Well, I don't feel like my wildflower garden worked out so well this year, although we had a few nice blooms. J and I had a hard time differentiating between the weeds and the wildflowers, for one thing. The wildflowers also grew in rather inconsistent patches, which was difficult. Since this garden bed runs along the side of our house, I wanted something that would be a little bit more consistent and widespread.

I still hope that wildflowers grow in our side garden next year, but I want to try and bulk up the large space with some perennials. We bought a total of 180 daffodil and tulip bulbs from COSTCO this week, and also bought six allium bulbs. Our soil is a little bit sandy in this spot, so we tried to add compost to the soil before planting all of the bulbs this weekend. I'm nervous that we might not have added enough compost, but hopefully the bulbs will do alright. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next spring.

School started again yesterday. I fully expected to have a very calm transition into the school year, similar to what I had last year, when I was able to clean the house thoroughly and get everything in order. This year, though, the exact opposite happened. The day before school started, some construction workers knocked on my door at 8:00 am. I wasn't expecting them until another day, so I had to quickly jump out of bed and get dressed to meet them - no shower for me.

We're getting baseboards put in every room of our house. It's very exciting to think that all of the unseemly gaps between our floor and walls will finally be covered up. But this project (which I wanted to have done at the beginning of the month) has thrown our lives into disarray. Last night, instead of doing last-minute preparations for school, I spent the evening emptying out our closets and pulling all of the furniture to the middle of each room in the house. While I did that, J scrambled to put up some drywall patches in the basement, so there would be a place for the baseboards to go.


The day before school was filled with other bits of chaos as well. J bought a used car (which is happy and sad for me at the same time - I liked being a one-car family). The VW Golf was supposed to be ready about a week ago, but the dealership had some set-backs. The car was finished on Tuesday, at the same time that I was dealing with carpenters, taking Sam to a doctor's appointment, taking Sam to swimming lessons, going grocery shopping, and trying to pull everything together for school. We got the car picked up though, and everything worked out. It actually will be nice to have a car, because J can help to take Sam to preschool when I need to leave for work.

I hope that everything settles down soon. The baseboards were installed yesterday, and today a painter will begin to match the new boards with the color of our already-existing trim. Sam and I will try and stay out of the house for the next day or two, so we don't have to smell fumes all day long. I can't wait to put things back into the closets.

Oh, and did I mention that another adjunct professor suddenly quit her job the day before classes began? We have been scrambling to find a professor to fill the class that begins today. I teach another section of the same class, so I imagine that I will be meeting with the new adjunct and filling him/her in on the course outline.

Phew! And now, onward into the school year! Welcome to my 150 students! Welcome to my four classes! Welcome to my responsibilities as the supervisor for museum interns! This will be fun, even if it is a little hectic. I just hope that I don't feel as internally-jumbled as my office appears in that photo above.

UPDATE: The chaos continued throughout the rest of the week! Friday was pretty awful at school: the projector broke in my classroom and threw all of my lessons off. I had multiple issues with the temporary projector that was finally brought to my classroom, and I ended up having to teach half of two different class periods without images to show the students. It was a very stressful day, but luckily it all ended. The upstairs baseboards are finished too, so now we can maneuver around the house much better. I'm sure that things will get better from hereon out.

I have been loathe to have the summer end. School starts in just a little over a day, though, so I know that I need to gear up and move on. The problem is that the weather is still incredibly nice. We have been without rain for virtually a month and a half, and the temperature still reaches the 70s and 80s each day.

This has been a very good summer. It's been filled with sunshine, fun activities, family, friends, vacations, good books, blogging, as well as personal insight and growth. I feel so lucky that my family and I have gotten to do so many wonderful things.

Last weekend our friend Meka joined us on a hike to a twin waterfall off of the Boulder River trail. I found this hike on a website which lists hikes in Washington State for young children. This hike was relatively short (only about 1 mile or 1.25 miles one-way), with hardly any change in elevation. It's an easy hike for young kids, although someday I'd like to continue down the rest of the trail (which is 4 miles one-way). There are a lot of trees that have bare branches which are covered in moss, too, which adds an interesting dimension to this area. The river is also full of huge boulders (hence the name), which is fun.

Although this was a really fun hike, it was a longer drive to the trailhead than I anticipated. I read online that this hike was "near Arlington" (which is true, comparatively speaking), but the trailhead is about 30-40 minutes from Arlington, at the end of a long dirt road. We ended up driving in the car for about 1.5 to 2 hours each way. Next time, I would probably plan to do this hike if I was already near the North Cascades.


Lately the weather has been really nice around here. I'm hoping that we can go on a few more hikes before the cold and rainy season kicks in.

 To follow up with my post on the movies that I watched as a kid, I wanted to jot down some of the television shows that I watched when I was younger. In my family, television watching was usually limited to the PBS station, although occasionally my Grandma J would record television shows for us on VHS tapes. These are the television shows I remember watching the most:

• Little House on the Prairie. I loved this show, although I was a little distracted by Melissa Gilbert's large front teeth when she was a little girl (she played "Laura"). I have a very vivid memory of standing by the back door of our house in Cincinnati. My mom and I had just come back from grocery shopping, and I said, "Mom! It's 4:00! Can I watch Little House on the Prairie?!?" My mom gave me permission, and I remember bolting through the house to get to the television in the dining room area.
•  Perry Mason. I loved this show as a kid, even though the ending was always predictable - usually with someone in the courtroom audience impulsively standing up and shouting that they were the murderer.
• The Andy Griffith Show
• The Lawrence Welk Show. We would watch this every Saturday night at 7:00 pm. When we were young, V and I used to make our little brother A dress up in a suitcoat and dance with us. Then we would pretend to be the dancing duo, Cissy and Bobby. I also liked watching Arthur (the tap dancer) and Jo Ann (the honky-tonk pianist).
• Lassie. This is one of the shows that my grandma would record onto a VHS tape for us. She actually made this tapes for my brother, A, but I would watch them with him.

• Welcome to Pooh Corner. My grandma used to tape this Winnie the Pooh show for us as well. The song for the opening credits is still very familiar to me. We watched this show a lot, especially because my brother A loved it so much. In fact, V sewed a stuffed Tigger animal for A one year, because A loved Tigger (and liked to pretend he was a bouncy Tigger!).
• The Wonder Years. Ah, Fred Savage. I remember that one episode on TV ended with Winnie and Fred breaking up, and then the next week our local television station reverted to showing rerun of previous episodes. I watched the show for weeks faithfully, to see if a new episode would come on, but it never did. Did Fred and Winnie get back together?
• Boy Meets World. Ah, Ben Savage. I didn't love this show as much as The Wonder Years, but I just liked to watch it and think about how Ben Savage was not quite as cool (or as good of an actor) as his older brother, Fred.
• Family Matters: Steve Urkel never ceased to amuse me. I have a vague recollection of my mom laughing hard at something that Steve Urkel said/did, but I might be conflating that memory with a more recent memory of her laughing really, really hard at something Dwight said/did in The Office.
• Beverly Hills: 90210. Confession: I most definitely was not allowed to watch this show. This was one of the shows that I would watch if my mom wasn't home (or out of the room). It seems so silly now, but I was very curious about such hip teenagers when I was experiencing the awkwardness of middle school. I also thought Jason Priestly ("Brandon") and Luke Perry ("Dylan") were very handsome. If I was "sneaking" a show like this one (or The Jerry Springer Show or Ricki Lake or Saved by the Bell) or I always had to quickly change the channel if someone walked into the room.

Did anyone else watch these shows? What were the television shows that you were allowed to watch, and what were the shows that you were forbidden to watch?

 
Last weekend we went camping in the North Cascades. J's co-worker recommended that we visit Diablo Lake, and I'm so glad that we went on this recommendation. Diablo Lake (and a lot of the water in this area) has some of the prettiest, bright-bluest water that I have ever seen. One of the signs near Diablo Lake explained that the nearby glaciers deposit "rock powder" in the lakes, which accounts for the vibrant color.

We hiked to an overlook of Diablo Lake by taking the Thunder Knob Trail. This was a beautiful hike, but it pushed Sam to his limits on that particular day. The trail was about 1.8 miles long one-way (and we hiked to get to the trailhead, so we probably went about 2 miles one-way). Even though the elevation gain was only 635 feet, it was still a long distance for his little legs. We had to walk pretty slowly, but he was able to hike to the top by himself. And, luckily, there were a lot of benches along the trail. Anyhow, despite Sam's whining and constant requests for "bweaks," we finally made it to the top.

 Last month my dad and siblings came to the Northwest for a visit. It was fun to spend time with them. We spent a few days in Portland and Seattle, and then went to Orcas Island for the last few days of their vacation. While we visited Moran State Park (which is an amazing place!), a few of my siblings and I hiked to Cascade Falls. We got on the trail head next to the parking area for Cascade Lake, and the hike was less than a mile to the falls.

This was a nice short hike, and I think that I could have brought Sam along with us (even though Sam had a fun time swimming in Cascade Lake while we were gone). The trail traverses directly and quickly across the mountainside, without any switchbacks, which is nice. If anyone is hiking in Moran State Park with small kids, I would definitely recommend this hike.

Or, if you don't feel like hiking, you can drive up to the top of Mount Constitution (also in Moran State Park) for a simply amazing view of the Puget Sound!

For the past week or so, Sam has asked to watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory every day. I'm much happier that he watch this show than some of the superhero shows that are available on Netflix. I've enjoyed having him watch this show anyway, since it feeds my own nostalgia. I remember watching this show as a kid (along with The Wizard of Oz and lots of the old musicals), whenever we visited my Grandpa T and Grandma J. Since we weren't allowed to eat very much sugar in my house, my siblings and I especially liked watching the opening credits. All of that chocolate!

As a result of this new Willy Wonka phase, I've been reminded of the other shows that I liked to watch as a kid. Whenever I associate movies with my childhood, I usually think of these:

• Mary Poppins (When we used to live in Los Angeles, I remember watching the a scene of this movie when an earthquake happened. I remember feeling the ground rumble at a point in the movie when there was a close-up of Julie Andrew's face when she was clad in the white hat).
• The Ten Commandments (I could probably quote this movie verbatim. This movie, along with the next four ones in the list, were some of the only things that we were able to watch on Sundays.)
• The Genesis Series (This is from "The New Media Bible" which came out in 1979. The Book of Luke was also filmed by this same director, John Heyman, and the footage eventually became the Jesus movie from 1979).
• Jesus of Nazareth
• The animated videos by "Living Scriptures"
• Saturday's Warrior
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• Bedknobs and Broomsticks
• Pollyanna (I don't think that we ever owned this movie, but we rented it enough - and watched it at my grandma's house - that I still associate it with my childhood.)
• The Parent Trap, with Hayley Mills
• Freaky Friday, with Jodie Foster (The opening credits and this "body swap" scene are so familiar!)
• Candleshoe, with Jodie Foster (This scene with David Niven is quite fun!)
• The Shirley Temple Collection (Really, any Shirley Temple movie reminds me of my childhood. I remember that we had one VHS tape that highlighted a couple short films, including "Kid 'In Africa" and "War Babies." I also really loved the film The Little Princess.)
• The Buttercream Gang
• Split Infinity
• Girl of the Limberlost
• The Incredible Mr. Limpet
• Anne of Green Gables
• The Narnia series by Wonderworks (The trailer for "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is available online.)
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe cartoon (1979)
  

What movies do you remember from growing up? J has a completely different list than mine; I never even watched his favorite movie, The Karate Kid, until I was in college.