landon appreciated that the hotel had a kids’ play area complete with a kitchen playset and lots of books.

Nice courtyard, too! 

After a hearty breakfast Tuesday morning, we made a quick stop in Frankenmuth to run a couple of errands we didn’t get to on the way up, and then we braved the rain on the way home. The storm let up as we got to the house, so unpacking went OK. Then it was back to work for Mike and back to play for the kids.

Landon has taken to making these creative geometric forms out of colored pencils. 

It was back to work for Mom too on Wednesday. It was a pretty routine day. She took Eliza to speech in the morning, then Landon to gymnastics in the afternoon. Mike and both kids rode to Landon’s early evening baseball game. Landon’s focus tends to wander as the day wears on. Good thing he also has Saturday morning games!

On Thursday, Hallie and Janel took Audrey, Eliza, and Landon up to Westview Orchards for a Moms Club activity. They learned about bees and plants. The weather was warm, but the breeze made the humidity much more bearable.  

These plants would become infamous by the evening. 

They must have really gotten into taking care of their plants, because they spent the afternoon watering their potted geraniums. Unfortunately, a two-year-old watering her plant unsupervised in the bathroom sink meant that all the soil went down the drain and plugged the sink. Dad spent the evening trying to clear it out using both mechanical and chemical means. Finally, he had to just let things set overnight and hope for the best.

Fortunately, the drain did clear out by Friday morning, so Mike did not need to resort to taking the undersink pipes apart or calling a plumber.  While Hallie worked, Mike and the kids spent a little morning time building LEGO airplanes before making a run down to the Honeybee Market and over to Belle Isle to see the Indy cars warm up in preparation for the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix.

We live close enough to Belle Isle that we can hear the roar of the engines as the cars race, so we were excited to get a closer look. Dad forgot to take his camera phone with him from the car, but what we saw looked a lot like this:

After everyone got home, Hallie caught wind of some yard sales that some friends were hosting near us, and she and Landon headed on over. Boy, did she make quite the haul! We love our friends in the neighborhood who help keep our kids dressed so well.

Hallie had Eliza model a new dress in the afternoon.

We spent a fairly busy Saturday morning first with a baseball game that then a trip up to the St. Clair Shores Junefest, followed by soccer and a return to the Junefest for lunch. The threat of rain and thunderstorms held off, and we had a wonderful time out.  

Mike did some yard work in the afternoon while the kids shot arrows.   

On Sunday we ended up splitting our time. Hallie took the kids to Landon’s first gymnastics recital while Mike attended church. Landon spent a lot of his time sitting in between feats of amazing tumbling. On the ring apparatus, Landon flipped up and around to the oohs and aahs of the crowd. 

Eliza tried to be patient. 

However, Hallie also saw that Landon spent a lot of time sitting. She mentioned that for the next recital, rather than going on a Sunday, Landon might just be able to do the routines one-on-one on a weekday or Saturday with his coach. We want to encourage Landon’s talents, and we wish we had better choices than Sunday sport activities. As it is, Landon doesn’t attend Sunday baseball practice. We appreciate the faith-based leagues, such as Upward Basketball, that encourage Saturday play.  Landon is so proud of his medal that he got Hallie to make him brownies to celebrate when we got home.

The day turned out so pleasant that we took a long walk to cap off the day.