Strawberry picking

Saturday was the most perfect strawberry picking day ever! Grandpa's farming skills showed as he picked as much as the five of us put together. Fun, fun, fun morning. (It was not as much fun to come home and wash and de-stem 22 lbs. of strawberries.) But the crepes, jam, and pies are worth it. I love strawberry picking season!

Demolition = Father/son bonding

The year after we moved into our house we got the play set in the backyard.  It was used for many things:  a fort to fight off Indians, a place to have picnics, a place to hide, a construction site, a barn, and most recently a goal for Allie to kick soccer balls into.  It was not an expensive set and has been deteriorating the last few years but we put off taking it down because just when we thought the kids had outgrown it, they would find a new purpose for it.  Recently, however, besides the fact that it was infested with hornets, it was falling apart and was becoming unsafe.

David had a dumpster delivered for clean up and was ready to start Saturday morning.  After about 15 minutes of watching him swat at flying insects with a cardboard box he comes inside and announces there is a problem.  "It's swarming with hornets."  Also, the bolts were not cooperating and were stubbornly not unscrewing for easy dismantling.  After some brainstorming with Trey, they borrowed 2 cans of hornet/wasp spray and a mallet and were ready to start again.

The next stage of the demolition consisted of David and Trey chasing after and spraying hornets.  Finally I noticed David start to take some swings at the play set with the mallet.  I notice Trey is just watching, and it appears it is going to be slow going, so I go outside and suggest Trey get started on the weeding until David needs his assistance.  David tells me "oh no, Trey's staying right here".  Then I notice that Trey is holding the can of bug spray and is poised to knock out any pesky flying insect that might get the wrong idea.

I went outside periodically to take pictures of their progress and laugh at them.  They had a lot of fun deciding the best way to make the play set crumble.  Nothing was as easy as it first seemed.  There was a lot of pushing, pulling, hitting, tugging, swinging and spraying.  Each time a different large section was conquered they felt empowered.  I finally had to leave for a soccer game but they reported they finished up the job just a the skies opened up with a rain shower.

 

Vice president Allie

Apparently, Allie likes to get involved.  Little did we know how much.  Everyone knows the story of Allie not making the soccer team then deciding to try out for and making the basketball team.  We are seeing a pattern with Allie.  A characteristic that she seems to be developing, or maybe it was always there, that no one else in our family has......she's fearless.  She does not get intimidated and is not afraid of failure.  She is not afraid to take a risk.  She joined the track team with a friend to "stay in shape for basketball".  She takes after her parents and is not a very fast runner.  However the team needed someone to do shot put and the discus and she said "why not?"  There is no coach for this sport so she is sort of on her own with it but she doesn't care.  Because she and one other girl are the only ones who compete in these events for Farragut, Allie represents her school at the meets even though she is just a freshman.  It was very clear from the first meet when she was in the bottom 1/4 of the throwers that this was not going to be something she was a natural at, but did that stop Allie from continuing forward?  No.  She's having a great time.

A few weeks ago Allie announces that she wants to join SGA at school.  Great, sounds good.  She later tells me that you have two ways of being a member:  one is you have to be voted in and the other was based on an application.  Then, last Friday she texted me from school and tells me that there is one more way to be a member of SGA....  she found out that officers are automatically inducted into SGA so she thought she might as well run for a class officer and announces she is now a candidate for Vice President of her upcoming Sophomore class. Huh? Where did this come from, Allie?  "are you sure Allie?"  She tells me "yeah, I've already turned in my application with 50 signatures on it."  So it was on.  Allie vs. the current freshman VP.  She had posters up (Tanner, Connor and Sydney helped in making the posters and had some cute slogans on them like:  "vote for Allie, if she's not elected, you'll be suspended", passed out candy, had "team leaders" that were in charge of getting people to vote for her.  She found out today that she is the Vice President!  She won!

David says Allie would make a good lawyer.  She's fearless.