Graduation

It doesn't have anything to do with Ben's graduation from Kindergarten, but I made my first mint julip of the summer tonight after work...bourbon mixed with sugar, wild mint from jut outside our door, crushed and muddled (in a good way) with a glass of crushed ice...yummy!


Now on to the regularly scheduled blog...


Tonight we went into the tiny Lake Clear Elementary School for the end of the year celebration with Ben's class of 14 kids...they sang some of the favorite songs from the year...


Told us the woeful tale of some silly fishes that swam by a hungry shark...

Related, again in song, some of the details of the water cycle, from the viewpoint of a single drop of water...



Each Kindergartner then got up in front of the whole room to talk about one of their favorite parts of the year, and what they learned...Ben talked about learning and writing his address...



Ben got an award for being the class "Way With Words Poet" award...


He clapped very enthusiastically when his good friend Frannie got her certificate of outstanding achievement in completing Kindergarten...


We were all very proud when he got his certificate from the building principal, Mr. Dora...


The ceremony ended, as all important events should, with cake and punch for everyone...we're very proud of Ben and all of his hard work this year in Kindergarten, we're thankful to all of the great teachers who helped him learn and grow so much, and we're hopeful about the coming years in the Lake Clear Elementary School (and eventually other schools within our community)...

A nice night for T-ball

The clock is starting to wind down on the T-ball season, but the Red Dragons are still having a wonderful time...spirits were high on on the bench as our boys and girls took their turns at bat...


They also played really well as a team in the field...



Ben has really improved his hitting and fielding and throwing...he had a great inning playing first base...



They had a great game, and got especially excited when coach Murnane announced the pizza party to follow the game on Thursday...


Here's a team picture of everyone who attended and played T-ball tonight...

Penny the Barbarian

Hanging out in bed this morning after early walks with Penny and watching her devour her breakfast with gusto, it occurred to me that Penny reminded me of a pop-culture icon from one of the top movies of the 20th century:

"Conan, what is best in life?"


"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women"

Penny is (despite her petite size and spectacular Labrador-osity) a barbarian...and not just any barbarian...a barbarian living the barbarous life to its fullest extent...


Proof of Penny's Barbarity

• She spends much of her waking time plotting new ways to crush Cedar, and to see him driven before her (she also spends a lot of time pouncing on him, biting his knees, and hanging from his neck)...
• She not only attacks Cedar in bed, under the table, while getting belly-rubs, and while eating...she pounces on him while he sleeps, when we ask him to sit, and...once...when he was pooping...he is totally driven before her...
• Penny revels in the lamentation of Cedar's women (well, woman really...just Gail, but she laments the high-spirited attacks on our grumpy old man)

Where earlier I had dismissed this behavior as simple puppy play, I have now come to recognize it as classic barbarian barbarism, in its most barbaric form...

So we have started in on a new training regime to try and condition her to be less of a barbarian

She's quite embarrassed and has fully acknowledged the error of her ways, and the full extent of her barbarity...we've got her signed up for local meetings of BA (Barbarians Anonymous)...

She needs your love and support in this difficult time...

T-ball continues

The T-ball season is winding down, but we're still having a great time every Tuesday and Thursday evening...


Ben has hit upon an optimal meal: ritz crackers, swiss cheese, thin-sliced ham, and cut up peaches...he makes sandwiches using various combinations of the ingredients and washes it all down with milk...


Penny is our secret weapon to distract the other team...we sometimes get kids from the other games on the field coming by, which can dilute the effect on the team we happen to be playing, but she is pretty cute...


This is the fearsome lineup of the RED DRAGONS!, Ben is the 4th one in the line, facing away at the moment, chatting with a buddy...


We played against the blue team (I forget their team name), and a friend of Ben's stopped off for a chat while Ben was playing 3rd base...Phillip likes to assume a sprinter's pose when he gets ready to run home, but he was a little distracted in this instance...


Although Penny still chews on Cedar an awful lot, they are getting along very well...we took Penny on a nice hike and then to the beach yesterday, and she slept like the dead for the rest of the day...Cedar approves!

First Weekend of Summer?

It was a sizzling (for the Adirondacks) weekend!

We spent lots of time hiding from the heat at the beach at Lake Clear...


The water is still cold, and the wind was high, which kept the mosquitoes away...


The high winds also made for big waves, which crashed on Penny, and made her less than eager to go swimming...


Ben had a great time exploring both on the shore and in the water...


Penny kept trying out her luck in the water, but it kept having the same result...


Ben made up all sorts of splashing games in the water...some of them involved splashing Dad...


The sun was blazing hot, but the water kept us all cool and happy...


Gail and Penny took some sweet walks with Penny along the shore, after she gave up, for the moment, on the wave-diving...


We ran into Ben's friend, Simon at the beach on Saturday...


After playing in Lake Clear for a while, we saw a float-plane land and start to taxi over to us...


It let off some passengers, which let the boys get close enough to check it out up close and personal, and then to watch it take off again...


Yup, Gail put suntan goop on Penny's nose today when we went back to the beach...she wanted to put some on her belly too, but we were able to stop her...


The wind was up again today, and we loved it...



He yelled into the waves...they still got him wet...


The Buerketts showed while we at Lake Clear today, and the kids all had a great time splashing around and playing with Penny...


Penny and Ayla had a face-off moment...two seconds later, Ayla got a snoot full of kisses...


Ben tried a lime Popsicle for dessert...it was a little too tart for him...


Gail took over for him, to finish off the Popsicle, and I intuited that it was a little tart for her also...

Early Mornings and T-ball

We're still having some early mornings with Penny Terrific...she gets up around 4am, and wanders over to the door to wait for me to take her out...while this is wonderful behavior, I could live with it being a little later because once I'm awake, I'm awake for good..Penny comes back in and goes right back to sleep, and I am left with coffee and Quiller (I'm reading my way through these ancient, yet awesome, British spy novels during my early mornings alone)...


This is Penny 2 minutes after coming in from her first walk of the day Tuesday..."HUH...what...go 'way...too early"...


This is taken the same day a bit after 5am...Penny heard the camera come on, but went back to sleep 3.72 seconds later...


T-ball has now shifted into game mode...no more practices...only games...this makes more sense than it might seem to at first as the feeling of competition without any actual competition (everybody fields, everybody hits, everybody runs the bases, nobody gets out) spurs the kids on to pay (a bit) more attention, and to start to play as a team and show team spirit...they warm up by playing catch for a while...here you can see Ben throwing the ball to his friend Joseph...


Coach Murnane gives the whole team a pep talk before the first game begins...


Ben is the middle of the 3 fielders in a row...all showing pretty good stances and readiness...


Ben and his teammates sat in a nice line waiting for their turn at bat...



Here's a picture of Ben talking with his friend Joseph while waiting for their turns at bat, with another friend, Jacob, next to them...



At this point, Ben is at the head of the line, and dons his batting helmet, stunningly a little big on his huge melon...


He gets up to bat, readies himself at the tee


...and smacks the heck out of the ball...I love the heads turned in this shot...his hit went past the line between 1st and 2nd base, which this early in the season constitutes a big hit...YAY BEN!!!


After the next 2 batters, Ben made it to 3rd base, and waited for a team mate to bring him home...the man standing and looking towards 2nd base is Ben's assistant coach, and the other man is the 3rd baseman's father...the 3rd baseman was a little cold and huddled like a frog to stay warm...he (and many others) were consistently distracted by Penny, which would have given our team a distinct advantage if:

1. all of the distracted kids were on the other team (which they were not)
2. we were keeping score or it was possible to get someone out or force errors (which it is not)

Penny got a little chilly and wet in the light rain that was falling the whole time we played (no T-ball rainouts in the ADKs), so Gail draped Ben's coat over her, and she went to sleep...


Ben got a nice hit in the 3rd, and final, inning, and made it to 1st in a blaze of speed, and under cover of some (not unexpected) confusion and mayhem between some of the infielders...ground balls tended to be magnets for all but the most disciplined (or distracted) players in the field, and we tended to get clumps of enthusiastic t-ballers piling up in the vicinity of each hit...there were also coaches at each base to remind runners where they needed to go (you can see the 1st base coach pointing out Ben's destination for him...don't think the players didn't need it...some kept running straight past 1st base towards Tupper Lake, some took shortcuts from 2nd to home (or mom...or Penny), and some ran to field the balls that their teammates hit...

Ben's (and Gail and Penny and I are all) having a great time with T-ball...Ben got his team pictures taken this week, and we signed up for summer soccer, so we've got that to look forward to after this season is over...I'm a bit sad that I'll be missing the next few games while I'm away at Zombie Camp in Missouri, but I'll survive (hopefully!)...