A Glimpse of Wednesday

It’s been raining here off and on all week.  Our pool was almost completely full on Tuesday night.

I went outside to feel to cooler air and take a few photos of the rain and the pool.  It made me thankful for our cozy,dry house.  I love rainy nights.

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Cutie Pie’s teacher has been doing a unit on the five senses with the children in her class.  On Wednesday they were covering the sense of smell.  I volunteered to do the Kool-Aid watercolor activity that I had done a while back with Cutie Pie.  She happily invited me to come in and said that it sounded way more fun than coloring with smelly markers like she had planned.

I took two children aside at a time to paint with dissolved Kool-Aid.  I drew fruit shapes to match each scent and had the children decide which color went with each fruit based on the smell of the “paint”.  The children seemed to really enjoy this activity and could not wait to smell each of the colorful cups of Kool-Aid.  The room smelled so good!

Cutie Pie was thrilled to have his mommy visit his classroom.  He kept running up to give me hugs!

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I carpool with a friend of mine.  Her middle child and Cutie Pie attend the same preschool so we take turns driving them to and from school.  Wednesday was my turn since my friend’s oldest child came down with a stomach bug.  I snapped the photo above of the two kiddos chilling out to a movie on the way home.  They look so darn cute, I can’t stand it!

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Wildman’s buddy came over to play after school on Wednesday too.  The boys managed to litter toys from one end of the house to the other in a matter of minutes.  Such is the nature of play dates, I suppose.  My inner neat freak was crying out the whole time but I refrained from cleaning until Wildman’s friend had been picked up 🙂

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There you have it.  A random grouping of events from mid-week.  Fascinating, I know!

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I’m on a Boat

Yep.  I’m on a boat alright.

J and I left the house last Friday with our 16 ft. Wellcraft…

And came back home towing a 28 ft. Sea Ray…

Here is a better view of it.

Do you want to know the craziest part of our Friday boat adventure?

We did not pay a dime for the new (to us) boat.  I know!  How is that possible?

Well, I’ll tell you.  J met a retired guy while lobstering in the Keys a couple of weekends ago who was looking to unload his boat.  Actually, he was looking to sell or trade it to someone.  He had his 28 ft. Sea Ray listed on Craigslist and had recently lowered the price in hopes of attracting some attention.  The boat was simply too big for him and his wife to manage in the wake of his recent medical problems.  But because the economy is so crappy he wasn’t getting any interest from anyone.  He told J that he would trade us his boat for ours.

After much consideration, research, measuring, studying and consulting a Sea Ray engineer who lives a few blocks away, we decided to take the man up on his offer.  All signs pointed to us coming out way ahead on this deal.

We didn’t want to strap ourselves with a money pit, however.  The boat had to fit on our side yard in order to avoid paying a monthly storage fee.  It had to run perfectly and have a solid hull as well.

We asked the boat’s owner to meet us at a boat ramp on Lake Okeechobee on Friday morning so that we could inspect it and take a test drive.  I am happy to report that the boat ran wonderfully.  The engine was so incredibly quiet.  I am used to hearing our outboard motor so it was quite a surprise to barely hear the rumble of this larger boat’s inboard engine.

We were also treated to some of the local redneck flavor while out on the water…

The only things really wrong with the boat are cosmetic in nature.  The vinyl needs a good bleaching.  Some of the interior upholstery needs to be replaced.  The teak needs to be oiled back to it’s shiny glory.  The wasp infestation needs to be remedied…  All of the aesthetic things can be tackled in time.  The most important thing is that the boat seems to be in sound operating condition.

I spent a lot of time in the cabin taking photographs while J got the mechanical lo-down from the owner.

Here is the galley.  This boat is like a little RV inside.  It’s so cool!

The cabin sleeps six.  This is the main sleeping area.  There is another tiny ‘bedroom’ toward the stern that would maybe sleep two tiny adults.

Overall, we were quite impressed with the Lissy B II (soon to be the Pura Vida).  We took the owner up on his boat swap offer and left the backwoods of the south Lake Okeechobee area with a certified yacht.

I’ll save the spectacle of parking it on the side of the house for another time.  It was one of the craziest and scariest things I’ve seen in quite some time.  It is safely parked there now and that is all that matters!

Fall Craft: Autumn Tree Window Cling

This is my first post after our home PC decided to commit suicide last week.  J struggled all weekend to recover our data and put it onto our MacBook Pro.  It was a herculean effort given how difficult it was to access the files and the fact that we brought home a new (to us) boat on Friday that required a complete fence rebuild on our side yard for yacht storage.  More on that later though!  Just know that it’s a miracle that I’m able to be Internet-functional today.

The boys and I worked on a simple fall craft today in the form of a cute autumn tree.  Cutie Pie got started this morning by painting two sheets of construction paper with washable paint in fall colors.  It took a long time for his artwork to dry due to the monsoon that we’ve been experiencing this week.  My plan was to have Cousin B make a tree too but the paint hadn’t dried by the time he had to leave this afternoon.

The idea is really simple.  I cut out a tree form from black construction paper.  Then I cut out a bunch of leaf shapes from the pages that Cutie Pie had painted earlier in the day.  Wildman helped us adhere the tree and the leaves to the sticky side of a sheet of contact paper this evening.  Then we stuck it to our sliding glass door.

Viola!

I give you our fall tree!  I love how it turned out!  It was a quick and easy autumn craft that I will keep in my mental file for years to come.