Month: September 2018

The Jeff turned 16 this week!

He’s making that face because I insisted on playing “Sixteen Candles” by The Crests, which made him totally embarrassed and it was totally satisfying. I count it a win every time my teenage son squirms and yells “Mooooooooom!”

Eleanor asked me to make a special evening trip to the store so she could pick out a present for him. Surprise, surprise : Magic cards. I’ve given up on trying to figure out if Jeff has any other interests.

Jeff asked for a Magic: the Gathering draft game party this year. He even invited — gasp — friends from school to this event. We’ve been trying to get him to do this for years.

Unfortunately, none of those friends showed up. It may be owing to the fact that Brian misprinted his phone number on the invitation Jeff handed out. We’ll never know. Fortunately, a couple other buddies from church, etc. showed up, so they still had a good (if shorter) tournament.

Also fortunately: Jeff is so very socially unaware that he didn’t register a trace of disappointment in his lame friends. His response was “oooh, more card packs for me!” and spent a long time stacking and organizing them all.

So it’s fortunate that my parents gave him a nifty new card carrying case.

Also, I knitted him this:

This is a dice bag shaped like Cthulu. It’s the Elder Dice-Bag. It may be the single most nerdy thing I’ve ever made, and that includes Jeff himself. I was worried that Jeff would be disappointed by the bag, but he was SO EXCITED when he saw it and spent a good amount of time gushing over how cool it was. (“The coolest thing ever!”) He even smiled a genuine smile!

(I also included some cool steampunk dice with little gears and curlicues all over the sides. I couldn’t resist them.)

As I write this, Jeff is playing more Magic with his dad and siblings. The Magic madness may never end. There are worse ways to burn through your time and money, so I don’t mind it at all. I only wish I could occasionally get my dining room table back.

As for The Big Question: yes, Jeff is juuuuust beginning to show an interest in learning how to drive. Specifically, he wants to be able to drive so he can get a job and earn more money for Magic cards.

[Brooke waves hands in “I give up” gesture]

Brian even let him carefully cruise around an abandoned parking lot this past week. Interesting developments are surely in store. I really love this brown-eyed boy.

And now, onwards to the next nerdy knitting project: a Hufflepuff scarf for William!

How exciting — Katie was finally old enough to come along to the Girl Scout Mom & Me weekend at Camp Robbinswold.

I had a moment of bitter confusion when I realized that we hadn’t been to a Mom & Me since 2015. Three years! (There wasn’t a Mom & Me in 2016, and then 2017 was the year I Over-Camped myself and I couldn’t handle the idea of yet one more camping trip.)

Full disclosure: this was Princess Camping. We were in a winterized unit with flush toilets and showers. Meals were served in the lodge.

But that’s not the point. The point is having fun one-on-on(ish) time with my girls. And eating lots of gorp.

The theme of the weekend was “Out of This World,” so there were lots of educational and art activities about astronomy. Katie was delighted to make a “solar system” beaded necklace. I loved learning how to use sightlines and geometry to calculate how high the sun is in the sky (er . . . it was overcast, so we used the same technique to estimate the height of a tree).

Saturday afternoon was spent making tie-dye shirts and painting rocks and mini canvases. Eleanor made a rather pretty landscape picture of the Hood Canal (where Robbinswold is located).

We also took a nice long walk along the shore, just the three of us. No sea otter sightings, but we did get to see the cabins where Eleanor stayed this summer at camp.

 

In the evening we had a guest speaker: a former NASA astronaut who told us all about what life was like on the International Space Station. Unfortunately, the clouds came in right before her talk so we couldn’t use her big telescope.

Bummer — but it did make for a spectacular moonrise. Katie was especially charmed by how beautiful it looked. It made for a great background for the all-camp sing-a-long. I’m such a sucker for camp songs, love ’em.

Our unit was shared with another group of moms and girls who were all Katie’s age. We had fun hanging out together in the evening, talking and playing games. The little girls made blanket forts in the middle of the common area. I spent time knitting my Cthulu dice bag for Jeff (more to come on that later), at which the other moms nodded politely (if they were non-geeks) or declared “the coolest thing ever your son is so lucky” (if they were geek geeks).

On Sunday morning we all worked together to tidy up the camp (lots of floor mopping and table wiping) then we gathered to trade SWAPS.

A SWAP = Some Whatchamacallit Affectionately Pinned. It’s a Girl Scout thing where people make little trinkets on safety pins to trade. Lots of good fun.

We were missing our Grandma on this trip (she’s come with us in the past) so we re-created some of the pictures Eleanor had done with her.

It was a little sad to say goodbye and come home, but we were very tired out (both girls fell asleep on the drive back) and more than happy to say hello to our comfy mattresses Sunday evening.

Can’t wait to go again next year!