Toys of Yesteryear

There is a lot to write about lately, but very little time.  I want to tell you about the kitchen renovation, the annoyance of living without a kitchen in a house with five people, how we started Halloween costumes early, school, cool things we've seen, thoughts on life and the world....  But in the small window for blogging I have available this morning I'm going with Tinker Toys.

Oh, and also these things happened...

So, the part of this blog that is a record for myself of things my family does kind of got understandably sideswiped this summer (and into the start of fall).  The death of my father and what that means going forward is still something I am processing, but regardless, our lives have continued on in busy and interesting fashion, and I need to jot some of it down before I forget it ever happened.

This is essentially "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" without the sad parts and with many photos.  Here we go:

I did post about our trip to the cottage already.  Ian and the kids (including my niece) got to return there for a week in August as well.  I love that the cottage is a summer tradition for our family.

Early in the summer I finally got the appropriate archery equipment for the girls to share.  There are several public ranges in the park system in Milwaukee, and sometimes we'll picnic there when we go out to shoot.

Quinn's still too small to handle the bow yet, so he acts as a human quiver and also retrieves arrows.  The girls are improving quickly and we've been having a lot of fun.  Next summer I plan to get a third bow so they don't have to take turns.

Summer means trips to Leon's Frozen Custard.  (Or, at least, more seasonally appropriate trips to Leon's.)  Aden has discovered the joy of the banana split.

Open Doors

This past weekend was the return of Doors Open Milwaukee.  We weren't able to venture outside our own neighborhood for it this year, but it was still fun.  Although the day got off to a rocky start.

Ian has been out of town for a week doing Army things.  I'm surprised how much the stress of that can still get to me.  I think of myself as a fairly calm parent, not prone to fits very often.  But a lot of my ability to be that way has to do with sharing the burden and having someone to laugh with and getting a break.  Remove the other parent from the equation and my mind becomes a constant scramble of responsibilities, always sure I'm forgetting something, and I become far less patient.

The weekdays with Ian gone have been complicated.  Last Thursday in particular was impressively tricky where I had to work, I arranged for the kids to walk themselves to the violin store after school rather than be picked up, I would feed them there, we'd head to the school for the open house right after work, then go straight from there to the Y for Mona's swim team practice.  Sure the dog wasn't getting walked until pretty late in this scenario, but it was the best I could do.

Doors Open Milwaukee

This weekend was Doors Open Milwaukee, where over a hundred different places were open to the public for tours and a peek into places most of us never get to see.  It's an interesting event the city tried last year, and it was such a hit they decided to repeat it.  I'm hoping it becomes a new annual tradition because it's a great idea, and it will take years for us to get to everything we want to see.  Too often we neglect to seek out the interesting sights in our own neighborhoods, and it's easy to forget to be curious about places that form the background to our daily lives.

Now, outings with kids are always a gamble no matter who you are.  My kids are unusually good on car trips and in restaurants, and can be trusted not to touch things when we go into stores or other people's homes, but even they get whiny when they are hungry and tired.  Ian and I explained at the outset that Doors Open Milwaukee was optional.  At any point on our tour we could go home.  This was either a threat or an offer, whichever need it met.

The weather looked beautiful but was cold.  Our first stop was the city hall to try and get tickets for the building's bell tower, which meant waiting in a long line at 9:00 a.m. outside.  (Everything on the Doors Open Milwaukee tour was free, but some spots with limited space required tickets.)  There was much complaining about the cold and the wait, even though I think I kept the kids fairly well entertained in the line.  Then I think Mona's mood was officially broken when we were unable to actually get tickets to go up to the bell tower.  I reminded her that it was still really cool to get to stand inside the city hall, but the whining had begun.

Milwaukee's city hall is modeled after a building in Germany and is quite striking.  (And anyone old enough to have watched Laverne and Shirley might remember it from the opening credits.)  Here is the building we did not get to the top of: