Don't touch the fence! Or, how we learned to love the quilt auction.

We went today deep, deep into Nebraska. Only about half an hour from our house, but in terms of tradition and land and How Things Are Done... it was amazing. We went to a local summer camp, beautiful and much-beloved, which has a fundraiser every year. All year, women quilt (and occasionally crochet and knit) projects, and then they donate them to the camp, and they're auctioned off. The camp counselors, several of whom were my students (including the young woman carrying the quilt in the photo below - it was next up to be auctioned), help with the auction and then open the pool and the waterfront. Thrown in barbecue lunch and a couple dozen horses to see, and we had a very family-friendly event.

Grace was most impressed by the horses, and Peter was most impressed with the possibility that the fence surrounding them was electric. He was very, very serious about the possibility of any of us, or any horse, being electrocuted, and we all stayed very clear while watching the horses.

But the real fun for me was the quilts - several hundred were auctioned off, and another hundred were sold by silent auction. They were absolutely gorgeous. Dozens of different patterns, and such a wide range of aesthetic approaches... it was so interesting to compare one quilt with another; even though they were all beautiful quilts, made presumably by women working with the same basic materials, they varied widely in style, colors, patterns, size, etc. Many of the quilts sold for upwards of $600-700; we only watched a bit of the actual auction, but the crowd got really into the action. Mike attended this event a few years ago and saw a quilt sold for 11K. In that instance, and several times today, the winning bidder offered the quilt to the person whom they'd just outbid, for the amount of that person's last bid, and then donated his or her own winning bid to the camp. So the camp gets nearly twice the winning bid, and the person who lost the auction gets the quilt after all. Win, win, win.

What surpised me was how many people we knew. Some folks from church, some students, a Lutheran here and a Lutheran there. Someone from our church bought several quilts, and another woman from church made a gorgeous crochet bedspread which sold for around $500. We didn't buy any quilts this time, but I think I'll tuck some money away this year to buy one at next year's auction.

Next up, re: our tomatos... wowza. They're coming in.

Acorns and snails and the Missouri River...

We went for a modest hike this weekend, and collected acorns, spotted a snail, dipped our toes in the Missouri, and startled the same little fawn twice. The river was really full - we've had rain, and are getting more - and so instead of wading in for a few minutes as we did last year when we hiked here, we mostly just stood on the muddy bank and marvelled at how high the water was. Both on our way down and our way up, we scared a little teeny fawn, complete with spots, who could run like anything but seemed unwise in terms of choosing hiding spots. (Under the boardwalk? Not so private, little deer!) It was fun to have a conversation about the Latin terms for plants and animals, however, and see Grace's face light up... fauna... like a fawn! Yep!

Next time we go we'll consider insect spray (instead of the largely unnecessary sunscreen we used liberally) and we'll plan to stop in the visitors' center to investigate further. I think we need some more books on Lewis and Clark, too, since Grace found the signs describing their adventures very interesting and read them all aloud.

The white tube with the leaves inside is the protective housing for an oak tree - in an effort to rebalance the species in the woods, they're clearing out enough trees so that the oaks can get some light in which to grow, then planting oaks grown from acorns collected in the area, then protecting them from... I guess deer, but maybe also rabbits? with the plastic tubes, which come off eventually. They were unexpectedly beautiful, and it's interesting to see that kind of forest management at work in a relatively small patch of woods.

Going to the Sun

During our time in Montana, we drove up the Going to the Sun highway the first day it was open, in early July. The snow was (as you can see) still impressive, and the kids had a great time slushing through snow and icewater in their sandals.

The road itself is treacherous and scary, but the views are amazing.

We had a car picnic at the top, with Peter in his booster seat and Grace snuggled up in our gear and the adults mostly standing around with their sandwiches.

We camp and fish.

We spent several happy days in Glacier Park in tents with the grandparents (they had their own tent, which was just as well, since the kids had some ... adjustments to sleeping outdoors.) The nearby fishing was fun, if not necessarily productive, and we did a bunch of great day trips from our campsite.

The kids really enjoyed being outdoors, although Peter was snacked on by mosquitos until he was cranky. I think next time we might do a modest backpack trip where we hike in to our campsite, but this was fun - social enough that we felt like part of a big group of outdoorsy people, close to indoor plumbing, and yet genuine tent camping, complete with camp chairs and a small gas stove and real s'mores.

Beautiful Montana pictures...

Gorgeous mountains, cute kids doing silly mugging on the porch of beloved (extended) family cabin where my dad spent some vacations as a kid.

Next up: loving images of our very first tomatos, plus the thirty-seconds-later shot of Peter chowing down on them right in the garden.

13.1 miles of fun!

So, if someone had suggested to me a couple of years ago that I might get up at 4:30, get some stuff together, drive an hour and a half, run for two plus hours, eat an apple, and then head home... I would have politely declined and considered that person an eccentric who did not have my best interests at heart. Then I started running... and now the 4th of July is just one more opportunity to run until my toenails turn black!
I did my second half-marathon today, and it was mostly fun, and I have the following observations:

1. Sometimes you start in Nebraska, drive through parts of Iowa and parts of Missouri, and end up back in Nebraska, and you didn't even get lost!
2. Rural running is fun.
3. The corn is looking good.
4. I need to revise my iPod playlist. Less random slow stuff, more ABBA.
5. My feet hurt.
6. The beauty of small races: I was among the top ten female finishers!
7. The downside of small races: there were fewer than ten female half-marathon runners, and while I was not quite dead last, this was mostly because other people just ended up being more tired than I was.
8. PR (personal record): 2:17. I'm a lot slower, in this particular context, than Sarah Palin.
9. It really *is* the humidity. I've never been sweatier, ever.
10. I'm going to do that again soon. Really, it's so much fun. The fun starts around mile 5 and dissipates around mile 10, when you've still got a whole 5K to run, but those five miles make the rest of it worth it.
11. Blisters.
12. Holy muddy trail! Turns out mud will actually clump on the bottom of your shoes and you have to break stride to scrape it off in a kind of wierd dance that's inexplicable as the people in front of you do it after the first muddy stretch and then totally obvious once your own shoes are mud-laden.
13. I heckled a fisherman around mile 5, and it kept me giggling until mile 6.

No pictures, since my posse wisely stayed home to participate in the neighborhood bike parade, but since I look much less glamourous than other women runners, who seem not to get as sweaty and disheveled and mud-caked and red-faced, that might be for the best. You know you look less than your best when multiple people say things like, "Are you ... ok?" and you say, somewhat surprised, "I'm fine! Just fine!" Although to counterbalance that, I've gotten complimented twice recently on my "stride" and not by men (I assume that'd be the runner equivalent of "Want to come up and see my etchings?") leading me to conclude that I apparently have decent form. Which I'll take.

Finally, since I've been nattering to various people for a while about the dude who collected his own fallen toenails, and the toenails of others, and cataloged them and then strung them on a necklace for his wife... and I don't think I've posted a picture of this... enjoy:

Dance recital madness! From way back.

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of attending Grace's dance recital. She had a great time, the dancing was fun to watch, and the various preparations and costume changes went smoothly.

There were a few numbers that made me feel a bit like an anthropologist observing a culturally important event of some distant tribe. (More and more, I get this feeling, and I'm not sure what to make of it. I suppose I need to expand my horizons, although generally I enjoy watching unfamiliar rituals play out.) One such number involved Tori Amos's version of "Home on the Range" which is haunting and lovely, and the dancing was skilled and well-choreographed, but the costumes... on the bottom half of the dancer, a long calico-looking skirt, as Laura Ingalls surely wore, and on top... a calico running bra. Or very brief halter top. So - long skirt, bare midriff, and the prop was a no-doubt authentic section of a split rail fence.

The costumes generally were more revealing than you'd think was strictly necessary, and I realized that there's actually a rubric: some costumes flatter most bodies, some costumes flatter few bodies, but no costume flatters all bodies, and (surprisingly) no costume flatters no bodies. So if you had an absolutely perfect dancer's figure, you'd look great all the time; if you had any other kind of body, as most human beings do, it was a total crapshoot as to whether you'd look basically ok or like someone forced to wear a horrifyingly unflattering outfit. There are limits to what can be done about this, given the costumes' functions (to let the dancers' bodies show, to permit a wide range of movement, to enhance the mood of the piece) but damn. Maybe I'm projecting and need to rethink what your average girl would consider a flattering fit, or be comfortable with onstage, but I wished that there were some way to make it good for everyone - like those thoughtful and gracious brides who give their bridesmaids some general guidelines (color, length) and let them pick out their own dresses, so that each individual bridesmaid looks good but there's still a sense of general harmony. (This is more observation than personal experience, since I've always felt fine in bridesmaids' dresses, but you know what I mean.)

Anyway, Grace has spent the intervening weeks spontaniously breaking out into her dance routine at random moments - standing in line, hiking, watching TV, at the beach - and I need to sign her up for next year's classes while I can still choose the day and time. We're thinking Peter might enjoy martial arts in the fall, so the timing becomes more important - juggling multiple obligations on one evening for months at a time is Not So Good, but with a bit of planning we should be able to give it a go.

Our tenderfoots hike a bit.

Afterwards, Grace described this as "mountain climbing" but it was really more like a short dayhike on a very gentle trail - a tenderfoot slope when the ski hill we hiked on is open for the winter season. Afterwards, we had ice cream, which is how every good athletic endeavor ought to end. We saw beargrass blooming everywhere, which we don't usually see since we visited Montana earlier in the season than we have previously.

The kids love small hikes, and although my impulse is to sign them up for a gentle five mile backpack trip, they're probably still a year or two away from being able to actually enjoy that. I think their time is coming, though. They really enjoy being outside and they're both naturals at noticing interesting plants and animals, and being attuned to what's around them.