Monday, September 7, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Summer Reflections
Summer on Cape Cod is my favorite time of the year. The school year is such a busy time for us (as it is for everyone) that by April or May I am longing for some quality down time with my kids. Then all the summer camp brochures start to roll in from school and this year I just tossed one after the other into the trash. I couldn't stand the thought of getting up early every morning and shipping the kids off to camp. I wanted to spend time with them.
That's not to say they didn't do any camps. Melanie was in a 2 week long drama camp and they both particpated in two bible schools (one ours and the other invited to by friends). But that was it. The rest of the time was a schedule of our own making.
The summer started with rain. Lots and lots of rain. I wanted down time? I got it. Two weeks worth of non-beach weather. We played games, watched re-runs of Little House on the Prairie (who remembers Little House being so intense??), got a head start on their summer workbooks, had a ton of playdates with friends we never get to see, attended the the library summer reading activities, raised butterflies from caterpillers and spent as much time using our imaginations as possible. We even fit a circus performance in there.
By Fourth of July, the weather was starting to clear and the residents were venturing out into the world again. Since moving to Sandwich, the 4th has become my favorite holiday. The community spirit is almost overwhelming. This year, we started an new tradition of jetskiing on a friend's pond. One more thing to add to a marvelous day.
Long awaited beach time followed the 4th. We spent as much time as we could at as many different beaches as we could get to. Packing sandwiches, snacks and watermelon became a daily habit.
My mom came on the 14th of July for 3 weeks. She started out her visit by helping out at our Bible School and came with us to swim lessons (getting her first sunburn in many years!). We introduced her to Mr. Parsons at the library (he's a tourist attraction in himself), hunted for mermaids, went on a duck tour in Boston, spent a day at the MOS, took her for her first Barnstable County Fair experience (and first country concert!), took her for her first lobster roll, spent a day in Chatham watching the fishing boats unload and saw tons of seals, and celebrated hers and my birthdays respectively. We also taught her how to play Mexican Train Dominoes and I think she and Melanie would have been happy to skip all the other activities to just play domino game after domino game. In fact she purchased her own set of double 12 dominoes when she got back to Kansas to have her girlfriends over for a game night.
Josh Gracin concert at the fair
Chatham Lighthouse
Museum of ScienceA day after Mom left, my cousins from Denver arrived consisting of my cousin Cindy (Mom's sister's daughter) and her husband, Todd and three kids, Ryan, Kelsey and Lauren. Only suddenly Ryan and Kelsey aren't kids anymore. Ryan is 20 and entering his sophomore year of college and Kelsey is a senior this year. (Were they really the same 7 and 4 year old ring bearer and flower girl at my wedding???) Lauren is only 9 and was a great playmate to my girls. They came for a visit, but also for Tom to take Kelsey's senior portraits on the beach. As soon as they drove up in our driveway, we ushered them in and headed straight for the portrait session (gotta take advantage of that good weather and with Tom shooting 2 weddings that weekend and booked solid with portraits, had to make sure their trip wasn't in vain!). The portrait session went great and we headed straight to Seafood Sams after for dinner (also a must see tourist destination for all our guests). While they were here, we showed them around Hyannis, to a Cape League ball game (Ryan is on baseball scholarship in college), took a cruise around Hyannis harbor (saw Ted Kennedy's boat Mya up close), took them to the Boardwalk at high tide where they all jumped and even got Melanie to jump (wow!), spent time at the beach, had a bonfire on the beach with our friends and lots of s'mores, watched Tom run in the Falmouth Road Race, took a drive by a lighthouse, had a family movie night (Fever Pitch), did lots of shopping and had lots of great food and drink. Then their final day the girls spent the day at Heritage Musuems while we sent the boys to Boston for a game at Fenway (sounds like they had a LOT of fun). It was a great visit. The girls didn't want Lauren to leave and we would be more than happy to have them all back again!
Kelsey, Ryan, Lauren, Cindy and Todd (Oh and there's Libby too!)
Kelsey's senior portraits
Todd, Lauren and Mel on the cruise
Ryan and Cindy
Kelsey and Kylie (best buds!)Things slowed considerably down since our guests left, but somehow we continue to be busy every day. We have still crammed in as much beach time as possible, played tons of games, read books, shopped till we dropped, spent time with friends and with our summer learning. We spent a day at a flea market and ended up with two hermit crabs as pets (who seem to now be hanging tenuously onto life) and a day down cape at the beach, followed by the girls' first drive in movie experience.
Rainbow and Shelly
Getting ready for the drive in movie!At the beginning of the summer, I had the girls set some goals that they wanted to accomplish over this few months. Both of them had one goal of each: social, academic, physical, emotional and fun. I have to say I am incredibly impressed with how they have grown in different ways. Kylie has made LEAPS and BOUNDS in her reading and math skills just by completing a page a day of her summer workbook. Melanie is more confident on her bike and with swimming. There are a couple of goals left unaccomplished -but we still have a week to go! (Just need Tom to take those training wheels of Kylie's bike and we're all set! She's ready!).
We have also introduced a new system of reward - the Daddy Dollar. The girls now make their beds and brush their teeth every morning without being asked. Their rooms stay picked up and messes get cleaned up without complaint, they help with the laundry, dusting and putting all their clothes away. It's a great system and so far they have stayed highly motivated. They can spend their Daddy Dollars at the Mommy store, buying family game time, movie night, sleepovers or playdates. It's fun to see them working together to save up for a dual sleepover. I've had to print more money to keep up - just like the US treasury! Since they have done so well with it, I've started an actual allowance with them at the end of the week if they have done all their chores without complaint.
One thing I have not accomplished this summer is writing. Usually the summer is good for at least one novel to come out, but I have a momentary lapse of inspiration. But I have enjoyed the vast variety of summer reading material I have completed (another blog story for another day!).
But one of the main themes of this summer has been friendship. We have spent more time with our closest friends than we ever have before and experiencing a variety of new activities. I treasure these friendships and am so thankful to have all these wonderful families in our lives to help shape my daughters' childhoods. Thanks ladies!
Amy, Donna and Wendy. What a fun pic!
Some of the crew at Mashnee Island
Wendy and Maryjo The girls go back to school next week and another summer is coming to an end. It also signifies me going back to work, although I am having gall bladder surgery September 21, so work isn't starting up for me again until October 5 (hope I'm recovered). So I have two weeks prior to surgery while the girls are in school for time to catch up on those "me" things I haven't done all summer. Hopefully I'll get caught up on my photo albums and maybe, just maybe I'll be motivated to crack that next novel that lives inside me.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
amazon
Did you know I am listed on amazon.com? I didn't either really. I got an email awhile back from Lulu stating that my books had been listed on their site and kind of shrugged it off. I hadn't been writing or working on promoting myself for a long time, so this information didn't leave much of an impression on me.
One day awhile later I was on amazon for another reason and a nagging thought occured to me. Was I really here somewhere? What if someone did a search for my name? Would it come up? So I tried it. First Kelli Davis. . .Yep. . .there was one of my books then some other books from some other Kelli Davis. Then I did Kelli Mustard. . .all 3 books I have published through Lulu appeared. But there was no information on the books. No summary of the plot, nothing. So I tried to edit it and found the only way I could edit my own book listing was to write a review. And the only way I could write a review was to give it a star rating. But, this felt tacky. Do I give myself 5 stars? Well, see for yourself. Go to amazon, do a search for my name and see what you find. Then if you are a generous person, add your own review. (If you haven't read the books, buy them! Or, since I am such a supporter of the reader, let me know and I'll get you a copy).
One day awhile later I was on amazon for another reason and a nagging thought occured to me. Was I really here somewhere? What if someone did a search for my name? Would it come up? So I tried it. First Kelli Davis. . .Yep. . .there was one of my books then some other books from some other Kelli Davis. Then I did Kelli Mustard. . .all 3 books I have published through Lulu appeared. But there was no information on the books. No summary of the plot, nothing. So I tried to edit it and found the only way I could edit my own book listing was to write a review. And the only way I could write a review was to give it a star rating. But, this felt tacky. Do I give myself 5 stars? Well, see for yourself. Go to amazon, do a search for my name and see what you find. Then if you are a generous person, add your own review. (If you haven't read the books, buy them! Or, since I am such a supporter of the reader, let me know and I'll get you a copy).
Hope
Wow. . .it's been since February that I blogged. Where does time go? Where have I been?
Part of where I've been is facebook. I used to say blogging was lazy man's scrapbooking. Well facebook is lazy man's blogging. In an instant I can update all family and friends with a picture or status update. Leaves little to talk about on my blog.
Also, my blog in the past has been a sort of journaling or instrospection if you will about life, books, writing or whatever happens to inspire me at the moment and frankly, I haven't been much inspired since February.
February 15, my father passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. I think putting that into words was difficult for me, therefore the lapse in keeping up.
But now, I'm slowly starting to come out of that. . .
I just finished reading a book called "The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb. At first it was difficult for me to really get into it. . .lots of detail, but about half way through I started to wonder where it was going to lead. The protagonist was a man who had been through an amazing amount of turmoil in his life. Columbine, addiction, abuse, family lies and deception, PTSD. . .you name it, it happened to him or someone close to him. He tended to just float along trying to make sense of all the chaos in his life, attribuiting it to mostly chaos theory. One little incident can offset a whole string of events that can become catastrophic. The main character was not a man of faith and grappled with the idea of a higher power. I kept waiting for him to have this big revelation that life was not all about chaos and there is actually some hope even in the grimmest circumstances. I won't spoil it for you who haven't read it.
It reminds me of the Kennedy family. Here is a family who wished for power, wealth and to give back to the country who had helped them to become so successful. Sometimes I wonder if in their case they should have been careful for what they wished for because sometimes it can lead to devastating results. Would Joseph Kennedy have made different decisions and pushed his sons in different directions had he had known the toll public life would take on their family? Or is the greater sacrifice worth the quest? But regardless, this family has endured incredible tragedies much like the character in The Hour I First Believed. Ted had lost all his brothers to violent deaths (two assasinations and one plane crash in war). He also made some major mistakes in life and narrowly escaped tragic death on more than one occasion. He could have given himself over to his pain and wallowed in self-pity, but instead he decided to commit himself to a life of service to his country in fighting for what he believed was right and for the most part maintained a solid faith in God along the way (although some of his political beliefs contradict strongly against his church beliefs). Watching the funeral yesterday I was moved to tears because of the sense of loss his family had to again endure.
But some of the tears were because Ted's funeral also reminded me of my own father's funeral. My dad may not have been a senator or president, but he was a very important man in his community. He also, like Ted, fought for the greater good. He helped others after Hurricane Katrina, was a minister to inmates in the pennitentary, helping them on the road to rehabilitation, educated believers and non-believers alike about the Bible and God, did an amazing amount of charity work and was highly regarded by all friends, colleagues and family members. At his funeral many people got up to speak about the positive affect he had on their lives. I found myself thinking that they knew him as this wonderful, powerful presense, but I knew him as just Dad. The man who didn't like my messy room, who liked to take goofy pictures of me pretending to hold an elephant at the zoo, who worried about me every time I got behind the wheel of the car even after I was long grown up and moved away. He would find it highly ironic that I am comparing him to Ted Kennedy. My dad the ultra-conservative compared to the Liberal Lion? But something else my dad was, was highly educated and knowledgeable about the both sides of politics and understanding it from a depth that I could never obtain. I find a hole in my life from not being able to call him up and say, "Hey Dad, what's the real deal with this health care bill?" I could find my source of information just from one simple phone call.
So, I think something Ted Kennedy said at his 1980 concession speech when he lost the presidential bid is very powerful. No matter what your political affliliation is or what your beliefs about the future of our country is, I think this can speak to all of us. Anyone who has ever faltered or lost their way in life. . .anyone who needs reminding that hope still exists even in the darkest of times. Maybe we're talking about different dreams or different hopes, but the main message is to not give up on them. So for you Dad. . .someday I would hope that I could make 1/2 as positive impact on peoples lives as you did.
". . .the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Part of where I've been is facebook. I used to say blogging was lazy man's scrapbooking. Well facebook is lazy man's blogging. In an instant I can update all family and friends with a picture or status update. Leaves little to talk about on my blog.
Also, my blog in the past has been a sort of journaling or instrospection if you will about life, books, writing or whatever happens to inspire me at the moment and frankly, I haven't been much inspired since February.
February 15, my father passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. I think putting that into words was difficult for me, therefore the lapse in keeping up.
But now, I'm slowly starting to come out of that. . .
I just finished reading a book called "The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb. At first it was difficult for me to really get into it. . .lots of detail, but about half way through I started to wonder where it was going to lead. The protagonist was a man who had been through an amazing amount of turmoil in his life. Columbine, addiction, abuse, family lies and deception, PTSD. . .you name it, it happened to him or someone close to him. He tended to just float along trying to make sense of all the chaos in his life, attribuiting it to mostly chaos theory. One little incident can offset a whole string of events that can become catastrophic. The main character was not a man of faith and grappled with the idea of a higher power. I kept waiting for him to have this big revelation that life was not all about chaos and there is actually some hope even in the grimmest circumstances. I won't spoil it for you who haven't read it.
It reminds me of the Kennedy family. Here is a family who wished for power, wealth and to give back to the country who had helped them to become so successful. Sometimes I wonder if in their case they should have been careful for what they wished for because sometimes it can lead to devastating results. Would Joseph Kennedy have made different decisions and pushed his sons in different directions had he had known the toll public life would take on their family? Or is the greater sacrifice worth the quest? But regardless, this family has endured incredible tragedies much like the character in The Hour I First Believed. Ted had lost all his brothers to violent deaths (two assasinations and one plane crash in war). He also made some major mistakes in life and narrowly escaped tragic death on more than one occasion. He could have given himself over to his pain and wallowed in self-pity, but instead he decided to commit himself to a life of service to his country in fighting for what he believed was right and for the most part maintained a solid faith in God along the way (although some of his political beliefs contradict strongly against his church beliefs). Watching the funeral yesterday I was moved to tears because of the sense of loss his family had to again endure.
But some of the tears were because Ted's funeral also reminded me of my own father's funeral. My dad may not have been a senator or president, but he was a very important man in his community. He also, like Ted, fought for the greater good. He helped others after Hurricane Katrina, was a minister to inmates in the pennitentary, helping them on the road to rehabilitation, educated believers and non-believers alike about the Bible and God, did an amazing amount of charity work and was highly regarded by all friends, colleagues and family members. At his funeral many people got up to speak about the positive affect he had on their lives. I found myself thinking that they knew him as this wonderful, powerful presense, but I knew him as just Dad. The man who didn't like my messy room, who liked to take goofy pictures of me pretending to hold an elephant at the zoo, who worried about me every time I got behind the wheel of the car even after I was long grown up and moved away. He would find it highly ironic that I am comparing him to Ted Kennedy. My dad the ultra-conservative compared to the Liberal Lion? But something else my dad was, was highly educated and knowledgeable about the both sides of politics and understanding it from a depth that I could never obtain. I find a hole in my life from not being able to call him up and say, "Hey Dad, what's the real deal with this health care bill?" I could find my source of information just from one simple phone call.
So, I think something Ted Kennedy said at his 1980 concession speech when he lost the presidential bid is very powerful. No matter what your political affliliation is or what your beliefs about the future of our country is, I think this can speak to all of us. Anyone who has ever faltered or lost their way in life. . .anyone who needs reminding that hope still exists even in the darkest of times. Maybe we're talking about different dreams or different hopes, but the main message is to not give up on them. So for you Dad. . .someday I would hope that I could make 1/2 as positive impact on peoples lives as you did.
". . .the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Melanie's first piano recital
Melanie did an excellent job at her very first piano recital today. She played three songs:"A Song of Penny Candy"
"The Man in the Moon"
"The Party"
Watch the video to see her in action!
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Life. . .
Times are tough. . .as I sit here watching the snow squall around me, I think of all the things that are weighing on my mind today. My dad, so sick still. My mom taking care of him day and night. The economy in the world getting worse and worse every day while we who are self-employed worry about what it will mean for us. Travel coming up, while always fun, is an added stress with the expense of it all and concerns about glitches in the weather or other glitches as yet unforseen. . .Friends who are struggling in these tough times and gloomy moods all around. . .Somedays it's hard to snap out of the reverie, but also we can't let ourselves become consumed by it. Winter is half over. There is light at the end of the tunnel. The sun is shining in Florida. . .
This past weekend we had a very happy occasion to celebrate Melanie's 9th birthday with her friends for her first real slumber party. Her actual birthday is Feb 10 - the day we fly out to Florida. We have an incredibly busy weekend coming up so we decided to have her party a little early. We had 9 guests for an American Girl themed party. They each brought their dolls for a total of 11 girls and 11 dolls! When they arrived they set out their sleeping bags in the playroom, then were given menus for dinner. We served pasta with their choice of toppings, bread and veggies. For dessert they got to decorate their own cookies and make their own sundaes.
After dinner they made fleece sleeping bags and pillows for their American Girl Dolls, then picture frames complete with photo of them and their doll taken and printed by Tom. Then we made paper fortune tellers for them to play with.
After presents, I set up the projector in the playroom and they then watched Chrissa Takes a Stand (the new American Girl Doll movie) on the wall - just like the theater. After the movie they all brushed their teeth and off to bed!
Yeah, right. . .4 hours later (3:30) they were still awake, talking and laughing. I finally had to pull Melanie out of the playroom and put her in her own bed to get them to quite down. Finally rest!
All in all it was a great, fun and memorable night! I'm sure Melanie will remember this sleepover for years to come. I still remember all the slumber parties I ever had. . .and I remember how much fun and how little sleep I got too. It's all part of the experience. . .part of life. . .
This past weekend we had a very happy occasion to celebrate Melanie's 9th birthday with her friends for her first real slumber party. Her actual birthday is Feb 10 - the day we fly out to Florida. We have an incredibly busy weekend coming up so we decided to have her party a little early. We had 9 guests for an American Girl themed party. They each brought their dolls for a total of 11 girls and 11 dolls! When they arrived they set out their sleeping bags in the playroom, then were given menus for dinner. We served pasta with their choice of toppings, bread and veggies. For dessert they got to decorate their own cookies and make their own sundaes.
After dinner they made fleece sleeping bags and pillows for their American Girl Dolls, then picture frames complete with photo of them and their doll taken and printed by Tom. Then we made paper fortune tellers for them to play with.
After presents, I set up the projector in the playroom and they then watched Chrissa Takes a Stand (the new American Girl Doll movie) on the wall - just like the theater. After the movie they all brushed their teeth and off to bed!
Yeah, right. . .4 hours later (3:30) they were still awake, talking and laughing. I finally had to pull Melanie out of the playroom and put her in her own bed to get them to quite down. Finally rest!
All in all it was a great, fun and memorable night! I'm sure Melanie will remember this sleepover for years to come. I still remember all the slumber parties I ever had. . .and I remember how much fun and how little sleep I got too. It's all part of the experience. . .part of life. . .
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