Summer – Page 5 – Jocelyn Rau

August 26, 2011August 26, 2011

Waxing nostalgic

I found this beautiful post the other day on BlogHer Moms and it almost brought me to tears. Not because I can relate to lemead’s summer camp experiences on Cape Cod, but because I, too, look back on my childhood summers with such aching fondness. The long days of play, hearing the cicadas and crickets on hot summer nights (i hate bugs, but that sound always takes me back), the hours my sisters and I would spend making up languages and forts and engaging in general make believe, the utter lack of responsibility save putting away toys at day’s end, and an overall age of blissful innocence that only children know.

My sisters and I never went to summer camp, but we did have Canada. And I wouldn’t swap those 2 for anything. When we were younger there were years when we were able to spend a good couple weeks up on the island, and it was pure heaven for us. For during those long stays we usually overlapped with my mom’s entire family, spending days and nights on end with our grandparents and all of our aunts, uncles, and cousins, some of whom we never saw except up there. We held countless diving contests off the dock, swam in and across the lake (but not through the seaweed, ew!), made treasure maps and turned the island into our own coded little world, read stacks of old comic books, set up tents and “camped” in various spots on the island, had water fights, made up songs, played endless games of cards and Scrabble and bingo, listened to old-time records every night at cocktail hour (one of my favorite traditions that still lives on), roasted bags of marshmallows and popped nightly bowls of popcorn, awoke each morning to the smell of bacon and a fire in the wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and fell asleep in the loft each night listening to the grown ups reminiscing about when they were our age and always trying to sneak peeks through the blankets over the railing hoping we wouldn’t get caught and forced back into bed. They were the best days of our lives, and the countdowns to the next summer’s trip usually began on the way home. I still get butterflies of excitement the night before each trip to Little Pine Isle.

Canada has always been a family place for us, though, unlike a summer camp full of outside friends. Not that others aren’t welcome, by any means. And some groups of family do take friends when they go, when there’s room enough without too many other family members already there at the same time. I think this is kind of what made it special for us, too. We bonded so strongly with our family when we were up there and loved spending that time with them. What could be more fun for kids than playing with their aunts and uncles who always gave in and let them get away with stuff that their parents never would? Granted, as we’ve all gotten older (and bigger) it is kind of nice when the island isn’t crammed full of people anymore, but as kids it was wonderful.

Much like lemead’s summer camp, our island is littered with these boundless memories and happy ghosts from our pasts. And now I am thrilled to be able to take D there and let her create her own lifetime of memories as well. She only has 1 cousin right now, but I know they’ll be joined by many more and will probably explore every nook and cranny and play every island game imaginable, just as we did. Now we will be the adults in the living room reminiscing each night while they try to put off sleep as long as possible up in the loft. And I hope she falls as deeply in love with the place as we have and makes boatloads of memories there with her own children and their children someday, too.

Canada couch — Me & my sisters in Canada ages ago

Canada cans — Crushing cans in Canada while rockin' a bikini. Awesome

p.s. totally unrelated, but i wanted to get my run stats from this week down. tuesday i ran 3.57 miles in 31:41 for a 8:51 pace, and last night i ran 2.86 miles in 24:04 for a 8:25 pace. my time from last night is only 4 seconds off my fastest time ever for that particular route, so i was pleased. both runs felt pretty awful, but i was very happy i got more than 1 in this week.

August 25, 2011August 25, 2011

The wonders of nature

When we were on vacation in Canada last month, I witnessed both the brutal and wondrous sides of nature. There was a little bird’s nest above the steps leading down from our boathouse to one of the docks, and when we arrived on the island there were 4 brand new, tiny baby Phoebes in it. A few mornings later, we opened the boathouse doors to find that the whole nest had been knocked down onto the steps, and the poor little babies were splayed all over the place. Unfortunately 1 of them did not make it, but the other 3 were amazingly still showing signs of life. So my sister M found a smallish cardboard box, put on some gloves, scooped up what remained of the nest, and fashioned a new little home for the surviving babies in that box. We put a rock in one end of it to weigh it down and placed it just off to the side of where it had fallen, in the hopes that the parents would come back and be able to see that there were still some of their offspring in there. Come on, Phoebes, your babies still need you!!

We watched that box from afar that entire day, hoping and pleading with the parents to come back and feed the youngsters in there, and lo and behold, they found it! We were absolutely thrilled. They were pretty tentative at first – like what in the world happened to our home? Where are our babies? Oh wait, they’re in this box now? Is this a trap? They would perch in the tree closest to the box and just hang out for a bit, singing their little Phoebe song, and then you’d hear the babies start peeping away. Feed us! Feed us!

Unfortunately, 1 of the 3 remaining babies perished within that first day. He was the worst-off of the trio, and M finally removed him and laid him in the garden area with the other one who didn’t survive. It was pretty clear that he wouldn’t live much longer even with the parents’ feeding, so we didn’t want them to reject the entire box nest if he was still in there. So those 2 received a nice little burial on the island, yet far enough away from the box to hopefully allow the other pair to thrive.

By the end of our stay, the Phoebes appeared to be a happy little family once again, even if reduced in members. The parents made regular trips into and out of the box, and you could see them removing the babies’ poop on their trips out, too. (i had no idea birds did this, the nest cleaning, but it makes sense. why would they want to sit in their poop all day?) It was so heart-warming to see how this little pocket of nature flourished in the face of tragedy, even if it was with a little help from us humans. The box babies would huddle together and peep when the parents were near, and it was the cutest thing ever to see them in there, heads tucked against each other, sheltering one another from whatever lie outside that box. They looked good when we left, so I sure hope they continued to grow and have maybe even moved into nests of their own by now. Or at least out of the box.

And another wonder of nature – human babies!! I finally met one of the 2 newest additions to our group of friends last night, Baby S, one of the most adorable little boys ever! It’s so fun that our kids will now have so many “automatic” friends with whom to grow up. I can just picture it now – the kids all corralled together playing while all us parents sit around with some drinks, most likely watching a Badgers, Brewers, or Packers game.

August 23, 2011August 23, 2011

Weekend reprieve

This past weekend was awesome. It was just 2 of those days where the whole time you think man, this is a really fun day. And with how busy we’ve been lately it seems like we hadn’t had our fair share of those for awhile. Well-deserved, I’d say.

My sister M and her fiance C came into town from Colorado on Thursday night for some business meetings on Friday, so they stayed at the Iron Horse Hotel that night. Oo la la. On work’s dime that’s a great choice. They stopped by my office after their Friday morning meetings to check out the place, then picked D up at daycare on their way to our house. So she got to leave school early and play with them that afternoon. We then all headed up to St. Ann’s for dinner Friday night, and it did not disappoint, as usual. It’s really called Schwarz’s Supper Club and is in teeny tiny St. Anna, WI, a little over an hour from here. Huge, delicious steaks and perfectly-made old fashioneds, all for a fraction of the cost you’ll find anywhere else. We dropped D at one of R’s brother’s house for the evening, then met friends for dinner and a couple drinks in Elkhart Lake afterwards. It was a beautiful night and a good time was had by all.

M and C spent Friday and Saturday nights at our house, and Saturday we were free all day. Wahoo! M and I went for a run mid-day (ran 3.23 miles in 30:26 for a 9:25 pace. slower than usual, but we had a huge hill in the middle and sprinted the last block), then we all headed downtown to take the Great Lakes Distillery tour that afternoon. That place is really cool. Their spirits are excellent, they have a full bar on-site, and it’s always great to see local businesses thriving with their products. I’m not a straight liquor fan by any means, but even I find theirs palatable. I also tried absynthe, and was surprised to find it not too bad. That evening there was a neighborhood party/summer concert just a few blocks from our house, so we loaded up a cooler with some beers, put it in the bottom basket of D’s stroller, and walked up there to hear some tunes. It turned out to be fantastic. There were approximately 1 million kids running and biking around, and the entire area had congregated on one of the main streets outside our little local grocery store. There was a big tent in the middle of the street where grills were set up and refreshments were being served. So we stood around for maybe 30-45 minutes, had our brews, then wheeled it back home to fire up our own grill. R cooked up the last of the Rausages as well as some brats from a fabulous meat market in Sheboygan, and we feasted. D went to bed around 8, then the 4 of us sat outside by a fire, enjoying the pleasant evening weather and some adult beverages.

Sunday M and C left shortly before 9 to catch their flight home, and then we had absolutely nothing on the agenda for the entire day. No places to go, no chores to do – something I like to call heaven. And the weather was spectacular again, which made it even better. D is officially in 1-nap-a-day territory, as it was the first weekend I couldn’t get her to take 2 naps at home. So when she went down after her lunch a little before noon, I put on my bikini and headed out to the backyard to snooze in the hammock and soak up some rays. Pure bliss, I tell you. The rest of the afternoon was spent just enjoying being home. R sat outside and caught up on some magazines, I played with D for awhile, and we got her water table back out to splash around in, too. She especially enjoyed carrying her little water toys all around the yard and driveway while we were out there. By late afternoon it was time to get her bathed and all the dirt and sunscreen washed off, then dinner for her and a little more playing before reporting for sack duty.

Summer weekends always fill up before the season even begins, so when we get ones like this to just relax and enjoy each other, they feel so wonderful. And guess what? We have another free one coming up again this weekend. Gasp! My heart might just explode with happiness.

August 17, 2011August 17, 2011

Our life in pics

I have been remiss in my photo posting duties lately, so I thought I’d devote an entire post to these past couple weeks pictorially. They’ve been really busy for us, so there have been a ton of pictures to go through. Enjoy!

My beautiful girl, just after her 1st birthday

She loved playing with the water table at the party

d12 — Birthday girl. Her dress had an adorable tulle overlay on the skirt part

d21 — R had to get one of the "Cheapest Beers" at the Fair

D suitcase — D helping me pack for Colorado

D&R Pack — Daddy & D ready for the Packers' preseason

D&R — One of R's bday gifts - I thought this pic was so cute of him & D napping in Canada

p.s. i finally ran again last night, the first time since last tuesday. i really need to work on getting more than 1 run in per week. but anyway, i ran 3.57 miles in 32:01, for an 8:57 pace. again, pretty much my standard. it felt awful, so i’m surprised i was able to hold my usual pace. i want to get at least 1 more 5k in before the end of summer.

July 25, 2011July 25, 2011

Takin’ it on two wheels

This weekend was R’s annual family picnic up in the Sheboygan area, and man was it hot. It was this exact same weekend last year, and I remember that because it was the same day my mucous plug came out (oh yeah, that again) and 8 days before D was born. It was equally as hot last year, but this year’s weather was more bearable for the simple fact that I wasn’t carrying around an extra 30+ pounds and going to the bathroom every 15 minutes. This is always a fun event, because R’s family is big and they’re a blast. His mom is 1 of 9 kids (this is their side of the fam that gets together), so all of his aunts and uncles and cousins are constantly coming up with crazy stories. Plus this was D’s inaugural appearance as an outside baby, so of course she was the hit of the afternoon.

P1080312-1 — The Murray fam (some of 'em, anyway)

Yesterday was one of our few weekend days where we had absolutely nothing planned, so we took advantage of it not being quite so hot and horrible outside and loaded D up into the bike trailer for her first ride. There is an awesome path that runs from just a few blocks from our house all the way into and through downtown, so we hopped on that and cruised along. R had her hooked to his bike and I followed, and he said she looked a little apprehensive at first. But as soon as we were halfway down our block, all I heard for the next half mile was her nonstop giggles. We rode all the way down to the lakefront and to the little man-made peninsula just out from the Summerfest grounds. It was so nice down there, too. The sun had gone behind some cloud cover and there was a cooler pleasant breeze off the lake, so we stopped for a bit at the point in the park to get D out and let her look around. By the time we got home we’d been gone for 2 hours, so that was a great ride. It was still pretty nice since the searing heat hadn’t come back yet with the sun, so R and I both got runs in after the biking, too. Talk about studs! I just did my real quick route, since the last time I had to do a bike to run transition was in the last triathlon I did, 2 summers ago. I ran 1.44 miles in 11:15, for a 7:50 pace. R did a longer run, and I called him crazy.

This is the bike trailer we got, and it worked perfectly. It holds 2 kids, so when only 1 is riding in it, the straps just turn around and make a harness in the middle of the seat. D loved it, so hopefully we’ll have many more weekend rides in our future.

Then after our runs, showers, and a Goldfish snack for D, we walked up the street a few blocks to watch the last leg of the International Cycling Classic, which happened to be running right through our neighborhood. Talk about amazing! I don’t know how those guys don’t wipe out each turn, they’re going so fast. We were there for the start, which was an awesome site as the field of riders charged down the street after the race car, then separated into a group of 9 leaders followed by the rest of the field, a gap that grew from around 20 seconds to almost being lapped by the lead pack by the time we walked home. We stayed for about 30 laps, which was just over half the race. What a cool event, and how fun to be able to get to watch it just a short walk from our house. They have it every year, but this was the first time we actually went up to see what it was all about.

And I’m sure you all heard about Amy Winehouse’s passing on Saturday. I can’t say it’s totally surprising, but a tragic loss of life nonetheless. And I did love “Rehab”. She joins the infamous 27 Club – Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain… R always said he was convinced he was going to die at 27, too. Sorry babe, I love you, but you’re not exactly the second coming of Mr. Mojo Risin. Sure glad you made it to this side of that fateful age, though.

p.s. One week from today I’ll have a 1 year old daughter. Wow!

July 17, 2011July 18, 2011

Where’s his whistle?

I currently have a spider monkey climbing around my legs. Oh no wait, it’s my daughter. My mistake. And this is almost an hour after I literally crawled out of her room on my hands and knees after putting her to bed so as not to wake her back up. ‘Twas no army crawl, mind you, but it was a crawl nonetheless. Apparently I could have back flipped my way out, for that “bedtime” lasted approximately 5 minutes. Superb, here we go again, after a grand total of 3, maybe 4 hours of sleep with her last night.

But to the real point of this post, today was the Milwaukee Challenge, that urban adventure race I mentioned, and it was awesome! It ended up being me and 4 other girls, and we were team “Jolly Green Giants”. None of us had ever participated in one of these races before, so we had no idea what to expect. The description said the top teams usually finish by about the 1.5 hour mark, so personally, I was considering a sub-2 hour finish a success. Plus, they posted hints on their Facebook page at midnight last night, and all they did was confuse the hell out of us. Here’s what we had to go on going into this thing:

360 degrees of blades
“DD”
Elroy
As You Like It 2/7
Where’s his whistle?

You’re kidding right? So let me get this straight. Each of those hints is supposed to correspond to something in Milwaukee that we had to find? Um, yeah right. I think you can see why we all had a mixture of anticipation and trepidation brewing by the time we got underway. Here we were, about to start a race that was billed as “part 5k, part ‘Amazing Race'”, and our preliminary hints were utterly vague and confusing. Sweetness.

Fortunately, once we got our sheet of actual clues at the start of the race, those ridiculous hints became much more clear and appropriate. Here’s how it worked: each team captain stood in a big circle outside Rock Bottom in downtown Milwaukee, the race staff handed each captain a sealed envelope, and when the clock struck 2:00pm everyone was able to rip open their envelope, make their way back to their respective team, and it was off to the races. Literally. There were 12 clues in all, 11 of which had to be completed for a successful finish. I must admit, as soon as we started reading through everything I was kind of lost in a cloud of wtf? Each clue was its own little paragraph, and 5 people all trying to read the same list of 12 paragraphs was slightly awkward. We finally decided that we had a good enough idea of what a couple of the clues meant, headed off in that direction, and just tried to decipher the rest as we went. It was a pretty good strategy, for we were able to complete our first handful of clues in no time. A couple were definite stumpers, and a couple of us tried using our phone-a-friends (totally allowed, per the race rules), but they turned out to be pretty much worthless. Ha, sorry phone-a-friends! But we did end up figuring all the clues out on our own.

And get this… We took 5th place!! Read that again. We, the 100% inexperienced, 110% confused team, came in in 5th place!! Out of roughly 160 teams that finished (about 170 entered). BOOM! Take that, Milwaukee. The Jolly Green Giants turned out to be a force to be reckoned with, and we Jolly Green Giant-ed all over your ass! Our official time was 69:28, and we ended up doing at least a 5k’s worth of running through downtown to get to our clues. And I think that was definitely the difference for us – those extra jogs through the streets instead of the leisurely saunters some teams were doing. It was so much fun. I was so unbelievably proud of us and just simply amazed that we did so well. None of us expected anything like that, but when we ran up to the finish line and saw they were just then beginning to bring the water bottles out for the racers and the finish line sign wasn’t even hung, I think we all got a little twinge of butterflies, like, we actually might stand a chance here! And we so did. We got 5th!! Sorry, I’m still riding that high.

And what did we get for placing 5th, you may ask? A $50 bar tab to be spent at Rock Bottom. Why yes we would like to spend that right now, thank you very much. How nice of you to offer. 1st place got $200 cash, 2nd place got $100 cash, 3rd place got $50 cash, and then both 4th and 5th places got the $50 Rock Bottom tabs. We were so stoked, I can’t even tell you. All I can say is watch out Challenge Nation – next year we’re out for blood. It’s 1st place or bust, and yes, we will knock you down and run you over to get there.

Here are pictures from our day, and I’ve tried to give you some idea of which clue we were completing in each caption. Even with a heat advisory we rocked this.

P1080240 — Find someone from a state that starts with L, M, N, O, or P

P1080242 — Form a pyramid in front of "The Calling" statue

P1080243 — Find a donor brick with the same name as any team member's first, middle, last name, or last name of a U.S. President

P1080245 — Find a building built before 1900 or completed and occupied in 2011

P1080246 — Find someone in non-WI sports apparel

P1080248 — Find an outdoor stage and work w/another team to act out a scene from an Oscar-winning movie

P1080249 — Find the plaque dedicated to "Crazy Legs"

P1080250 — Find the 9' abstract referee statue

P1080251 — Unscramble an anagram to get "Public Market", then go find the clock in the middle

P1080254 — Then take another picture there 5 minutes later

P1080256 — Find the firefighter statue and pretend to put out a fire

P1080261 — See, the final list even says so

P1080258 — Putting our prize to good use

July 13, 2011July 12, 2011

Canada recap (lots of pics!)

So like I said, our Canadian vacation last week was awesome. The car ride there was 12 hours exactly with stops, which was better than I expected. I had been thinking it was normally a 12 hour drive, when in actuality it’s more like a 10-11 hour drive when it was just me and R. The weather was gorgeous all week; a few showers and clouds here and there, but on the whole it was beautiful. We overlapped for a day with my grandparents, an aunt and uncle, and another uncle and his wife (all on my mom’s side), and we overlapped for 4 days with my mom and stepdad. Everyone LOVED spending time with D, and she had equally as much fun playing with and charming everybody. I must admit, however, that once my mom was gone and it was just me, R, D, and my sister M, it was much less relaxing of a vaca than it used to be, except when she was napping and I could lie out on the dock in the sun and read my book (or nap myself). It was still a wonderful time, though, and I can’t wait to watch her grow there throughout the years and fall as much in love with the place as my sisters and I have.

I think the only downside to the trip was the ride home – it was so long, 15 hours total. We got stuck on the bridge coming back across the border in Sault Ste. Marie for over an hour, then had between a 1-1.5 hour stop at 8:00pm for dinner in Sheboygan Falls. D did great, though, and it was fun showing M R’s stomping grounds. Needless to say we were all exhausted by the time we finally rolled into our driveway at 10:30 that night, but the vacation overall was well worth it.

Here are some pictures from the trip. I tried to make them small since there are so many, so just click on any for a larger version. Why do the good times always have to go so quickly?