Parenting – Page 5 – Lisa Holcomb

week of the kiddos

Well, you’ve mostly heard about my week with all these Food, Fitness, & Faith updates, but you haven’t heard about the kids, so here’s their updates:

Monday was, as previously mentioned cold & rainy & full of laundry. The kids came home from school to see piles & piles of the stuff for them to put away, but they were okay with it because the piles were warm and fluffy. The kids watched some of their latest obsession: Avatar: The Last Airbender (which everyone else in the universe seems to be watching right now. Cepheids, friends from various churches, kids of friends from high school. everyone.)

Tuesday I got all the kids to school. (Greg at MDO)

It was David’s Track & Field Day. This year the 4th & 5th graders got to have a big track meet with some of the other elementary schools over at Rose Stadium (the big one the two high schools use). I was only going to go for the first half, but David didn’t have a whole lot going on during that time period, so I stayed til the end. It was a big disappointment for him: he followed directions and didn’t get a chance to play any games because none of the other kids were following instructions.

Tuesday afternoon they watched some more Airbender (as I call it. Avatar, as they call it). Greg and I dug holes for the azaleas that had magically appeared in our front yard. We planted & watered them. The brothers had to be pried out of their seats to go to piano lessons.

Wednesday morning Greg and I spent at my friend SJ’s. We spent ALL MORNING LONG there. We played inside with drums, then outside with spray bottles and brooms. We ate lots of snacks and the kids drank lots of juice (me, I had COFFEE). So much fun. See:

That afternoon Greg and I repotted some plants, big and small:

Thursday was the Day that Wouldn’t End. There were no toaster pastries left when we got up, which I had promised as a special treat (Nick didn’t know that David had eaten his already, so he thought he was saving me from fighting kids by eating the last two), so we had to go to the grocery store before school. Eventually got everyone to school, but then I had 10,000 errands to run and none of them went exactly as planned (mostly the scout related ones, naturally). I did manage to buy everything needed (I went to the grocery twice and Wal-mart as well) and got back homewards just in time to pick kids up from school. Of course then the kids had kids with them, which I’d invited and everything, but had forgotten about having over. So the house was a wreck, people were coming over, I had no snacks (despite all the grocery runs), and there was chaos. Which is when my mom called to say that the main city water line had broken outside of their house; water was everywhere and they couldn’t leave to come up here because they were blocked in my giant bulldozers. I couldn’t do anything for her, but for us, all was not lost: we had water balloons and Junk Trail Mix (saving money/parenting tip: if you have a houseful of kids, no “real” snacks on hand, but lots of leftover holiday junk food, combine the whole thing in a bowl, toss, then dish out as “Junk Trail Mix” The children will devour it, think you’re the funnest parent ever, and you will have saved money by not shelling out for “real” snacks). The water balloons saved the day and there was much fun wetness. We filled up fifty balloons, split up into three teams, and picked our bases. The big kids took the jungle gym, the medium kids took the trampoline, and me & Greg took the comfy chair (there really were only two bases that were decent choices, alas). The big kids were very sneaky and let the younger kids throw all their balloons before pelting them from above. We also noticed that throwing balloons up there did no good, as they bounced on the wood and did not explode, so that gave the big kids more ammo to pelt us with. After the filled balloons were gone, I went inside to check the camera and the kids started filling more balloons, but not tying them off. They figured out that they could be twisted and thrown with all the watery splash and none of the broken balloon pieces, as long as they were throwing short range. They also kept trying to lure me outside to get me wet: a cute kid looking sad at the door while two to the side were armed with balloons waiting to pelt me when I opened the door. After everyone went back to their homes, we grabbed a quick dinner before Nick and David left for Webelo scouts.

Today is Friday and my parents are on their way up. We’ll spend the afternoon with them, then hit somewhere fun for an early Mother’s Day celebration, since our Saturday is filled with church stuff and they’re going home early Sunday morning.

Around the House, Family Time, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting, What I Love

Last part of kid update post

Friday morning was the Royal Wedding, so we all got up extra early. Well, that’s why I got up extra early.

I don’t know why everyone else did. But I commandeered the TV and switched it over to wedding programming, which I’d been recording for hours earlier. We fast-forwarded through the commercials and less interesting bits. I made muffins (I’d wanted to make scones, but was outvoted by the children who’d be NOT eating them) and several kinds of tea. We put up decorations and wore fancy/silly hats. The kids were mesmerized by the hats and fancy dresses.

We managed to just finish watching the ceremony in time to leave for school. We dropped off the big kids, then hit the grocery store for Field Trip supplies (water bottles & lunchables). We met up behind the buses by the school to caravan over to Camp Tyler. G and I got out and were once again given bad information from the office. Fortunately we talked to the bus driver (who we recognized from last years field trips) and found out that we would have been following the wrong bus (which some other people did later), as he was taking the kindergarteners to the zoo. Eventually we followed the right bus and even though that driver went the wrong direction we managed to get there thanks to my map. The kids had a blast at Camp Tyler.

My kids like going because they feel super-extra-smart there, as we follow things at home like the Nutrition Pyramid and Recycling and Composting and Gardening. Nick’s parents and sister’s family have farm animals, too, so the kids do know a lot about everything that happens at “The Farm”. The other kids? Not so much. They’re mostly low-income kids whose parents grew up in the city/town and haven’t ever been out in the country. It’s fun for me seeing them get to explore this other world and it’s beyond comprehension to them that one of their classmates actually lives this way every day. After lunch I gathered up our classes recyclables, which astonished the teacher because she didn’t know our city had a recycling program. G and I spent a little while after we got home just resting, as the day was warm and we were tired. Nick got the big kids and took B out hiking for scouts. I took my two out to Taco Bell for dinner, then gathered up the party supplies, and met Nick and B (who’d dined at Wendy’s) at Fire Mountain Amusements for D’s birthday party.

We’d not invited a whole lot of kids to D’s party because at $20 a kid, it was way too expensive to invite the whole class. Four of the 10 invited showed up (the kids from church all had too far to travel to come – I tried to tell D that before he invited them, but he was insistent on it), 2 brought siblings, plus our three kids brought the number up to 9. We used the 10th wristband to get everyone extra tokens for the arcade at the end before parents showed up. So it was actually good that not everyone showed up. 🙂 We spent the first part of the party in the arcade. The kids loved running around in that dark room, playing whatever they wanted. After that we split up a bit, with the younger kids going to the smaller kart track and the big kids going to the bigger one. I ran around trying to get photos of everyone. Nick took G on the big track, as G was too small for the smaller track. After that I took G on the bumper boats with the rest of the kids. That was soo much fun! I was drenched by the time I got out. When that was done, each kid picked their favorite thing and went on it. Some kids did karts, some did more bumper boats, some did more arcade or checked out the other rides there. Finally it was time for cake and presents. We weren’t given any time in the party room to decorate beforehand, as the party before us went over, but I think the kids weren’t really paying attention to that anyway. All in all, it was a great party! 🙂

Saturday was a regular Saturday for the most part. Got up, ate breakfast, got ready for church, went to church. I was feeling weird all day, lots of dizziness, tingling, and crazy brain fog, so I spent quite a bit of church out in the foyer trying not to fall over. The kids prepared for the Pentecost Presentation coming up. Nick did his media stuff. Eventually the kids and I went home, ordered a pizza, and watched a crazy French Canadian puppet movie about a dragon that ate all the stars while Nick went to prom with his mom. Yes, I did say “prom” and “with his mom.” His brother was the DJ and Nick went to dance with his mom since his dad doesn’t dance AT ALL and she was one of the sponsors for the prom. Anyway, he came home not too late, telling me that he got to dance with our little nieces at the house, who were hanging out with their Pa, and that most of the kids at prom didn’t dance at all. Also that his brother played the Doctor Who theme song for him. 🙂

Sunday was…well, what’s becoming a regular thing, where Nick gets up early, grocery shops, and then goes to work. I got up a bit later, fed the kids toaster pastries, and started on the cleaning. We cleaned until Nick got back around lunch time and then I headed out with my Girls Night Out ladies for an afternoon performance of The Diviner at our local junior college. It was so good. 🙂 Came home later to my husband making a special dinner (steak, baked potatoes, caramelized onions, zucchini, all so yummy). Sent the kids to bed and watched the latest Doctor Who. Oh, that show! So mind-twisty! Love it, though. 🙂

And now it’s Monday. It’s cold & rainy & we are keeping the house warm by doing laundry. So much laundry.

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, Parenting

Long awaited kids post, part one.

Nick is in the shower and the kids are digging through the spoils of last nights party, so I might be allowed a few minutes peace to write this post (edited to add: nope, my eldest came in a minute later with “alien ears” he made for me out of a ruined slinky). Here’s what’s happened since the last update:

April 12th I went to the doctor & got unwelcome news (posted about here). After the appointment, my friend Tanya brought me a couple loaves of bread as part of her “5 Little Loaves” project (she brought bread to 5 people a week for about a month – 1 loaf to eat & 1 loaf to share; this was serendipitously my day). God knew that I needed a friend to talk to that day. She brought the bread in, chatted with me a bit, gave me a hug, and then we had to speed out of there to piano lessons. But it was so good to have an actual person there in the room with me to talk to.

Thus sustained, I was able to make it to the big kids piano lessons.

Wednesday the 13th my friend SJ and her little ones came over for coffee. They brought me a lovely coffee/saucer/spoon chime set as a thank you for all our lovely coffee mornings.

Such sweet friends. All the little ones played together nicely, regardless of the smallest one’s having just learned the word “no.” 🙂 That afternoon another family came by and carried David off on bikes for a playdate. He loved that! 🙂

Thursday the 14th we had my friend HM & her son over for coffee (finally! a much rescheduled gathering due to illness and other things). T & Greg rode scooters, jumped on the trampoline, and built miles of train tracks while us moms got caught up (we had both been being hermit-like during the winter).

I gifted her a water bottle with a globe on it in celebration of her new business (I’m posting that so later when I can’t remember who I gave it to I’ll know)! 🙂 I was glad to hear that she and her family are doing so well in their new endeavors. Greg went to MDO after they left and I spent the day tidying up in preparation for deleavening for the Days of Unleavened Bread.

Friday afternoon we went over to Nana & Pa’s house for dinner and haircuts.

Nick’s mom and I worked on our duet, too, and tried out a few other pieces to see what we might like to do later on. The kids all got mini-pizzas in several different flavors to try out (some of those little 89c ones are so yummy!). Nick stayed home and worked on deleavening the rest of the living room and dining room.

On the Sabbath my parents were in town, so we visited with them before going to church. After church (& piano practicing & media copying & snacks, etc) we headed out to another little town for Nick’s co-worker/friend’s retirement party.

There was bbq and cookies and fishing for the kids. 🙂

Sunday morning we visited with my parents again before they left town. D had a friend come over unexpectedly (apparently D had invited him over for Friday and then we weren’t home, which was …well, rude on D’s part), so they had an impromptu playdate.

B and I ran off to get D’s birthday party invites and to have a Mama/Boy Date at Andy’s Frozen Custard. Mmmm.

We got home just in time for Nick to get ready to go to the Passover service at church (only baptized members of their church may attend and while I’m doubly baptized -both sprinkled as an infant and immersed by choice later on, it wasn’t at their particular church so it doesn’t count to them. Which makes me wonder what God thinks about all this, but He isn’t saying a thing on the subject.)

Monday the 18th was a weird day all around. Nick had arranged to be home for the day because we were originally going to have people over for Night To Be Much Observed, but instead we were going elsewhere, but the day off was already arranged, so he took it. So we headed off to Fresh, which was fairly empty, but still stressful to me, as Nick let Greg have charge of a mini-cart. We stopped and chatted with friends in the cheese section and thereby were introduced as friends to the Cheese & Olive lady for the store. Score! We spent the rest of the day getting stuff ready to take to dinner, which we were having at my in-laws in-laws house. (Stop there and think that out: Nick’s sister’s husband’s parent’s house. There.) Once we picked up the kids and got them all tricked out in nicer clothes, we headed on over. The evening was hosted by Nick’s sister’s husband’s sister and her husband, whom we love (we spent time with them at the Feast last year) and they made delicious filet mignon and lamb and twice baked potatoes. Others brought green beans almondine, various unleavened breads, cheeses, olives, wines, etc.

It was a very filling and fulfilling night, we got to see lots of people we hadn’t seen in ages (KATE is practically a grown-up now!), and all the kids got along marvelously, even if they weren’t interested in the videos we brought for them.

We left from there veryvery late and spent the night at Nick’s parents house down the road.

Tuesday morning was my littlest niece M’s 4th birthday. We got together for our traditional First Day of Unleavened Bread brunch. M started out the morning yelling “I am grown bigger now!” It was excellent! Lots of good food, fancy-schmancy cards for the birthday girl (her family doesn’t do presents so we find fabulous cards with games or stories inside), and lots of kids running round and round (they’d brought T over for D to play with, too).

D and I got our birthday cards, too. That afternoon we had church and I got to play with The Ensemble for the first time. It was a very small ensemble, but I think we played pretty well, especially since we hadn’t practiced together at all. 🙂

This is getting very long, so I’m splitting it into two parts. 🙂

Parenting

Next to last week of March

I’ve gotten fairly good at putting things off lately, like this blog post. I was going to start it on Monday last week, but the pictures weren’t up yet, so I was waiting on that. Then when I finally posted the photos, I realized that I had 101 other things to do, so I did those first. At some point so much time had past that I thought, enh, why bother. But yesterday I complained to a friend that she hadn’t updated her blog lately and her responses were so close to mine for not blogging that I laughed long and loud. So here I am, blogging. Yay.

The next-to-last week of March was busy, but that’s really normal these days, right? Greg and I did a lot of stuff with the school, but we also had some fun time on our own, going to the big park on the south side of town and walking some of the trails & bridges, then playing afterwards, and also going to the McDonald’s with the fun play area (using coupons a friend gave us). I also got to visit my favorite local baby and her mama for an afternoon.

It was Texas Public Schools Week, so our PTA did Muffins for Moms one day, Pancakes with Parents another, Donuts for Dads a third day, and also a program with the 1st & 2nd graders. Since I’m one of the PTA volunteer regulars, I went up each day and helped out with various things.

We had a bit of a kerfluffle, due to some miscommunication about what the events really entailed (the muffins & donuts were for parents ONLY, due to some bizarre regulations about offering kids free food at a competing time a federally sponsored free food program was being offered) and a lot of parents and kids went away from what was supposed to be a positive event with bad feelings in their hearts, which made me really sad. (Also, I had baked 9 dozen mini muffins for the event and had to take most of them back home with me.) One good thing, though, was getting to tour all the new library books the school ordered from the last of their grant. So many beautiful books! Also, both of my kids won door prizes from my having gone (one new book each!).

The 1st and 2nd grade program was nothing but pure delight, though. Ben was a soloist (one of 6, but only he and one other girl had really long parts), and an actor (clownfish #3), as well as singing and dancing with the rest of the kids. We had to make him a clownfish costume (most of the other parts there were costumes already made up for, but the clownfish were on their own, costume-wise) and he looked really really cute. 🙂 He did a great job singing, dancing, and acting.

Oceans of Fun end song
Afterward, Pa took us out to dinner at Taco Bell while Nana skeddaddled off to teach her class (which she’d postponed an hour for us: so thanks to her and her students!).

The next day we spent getting ready to go camping. We picked up the boys from school and headed on over to Martin Creek Lake State Park and spent the weekend camping with some of our friends from church.

Most of the kids from church were there, so the kids had a blast. David got to spend both night in the Boys Tent (the other kids stayed with us). We took the kids on nature walks around the lake and got to see an electric plant up close.

It was really windy on that side of the lake and it made the waves and wood really interesting. The lake was quite a lot down on water as well, so there were lots of shells everywhere. We collected a bunch of pretty ones to take home. We had a church service in one of the open air cabins, listening to the sermon from our regular service over the internet (lovelovelove technology) while the kids made crafts at our feet. It was a really nice weekend. Entire photo set can be found here.

We came back Sunday afternoon and unpacked. Nick went off to work for a few hours while the kids and I went over to Ben’s best friend’s birthday party. It was a fabulous party, one of those big Hispanic neighborhood/family/friends parties (one of the kids asked the birthday boy if he knew everyone there & he said “I don’t know. I think some people just saw the balloons and came on in. It’s a party! The more the merrier!”). There was a pinata bigger than I’ve ever seen and a man stood on the roof to pull it up,down, & around so the kids had to really work to hit it. I really wish now that I’d taken Spanish as my foreign language so I could speak to more of the people there. This party was a great end to a very busy week! 🙂

Around the House, Books, Computers and Internet, Crafts, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, Parenting, What I Love

Spring Break

This last week was our spring break from school. I’ve already told you about Monday and Tuesday, so I’ll start today’s story with Wednesday. We didn’t make any big plans for Wednesday, since that was the day that we were swapping out D for B at Nana & Pa’s house, but it turned out to be a big day anyway. My parents came up to town and told us that they’d decided not to make us wait for a month to get our new van (which is their old one), they were going to sign it over to us right now. 🙂 And so we began our day long journey to get the car retitled, re-registered, and in all ways made our own. We ended up visiting the registry twice, once with just me and my dad and once with both of us, my mom, and two of the kids as well. By the end of the day we’d gotten it done. G and I spent the rest of the afternoon emptying out our old van, then vacuuming it out, scrubbing it down inside and out, then cleaning all the windows we could reach, all so Nick could start driving it as soon as he came home. (D spent the afternoon catching up on three days worth of Animal Crossing.)

Thursday morning we visited with my parents a bit, then went home very quickly for D’s early playdate with his best friend C. They had a great time playing video games, riding bikes & skates, and wrestling on the trampoline.

While the kids were playing, I once again worked on some jewelry (a post on all of that coming soon). That afternoon my mom watched the kids so my dad and I could also go out and check out a netbook at Best Buy, which they did not have in stock, and to buy a camera, which they did have. We spent some time updating his regular laptop and getting it set up with the camera software and then learning the new cameras ways before going home for the evening.

B came home just before dinner, bearing sundaes from McDonald’s. My in-laws got a tour of the new van and all it’s shininess before they left.

Friday morning B’s friend A came over for a playdate. I made some more jewelry. They spent quite a bit of time playing the Wii, but we also had a picnic in the backyard, since the weather was beautiful for it. We experimented with playing baseball/tee ball in the yard.

After he went home, Nick and the kids and I went out to the bookstore to get the kids their celebration books for having great report cards (and we may have picked up a couple things for ourselves as well. maybe. possibly. what? we never ever do! Leviathon & Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld and Good Eats: the Middle Years.). D got the second Percy Jackson book, B got three Magic Treehouse books (#20, #21, and a research guide about Knights and Castles), and G got two Barbie books (one 3 Musketeers and one Fairies) and an audio book about the movie Toy Story. Then we headed out to tour the big new exciting store in town: our local markets version of Whole Foods.

It’s called “Fresh” and wow, was it packed with people. It’s a beautiful store, filled with lots of things our regular stores don’t carry: lots of organic, whole grain products and a huge array of cheeses, meats, and ready-to-eat foods (for which there is a balcony seating area outside).

We amazingly managed not to lose any children, nor to knock down any displays, though we did pick up a lot of stuff that was knocked down by the little old lady near us, as she had a large purse and was trying not to hit my kids with it, and since we were behind her in the herd (seriously, it was so packed that you pretty much followed the same people all through the store) we did the picking up. We eventually made it back home and Nick and the kids tidied up there while I went over to help my dad with his new netbook, which he’d picked up that morning. I did all my computer magic over the course of a couple hours and got him hooked up with all his software and file needs and headed back home to start reading my book. Bwahaha. Nick went over and spent the evening hanging out with my dad.

Saturday we hung out with my parents again in the morning before we left for church. The kids climbed ropes and played on the swings. Nick and D and Dad played chess. It was a good morning. We went to church, listened to our new pastor (who was a fabulous speaker, lots of discussion of Greek words, loved it), and then kids had snacks while my m-i-l and I practiced our duet on the big piano (which has keys that are very hard to press compared to my piano at home). We headed home, I changed clothes, and headed out for Girls Night Out. Nick and the kids stayed home and did whatever boys do when their mama is away (hung from the ceiling? shot themselves out into space in rockets? who knows! It was Boys Night In!). I had a lovely time with my lady friends and this time we managed to get a photo of all of us together (something we’ve never managed in the two years we’ve been meeting).

Came home and couldn’t sleep, as I am always excited after a night out, so I stayed up late finishing the book I was reading (the second Percy Jackson book; trying to keep up with D), never realizing that the clocks hadn’t already been set ahead for daylights savings time.

Yesterday we all got up unreasonably early. The day turned out to be one of those ones were everything goes wrong. G ran into my room yelling that D was throwing up from atop his bunk bed, B was asleep below, mercifully, or there’d have been extra mess. I got up, cleaned up the mess, got the boy into the bathroom, then looked at the clock: 5:45am. My husband, who was mysteriously in the kitchen and not at work (he’s been working a lot of overtime lately), hugged me and told me he’d reset all the clocks already so I didn’t have to. I tried to go back to bed, but couldn’t since I had a snuggly, wiggly boy (G) in there with me. So we all got up, ate breakfast, then sat around reading until it was time to leave for the last basketball practice of the season. David and I stayed home because of his icky tummy. He played more Wii and I wandered here and there doing chores and trying to finish up another necklace. The laundry that I thought was clean was mysteriously dirty, the necklace that I “finished” I turned out to have left a bead out of.

After the other kids came back home, we tried to go to the zoo and got verbally assaulted by the director of said zoo for bringing in a check that wasn’t signed by me — it was a gift membership from my in-laws, which I had filled out paperwork for and brought in with me, but he refused to listen one word I said, no matter how polite I was. It was a disaster all around, so I decided to take my children elsewhere. We got to the frozen custard place and discovered that my two-for-one coupons had been left in the hallway when we were swapping stuff around between the vans earlier in the week, but by then I decided to just make the best of it and we paid full price. The custard was perfect and by the time I’d finished venting to my husband, my best friend, and finally to my mother-in-law (who is going up to talk to the zoo about their communication skills today) I was feeling much better. We had a movie night with the kids, watching an old Valerie Bertinelli movie about a robot dog, which they loved. The movie ran late, so the kids ran late getting into baths and storytime, so it was nearly 9:45pm before they went to bed. I made their lunches last night and set out clothes for them so they could sleep in this morning and it’s just now time to get them up so that’s the end of this post.

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, health, Parenting

More catching up

I realized the other day after the fact that when I posted about President’s Day that I still had a week or so of posting to do and now it’s been a couple weeks since that and I have A LOT of posting to do. I’ve been doing that thing again where you start a post, realize that you need to have your calendar close by or your photos already uploaded and since you realize that you’re woefully unprepared, you close out of the post unsaved and promise that you’re going to post TOMORROW. Well, I have a lot of “tomorrows” to post for and who knows how long I’ll manage to stay awake at this point, so this may be more summary than actual posty goodness.

We’ll start will February 18th, as that is the first day on the calendar post-15th that I have a) something written on and b) photos for. In the morning, G, my mom, and I hit Lowe’s for the second time in a week, this time in order to buy those fabulous kid-size-but-very-sturdy gardening tools that we’d seen earlier in the week. We also scored some Gerber daisies (two varieties, it turned out), which we later planted in a small grouping in the front yard.

That afternoon we picked the kids up from school, drove out to my in-laws house, and prepped & decorated for a family dinner.

The next day we got up, got ready for the day, and then G and I headed up the hill for his best friends birthday party at the local community center. Fun was had by all, including me (I got to talk at length with an interesting woman who’d held a similar ministry position to mine back in the day)! 🙂

After that we headed out to church, then back to town to visit with my parents. Sunday was, again, basketball and more basketball, followed by Nick working overtime and the kids and I cleaning up the house and catching up on laundry and such. Monday was President’s Day, which I already blogged at length about in my last post. Tuesday was my appointment with the rheumatogist, which I blogged about here. In case you don’t follow that link, the long and short of it is: new meds and I have to see another doctor about my pre-hypertension. Yay. I spent the rest of the day cleaning and taking kids to piano lessons and Greg got to spend the night with his Nana and Pa.

Wednesday I hung out with my parents a bit, which was weird all by myself. I went home and cleaned house until it was time to pick up kids. Around 4:45 we met up with some other scout parents and took a group over to the Lady Apache Basketball game (well, I took the kids, but Nick and his dad and G eventually showed up there).

Thursday I had my appointment with my PCP, wherein I found out that due to family history, I needed to start on a beta blocker and watch my health more closely. Yay. Friday was a normal day with kids going to school, homework being done, chores, etc. We drove down to CS Friday afternoon/evening. Saturday the kids played ping pong and watched movies. My friend Sarah and her new baby came over to visit, which was lots of fun.

G loved playing Peek-a-boo with little Serenity. 🙂

Sunday the kids went fishing at the park, then we drove back home in the afternoon.

Monday was a regular day for us, with the kids at school and later B had scouts. Tuesday marked Nick and I’s 14th anniversary of our first date, so we had the babysitter come over after piano lessons, so we could go out to Sonoma Grill and the bookstore afterwards.

Wednesday, March 2nd, the car wouldn’t start, as we’d miscalculated the gas mileage (our gas gauge does not work). I walked the kids in to school, a 45 minute round trip. This, of course, put us in the marginal zone for being late for our 2nd glass appointment (the replaced glass from last week having cracked once we tried opening the window). They said that the guy was running a bit late anyway, no worries, he’d be there by 11am. Well, by 11am we had a friend lined up to help us fill our gas tank. The glass guy was, of course, terribly late, so while we waited we had a playdate at our house.

That family left after lunch. The glass guy, despite being only “45 minutes” away at 10:30am, showed up at 2:35pm. Needless to say, we won’t be doing business with the Glass Doctor again.

Thursday the 3rd all the kids went to their various schools & I had lunch with my friend Em and her daughter H. We discussed the Wii game Animal Crossing in great detail, as my whole family is obsessed with it, and H. is an expert player. That evening I went out once again with B’s Tiger Cub den (and one other), this time to tour the local TV station during the evening broadcast, which we were supposed to appear on, but due to scheduling and technical difficulties, we did not appear on. Ah well, the tour was interesting and the kids had a pretty good time.

Friday, March 4th. we went over to my friend JP’s house for a playdate. G loves her daughter K, so all was well there.

Afterward we spent the afternoon cleaning up before hosting a family from church for dinner. We had a fabulous time with our friends and the kids loved making a movie “show” and videotaping it for our later viewing pleasure. 🙂

Saturday was a church day, then afterwards Nick headed out to Men’s Club while the kids and I headed out to Pizza Hut with Nick’s parents and sister and her girls. Sunday was yet more basketball, Nick working more overtime, and us cleaning more of the house. Monday was the first official day of Spring Break. D has spent several nights at his Nana and Pa’s house. The younger kids and I made a picnic lunch and toured Mrs. Lee’s Daffodiil Garden before heading our to our friend’s house in Gladewater for the afternoon. We played at their house, then played over at R’s school playground before coming home for the evening. Today we spent the day playing video games and hosting a playdate with one of Ben’s friends and missing our D. Tomorrow he comes home, though, and B will get his turn at Nana and Pa’s house. 🙂

That’s it. Hope that was coherent enough for you. More photos can be found at flickr.com, of course.

Around the House, Books, Crafts, Family Time, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting

Happy President’s Day

We’ve had quite a day here. My eldest son hit a golf ball with a baseball bat and it went straight through the kids bedroom window. The glass company said they’d be here in less than 2 hours, but it took many phone calls and 7 hours for them to get here. Delightful, really. I made a list of good things about all this in my head all day long, to counteract the screaming, hysterical woman in my head. Such fun.

So anyways, since it was President’s Day and I’m a theme-loving kind of gal, we had a whole day of fun planned.

First we played Animal Crossing. We like taking care of our little town and I think it’s good that this game teaches them to take care of the environment with the recycling center and to pull all the weeds and take care of planting all around and not just in their own little places. It’s fun!

Then, for second breakfast, we had what I like to call “The Color of Money Muffins” which were green muffins with multicolored sprinkles inside to mimic the dollars that Presidents adorn. They were chocolate orange flavored. Yumm.

The kids played outside, which is when the glass thing happened.

After cleaning up all the glass and moving around furniture and cleaning up all the toys we found under said furniture, we made George Washington-style hats to wear around the rest of the day and also made cherry trees out of craft paper and yet more of the little red pom-poms leftover from Christmas.

Another thing we did was a game called “Ask the Kids.” The first question: If you could be president for a day what would you do?
D: make some laws, like going green and saving animal habitats.
B: wanted to save the animals, too, by checking if they were okay. for people, he wanted to have floating chairs for all the elderly people, the kind that don’t have to be pushed by anyone and that float high enough that it would be easy for them to get in and out of cars easily.
G: didn’t want to be president. he wanted to be a robber and steal peoples clothes (?!?!?!) or, even BETTER, to be a Jedi and battle the droids.

The second question: What do you think the President of the USA does all day?
D: He stays in his office and works on paper and passes the laws.
B: WORK! He works all day!
G: I don’t know. Maybe he writes to his friends every day.

The third question: Why do we have a president?
D: So we can stay free from other countries. In the beginning people wanted George Washington to be King, but he said “No, I want to be President.”
B: He’s here so we don’t get robbed or anything. He makes laws to help us.
G: (ran off & had to be dragged back) Because someone needs to do some work.

The kids left for a while after all this to hang out with my parents while the glass man came…or didn’t come, as happened for several hours. I crawled around their room with a light, checking for glass in unexpected places (it was still everywhere, despite vacuuming, because we have Berber carpet in that room), and did laundry, and entertained B when he came back because the Lord of the Rings cartoon was too scary.

We were also going to make cherry tarts today, but since we didn’t make it to the grocery, that has to wait until tomorrow, I guess. For storytime tonight we read some of our President books: “Arthur Meets the President” by Marc Brown, “Stand Tall, Abe Lincoln” by Judith St. George & illustrated by Matt Faulkner, and “Sesame Street: I Want to be President” by Michaela Muntean and illustrated by Tom Brannon. We really recommend the Sesame Street one, as it explained the best what a president actually does. The Abe Lincoln one is really good, too, but we’re not done with it yet, as it’s a very long one. The Arthur one is mainly Arthur-ish, but still good.

Anyway, hope everyone else had a great President’s Day! 🙂

Around the House, Family Time, health, I Am Traveling, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting

Happy New Year: 2011!

It has been a sincerely and completely crazy week. I’m not even going to try to tell all of it, that’s how insane it’s been.

Monday we wrote in our workbooks, ran Zhu-zhu & Kung Zhu hamsters all over the house, made food in the Easy Bake oven, looked up recipes to make reasonably priced food in the Easy Bake Oven, and generally stayed in our pajamas until it was long past time to be out of them.

Tuesday we did more of the same, but this time ventured out to a Post Holiday Jollies party at Double Daves with my former MOPS friends.
The kids ran around like crazy, the adults ate far too much in an attempt to recomp some of the money we spent on food the kids weren’t eating, and we generally laughed a lot and agreed that Christmas is totally ridiculous. A good time was had by all. 🙂

Wednesday we got up and after a couple false starts drove to Ft. Worth for D’s orthopedic visit. We got completely turned around at some point (bad directions, yay) and ended up getting to our appointment with only 4 minutes to spare, which was agonizing, as we’d left more than an hour of leeway in our schedule. My friend Kay watched the younger two at the park (along with her two) while I took D in to the doctor alone. He had his xrays done, his legs measured four ways (on a block, on the xray, with a measuring tape by hand, and another way I’ve forgotten now), and we got the whole hemihypertrophy schpiel again, as the med student in with us had never heard of it. The doctor reassured us that despite D’s “deformity” (his word, not mine), he was actually in really good shape and did I read any hemihypertrophy blogs or belong to any forums? I tried not to laugh at that. (For a really long time I was one of the top three hits on Google for hemihypertrophy) I explained that I had at one time, but really it got to be too much. The doctor said that D’s leg length difference is getting worse, not better, and that we need to keep coming back at 6 month intervals to keep an eye on it to make sure it’s not damaging his pelvis or his spine or anything. When he’s around 15 (sooner, if it keeps growing too fast), they’ll have to break his growth plate on the one leg so the other can catch up. I’m hoping that the health industry comes up with a better answer by then, as that sounds incredibly painful and time consuming and what 15 year old boy wants to take a time out from life for something like that?! Aie. Anyway, after the appointment, we went back to Kay’s parents (now Kays home as well, but they have two houses at the moment and it gets confusing) house and took the kids on an adventure and let the play games and fed them multi-colored pancakes for dinner. I think Kay has better photos than I do, but I will post those when I see her next.

Thursday I spent in pain because of all the driving I’ve been doing lately. Yay, pain. D and B each had friends over to play video games. G’s friends couldn’t make it, due to illness (argh), but B & his friend let him play Mario Kart & Wii Music with them, so he was pretty happy anyway.

New Year’s Eve day we spent running errands with Nick. We got fireworks for a future display (once the burn ban is over, I’ve been chanting this for months) and other stuff that required a trip out towards Nick’s parents house. Hung out there for a while with his dad. We had a big surprise over something that I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about yet, nothing family related, exactly, but something big we’re still talking over and making decisions about.

For the evening festivities, Nick made a whole lot of German food (sauerbrauten, red cabbage and apples, caramelized onions, etc) and

I made a lot of decorations that said 2011 and poppers for the kids.

My parents came over to eat and celebrate.

The kids got to do both my kind of poppers (with candy inside) and the more explosive kind (confetti explosion) and smoke bombs and sparklers. We had a bit of dancing in the living room and then an early countdown to the new year for the kids. Actually, for everyone.

My parents left right after that and Nick and I decided we’d had enough for the day and went to bed, too. 🙂

New Years Day was a Saturday and therefore a church day, but therein lies the madness, so we ended up going to services at two different churches. Like I said, not something I’m up for discussing at the moment, but it did take up all the day and into the evening. We had dinner at my parents house here in town, with the two D’s making us the Crazy Cantina Chili from the original Star Wars Cookbook. It turned out all right, kind of like Taco Soup, but without the meat (my dad threw some in at the end to fill it out a bit).

Yesterday we took the kids out for basketball practice, but there weren’t many kids there. They had fun, though.

We spent the afternoon at home doing necessary cleaning type stuff. I set up a Kids Command Center in their hallway with all their important info like calendars, lunch menus, emergency numbers, chore lists with dry erase markers, etc. I’ll do a post about that and the art we made today as well sometime tomorrow.

Anyway, hope everyone is having a very pleasant new year so far. 🙂

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Friend Time, Parenting

From Twitter: 11-17-2010

2:33 pm: Busy day: friend for coffee, made ballerina skirt for G’s friend, helped w/ TG lunch @ Nick’s work, ran errands for box car stuff. So tired.
8:08 pm: is having to have an awkward conversation w/ her older son about texting etiquette & why it’s wrong to borrow a phone to text random people.

Around the House, Family Time, Friend Time, Parenting

All B, all the time ;)

Last week after I posted we had a regular kind of week, I guess. Piano lessons for both boys. The K-3rd graders had a Veteran’s Day Program up at the high school. B brought home a note that afternoon saying he needed to wear a red shirt for the program, but there was nary a red shirt in sight that was clean, so he ended up wearing one that was more maroon than red, but he liked it, so we were good. The new power cord for my camera hadn’t come in yet, so we took pictures with Bs camera, which made every photo weird colored and didn’t record sound at all, so we have weirdly quiet blurry video of the event. Going to the program meant that D missed scouts yet again, of course. *sigh*

I don’t remember anything at all about the weekend, but I think we spent it quietly at home amongst ourselves. Maybe?

The next week was crazy busy. Nick left town Sunday night so we didn’t have cub scouts. Then Tuesday was B’s birthday. B had requested pancakes like they have at IHOP for breakfast, so I made giant pancakes and gave them gogurt & whipped cream to make faces with. They had a great time playing with those.

I had a doctor’s appointment that morning & then ran cupcakes up to his class afterwards. He loved that. We ate them outside the school and the kids ran around a played for a bit. Lots of fun for them! 🙂 That night for dinner we had pizza and more cupcakes for dessert (He’d asked for them instead of a regular cake so he could share his birthday cake with the friends that couldn’t come to his party; isn’t that the sweetest thing?).

Wednesday we had piano lessons again, and G drew his first picture with people in it. See: that’s Mrs. C and B at the piano (they’re not sad, he just hasn’t figured out how to do smiles yet). 🙂

Thursday we had another piano lesson and went straight from there over to Literacy Night (which was technically just for 1st graders), where we got to eat pizza and drink sodas and play games that we made while we were there.

Friday afternoon Nick came home and we were supposed to go camping at his parents house, but it was pouring rain so we had to postpone that. On Saturday, B got a telescope from my parents as his birthday gift.

Last night we had a whisky tasting over at my parents house here in town. We had a good number of people show up, mostly from Nick’s work, and we all had a good time trying the various foods and drinks available to us.

Today was B’s birthday party, which had a Star Wars theme. Several of his friends couldn’t come because of illness, but we had a fun little Jedi Academy Training anyways. Nick built them an Ewok Hut in the top of the jungle gym and we had a scavenger hunt and fun games.