Harvest, friends, and buses

Business as usual here at the Taylor Ranch. Well, almost. This year I started gardening seriously (teehee) and the fruits of my labor have arrived. Above you will see my baby squash (that I found by surprise). I swear there weren't any big ones the day before I plucked that beauty. Must be the local night air.

The Nienstedt family came over for a Saturday night BBQ. As always, it's very educational to learn first-hand about the differences between boys and girls. All four kids were happily searching for toads and bugs when they happened upon a large wolf spider. My boys, being little killers-oops, I mean experimenters, decided that it would be neat to feed old wolfy a roly poly. I wasn't there, but I got report from Cheyenne that once the boys "fed the roly poly to the spider, it pounced." Cheyenne, being a tender-heart, was very forlorn by the ordeal and abandoned the game. My boys raucously came in reporting how cool it was that the spider attacked the roly poly. Later, the kids managed to turn things around and play a game of Kung-fu/gymnastics/karate complete with squirt guns and aliases such as Tai-Lon and Ming.

Today, the boys and I ventured out into the world of public transportation. Given the economy and my wanton to "be green", we decided to travel the necessary route to drop both the boys off at school and get me to work. Things didn't start out too well with Charlie falling onto the street on the way to the 1st bus stop. Of course, it was my fault because I "didn't run fast enough to catch" him like "dad would have." Also, it was my fault that I "didn't have any band-aids in my purse." Whew. It sure is tough when everything is your fault. Once we got onto the bus, it was smooth sailing. We met several very nice locals, who were more than helpful in directing us to what bus number we needed, where the stop was, and what time to do it. I was very grateful to have their help. We didn't take the most direct route, needless to say, but were able to stop by the kids' school, drop off tuition, and arrive at the hospital just in time for lunch. Three buses and two hours later we were enjoying hospital pizza...mmmm. After going over my route with the locals, we decided that I could probably shave 1/2 hour off of my time, making the total route door to door, about 1.5 hours. Wow. Next week I think I'll try loading the kids onto the back of my bike and see how long that takes. There must be a quicker route (without having to drive).