to round out this year's content, i'll leave you with my favorite photo from our colorado trip (since i've been chatting it up all week). i still remember when bella walked back from rinsing her hands, she commented on how ice cold the water was, and this in august. i'm thankful marty and i had a year with enough health and friendship and opportunity for our children to feel the cool bite of a rocky mountain lake. it is a small mark of many other fortunes. may next year prove as fruitful. best to you all.



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yesterday i shared my thank you note in our hosts' guest book. today i'm sharing the thank yous the kids left.

him climbing the mountain




all of us climbing the mountain








part a : thank you
part b : family drawing
part c : us climbing the mountain
part d : us at the drive in (for as good of an artist as bella is, her rendition of our van is most curious)

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we're a decently dashing lot via bella's eye/pen ... although i fear marty isn't wearing any pants.

we were a third of the way into our summer before marty and i got enough of a pause in the whirl to ask one another if we would be taking a family vacation this year. in consulting our finances which could, given eight years of living on one income, be best described as a meager, the answer was no. a few days into this revelation (truly read despondency) i recalled an email i received earlier in t...

the official ogre rules (as divined and governed by the dearmitt clan)

CORE RULES

1. a dad or a mom or a much older kid plays the ogre.
2. the kids are the food for the stewpot.
3. the ogre chases the kids.
4. if the ogre tags a kid, the tagged kid must go to the stewpot (typically a bench or a tree or the like)
5. the only way to get out of the stewpot is if another kid who has not been tagged comes to the stewpot and tags you out.
6. the ogre wins if he gets all the kids in the stewpot.
7. the kids win if all but one kid is in the stewpot and that last remaining free kid tags all the captured kids out of the stewpot before getting tagged by the ogre (when only one kid is left is, for sure, the loudest and most exciting part of any ogre competition).

ADDITIONAL RULES

1. you must be in the stewpot before you can be tagged out (that is, you can't be tagged free while walking to the stewpot).
2. there is no base or safe spot for the kids.
3. you have to stay inside the prescribed area, usually a playground or the shallow end of a large swimming pool.
4. if there are more than five kids playing, you may add a second ogre.
5. you must honestly obey the rules of the stewpot (e.g. pretending to be tagged free when you weren't) or the game is immediately over and cannot be played again on the same day.
6. it is fair to pretend to be in the stewpot when you are in fact free, tagging kids who have been sent there. however if an ogre discovers you using this ploy, extra attention may be given to properly keeping you in the stewpot.
7. it is suggested that ogres wear their running shoes and eat their wheaties prior to a round of ogre.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. acting out

for those that asked about yesterday's sassafras picture, re-shown below, here's a more revealing picture of what he was climbing. these tolkienesque huts were erected in front of the art and architecture buildings of the university by our home. we passed the recently completed structures while coming back from roller blading/skating in forest park (and headed to breadCo for hot chocolate). i had seen the early stages of their construction a few weeks earlier but dismissed it as something not meant for me. coming upon the completed version my foot quickly moved to the brake and i pulled over for a closer look as they definitely jump out in front of your eyes. seeing the grandeur and stability of the edifices one of my kids, i forget which one, called for an impromptu game of ogre. the kids won in a best of three affair, anthony winning the third and pivotal round. and we concluded that when we play ogre in funny shaped buildings like this, instead of a city park or swimming pool, it will be called smurf ogre.



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these were the first words i heard saturday morning: if you're wondering what that is about, it is code talk between marty and i. if you're wondering what the code is, i'll give you a second hint. the code was born when marty approached me one night and asked if i had time in my schedule to fulfill my husbandly duties. and with that, a new lingua franca was born.

and, i'll let your imagination guess where graham crackers might fall on that scale.

i'm really shocked i never heard of this guy before now. and i stumbled upon him, surpisingly, while listening to a rather blue comedy stream in itunes.

may i direct your attention this way where this year's everyman winners have been named. may you enjoy the vivid distraction.

our bathroom sink was recently broken for about five weeks. our experience camping has never paid more dividends as once the sink was declared inoperable marty set our camping sink up on the bathroom radiator and after their initial "why's the camping sink up here?" question and subsequent shrug of their shoulders, the kids never looked back or groaned.

a few weeks into our family's no-bathroom-sink lifestyle marty told me she was thinking of inviting a new family she met over for a brunch. they have a son who a daughter of ours might be mildly smitten with so marty asked bella if she would mind if we had the boy and his family over socially. after a beat of silence bella asked, "will the sink be fixed before they get here?"