fruit fly invasion

It's strawberry season here in Vermont and for the first time Ellis was a legitimate help with the picking this week. While he managed to throw a few berries in the box last year, it was more of a race between me trying to fill the flat and Ellis whining with increasing intensity about how much longer we had to pick. Not only did he pick a substantial amount, he offered this little nugget: "I guess last year I hadn't figured out that if I don't like picking but I do like jam, I should just do the job anyway." Indeed. What next? Asking to take a nap?

I tired a new "fancy" recipe for strawberry jam, which included raspberry juice, balsamic vinegar, and black pepper. It ended up with a much more cooked flavor, but it was an interesting experiment; the vinegar and black pepper are pretty subtle, though I suspect Ellis will detect and reject. So we're also making a few batches of "regular" strawberry jam. I've been collecting rhubarb from anyone who mentions they have more than they can handle (we don't have our own after 3 failed attempts at getting a plant started). No matter how careful I try to be about not letting syrup or fruit sit out, I always end up with millions of fruit flies around this time of year. It's bad this year as it looks like we're developing a whole ecosystem- there's a tiny spider web behind the compost container where a spider is growing plump on the fruit flies buzzing around the compost. Thanks for nothing charcoal filter.

6th birthday extravaganza

Ellis's major birthday celebration was last weekend when we hosted 12 of his friends at an Olympics-themed party. I think this theme worked out pretty well, despite some of the kids not really knowing what the Olympics was. So perhaps it would've worked out better for a September party after kids had been exposed to the summer games this year. Ah well. I was largely freaking out because the chances of rain climbed from 20% to 100% over the course of the week leading up to the party. And everyone we invited RSVP'd (including 3 kids in the 48 hrs leading up to the party). So, 13 5-year-olds in our house for 2+ hours, what could go wrong?

We started off by dividing the kids into teams and having each team color a flag with fabric markers. The kids seemed to like this, but as soon as they finished coloring, they starting wandering off to destroy our house. We tried letting them run off some energy in the tents we'd pitched in the yard ("The Olympic village") . I envisioned them moving from tent to tent like little forts, but instead they created a mosh pit in the center of one of the tents and had to be forcibly removed.

So we soon made our descent to the basement where the first event was balloon popping. The kids had to pop their balloons using their bodies only, with the goal being to pop as many balloons as possible in 2 minutes. In that 2 minutes, they popped 88 balloons. Then they started screaming to celebrate the popping. Yikes. The next activity was quieter- build structures from marshmallows and toothpicks. They seemed to like this, but had a little trouble organizing themselves to build much more than marshmallows blobs. Trey noted we were lucky they didn't think of sticking the mallows together with spit. Indeed.

Next, we moved to the porch for a couple relays (1 in which they had to pass a handful of sand between their hands and see how much it weighted and 1 in which they threaded a spoon attached to twine down their shirts).

After the relays were complete, there was cherry spitting and throwing a pool noodle "javelin" through a hula hoop target. These worked pretty well, except for on kid who didn't like cherries and so spit the fruit on the porch. At least Trey finished the new railing in time and no kids fell off the porch! 

Finally time for cake- we had a small chocolate sheet cake and some cupcakes in ice cream cones designed to look like Olympic torches. All the kids chose the torches and I was a bit surprised that 1) the kids made very little mess eating them and 2) several parents couldn't figure out how I'd made them.

Present time!

The party wound down after this, with kids taking advantage of a brief period of sunshine to play outside and then eventually depart. So, other than the stress of planning all the events and last minute run to the Dollar Store to get new gold medals, very little damage was done. Ellis seemed to have a good time, but I hope we never have this big of a party inside the house again!

happy birthday ellis!

Ellis climbed into our bed this morning and whispered, "It's my birthday!" Hard to believe, but Ellis is 6 today. We had a unreasonably big "friend party" on Saturday, about which I will post next. If recovering from that weren't enough, Sunday night was a no-sleep zone with Ellis throwing up most of the night and Maddox spiking a 103º fever. So Monday was spent in PJs watching Busy Town Mysteries prior to a doctor's visit. Ellis is back at school today and Maddox is antibiotic-ed. So all is well, but taking cupcakes to school and doing the annual birthday walk will have to wait another day. Ellis doesn't seem to mind as he's still on a toy high from the presents he received on Saturday. Oh for the days that new paint and a Lego kit could make one so happy!