The warm spring was but a harbinger of the hot summer to come. Summers in Indiana tend toward mild humidity, and usually involve a fair amount of rain. Not this year. By the end of May, the weather was already unusually dry, averaging less than half the usual rainfall. When June showed up, I could have sworn we were living in the west again. Or I would have sworn it if anyone had watered their lawns. If you live in the west, you may not actually realize that there are places where lawns grow
without sprinklers--at least I never realized it until I moved east. Certainly nobody has the underground timed sprinklers that popped out in my childhood yard every morning. Only a handful of people seem to have the sort that you can hook up to the hose outside--and those tend to be for birthday parties and hot summer playdates, not for watering lawns. Which led to a lot of yellow and brown lawns in our neighborhood (including our own--no, we're not dedicated enough to go out and water our lawn daily, especially since the cost for water is well above the national average here). Considering the fact that after years of talking about it, this was the year we finally actually planted things in our garden, we took the ensuing drought personally at times. Our peas and spinach got scorched right off, though the tomatoes soldiered through, and the zucchini somehow managed to cling to life as well.
Despite the parched earth, summer still sprouted plenty of opportunities for fun, for relaxation, and a bit of work in the mix. Theo's birthday always seems to land on a day that's special in one way or another. This year it fell on the same day as his fifth-grade choir trip to Indiana Beach, a smaller-scale amusement park a couple of hours out of town. I'm so glad he not only participated in choir this year, but also that he talked several of his friends into being a part of it with him. It definitely made this trip more fun for all of them. Aaron got to go along as a chaperone--something he doesn't often get to do--making Theo insanely happy, mainly because it meant that he got to play on the iPad on the way up, which was apparently a major highlight of the trip. When the two of them got home, just in time for cake and presents, Theo declared it "the best day of his life," and enjoyed his baseball birthday cake and presents of a betta fish from Addy, an Angry Birds poster from Emerson, a pack of gum from Sera, a voice autotuner gadget from Aaron, and a new scooter (he wore his last one completely out) from me.
In an effort to direct the rest of the excess out-of-school energy, I introduced a "theme" for our summer: Pioneers. Not only the wagons-to-the-west Mormon pioneers, but other kinds of pioneers as well: space pioneers, explorers, political leaders--anyone who sees something that has never been done and does it, pretty much. We trekked down to the library for the summer reading program and walked out with bags full of books about pioneers, from American Girls to Buzz Aldrin to Steve Jobs. On a tip from a friend, I had stocked up on a bunch of books left over from school Scholastic book fairs this year, all discounted 50% or more. I told the kids that for every 10 books about pioneers that they read, they could choose a new book from my big box. They got straight to work, and launched us into some lovely and surprisingly quiet summer mornings (although we down-graded to 5 books/prize pretty quickly).
After a week to cool off from the school year and reorient for the summer, I launched into a series of KinderKeys summer camps. Though they were a lot of work to plan, put together, fill, and to carry off, they ended up being a lot of fun. The preschool camps (ages 4-7) during the first week were
so energetic, but the kids were enthusiastic and really seemed to gravitate toward the activities we did--making songs with water-filled jars, trying out different instruments, learning a bit at the keyboards, and exploring the music of different composers. They were great, if exhausting. The older camp (ages 6-9) was much easier to run, by comparison, and the kids were able to really get their hands dirty, learning to compose their own melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and sequences. It was cool for me to get to teach some things more in-depth than I'm able to in regular piano classes, and I was so impressed with the songs that the children were composing by the end of the week. Anyway, at the end of the week, I vowed not to do the camps again, because of how much work they required, but by a few weeks later I was already reconsidering. There's just something wonderful about seeing kids really click with music, and it's such a blessing to be the one who gets to help that happen. More likely I will just have to make the preschool camps a little shorter--2 1/2 hours can be longer than you think! During camps, Theo got to spend a week at a cub scout camp (which he didn't particularly care for), and the other kids got a chance to spend a little quality time with their dad--he hasn't had as much opportunity as I have to take everyone to the park or spraypad, visit the library, and stop by McDonald's for 79 cent cones every summer, so I think it was a fun diversion for him--though he usually ended up glad to have his iPad to keep him company.
This year, Aaron even took on his first birthday party! After fighting Theo on having a "themed" event for the last two years, I finally gave in this year and sent him with a few of his friends and Aaron to a bowling alley, where they had pizza and soda and bowled a couple of games. Correction: they
would have bowled a couple of games except that a gigantic storm blew in.
Gigantic. I had taken the younger children shopping with me to a strip-mall store called Gordman's, and though we walked in under moderately cloudy skies, within moments, rain started pinging the top of the roof so hard it sounded like drums, and there was a terrifying crash overhead and rumbling thunder. Just as I thought to myself "this is not a place I would want to be if a tornado ever blew in," there was a second loud crash and the lights all went out. Since the store went pitch black except for a few emergency lights, all the shoppers worked their way to the front of the store, where we could see that outside it looked like 9 pm, and rain was pouring down in sheets. The wind was blowing wildly, and I became increasingly unsure of whether in fact a tornado had touched down or was about to. Taking stock of the circumstances, I decided that not many places could be worse equipped for this kind of emergency than the store I was in. I ran to our van and pulled it up to the curb to let the kids (who got completely soaked in the three seconds it took to get from the doors to the van) hop in, and we headed home. Almost immediately I began to doubt my judgement, as billboards had flown to the ground, large roofing panels had blown off several nearby stores, and more than one tree had split in two. However, we said a quick prayer and drove home, as slowly and carefully as we dared. I've never been quite so happy to drive into our nice, dry garage! As soon as we made it safely into the house, we ran to the great big windows that overlook our backyard to watch the rest of the storm. Already one of our huge willow trees (one that had been looking a bit sickly, thanks to the drought), had crashed to the ground--thankfully falling
away from our house, rather than toward it. Anxiously, we called Aaron, only to find out that he and the boys were on their way home as well, driving through the storm (which had settled down a bit). A couple of moments later, our lights flickered, then went out. Just as the storm (which dropped astonishingly little rain considering the disaster it wreaked) was clearing away, the parents of Theo's friends came to pick them up, and we all ogled the fallen tree in our back yard and wondered when the power might come back on.
Well, it didn't come back on. However, you may recall our theme for the summer: pioneers. We pulled out the board games and the books, and plunged into our very own pioneer experience. What was it like before electricity? We sure found out. For one thing, there was definitely no refrigeration. Luckily, power was only out in small sections of the city, and we happened to be in one of the ones they took their time getting around to. That was unpleasant, of course, but it also meant that some friends were able to lend us their generator to plug our freezer, refrigerator, and a few lights into for a few hours every day. Since we eat a lot of salad in the summer as it is, things weren't too bad on the food front, but we did rather long for a grill to cook on now and again. Of course, restaurants were open, so we ate out a few times, but for the most part we stuck to our regular summer activities--getting outdoors as much as possible, and visiting the zoo and the botanical gardens and such. It took nearly a week before we started to really really want the power back on again (mostly for computer reasons--our internet didn't work even with charged devices). And, well, that's how we ended our month. As pioneers. As pioneers interested in the invention of electricity, to be quite honest.
