Well Guys and Gals!  Here it is, my very first review of a location!!

Part of the Coastal Trail

Photon Pink, Photon’s Castle

Overall Rating: ★★★★★

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Photon%20Pinks/66/126/40
Owner: Photon Pink
Sim Rating: PG
Limitations: No Pushing

My Thoughts:

OK… granted there isn’t a HUGE amount to do here, but really it is worth it!! This is one of the most fun sims I have been to in a long time. I spent about an hour and a half pottering around it, taking photos and exploring. It is more of a “the kids want to go somewhere fun” sort of sim, than one where you would go for a picnic, but has been fabulously well-built with lots of bright colours, sculpties and particles.

Part of the Jungle Trail

Land at the Royal Garden and follow the trails to see the various themes areas, or visit inside the castle itself to but some fun toys, landscaping or accessories. My personal favourite was the coastal trail, but the jungle trail was fab too! Also has 7 Seas fishing to keep the kids occupied!

Lag might be a little bad… its quiet but because of the sculpts and particles things can be slow to rez, particularly if you view it as it should be seen – with ultra settings! It is perhaps more suitable for families with child AVs, but well worth a visit if you are young at heart and want to spend a few hours looking at some pretty colours!

For more photos of this wonderful Sim please visit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shannon_kaffebaum/sets/72157622692316751/

Reviewed By: Shannon Kaffebaum

World famous Cirque du Soleil takes you into the colorful, energetic world of insects in their latest show, OVO. When a mysterious egg appears in their midst, the insects are awestruck and curious. Amidst work, play, and the everyday activities of an insect’s life, a gawky, quirky new insect arrives and a fabulous ladybug catches his eye. With stunning visuals and music, OVO reveals the beauty and action of the hidden world at our feet. 

Full Price: $85.00 – $95.00
Our Price: $51.00 – $57.00 + svc fee

Check for Tickets

That’s how our 2 year old says “Splash Lagoon”.

Which is where we went for a few days recently.

My 8 year old said it was the best vacation EVER. 

Here’s some pics…

**Please notice the snow outside the window ~ the kids thought it was the coolest thing to be swimming and watching it snow outside at the same time!**

My husband said it was not the best vacation EVER … that would be a return trip (alone) to our honeymoon spot … but I think this was pretty good for a low-key, short, fairly inexpensive vacation with three kids!

Click here for Halloween Fun crafts, games, puzzles and more for kids.

Click the coloring page to print

http://www.ClubTuki.com This is an interview where in a marketing expert Greg Writer and his friend Adria tackles about the danger of internet to our kids and how to solve this kind of problem.

http://www.Tuki.com Internet safety filtering software with Shrek interface.

Back to School this week… and we pretty much celebrate everything around here with food.  Check it out…

Sugar cookie pencils!  This might become a tradition…

This site Funky Lunch has the cutest Sandwich designs. They would be great for kids parties or even grown up parties like baby showers, etc. I’m seriously thinking about incorporating some of these ideas into both my kid’s future dual party in the next coming months. I have a feeling my finicky daughter Ejypt will just pluck some of the things off and eat just the bread though..lol.

Per their website “Funky Lunch was born out of the desire to turn an ordinary lunchtime sandwich into something a bit different to encourage children to try and eat a varied and healthy lunch…

…to show you how to create them and how to incorporate new foods into your childs meal by distracting them from what they are actually eating.”

Check them out here: Funky Lunch

Tooooooo cute

Cars beware! On Commercial Street pedestrians and bikers rule. So, to all those drivers out there, roll your windows down, go 3 miles per hour, and, for goodness sake, park your car as soon as possible, and get out into the action.

In “Land’s End,” novelist Michael Cunningham’s must-read book about Provincetown, he writes,

Provincetown is, has always been, an eccentrics’ sanctuary…It is the only small town I know of where those who live unconventionally seem to outnumber those who live within the prescribed boundaries of home and licensed marriage, respectable job and biological children…Among strollers and shoppers [on Commercial Street] on a summer afternoon, it is not unusual to see, within a fifty-foot radius, all of the following: a crowd of elderly tourists who have come for the day on a tour bus or have disembarked from a cruise ship anchored in the harbor; a pack of muscle boys on their way to the gym; a vacationing mother and father shepherding their exhausted and fussy children through the shops; a pair of lesbians with a dachshund in a rainbow collar; two gay dads in chinos and Izod shirts pushing their adopted daughter in a stroller; a dread-locked and ostentatiously tattooed young woman who works at the head shop; a man dressed, very convincingly, as Celine Dion; elderly women doing errands; several closeted schoolteachers from various parts of the country who come to Provincetown for two weeks every year to escape the need for secrecy; several weary fisherman coming home from their stints on a scallop boat; a bond trader with three-hundred-dollar sandals up for the weekend from New York; and a brigade of furious local kids on skateboards, seeing how close they can come to the pedestrians without actually knocking one over, a stunt that is usually but not always successful.

Throughout “Land’s End,” Cunningham perfectly and lovingly captures Provincetown in all of its strange and glorious beauty. And I couldn’t help but think of the above description chronicling the rich and vibrant street life found on the town’s main drag as I walked along Commercial Street for an afternoon of window shopping and practicing the underrated art of loafing around.

Now, first let me discuss the limited scope of this blog post. The rich gallery scene, the vast cultural offerings, and the incredible night life will be not be included here. Each deserves its own space – and I will be sure to get to them soon. So, let this blog post act as just a dip of the toe into the ocean of things that can be said about Commercial Street.

Norman Mailer wrote of Provincetown, “There could be no other town like it. If you were sensitive to crowds, you might expire in summer from human propinquity. On the other hand, if you were unable to endure loneliness, the vessel of your person could fill with dread during the long winter.” Besides making me look up the definition of propinquity, I love Mailer’s quote from “Tough Guys Don’t Dance” because it speaks to the mercurial nature of Provincetown – the quickness with which is can move between two extremes.

A shot of Commercial Street in the 1890s.

Though Provincetown was officially settled by the English in the early 1700s (the town was then known as Province Lands) and was settled by the Nauset tribe long before that (the town was then known as Meeshawn), there were no proper roads until 1835. Before that, most people used the waterways of the surrounding Bays to get around. According to the Provincetown Museum’s website the building of Commercial Street was a controversial one:

Many residents protested the building of a road, saying it was a senseless extravagance. Nancy Paine Smith in The Provincetown Book tells the story of one man, a doctor, recently moved to town, who felt differently and proposed a street or boulevard sixty-four feet wide. He was soon voted down for proposing such foolishness. The doctor offered a compromise of thirty-two feet, but this proposal too was voted down as just more foolishness from a foreigner. Twenty-two feet was finally chosen as a size that was wide enough for all general purposes, and twenty-two feet is the width of Commercial Street today. Once the street was laid out, extravagant citizens began to talk about the need for a sidewalk. It is said that the debate [about building a sidewalk] lasted for a week. Finally, after a very close vote, the sidewalk was built. Some people were so incensed they refused to walk on the sidewalks. It is ironic that many people today still refuse to walk on the sidewalk.

And the history of senseless extravagance can still be found among the shops along today’s Commercial Street. From feathered boas, to incredible paintings; from obscure Italian kitchen products to antique Chinese pickling jars; from assless leather chaps to used art books – the goods on sale in the shops on Provincetown’s main street tend to be of the non-essential variety (most of the hardware stores and grocery stores are found off Commercial Street). But this is what makes window shopping (or actual shopping if you are one of those rare creatures with some disposable income these days) so much damn fun.

WA

One of my favorite shops is Wa, located at 220 Commercial Street. Opened by Tom Rogers in 1996, Wa is a beautifully curated refuge filled with chinoiserie and other wonderful items from all over Asia.

Another shot of WA

Though most of the best stuff is way beyond my budget, I always stop in the store to check out their old, wooden Buddhas, their red-lacquered furniture, and their many other treasures. When I do buy anything there, it tends to be gorgeous little bowls (around $15 to $20 each) that make perfect homes for all the stones I’ve picked up on the beach.

Southstream Design

Another shop filled with a wonderful selection of hand-picked curios is Southstream Design (located at 200 Commercial Street) – run by Christian Sonderstrom, an interior designer with a strong eye for the beauty of found artifacts. It is a small place, but chock full of items for the home and garden. He also carries really expensive, really beautiful hand-woven scarves.

Cabot's Candy makes salt water taffy on site.

After stopping into store after store full of desirable items that I can’t afford, I stop by Cabot’s Candy (276 Commercial Street) where a couple dollars will get me candy fix strong enough to knock away my recession blues. Cabot’s Candy has been around since the 1920s and, as a child, it was my first stop whenever I found myself in Provincetown. They have an incredible variety of salt water taffy, fudge, and penny candy.

In the back of Cabot's Candy is a really honky-tonk store that sells all kinds of shells and the typical, rather crappy, stuff you find in many sea-side tourist stores.

And should you be visiting Cape Cod and find yourself in need of cheap souvenirs to bring the folks back home, a box of salt water taffy and a couple of starfish and shells could be just what your wallet is craving. Original? No. But is it a solution to an annoying obligation? Yes.

Shop Therapy: A Provincetown institution and a self-proclaimed "alternative lifestyle emporium."

Another of my childhood haunts was Shop Therapy (346 Commercial Street). Covered in psychedelic murals and stubbornly keeping the hippy aesthetic alive, Shop Therapy is the place for cheap sunglasses, cheap incense, cheap clothing, and, all other things necessary to making you look like you’ve just come from a week at Burning Man. When I was a kid, Shop Therapy prominently displayed a vast, colorful, and creative variety of bongs and other marijuana-related accessories, but now all that is offered is a small selection of what the guy in the store called “tobacco pipes.” It is hard to process that the Just-Say-No era of my childhood was more lenient about this stuff than they are today, but Shop Therapy has tangoed for decades with the federal drug paraphernalia laws and, you know how it goes – they fought the law and the law won.

So, with its bong business gone, Shop Therapy must survive on vulgar bumper stickers and Guatemalan sweaters. And, let me tell you, I think they’re doing fine. It was, by far, the busiest shop I visited that day – filled with swarms of out-of-town teenagers drawn to the counter-cultural, gently subversive products they’ve been selling for decades.

A selection of the bumper stickers sold at Shop Therapy. Thank God 12 year old boys don't own cars, otherwise, these would sell by the truck load.

Another gem on Commercial Street is Tim's Used Books. Full of hard to find, well-priced books.

Of course, any trip down Commercial Street is full of unique sights. Here are some more pictures from my day of browsing.

Karaoke Taxi. May I just say, "Oh, Yes!" to this brilliant idea?

Funny Balloon Hats and Face Painting are some of the best ways to keep the kiddies happy on Commercial Street.

There's always a musician or two or twelve busking in Portuguese Square.

I love how weathered some parts of Commercial Streets become.

And, be sure to take a break from the crush of Commercial Street and walk along the beach that runs parallel to it. Here's a picture of the beautifully weathered pier below Fanizzi's.

And here is one of the two martinis I had at Fanizzi's - an east end joint with spectacular views that is my favorite place to grab a drink after strolling the entirety of Commercial Street.

As I made my way back through the crowds on Commercial Street, with two martinis bolstering my ‘everything-is-beautiful’ state of mind, I overheard a gravely voiced man say, “Here it is, such a beautiful day and everyone’s wasting it walking up and down Commercial Street.” And, I guess he had a point. Perhaps we all could have done something different, better, more enriching with our day. But isn’t that act of being wasteful, in itself, part of the joy of frittering away the afternoon in mindless, ebullient communion with a crowd so diverse you’d think New York’s East Village had transplanted itself to a small sliver of asphalt pressed up against Cape Cod Bay?

Fredrick Law Olmstead said, “The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it, tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration of the whole system.” And, sure, he might have been thinking about walking in the woods and not about window-shopping amongst seven foot tall drag queens, but, still, what he says applies to the crush of Commercial Street as well. It is a place to be with people, to check out the scene, to relax, and to reenergize. And, plus, isn’t it nice to be on a street where the people rule over the cars, where the outsiders are the insiders, and everyone feels welcome?

And where even the traffic cop, with his graceful twirls and artful movements, transforms the quotidian into the transcendent?

This Provincetown traffic cop is a movement artist - full of twirls, swirls, and incredible catalogue of hand gestures. The man is poetry in motion. I wish I had a video camera.

I am in no way an experienced gardener.  In fact, this year I planted my first “real” vegetable garden.  (And by real, I mean a garden that has more than one plant and is planted in the actual ground and not in a container.  This is the first summer I’ve had the space for it.)   

But I have quickly come to love my vegetable garden.  So here are my top 5 reasons for vegetable gardening…

(1)  The weeds.  Seriously.  Now I understand why the Bible compares sins to weeds.  I get it.

(2)  Yummy fresh vegetables.  We planted tomatoes (roma and cherry), green peppers, zucchini, and beets.  I know, it’s small-scale.  But I’m hoping for a bigger garden next year!

(3)  A way to put your kids to work (and teach them something at the same time).

(4)  Exercise.  Kind of.

(5)  Photo ops…

The first zucchini!

P.S. – if you don’t have enough land for a veggie garden, how about an herb garden?

Our herbs...

Approaching Great Sand Dunes National Park on US 150, underneath the early morning shadows as the sun comes up and over Mount Blanca, a red band slowly started to emerge at the base of the advancing range. Two-and-a-half hours after leaving the Springs, my son Tyler and I had finally arrived.

Before attacking the dunes, we decided to make a quick detour pulled off when we saw the sign announcing the “Zapata Falls Recreation Area”. While doing some brief internet research on the area the previous evening, I had come across Zapata Falls and thought it might be a fun way to initiate ourselves into the surrounding landscape of the San Luis Valley.

After the 3.5 mile drive along a bumpy dirt road we arrived at the trailhead for the half mile hike that would take us the rest of the way to the falls. Short yet steep, the trail rises 500 feet in a very short distance while depositing you to the banks of South Zapata Creek. To get the rest of the way requires a dip in the water, which of course originates from snowmelt high up on Blanca.

The first step was cold enough to shock my system a bit, but my body adjusted pretty quick as I waded upstream, carrying Tyler over the areas where I felt the terrain might be a bit too much. A quick climb up an embankment took us into the rocky crevasse that is home to the 40 foot waterfall.

Light peered through the opening as the water poured down, and in the mist of the falls was a rainbow whose colors were as bright and distinct as a box of crayons. The temperature had dropped what I guessed to be nearly 30 degrees since entering the alcove, teetering on flat out cold rather than refreshing. The brisk air was exacerbated by the sweat required to arrive to this point, but the sight of Zapata Falls justified it all.

Back on the road we arrived at the Visitors Center in less than ten minutes, and after a quick peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a couple pieces of fruit, we filled up on water (a must if you are taking on the dunes) we were ready to go.

First was crossing Medano Creek, whose seasonal flow peaks during the late spring and early summer months, but was now all but nonexistent due to the driest July on record at the park. Tyler shot across the sand toward the mounds thinking that he had arrived at the biggest sandbox on the face of the earth.
With the sun playing a game of hide and go seek with the clouds, a gentle breeze kick op and accompanied our initial explorations the dunes. At first we would attack the hills head on, emptying our shoes after what seemed like every thirty seconds, sliding down a good half step for each one we made forward. A break for water at the top was followed by a race to the bottom, only to have the sequence to begin all over again.

After a few too many mouthfuls of sand as Tyler landed on his face descending the hills, we started taking a more commonsense approach to exploring the 30 square mile dune field. The rest of our time was spent aimlessly weaving and zig-zagging our way around the ever-changing ridgelines until we were engulfed by the angular mountains of sand, whose shades of browns and reds were brilliantly juxtaposed by the deep blue of the August sky.

We were lost, just a father and son, in the majesty of one of Colorado’s most overlooked treasures. And I couldn’t think of a better way to have spent the day.

Hey, guys!

When you were a kid, did you ever make a fort?  I think I did a couple of times, but I think it was more a boy thing.  My male cousins were so into making forts wherever/whenever possible…out of whatever material was available!  My husband just made the coolest of forts and my kids are having a BLAST!  Do you have any memories of this kind to share?  I think you might be able to post the pictures in your comments (not sure, but I thought wordpress was now allowing that)  If you can share, that would be awesome or post them to your blog and list the link so we can see!  People never fail to amaze me with their creativity!  See below for pictures of Fort Ormsby.  We’ll be opening to the public soon & accepting donations:

ALL RIGHT, DADDY!

OK, so I stole that line.

We went to Martin’s Fantasy Island a few weeks ago.  I haven’t been there since I was very young.

I’ll tell you, if you have pre-schoolers, or young school-aged kids, this place is way better than Darien Lake.

Cheaper admission prices.

Free parking.

More kids’ rides.

A petting zoo.

Miniature golf.

Water park (although we didn’t get to do this because the weather wasn’t too great).

Canoeing.

Lots of fun for the under 10 set, to be sure.

Try it out with your family this summer!

The bandstand was paid for and built by the volunteer amateur musicians who make up the Chatham Band.

Ever since the 1940s, families have gathered during the warm summer months on the gently sloping green of Kate Gould Park to attend the Chatham Band Concert. From 8 to 10 p.m., on Friday nights only, forty band members ranging in age from teens to octogenarians, all dressed snappily is red and blue uniforms, squeeze into the bandstand with their instruments in hand. As dusk settles over the town, the bandleader turns to face the crowd and shouts, “Hi-De-Ho!” and the audience merrily replies, “Hi-De-Ho!” and it is that call and response which begins every Chatham Band Concert, a tradition beloved by generation after generation.

The Chatham Band Concert is a popular event, so the wise and forward-thinking attendees lay claim to spots early on in the day.

According to this wonderful post by longtime (and second generation) band member, and now band manager, George W. Goodspeed Jr., the band was originally formed in 1931, shut down after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and restarted in 1945. My own family has been coming to the Chatham Band Concert for almost as long – ever since my grandparents took my mother when she was a little girl in the 1950s.

And like any other tradition, my family has a long-held ritualistic preparation for the Chatham Band Concert. First and foremost, it is crucial to get to Kate Gould Park early in order to stake claim to a patch of park grass. Blankets begin popping up on the green as early as 10 a.m. My family is not quite that organized. Last Friday night we got to the park by 6 p.m. and were lucky enough (because the weather was flirting with thunderstorms all day) to get a perfect spot not too far from the bandstand.

The Chatham Candy Manor in the gentle light of the Magic Hour.

Once you have secured your perimeters, it is necessary to forage for sustenance. And the best place to go is The Chatham Candy Manor on Main Street, which is just a two minute walk from the bandstand. Established in 1955, The Candy Manor is a classic Cape Cod institution. Though they are best known for their wonderful homemade chocolates and fudge, they also have lots of penny candy, jelly beans, and salt water taffy. This place was the closest substitute to heaven for me as a sugar-addicted child. That my mother (who forbid me to eat sweets most of the year) would allow me to fill up a little paper bag with whatever ridiculously unhealthy treats my tiny hands could grab, made my annual visit to The Candy Manor an awe-filled and much anticipated event. And even now that I’m an adult and am legally entitled to eat myself straight into a diabetic coma whenever I want to, when I visit The Candy Manor I still have a vestigial childhood desire to shovel candy into my mouth as if the whole world was on fire and it was only my consumption of large quantities of sweets that could quell the flames.

So, picnic blanket: Check! The Candy Manor: Check! It is now time to buy several balloons. Each child gets a balloon tied around his or her wrist in order to avoid the tantrum-inducing experience of the child accidentally letting go of the balloon, and then woefully having to watch it slowly and painfully drift into the sky. Balloon escape must be avoided at all cost because not only is the child traumatized, but the balloon can wind up anywhere and none of us want our bit of brightly-colored fun to choke Mr. Sea Turtle. After a short spell of being mesmerized by the balloon, all children will grow weary of this now slightly cumbersome thing which is preventing them from showing off their cartwheels, dance moves, and/or ninja kicks. When this happens, the string is carefully untied and the balloons are then tied onto each other and anchored around a beach chair armrest – making a delightful daisy chain of helium-filled goodness.

And, as 8 p.m. rolls around, the crowd settles into their spots, the band readies their sheet music, and the bandleader steps up to the microphone to kick-off the night. For over forty years, local maestro Whit Tileston, Mr. Music himself, was the always wonderful bandleader for The Chatham Band Concert. But now, Ken Eldredge, who started off playing in the Band as a drummer in the 1930s, is capably filling Tileston’s shoes.

Band Director Ken Eldredge begins each concert by shouting "Hi-Dee-Ho!"

The Band plays a wide variety of songs – from classic marches, tangos, waltzes, and patriotic sing-alongs, to not-so-classics such as YMCA and the theme to the TV show The Simpsons. On the night we went, there were a few technical difficulties. Someone forgot the bandleaders microphone, so he was forced to shout his mostly unheard words out into the night. And also there was a problem with the speakers, which amplified the music in fits and starts before eventually smoothing itself out. But we didn’t care. All of us had been coming long enough to know the routine. We knew when we were invited to dance around the bandstand – to march, to waltz with whoever would have us, and to shake, shake, shake our limbs during the Loop-Dee-Loo – and we knew when to sit back down. Whit Tileston had trained us well.

The crowd is invited to dance around the bandstand to a number of songs. My favorite song to dance to is the Bunny Hop.

As much as we all fight it, life is governed by a ruthless flux. Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote, “Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.” And no truer thing has ever been said. Well, at least, no truer thing has ever been said by a German philosopher whose only friends were a succession of pet poodles named Atma and Butz. But each year, as everything changes around us, this event remains, essentially, the same. So, with my hands wrapped around my cousin’s waist, her hands gripping her sister, whose child was sitting upon her shoulders, while my mom happily watched all of us from the less raucous comforts of the park green, we all ecstatically danced the Bunny Hop together – an annual ritual we have each long honored and cherished on these warm Friday summer nights in Chatham; just like our parents and grandparents do and did; just like our children and grandchildren have and will. It may not be the greatest act of courage in the war against the eternal forces of change, but it sure is fun. Hop, hop, hop.

Did you attend Vacation Bible School when you were a child?  VBS is happening all around our county these past few weeks and it is a joy to know it is still offered in some churches.  VBS is much work but also much needed for our children.  It breaks away from traditional routine and provides some summer time fun for the children in learning about Jesus. They can be exciting, easy, and a powerful way to reach out and share the Gospel message with children in your community with a means of encouraging activity and sharing lessons even if you are not a member of the church. It is a great treat for kids who come, or that it opens the door for un-churched kids to get the Bible foundation to help them be that follower of Christ in their adult life.

From the time I was two years old until I was fifteen I attended Vacation Bible School every summer.  Sometimes I would attend two during the same year.  What I remember most is the marching in, holding the Bible or one of the flags.  It was such a treat to get chosen to do the honor and be a leader.  From the crafts, music and songs, home made iced sugar cookies and lemonade and tag at recess, or the contest between boy/girls offering, I treasured the memories of VBS.  One particular memory was the little elderly ladies always willing to help with the glued on macaroni picture frame, or the plaster molds we painted.  They treated us like we were their favorite little person.

Whether we realize it or not, VBS can make a difference in the life of a child.  It made a difference in mine and I couldn’t wait until my children would participate in their own VBS. Clothes pin magnets, yarn or button items, planting a seed in a cup or nail art was usually on the top of the list for crafts.  Not like today with the craft in a box already cut out and ready to assemble.  Although the crafts may be different, the spirit of God is alive and well planting seed of righteous living in every little heart.

Summer is coming to an end and many camps have passed.  If you want your child to grow up to be a major league athlete then you probably should spend lots of time and of course money in finding the perfect camp to advance his career. However if your goal is to raise a child who has a sound moral and spiritual footing and is ready to face the world, you may want to think again about the value of sending a child to VBS. Vacation Bible School is definitely God centered, there’s no getting around it. But there are many routes to God and VBS programs are created to help children discover and express their relationship with God through many different venues. Kids at Vacation Bible School don’t just spend their time reading endlessly from dry pages of the Old Testament but get to participate in acting out the part. The result is that kids who attend Vacation Bible School come home feeling good about themselves and their activities that they will treasure for a lifetime.  I know I certainly did and it made such a huge impact in my life as a child.  So, when VBS roles around in your neighborhood, keep in mind that not only is a life changing experience it is also free!

Feel free to share a memory in my comment box of your VBS experience and how it enhanced your life.

Prayer:  Lord, I thank you for having a mother who thought it to be wise to teach me the things of God at an early age to give me hope for my future.  I realize now of the work that I do for you now is because there were years sown into my life of your word and faith.  May all the Bible Schools do the same in each child.  In Jesus name.  Amen.

Matthew 19:14 Jesus said, Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. NIV

One of the struggles of being a mom with preschoolers is how to get projects accomplished around the house with little ones underfoot.  My motto is “Let them help!”

Yes, this can sometimes cause even bigger messes, but it often provides benefits:

• giving the child a sense of accomplishment
• allowing them to learn new skills
• letting to get something done while they are busy “helping”

One perfect place to do this is when you’re painting.  I’ve let my children help me paint rooms a few times now.  They really enjoy it, and it generally doesn’t cause too much trouble if I prepare well.

(Want to see some photos?  Click here.)

Preparing to have the kids’ paint includes using drop cloths (do not skip this step!), giving them very small paintbrushes, dressing them in old paint clothes, and then giving them plastic cups with very, very small amounts of paint in them.  The older the child, the bigger the brush is a good rule of thumb!  You can give the older children some instruction and generally they’ll do pretty well.

Don’t be scared of letting your kids help you paint!  Latex paints are pretty easy to clean off skin!  And they’ll have a ball painting pictures on the wall before you go ahead and put the first coat on.

It was on Sunday, 14 June 2009, the Blackwater Country Show in Essex was held not too far away from where I live. It was a warm, sunny early summer’s day; my husband and I were eager to go out to get some fresh air. So it was the perfect event for us to enjoy the weekend.

When we drove there, there were already thousands of people enjoying the show. The fair is an annual charitable event to raise money to support Essex Air Ambulance and therefore the cost of the tickets and a percentage of anything bought within the event is then contributed to our local Air Ambulance service.

There were 26 events and shows as well as many stands of local people who were selling home made stuff. There is a big lake within the venue and people were enjoying some sailing and taking steam boat trips . There was a stall selling roast hog in a bun, sheepdog display, Newfoundland dog demo, Olde English Battle re-enactment, Falconry Demonstrations, Clydesdales horses and much more. The sheepdogs were even used to round up ducks and turkeys!!

Owls: for as little as 50p I was able to hold an Owl on my arm for a few minutes and was able to stroke her.

Archery: We also tried archery, shooting a swine flu rubber pig with a white mask on. There was also a large rubber dinosaur to shoot at but the pig looked more dangerous!!! I didn’t get to try to the clay pigeon shooting as the queue was too big.

It was a really fun day, and a great day out for a family. We could see there were lots of children and both adults and children enjoyed the day. I also felt happy as all the money we were spending helped contribute to our local community for a better life.

Two of the many faces at the Barnstable County Fair - Happiness on the left and unbridled, hysterical joy/terror on the right.

As I stood in line to enter the Barnstable County Fair, a thick blanket of grey clouds hung low in the sky. The wind was strong and rather cold. There was a slight drizzle, which threatened to turn into something more disruptive, and, because I arrived just as the fair gates were opening, the crowd was sparse. Yet, I was incredibly excited to be there. And, judging from all of the energized kids running around me, I was not alone in my state of ebullient anticipation. Since as long back as I can remember, the sight of a ferris wheel arching high up over the skyline has always thrilled me. The county fair – with its deep fried treats, rusted, neon-covered rides, moist-eyed farm animals, and exhausted, chain-smoking carnival workers – is an age-old summer tradition that I look forward to every year.

Upon entering the fairgrounds, I like to make a loop around the place to see what’s going on and to map out in my mind all that I’d like to do, but I didn’t make it very far before I saw 5 black bears pacing up and down in a cage right next to a sign that read: “The Great Bear Show at Noon.” I was horrified. Haven’t we, in today’s enlightened/sanitized era, done away with spectacles of animal cruelty, just as we have dropped the freak shows featuring bearded ladies and conjoined twins? So, out of my discomfort and curiosity, I decided to stick around. Before the show started, Arena Rock blared over two large speakers while the paunchy and tired-looking Bob Steele, the man behind The Great Bear Show, outfitted in a soiled tan uniform, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, fed each bear its own pre-performance sweet potato snack. His assistant Amber sat smoking behind a folding table strewn with a variety of bear-related mementos that audience members were later invited to purchase.

Bob Steele, pictured here with a black bear cub, bills The Great Bear Show as something to "Educate, Enlighten, and Entertain."

The show began with Steele delivering a brief lecture about the different types of bears found in North America, their mating and feeding habits, and how The Great Bear Show rescues bears that would not make it in the wild. But the children were growing restless. They wanted to see bears, not learn about the Grizzly’s gestation period. So, soon enough, the bears were brought out of their cage with chains around their snouts and placed so that they are all sitting upright in large wire chairs. While each bear individually performed tricks (such as waltzing and riding a push scooter) Steele repeatedly told the audience that bears are playful and agile, so these tricks were just another part of the natural tempramant of bears. As a 400 pound black bear stood on its back legs balancing on a large ball, Steele said that, “The ball was similar to bear playing on a rock in the wild.” Oh, really?Just like in the wild, you say? Am I supposed to buy this? But the children around me loved it. They were enthralled. But I was disheartened. Steele seemed good-natured enough, but he is running a for-profit operation and, let’s just say, the whole thing left a terrible taste in my mouth. Let’s hope there is no Great Bear Show next year.

Needing to shake of the moral implications of witnessing a bear ride a scooter, I headed off to less treachurous ground. I first started with the wonderful Flower Show, which is full of beautiful entries from exhibitors all around Massachusetts.

After relaxing amongst the gorgeous, elegantly displayed flowers, I headed over to the petting zoo area to spend some quality time with the horse, bunnies, sheep, and others barn animals – all happily chewing hay in their stalls.

This ram and I found each other mutually fascinating.

I also stopped to check out the sheep – many of whom were newly shorn and wearing these incredibly endearing hooded jackets that made them look like little sheepy superheros.

These coats keep recently shorn sheep warm while also making them look like they are members of a very secret sheep society/prisoners at an Animal Farm Abu Ghraib.

I also was lucky enough to stumble upon a ram judging content, which was extremely entertaining. All these glorious and cacophonous black-faced rams were being posed and trotted about for the judges. They all looked the same to me – mostly like they’d rather be doing anything else but this – yet, alas, there must always be winners and losers, even in the barnyard.

From the field to the barn stall, which ram is the fairest of them all?

Fair is fowl and fowl is fair - the chickens are a must-see at the fair

After spending an extended gawking session amongst the amazing variety of chickens, I took a long time marveling at the wonderful quilts, hooked rugs, photographs, and vegetables that locals had, after much creativity, time, and hard work, produced and entered into the many various fair competitions.

Once I was filled up to the brim with good wholesome entertainment, I headed to the rides and games section of the fair. This part of the fairgrounds is full of packs of teenagers unencumbered by parental supervision and, thus, able to laugh, flirt, and sulk to their heart’s content.

One teen finds herself so overwhelmed by the spectacle of the Barnstable County Fair that she is forced to place her head on a table while her friend patiently looks on.

The rides and the games are exactly the same as they have been since I was a kid. My favorite and most dreaded of all the rides is the Zipper. Designed in 1968, and a mainstay at most carnivals around the country, the Zipper is a neck snapping, g-force fueled, scream-inducing experience.

The Zipper is made up of a long oblong frame that rotates with free-flipping, metal mesh cars suspended from it.

This ride terrified me as a child and even now, as the snug metal mesh car I was encased in began to ascend, I was full of regret. “Why am I here?” I thought to myself. In 2006, two young Minnesotan girls were flung out of the ride when the door to one of the Zipper cars flew open because it was not properly secured. I thought of them as the ride began – seeing myself sailing out into the heavens after being spit from this rusted contraption. But soon enough, as my car began to spin and spin, and my skull crashed and banged in the tiny enclosure, I was too full of fear and joy to think about much of anything. And even now, I’m quite sure I will find myself paying the $5 (!!) to experience the same thrilling trauma next year and the year after that.

In an attempt to recover from the Zipper, I walked around the very empty games area – each stall manned by weary and ashen-colored carnival workers with nary a customer in sight. I’m sure that once nighttime comes, everyone gets bustling and hustling, but while I was there, it was strangely quiet. But, as I have gone way passed the years when I longed for large stuffed animals, I decided to focus my energies on honoring my annual fair tradition of eating a large quantity of sugar-coated fried dough.

So, full, frazzled, and totally satisfied, I left. All and all, starting with the dancing bears and concluding with some bone crushing rides, the Barnstable County Fair is just what I expect from a small town carnival – a mixture of sweet and unsavory, risk and reward, and an absolute must-do event every time it comes to town.

The Details:

The Barnstable County Fair is on from July 17-25, so today’s the last day! And it is sunny and perfect weather for taking in the fair. The traffic will be epic and the crowds will be overwhelming, but it will be an experience to remember.

Admissions are $10 for adults and children under 12 get in for free with a paying adult. Ride tickets cost $1 each and most of the rides are 5 tickets each – making them a pretty expensive cheap thrill. But some are worth it.

The Sesuit Harbor Cafe

When it comes to dining on the Cape, I’m happiest when things are kept simple. All I need is a stellar location and some fresh food that’s cooked well. So, when I get the chance to eat out, and the weather behaves, my favorite place to go is the Sesuit Harbor Cafe, a well-kept secret tucked away amongst the towering boats in a Dennis marina. The views are outstanding, the napkins are paper towels, the tables are of the picnic variety, and the food (well, most of it anyway) is outstanding, golden-fried seafoody goodness.

The cafe is tucked behind boats, stacked three stories high

But, there are a few crucial bits of information essential to making your trip to this gem a success. The first thing to know about going to the Sesuit Harbor Cafe is that it’s a cash only enterprise. This is important information because if you find yourself with only a credit card in the middle of a marina with no ATM in sight, you will feel marooned, angry, annoyed and hungry. Trust me – I speak from the pain of personal experience. Secondly, this is a BYOB joint. Bring wine, beer, or whatever does it for you. For my visit there, I brought some chilled white wine, a bottle opener, and some plastic glasses. And third, be ready to get grabby! Everyone seats themselves at the cafe and there tends to be more people than picnic tables. So, come with your A-game and be prepared to actively pounce on any available openings. But wait your turn, of course. Let us not get into a fisticuffs over seating – this is a family restaurant after all. And a final point, on your first visit here, it may be a bit hard finding the cafe. This place is surrounded by tall towers of motorboats, but don’t feel discouraged – it’s pretty easy to find if you click here for thorough directions to the harbor.

They serve the standard fare, but what's wrong with that?

I arrived at the cafe around 6. The place was packed, so my party of eight broke into various divisions – one group busied themselves finding parking in the cafe’s crammed and chaotic parking lot, one group hunted for picnic tables, while the other group stood in line to order food. And though the line spilled out of the cafe and the tables were mostly full, it didn’t take us that long to find a free table, order, open our bottles of wine, and settle in. The scene at the cafe is bustling, jovial, and a great place to let kids run around. A lot of the people there were of the boating flavor. And though I envy their deep suntans, their disposable income, and their clever whale belts, I do not count myself as one of them. But seafood shacks, like public parks, are great levelers. We were all there to relax, eat, and enjoy – boat-owners and non-boat-owners alike, all are welcome and all will leave happy.

May I recommend the Fisherman's Platter? May I recommend sharing said Fisherman's Platter?

The menu is your typical seaside shack fare, but it’s excellently executed. And though they offer choices that are not cooked in a vat of oil, I recommend sticking with the fried seafood. There were a couple of women in my group who, out of a misguided attempt to respect the status of their waistlines, went with the healthier baked fish option. Both were audibly disappointed with their food and both were eyeing my fried clams. I had to keep them away from my plate by making rapid stabbing movements in the air with my plastic fork.

The evening light turned soft and magical

I ordered the fisherman’s platter, which is an obscene amount of food. The fried fish and oysters were the best parts of my seafood smorgasbord. I ate until I couldn’t eat another bite and then, acting like a royal dispensing favors, I shared my leftovers. A scallop for you, my good man. A fried oyster for you, my fine lady. But I do recommend two people for every one fisherman’s platter. It cuts the cost and is the best way to avoid overdoing it.

The cafe overlooks Cape Cod Bay

After a long, leisurely meal with friends and family, the food was finished, the wine bottles were empty, and the sky was beginning to darken, so we cleared out. Before we headed home, we went on a little detour (turning right, when we should’ve turned left) along the small streets that hug the shoreline. I highly recommend doing this so you can check out the incredibly beautiful homes (see how the other .oo1% lives) and watch everything around you turn electric gold and orange as the sun makes its glorious descent behind the horizon. An evening like this is when everything feels right and good. These are what Virginia Woolf calls Moments of Being. Or maybe they are just the best moments of being on Cape Cod.

If only this picture did justice to the overwhelming beauty of this sunset!

Last week’s field trip was to Springdale Farm in Spencerport. 

Here’s the website for more information:

http://www.heritagechristianservices.org/springdale/index.html

This is a definite must-do field trip for preschoolers to school aged children.  Not too far away and doesn’t take too long to get through.  Nice variety of animals.  Some learning activities.  Free admission, although the petting zoo area and the dairy barn tour you must pay for.  They also have a playground and picnic tables in case you’d like to pack a lunch.

Try it out & let me know if your family gives it a thumbs-up, too!

luke just loves trains. i mean i know a lot of little boys like trains. but luke LOVES trains. he says choo-choo at least a couple dozen times a day. he spots barren tracks that i wouldn’t ever notice and enthusiastically  points them out to me . any day, any time, if he sees a train… he’s alert and ready to stare at it until it disappears.  he is truly, adorably obsessed. here he is with his cousin jack on his very first, sorta, train ride.  a caterpillar on tracks, really. but so cute! he was apprehensive, as you can tell by his expression. jack was very relaxed, as you can tell by his casual flair and waving. but luke wanted to go back on once it was over and made his sad face and soft “wah” when i was sitting him in his car seat. i think he knew it was over and it suddenly made him emotional. but we’re seeing Thomas in August so he’ll get over it that day.

Where am I? In a Van Gough painting? My eyes could not believe the color of these golden fields of heath at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

Once I was out walking around the salt marsh, heath, and ponds of the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, surrounded by the happiest birds on Cape Cod and some of the most profound beauty I’ve ever seen, it seemed impossible to me that I’d spent a lifetime on the Cape without ever coming here, but somehow (dumbly) I managed. But now that I’ve been here once, it will be difficult to keep me away from this incredible place. The Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, located off Route 6 in Wellfleet (close to the Wellfleet Drive-in) and part of Mass Audubon, a Massachusetts organization that fights for wildlife and habitat protection, is a hands down, must-visit destination on Cape Cod. 

Goose Pond Trail takes you by the Sanctuary's salt marsh.

I was clearly the only one on the Cape who wasn’t hip to the treasure that is this Wildlife Sanctuary because, on the morning I visited, it was hard to find a parking spot in their rather ample lot. But though it was busy with both young and old, my time there never felt crowded or rushed. After all, with 1,100 acres of earth to delicately tromp around on, there was plenty of room for us all.

The Wildlife Sanctuary has four distinct, well-maintained trails that each take you through a variety of different landscapes – from pine woods to freshwater ponds to beach to salt marsh. All the trails begin at the Sanctuary’s Nature Center, which is a green building that uses solar heating, has composting toilets and graywater planter beds. The Center also has an exhibit that is a fantastic introduction to the natural wonders of Cape Cod. There are two large fish tanks – one that is salt water and one that is fresh water – which allow you to see fish, crabs, and other shy creatures up close. I gawked at their collection of animal skeletons and taxidermic birds. The Humpback whale vertebrae and 6 foot long jawbone were my two favorites because of their mind-blowing size and pristine, bleached beauty. They also have a great collection of hands-on stuff for kids. Your little ones can manhandle a tortoise shell, a starfish, the remnants of horseshoe crabs of days long past, and other wonders of nature that they usually aren’t allowed to touch.

The Exhibit at the Nature Center is full of cool wonders of nature. On the wall in the middle is the very sculptural, very large Humpback Whale vertebrae.

Because I was a first-timer at the Wildlife Sanctuary, one of the lovely volunteers recommended the Goose Pond Trail – their most popular walk. The walk takes you through their flower garden, into the woods, out onto a boardwalk that extends to the beach, then on through a salt marsh where crabs scurry into holes in the sand right beneath your feet, then through glorious expanses of multi-colored heath. The walk was divine. And let me tell you about the birds! There were tons of them – the sky was ringing with their calls. If I was a bird, this is where I’d be, so this place is definitely a great place for birders. I saw many of those quietly serious birders carrying tripods and cameras with lenses as long as my arm. Birders are not a noisy or effusive bunch, but I could still tell that they were having fun.

Sorry, a bit tough to read as it is here, but this is a list displayed in the Nature Center of all the birds and creatures to be on the look out for while in the sanctuary.

But the thing I was excited about was how kid-friendly the sanctuary is. I ran into a group of children out on a guided tour – each armed with a net and a pail. They were outside exploring the natural world and all of them seemed utterly enthralled. I thought it was one of the coolest things a kid could do on the Cape. And there are great programs offered for adults – such as sunset canoeing, kayaking, marsh cruises, a “birding for beginners” tour, and other delightful ways to explore the sanctuary.

The trails are open every day from 8 am to dusk. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for kids. Be sure to check out what programs they are offering when you visit, some require registration. Oh, and no pets! We love our dogs, but the birds don’t, so leave them at home.

There are many picturesque sitting spots all along the Goose Pond trail.

I was hoping to spot one of their diamond back turtles, but all I could see was the reflection of the clouds in this sweet little pond.

How can you resist seeing a view like this for yourself. Get thee to a sanctuary!!

A busy but swiftly moving flow of people shared the pure pleasure of minigolfing amongst the pirate kitsch

The poet Frank O’Hara wrote, “I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It’s more important to confirm the least sincere. The clouds get enough attention as it is.” So, though I share neither O’Hara’s impulse to ignore those beautiful clouds in the sky, nor his genius, I too will pen an ode to the least sincere, to a land of turquoise dyed water, artificial grass, and terra cotta-colored boulders manufactured out of plaster. This is a love song to Pirate’s Cove Mini Golf in South Yarmouth.

Pirate’s Cove is the most over-the-top putt putt destination that I know of on the Cape. Featuring several waterfalls, sunken pirate ships, caves, and two 18 hole mini golf courses, it is pure kitsch and tons of fun. It was tremendously busy when I was there, but, thankfully, there wasn’t too much standing around time. When I did find myself waiting for my turn at the tee, I put my energies to good use by studying the mistakes and successes of the putt putt players ahead of me. As we all proceeded around the course, clustered in our individual groups, we got to know each other. We began sharing tips on where to steer the ball. We cheered for each other’s successes and made camaraderie-fueled grimaces when faced with each other’s failures.

While playing (badly), I surveyed the scene – here we all were, crammed onto a small bit of land, surrounded by parking lots and Route 28, yelling at our brightly colored golf balls (which rarely seemed to obey our intentions), listening to bad music, in a highly manufactured landscape, saturated with phony pirate lore, yet everyone from age 2 to age 82 seemed to be having a wonderful time. There was laughing, smiling, some bouts of pouting, and then some more laughing. We were all collectively at play. Though the experience is about as unique to Cape Cod as frozen fish sticks, sometimes the authentic local experience is not what’s called for. Sometimes it’s best to embrace the synthetic, get silly, and let the brightly colored golf ball roll wherever it sees fit.

Pirate’s Cove is located on 778 Main Street in South Yarmouth and is open from mid April to the end of October. A round of golf will set an adult back about $8 and children play for a dollar less than that.

The kids and I have a bunch of “field trips” planned for the summer.  Last week’s trip was to the Amherst Museum.

Details here.

Would definitely recommend this place.  It’s along the same lines as Genesee Country Museum, but on a smaller scale.  They had two exhibits that my kids loved – one was a pioneer kitchen (all stuff that they could play with and touch) and the other was an exhibit on the Erie Canal, complete with a full-sized packet boat model. 

The price is cheap ($5.00 for adults and 1.50 for kids.  Under 5 free – the website prices haven’t been updated).  It is fairly small, so doesn’t take too long to get through, and it seemed to keep my two-year-old’s attention pretty well.

If you don’t mind driving a bit to get there, this is a nice “morning” field trip.  We stopped for lunch & ice cream on the way back and had a great time!  Try it out!