The Last Day

I knew it would be a hard day for me-- Claire's last day of Kindergarten. We have had such a great experience this year with Claire's schooling. She was in a wonderful class, with a WONDERFUL teacher, with great friends and it has been better than we ever expected, which makes it that much harder to say goodbye.

It is really the first big goodbye we have here in Virginia as we get ready to move, and I handled it like I always do. I cried. I tried to joke it off as I was crying but I ended up braying like a donkey. I just can't talk when I cry like that. Embarrassing. Especially since I was the only one crying. Claire gave hugs goodbye to everyone and handled everything with a smile, much better than I did. Geesh.

Claire did cry about it last week, one night as she was getting into bed. She started to cry that once we move away, she would never be able to see her friends again. And through her tears, she started naming her friends that she would never see again. That was hard to hear. After I left her room, I started crying, too, as I wondered what we are doing to our kids, moving them around, having them make friends and then moving them away from them. Over and over. But again, I think I am taking it harder than Claire. That is the only time she has cried about it. Most of the time she is excited and busy making plans of all the things we will do in Alabama.

For Claire's final day in Kindergarten, the kids put on a Patriotic program, where they sang songs like "Grand Ol' Flag", "My Country 'Tis of Thee", and "God Bless America". It has been fun listening to her practice at home for weeks. She had a speaking part, explaining what the Statue of Liberty is and she did such a great job. But it almost didn't happen. Last night Claire, as well as two other girls in her class, threw up. And they started throwing up at about the same time, so we think it was a bit of food poisoning from something they ate in class yesterday. So Claire missed her last day of class, as we stayed home to rest a little before we took her in time to join her class in the program.

{With her teacher, Miss Jamie.
She is such a great teacher. Claire loved her and we will miss her}

Blah, blah

Honestly, I don't know where time is flying to. It is going a little too fast for me. We are now down to counting weeks instead of months until we move. Wowsers. My to-do list is getting to be longer than I would like and that just gives me anxiety to think about it. So I try not to think about it and that just makes my to-do list longer. Anywho, I don't have anything to write about so I am just going to put up pictures of my kids. again.

{Williamsburg, with the oxen. They let Claire stand behind and plow the field.
She loved it.}

{at the beach}

{this is what Morgan does at the beach: build sandcastles out of the dry sand}

Sweet Home Alabama

As I got off the airplane in Alabama, I heard it, several different times from different people. "Sweet Home Alabama!" and I wondered to myself if Alabamans got sick of hearing that from people who come to visit.

"Oh, yeah, Sweet Home Alabama. Good one. We haven't ever heard that before," said the sarcastic Alabaman.

Or do Alabamans hold it as their anthem. I have no idea. But I found myself repeating another phrase over and over while I was there to Cody. "You ever been to Mobile? . . .That's where I'm from. Mobile, Alabama." Over and over again. Even though we weren't in Mobile, nor am I from there. In fact, our trip out there a few weeks ago was the first time I had ever laid eyes on the state of AL, or anything near it. What are my thoughts about it?

It is GORGEOUS. It has lots of lovely trees and rolling hills, and lots of really nice people. I am looking forward to our time there (just not looking forward to the actually moving part, yuck). We found a cute little place, in a really cute little neighborhood, where Claire can ride the school bus to school, Morgan can ride her tricycle outside, Luke can sit around being plump, and we can go on family walks down in the woods behind our house (plus the neighborhood has a swimming pool, holla').

We spent most of our time there looking at homes, but we did manage to squeeze in a very yummy dinner with my friend, Melanie's, sister, Melissa and her family. She is a yummy cook and her family was very nice company. Her husband is from Eastern Washington (Wenatchee), and of course, when you are in Alabama and you meet someone who is also from the same area of the state you grew up in, you play 'do-you-know' and guess what? He did! (He knew Josh and Don--just in case you were wondering, Liz). I love that game.

Anywho, while we were monkeying around in 'Bama (I don't know if that's what the natives call it, but that is what I call it because I am hip), my sister-in-law Tiffani had flown clear across the country with her sweet little babe to watch Claire and Morgan. It is hard to be clear across the country from the nearest family member, especially when we may need help for things like this, so I am so thankful that Tiffani was willing to turn her life upside down for a week to come out and help us. I know it wasn't easy, or really very fun for her, but it helped us out immensely. And my two girls are kind of in love with her now. All I hear is 'tiffani-this' and 'diffani-that'. Thank you, Tiffani, from all of us. And thanks Mom, for helping out with the Washington end. It was such a big help to us.

And I'd like to thank the writers of Maverick for supplying me with the line, "you ever been to Mobile?. . ." and Cody thanks you too.

{Eva and Luke. Cousins. Born three days apart}

{Tiffani. First time at the Atlantic Ocean}

Who Stole the Cookie?

I am a little behind on things. It has been a very busy April. So let's start with Claire's birthday party.

She invited her friends from her Kindergarten class and these were the invitations:

If you couldn't guess, it was a mystery party where the kids were the detectives, trying to solve the crime of who stole the cookie from the cookie jar. It included a newspaper clipping, a tiny manila envelope with a tiny note inside that can only be read with the magnifying glass, inviting them to be detectives at Claire's party.

And most essential to the party were cookies and cookie jars. Instead of birthday cake, we had a cookie buffet.

Since they were detectives, I thought it only fitting that we use the mustache for the decorations at the party. I even cut out felt mustaches for the kids to put on, but the double sided tape wasn't working, so I had to bag that one. Darn, it would have been cute.

Here is the list of suspects. The kids had a piece of paper with all the suspects pictures on it and then they went through the house finding clues and secret messages that narrowed down the list of suspects until they discovered who the thief was.

Of course, it was Strawberry Shortcake.

It was really fun for Claire, stressful for me (because those kids are wild when they get together!), but really fun to put together. I think the detective, secret message party will be one that we will repeat in the future.

Of course, after the party, my girls had a fun time putting on the mustaches from the cookie buffet. They make for pretty cute detectives.

Easter 2010

Hi. Here is our Easter post, two weeks late.

We enjoyed a lovely day for our easter egg hunt. Morgan is holding up a malt egg. Vomit. Who eats those? It's like eating chocolate covered chalk. She didn't like it either. Last time I send Cody off to the store without a detailed list of acceptable Easter candy. Sheesh.

Speaking of lovely days, I just have to tangent a little to defend my little neck of VA by saying that since I wrote the ranting post about being too hot too early, it has been perfectly 60-70 degree weather since and I haven't had to use my AC since the day it was fixed. Now, I too, can be smug. (also, my jeans stretched so everything is just rosy now. . .until the next time I have to wash them)

oh, and to tangent on my tangent, the reason I put on tight jeans during that hot day, was because I do not have a lot of options (because I am still chubby) and since I was going out into public, I make it a point not to wear my husbands scrub pants when people are going to see me, I had to wear my one and only pair of pants that fit me. That's why we had the crying-mommy-in-a-tight-pair-of-pants-on-a-hot-day episode.


Anyways, back to Easter.

Luke was just a spectator this year. But you can tell by his expression he wanted in on the egg hunting, candy gobbling action.

I told you he was chubby.

6 Years, What?!?

Happy Birthday, Claire. We love you so much.

Layers of Crap

Yesterday was a bad day. A very bad day. It wasn't just one thing, or even two things that were bad. It was layer upon layer of crappy things that built up to make one big crappy pile of a day.

First I would like to clarify that I would normally characterize myself as a happy person, somewhat of an optimist, willing to see the positive in most things. I generally see the cup as half full. Except for when I am hot. Then, everything in the world is so much worse. I am sad, everything seems overwhelming and futile, and I don't care how full the cup is because it doesn't change that fact that I am hot.

Yesterday it was 90 degrees here. Which some of you might think isn't all that hot, but to me 90 is hot, much too hot for April 7. In fact, in the midst of my heat depression, I weather.comed Phoenix to make me feel better. Because, even though those smug tan Arizonians in Phoenix are always bragging about how perfectly 70 degrees it is during the winter time ("oh, it's Christmas and I am outside wearing shorts!"), it just makes me feel better knowing that they have to live in the heat of hell during the summers. Surely it is hotter in Phoenix than it is here. Nope. It was a perfect 72 degrees. Smug Arizonians.

To make the heat worse, like 1000 times worse, our AC is broken, again, for the sixth time this year. Frustrating. . . and hot. Our upstairs was a nice and toasty 85 degrees.

You know what is worse that a hot house? Putting jeans on in a hot house. And you know what is worse than that? Putting freshly laundered jeans on, when they have shrunken down to their actual size, so they are too tight. Too tight because I still am chubby with baby weight and I may or may not have pigged out on cookies the day before (and the day before that). Because it has been hot and I have been in a heat-induced depression so I turn to the only comfort that I have. . . no-bake cookies and Swedish fish.

So there I was, wearing pants that were tight, doing squats to stretch them out, hating the world more and more every constraining step I took (I really hate wearing tight pants)and did I mention I was hot? I was seriously near tears. And it was only ten in the morning.

By eleven I was on the road, kids in tow, on our way to Costco to get some much needed supplies. This is when I get the phone call that puts me in tears, just not right at that moment. I waited until I was standing in the middle of Costco before I randomly burst into tears. The phone call was Cody informing me that the owners of our house had scheduled a showing for that day at four o'clock. Super major bummer. I am not the type that keeps the entire house spotless at any random time. I am the type that has messy closets. So I completed my shopping, hurried home, made a mad sprint-dash clean of the house, shouting at my kids "don't make a mess, don't make a mess" all the while. Plus, it was a very, very hot house. No a/c. So I was a little grouchy.

At one point, I had put random things in a box to be taken upstairs. Claire and Morgan come downstairs and decide to dump the box out and spread all that stuff around again. When I saw it, all the layers of crap came to their culmination and it all hit the fan. I stomped and yelled, threw a major mommy fit, and put those kids squarely in time out. Usually when I put the kids in time out, they whine and cry all the way there. I was so monstrous that I think I scared the crap out of them. They both went and sat in their respective time out without saying a word. Morgan just sat there looking at me with wide eyes, a bit shell-shocked.

Anyways, after four hours of cleaning, mopping, lifting heavy things up into the attic, a very sweaty and grouchy me loaded up the girls and Luke into the van to hang out at McDonald's to wait out the showing. About a half an hour later, Cody calls me to inform me that nobody was coming. They took too long looking at other houses and decided to reschedule our showing. Blech!

I complained about 400 times yesterday that I was hot. Cody finally said to me, "You know, I don't think you could have cut it as a pioneer."

Of course I could have cut it as a pioneer. I just would have complained a lot.

Some things I feel need some clarification:
* I don't think Arizonians are smug. Okay, maybe a little during the winter.

* I don't think it's okay to throw mommy temper tantrums and yell at my kids. I apologized to them for overreacting, but they still had to sit in time out for dumping the box out.

* I don't like being hot.