Riding with Oma

On Saturday, we were able to spend the afternoon and evening in Doylestown with Jeff's family. Most of them, anyway. It's rare for us to visit Doylestown without some momentous occasion taking place. There are so many birthdays and holidays that need to be celebrated. We are usually there for one of those. But this Saturday, we came for the fun of it. The kids were able to ride horses with Jeff's mom and some of their cousins.

Grace told us many days before the visit with Oma's horses, that she would not be taking part in any riding. But, brave girl that she is, she took her first ride on the back of horse. Jan was her name.

And, of course, there were barn cats to be enjoyed.

After riding and visiting Mom vB's beginnings of her farm house, we had an enjoyable dinner with the family.

A night in the life of the van Bastelaar family

I've been told that some think that being a stay-at-home mother is a boring life calling. Not at my house. The excitement and drama rarely cease--there's 3 kids involved, remember?

Tonight was one of those nights. I had prepared dinner as much as possible before Jeff arrived home. The salad was ready, the table was set, everything was waiting on his arrival. I simply needed him to walk through the door and the burgers could be thrown on the grill in the backyard and then we could eat as a big happy family.

Jeff came home a bit later than planned and told me that he left before he should have because he had a conference call he still needed to take. But he thought he would take it from home so that dinner could be started sooner. The plan seemed fool proof. He would grill while taking the call. I would feed the baby and do the last minute dinner prep. Ingenious.

Just as we finished finalizing the plan, the call came. The phone rang. Jeff got a "one tract mind" look in his eyes, bolted up the steps with his blackberry phone in his hands and answered the call. I assumed he'd get the call rolling and be right back down to do his grilling duty. So, I went out back and turned on the grill on high to let it preheat for the burgers.

I, then, went back inside to start my end of the deal--feeding Kate. I opened the babyfood, which happened to be greenbeans. I put Kate in her high chair. I started feeding her, pouring drinks, getting the burgers out and grill tools. I continued with my task. After about 10 minutes, it occurred to me that Jeff was still upstairs and that maybe he had forgotten about the grill. "I'll just throw the burgers on for him," I thought to myself. I walked outback with raw burgers on a plate in one hand and a large metal spatula in the other. I was greeted by the site of a tall billow of grey smoke ascending from our grill and clouding the sky above our house and the neighbor's back yard. I raced over to the grill and without thinking through fire safety rules, whipped open the lid of the gas grill with my right hand. A burst of flames jumped out before I had time to let go of the handle on the grill top. I was shocked at what happened and jumped backward. I then looked at my right arm. Every hair had been singed. There were tiny black hairs on my otherwise unburnt arm. Close call.

I recollected myself and turned the grill back, put 5 burgers on the rack and then heard hilarious laughing coming from the kitchen. "Oh good," I thought, "Jeff's phone call is over, he is tickling the kids and will be ready to take over grilling." And then Joost sprinted out the back door. "Gracie is feeding the baby!"

Oh crap. I was pretty sure Gracie did not have that skill set yet. I ran back inside.

What I saw next was not Grace feeding Kate, but 7 month old, I have no pincer grasp Kate feeding Kate. "Look, mom!" said Grace. "Isn't Kate doing a great job?"

She was not. There were green beans everywhere. They were all over her face, hands, bib, clothing, highchair, highchair liner, the floor, the walls--anything within the five foot radius of the high chair was splattered with green beans.



I grabbed the spoon and dish from her. It was a mess, a rather comical one, but a mess and there was no time for laughter. There was cleanup to be done. I could think of nothing else. First I tackled the floor so that I could come close to the baby. I thought maybe I could wipe her down and resume the feeding, but it was not possible. Green beans had found their way inside her clothing. I pulled her from the green bean covered chair and took her straight into the bathtub. I bathed her and put her in clean pajamas. I cleaned up the chair and put a new liner on. I pulled out new food. I gathered the pile of greenbean defiled laundry and put them in the washing machine.


And then it dawned on me....the burgers! I ran back out side. Well, first, I put the baby food in a position where no child of mine could reach it. Then I ran back outside to rescue the slightly blackened burgers.

I finished the grilling, loaded on cheese to hide the burns on the burgers, finished pouring drinks for everyone, and called the kids to the table to start dinner time. (I assumed at this point that Jeff's phone call was going to be a long one, so I gave up hope of having dinner with him.) Just as everyone was settling around the table, Jeff came down the steps.

"Do you want me to get the burgers on the grill?" he asked.

and then they came from Texas

Another set of award winning friends came to visit us later in the week. Laura and Charlton Wimberly are friends of ours from our Philadelphia days. Jeff and Charlton went to law school together and we all went to Tenth and attended the same Sunday School Class. That class has produced some lifelong friendships. Many thanks to the Ferners, Harders, Leonards and others who helped make that class and those friendships what they are today.

Laura and Charlton have a 3 year old son, Stephen. We tried to make the visit as kid friendly as possible, for his sake, so we spent another afternoon at Hershey Chocolate World. Joost and Grace never tire of that place (really, who, of any age, tires of free chocolate?)


They were able to stay for 2 nights, so we had some lovely times of catching up and enjoying laughs together. On day 2, we drove north to Lake Tobias (you might recognize that name...it is quite popular on this blog). The kids, especially, had fun watching, feeding and petting the animals. A good deal of hand sanitizer was given out that day.

(this is a zeedonk, if anyone is wondering. it is part zebra and part donkey.)

This visit was so nice. we had never been able to meet Stephen before, so it was a treat to finally see him in person. (Although, Jeff did get an unexpected visit with Stephen two weeks earlier when he was stuck in Texas over night while trying to fly home from Mexico. That is another story....) It was great to spend so much time with Laura. She is such a treasured friend. I wish Texas wasn't quite so far away and we could see them more often, but it's wonderful to have those weekends here and there when it works out.

Friends from sunny LA

I will begin this post by saying that Jeff and I have some of the most wonderful friends--ones who are willing to travel across the country to see us. This week is full of them. The first set are the Perkins, which this post is all about. The second set will be coming to stay with us later this week, but we'll talk more about that later.

Steve and Jeff were good friends while Jeff lived in California. He and Stacy were married a few months before us. We had kids all around the same time. We continue to stay close despite the 2,600 miles that lie between us. And, sweet friends as they are, when they came to the North East to visit Steve's family in Maine, they drove south to see us, too. We had a great time together. If you follow both the Perkins' blog and ours, Steve will most likely write a much more clever and funny post about it all, but here's mine, none the less.

We wanted to show off Harrisburg a bit, so we did one day of our standard tour when out of town guests come to stay with us. First we took them to the capital building in town. We had a good time touring without an official tour guide. The kids held up well since they knew that the next stop was Hershey Chocolate World.

The next day, we went to Gettysburg. We had a good time hiking around Little Round Top. Remember the bad feelings I was having as I hiked up the Corolla Lighthouse with my 3 children? Those same feelings were felt (to a slightly lesser extent) when I, without fore site, took all 5 of the kids up to the top of a memorial tower on my own. Stacy did eventually join me (that's the picture below) and she helped with the trek back down the twisting staircase. After that, everyone climbed around Devil's Den and then we picniced there. We then saw the site of Lincoln's Address.

Interesting Fact of the Day: Jeff's forefather, General James T. Pettigrew, who was a Confederate, helped lead Pickett's Charge.

We're glad for the Perkins friendship and pray that it will continue for many more years. Thanks for coming to visit us!

a week at the beach

Every summer we spend a week at the beach. The particular beach varies from year to year. The family we spend the week with bounces back and forth every year. This year it was at the Outer Banks in Corolla with Liz's parents.

Joost made sure we acquired him a boogie board before the trip began. He rode some great waves and didn't even mind the sand burn that came with a few tumbles.

In the Outer Banks, it's mandatory that you eat pulled pork at least once. We did it twice.


We had a few sunny days and a few rainy days.



Kate is surprisingly content in this picture. She was not the biggest fan of the sand, the sweat, the salt and the sun. (I didn't try to use only 's' words in that sentence.)

She did enjoy the water, however.

Her father enjoys the water, too. Although he owns his own kayak and uses it whole heartedly on the Susquehanna, we did not have enough packing room in or on the van (go figure) so he and my dad rented kayaks in Corolla. Jeff was on the water at least once a day.

Gracie was a big help in pulling the kayak in from the ocean for Jeff.



We also climbed the Corolla light house. When you give birth to a child, do you also give birth to a horrible fear of heights for your children? There were a lot of bad feelings in the pit of my stomach as we climbed the 214 steps of the lighthouse. Once up top, however, it was a great view.

It was a great week of relaxation and family time.