Neat Stuff
Here are a few pictures I’ve taken around the house and yard recently. …
Author: Leslie Kimel
St. George: Part Five
Jake and Mom waiting for the ghost tour to begin Probably the neatest thing we did during our beach trip was attend the Spring Ghost Tour at the Chestnut Street Cemetery in Apalachicola. The Chestnut Street Cemetery has graves that date back to the 1830s. …
St. George: Part Four
Sophie doing a little hula hooping on the deck. I just wish I’d framed this shot a bit better.
On Friday night at the beach house, Sophie and Matt watched an NCIS marathon. I tried to watch with them, but I immediately fell asleep. The next morning Matt told me he said to Sophie, “Leslie was counting sheep and she got to one.”
I thought it was so cute the way Sophie and Matt were watching NCIS together . I didn’t know this before, but Sophie is a huge NCIS fan. Her favorite characters are “Abby” and “Gibbs.” (I asked her.) While Matt and Sophie were watching NCIS, Sophie made Matt toss Honey Graham Oh’s to her so she could catch them in her mouth.
“She made me throw cereal at her for about half an hour,” Matt complained the next morning.
Jake bossed us all weekend, and if we didn’t do exactly what he wanted he’d get hilariously melodramatic. He looked so cute in his pajamas, shouting, “I’m going to remember this vacation! Nobody cooperated!” He kept crossing his arms and sticking out his bottom lip.
We played lots of games in the beach house. We played Spot It and Dweebies and made Shrinky Dinks. Bunny taught Sophie some hula-hooping tricks.
On the beach, Bunny and Sophie and Kris and Jake built “factories” in the sand.
“I’m Poogan,” Kris explained to me when I came along later, “and Jake’s name is Sharmin. This factory is a fresh start for us. Sharmin was fired from his last job for harassment.”
It was so funny hearing Jake shout, “Poogan!” Everything is so urgent with him. There was a lot of urgent business at their factory in the sand.
St. George: Part Three
Jake was so funny at the beach house. Well, I guess he’s always funny. Whenever anybody accidentally cussed, Jake would repeat it, with a big, merry grin on his face: “Ooh, you said ‘sh!+’! Mommy, Rob said ‘sh!+’! Stop cussing, Rob!” he’d say.
St. George: Part Two
Kris and Jake have the cutest, closest relationship. They’re like an old married couple, always together and always kind of getting on each other’s nerves. Several times they were seen walking side by side on the beach, happily bickering, both rolling their eyes, Jake making air quotes. Jake is such a drama queen.
St. George: Part One
There was plenty of nonsense at the beach house. Sophie spent a fair amount of time catching Honey Graham Oh’s in her mouth.
This weekend my family and I took a trip to St. George Island, just about an hour and a half away from home. We stayed in a beach house and rented bicycles and collected sand dollars and wore flip-flops and ate too much birthday cake and had a great old time. I’m still sore today (Monday) from laughing so hard at Jake, who is seven and quite possibly the bossiest person in the world. Kris said Jake’s theme for the weekend was “I won’t take no for an answer.”
The first thing Bun and I did was play Liv dolls with Sophie (Kris and Mom were doing a puzzle). Matt sat nearby waiting for the perfect opportunity to annoy us–and he found it amazingly quickly too. He strapped a tiny bicycle helmet over a doll’s face and said, “Hey Sophie, it’s pretty cool they come with Halloween costumes, huh? I mean, this Jason one is pretty cool, right?”
“Shut up!” Sophie cried. “Give me that! Give me my doll!”
Meanwhile, Jake was sitting on the couch doing mad libs with Rob.
“A type of liquid,” Rob prompted him.
“Tee-tee!” Jake cried with glee.
Rob and Jake did a mad lib together. Then Jake started on his own. He had a Club Penguin book of mad libs, and he was doing it all by himself, filling in the blanks with his hilariously bad handwriting and using the same words over and over: poo, pooey, fart, tee-tee, dumb, stupid, crap, crappy, Barney, Barbie, moron, morons, and idiots.
After he finished filling in each page, he’d say in his very loudest, happiest voice, “So, do you guys want me to read this one? Do you want me to read it to you?!”
And then he’d read us an entire page of penguin-themed nonsense, with some insults to Barney and Barbie thrown in.
Jake is an excellent reader, but he had a bit of difficulty making out his own ridiculous handwriting. Over and over, the words “Barney” and “Barbie” proved particularly challenging to decipher:
“ . . . And then the stupid waiter brought them a crappy pizza topped with Barney, no Barbie, no Barney . . . !”
There was one page about pirate penguins. Jake read it aloud (of course). “Shiver me crappers!” he cried in his happiest voice. “It’s a crap’s life for me!”
“Shiver me crappers,” Matt mumbled. “I might actually use that one.”
Jake came to the end of the page (we had listened to literally dozens of pages). “And that’s all I have so far,” he said apologetically.
“So fart?” Matt said.
Jake nodded, grinning, and got to work on the next page.
Meanwhile, Sophie and Bun and I were still playing Liv dolls. Sophie was getting mad at the way Bun and I were dressing the girls. “Leslie, why did you put those slippers on her?” Sophie cried.
“Oh, I thought they were clogs,” I said sheepishly.
“Why do you even play with Queen Commander?” Rob asked me. “You know you can’t do anything right.”
“Oh, but it’s fun trying,” I said. “I mean, maybe someday . . .”
Sophie kept getting “ticked off.”
“Okay, Sophie,” Bun said, “why are you ticked off?”
“Because Leslie and you are jacking up my dolls!”
She got especially steamed when I dressed Jaden in a pair of knee-high boots with shorts.
Matt was really bugging Sophie too—but he was doing it on purpose.
“Um, Sophie, do you have a little pillow we can put on the hammock?” I asked, and Matt threw me a packet of desiccant he’d found in the crack of the couch.
“Not that!” Sophie cried, and she threw the desiccant across the room.
Matt asked Sophie if there were any boy Liv dolls.
“There’s one,” Sophie answered in a perfunctory sort of way (she was busy dressing her doll). “Jake.”
“Oh, yeah,” Matt said. “I’ve seen him. Looks kind of like Bieber? . . . Now do you say it ‘Beeber’ or ‘Biber’? I’m never sure. . . .”
Sophie threw a peanut butter cup at him.
Jake flossing his very far-apart teeth . . . in the living room . . .
Short and Sweet
A few new pictures: My new old tray table in the sun room. I got it at Out of the Attic in Tallahassee. Here I am in the cilantro patch. Doesn’t the bolting cilantro look like Queen Anne’s lace? Another shot of the Swiss chard. I can’t …
Happy Easter: Part Two
We hid eggs, of course, at Kris’s Easter party. This is not something we do just to entertain the kids. We grown-up Kimel sisters actually love hiding and finding eggs. We like hiding them in the most picturesque ways …
Happy Easter: Part One
Sophie and Jake’s Easter eggs contained some awesome Sprite-flavored candies, among other things.
On Easter Sunday, we all got together at Kris’s house. Everybody contributed food for lunch. Bun brought perfect empanadas stuffed with black beans and butternut squash; I brought oven fries, kale, and red bean dip; Mom brought watermelon, green beans, and really great parsley potatoes (just ask Sophie); and Kris made some terrific jerk seitan patties.
It was another strange, burning hot spring day (it’s too hot and we desperately need rain). We gathered at Kris’s house and started eating right away, after we took pictures on the golf course across the street. I was so excited because Sophie consented to try one of my oven fries. She put it in her mouth. She chewed. And then a look of disgust came over her face.
“Leslie,” she said, in an incredulous tone, “what did you do to these potatoes?! They’re hot! They’re disgusting! What did you put on them?”
“Um, a little cayenne pepper,” I said sheepishly.
Sophie rolled her eyes. “Well, you jacked them up,” she said.
Mom cried, “Oh, Lez, these are wonderful potatoes!”
“Mom feels sorry for me,” I said to Sophie.
“Well, I don’t,” Sophie said. “You jacked up your potatoes.”
“What’s going on?” Kris asked, coming into the kitchen.
“Sophie was offended by my oven fries,” I explained.
Kris laughed. “And she didn’t mind telling you about it, right?”
“Right.”
We started eating under a big umbrella by the pool.
Bunny took a bite of a seitan patty. “Kris, these are good!” she enthused.
“They’re from Walmart,” Sophie said, rolling her eyes.
“They are not from Walmart!” Kris protested.
“They’re from Walmart, Bunny,” Sophie said.
Sophie’s meal was pure white. She ate Mom’s potatoes and some dinner rolls and nothing else.
After lunch we looked at Sophie and Jake’s Easter baskets. They were so extravagant. Sophie’s was basically a bushel basket, absolutely stuffed. Before Easter Sophie said to Kris, “Mommy, could you tell the Easter Bunny that I only want toys, not candy?”
Jake made this observation about the Easter Bunny: “Mommy, I’d have to say the Easter Bunny is pretty unusual for a rabbit. I mean, some rabbits might hop into your house just out of curiosity, but they can’t usually read addresses or hold things like baskets in their hands.”
The Easter Bunny brought Sophie and Jake masks and snorkels, cute stickers, bunny and frog magnets, peanut butter cups, and marshmallow Peeps. Sophie got an origami kit and Shrinky Dinks, and Jake got Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (one of my favorite books).
Sophie also got an outfit for her American Girl doll. While she was distracted, I quietly opened the box to admire the plum-colored corduroy jacket and khaki bellbottoms, the little purple beret and matching clogs. It was truly a marvelous little outfit. I was holding the beret (very carefully and gently) when I heard these stern words:
“Drop it, Leslie. Drop it now.”
It was Sophie!
I nearly jumped out of my skin. We all know how fussy Sophie is about her American Girl stuff. Once Tuxie, Sophie’s cat, dragged Lanie, one of the American Girl dolls, down the stairs, and Kris caught her. She said, “Tuxie! What are you doing? What if Sophie saw you? Don’t you value your life?”
Sophie did find it in her heart to forgive me (eventually). So we decided to do a little origami—she and Bunny and I.
It took us a little while to choose exactly which project to work on.
“How about this one?” I suggested, pointing to a page in the little instruction manual.
“No,” Sophie said. “That’s supposed to be a mouse, but it doesn’t look like a mouse.”
“It looks like a mouse to me,” Matt said.
Sophie rolled her eyes. “You don’t know what a mouse looks like.”
We finally ended up making foxes. I needed lots of help. Origami is way too hard for me.
. . . And I’ll tell you more in a little while.
Sophie inhaling rose petals on the golf course
Jake putting up with me
Jake’s Easter basket has a face.