Kefu comes to visit- Henry.

We've been pretty good at procrastinating all summer. But last week, mama realized that my buddy Kefu would be returning home to China soon.

So she called up his mom and asked if he could come over for one last playdate.

We had a great time spending the afternoon together.

We played with all of our toys and built a huge marble run.

You can see how happy I am, not only to have my friend over, but to be skipping naptime too.

It has really been remarkable how much Kefu has changed this year. When we met him, he knew very little English. Now, he is fluent and even had to help translate for his mom.

Kefu's mom came over for the afternoon, too. She and mama had a good time comparing how different childbearing and childhood is between China and the US. For example, since she found out mama was pregnant, she couldn't believe that mama was planning on taking care of 3 kids by herself. (And she couldn't believe mama also cooked and cleaned too.) She told us that when she was pregnant, her parents moved in and stayed until Kefu was almost a year old, just so they could help out. (Hint, hint, Grandmas!) She was also very surprised that mama put June down for her nap and June went to sleep on her own- and in her own bed. Apparently, Kefu does not. Mama wonders if many of the differences are attributable to the fact that single children of single children only get one child themselves. If we only had one kid on our family, things would probably be a lot different too.

While the moms yacked, we tried to find new ways to load up the marbles. We use trucks to dump the marbles in and then I had to show off how the set glows inthe dark by closing all the blinds in the house.

Before Kefu left, mama wanted to get a picture of us together. Come on, mama.

Okay, fine. We were so glad to get to see Kefu one last time before he went home. And we already got the email saying they were back safe in Shanghai. Hopefully, someday they'll have the opportunity to come back to Clemson again.

Grumpy Gertie.

Okay, bloggers. We didn't want to say it, but this is getting out of hand.

Check out that countdown on the sidebar. 8 days to go. And if know mama, things are getting pretty desperate over here. She likes being pregnant and generally enjoys having kids, but pretty much ANYTHING puts her in a bad mood these days.

Today, we haven't helped much, because Henry used his chair to grind fresh blueberries into the grout in the kitchen and June demolished many huge piles of freshly fold laundry in a jumping contest. Add on to that the fact that air conditioning set at 74 degrees is still too hot, and you've got a major Grumpie Gertie on your hands.

Here's where you come in. Why hasn't anyone updated their blogs??!?!?!?!?! For some of you, it's been weeks. Others- months. this is simply unacceptable. Since we're still trying to catch up, mama has agreed not to immediately stop posting. But she does have the following threat:

Unless she sees some action out on the blogosphere, we're not telling anyone when we have our baby. We don't want to ruin this for everyone, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

So it's up to you. We've seen your kids. They're adorable! They say the darndest things! Please post something! Otherwise, you might get a grumpy mama on your doorstep, and unless you've got a frozen coke to fend her off, may God have mercy on your soul.

Truck Day at Chick-fil-A- June.

Let it be known that we can't say enough about Chick-fil-A. Their food is beyond delicious; they have an awesome indoor playground; and they are constantly handing out free food coupons. But now we have two more reasons to love them. First, they are frequently sponsoring some kind of theme day in order to hand out free food. for example, a few weeks ago, they hosted "Cow Appreciation Day." If you dressed like a cow (we taped spots to our shirts), you got a free combo! And that was for everyone! $20 of free chicken is enough to make mama love you forever.

The second reason we love Chick-Fil-A is because the two local franchises host a ton of family events. Last Saturday was Truck Day in Seneca. They had the local fire department out to show off their fleet. Henry took his own truck to join in the fun.

I got my own hard hat and went to work in the sand boxes. Mama really wanted us to play in the water they were spraying from the back of the truck, but neither of us would go in. Even though it was 100 degrees and we were standing on the blacktop for a long time.

The Seneca FD also brought out their fire safety education trailer and we got to see a demonstration about fire safety in our homes. We've since installed two more smoke detectors in the house and mama and papa are doing some research on the best way talk to us about what to do in case of an emergency. Any suggestions on good websites or resources?

Here's a funny story from later that morning. It got too hot for mama to stand in that parking lot, so we decided to visit a local toy store. Since this baby is coming soon, mama thought it might get us in the spirit if we picked out a present for the baby. When we got to the store, they had a train set up, so we spent the first 30 minutes playing with that. Finally, mama convinced us to stop playing and start looking for a present. She was not pleased at all when I plopped myself down in front of the horse display and wouldn't budge. Henry, on the other hand, tried to be a little more discreet. He (unsuccessfully) tried to convince mama and papa that a new model train set would be the perfect gift for a baby- in four and a half years. How convenient. Mama gave up and instead let Henry pick from a predetermined set of toys that she had chosen online. This time, he picked the right one and everyone was happy.

Tour de La France- June.

Miss Kerri, our neighbor, is super creative and super active with her two boys, James and Andy. She makes us feel pretty lazy 90% of the time. She's also really into the Tour de France. So she decided to host a race of her own- the Tour De La France- at a nearby elementary school of the same name. (She has admitted that she did it solely for the blog post.)
There were 6 participants on the day of the race.

And they're off! Henry had the advantage of being the only one in his age group (the Masters) pointing in the right direction. Which worked out well for him, because he really wanted to win, and James and John are pretty fast. This heat went to him. In the Novice age group, Maddie won with flying colors as she was the only one who would go without someone pushing her.
Miss Kerri was so excited about the race, she even brought ribbons for everyone's bike. Of course, their were yellow ribbons for the winners, but most everyone coveted the pink polka dot ribbons instead.
Miss Juliet also scored big by bringing ice pops. And did we need them, because Friday was the start of a 3 day record breaking heat wave. It broke 100 degrees every day and heat indexes hovered around 110 degrees. To give you an idea of how miserable it was, the overnight lows only reached about 79 degrees.

Mama loves this picture of me and James because of my smile in the background. For some reason, it reminds her very much of our Ohio friend Cole Meyer's earnest smiles.

Check out this sweaty kid. Too bad all the moms are sticklers for safety and required us all to wear our helmets.
John might win the sweatiest head ribbon.
Poor Maddie lost half her ice pop on the hot sidewalk.
I took the "suck the juice approach" so I wouldn't suffer the same fate.
Each kid got two pops, then we were forced to suck on ice cubes if we were still in need of frozen refreshment. Andy didn't let it get in the way of his super hero crime solving.
Lined up for another race. And James is FAST on flat ground. Henry takes a while to get his confidence up when he's riding, but he's steady on the uphill, just like Lance.
Unfortunately, John wiped out on the downhill and had to sit the remainder of Stage 2 out.

After the races, we rode for a little while longer. That's when Henry really got into his groove. As it got hotter and the tiny bit of shade mama was sitting in disappeared, everyone started talking about heading home. And it took a lot of convincing to get Henry to agree to get off his bike. Eventually, the promise of James and Andy coming over to play in our kiddie pool and eat lunch in the backyard convinced him.
We didn't get any pictures of the pool party, but it was a great time. Mama did get this shot of me scooting in my bathing suit. This might be her new favorite picture. Thanks for planning an awesome morning, Miss Kerri!

Try your luck at a game of chance!

Back by popular demand, we set up a baby pool so everyone can make a guess at our new baby's birthday, weight and gender.

Just so you know, the winner gets all three kids for a week.

Craft time- June.

Due to the fact that mama keeps turning the thermostat lower and lower (and doesn't feel bad because we live in a wonderful, well-insulated shady brick house!), we've been forced to spend the summer keeping ourselves busy inside. And the closer we get to having this baby, the grumpier mama gets (see the Taller Girls blog for the Grumpy Gertie story). So we need to find quiet entertainment for fear of getting thrown out a window.

Henry gets to stay up an hour later than me at nap time, on the condition he play quietly and mostly leave the grump alone. To help out with this, papa found an old MP3 player and loaded it up with Henry's favorite songs. One day, he kept himself happy doing a whole book of dot-to-dots while listening to a playlist consisting of the Beatles, Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, and the Kinks.

Mama found a website that had graphing coloring pages. One page is a graph and the key tells you what color to color which square. Mama LOVED these when she was a kid and has many fond memories of doing these in 6th grade while Mrs. VonDeylon read books to the class after lunch.

Here's two finished projects. Henry also likes doing these and now mama needs to find more on the interwebs, which is proving to be difficult, because she doesn't know what they are called. Any help would be appreciated, all you teachers that read the blog!

I don't have an attention span like Henry's, but I did settle down for a little while to color my horsie book. Mostly, I just like moving all the crayons and markers from one container to another.

Have we told you about the CSA we joined? Miss Kerri found a farm that sells weekly shares for $10. And this isn't like the share we used to get in Wisconsin, that mostly consisted of bizarre, obscure vegetables, like ramps, sorrel, parsnips, and black radishes. This share is the bread and butter of CSAs and for each of the first two weeks, we've gotten no less than 20 pounds of tomatoes, a bag of sweet peppers, a bag of hot peppers, three cucumbers, and a big muskmelon. (Side note: no one calls them muskmelons down here. It's a cantaloupe, or else you get a crazy look.) So we've had to find something to do with all of this produce.

The tomatoes have been our first job. Not only do we have the 20 pounds from the share, we also get another 5 pounds or so a week from the three plants out back. We eat a ton and then mama tries to preserve the rest. The first week she dried a bunch on the food dehydrator and ended up with a little bag of "sun"-dried tomatoes. The next week she cut up all 20 pounds and made spaghetti sauce. She actually wasn't paying attention to the recipes she had pulled up on the computer and got halfway through a salsa recipe before it dawned on her that she was adding a lot of peppers and why were they calling for lime juice and cumin in spaghetti sauce? Luckily, she came to her senses in time and managed to salvage the sauce. Amazingly, the 20 pounds she blanched, peeled, cored, seeded and boiled cooked down to only about 8 pounds of sauce. Aunt Jenni says this is why pioneers had big gardens.

The real adventure has been the hot peppers. Miss Kerri mentioned to mama that she's dried them and ground them up for a super spicy pepper blend. Mama thought she'd give it a try and quickly poo-pooed all of the advice she saw on the interwebs about how hot a habanero pepper really was. So she sliced them all up, threw them on the dehydrator and was fine. About 15 minutes later, she moved the dehydrator outside because it was spreading some serious fumes around the house. Hours later she made the mistake of touching her eye with her hand and got a stinging surprise. But not too bad. the big shock came hours later when she went outside to move all of the dried peppers off the trays. I don't know what she touched, but she spent the rest of the night alternating rubbing her hands with baking soda and socking them in ice water. Never again will she turn her nose up at a hot pepper. They are now in a bag in the freezer and mama is too afraid to try anything with them.

Update: she did cut up a few more chili peppers for the sauce and found that Solarcaine aloe vera burn gel works well to counteract the juice. She's also sworn to never touch a habanero pepper again.

Bunk beds- Henry.

Big news in the Turner house! After months of watching Craigslist, mama finally scored us some bunkbeds that were under $100 and within an hour of our house.

For only $50, we got this very sturdy bunk bed. Granted, it looks like it was built for a college dorm room, was moved to a fraternity house, then thrown off a roof while it was on fire. But it is very sturdy and perfect for a bunch of kids who will probably trash it anyway.

It came with boards to put under the mattresses, but we had some plywood cut to put over the boards, just to fortify it. And papa drilled some new holes to move the rail up a few inches. I've already moved into the top bunk. It's awesome. June is really excited to sleep in the bottom bunk, but we haven't gotten her a mattress yet. And frankly, mama isn't really that excited about June moving out of her crib. We'd like to keep her in there as long as we can.

Mama and papa didn't just buy the bunk beds for us to share. They also bought them so eventually the new baby can sleep in the crib. And that leads to their really ambitious master plan- to put all three kids in one room.

It's all very complex. We have two bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs. Mama refuses to sleep downstairs for fear that zombies and serial killers might get here through the ground floor windows. I'm the next logical choice, but I refuse to sleep without June. And there's no way they'll let June roam the downstairs alone.

So until it becomes very clear that this is a bad idea, mama and papa are going to try and get us all into one room. Frankly, I think this has more to do with papa not wanting to give up his office and mama not wanting to give up her craft room/guest bedroom.

The beach!- June.

Since we moved to South Carolina, mama has been making a joke about the criteria we have for new friends. You have to have at least one of the following:

1. A pool.

2. a boat.

3. A beach house on the ocean that you're willing to let us use free of charge.

Number three is kind of hard to come by unless you're independently wealthy and much, much older than us, so we haven't had much luck with that one. But we got really lucky when we met Miss Kerri. Not only does she have a pool (and has graciously let us use it all summer long), her parents own a house on the lake complete with a dock and a boat!

Last week, they invited us to take a ride to a little island in the middle of the lake that is good for swimming.

Henry swam a little, but spent more time as the safety police. He tried to lift Andy off the boat before someone came to help out.

As usual, James and John were eager to jump right into the water.

Even Christopher had a good time, probably due to the fact that the water was so warm it was like taking a bath. It was a cool day- only in the high 80s. Miss Kerri commented that she thought it might be a little cool to swim. That's her Texas blood talking. By the time we finished lunch, it was climbing into the 90s and mama was getting much too hot to be outside in the bath water.

Initially, I just played on the beach and refused to get in the water. But mama picked me up and took me to swim for a while. In no time, I was back to being a water baby. I really like beaches because no one had to hold me.

And once I got into it, there was no stopping me. Someone did have to stay close to me though, because I'd start fake falling (whoa, whoa whoa!) or floating on my belly and a big wave would come in and I'd go under and have to be stood up.


You can imagine how much sand was inside my suit when mama peeled it off.

James and Andy's grandpa's boat was awesome. It even had a table on it, so we could eat lunch on it. After lunch, everyone got back in the water, but Henry stayed on the boat. He was worried that someone might start walking backward and accidentally fall off the front of the boat. So he stayed on to make sure everyone was safe.
And for probably the first time in 10 months we've known them, Andy and I actually noticed each other! We played a fun splash game, which worked out well, because neither of us are very good at splashing or hitting our opponents.
Now this is what I call a perfect morning. James' grandpa let us each take a turn steering the boat. And when we got back to the dock, we each took turns jumping into the water. Well, we all jumped in except Henry. He climbed down the ladder.

Thanks so much for the great morning, Miss Kerri and Mr. and Mrs. Worthy!