My Kingdom for a minivan....

The Summer in Pictures: Day 39

2011-07-09T02:35:00.000-07:00

July 9

Today we made strawberry freezer jam.

It was fun.

Kinda.

Ok....it was as fun as making strawberry freezer jam with three over eager kids can be. That's a fair statement.

Anyway, it's just another product of our tardy backyard garden this year. Back on June 2nd, I went to great lengths to make you understand the nature of the backyard we inherited when we bought the house. We have slowly been making it our own, complete with gorgeous raised garden boxes built painstakingly by Skippy. We've still got a long way to go but this year we have managed to cultivate and plant our strawberry bed, our transplanted raspberries, three kinds of tomatoes and four kinds of peppers, plus cucumbers and the cantaloupe that Banana has grown from a seed she begged off of the cutting board one sunny Saturday morning.

It's a start. And our efforts are paying off. So far this year we have already used our peppers in chili, our raspberries and strawberries in countless smoothies (not to mention the ones that go straight into the kids' mouths!) and then today we supplemented our store-bought strawberries with more from the patch in the backyard to make our jam.

The kids have so much fun growing things and then seeing how they are used.

I have so much fun watching them.

Life is good.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 36

2011-07-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

July 6

K bear this morning: "Mom can I go get a cherry?"

Me: "You can go get one, K. They are going to start picking this week."

I quite clearly said ONE cherry. I mean, we have permission to pick from the folks who own the orchard, but only after the hired field workers are done. That being said, I didn't think that letting my seven year old preview the crop with one cherry would make or break the season. And when there are literally thousands of trees within six feet of your property line, they are hard to resist.

But apparently, this is what "one" cherry looks like to K. I can't tell if that's one handful or one branch, but it's definitely what one little girl can carry in one sweater.

So coming soon to a grocery store near you...fresh Oregon cherries...at least the ones that didn't go into my kid.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 34

2011-07-05T15:44:00.000-07:00

My mother-in-law blessedly took all three children to Bend to see my sister-in-law's family for the holiday.

There are pictures somewhere. I'll track them down.

I worked 43 hours in four days. When I wasn't upright in the chair at work, I was horizontal in bed. I barely even saw Skippy.

So anyway, the blog went on a small holiday hiatus. Hopefully I can hijack some pictures from their weekend from Grammy and get them up!

The Summer in Pictures: Day 32

2011-07-02T03:09:00.000-07:00

July 2nd

Shit.

Now obviously it's not the best picture. I didn't have the good camera handy so I took with my iPhone. And I was alternating between laughing until I peed and scolding the kid.

Would you look at him?

I mean.....seriously......it's less than ten minutes from the ice cream place to our house. How did he DO that?

I even asked for the ice cream in a cup specifically so that he wouldn't make the mess he would if I had gotten him a cone.

Look at that face. And he has the nerve to LAUGH!

Look at his hands.....his arm.

Look at his shirt.

It's on the side of the car for God's sake.

And it's dripping down the seat belt.

Good lord. I think a bath is in order, or at the very lease a soaking with the garden hose.

Boys.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 31

2011-07-01T05:04:00.000-07:00

July 1

Look at my gorgeous girl, already home from camp.

Remember my overly emotional post from a few days ago? The one that shows Miss K all set up on her bunk bed? The one where I was all worried about leaving her?

Yeah. That was groundless. After she threw herself into my arms this morning I asked the key question: "How was camp, K?"

The answer, in her words: "AWESOME. Can I go back next year?"

Why on earth do I worry so much?

The Summer In Pictures: Day 29

2011-06-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

June 29

>sniff<

Goodbyes are never easy for little kids when they are about to embark on a new adventure.

Although if we're being honest, the same can be said for Moms too.

So there she is earlier today...my Kbear all set up on her bunk at sleep away camp up in Washington state. She looked so cute, and so big. When I took this picture, I don't think it had really sunk in for her just yet - the fact that I was going to leave and she was going to stay. She hadn't met her counselor yet (code name Snickerdoodle) and she hadn't found the chocolate bar that I hid in her bag. She didn't quite grasp the idea that if she woke up in the middle of the night and had to pee, she was going to have to go by herself at this strange dark place called camp.

Now if we're being REALLY honest, in hindsight she wasn't the only one who hadn't really thought it through. I hadn't really considered the implications of this mini-camp with it's two overnights and not-quite-three-days of summer fun and what it would mean to Kbear. I hadn't really thought about the fact that my girls' lives have been pretty intertwined up to this point. I sign them up for the same activities because quite frankly, it's convenient for me. They both tried dance. They both played soccer. They would go on the same play dates and attend the same birthday parties. They are only seventeen months apart. It's just EASIER. But as they get older that isn't working out for me the way it used to. They are beginning to do their own things, have their own friends, develop their own separate passions and attend different birthday parties. This summer Banana has swim team; that's four days a week for forty five minutes a day, plus competing in meets. So Kbear gets this stint away at camp and then later in the summer, soccer day camp. And this summer (or more specifically, today) it has really hit me that even though they will always walk the same road as sisters, they have begun to choose their own separate offshoots.

And so I gave her one last hug, and I said good bye, and I left her in the care of the (oh so young) camp staff and her fellow campers. As I drove away I thought about how much fun she was going to have. I wondered how late she would stay up and if she would tell scary stories and share that chocolate bar. I know she'll miss me, but more than that I wonder how much she'll miss having her sister by her side. I wonder what Banana will think tonight, sleeping alone in their shared room. I think that overall, the whole day was a revelation of sorts for all of us. It's not bad...it's just different.

We pick her up on Friday. I already can't wait.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 27

2011-06-27T02:25:00.000-07:00

June 27th

So far, our summer has been delightful. People keep on telling us that this is what an Oregon summer is typically like, but I wouldn't know it - every year since our big move the summer has always kicked our collective family ass, becoming beastly hot by the middle of June with temps topping the 100 mark for days on end. Just because there's no humidity and very few mosquitoes (neener neener Chicago people!) doesn't mean it's not miserable.

So the fact that this year we are grabbing hoodies in the mornings and covering up with blankets at night has been a treat. And our evenings have been spectacular; perfect for dinners on the back patio, and for hanging out in the front yard....and maybe playing with the Bailey girl.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 24

2011-06-24T02:51:00.000-07:00

June 24

I actually don't think this one needs any explanation.

He's just that cute.

The end.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 21

2011-06-21T02:29:00.000-07:00

June 21st

It's summer reading time at the library!

This year the kids have their own library cards. We'll see if I can make it through the summer A) making them keep up on their reading, B) Keeping track of their logs and C) remembering to take them to the library for activities.

Today was fun though. The kids got to have cake and punch and color bookmarks to use while they rack up their minutes to earn silly bandz - God how I hate those things.

Happy Reading!

The Summer in Pictures: Day 20

2011-06-20T06:35:00.000-07:00

June 20th

This is what cuteness looks like.

Today I was mowing the backyard - a chore I actually enjoy - and the kids were running around and generally acting like they were in great cahoots about something and it was just one of those wonderful summer days where there isn't much of anything going on, and that's how it should be.

After I shut down the mower I was kicking a ball back and forth with Colin and at some point I tackled him and blew a big old raspberry on his stomach.

"That's called a raspberry." I told him.

Still giggling, he wriggled out of my grasp and ran over to our garden area. He poked around a bit, and then came running back, presenting me with today's picture.

"No silly Mama," he told me "THIS is a raspberry."

Sweet silly smart boy of mine.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 19

2011-06-19T02:15:00.000-07:00

June 19

Let's just get this out of the way:

Happy Father's Day to my Skippy.

You are a great Father, the love of my life, yadda yadda yadda. Next year I promise we will try not to schedule Banana's birthday sleepover for what is supposed to be your special day - because nothing says "You're a stellar male parent" like five little girls and one four year old boy clamoring for more s'mores, orange soda, and a bucket of water for "real" pedicures.

What on earth were we thinking?

Nine days ago my Banana girl turned 9. And I had to work. Then Skippy was out of town. Then I had to work some more. Then we started to feel like the whole idea of a birthday sleepover was going to be seriously overdue and half-silly if we didn't get to it soon....so we did it on Father's Day.

With my two, we had five little girls.

They were loud.

They had grilled chicken for dinner at Banana's request (so Dad DID get to grill on his Father's Day!)

They screeched a lot.

They had s'mores.

And popcorn.

And soda.

And watched Gnomeo and Juliet on Pay Per View.

They had a blast.

I had Advil for an after-dinner snack.

They stayed up until 1 a.m.

In the morning we had pancakes.

I had Tylenol.

The end.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 17

2011-06-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

June 17

I think this picture pretty much sums up the way I would love to approach my summer. Just being lazy, hanging out on the patio with a gardening book.

Then three kids start clamoring for breakfast and I realize I have to figure out how to do laundry, sweep floors, turn on the sprinklers, yell at three kids who think it's okay to come in dripping wet on the newly swept floors after playing in said sprinklers, make lunch, and fill the afternoon with something other than Nick Jr before Skippy comes home.

Sometimes I wish I was a cat.

The Summer In Pictures: Day 15

2011-06-15T13:08:00.000-07:00

June 15th

And so the craziness begins. The last day of school is upon us - again.

My girls have officially completed first and third grade. I can't quite believe it. In fact, I'm reasonably sure I just attended Kbear's kindergarten graduation a week ago....right? They have both had fantastic years, getting great grades and excelling in their own ways. Banana is quite the artist and came a long way with her reading this year and Kbear is my math whiz and social butterfly. Banana also started Spanish this year (she already knows more words than I do) and she started "Tiger Tracks," a set of classes for the older kids where they get to choose Friday electives. This year Banana took part in "Hike and Draw" which is exactly what it sounds like, and "Cooking" where she brought home everything from crepes to pudding pops and scrambled eggs. She played Lacrosse and expanded her social circle. Kbear took part in art club, marble club, soccer club, and drama club, and had something going on pretty much every afternoon of the week after school. Overall it was a great year. We are incredibly blessed to have the kids in an absolutely amazing charter school with wonderful and dedicated staff and opportunities that I've never thought would be possible at the elementary school level.

But now.....it's summer. The year ended with the traditional picnic on the school lawn, complete with one family bringing their horses and tirelessly giving ride after ride to the kids, including my own. Those sweet animals must have paced the length of the school field a hundred times and the kids loved it.

So today's "picture of the day" is actually a double feature, because I just couldn't post only one. You could say our summer is off to a galloping start. *wink*

The Summer in Pictures: Day 14

2011-06-14T21:54:00.000-07:00

June 14th

Today when my Banana got off the bus she was all sorts of snarffly and snuffly. Her eyes were red and she was all blotchy. With the wind we have been having this last week the pollen is flying around in full force and the allergies have been just killing us. So I gave her a benadryl. One Benadryl at 4:30 right? I thought that maybe it would help her zonk out but really I thought no more of it until bedtime, when she realized that one of her favorite shows was coming on.

Banana's pitch:
"Mom....tomorrow is the last day of school can I please stay up late I want to watch So You Think You Can Dance with you and I promise I won't be tired tomorrow I won't even be the teeny tiniest ittsy bitsiest bit crabby and I really like that show and I promise that when you tell me to I'll go right to bed and we won't even miss the bus so please please please please PLEASE can I stay up?"

I countered that she had taken a Benadryl and that it was still a school night.

She gave me puppy dog eyes.

I relented and let her get comfy in the chair.

And after all that, ten minutes later I took this picture.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 12

2011-06-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

June 12

See that?

That is the only thing I have left that has my Dad's handwriting on it.

It's a luggage tag. Once upon a time it hung on the strap of his black leather Amoco bag that he used for traveling. I'm not even completely sure how I got a hold of it - I think that Skippy and I borrowed the bag for our honeymoon and that somehow the tag came off and it ended up in my jewelry box. I probably intended to give him the bag (and presumebly the tag) back some day. And then he got sick. And then he died and it stayed in my jewelry box. When we moved, I rediscovered it, tucked into a corner under some old birthday cards and other trinkets that have no real place in my house but that I can't bear to throw away.

And I cried. Over a freakin' luggage tag.

Once upon a time, it probably took him a whole thirty seconds to fill out. It was completely insignificant. Just one more thing to do before heading to the airport. But now it has become so much more than just a luggage tag - it has become one of my most treasured possessions. It's something that I will keep even when the leather is cracked and the stitching has started to deteriorate and the paper inside is yellow. I will keep it even when I have to strain to see the writing that I know so well, his characteristic block letters, all in caps, that told people who he was. When my Mom no longer lives at the address listed on the tab (blurred because she still lives there), I will run my fingers over the writing and remember the years we all lived in that house. I will look at his old characteristic block letters and smile.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I miss you.

The Summer in Pictures: Day 10

2011-06-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

Yeah yeah yeah, I missed yesterday. This shift work gig isn't easy you know. But all things considered I think I am hanging in there pretty well. This has been a lot of fun.

Anyway, today Banana is nine. NINE, people. I'm a little aghast. It was really just the other day that they put her in my arms after an 18 hour labor. She was my "moon baby," born during a lunar eclipse. These days she's all legs and attitude, but I'd like to think that she knows that I am the very best friend she will ever have, as long as she continues to let me have that role.

Sometimes I see her objectively, the way a stranger must see her and I realize just how beautiful she is. She is kind and sweet and funny and smart and I love her every bit as much as I did the day they handed her to me.

Today we celebrated with purple hair extensions and her first ever "real" pedicure. I'm a little annoyed that I didn't have the good camera with me, but even so, I got this shot. It makes me smile.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Girl. We love you so much.

The Summer In Pictures: Day 8

2011-06-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

June 8:

Me last year:
"Hey babe, look at this amazingly awesome website I found. This stay at home Mom in Alaska makes all sorts of easy cool things out of wood. Maybe you can use the kazillion dollars worth of tools you have been hoarding and make us a few of these awesome garden beds out of cedar fence pickets....aren't these cool babe?"

Skippy: "Those are cool. Bookmark that. And I did not buy 'kazillions of dollars worth of tools dear.'"

Me a few weeks later last year:
"Hey babe, remember those cool garden beds? Home Depot has the fence pickets on sale. It says you can make a bed with less than ten of them. Can we try it?"

Skippy: "Sure. I'll go get the stuff right now."

Skippy then proceeds to come home with approximately 120 fence pickets. No, I'm not kidding.

Me: >sigh<

So we build a box right? It's pretty neat and Skippy is proud of it, and rightfully so. All of our friends who stop by ohhhh and ahhhh over it. My mother-in-law asks where we bought it. I am envisioning a summer of gardening where I don't have to sit in the dirt, which I hate.

And then our lone garden box sits there all winter long. Empty and sad. We have three kids you know? Life is busy.

Fast forward to this spring:

We finally bang out a few more boxes. And this time we actually put something in them. We have a long way to go before that area of the back yard looks like we want it to, but still - pretty neat, huh?

The Summer in Pictures: Day 7

2011-06-07T21:50:00.000-07:00

Isn't she cute?

Actually if we are completley honest, she is so stinkin' ugly that she's cute.

If you've ever visited http://icanhascheezburger.com (otherwise known as lol cats) then you get what I mean when I say, "Go 'way, Mabel haz sunshines."

The Summer in Pictures: Day 6

2011-06-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

June 6th:

Today we got new carpet upstairs.

When we moved into the house, we put in gorgeous dark sold hardwood throughout the living room and the kitchen, but we left the god awful stained, smelly, shaggy, icky, 1970s carpet in the bedrooms. We contemplated putting the hardwood in those rooms as well, but with two of our four bedrooms being downstairs directly under the two upstairs rooms, we decided to make everyone happy and put carpeting in for soundproofing. If you've ever been downstairs when two dogs decide to play upstairs or three kids go pounding by overhead, then you get it.

Anyway, the install was a nightmare. There is really no other way to describe it. From start to finish it was a living nightmare. But when the girls got home from school, the first thing they wanted to do was make "carpet angels" and that was pretty darn cute.

Thank goodness it feels amazing under my bare feet. That makes it worth it.

The Summer In Pictures: Day 5

2011-06-05T12:48:00.001-07:00

June 5:

My little boy.

Not so little any more.

Ever since I got fed up with Chunk's ever-messy hair and buzzed his whole head last summer, Skippy has been gleefully looking forward to this year, when he decided that come hell or high water he was going to give our son a mohawk.

I have to admit, Chunk would be cute no matter what, but he actually looks adorable in a mini-punk rocker kind of way. Skippy wants to let it grow and grow and grow and just keep shaving the sides. We'll see how long I can go before it makes me start to twitch.

But for now, he's just too damn cute.

The Summer In Pictures: Day 4

2011-06-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

June 4

My new backyard is an exercise in intimidation.

You see, in Illinois we had a backyard that was roughly the size of a Volkswagon. But at the time it worked for us - the girls were little and we didn't have a need for a ton of green space. Then we moved to Oregon, the land of green things and our rental house had a decent sized backyard....unfortunately it was mostly comendeered by the landlord as a place to park all of his various non-working vehicles. The part that he wasn't using was uneven and dry, covered with crabgrass and goatheads, otherwise known as puncturevine the Pacific Northwest. Puncturevine is known as a noxious weed in Oregon (seen here: http://www.idahoweedawareness.org/vfg/weedlist/puncturevine/puncturevine.html) and it's nasty stuff. I refer to it as "that f'n crap that made it impossible to play outside without having a kid come in every five seconds with a thorn in their foot." But that aside, the bottom line is that it was kind of hard to get your garden on in the old house.

Now fast forward to the new place. It has a wonderful backyard - in fact it was one of the main reasons we bought our charming money pit with it's orchard view. And when I say it has a wonderful backyard, what I really mean is that it has the potential to have a wonderful backyard. You can tell that once upon a time, the previous homeowner was an avid gardener - there are all sorts of exotic (to me) flowers and shrubs struggling to survive out in our mini urban jungle. Unfortunately, you can also tell that the second the previous owner received our offer on the house, she stopped weeding, watering, and caring about it at all. For approximately three months. In the spring. When things grow. In fact I'm reasonably certain she forgot that she even still had a backyard. So by the time we got into the house a year ago, there wasn't much that could be done except hack down the weeds that threatened to eat us and hunker down until this year.

And finally, my efforts are paying off. Slowly but surely I am winning the battle to reclaim the yard. I can actually mow it, the grass is green, and we are cleaning up the flower beds bit by bit, having fun discovering the treasures already planted underneath months of old leaves neglect.

Among my greatest discoveries are the peony bushes. I have never had experience with these before, and when they bloomed I was stunned. The kids and I have had so much fun watching the plants produce their golf ball sized buds that suddenly explode into huge bright blossoms. They are simply magnificent, and the flowers themselves seem to be be saying thank you to me every time they bloom - thank you for bringing us back!

I am more than happy to oblige.

The Summer In Pictures: Day 3

2011-06-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

June 3rd

It has been an unseasonably cool spring in the Columbia Gorge. Without a doubt, when we were wearing windbreakers on Wednesday afternoon I was thinking that it was definitely the coolest (almost cold!) June 1st we had experienced since our move four years ago.

But there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. This weekend forecast highs are in the mid-80s AND it appears that our hard re-claimed strawberry bed is going to give us a harvest! Grow little berry, grow!

The Summer In Pictures: Day 2

2011-06-03T10:27:00.001-07:00

June 2

Tonight we had Family Night at the kids' school. As usual it was a blast and we were excited and impressed by the level of work that these children continue to produce. Banana's giraffe finally made it up on the classroom wall, and I've got to say, it was pretty darn impressive.

Next year however, we are going to start earlier, and think smaller. And yes....I say that every year.

The Summer In Pictures: Day 1

2011-06-01T23:20:00.001-07:00

June 1st

Today my Bailey girl is 10. She has been with me through it all - through my marriage and my pregnancies, through my miscarriage, and when I lost my Dad. When I came home after having emergency surgery, she jumped up on my bed and refused to leave my side for three days unless she absolutely had to take a doggy potty break. When I brought home each new baby, she appointed herself their personal guardian angel.

I can tell her anything and she loves me no matter what. My children do not know a world without her. Every so often I see the signs that she is slowing down and I realize that I'm not ready to lose her. She's been with me for so long I don't remember what it's like not to come home to her.

She is one constant in an ever-changing world. Happy Birthday, Bay. We love you.

Welcome Back

2011-06-01T23:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome back.

It's been awhile, huh?

So sorry about that...it seems that sometimes life just gets in the way. Let's cover the basics first, shall we?

Everything is good.

Jobs are good. Busy on both fronts. I am ramping up for another busy summer in the world of 911. Nothing says, "hey it's June!" like a call that begins, "So I'm camping down at Frog Lake, and there are all these guys with guns running around."

The house is good, if not slightly messy. But let's face it, that's nothing new. I mean really, if I said it was spotless THEN you'd be shocked.

The kids are good. Everyone is healthy. The girls are chomping at the bit to get out of school for the summer, and Chunk is chomping at the bit to start pre-school in the fall.

Oregon continues to be good to us.

So let's try something........again. In the name of full disclosure, I have tried this before, and failed. I want to do the daily summer pictures again - where I post a picture every day that represents a part of our summer. Remember? I think last time I lasted three weeks, if even.

But last time I didn't have my Canon Rebel. I love it. I don't totally know how to USE it, but I adore it. And I'm excited to learn more about it this summer while I run around the Gorge with my kids. So I'll tell you what: I am going to start posting pictures. I'm going to aim for one a day. And we'll just see what happens.

If I blow it who's really going to know, right?

"I'm going to get married when I'm twenty."

2011-02-15T19:22:00.000-08:00

That's what Banana informed me tonight when we were taking a homework break in favor of hitting the Golden Arches. There we are, driving along and jamming to the radio and out of the blue she asks me, "do you like being married?"

So many answers.....most of them way more complex and inappropriate for an eight year old's question.

"Of course I do." I tell her. "I love your Daddy and our family."

She mulls that over for a second and then asks, "how old do you have to be to get married?"

"Well," I hedge "I think you have to be at least eighteen to just run off and get married BUT that's pretty young too; I think it's a good idea to go to college first." She nods wisely.

"Then I'll get married when I'm twenty." she decides.

"That would probably be okay, but you won't be done with college yet, especially if you want to be a bug doctor." Are you seeing a theme to this conversation yet? I mean, naturally I don't tell her what I want to, which would be more along the lines of "over my dead body, you need to experience the world on your own and have friends and go to clubs and date and learn to cook and pay bills on your own first. You'll get your heart broken and break a few yourself, and overdraw your checkbook and buy your first brand new car and get a job and take a trip and cry over margaritas with your girlfriends and do all sorts of other stuff first." I can't say that. That's pretty heady stuff. So I stick with the basics. Like wanting to be a bug doctor.

Banana contemplates this. "Okay." she decides "Then I won't get married until I'm at least twenty four. And after I'm a doctor."

Works for me, kid. We'll work on the hard numbers later. Just stay my little girl forever.

More and more and MORE

2011-02-03T22:08:00.000-08:00

Look at my adorable little man. My Chunk. My Buddy. My Boy.

Having a son....at the very least I can say that it's nothing like having a daughter - and not just because diaper changes are WAY easier - because it's way more than that. Boys are definitely wired differently. And even though I look ahead to the tween and teen years of raising two girls with apprehension and sometimes a dose of straight up dread, I don't really worry about not getting along with my girls when the hormones kick in. We will still be close. We will still be friends. We'll muddle through it together. And I work hard every day to make damn sure that they will never doubt that I am there for them.

But boys....boys are different. It's not that I won't be there for him. It's not that we won't be friends. It's not that I don't dread parts of the tween and teen years of raising a son. It's just that it's DIFFERENT. I can't really explain it. But it's what I'm sitting here pondering tonight after finally getting my Chunk into his bed.

Chunker zonked out on the couch earlier tonight, so he and I stayed up eating popcorn on the couch and watching the last twenty minutes of Twilight, New Moon on Showtime until just a few minutes ago. When the credits started rolling, I scooped him up and took him to bed. And once I got him settled under his Cars bed tent with his pillow pet and his puppy, snug and warm in his Batman jammies, with hugs and kisses said and done, I straightened up and moved towards the light switch. And just like every night, our script went into motion:

"Good night baby." I say.

"Night Mama." comes the sleepy reply.

I turn off the light.

"Mommy?" says that little voice in the darkness

"Yes Colin?"

"I wub you."

"I love you too sweetie." I tell him. And as if on cue, he replies

"I love you more and more and more and MORE."

And with that, I leave my little boy to his dreams of puppies and ice cream and hot wheels and anything else that passes through his beautiful blond noggin in the night.

Here's the thing: I know he will always love me. Just like I know that there is nothing in the world that can make me stop loving him. But I know that someday, he won't tell me as often, or with such amazing abandon.

I can hope that he'll always tell me that he loves me more and more and more and more. I already know that he won't. Not like he does now.

But I can hope. Because nothing is sweeter.

January Reading List

2011-01-30T18:19:00.000-08:00

In my quest to track the number of pages I have read in 2011, here is my January reading list:

Sweetwater Creek, by Anne Rivers Siddons (Pages: 480)
This was okay - your basic "coming of age" chick lit kind of read. I wouldn't re-read it but I enjoyed it. It's the kind of book I would have read in high school, and has some stuff in it that I'll work to make sure my girls DON'T read, even in high school.

1st to Die (The Women's Murder Club Series) by James Patterson (Pages: 432)
I actually re-read this. It's been awhile and I'd like to work my way through the whole series this year. I think somewhere around the third one I stopped buying them and now they are popping up in thift shops and secondhand bookstores so I'm keeping an eye out for them and picking them up as I find them.

Under the Dome, by Stephen King (1072 pages)
Of all the King books I have read (and I've read a lot of them) this one is right up there with the ones that got into my head the most, It and Cujo. I'm not going to say that I didn't enjoy it (because I'm human and like all humans, I have a morbid streak), but there is no doubt that it was extremely disturbing. King writes so graphically that I was reminded over and over that since having my own children, I can't read certain things as easily as I used to. Hence why I have never re-read Pet Semetary. But it was good. I couldn't put it down until I had bullied my way through all one thousand plus pages.

I, Alex Cross, by James Patterson (365 pages)
Like all of Patterson's Alex Cross books, I read this in less than 24 hours. I have a major crush on Detective Cross and even though it was good, I didn't feel like it was quite up to his earlier Cross books. Patterson is assuming that if you are reading this one, you have read the previous books and although that is likely true, I really missed some of the more in depth character connections that are at the forefront of the earlier Cross books, and are the reason I got sucked into them in the first place. In the first Cross books, you feel like you are getting to know the family for the first time. Then later, it's like revisiting an old friend. I didn't get that this time and felt disappointed. But that being said, I will ALWAYS buy the next one in the series, and as a whole they are some of my favorites.

Total Books Read: 4

Total Pages Read: 2,349

Hard to believe

2011-01-19T22:19:00.001-08:00

Another year has gone by. Today marked nine years of almost-always-happy-marital-bliss for Skippy and me.

In case you missed it a few years ago, here is one of my absolute favorite posts, "The Story of Us"

http://freckledmama.blogspot.com/2008/01/its-story-time-again-wild-applause-part.html

Couch to 5K: Week One

2011-01-10T16:57:00.000-08:00

Feets don't fail me now.....

That's what I was thinking when I took this picture this morning while standing next to the treadmill and deep breathing at the gym at 6:30 this morning.

Once upon a time, I loved to run. I never really ran competatively, but I was one of the only girls who never groaned with dismay or faked cramps when the gym teacher announced that it was time to run the mile. At one point in high school, I was accomplishing the mile in eight minutes or less.

Then I went to college. They had buses. Then I had kids. They kept me home and I wasn't motivated to do anything for myself. And that was the end of that.

Then my butt expanded.

I had to buy bigger jeans.

And I am tired of it.

So today on my birthday, I started the Couch to 5K program. I am hoping to rediscover my love of running. I hope all of you will help encourage me when I am rocking, and push me when I'm slacking.

Week 1, Run 1: 30 minutes, 1.4 miles

It's that day again....

2011-01-05T20:19:00.000-08:00

I really thought that I was going to be able to get away with not doing the whole "did you know that my Dad died?" blog this year. I was genuinely going to try. I've been venting my emotions out on Facebook and talking to good friends and just kind of getting by. But maybe I've been in denial, because every year I think it hurts a little less and really....every year I realize that it still hurts the same.

Plus tonight the husband is out of town and and my kids are doing their ping-pong-ball-off-the-walls imitations and I'm retaining water and craving chocolate and short on sleep so I'm just generally feeling kind of down. Not to mention I just finished wrestling a tinder-dry Christmas tree out of the house by myself, carpeting my hardwood floor in pine needles before knocking a shelf off of the wall and sending a lamp flying in the process -- right before stepping in dog doo after unceremoniously heaving what has basically become the world's largest toothpick into my front yard for the time being.

So yeah....I've hit a low point. Every Mommy has them. This is mine.

I'm not sure if it was the tree or the lamp or the kids that finally made me realize that I've spent a good part of my day IGNORING the day. I haven't let it in. And I'm still not sure I want to. Right now I kind of feel the way I did three days after Banana was born, when my Mom came over to help and I got emotional over the fact that I burned a grilled cheese sandwich right before bursting into hysterical tears when I stubbed my toe...I'm in that place right now - where the smallest thing could be akin to the breaking of a dam. And I'm not ready to open the floodgates.

So this year, let's try something different. If you want to read the sob story, it's on here, under January of 2009. This year let's talk about some of the GOOD stuff. Like the time we went camping and my parents realized that they had remembered the coffee, but forgotten the coffee filters. Being a coffee drinker myself now, I completely understand that that was a potential disaster of substantial magnitude. But my Dad didn't let it phase him - not when he had a perfectly good clean tube sock at his disposal. It may not have been Starbuck's Special Roast, but cafe ala sock probably had it's own unique taste!

Then there was the time he took me fishing. Actually he took me fishing millions of times, but this one time he took me to Shabonna Lake in Northern Illinois. I don't remember much about the day, just that we left early, he bought us McDonald's for breakfast, and I caught three fish that day. Mostly what I remember is that it was just me and my Dad, and that day I had him all to myself, and he was my hero.

I remember the look on his face the first time he saw me in a formal dress...and the look on his face after the doorbell rang and he saw the look on my high-school boyfriend's face! I remember sitting in the garage in the old yellow swing after getting my first real kiss and jumping six feet in the air when the door to the house squeaked open and he came out "to check on the sprinkler." Sure, the sprinkler. Right. Moving on.

When I was in college we took our last big family vacation to the Grand Canyon. In Sedona we ventured out on a guided horseback tour. If you have ever been on one of those, you know that the only horses that are more gentle and calm are the ones you see hitched up to the pony rides for little kids at the carnival. But when we crossed a small stream, Dad's horse pawed at the water and whuffled loudly, coming up on his hind legs before finally relenting and crossing the creek...and afterwards to hear Dad tell the story, you would have thought that Wyatt Earp had just bullied his wild steed across the mighty Mississippi.

I remember so many different things - so many snapshots - so many moments.

I remember telling him he was going to be a Papa. Twice.

When Skippy and I got married, my Dad was determined to have everything just so. My Mom was the one who worried about getting the bride ready to go, but Dad was the one who made sure I ate breakfast and who decided at the last minute that we should have balloons for the guests to release after the ceremony. I remember him coming to me in the chapel and telling me that it was time to go. He was stoic when he walked me down the aisle - my pillar of strength. His voice was strong when he replied "Her Mother and I do" in response to the classic "Who gives this woman in holy matrimony?" He was quiet and proud and serious when he took his seat next to my Mom....and then somewhere along the way, during a fourteen minute ceremony, it was the father of bride, not the mother, who became choked up.

So many little things....like when my Dad laughed really REALLY hard, I used to think he sounded like Ernie from Sesame Street.

He bought cheap beer, but I think his real drink was rum and Coke.

He tucked his tshirts into his sweat pants on weekends.

He drove us crazy, lectured, and gave unsolicited advice every chance he got.

He loved us more than anything.

I love you, Dad.

S-T-R-E-T-C-H

2011-01-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

You know that feeling you get on a Saturday morning in the spring, when you open your eyes, warm and cozy under your favorite blanket in your bed, and you see the sunlight streaming in through the windows? The birds are chirping, your children are sleeping, and there is a cat purring on your pillow...and although you feel fully awake in an instant, ready to greet the world for another day...you take just one extra moment, and you stretch. You arch your back and close your eyes and point your toes, and you STRETCH every creak and kink and ache away before you begin the day. You feel your lungs fill with so much air that your chest hurts, and then you let your body go boneless and the air comes out in a whoosh and for a split second your chores and your worries and your to-do list all seem minor and your whole world is just waiting for you to begin all over again. It is without a doubt one of the very best and most gratifying feelings in the world.

I have to tell you, that's how it feels to sign into your blog when you've been away for far too long.

Too much has happened since I last checked in with you, so I've decided that I won't even try to begin to cover it all. Some of it has been wonderful. Some of it has broken my heart. I've been stressed out and I've cried and I've laughed until I've wanted to puke and I've hugged my kids more times than I can count. Life is hard. Life is good. And I think that rather than spend a whole blog entry looking back, I'd rather just take a big bloggy stretch and look towards what lies ahead instead. I'm sure we'll reminice as we go.

It's the first day of a new year. I am ridiculously romantic about starting a new calendar. I believe in resolutions and new beginnings and that anything is possible on January 1st. It doesn't even bother me that at some point, I will most likely break the numerous resolutions that I've made - I told a co-worker that at some point during the year I always come full circle and revisit them. I don't think of resolutions as ironclad win-or-lose edicts....I consider them guidelines that I set to make myself a better person, a better wife and and a better mother. And if they fall by the wayside occasionally, that's okay. I know where to find them again.

So in case you haven't figured it out, the big resolution of 2011 is to blog more. Or rather, to blog again. This is the one resolution I hope to hold on to firmly because I have realized recently how much I miss my blog - how much I miss sharing our life in Oregon with anyone who cares enough to read about it. So stay tuned, because I'm hoping to attack it with a vengeance, and I'm going to try really really really REALLY hard to blog at least once a week.

I've got some other resolutions...I already know that some will be more successful than others, but we'll see how it goes. Naturally I'm going to share them with you, so that in coming months you can taunt me while I stumble around trying to hold fast to them.

Ready?

(I can tell you're on the edge of your seat. Really.)

So I'm going to lose some weight. Let's just get that one out of the way because I totally get that it's trite and predictable and that a kazillion other people have said the exact same thing tonight. But I'm really going to do it. We'll get into the specifics more later, but let's just say that over the last year I have developed a "bookshelf ass" and I'm not happy about it. I do not believe that it just means that there is more of me to love - I believe that if someone can set their drink on the top of my rear at a party that things have gotten way out of control. And maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit....but really, it's bad. And I'm done. So more on that later.

Just for fun I want to keep track of the books I read this year. I want to cook at home more. I want to coupon hardcore at the grocery store again. I want to play board games with the kids and beat them at Mario Kart on Saturday nights. I want to make a point to go on dates with my husband again. I want to keep learning new ways to do my job better, faster, and easier. I want to stress less, sleep more, and enjoy my family.

I want to have a good year. So I'm going to stretch and flex and shake out the cobwebs...and I'm going to get my rear in gear. Here's to 2011.

***************************************

Currently Reading: "Run Like a Mother" by Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea

Windows to the soul....

2010-05-20T14:19:00.001-07:00

That's what they call eyes - the windows to the soul. Now I'm not sure who "they" are, but I think that they are on to something. After all, the majority of people will list the eyes as one of the top attributes that they notice first when meeting someone new. They can express every emotion a human being can experience. They let lovers speak without words. They tell a mother a child's secrets. And the other day, my son's eyes offered me a surprising revelation.

Chunk and I were out and about running errands. It was just your usual day of grabbing coffee - or in Chunk's case, "hot cha-cit wif cweem!" (Otherwise known as hot chocolate with whipped cream). Then we stopped to pick up milk, buy stamps, and dropped in at dispatch to check the work schedule and to let Chunk con my boss out of some candy. It was sunny, the radio was playing, and the time slipped by for me and my boy. In fact, it was lunchtime before we knew it, and I marveled at how quickly my almost-kid-free school days tend to fly by.

We were having such a nice afternoon that rather than run home for yet another ho-hum PB&J, I decided that we would have a date and hit the Golden Arches. We don't go to McDonald's very often, (although still more than I'd like) but I had a new mommy magazine full of clutter busting tips I'd never implement and another chicken-of-the-month recipe and I was anxious to read through it while Chunk played in the plastic tunnels and squealed from the top level of the play place.

So there we were, eating and playing and reading and it strikes me that my Chunk is getting big -
I can actually hold a somewhat coherent conversation with him now, and I usually understand at least half of what he is saying. So while we talked about colors and chicken nuggets and sisters, I thought about how big he is and how fun...and how much he looks like Charles. It's uncanny....in fact it's almost creepy. Although it's most obvious in Chunk, all three of my kids have very strong W family features, to the point where sometimes I'm a little melancholy over the fact that they don't look just a little bit more like me. But at the end of the day they are healthy and amazing and beautiful and I just don't sweat it. There are so many other things that are so much more important. And I know that. But still.

A quick glance at the clock tells me that it's time to run - it's almost time to hit the bus stop to grab the girls. So we wrestle Chunk's feet into his sandals, slurp down the last of our drinks through our straws, toss our trash and head out the door. I snap the buckles on Chunk's car seat and climb up behind the wheel. I tell Chunk how much fun it was to have lunch with him, and I glance in my rear view mirror to see his response.

And in that moment, I catch my breath. The mirror is angled at just the right angle, and all I can see is Chunk's sweet little face from the nose up.

He has my eyes.

Sure....he looks just like a little carbon copy of Charles. There is no doubt that he's a W kiddo. The guys at Google call him mini-Chuck. He is the image of his father. It's adorable and kind of freaky.

And his eyes are the same beautiful sky blue that Charles' eyes are - maybe that's why I never noticed. His facial features are his Daddy's......but when he smels and his little face crinkles up, I notice the shape of his eyes.....

Those are all mine. They may be blue and not brown, but he has my eyes.

Now really, does it change anything? Not really. I know that. I don't feel any differently about my son, or about myself. I realize that my who my children are and who they become will be shaped by our actions and our lessons and their own individual personalities more than anything. I know that in the scope of the bigger picture, looks don't matter. And that in my eyes all three of my children are the most beautiful children in the world.

But for some reason, as I pull out of the parking lot, I can't stop smiling. And I think that's okay too.

Did I mention....

2010-04-01T06:50:00.000-07:00

Did you know that my baby boy turned three?

I know. It's hard to believe. Sad but true folks, my sweet little angel man has entered the terrifying threes (screw the terrible twos, they are a myth to lull us into complacency so that when the threes hit we are totally shell shocked). Now in my completely unbiased opinion, Chunk is the most amazing, accomplished, and adorable three year old ever. Plus he's super sweet. And he's funny.

Now if only I could get him to consistently go on the potty, my life would be complete....

But anyway, as seen in a previous blog, we started off the birthday festivities with dinner at the kids' favorite Mexican restaurant here in town, where the boy got to shake his money maker and a pair of maracas while wearing a kid-sized sombrero. I had a drink with dinner. Overall it was a great night.

Birthday celebrations capped off with Chunk's first movie, "How to Train Your Dragon." I wish I could give you a review. I really do - from what I saw, it was super cute and the 3D glasses appeared to be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I spent the majority of the show realizing that Chunk wasn't quite ready for a full-length movie. By the time we walked out of there, I was exhausted and had muscles aching in places I hadn't ever experienced before.

But I rallied (because I'm a Mom and I had Advil readily at my disposal) and we continued the fun at home with presents and cake. It didn't take long to discover that this is "The Year of Cars" and "The Year of Hats." The cars are kind of a no-brainer because he's a boy, and he's three. But the hats....there's a story there. See, a few weeks ago we were on the webcam with Nana (gotta love technology) and she asked Chunk what he wanted for his birthday. With no hesitation and zero prompting, he replied "I want a HAT!" So Nana being Nana, went on a quest for hats with Jack. Shortly before the big day, a box arrived that was roughly the size of a smart car and amid the sixteen pounds of packing peanuts (THANKS NANA) we found a cowboy hat, a soldier hat, a train hat, a construction hat (complete with a yi-ite!), and all sorts of assorted goodies to go with the hats! Shortly after that, an awesome space helmet showed up from Aunt Sarah.

So the kids is totally set on hats. And totally set for the next six Halloweens. Eventually I'll get a new blog post up, titled "the many hats of Chunk" but for now I'd be happy if he'd sit still long enough to get a picture. And from everyone else, he got cars. And tracks. And accessories. And best of all, an adorable little wheeled suitcase for all of his newly acquired hot wheels.

Overall, I think that my big-little boy had a wonderful birthday. It's hard to believe that not so very long ago, this was my Chunk......

>sniff<

>sigh<

We survived Spring Break....and now I need a vacation.

2010-03-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

Whew.

The kids are back in school.

I know it's not PC to admit this, but between you and me, my friends of the interwebs...I'm relieved as hell. My children are awesomely exhausting.

We had a busy Spring Break. We parked it up and hiked it up and movied our butts off and now I'd love nothing more than to park my butt on a beach with a paper-umbrella-embellished-drink. But alas, some things just aren't meant to be.

Here are some highlights of our week:

The girls enjoyed their first tailgate with their Grammy, up on the Rowena Loops. They were searching for the massive fields of wildflowers that are supposed to abound this time of year, but apparently they were a little bit early. Still, sandwiches, pickles, and snacks were enjoyed, and a few nice pictures got taken. As a side bonus, I enjoyed a few hours in a quiet house with my boys and caught up on my sleep after a few busy shifts at work.

Both of the girlies also had a chance to practice their camera skills on a few early spring flowers:

We also braved the zoo - along with every other school-aged child and harried mother in the state of Oregon. We packed a picnic and dragged along some friends and had an awesome time seeing the baby elephant and the smelly penguins and goats and lions... and don't go asking Laura about the little episode in the lion exhibit. Let's just say that I thought there were only two in the enclosure and that when a third sauntered out from around a nearby rock corner licking her chops and eyeballing my slightly more than rounded rear end, I almost peed myself. We aren't going to ever mention this again.

Anyway, here's a few shots - do you know how hard it is to make six kids look at a camera at the same time? Laura got the best shot so I stole it off of her Facebook. The girls especially had fun feeding the lorikeets.

After the zoo, I was honestly pretty exhausted. In fact, it would have been fair to say that I was gratefully looking forward to working all day on Wednesday and Thursday, if only because it would give me a chance to REST. But before that could happen, I soldiered on in the name of fun on Tuesday, taking the kids out for ice cream and for a hike down on the riverfront trail that runs through our scenic little town. I am sorry to say that there aren't any pictures of this - not because I didn't bring the camera, but because it was me against three kids, one dog, dripping ice cream, and the distractions of frogs croaking, joggers, off leash dogs, an airplane flying overhead, the creek, and the great adventure of a five year old that desperately needed to pee behind a bush. Let's face it, pictures were the last thing on my mind - I was just trying to make sure we all made it back to the blissful safety of my minivan before the sun went down and we got lost within 100 yards of the Google complex and the animal shelter.

So yeah. That was fun. WHATEVER.

Wednesday and Thursday I worked. That meant that my dear devoted girlfriend and babysitter Laura had the kids. I would have offered her the chance to blog about the experience, but I doubt the good people at Blogspot would appreciate that many obscenities and f-bombs being dropped in one post.

But once Friday rolled around, we were in the home stretch. We hung out and watched movies. Skippy and I cleaned out half of the garage on Saturday and took everyone out to our favorite Mexican restaurant for the Chunker's third birthday - he loves it whenever anyone gets to wear the big sombrero and all of the servers sing "happy birthday, cha cha cha" -- so what better way to say good bye to the terrible twos than with his own serenade, complete with maracas. On Sunday, we rounded out our Spring break with How To Train Your Dragon in 3D. It was the Chunk's first movie in the theater - aside from the ones when he was a few months old and small enough to nurse under a blanket and fall asleep while his sisters shoveled popcorn into their mouths. He wasn't crazy about the 3D glasses, but liked he liked having his own box of "tandy" and he loved to make his seat go up and down...oh yeah and he even seemed to enjoy intermittedly watching the BIIIIG TEEE VEEEE. But that being said, I think we'll wait before we attempt it again. And after the house lights came back up, we headed home for cake and presents (but that's another blog) and finally we tackled baths and backpacks.

So overall, our Spring Break meshed with my little boy's birthday pretty nicely. That night I peeked in on my sweet munchkins before I collapsed in my own bed, and I thought to myself that our week of freedom and fun had absolutely flown by.

But when Monday rolled around, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I wasn't thrilled to see that bright yellow bus pull up.

"My Keeeety"

2010-03-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

I really need to utilize my camera more. For awhile there, I was a picture taking fool. I would even venture to say that I had a decent eye for awesome shots of my kids. But for the last few months my shutter happy amateur skills have taken a hiatus. I snapped this shot of the Chunk with my phone yesterday and realized that I really need to get my camera back into my hands...because time flies by far too quickly.

In case you haven't seen it already, here's Chunk with his friend "my keeeety," the newest addition to the W Zoo, Licorice.

Parenthood....my thoughts.

2010-03-05T07:28:00.000-08:00

Well, it's official - the Olympics are over. We enjoyed them tremendously this year - it was the first year that the girls were old enough to really understand the awesomeness of the Olympics and they were pretty fascinated with all of the different events, with the exception of curling. One rainy Saturday Skippy hollered down the hall for the girls when curling came on and they dutifully came running to check it out. After a brief explanation, they stared at the TV for a few minutes and then turned to their Daddy with blank expressions and in stereo surround sound told him, "I don't get it."

Me neither girlies.

But anyway, the Olympics were a blast. Now it's time to get back to good old fashioned in-my-jammies-on-the-couch TV. This past Tuesday, I propped my eyeballs open into the wee hours of the night (aka ten p.m.) to watch the premiere of Parenthood on NBC http://www.nbc.com/parenthood/ and I thought it was great. If you have kids, or if you work with kids, or if someday you want kids, then you should definitely watch it. The cast is wonderful - I immediately recognized Lauren Graham from her days on Gilmore Girls, and I am a huge Peter Krause fan from the short lived Dirty Sexy Money, although I've read that he was hugely successful on Six Feet Under on HBO as well. I think that what I liked most about the show was that it had something for everyone - the successful working mom, the stay at home daddy, the single mom, parents with rebellious teens, parents with little munchkins, and the cornerstone of the premiere episode, parents dealing with their child's newly diagnosed disability. And aside from the fact that everyone in the cast was skinny, fit, and sexy, I thought that the show it was pretty realistic - and let's face it, the show wouldn't be as appealing with a lot of chubby soccer moms like me running around - I like my actors as hot and sexy as the next viewer. And despite the fact that lot of online reviewers bitched and moaned that it was too similar to "Brothers and Sisters" I thought that it had a more appealing plot, plus the advantage of not having Sally Field OR Calista Flockhart (who as Skippy would say, still needs to eat a sammich) in the cast.

But anyway, I liked the show so much that I was still thinking about it while I drove my purple minivan around town all day on Wednesday in all my Mommy glory. Mostly it got me wondering when my tastes changed so much. It's funny what parenthood does to you. Skippy and I occasionally laugh about how quickly things can change - like when I'm saying goodnight at quarter to ten and heading to bed we will often remark that once upon a time, quarter to ten was prime "let's get dressed in something hoochie and hit the bars on a Thursday night" time for me and Jacquie. Napping used to be a luxury but now, it has become a necessity that all too often eludes me. And even looking at the magazines that come into my house provides proof of the changes. After all, I look forward to my monthly deliveries of both Family Fun and Family Circle (you'll notice that both of these titles contain the world "Family"). But more importantly, let's touch on the fact that I get FAMILY CIRCLE - it's like Better Homes and Gardens for those of us who don't have the time, money, or talent to make Martha Stewart Perfect rooms and rose beds but still find ourselves in dire need of another new "quick and easy dinner idea" for the nights that the kids have soccer practice.

But when did this happen? When did a fully loaded Honda Odyssey become my total dream car? When did vomit stop being a big deal? When did I develop a first name relationship with the doctor's office, and when did the highlight of my week become MOPS or Friday night skate night at school? And where in the HELL have all of these damn animals come from? Isn't it enough that I have kids?

I've noticed that it seems to happen gradually, this transformation. You stand in line at the grocery store (with your cart full of foodstuffs that bear no resemblance whatsoever to your child-free carts of the past) and you glance at the covers of the various magazines. Suddenly, instead of thinking "Wow, Cosmo has twenty ways to blow your lover's mind this month!" you are thinking "Wow, Woman's Day has a chicken-smothered-in-salsa recipe that I HAVEN'T tried yet!" You don't even realize that you are doing it - it's not that you wouldn't love to know how to twist your body into a pretzel for your partner's delight, it's just that you would love to have that chicken recipe more...and the fact that now your knees crack when you get out of bed and your ankles protest when you go down the stairs in the morning. It's not that you don't care what the season's hottest color is, it's that that the hottest color has become "What doesn't make my ass look big?" or the ever popular, "What will make my boobs look like they are up where they belong?" It's because now you have a family to feed, and your six year old who (despite what she claims) cannot subsist on noodles alone.

It's a funny thing, becoming a parent. It changes you to the core. And if part of it means that I find that I relate to things in different ways, I think that's okay.

And really, I wouldn't change it for anything.

~~~~~~~~~~

Currently Reading: Envy, by Sandra Brown

Had to share...

2010-03-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

I can't take credit for this - in fact I picked it up off of a Facebook friend's wall -but I did have to share it!

7 Ways to Trick Your Wife into Having Sex Every Day - john walker - Open Salon

911....this is Momma (plus a W family update)

2010-02-24T14:01:00.000-08:00

So.

Hi there.

It's been awhile, huh?

There's really no excuse - to put it simply, blogging has just been on the back burner for the last six months or so. And I have missed it. But there's so much to catch up on, I think we'll just touch on the basics.

First of all, the kiddos are great. Everyone in the W house is recovering from one form of crud or another, ranging from double ear infections to viruses of unknown origin, but we are all on the mend. I think that for today, I can handle a quick rundown on everyone, but then the couch is calling my stuffy head towards a soft pillow.

Munchkins first: The girls continue to rock it out in second grade and kindergarten, respectively. Banana is consistently scoring awesome spelling tests and she has finally discovered the cool and exciting world of chapter books. I told Skippy recently that it's as if someone has flipped a switch inside her noggin - she has realized that not only CAN she read, but that she LIKES it. And considering how much as Skippy and I love to read it does my heart good to see her with her nose in a book. Her most recent report card shows that she is steady and consistent with her progress in school, and her teachers and friends adore her. She continues to be my big helper girl and she still amazes me with her empathy and her huge heart. In the last few months, we have caught small glimpses into the future - she is fast approaching the "tween" years and at a very mature seven years old, there are times I just cringe and wonder how I will survive until she runs away to college. But the occasional door slamming, stomping, and eye rolling aside, she's still my number one big girl. I find it hard to believe that she's going to be eight this summer!

Kbear is growing by leaps and bounds both physically and mentally. She LOVES all-day Kindergarten and is quite the social butterfly. On her last report card, she showed improvement in almost every area with no backsliding elsewhere. She has tackled roller blades during skate night at school and has turned into quite the little terror on wheels. She loves music and she's always bringing me home pictures, projects, and cards. We still struggle daily with a touch of "middle child syndrome" but overall she continues to be a sweetheart of a curly mop top who is easygoing and hilarious. We celebrated her sixth birthday a few months back with a trip to build-a-bear in Portland and a big girl lunch at Olive Garden and I recently had to do a double take when I realized that all of her jeans were slowly but surely turning into carpi pants. School has really opened her up and she is always eager to share her thoughts and ideas. She soaks up new knowledge like a little sponge, and she is so much fun to watch.

Chunk has officially become my handful. Most days I am half convinced that someone sneaked into my house one night and replaced my adorable smiley baby boy with a demon in disguise. The kid just.never.stops. He climbs and he hides and he sneaks and he builds and he plays and he grabs and he tumbles EVERYWHERE and into EVERYTHING. But more than anything, he makes us laugh. Chunk is the epitome of the spirited child. Every day I wonder how in the world I was so unprepared to tackle the challenge that is Chunk, and then my friends laugh and say, "he's a boy, and he's almost three." So in other words, buckle up Buttercup, because it's going to be a wild ride. He LOVES to talk, he LOVES to run, and he LOVES to make messes. But at the end of the day, no matter how wretched he has been, he melts my heart when he curls up in my lap and asks, "mama, know what? I love you." I mean really, who could resist?

And that pretty much wraps up the kiddo update. Skippy continues to be gleefully and gainfully employed at Google. Don't ask me what he's doing these days, because I've got to tell ya - I don't have a clue. But I know that he's busy doing Googly things and that he is usually under some degree of pressure, and that is when he's happiest. He has also gotten to do some pretty extensive travelling since I last blogged, including trips to Taiwan and Belgium. And although I was not impressed with the chicken flavored Cheetos he brought home from Taiwan, he made up for it with the Belgian chocolate. Bonus time is rolling around again, and it looks like we may be (finally) getting out of the-rental-that-Amy-hates and getting back into our own house. Keep your fingers crossed - I know that we are!

Last but not least, that brings us to little old me. Amy, the crazy stay at home Mama. You may have been thinking these last few months, "where is Amy's blog? She's got nothing better to do except fold laundry!" But as it turns out, I've been busy. Last year I came to the realization that being a full time stay at home Mom might not be my thing. As much as I adore my awesome kids, I was really starting to want a little something more that was all my own. And so I went back to work.

Last October, I started training as a 911 dispatcher. It has been a wild, crazy, and insanely stressful ride, but I have enjoyed it immensely. For the last four months, there hasn't been time to do much other than eat, sleep, and train. What little time and energy I had was being thrown 100% into my family. And although there have been many days when I feel guilty for loving my job, for the most part it has taught me amazing things about myself, and I love working. I have discovered that going back to work has made me a better Mom (although a crappier housewife) and I honestly wouldn't trade it. Skippy has been tremendously supportive, and it felt amazing to make him proud at my Dispatcher "Graduation" a few weeks ago at the Public Safety Academy. After a few more shifts my trainers are going to push me out of the nest and I'll be flying on my own. I'm terrified and excited, but I love having a job that helps people and is an asset to the community. And this is probably the best time to say that although I am looking forward to getting back to blogging, don't expect too many details about the job itself - obviously you have to understand the incredible standards we are held to concerning privacy and confidentiality. However, going back to work doesn't make me any less of a busy minivan-driving mama, so it's not as if I'll ever lack for my own stories concerning the comings and going of the W clan.

So that's really it. That's the full recap. We are doing well. Oregon continues to be good to us and spring is well on it's way here. Aside from these recent bouts of crud, everyone is for the most party healthy and busy, and I'm hoping to have some updated stories and pictures to share soon! Lots of love!

~A~

On hiatus....

2009-10-16T10:37:00.001-07:00

Amy's blog is officially on hiatus for a few more weeks while life is messy and hectic. Never fear, all eight of you will have plenty to read soon - I plan to get back at it by the end of the month!

All is well in W World, just very very busy.

My life is one long blog entry

2009-08-27T09:49:00.001-07:00

At least, that's what my girlfriend Charlotte just told me one the phone. *sigh* I blew it, huh? My great summer photography project went straight into the crapper. I don't know how those Project 365 people do it - that's far too much commitment for me. I think that I'm just bound to commit on a smaller scale - like to library books and pints of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

But such is life....

I'll be back later tonight to share some happy news, some sad news, and start my summer recap. The school bus pulls out in approximately 92 hours.

I am so ready.

Summer Survival Blog, Day ?

2009-07-08T23:42:00.001-07:00

Today's blog entry is titled "The Worst Day of My Life."

At least that's what the Chunk will tell people twenty years from now while he recounts this story over a foamy beer, striving to hold back the tears while the recounts the tale of losing his first love.

His first love of course, being Puppy.

Puppy came into our lives shortly after the Chunk did. My sister Sarah had started an adorable tradition when Banana was born, and has gifted each of my children a stuffed dog as a "welcome to the world" present upon their official entry to this big bad world. These fake furry friends have been with us to absorb tears, to help heal boo boos, and to get dressed up in all manner of new fashions, from doll bonnets to kleenex dresses. And so it was with joy that the aptly named "Puppy" (Banana's) and "Puppy" (Kbear's) gleefully enjoyed the introduction of the third member of their fiber filled family, "Puppy" (Chunk's).

Of my three children, Chunk has been the most attached to his puppy by far. Being dragged along by an ear at Chunk's side (or sometimes by a paw) he has accompanied us through weaning, walking, hospitalization, and surgery. He gets tucked in side-by-side with his master every night, and gets hauled to the grocery store by day.

We have never once lost a Puppy.

Until today.

Today we drove into Portland for the arrival of the first of many summer visitors. The well-loved Miss Toni is gracing us with her presence for a few nights before attending a wedding several hours South of the Gorge. Miss Toni was our steadfast babysitter way back in the day, faithfully caring for my girls at all hours during our time in Sycamore, Illinois. She helped take care of my girls beginning when Kbear was a tiny baby. She was there to help when my Dad died...when we miscarried...when I had surgery...and when I simply needed an hour to myself at the grocery store. And in the meantime, we enjoyed watching her work her way through college at NIU. When we said good-bye to Miss Toni, many tears were shed. We have missed her tremendously and I have yet to find a sitter that can take her place.

And so naturally we wanted to show her a good time on her short visit to our sunny piece of Oregon. Once she was safely on the ground and buckled into the minivan with many hugs and squeals of excitement, we travelled towards an Oregon showpiece - The Historic Columbia Highway and it's star attraction, Multnomah Falls.

Toni was appropriately awed by the beauty of one of our favorite spots. And while we made our way to the big mama, we hiked, took pictures, and absorbed the scenery. It was a cool and sunny day. My children were happy to have an old friend back, and I was enjoying a good cardio work out while pushing Chunk's umbrella stroller up and down the paved paths. Finally, slowly but surely, Multnomah Falls came into view around bend.

If you've never seen them, rest assured that the falls are absolutely spectacular. The upper falls are approximately 540 feet high and spill into the lower falls, which measure in at an impressive 69 feet. (You can see more details about the falls themselves here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multnomah_Falls) And in between the two tiers is Benson Bridge, a showstopper if you've ever seen one. It's an easy .2 mile paved hike to the bridge, and the view can't be missed. So naturally, we made the trek.

And that is when disaster struck.

There we were, jostling for space on the crowded concrete bridge...the girls are pointing and laughing and waving to the people 550 feet below. Toni is trying to capture the beauty of the falls with her camera. And I'm standing with both hands on Chunk's stroller, white knuckled in my determination to make sure that my only son doesn't somehow go tumbling down the ravine and into sure disaster. I like the bridge, but it makes me nervous to have my kids on it. I even set the stroller's brakes, pressing my foot down firmly to ensure that my smallest munchkin isn't going anywhere unheeded. And before I go any further, needless to say that despite the disaster that we encountered, of course I am first and foremost thankful that no one has ever gotten hurt during any of our many trips to the Falls.

The Chunk of course, was fine.

But Puppy...Puppy somehow took an impromptu flying lesson.

That damn stuffed dog sailed perfectly through the slats in the bridge - and landed ten feet below in a sudden-death-like-drop of grass alongside one of the tallest waterfalls in the country.

My heart just about stopped when my sweet baby boy started to wail. It all happened in a blink, and yet I couldn't believe I had actually seen it. I mean, those things happen to other people, they don't happen to US. Surely that couldn't be MY baby boy's beloved Puppy friend snagged in the ferns below....but it was. I swiftly brought Toni up to date on our tragedy. She quickly herded the girls towards the trail and we headed back down in search of someone who might be able to help. And that's when it got rough.

"PUPPY!" Chunk cried in dismay, "PUUUUUU-PPPPYYYYYY"

Right then and there, my heart broke. The farther we walked from the bridge, the louder and more forlorn my sweet baby boy got. I bit my lip to keep from bursting into tears, swallowed my pride, and walked my tear streaked child's stroller to the information desk to see if anyone could help.

And Lord knows that they tried. The ranger was surprisingly unperturbed by the situation. Apparently it's not all that uncommon for them to try to retrieve camera cases, expensive sunglasses, and who knows what from the falls. They even have these neat grabber tools to help facilitate the job. However, they are rarely successful. Multnomah is a massive force of nature, and she doesn't eagerly give back her treasures.

For one brief second, while he held everyone captivated, Ranger Sam managed to snag puppy by one paw...only to lose him again - this time further down the steep ravine.

And so, defeated and dejected, I left my information at the front desk. Our ranger is going to try again tomorrow if Puppy happens to still be there but I have to admit, I'm far from hopeful. I think that Chunk's first furry friend is lost for good.

In our one stroke of luck for the day, Toni just happened to bring Chunk a stuffed Huskie dog in honor of our time at NIU. It's not the same. It's nowhere close and we all know it. But for now, it seems to suffice. Chunk is sleeping securely in his bed with his arm wrapped around this new friend.

And Lord knows, we won't be taking "Doggie" to visit the falls any time soon.

Pictures and updated blog entries coming soon - we've been on the run for two weeks straight and I haven't had time to write like I normally would. But call it a mother's guilt - I had to get this one off my chest tonight.

Summer Survival Blog, Day 10

2009-06-19T19:55:00.000-07:00

And so the second Friday of our summer vacation has arrived. I had plans. We were going to attend the preschool story time and then stay at the library while Banana participated in Summer Reading before we walked over to the park for a picnic lunch.

I had plans.....but so did Chunk.

He woke me up bright and early with tears, a poopie diaper, and a tantrum to rival the current pop diva of your choice.

Needless to say, Chunk and I stayed home. And Kbear went to the library with Laura and her three boys. Normally, Banana would have tagged along with them but her social calendar was already full for the day. She spent her morning busily making fresh strawberry jam with her Grammy and when I went to pick her up, she was oh so proud!

Summer, Day Ten

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Currently Reading: Change of Heart, Jodi Picoult

Summer Surivival Blog, Day 9

2009-06-18T23:16:00.000-07:00

What in the hell were we thinking?

That's the only thing running through my head tonight as I sit here and contemplate my day.

What in the hell were we thinking?

I'm exhausted. This morning my parenting soul mate Laura called around 9:00. I was wearing pajamas and making Kashi GoLean waffles. For the record, Kashi GoLean waffles taste kind of like an old dish sponge. But in a good way.

So Laura asks if we would mind giving her a ride either to or from an appointment that she has downtown at 10:30. And while I measured out 1/8th of a cup of syrup for my sponge waffles, I indulged a split second memory of our days with three kids and one car. I remember how much they sucked. And Laura is good to me. And there is an excellent chance that someday we will be mother-in-laws together. So it was really a no-brainer. Of course we would give them a ride.

An hour later, freshly showered and with a belly full of fiber-enhanced Kashi sponge waffles, I herded the kids out to van and we picked up Laura and her brood. On the way downtown, I suggested that instead of leaving them downtown to walk home, I could take all of the kids to the park to play while she had her appointment.

Laura does home daycare. She knows kids. She knows LOUD. And most days she has the patience of a saint. She cocked an eyebrow at me and I could see her imagining me tied to the teeter-totter while the kids made Chunk do a 360 on the swings. But the thought of attending an appointment WITHOUT her children was just too tempting, and I think she figured I'd just have to take my chances. And with that, we dropped her off and went down the street to the park.

And it was just fine.

No really.

No punch line.

The kids were awesome. I read my book and they had a blast. When Laura turned up we were so enchanted with our well behaved children that we completely lost our collective minds - we decided to take them to the thrift store.

One hour and seven dollars later, we decided to take them out for Chinese.

At this point, I'm not sure we're allowed back into either establishment any time soon, but it was fun.

And after THAT, just because we were feeling really wild and crazy, we meandered across the river and visited an animal sanctuary over on the Washington side of the dam. Until today, I honestly had no idea that there were zebras and giraffes living less than 10 minutes from my house. Pretty cool really.

Looking back on it now, snug at home and back in my pajamas with three kids snoring in their beds, we were absolutely nuts. But in that sweaty-overtired-mom-I-want-a-snack-I-have-to-go-potty-are-we-there-yet-god-I-need-a-coffee-or-a-shot-of vodka kind of way, it was a blast.

Here's the kiddos among the carnage following our lunch at Canton Wok!

Summer, Day Nine

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Currently Reading: Change of Heart, Jodi Picoult

Summer Survival Blog, Day 8

2009-06-17T23:32:00.000-07:00

While relaxing with the Chunk in our fancy lawn chairs-in-a-bag tonight, Skippy posted a new Facebook status message that read "Skippy is watching the girls play softba, yes, softba. It's not quite softball yet, but it's getting there." I thought it was cute and funny. But the bottom line is that it was also oh so true.

After surviving two seasons of fall soccer, this is our first attempt at girl's softball. Without a five week Chicago vacation to take over our summer, we needed to fill some time in a hurry. And it has been an absolutely hilarious whirlwind. Not to mention that just like in soccer, the level of improvement we have seen in just a few weeks is nothing short of amazing.

Our girls are playing on the same team. This makes my life much easier concerning practices, games, and snacks. They play with six other little girls that range in age from five to eight, and it shows. The bigger girls are GOOD. And our little rookies...they do their best.

Here are the basic rules to entry level girls' softball in our town:

While batting:

1. Everyone bats every inning.

2. You cannot be struck out. The coach gives you four pitches, and then you get the tee.

3. You should not be upset if you have to use the tee. You most definitely should not yell "Aw DAMN IT!" when they set it up like Kbear did during a practice.

4. No matter how hard or how far you hit the ball, you stop at first base. There are no doubles or triples. You hit a home run, you stop at first. That's the way it goes.

5. If the base woman is standing on the baseline, run her down. She should know better!

6. The last hitter is the "home run hitter" and that is the only time you advance more than one base - as long as the ball gets smacked in some fashion against the home run hitter's bat, all base runners go all the way around to home. Then it's the other team's turn to bat through their order.

7. You should not lap the runner in front of you.

While fielding:

1. You should pay attention. Otherwise you may take a ball to the face. Just ask both our girls.

2. You should not pick your nose.

3. You should refrain from making dandelion chains or turning somersaults.

4. You should wear your mitt. You should NOT chew on your mitt.

5. If the ball is hit to you, you should pick it up. Then you should probably throw it.

6. If for some reason you DO pick your nose, please do not attempt to snack on it while playing second base.

7. If you are standing on the baseline, prepare to be trampled. You should know better.

And in general:

1. There is no score keeping.

2. Have fun.

3. It's fun to have Dairy Queen as a sponsor because it gives you an excuse to go for ice cream.

Banana and Kbear usually follow the rules, but it's a game-by-game process although I will admit that they have gotten pretty darn good as the season has progressed. Both girls are hitting the ball regularly, and even if they don't have the hang of fielding yet, at least they aren't out there eating boogers.

And because it would be horribly unfair to post only one picture of my little all stars, here's one of each:

Summer, Day Eight

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Currently Reading: Change of Heart, Jodi Picoult

Summer Suvival Blog, Day 7

2009-06-16T22:24:00.000-07:00

Of loaves and fish kites.....

Today's picture shows of Banana's artistic skills. Our local library is offering free art classes every Tuesday afternoon for school aged kids ALL SUMMER LONG. Unfortunately for me, the other two are still too young to participate. However, it gives Banana something to do that is hers and hers alone, plus it gets her invovled with the library. Best of all, it's free! So every Tuesday from now until the end of August, Miss B will have something new and lovely to show off. She was a little apprehensive at the start of the first class - especially after she found out I wouldn't be staying. But at the end of the hour, she had this fabulous fish kite to show off!

Now we cue the prayers of thankfulness for our local library, hallowed be its name.

Summer, Day Seven

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Currently Reading: Change of Heart, Jodi Picoult

Summer Survival Blog, Days 4 through 6

2009-06-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

This daily blogging/picture posting thing is hard. And honestly, our summer has been busy but it hasn't been completely and overwhelmingly exciting. Sometimes we just hang out. And as cute as my kids are, you all don't want pictures of them zoning on the couch watching "Hotel for Dogs" in their pajamas. Plus, then you'd see the Fruit Loops strewn around on my floor.

I'm kidding.....or am I?

Suffice it to say that our summer is moving along swimmingly. We have been trying to stay

busy. I have found that if I don't make some sort of plan for each and every day, we are all climbing the walls by about two in the afternoon and I'm ready to trade my kids in to the nearest band of gypsies. I have been trying to take lots of pictures, but sometimes in between remembering all three children, I forget to grab the camera.

The big news is that our local pool is open for the season. We've already been up there a handful of times and Chunk has been loving the wading pool. I have taken a ton of great pictures down there already, so here's some highlights!

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Currently Reading: Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult

Summer Survival Blog, Day 3

2009-06-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

Summer brings lots of different things. It brings sprinklers and pool floaties and an unlimited supply of otter pops stocked in the freezer. It also brings Summer Reading at our local library. Banana is old enough to participate for the first time, and today marked our first day.

I just happened to snap this shot of my younger two heathens while Banana was inside learning all about the fabulous rewards she will reap once she reads for 1000 minutes this summer. Just outside of our library is a HUGE (I mean massively ginormous) tree trunk. Being the fearless little monkeys that they are, K and Chunk had a blast climbing onto it and giving me two big smiles.

Happy summer, Happy reading!

Summer, Day Three

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Currently Reading: Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult

Summer Survival Blog, Day 2

2009-06-11T09:21:00.000-07:00

With the warmer weather, comes the compulsion to garden. Even in our age of email, laser surgery, and microwaved gas station burritos, there is a primal need in us to harvest and gather like that which drove our earliest ancestors. The desire to reap what you sow. And in my case, it's simply the inclination to stick a few plants in the ground to see if I can nurture them enough to keep them from whithering away.

I am not a gardener. I desperately WANT to be a gardener, but I seem to have a really difficult time keeping green things alive. I think it has something to do with giving them water. As in, that you NEED to give them water. And over the years, through some trial and error, I've started to get the hang of the most basic gardening principles. So it's a matter of pride that I've actually managed to construct a gorgeous flower bed in my front yard this year. When we moved in it was a horrendously messy tangle of weeds, grass, and overgrown shrubs. Once I pulled out a waist-high bush only to realize that once upon a time, it had been an oregano plant. I completely tore the entire area apart and started from scratch. And if I do say so myself, it looks beautiful. I am so freakin' proud of it.

High on the success of my flowerbed, I moved on to rehabbing the corner of our yard. I so full of myself after my flowerbed triumph that I decided to bypass the novice marigolds for this overly sunny spot and I dove headfirst into the challenge of maintaining a rose bush.

My tiny rosebush beckoned to me one afternoon while I was at Bi-Mart. I was picking up mulch and vegetable seedlings. Mulch and vegetable seedlings are things that sensible people buy when they realize that they are not gardening material. Vegetable seedlings are cheap, so if (when?) they die, you can just bury the cracker-dry evidence in your garbage can, buy another ten seedlings, and pretend it never happened.......not that I would know. And mulch has the advantage of not being alive. Bonus.

So there I was with my red pepper plants, perky tomato starters, and cucumber babies. And something about that little rose bush by the register called my name. "You can dooooo this" it beckoned me. "Take me hooooome" it implored. And being the tenderhearted wannabe gardener that I am, I gave in. Besides, I figured that it couldn't be any harder to hide a cracker-dry rose bush in the garbage than it is to hide a few kindling-like tomatoes......again, not that I would know.

So just like that, I had a rose bush.

I get that for some people, this isn't a big deal. It shouldn't even be a big deal for ME - after all, I have managed to keep three kids, three cats, two dogs, and a husband alive. But as my girlfriend Charlotte points out, those are all things that squawk if not fed and watered regularly. Plants just look more and more sad while they droop away, glaring at you balefully. So keeping a rose bush alive will be a challenge unlike any other I've taken on in my short career as a green thumb. And in an effort to make myself more accountable, I'm showing all of you my tiny fledgling rosebush, as it appears on our second day of summer break. In about two months, I'll take another picture of it so that we can compare.

Hopefully, it will still be there.

Summer, Day Two

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Currently Reading: Nineteen Minutes, Jody Picoult

Summer Survival Blog, Day 1

2009-06-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

I officially have a second grader.

Now that is some scary stuff my friends. Banana finished out her school year with flying colors. We continue to be thrilled with our choice to send her to the charter school fifteen miles down the road - along with being one of the best schools in the state, they also recently won an award for fostering healthy eating and good nutrition. We also enjoyed the spring performance, complete with healthy renditions of "High Hopes" and "Hey Good Lookin'" among others. There is nothing like 142 elementary school kids singing their hearts out...at the top of their lungs.

Banana had a fabulous last day of school. Along with the fact that the entire summer loomed ahead of her, she was also celebrating her seventh birthday. My big girl is SEVEN. It's hard to believe. And when your birthday is on the last day of school, what do you do? You buy Popsicles for the whole dang school of course! And then they all sing happy birthday to you in between the end of the year assembly and the games on the playground! And I've got to say, I didn't know that 180 Popsicles could disappear so quickly! That brings me to today's picture:

Summer, Day One

Other cool last-day-of-school-birthday-celebration-extravaganza-events included the school family BBQ, feeding the baby cows that someone brought by, and riding the horses that another family trucked over.

You've got to love raising your kids in Oregon.

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Currently Reading: By the Light of the Moon, Dean Koontz

And so it begins....

2009-06-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

It's official. My kids are on Summer break. From now until early September, we're all stuck with each other without the respite of preschool or Banana's eight hour school day. There's no more running to the bus at 6:08 a.m. No more homework. No more remembering to send in a check for lunch money. No more preschool tuition. No more snack helper.

It's just us.

I am determined to make it a good summer. Like everyone else, we are watching our pennies and riding out the economy so we're going to get creative. We have lots of plans, including the park, the pool, the river, and a big dose of old fashioned Oregon exploration. We're going to take a few road trips. We've got some company coming. We're going to BBQ and make s'mores and have fun. We want to take the dogs to the beach. We want to visit the zoo. We're going to try not to melt when the Oregon heat hits 110 in the Gorge and we're going to hang out with friends.

I will try not to kill my kids. Hopefully we won't be climbing the walls by the fourth of July.

The key to this summer's success is SCHEDULING. I've been scouring the newspaper for free activities and cheap goings-on around town and we're loading up to the hilt on art classes, plays in the park, and anything else we can find. The kids are gearing up for summer reading through our local library, and I'm going to get on board by keeping track of what I read all summer long. Skippy and I both love to read and this past school year a switch has clicked inside Banana's head so we're going to hunker down on hot afternoons and practice our bookworm impressions. I also want to take lots of pictures of what I hope will be our many adventures. I started my blog in part to stay in touch with our friends and family back in sweet home Chicago and I'd like to reconnect with that a little bit by doing what I can to show you more of our world out here in the Pacific Northwest. So look for my version of Project 365, the Summer edition, where I am going to try to take at least one picture a day, from our last day of school to our first day in the Fall. The key word of course, is try.

We'll see how it all goes! Happy Summering!

More fun with coupons

2009-05-27T11:01:00.001-07:00

A few months ago, I put up a blog detailing a recent trip to Safeway and all of the mad crazy cash I saved using coupons. Admittedly, it wasn't all wholesome crunchy granola all organic fare. But here's the thing - I make a serious effort to put a healthy dinner on the table every night. There is always fruit in my house and the minions know that they can have a piece whenever they want without asking. If all else fails, we always have milk, bread, eggs, and cheese or I can toss together a PB&J. And being a novice Weight Watchers slave, I'm eating a lot of salad. Although we have our fair share of junk in the house, I really do make an effort to feed my family well.

The bottom line is this: I'm no chef. But I do what I can and I do my best. And kids are expensive and you have to feed them. Constantly. So when I can grab snacks on sale and sock them away for weekends, car rides, and summer break, you bet your sweet buns I do it. And if I can stockpile stuff that won't spoil and rest assured that when a jar of applesauce runs out, I know that I already have more on hand, well....that makes me happy. I'm easy to please like that.

Which brings me to my most recent Safeway Adventure: Last Night I Went to Safeway, And All I Spent Was a Dollar Twenty Four.

And I bought:

1 bottle of Kraft Zesty Italian Salad Dressing

1 bottle of Light Asian Sesame Salad Dressing

1 bottle of Catalina Salad Dressing (my kids love it)

All three bottles of salad dressing cost me about fifty cents, total.

THEN I bought a box of Reduced Fat Wheat Thins and a box of Reduced Fat Ritz Crackers for kids' snacks and for my Weight Watchers carb attacks. I had a BOGO coupon, plus the crackers were on sale.

After THAT, I got two bottles of Vitamin Water, because it's sweet crack that's almost as good as regular soda. They were on sale for eighty eight cents and I had coupons for a dollar off. So THOSE cost me negative 12 cents.

And finally, I bought my kids a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Pies. They have gotten hooked on them through softball and I don't mind buying them because I don't eat them. They were a whopping ninety nine cents with a coupon.

So to sum it all up:

My total before savings was $23.90 and after my club card and my coupons, I spent $1.24 for a total savings of ninety five percent!!

My beloved coupon mentor Laura stood beside me while I completed my purchase and I swear that just for a second, I saw a lone tear of joy.

Anyway....

Were my purchases enough to make a six course meal for a twelve person dinner party? Of course not. But I stocked up on salad dressing, bought the kids some snacks, and got a happy Vitamin Water fix for next to nothing. And when you live in a small town in the middle of nowhere, you have to find your fun wherever you can!

My life is a zoo? No we WENT to the zoo!

2009-05-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just have to throw good old fashioned frugality to the wind and do something fun with your kids. You know? And this past Memorial Day weekend, we did just that.

Friday morning I was chatting online with Skippy. This isn't unusual - we ping back and forth throughout the day. What was somewhat out of the ordinary was that he was pinging me from Atlanta. He had been there throughout the week doing whatever Googly things he does, and the kids and I had been holding down the fort at home. I for one, was holding it by the skin of my teeth. It had been a l-o-n-g week. Between softball games, preschool graduation, and the first round of ninety degree temperatures, I was done flying solo and ready for my husband to be back in the same time zone.

So imagine my delight when we agreed to wing things a bit. I booked a hotel near PDX for Friday night, tossed a handful of clean little girl undies, diapers, and swim suits into an overnight bag, buckled in three wound up kidlets, and hit the road to Portland. Skippy's flight was due to arrive somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00 that night and that left us plenty of time to hit the golden arches, conquer the play place, check into our hotel, exclaim over the itty bitty bottles of shampoo, flip through all fourteen TV channels three times, contemplate the meaning behind the door that joined us to another room, change into swim suits, and paddle around in the pool for an hour.

When we returned dripping wet to our room around 9:30, the girls enjoyed the novelty of HBO and a queen size sofa sleeper (Mom!! There is a BED in the COUCH! SWEET!). We went on a safari-style hunt for the ice machine, made microwave popcorn, changed into jammies, and had ourselves a regular old slumber party. Finally, they all passed out - Chunk sprawled in his pack and play, Kbear wrapped snugly in her blanket on the sofa sleeper, and Banana ....."camping out" under the hotel desk. Skippy snuck in around 12:30 amidst three snoring kiddos and promptly crashed in an effort to sleep off a full day of travelling.

Now at this point, I must say a quick word about hotel drapes. They are wonderful and amazing and I totally want to rig up some sort of high tech pulley system that will allow me to cover my whole house with them this summer. Why, you may ask? Because those beautiful light-blocking pieces of heavenly fabric kept the room so dark that my children slept until after eight o'clock Saturday morning.

Be still my heart.

Then we three girls decided to let my two favorite boys sleep in for a little while longer and we trooped down to the buffet room for our complimentary breakfast. We put down cereal, waffles, bananas, and in Bree's case, a whole half of a grapefruit before we made our way back to our room loaded down with biscuits and gravy for Daddy, and half of a peanut butter sandwich and fruit for Chunk. While the boys ate and watched TV in their underwear in the big hotel bed, I took the girls for one last dunk in the pool. We requested a late checkout, relaxed, packed up, and finally headed for the zoo around one o'clock.

The zoo was....well it was a zoo. For one thing, the weather was absolutely spectacular with cloudless blue skies and sunny seventy degree temperatures. And it was a Saturday. And Memorial Day Weekend. And families were out in droves. But we scored a great parking spot, wrestled Chunk into his stroller, and went in search of our first exhibit, Samundra the baby elephant - affectionately referred to as Sam by many Oregonians. It was by far the busiest exhibit, but totally worth the wait. Skippy (being as tall as he is) got some awesome pictures:

And after that we just had more fun. We saw the bats, penguins, sea lions, zebras, giraffes, ducks, eagles, sun bears, polar bears, birds, meerkats, and who knows what else. And although the baby elephant definitely stole the day, we also say my favorite, the black bears (who were sleeping in a big old furry pile) and Skippy's favorite, the otters. By the time we finally wandered towards the gate it was coming up on five o'clock so we treated ourselves to dinner out and then finally drove our separate vehicles back through the Gorge, until we were home sweet home to a slightly stuffy house and two very happy dogs.

And what did I learn from our mini-weekend trip? Sometimes, you just gotta let it all go and have some fun.

Pomp and Preschoolers

2009-05-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

It's official folks. My little girl is finished with preschool. Her last summer of freedom has officially been kicked off before she trots off to Kindergarten in the fall with the big kids.

Last night we all gathered under the picnic shelter at Sorosis Park here in town (I know the name is weird, I recently learned that it has something to do with the cherry processing process....more info to come soon after some google searches) and we watched our adorable kiddos don their adorable tasselled caps and receive their awards for their successful completion of preschool. Each solemn child accepted his or her "diploma" with huge smiles to lots of applause and flashing cameras. Then we all enjoyed cupcakes and hugs and played at the park because really, what else would you do after a graduation ceremony?

Kbear was also the recipient of the "Leadership Award." And not for her stellar good Samaritan ways....not for her upstanding citizen-like behavior....but because (according to Teacher Mary) "the rest of the children would follow her anywhere. She could lead a mutiny."

That's my girl.

The post Mother's Day blog

2009-05-11T09:04:00.001-07:00

First, the sap.

On June 10, 2002, after eighteen hours of labor, my Banana baby came into the world. The second they announced, "here she is!" I burst into tears while still up in stirrups. She was beautiful and perfect and had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. She transformed my life and took me from "Amy" to "Mommy" and I have never looked back.

Just seventeen months later, on November 18, 2003 Kbear came shooting into the world. She was my drug free birth, but I don't hold that against her. From the moment she opened her eyes, she had the entire nursing staff cooing over her gorgeous curly hair. She officially made me the mother of two.

And two years ago, on March 29, 2007 my Oregon baby was born. Chunk was the hardest labor, and to me he represents everything we have worked for here in Oregon. I was pregnant when we undertook one of the biggest transitions of my life, and when he came into the world out here in the Pacific Northwest, I really felt like my family in Oregon was complete. I cannot begin to imagine my life without him. He made me the mother of a son and he is a little dose of sunshine in every day.

So there you go. My three sappy beautiful Mother's Day blessings.

Now, on to business.

You probably noticed it already....there are no lists posted on my blog. Nothing singing my many praises. No warm fuzzy feelings.

You may be wondering if my husband is lying somewhere in the fetal position, missing various important pieces of vital anatomy. But he's not. I promise. In fact, he's completely off the hook at least for another year. Here's why:

First of all, he let me sleep in. I slept in until TEN O'CLOCK completely uninterrupted. This never happens. Even when you're "on vacation" (aka in the hospital after birthing yet another baby) you don't get that much uninterrupted sleep because someone is always coming in to check on you or take your blood pressure. So for that alone, I love him and he rocks.

But then he made breakfast. Fresh strawberries, coffee cake, bacon, and icy cold mimosas. Can you say total yummy? While we ate, I read the six cards that the kids made for me. I only have three kids (and one can't write yet) but I got six cards. How totally special is that?

Then I got to lay around on the couch for awhile. I watched the Cubs game in my pajamas. And wonderful smells started coming out of the kitchen. Lo and behold, for dinner we had from-scratch chicken Parmesan with from-scratch spaghetti sauce. Warm bread, salad, and raspberry brownies completed the trip to my happy place.

AND, he and the kids gave me the Magic Bullet blender, which I have wanted FOREVER. I've been having a serious amount of fun with it already, including making Chunk a smoothie with his breakfast, As a bonus, according to my math if I make 13 more blendy coffee drinks, it will have paid for itself!

So between not giving him enough notice for compiling a laundry list of my many fine and lovable attributes and the fact that we didn't get home until 1:30 in the morning after my sister-in-law's 50th surprise party on Saturday night, I think I can safely let him off the hook.

You hear that honey? You're in the clear.

But that being said, I kind of WAS looking forward to reading what the kids came up with. So next year I want those lists. And don't say I didn't give you enough notice.

I love you, thank you for a wonderful day!

An open letter to my family.....

2009-05-08T14:22:00.001-07:00

In light of the current economic situation sweeping the globe, I have decided to cut back on my gift requests for this year's Mother's Day. I am kind and considerate like that, and sometimes I like to torture my husband, so this hits two birds with one stone.

First, I would like free reign regarding buying my garden supplies so that I can get my cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and spices into the ground, fenced, and watered this weekend in an effort to have a more self-sustaining summer. I foresee lots of salads and salsa.

Second, I would like my husband and my kids to each write me a list - ten things that they love about Mommy. After coming in second for a job opportunity that I wanted quite badly, Mama needs her ego stroked, so hop to it beloved family members. Help from Daddy is allowed. Help from the dog is not.

It's out on the blog, folks. Don't let me down! Lists will be posted on Sunday so make 'em good!

Cell Block W

2009-05-03T23:39:00.000-07:00

So my resolution to blog more frequently lasted......a whole day. Call me a failure if you must, but I prefer to just think of myself as insanely busy - although doing what I'm not sure.It's been a combination of mom stuff and wife stuff and Amy stuff and eating pretzels reading crappy books stuff. But I've been busy. Trust me. Just go with it.

My gut tells me that the right thing to do would be to sit here and type out a massive missive that details every little moment of life in the W house over the last several weeks, from the significance of Chunk's second birthday to the insignificance of the fulfilling fact that Skippy and I finally produced a functional playroom for our children over the weekend. It has neat foam mats and storage bins galore and more crayons than you can shake a stick at and it smells like lemon scented wood floor polish....but I digress.

It's late and tomorrow we have our first official softball game (after the unfortunate weather cancelled the "softball jamboree" over the weekend, much to our overwhelming dismay) so instead I'll just tell you about my new parenting foray, otherwise known as "Reason 674 that my children will someday tell their significant others how I scarred them for life at a young age." The focus of this life lesson: My kitchen sink.

I'd be willing to bet that a vast number of my fellow mommies can sympathize. Dishes accumulate in my kitchen sink the way rabbits pile up under a farmhouse porch. Overnight they simply seem to multiply. No one seems to know where they came from, and no one but me seems to know how to get rid of them, which in either situation usually involves a thorough soaking with a water hose of some sort, a copious amount of sweat, and some very unladylike cursing.

My children apparently need a cup for milk. And then a new cup for water. And then a cup for juice. Quickly followed by a cup to use with dinner. Almost always without exception, this wide variety of cups are happily married with their own separate cereal bowls, PB&J plates, and assorted dinnerware. And naturally, my house is sadly lacking a dishwasher. Or to be more specific, my house lacks a dishwasher that isn't a sucker for romance novels, dark chocolate, and isn't named Amy.

So a few days ago while standing at my kitchen sink (yet again), looking out my window at the beautiful Friday afternoon (yet again), and searching for the last sippy cup while up to my elbows in soapy water (yet again) I was quietly lamenting this sorry state of affairs to myself. And somewhere in between shaking my tush to the radio and cursing because yet another pair of sexy yellow rubber gloves had gotten yet another f*&%$ing hole in them, I decided I was done washing mini tableware for awhile.

A trip to the dollar store was in order, quickly followed by a stop at my favorite thrift store. And when I returned, I was armed for battle. With a sharpie marker, I drew a bold "B" and "K" on my newly acquired purchases, and then I stepped back to admire my handiwork. My girls were now the proud new owners of ONE new plate, ONE new bowl, and ONE new cup, color coded to avoid any possible confusion. This was followed by even more drastic action: after I set aside a few things that Chunk would need and I relocated the remainder of our kid friendly dishes to a top secret location, guarded by the three headed dog from Harry Potter and accessible only after a retina scan and a blood sample.

Okay, actually I moved them down to the back of the bottom cabinet, but who's going to tell my kids that, right?

And thus began Operation Cut Down On Dishes.

At first, the girls were thrilled with their new fancy dinner duds...until I dropped the bomb.

These were to be their ONLY dinner duds. For that matter, they were also the only breakfast duds. And lunch duds. And sna....you get the idea. And not only were dishes suddenly in short supply, but Mom was being relieved of her dish washing duties for anyone under the age of 30 and over the age of two. So in other words, if you want to eat off of it, you'd better wash it your damn self.

One bowl. One plate. One cup. And a step stool to make the sink more easily accessible.

My mother hooted in semi-amusement over the phone later that night. She told me I was mean - what's worse, she compared the situation to PRISON. Apparently it's next to criminal to expect an almost seven year old and a five year old to (at least temporarily) wash their own dishes and to be completely responsible for keeping track of them in between meals. You'd think I was only issuing bread and water on such meager eating receptacles, she made me feel so mean.

But then I remembered how it feels to scrub at a forgotten bowl of oatmeal, or to track down some one's brand new softball water bottle under the desk....with milk in it....from two days ago. And I decided that I could handle being mean. Mistress of the sippy cups I would be no more.

Just call me Warden.

Stay tuned, now that the playroom/computer room is clean I hope to be in here a whole lot more - it's hard to relax and blog when a mess is staring you down! With any luck, I'll be able to check in tomorrow after the girls' first softball game!

Blogging resolution, take one....

2009-04-15T22:43:00.000-07:00

Well as I suspected, today was a pretty uneventful day. I had a monster migraine last night so Skippy ran Banana to the bus at 6:08 this morning and I slept until 7:30 when it was time to get the Kbear to preschool. If you talk to K, make sure you ask her about the new song she learned today "honk honk beep beep" during music time. It comes complete with hand motions and it's a hoot.

The Chunker was at home sleeping in with Daddy so I took advantage of the child free moments to grab coffee and some miscellaneous groceries before heading back home to procrastinate my housecleaning. Skippy has been home for the last few days basically feeling like dog poop - we are fairly certain that yet another back surgery is in the near future. And while I hate that he feels yucky, he seriously throws off my mommy mojo when he's home. Basically, I don't feel like doing squat.

All in all, it was a pretty quiet day. I made spaghetti (and totally cheated with a jar of Prego sauce, so sue me), took the girls to youth group, and just got home from having pie with one of my favorite girlfriends Laura. It's almost eleven and once again I have failed in my attempts to go to bed like a normal grown up adult, but there's always tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I am taking a written test at 9a.m. for a job I applied for in town - it's the first job I've seen since moving here that actually has me excited about the idea of working outside of the house again and I really hope that I have a shot at it. So cross your fingers and say a prayer - we'll see how it goes!

Recaps of both the Chunk's second birthday, spring break, and Easter are all coming soon! For now, I need some sleep.

And.....I'm back

2009-04-14T22:51:00.000-07:00

So after my husband's attempted hijack of my blog (and by the way, I find it highly insulting that you all gave HIM more comments than I typically get) I am making a determined effort to reclaim my blogging mojo.

To be honest, I haven't been on as much because I just feel like life isn't that interesting these days. We do the school bus run, make macaroni and cheese, and read stories at bedtime. Sometimes I shake things up and I go grocery shopping in my birks....with socks on.

So I'm going to really try to sit down every day for the next week to see if I can figure out EXACTLY where all of my time is really going. Maybe I'll just type a quick snippet that says that I made grilled cheeses for lunch, picked up dog poop in the yard, and got bit while brushing the baby's teeth.

But dammit, it will be a blog entry.

See ya tomorrow!

Hijacking: The Great "Facial Tissue" Fiasco

2009-03-26T14:03:00.001-07:00

(Disclaimer: This blog post is a hijacking, something I've wanted to do for a while, but hey, I feel it's time, and this is a justified topic. All opinions expressed in this post are those of the blogger's husband, and not those of the blogger, even if they should be because it's bloody common sense in this case)

There are certain things in life that just matter. They just do, it's a fact of life.

If you prefer a certain kind of car, for whatever reason, you are more than likely going to keep choosing that model or brand of car. It's what you like so you roll with it.

If you like foam pillows (for whatever misguided reasons you might have), you probably won't be able to deal with feather or down pillows, no matter how unbelievably comfortable they might be.

You might have a favorite type of ketchup, or mustard, or some other random condiment that you favor over another, and if push comes to shove and what you want isn't available, sure you might sink to the depths of depravity and use what's there, but that doesn't mean you have to like it, and can't sit there wanting your preference to be nearby.

So we come to the crux of our current fiasco. In addition to the sinus infection from Hell that won't go away, now my nose is running and I've caught some evil bug to make my life slightly more miserable (hopefully short-lived), and I'm at work. Google is fantastic, I love it here, but we have one greatly lacking amenity.

Our Kleenex (or "facial tissue" to be specific in this case") sucks.

Now, if you've never had the pleasure, and I use that word very lightly, of having to blow your nose into these things, well, you aren't missing much. It's like rubbing some 100-grit on your already distressed nose. It's not fun. Imagine the "toilet tissue" in a porta-potty at some big festival, and blowing your nose with it. That's what you get when you pull a Surpass brand "facial tissue" from it's evil demonic nondescript beige box of torture and press it to your face. It's just wrong. You are probably thinking to yourself, "Surpass? I've never heard of those before." These lovelies are a product of Kimberly-Clark Professional, and can be found via a quick web search where you also find they are made from at least "10% recycled consumer products", my guess is that 10% is directly from defective pads of 3M sandpaper, but I might be wrong.

I expressed my utter displeasure with the Surpass brand "facial tissue" to my wife, and she MOCKS me for my family's undying preference to Puffs tissues. Is wanting something that doesn't feel like sandpaper against my nose such a bad thing in all honesty? Is having a preferential brand of anything so horrible that one would be mocked as whining? Can't a man want a stupid specific type of facial tissue (normal Puffs, no lotion, those are just slimy and vile). I think not.

So tomorrow, if the Great Sinus Flood of March '09 has not stopped already, there will be a box of plain old Puffs tissues on my desk and I can banish the Surpass back to the depth of whatever Hell they originated from. I'm sure my wife will continue to brand me a whiny $@%*&, but I say good riddance.

Spring Break Survival Log: Days 1 - 4

2009-03-24T19:18:00.001-07:00

Last Friday was the official start of Spring Break for the entire state of Oregon. From the coast to the eastern desert region, kids young and old spilled out of schoolyards, tumbled off of buses, and sprinted home full of delight and thrilled that they were FREEEEEE...at least temporarily.

And so began Mommy Survival Boot Camp.

To be honest, for the most part Spring Break has gone off without a hitch. Unlike some (insane) people we know, we aren't going anywhere. We're boring like that. We're just hanging out at home. But that doesn't mean that I don't have to find a way to fill the endless hours with something other than Spongebob, The Wonderpets, and my personal favorite, Phineas and Ferb. So we have endeavored to keep busy.

After a blissfully uneventful Saturday, my little campers were getting restless by Sunday afternoon. So while my little guy AND my big guy napped the last of the daylight away, Banana and Kbear suited up and we drove to the gym for a swim.

Thus began the "Swimming With Wildlife" chapter of our Spring Break Extravaganza.

The girls were having a blast jumping, splashing, and paddling around in the shallow end of the pool while I relaxed in a comfy padded chair at the water's edge. Banana was showing off her newly acquired skills from two weeks of school swimming lessons (have I ever mentioned how much I love her school?) and floating on her back like a pro and Kbear was being incredibly brave and actually venturing off of the steps past the waist level with the assistance of her Nana-purchased-super-cool-Speedo arm floaties.

And then it happened.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a middle aged man (maybe early fifties) enter the pool area from the locker room. Being a Mom, I make it my business to be nosy and check out anyone who enters the vicinity of my kids, but I have to admit that more than typical overbearing mommy protectiveness, what really caught my eye was the fact that this dude had the single most hairy set of legs I've ever seen. It was genuinely incredible.

So Mr. Hairy Legs wades into the pool and as he passes by where I'm sitting, I note that the poor dude's follicle issues don't just concern his lower extremities. This guy was FURRY.

Now before I should go on, I feel the need to make a quick point. I'm not making fun of the guy. I'm REALLY not. I get it - some guys get old, and they get hairy. It grows in their ears, it grows on their chests, etc etc. I GET IT. And I'm sure that it takes a hell of a lot of courage (and possibly several years of therapy) to go swimming or to walk around sans shirt when you practically have a pelt. MY POINT is that although *I* understand that these things happen, I have two incredibly precocious, curious, LOUD little girls who are prone to asking embarrassing questions at extremely inopportune times.

It was about this time that I noticed Kbear. She had stopped her wading and was paused mid-float on the steps.....staring. She was utterly fascinated by our overly-insulated swimming companion. She watched him intently, worrying her lower lip with her teeth the way she does when she's really concentrating. And that's when I started to pray.

"Please-don't-let-her-say-anything-please-don't-let-her-say-anything-please-don't-let-her-ask-questions-please-don't-let-her-ask-HIM-why-he's-got-so-much-hair-please-parenting-gods-and-goddesses-don't-let-my-precious-princess-open-her-mouth."

Thankfully, the moment passed uneventfully. I was safe from true mortification and thankfully, so was everyone else in the pool. However, it was soon after that key moment that I decided it was time to hit the showers and head home. I wasn't about to push my luck with Fate.

Monday was a whirlwind of sidewalk chalk and lunch at McDonald's with my friends Charlotte and Laura and all of our assorted children in what had to be the most crowded and noisy play place on the planet. Two Excedrin migraine later, we met up with my mother-in-law and my sweethearts of a niece and nephew after dinner for ice cream at dairy queen, where Chunk appointed himself the dessert sampler and proceeded to check the quality of every one's orders.

Today was (thankfully) a down day. The kids all slept in. We had a late breakfast and did some crafts until my mother-in-law volunteered to pick up the girls for dinner at her place with their cousins. It's been a wonderfully quiet afternoon and I got my kitchen cleaned without anyone coming in for a snack five minutes after the last clean dish was dried and put away.

We've still got a lot planned. I promised the girls some time with their Girl Gourmet Cupcake Maker, we're going to hit the park, do some more crafts, play with some more chalk, take over the library, and last but not least, celebrate a certain young Chunker's SECOND BIRTHDAY this weekend.

How fast it flies! Let the Spring Break Survival continue!

Mama, she's a QUEEN!

2009-03-17T14:29:00.000-07:00

You've got to love small town living sometimes.

On Sunday night, Skippy and I decided to say the hell with cooking. Everyone was recovering from colds, and I hadn't taken anything out of the freezer so we decided to chuck responsibility out the window and go out for pizza. We invited my mother-in-law Dixie with us and then headed over to pick up her along with Banana and Kbear, who had spent an afternoon playing blissfully at Grammy's house. Then we headed across town to Spooky's.

Having grown up in suburban Chicago, I am super picky about my pizza. Just any old pizza will not do. Unfortunately, oftentimes in many Oregon towns if you ask the locals where the best pizza place is, they will point you to Domino's in one direction, and Pizza Hut in another. Not many options abound. It is a sad sorry state of affairs.

However here in our own little bit of the middle of nowhere, we are 'lucky' enough to have Spooky's. Spooky's is our local pizza joint that specializes in locally brewed beer, insanely over-priced pizza, and a variety of sandwiches. They have a big screen TV for watching sports, a small arcade for the kids, and various temporary tattoo and lead-based toy machines that will dispense anything to you for a quarter. Last but not least is the giant moose head mounted in the doorway that oversees all of the proceedings. The killer fries make up for the moose head.

And let's face it...beggars can't be choosers.

So we get settled at our table and Skippy heads off to order way too much food for way too much money and the girls run off to the arcade while Dixie and I try to strap Chunk into his highchair. The place is hopping busy on a Sunday night and I'm people watching the long line leading up to the counter when a young lady catches my eye.

First of all, there's something about the way she's holding herself. Very confident, full of smiles and laughter. Her hair frames her face in big fluffy curls and her makeup is perfectly applied. She has cowboy boots and a gorgeous black cowboy hat sits on her impecably done hair.

She is without a doubt one of our local rodeo princesses.

When we moved to Oregon, the rodeo culture was completely new to me. And I have to admit, I get just as much of a kick out of seeing these girls in the local parades as Banana and Kbear do. I'll also admit that I'm not completely up on the logistics of the competition but I know that it takes a lot of time and money and dedication to support those young ladies. When Banana and K see them in the Cherry Fest parade every year, they literally squeal with delight at the gorgeous horses carrying such pretty girls in crowns seated in beautiful flower festooned saddles.

And there was one, right in the middle of Spooky's.

Once our cheesy breadsticks arrived, Banana and Kbear came running from the arcade and I leaned across our table conspiratorily...

"Pssssssst.....girls. Look over at the next table.....I bet that's a rodeo princess."

Kbear's eyes grow huge, "Can we go talk to her?" she whispers.

We three grown ups chuckle indulgently and give them some conversation coaching and watch while Kbear brazenly walks up to interrupt the other table's dinner, Banana play acting shyness behind her every step of the way.

"Excuse me," K says politely as the young lady in the cowboy hat turns around, "but are you a princess?"

The girl flashes my girls a big smile. "Actually," she tells them confidingly "I'm a rodeo QUEEN."

The girls eyes get HUGE and they scurry back to our table, obviously overwhelmed into stunned silence by their discovery. A few minutes later, Miss Cowboy hat comes over to our table and takes a moment to crouch down so that she can talk to each of my girls, asking them their names and signing little cards with her picture for each of them.

Without a doubt, it was the highlight of my girls' weekend. They jabbered about it all through dinner and all the way home and Banana even insisted on taking her "autograph" to school with her the next day.

So thank you, Miss Wasco County Rodeo Queen Melissa. You were sweet and gracious and made my little girls' night!

Forgive me, people of the interwebs....

2009-03-11T11:31:00.001-07:00

For I have sinned.

It has been....well it's been a long ass time since my last blog.

I've got to tell you, I'm not sure what happened. It's not that I haven't realized that I've fallen behind on my blogging, it's just that we've been busy. Really, insanely, constantly-on-the-go busy. But it's not as if we're busy doing anything that is fantastically interesting. Skippy goes to work. I do laundry. The girls go to school. Chunk says "Mama?" fourteen thousand times a day.

I mean really, contain your excitement people!

In a nutshell, everything is fine in the W house. Our third Oregon winter is hanging on a bit harder than in previous years, and we are all VERY ready for spring. Here's a quick rundown on the whole fam:

Chunk: Continues to be the coolest little boy ever born. He is a constant crack up. New words include "Hello" (pronounced "Heh-wo"), "funny," and the ever popular "I want cheese." He is also fond of grabbing his diaper and telling me "EWWWWWW" after a bodily function and we are gearing up for the great unknown: "POTTY TRAINING A BOY." I am kind of waiting for warmer weather...although why I don't know - it's not as if I'm going to turn him loose in the yard with a bare bum.

He is the busiest child I have every seen and scary-smart. He also has a keen sugar radar - a few weeks ago I had some chocolates hidden in my nightstand drawer. Chunk managed to sniff them out and promptly devoured them. I didn't realize this sad sad fact until I went to get one later that night....and found one wrapper and one half eaten raspberry fig newton that had been left as payment. Some would say at least he traded me something!

Chunker will be two in just a few short weeks! It's hard to believe.

Kbear is also being her normal self, which means she is a cuddly and sweet little monster who is incapable of sitting still. She is in her last few months of pre-school and every day she asks when she gets to start Kindergarten and ride the bus like a big girl. Honestly, I'm still not ready but I'm looking forward to having a great summer with her.

K is probably my most challenging child. She is trouble personified, but also sensitive and sweet. It's hard to chastise a monster who looks like a curly haired angel. She is addicted to hot chocolate from Starbucks and if I'm not careful she's going to put a serious dent in my already-meager coffee budget. She is also very excited to start softball in the spring, even though she has no idea what softball is. And she continues to eat more breakfast than the rest of us combined, before she grazes throughout the rest of her day.

She is sweet and friendly and she is going to make my life a living hell in ten years.

Banana is rockin' school and is doing very well. She is getting unbelievably tall and her hair is getting long. In the mornings I'll catch her brushing it in the bathroom and I am struck at how gorgeous she is. Bree is reading at a second grade level and is doing well in her new math group. She is in the drama club at school and her class is finishing up two week's worth of swimming lessons on Friday.

Banana continues to be my "little mama." She is generous and empathetic and completely over sensitive like her mother. She has developed a nice group of friends at her new school and I honestly think that moving her this year was one of the best things we could have done for her, even if the schedule is a bit of a challenge. I have a lot of opportunities to participate in her activities, from the field trip I accompanied her class on (we saw "Click Clack Moo" in Portland), to attending her "publishing party" to helping out at this Friday's sock hop. She is excelling in everything she takes on and I really feel proud of her.

Currently she is all about her MP3 player. Sometimes when she's walking around the house with her earphones on, I get a glimpse of my teenager in the making. She also LOVES to read - last night we started our first "big" chapter book, Black Beauty. Like K, she is looking forward to starting softball in the spring. Like K, she has no idea how to play. It should be fun.

Skippy continues to enjoy this job at Google. Recently we received his yearly bonus and I am happy to say that we are now officially OUT OF CREDIT CARD DEBT! It wasn't too bad to begin with, but it's nice to have it gone. Now we're tackling some other financial woes of the past and working on saving towards getting out of the rental Amy hates. We are also in the process of saying goodbye to his beloved Grand Prix. With our tax refund we purchased a used Durango that has NOT crunched three deer over its hood on the freeway. It will be sad to let the Pontiac go, but all things must end eventually.

Skippy's travel has been put mostly on hold and we are enjoying having him home. His sleep apnea is also slowly coming under control and he and I are both working on becoming healthy again. I forsee lots of bike rides in our future as the weather improves. We're also going to clean out the garage - something that if he didn't know before, he knows now since he reads my blog.

This weekend we might have a HOT and SEXY date - Banana's school is sponsoring a bingo night - how cute and pathetic are we?

And I guess that leaves me. I've been having some medical ups and downs lately and we are working towards bringing my migraines under control. I was also recently informed that my blood pressure is pretty much out of control so I've just started a new medicine, a beta blocker that will hopefully help with both the BP and the headaches. I've reconciled myself to the fact that I will most likely need some sort of medication for the rest of my life, but if that's the price I have to pay to not have a stroke in my thrities, then so be it. There are worse things in life. Yesterday I had an MRI that left me feeling very uneasy about tight closed in spaces and I'll be happy if I never have to have another one again.

Overall, I am healthy and happy. I'm working on shedding some pounds, working on getting the blood pressure thing on track, and working on sleeping like a normal mother of three instead of like a college kid. I am looking forward to spring and hoping that some of the visits we are discussing with friends and family will work out this year. I still love Oregon...in fact I've come to love it more and more with time and I feel like my family is building a wonderful life out here.

I'm also going to really work at the blog thing. Even if things aren't that exciting, it always feels good to sit down and bang something out on the keyboard.

Let's aim for twice a week for now, okay?

See you soon!

TOUCHDOWN!

2009-02-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

Before I begin my Superbowl blog, I have to show off Skippy's gorgeous taco dip. Mostly, I'm posting it to torture all of my cousins, who say that a family get together isn't complete until Aunt Karen (my Mom) shows up with the taco dip. Skippy has taken her famous concoction with him to Oregon and it's just as big of a hit here as it is in the Midwest. So anyway, on with my blog.

Once a year, friends come together all across the country to celebrate a day of nachos, beer, and football. And the W family is no exception.

Yet another Superbowl Sunday has come and gone.

This year, Skippy and I revived an old tradition that we began in Illinois the year we got married and we threw our first Oregon Superbowl party. I spent the week cleaning my house, Skippy prepped food, and we had a ton of fun although admittedly I've got to say...that things have changed.

Our Chicago Superbowl party had really become a beast over time - we're talking upwards of 30 people jammed into our thirteen hundred square foot house, several cases of Corona, tubs overflowing with soda, and Skippy outside freezing his buns off at the grill making burgers and brats in the subzero Chicago February temperatures. Back in those days, we were the only insane people with kids so everyone came to us - and every year the party got bigger. When we moved in 2007 just weeks before the Bears played the big game, our friends were left homeless for the big day, and sadly they had to scramble to improvise new parties of their own. We caught an incredible amount of hell from everyone for not postponing our relocation just long enough to throw one last pigskin shin dig, but some things just aren't meant to be.

I miss that party. It was always a huge pain in the ass, but so much fun to throw.

So this year we renewed our Superbowl tradition, although I'd be lying if I said that things hadn't changed significantly since our last big football bash.

This year it was a smaller affair -- we invited three of our favorite families and all of their assorted kids...that's eight adults and nine kids in a very small house. We polished up the new 52 inch TV (that Skippy swears allows us to see each individual blade of grass on the field) and laid out a huge spread that included nachos, pulled pork, dip, chips, and rice krispie treats. Soda was chilled and I had an abundance of apple juice on hand. We were set.

At the last minute one family had to pull out due to a sick kiddo, causing us all to lament the fact that our lives now tend to revolve around the level of snot output from our children, but we persevered and pushed forward and really had a great day.

It wasn't the beer infused overcrowded loud noisy insane party of the past. After all of our guests had left for the evening, I read a text message from Seth back in the windy city, which simply stated "I always miss you the most on Superbowl Sunday." And it made me yearn for home. But honestly, in a completely new and different way I had just as much fun this year as I did all of those other years just hanging out with our friends here and with their munchkins. The food was rockin', the game was entertaining, and the commercials were a crack up.

As far as parties go, it was a good day...a touchdown so to speak.

Let's talk about my kids some more! Part Two: Kendall

2009-01-28T09:59:00.000-08:00

Many many many blog posts ago (I have lost track of how long, my days are measured in Dora the Explorer episodes) I wrote a blog post dedicated to my firstborn child, my Banana. Since then, I've kind of forgotten about the other two...not the other two kids, but the other two blog posts about the other two kids. I figured it was no big deal, that eventually no one would remember anyway.

Wrong.

In recent weeks, more than one friend has asked when I'm going to finish up the whole blogging about each specific child thing. So while the Chunk eats goldfish crackers in Daddy's recliner (sorry honey) I figured I'd start drafting a missive that is centered solely around the cutest preschooler in the world, my Kbear.

Kbear was yet another surprise baby. Her sister was just nine months old when I found out that I was pregnant again. We told my parents the news after first stuffing them full of a fabulous Easter dinner, mostly because when people have a belly full of from-scratch scalloped potatoes, they are less likely to chase your husband with a crowbar when you tell them that he has knocked up their daughter for the second time in less than three years.

But honestly, we shouldn't have worried. They were completely delighted. My mother-in-law was completely delighted. Our friends just thought we were nuts. And while I was hanging over the toilet in the midst of morning sickness hell while Banana howled from her pack-and-play, I swore that I would never have sex again.

But when Kbear arrived, she was just about perfect, even down to the little "stork bites" she had on her back and tummy. He had the softest curly blond hair you'd ever seen. She was born at exactly two o'clock in the morning in the midst of an incredible raging midwest thunderstorm. Someday I'll tell you the whole story, but Skippy barely made it to the hospital in time, just as my water broke all over my poor labor nurse. It was a quick labor. It was my only natural labor, mostly because she just came way too quickly. I myself am a big fan of hospital drugs, but it wasn't to be.

Kbear arrived fast, and she's been on the go ever since. She is a ball of green eyed curly haired spitfire that just never stops.

My big concern for K is that we do everything we can to avoid "middle child syndrome." I'm a big believer in birth order characteristics. We do lots of things to make her feel like she's a cool cat. I tell her all the time that she is special because she is the only one in our family who gets to be both a big sister and a little sister. She is friendly, percocious, and smart as a whip. She is constantly pushing Banana away and trying to follow right behind her all at the same time. She will knock Chunk over in her rush to answer the door only to turn right around to cuddle with him on the couch for as long as he'll stand it.

If Banana is my generous and empathetic child, K is my hell-on-wheels kid. There is a saying that "Well behaved women rarely make history." If that's true, then someday my K will be legendary. But when all is said and done and hurricane Kbear finally decides to rest in calm waters, there was never a sweeter, more loving, warm and cuddly kid on the planet. She is bright, funny, kind, and makes friends wherever we go.

Banana is always going to be my "big girl" - that's what happens to the first kid. They will always seem bigger and more grown up than they really are. You have to watch it and constantly remind yourself that they are NOT the little adult you sometimes imagine. But K....K will always be my baby girl. This past fall she turned five and I swear it was like someone flipped a light on - I just can't believe how big she is getting.

In fact, I thought about it early this morning when Kbear and I made a mad dash to Fred Meyer before pre-school because she is today's designated "snack helper." Last night she told me she wanted to bring muffins. She ALWAYS wants to bring muffins. But Mommy was tired. Mommy had been on the go all day. And Mommy did not want to make muffins. I had hoped that when she woke up this morning, she would be content to grab two boxes of 100 calorie packs to trot off with, but no such luck.

So there we were in Fred Meyer at 7:40 this morning, buying muffins. Because honestly, I don't tell my kids no when it's something little like that - yeah the muffins cost four thousand times more than they would have if I had made them and yeah, her buddies probably won't even eat them, but I've learned that if you expect K to listen to "no" when it really matters, like "we don't try to open car doors when we're going down the freeway" then you need to pick your battles VERY carefully. And the battle of blueberry muffins was not one I was willing to wage.

Anyway, the muffins aren't the point. The point is that when we arrived at preschool, I received my monthly newsletter from K's teacher. Amongst notes about the upcoming Valentine's Day party and book orders is an invoice for the upcoming month of three days a week/three hours a day bliss. So as usual, while I am walking back to my van I am tallying up the coming month's bills and matching them up to paydays and thinking that it's awesome that we only have four more months of preschool to pay for and God, I will be SO glad when I don't have to shell out that extra eighty five dollars a month.....

I mean, won't I?

Um....................

All of a sudden I'm feeling kind of sick to my stomach.

Only four more months of preschool before it's time for summer. And only one more summer before it's time to send my K off to big kid school. She will be in Kindergarten in the fall. ALL DAY KINDERGARTEN. That means that from six fifteen in the morning until three fifteen in the afternoon, my girls will both be off learning and playing and having fun while Chunk and I hang at home. That means that my little monster that eats three packets of oatmeal while she watches Seasame Street will be gone all day. My thrift store girlfriend. My curly headed grocery store companion who never fails to remind me to buy cereal. She won't be all mine any more.

My little girl will be a big girl. And what on earth will I do then?

So I'm starting to make a list of activities for us to do this summer. Another big trip isn't in the cards this year, but damn it, we're going to have fun. I am feeling very quietly frantic about my little girl growing up, but I know that I'm going to do everything that I can to enjoy it.

Lucky number seven!

2009-01-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

So in case you missed last year's soap opera in print, "The Story of Us" chronicles the ups and downs of the early "Skippy and Amy Days" and can be found beginning here:

http://freckledmama.blogspot.com/2008/01/its-story-time-again-wild-applause-part.html

Other than that, it's been another wonderful year of watching our children grow, conquering new challenges, and loving each other more and more!

Happy Anniversary Sweetie! I love you, and I am proud of you and our kids are the light of my life! Here's to us!

The quest to feed the family....

2009-01-05T11:20:00.000-08:00

Now before all of you who have raised teenagers start in on me, let me just say this up front:

I know that it will only get worse as they grow.

Feeding a family on a budget is HARD. I really try to walk a fine line between all-local-all-organic-grown-by-hippies-food...and Burger King. My kids DO eat hot dogs, and I don't feel guilty about it. However, I make a pretty serious effort to also make plenty of meals that are healthy and well rounded, with plenty of fresh fruits and veggies. We almost always have a nice sit-down Sunday dinner, and we have lots of fun making big breakfasts on the weekends. Sugary cereal is a fairly big treat - Kbear once told my girlfriend Laura that "My Mom buys cereal that tastes like NOTHING!" but I do hand out the occasional Nutragrain bar on the way out the door to school.

So yeah, I'm far from perfect. I'm like a cross between Rachel Ray and Ronald McDonald most of the time.

Now shopping for a family of five and making food stretch can be a serious challenge. Skippy and I looked at our bank account recently and realized that we were "thirty dollaring ourselves to death" by running to the store fourteen times a week for just a few things here and there. There was no plan. If we wanted to grill, I went and bought steaks. If we wanted soup, I went and bought all the ingredients. No chicken? No problem - I went to the store! And half of the time, I'd come home and realize that I had the fixings for half a dozen meals already at my disposal.

It was ridiculous.

Thus began my quest to pare down my grocery habit. It started with a cash budget - now every Sunday I go to the ATM and withdraw my cash for the week (a fixed amount that Skippy and I agreed on) and then I treat myself to a fancy coffee and I pick up a few Sunday papers.

Then I go home, drink my coffee, make my list, and cut coupons. I try to plan the week around things that I already have in the kitchen, and things that are sale through the store fliers and the list that I get off of The Grocery Game. (www.thegrocerygame.com - use me as a referral if you ever give it a shot) I have managed to accumulate quite a stockpile of kitchen staples and we have a chest freezer that is slowly filling up with meat when I can find good quality on sale.

So I make my list. And then I shop.

We've been doing this for about six months now. Of course there are exceptions to the budget - holiday dinners, birthday parties, etc but for the most part, we stick to the rules.

This last Sunday I scored big time and had my best coupon bonanza yet. I was doing the happy dance in the damn check out line and even the cashier gave me a high five.

In fact, I'm so excited, I'm going to tell you what I bought and what I spent.

Ready?

1 six pack of Mott's All Natural Applesauce cups (had a coupon)

1 four pack of Dole diced pears for Banana's lunch (had a coupon)

2 bags of Tostitos Scoops to feed Skippy's salsa habit (had a coupon)

2 boxes of Quaker Simple Harvest Oatmeal (had coupons)

2 boxes of Captain Crunch - this is a BIG treat (had coupons)

2 boxes of Quaker Maple and Brown Sugar Instant Oatmeal (had coupons)

4 boxes of Special K Red Berries for me (had coupons, thank you Laura!)

1 bag of Chewy Chips Ahoy for lunches (had a coupon)

5 cans of Campbell's Tomato Soup (had a coupon)

5 cans of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup (had a coupon)

1 bottle of Triaminic Children's medicine (free with soup, plus had a coupon)

One bag of Ore Ida French Fries (on sale)

2 gallons of 1% milk (on sale)

1 container of cottage cheese (on sale)

1 loaf of whole wheat white bread (on sale)

1 Package of all beef hot dogs (on sale)

1 Pot Roast (on sale)

1 Small package of chicken breasts (on sale)

2 pounds of bananas

and 2 and 1/2 pounds of organic gala apples

Now keep in mind that this stuff will be added to things I have already at home that were also bought on sale - it's not like we're all eating nothing but tomato soup all week - when you combine my purchases with things I already have, we'll have at least one soup and grilled cheese night, one leftover night, one meatless night, and at least four other "good" dinners.

So before any type of savings (club card, coupons, promotions, etc) my total would have come to one hundred and twelve dollars and eighteen cents.

After my Safeway card, my coupons, and two in-store promotions, I spent thirty eight dollars and and ninety five cents.

I flippin' rock. Some healthy stuff, some treats. And not a box of Hamburger Helper to be seen!

My Dad died of cancer, and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt

2009-01-04T00:03:00.000-08:00

On January fourth four years ago, I was driving my old paint chipped Chevy Blazer down Interstate 88 to meet my Mom at the hospital. She had called me earlier that morning, frantic with worry over my Dad. Shortly after we hung up, I got on the road and began the forty mile trip to be with my family and my father was taken back to cancer care via ambulance. He had been fighting esophageal cancer since his diagnosis just six months earlier.

By some stroke of luck, my mother-in-law was in town - she had arranged an extended layover on her way home from my sister-in-law's family during New Year's so that Skippy and I could have a rare date night. Blessedly, I was able to leave my girls with her. Banana was two. Kbear had just turned one a few weeks earlier.

I called Skippy at work while I drove under a steel gray sky. I remember that I was shaking, with cold or with worry I don't know. I told him that things were pretty bad, worse then they had been when I had frantically rushed to the hospital just three days earlier. I told him to stay at work, that I would call when I had news.

While I drove, I thought about my Dad. The strong, tan, outspoken man that I loved, respected, and sometimes even feared was almost unrecognizable now. Chemotherapy, a subsequent allergic reaction, and various infections had sapped his strength in addition to the cancer he was trying to ward off. We had almost lost him in ICU shortly before the holidays, and our reprieve had been too brief.

I parked in the now-familiar lot on the back side of the hospital with an entrance to the cancer ward. I can remember turning off my radio, leaning my head against the steering wheel, and taking deep breath after deep breath. I wasn't sure what to expect, but experience over the last six months had taught me that it wouldn't be good.

The first thing I saw when the double glass doors slid open was my husband. He was standing near the front desk, talking to my sister. The husband I had told to stay at work. The husband who had beat me to the hospital, being closer to it than I had been. The husband who had been through this before with his own father. He was determined to be there for me. He loved my Dad too.

My mom looked tired. She was always tired then, but this time...she looked defeated. Assorted extended family joined us as the hours ticked by. We kept vigil. We laughed at old fishing stories, we went to eat in shifts, we held hands, and we supported each other while my Dad slipped further and further away from us.

No matter how long I am granted a life on this earth, I will never forget when the doctor came to confirm our worst fears. There was no hope. Dad was beyond the help of modern medicine. All they could do was make him comfortable, make him pain free, and allow him to slip away in peace, surrounded by his wife and children.

It didn't sink in right away, that there was absolutely no hope left. That my Dad was going to die. That we had to say good-bye. It was mid-afternoon on January fourth, and the doctors said that Dad probably wouldn't last the night.

Shortly after that unhappy revelation, our extended family filed out for a while, leaving my mother, my siblings, myself and my husband alone with my Dad. We held his hands and talked to him. I don't know for sure if he heard me, but I absolutely have to believe that he did or I might go crazy on some awful emotional level. I know that he knew how much we loved him. We tried to tell him that it was okay to let go, that we would be okay. It was the last thing we wanted, and the only thing we could say. My Mom told him that when he "got there," if he could please send her a sign and let her know, it would mean everything to her.

Later in the evening a priest from Mom and Dad's church came and administered last rites.

That night I sat alone in the dark and deserted lobby of cancer care and stared outside.

That night it snowed.

A thick blanket of white slowly and methodically covered our cars as they sat waiting in the parking lot. It was the first major storm of the season. That night, my entire universe revolved around the cancer ward. My world seemed to be holding it's breath. I felt like the storm was heralding a massive event...it seemed to be sweeping my father out of my life.

In the morning, Dad was still alive. He was deep in a coma. My mother had not left his side, not to eat or drink, and not to sleep. My father had been a fearsome man during the pain of his cancer, and not easy to live with or care for, but she was determined to stay at his side with him until this life finally let him go. Nothing anyone said could move her.

I knew how she felt. After several hours of watching the snow fall, I parked myself firmly at Dad's side at dawn with my family and my husband. I can remember telling Skippy, "I don't want to miss him." When the last breath left his body, I needed to be there. To stop long enough to sleep or eat or even use the bathroom put me at risk to miss what was sure to be one of the most awful moments of my life, and I didn't dare leave the room.

As time went on, the pauses between my father's breaths would get longer. Sometimes we would all pause in our quiet conversations, waiting to see if he would take another one. To watch a life let go of a body is one of the most excruciating experiences I have ever been through - to sit...to wait...to pray and hope and cry and love and to wait some more....It is beyond humbling.

And on January fifth, sometime around noon - I don't remember anymore if it was a few minutes before or a few minutes after - my father let out a breath...and didn't take another.

One of our cancer care nurses (an angel on Earth) came quietly into the room, stethoscope in hand. She gently pushed past my family and listened to my father's chest. She listened again. The seconds ticked by. And she shook her head ever so slightly at my Mom.

There would be no more breaths. My father was gone.

In that moment, my entire world narrowed around that one inconceivable thought. In that moment, I felt myself pressed hard against Skippy's chest, as if he hoped he could some way shield me from what had just happened. In that moment, I understood what it was to grieve. A god-awful heart-wrenching "nononononono" came tearing out of me.

We had waited together for over 30 hours for this moment, and yet I couldn't believe it had finally found us.

I don't know how long we stood there, arms wrapped around each other, my aunts and cousins and mother and brother and sister and husband. I don't know when we pulled out of those first few awful shocking moments. I remember someone saying that my grandparents had arrived. I remember going out with my Aunt to tell them our awful news. I came back into the room and as my Mom moved towards the door to see to my Dad's parents, Skippy's hand gripped my arm and ever so quietly he said, "Ame, the window."

A pine tree stood just outside my Dad's hospital room. A big bushy snow covered pine tree, it's green boughs brilliant against their backdrop of white. And nestled in the branches, was the biggest fattest cardinal I had ever seen.

You have to understand some of the back story. Growing up, Mom always told us that seeing a cardinal was good luck. She had a fondness for them and as a result of her little home-grown-fable, we all liked the vibrant red birds. Being the state bird of Illinois, they were spotted often in our area, but nevertheless, to see one the morning after a raging snowstorm, inches from my Dad's hospital window, sitting calmly in the branches of a tree and watching us sad humans inside was a bit unusual. I rushed out to grab my Mom from the lobby - there was no way I could let her miss seeing it with her own eyes.

I shouldn't have worried about it. That dang bird sat there for close to a half hour - or more. We all saw him - he didn't fly away when we stepped closer to the glass. He just hung out, surveying the scene in the tiny room that had been a place of such sorrow.

And then in an instant, although no one saw him fly away, he was gone. But we all felt that seeing one of my Mom's favorite birds, her self-appointed feathered good luck charm, in the horrible moments following my father's death and in such unlikely conditions could really only mean one thing.

Dad was letting her know. He was letting her know that he had "gotten there" just fine.

****************************

Needless to say, in the months following Dad's death, we became a little bit fanatical about cardinals. You know how old ladies sometimes become "crazy cat ladies?" We've kind of become "crazy cardinal people." It's gotten better but whenever I see anything from a Christmas card to a dishtowel that has that bright red bird on it, I can't help but think of him.

It has been four years since my Dad died. We have all gone through tremendous changes on many levels, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, but parts of him will always be with us. It never really truly goes away.

This is the first Christmas that it didn't hurt quite so much. And the fact that it didn't hurt as much, hurt.

I think of him often. I still ask him for advice. And even though I have traded the cardinals of Illinois for the blue jays of Oregon, I know that he hears me.

Someday, I won't feel the need to talk about him around January fifth. I won't have to project my sorrow on my blog. Someday I'll be able to just look at the sky and say, "Dad, wherever you're fishing today, I hope the beer is cold and that you catch a whopper."

I'm not there yet. I still have a need to tell my stories, to share my father, to somehow make him REAL to people.

I talk to my girls about him often. My husband teases me when I say something that is straight out of Dad's mouth. My mom cautions me to live my life more, and to worry less - he hated that I was a worrier like him. I have let go of the bad stuff. Dad wasn't perfect. I say it every time. Sometimes when people die, we tend to put them up on a pedestal of clouds and forget that they ever had a sharp word for us. I haven't forgotten the bad stuff, I've just chosen to let only the good live in my heart. Death in and of itself is too much, too hard, and too sad to hang onto all the bad stuff.

So instead I'll just say this:

I love you Dad.

Wherever you are fishing today, I hope the beer is cold.

I hope you catch a whopper.

Thank goodness it's only once a year....

2008-12-28T23:57:00.000-08:00

Christmas post-children really just absolutely kills me. It saps my strength. It makes me crazy. I feel like all I do is spend spend spend and bake bake bake and wrap wrap wrap. When it's all over it takes me days to recover.

It's exhausting.

Our second Oregon Christmas was full of new challenges this year. The big news was the mini-blizzard that hit our area - the Columbia Rive Gorge saw the largest snowfall in over forty years. Kbear got an extra week off from preschool and Banana had late starts until six fresh inches fell on Wednesday and they finally threw in the towel for the last two days before break.

People in Chicago may have scoffed at our measly 18-22 inches of snow (depending on where in the yard you stuck your tape measurer) but let me tell you Midwesterners something; when you get rid of road salt, your whole damn world gets turned upside down. Tree hugging hippies in the Pacific Northwest don't use road salt - they apparently prefer to see how many 360s assorted motorists of all ages can do on their way to the grocery store. And when it snows that much, EVERYONE goes to the grocery store! Then you've got to understand the plowing situation....there isn't one. The entire week that the snow came down, I saw ONE actual snowplow. ONE. The rest of the time I watched people use everything from pickups and four wheelers with plows attached to them to a friggin' BACKHOE in a collective attempt to move the white stuff from our roads and driveways.

And then there was the situation out on the one major interstate that leads through town. It's the only way to get in or out of town in any direction.

CLOSED.

We had no mail service for almost a week. UPS and FedEx took an extended local holiday - the WEEK OF CHRISTMAS. It was horribly frustrating and made me happy that I haven't joined the ranks of hard-core online shoppers just yet, because let me tell you, they were screwed.

It also meant that freight couldn't come in or out of town. And after awhile, Fred Meyer and Safeway both had a very "Children of the Corn" feel to them as supplies dwindled. But December 22nd, here's what you saw if you went to the store.

No baby oranges

No sour cream

And no milk.

Freaky huh? And to this native Chicagoan who knows snow, it was downright bizarre.

But hey, we survived. This year the kiddos had a fantastic Christmas. Santa did what he was supposed to do, and both Grandmas actually respected our request for a scaled back year and gave each munchkin just a few practical fun gifts. Skippy restrained himself quite admirably during his last minute bonanza, and I managed to pull it all together pretty damn beautifully if I do say so myself. Among my personal stash I managed to score some new fuzzy socks courtesy of my kids, an armband for my iPod and a HUGE Itunes card among other goodies from my hubby, and all sorts of other assorted loot. Banana digs her (cheap) MP3 player and Kbear loves her keyboard, although I have a bit of buyer's remorse over that particularly loud gift, especially after the Chunk discovered the power switch. Chunk is happiest on his ride-on firetruck that I discovered has no off switch, and although I love it when my child is happy, someday my sister-in-law will pay ever so dearly for that particular present.

But overall it was a great year. And in the end, I was so happy that Skippy kept me from breaking out the sleds that we had bought for under the tree a few days early - with the snow falling I was dying to give them to the kids before the big day but the wait was so worth it when we took them all up and down the hill a few times. Plus, Dixie managed to take my new favorite family picture.

It was a good year. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

The Christmas Eve tradition....

2008-12-26T19:08:00.000-08:00

Christmas of 2001 (like, totally forever ago) was the first Christmas that I spent out of my parents' home. It was a somewhat surreal experience. I was 23 years old, three months pregnant, and living in sin with Skippy while we sang Jingle Bells and coordinated plans for our I-refuse-to-call-it-a-shotgun-wedding, which was just a little over three weeks away.

Skippy being the sensitive soul that he is (stop laughing) knew that I was feeling out of sorts. At twenty three years old, I was still fully into waking up on Christmas morning in my twin bed at my parents' house, and opening presents all over the family room while mom made her signature blueberry-muffins-from-a-box. It was TRADITION. And I loved it.

So he rolled up his sleeves and endeavored to make my first Christmas out of the 'rents house a smashing success, embracing his mile wide romantic streak (seriously, stop laughing).

He was determined to spoil me. We tackled the mall, drank sparkling cider, and wrapped gifts. Two nights before Christmas, we went out and got the most Charlie Brown-i-est looking tree you'd ever seen from Frank's Nursery in Naperville (alas, no longer in business) and decorated it with white and red lights that we found in the bargain bin at Target - the very same lights that made me almost burst into tears when I went to put them on the tree this year and realized that two strings were now officially half dead. He made every effort to cater to my mood swings, meet my cravings, and hold my hair back when morning sickness struck. He was the poster fiance and Daddy-to-be. And deep down inside, he still worried that I'd find my Christmas lacking. It was the only one we would ever spend as "Skippy and Amy" - by the time the next one rolled around, the bump in my belly would be six months old. And he wanted it to be special.

Somewhere in the craziness, we began a tradition that has survived almost seven years of marriage, four residential addresses, and three kids. We began our Christmas Eve gift exchange.

Skippy absolutely can NOT keep a gift a secret. I mean...he CAN, but he wiggles around like a squirrel on pixie sticks and taunts you from the moment he makes the purchase until the last ribbon comes off on Christmas morning. The man loves to give gifts, and adores coordinating surprises. And as his legal spouse, this has its perks.

That one single child-free Christmas Eve night, we decided that we would each pick one gift for the other to open. This felt like sacrilege to me - immediate family gifts were to be opened on CHRISTMAS DAY AND NO OTHER in mom and dad's house. But it was sweet and romantic and fun to begin a new tradition while we teetered on the cusp of a life and a family together. And as the years have passed, it has become one of my favorite few moments of the holiday season. We always wait until all of the kids are in bed - then it's just the two of us like it was during that first Christmas Eve night. Sometimes we make a few drinks and open gifts by the red and white lights of the tree. Sometimes, we grab them haphazardly a few minutes before midnight while in the midst of baking cookies together or arguing over the consistency of the fudge.

And sometimes, Skippy still manages to outdo himself.

This year inspiration struck my sweet husband. I think he was really striving to do something special to shake me out of my holiday funk. Admittedly, Christmas wasn't as sparkly for me this year, having lost my holiday motivation in my quest to mope about being in a house for a second Christmas that I swore we'd only spend one Christmas in. I didn't do much decorating and I'm still up to my ass in chocolate chips from all of the baking I didn't do. And Skippy being Skippy, with his huge heart and his romantic streak, went out of his way to make me happy.

We arrived home from Laura's Finger Food Festivities around quarter to six on Christmas Eve night. I had my Mother-in-law's favorite potato soup simmering on the stove and Skippy rushed me through a bowl of it, saying only that we had a time constraint that we had to meet.

So feeling somewhat annoyed, I slurped my way through the soup and bread as quickly as I could. My kids were giggly - they weren't in on the surprise but they knew that something was up. My Mother-in-law kept grinning at me. I burned my tongue on the last bite and wondered what would happen next.

A package appeared on the table at my place. It was small, and it was cold. Later I found out that it had been in the fridge. I glanced around at all the smiling faces and unwrapped it while Skippy slipped outside and started up the minivan.

Inside was a bag of apple slices and a note:

Your Instructions:
1. Put on your boots.
2. Put on your hat, gloves, and coat.
3. Put these in your pocket.
4. Get in the van.
5. Don't ask questions.

Totally intriguing right? I quickly followed my directions and slid into the barely-warm passenger seat of the van, next to a grinning husband.

If you know me, you know that I absolutely suck at receiving surprises. Of course I started asking questions and of course, they weren't answered. But after a few moments, a light bulb as bright as the dang old star of Bethlehem went off inside my head.

"YOU ARE TAKING ME TO FRED MEYER!" I squealed.

He raises an eyebrow at me. "Why would I do that? It's Christmas Eve. Fred's is closed Ame."

"BECAUSE THERE IS A HORSE AT FRED MEYER!" Apparently I was trying to shatter the van's windows in my excitement.

Mr. Cool-as-a-cucumber replied, "Why on earth would there be a HORSE at Fred Meyer? It's a grocery store silly!"

Of course by then we were only blocks away and everything was as clear as the three foot icicles hanging off my porch at home. I lowered my voice several octaves and played along, answering "Because the horse at Fred Meyer gives CARRIAGE RIDES!"

And sure enough, there they were in the empty and snow covered parking lot at Freddie's, waiting for us. Skippy treated me to a half hour horse drawn carriage ride around town, with his arm warm around me and cozy blankets over our laps while we admired the miscellaneous holiday decorations everyone had up. People waved from inside their houses, and little kids squealed, "LOOKIT mommy, it's a horse!" and pressed their noses up against car windows as we passed in intersections.

And after our ride, of course we fed our trusty steed his apple slices.

Skippy may rarely get his underwear in the laundry basket. His favorite computer game annoys the hell out of me. He doesn't always help with the dishes and he has a knack for passing along a poopie baby.

But the man knows how to keep a Christmas tradition alive.

Love you babe.

More holiday blogging to come!

It's almost that time!

2008-12-24T10:18:00.001-08:00

The W Family would like to wish you and yours and very happy, very merry Christmas this year! It would appear that most of us are under some form of cold precipitation, and we apologize to those of you who will be receiving presents and cards late this year due to the suspended mail service out here in Oregon, but you are most absolutely in our thoughts! Be safe and be merry!

With love from Amy, Skippy, Banana, KBear, and Chunk

How to survive your first Oregon blizzard

2008-12-20T23:01:00.000-08:00

Let's get something straight...

We do not (despite what my cousin Erin believes) live completely in the middle of nowhere. I mean, we have next door neighbors on both sides. We have a post office, two grocery stores, two tattoo parlors, a PetCo, Starbucks, and McDonald's WITH a playplace, among many other things.

But after growing up in the Chicago suburbs (where 'burbs means 60 miles away from the city and still sprawling), Oregon has been an adjustment. One of the biggest issues has been the weather. It's weird and different. You think Chicago weather is unpredictable? You ain't seen nuthin' sister.

After the novelty of having to explain the concept of a "heat index" to our new friends wore off, I started working on getting used to the often windy and extreme weather that the Pacific Northwest regularly treats us to. This summer we had several days above 110 degrees. In the spring, it rains. In the fall, it rains. And in the winter, it usually rains and VERY occasionally snows.

When we first moved here, I thought that Oregon was full of wussies because the sparse snow would often immediately close school for the day. I didn't get it. I was used to bundling up and trudging off to school in minus twenty degree winds, feeling my damp hair freeze on my way to the bus stop! Two inches of snow equals no school? What was WRONG with these people?

Then I realized a few things:
1. Oregon has hills. Lots of them.

2. There are very few snowplows, unless you live on a road that is en route to a ski resort.

3. Road salt is a foreign concept to the hippie tree hugging goodness that is Oregon.

As time has passed, the snow issue has become quite a point of contention between Oregon and me. I LOVE snow. I really do. I have fond memories of playing outside in the snow with brother and sister while my Mom watched from the kitchen window (smart lady) and I still remember my Dad taking me to THE BIG SLED HILL in Naperville for a few runs after a good storm. I like to shovel. I really really do. It's good cardio. And last year I thought it was pretty cool here that we could see the grass at our house, covered in nothing but frost and flurries, and then drive a half hour and have snow to our butts on Mt. Hood. That is COOL STUFF.

Cue this year. Our first full winter in Oregon. Apparently, we are currently experiencing THE STORM OF STORMS *cue ominous music* and I've got to tell you, it's caught me off guard ass over teakettle.

We currently have nineteen inches of snow in our front yard. And it's still falling. We are officially under a winter storm warning / blizzard watch until sometime Monday. Friends who live higher up than we do already have FEET of snow piled against their houses. They are literally snowed in, Little House style. Yesterday I almost got into a fight with a lady Black Friday style over the last bag of Nestle Milk Chocolate Morsels at Fred's because let's face it, why use the store brand when you can hit senior citizens over the head with your Cheerios for the last bag of Nestle goodness?

All of this leads me to my latest blog entry, complete with pictures:

How to survive your first Oregon blizzard.

First of all, steal your husband's bitchin' ski hat, as modeled above. You know which one - the one that he simply had to have for the Google ski trip last year. The one that you made fun of for days. Because if there's gonna be a blizzard, you're gonna need a hat.

Next, proceed to check the weather channel's site constantly on both your computer and your phone. Sprint down the hallway shrieking THE SKY IS FALLING (while wearing your hat of course) and inform your husband that you need to run out for candles, flashlight batteries, and Doritos. Throw a slipper at him when he laughs at you about everything except the Doritos.

Brave the roads in your minivan that does NOT have snow tires or four wheel drive and accompany the rest of town to the grocery store. Circle the parking lot at least six times before deciding to go hit the Dutch Brother's hut for coffee because really, who needs food? Get your son a chocolate milk to prevent pure mutiny later on when it's time to be strapped into the shopping cart.

Next, beat up old ladies for chocolate chips (see above) and stock up on bread, milk, and Doritos. And eggs. And flour. And all sorts of stuff that will do you absolutely no good if the power goes out unless you are the Ma Ingalls incarnate.

Go home and stack firewood in the house. Attempt to rescue outside toys from snowdrifts. Laugh at the poor dog when she tries to pee. Make a list of things that you fully intend on baking. Procrastinate baking. Do crafts with your kids (thanks for the kits Nana!) and drink hot chocolate. Make snow angels.

Rest assured that if any homeless degenerates try to barge into your house in search of warmth, you have several large icicles at your disposal for all of your stabbing and beating home defense needs.

And try not to worry about losing power.

After all, you bought flashlights.

And besides...

You can always fire up the grill.

Vacation Bible School and the Mechanical Bull...not your typical Saturday.

2008-12-14T16:21:00.000-08:00

And so another weekend flies by in the W household - it seems as if I just settle in to enjoy them and they are over. But hey, things are busy. It's a busy time of year. Saturday alone was jam-packed full of stuff!

Saturday dawned bright and early with a one day "Christmas For Kids" vacation bible school being held at one of the churches in town. Now if you know us at all, you know that we typically don't attend church. In Skippy's case, we outright AVOID church. But we have said from the start that we want to let our kids explore all different beliefs and faiths, so when an opportunity comes up for a little youth ministry (especially around the holidays), we usually take it. Not to mention the added bonus (at least in my mind) of being able to go Christmas shopping with just my two handsome boys and no girlies with a mega case of the Christmas "I Wants."

So it was with a light heart that I dropped the girls off at 9:30, smiling as they skipped off to decorate cookies and sing carols. From there, I went straight downtown to get a haircut - a truly extraordinary event considering my last trim had been in Chicago in July. To say the least, I was badly overdue for some hair TLC. And once my new coif was dry, fuzzy, and stuffed under my awesome blue knit hat, I cruised back up the hill and picked up my big man and my little man and we beat a path to Hood River, 20 miles away and the site of the nearest WalMart.

Apparently, everyone else had the same idea that we did - we ran into various fellow-parents who were also kiddo-free thanks to Vacation Bible School and we got into a minor argument while debating the merits of various sleds for the kids. Chunk be-bopped to the carols being broadcast and Skippy picked out a dashing new Christmas shirt for the party we were attending later in the day. We shopped. We chatted. We had lunch (just me and my boys!) and then we cruised back to town just in time to stash our new purchases in the garage and pick up the girl children, who chattered all the way home about the Christmas star and singing Silent Night until we tossed them all into bed for a quick snooze.

Then just a few hours later, we were heading out the door again - only this time I was wearing make up AND my *good* bra! It was truly a miraculous Christmas miracle - my boobs were where they belonged! Our first stop was Laura's house - Laura my parenting soul mate was braving all three of my children for multiple hours while my husband and I hit the Google Holiday Party. She is a brave soul...or possibly just a huge glutton for punishment. But either way, she was stuck - we had watched one of her munchkins overnight the weekend before and we both felt that one of her kids for 24 hours was about equal to three of my kids for four hours, so it all worked out.

Blissfully child-free, we coasted down the hill to the Civic Auditorium in town. It's hard to feel cool and sexy on a date with your husband when you're in an empty minivan and an empty McDonald's french fry carton keeps bumping into your foot when you turn, but I was really working to persevere. Then after Skippy made fun of my parking job (you try parking with a french fry carton constantly annoying YOU) we made our way up to the ballroom.

Just like the year before, the decorations in the lobby and up the stairs were gorgeous. The smell of food wafted out to meet us at the entrance and my stomach grumbled. The tables were set. You could hear the tinkling of ice in glass as the bar organized itself. The DJ was in place.....

And there was a huge inflatable pool with a mechanical bull set up prominently in one entire corner of the ballroom.

Huh?

Talk about disconcerting. But it was just too much fun for words - just SEEING it there was enough to make me giggle. The thing was HUGE. And the "pool" was just too far over the top forget sawdust on a dirty bar floor - this bull had STYLE! He had even brought his own landing pad!

Thus my second Google Christmas party kicked off. We ate, we drank, we mingled. We entered raffles and admired a brand new baby. We held hands and we ate and drank some more. Skippy played a few hands of blackjack. I socialized with all of our friends.

Then my husband decided he was going to ride the bull.

...

.....

........

Yeah....that didn't last long.

So we ate and drank and socialized some more.

And finally, at the late LATE hour of TEN O'CLOCK (ohhhhh party animals beware) we picked up our sweaty overwound kids from an exhausted Laura and we headed home.

So yeah. Bible School and a Bull. Just a Saturday in W World.

Technology Sucks Sometimes.....

2008-12-09T21:48:00.000-08:00

I know, an ironic statement from a woman who pays the bills with Google money, right?

But seriously, I am feeling very anti-technology this week. Here's the deal - last Tuesday, my dryer decided that it was going to stop getting hot, thus not drying any clothes. This minor bump in the road of life has led to several alternative solutions in the quest to keep my family in clean underwear while we wait for our warranty service call:

Solution One: I can wash my laundry here at home and then take it to dry at Laura's house. Laura's house is nice because there is always coffee on, I feel like I can show up in pajama pants, and no one cares if my kids act like rabid monkeys. After all, as mentioned before Laura is my parenting soulmate. The drawback is that I have to work it around school bus pick up, preschool, and nap time. This can be a hassle.

Solution Two: I can wash my laundry here at home and then take it to dry at Charlotte's house. Now Charlotte's house is nice because I go there in the evening after my kids and her kids are in bed and we sit around and play around with picasa and drink strawberry daquris while my laundry dries. The drawback to this is that no matter how genuinely welcoming they are, I feel like I'm encroaching on their evening...and I occassionally wake up with a laundry hangover the next day.

This brings us to Solution Three: I can wash my laundry at home and then take it to the laundramat to dry. I have done this three times this week. This is nice because I can dry everything I have in under a half hour. That is the one and only nice thing about it.

The laundramat is a strange, sad, depressing place.

First of all there's the "laundramat supervisor," who peers over your shoulder while you fold your husband's underwear in between foggy sessions of chainsmoking just outside the door before meticulously vacuuming up all of the lint from the inside and outside of each and every dryer while humming the theme to Days of Our Lives.

And then of course there are your intereting (and often disconcerting) quarter-carrying fellow landramat patrons who either want to talk your ear off or make you feel instantly uneasy while you watch your towels and socks tumble 'round and 'round and count down each and every minute on the timer.

So yeah......having a broken dryer sucks.

Of course, you may be asking yourself why I don't use my clothesline. After all it's been sunny and pleasant here in Oregon considering that it's December. And believe it or not, I've actually utilized it a few times this week for a few blankets. But that's as far as I'll go. For one thing, I don't like my skivvies hanging out there flapping in the breeze for all the world to see. And for another, my name isn't Laura Freaking Ingalls. I have a beautiful shiny blue front loader that simplifies my life. I don't need no dang clothesline.

*sigh*

Then to add insult to injury, on Friday the one and only TV in the house decided to poop out on us. AGAIN. This is the second time in less than 18 months that it's gone kaput. It's like a huge black lemon that intermitedly lets me watch Boston Legal. And NOOOOOO Mr. Customer Service Dude That I Waited Forty Minutes To Talk To, NOOOOO we don't have an extended warranty. Why? WHY? Because my Daddy raised me to believe that they are a ripoff scam and besides, who expects their pretty shiny new TV to crap out twice in a year and a half ANYWAY???????

>Deep Breaths<

So after a long Dora-The-Explorer-free weekend of kiddos playing with legos at 6:15 each morning, today I finally got to talk to a manager who agreed to cover the repair for free. But after that if the dang thing breaks again, we will be the proud owners of a very heavy 42 inch paperweight. Nice huh?

That just about sums it up. No dryer, no TV. My normal evenings filled with watching sitcoms while folding my family's assorted wardrobes are indefinitely on hold. And as if that's not enough, over the weekend my eight year old hair dryer decided that it had blown dry its last head of hair. It's limping along if I'm gentle with it, but I know that it's only a matter of time before it too joins the great appliance junk pile in the sky.

*sigh*

It's three-fifteen in the morning

2008-11-29T22:39:00.000-08:00

And I'm wide awake.

I'm dressed. My shoes are on. I have a backpack slung across my shoulders and a blanket draped over my arm.

I'm waiting to see headlights.

Sure enough, Laura's Montero pulls to the curb in front of my house five minutes later. I ease the front door open, slip out of the house, and skip down to hop into her toasty warm vehicle.

It's the day after Thanksgiving. And we're going shopping.

Laura is virtually bouncing in her seat behind the wheel as we make our way across town to pick up a fellow crazy Mommy, our girlfriend Nicole. It's three forty a.m. when we merge onto the freeway and head towards Portland.

Contrary to popular belief, we're not crazy. At least, not in the normal sense. We're just three moms with nine children between us who need to make sure that this coming Christmas is on par with every other Christmas in the past. And with the economy slowly but surely sliding further downhill, finding the deals seemed even more important this year.

As usual, I appoint myself to deer watch duty as Laura navigates the dark highway through the Gorge. It's Nicole's first time shopping on Black Friday, but Laura and I have braved the crowds before. We go over our strategy on the 80 mile trip into the city.

At 4:45 we pull into the Walmart parking lot outside of Wood Village, Oregon. Or rather, we pull into line to pull into the parking lot. The crowd is unreal - bigger than any Black Friday I've ever seen. The adrenaline starts pumping as the three of us join the masses.

We start creeping steadily towards the entrance at 5:03. Before we make it to the door, the first lucky shoppers are already coming out with carts laden with everything from four dollar pajamas to big screen TVs. After what feels like forever the harsh fluorescent lights wash over us and we confront the churning sea of wall-to-wall bodies head on. Clinging to our cart for dear life, we begin to canvass the store, trying not to roll over any one's toes and occasionally getting bumped in the rear by someone who isn't so considerate.

After almost an hour, we throw in the towel. The crowd is just too damn big, and it's starting to get cranky. Even though none of us manage to get everything we were hoping for, we all manage to score some great deals.

And so we check out.

And then we load up.

And ten minutes later, we're in line at Target in time for their six o'clock opening. Further shopping madness ensues before we decide that it's finally time for breakfast. The day feels like it's already been going on forever and it's only eight a.m!

We sit, we eat, and then we head out to do it some more. Fifteen hours from the time Laura picked me up, she drops me off at home just in time to take my kids to the Starlight Parade.

What.A.Day. Just call me Santa.

Gobble Gobble, Friends and Loved Ones

2008-11-27T22:09:00.000-08:00

(That's Chunk's "Where's the turkey?" face.)

So in case I didn't talk to you today during the FEAST OF EATING, I hope you had a warm, safe, and overall splendid Thanksgiving. We here in the W household had a genuinely fantastic day!

Turkey Day began like it always does - with the parade. While the kiddos and I sat on the couch in our PJs watching the Buzz Lightyear balloon float across the screen followed by a much-too-obviously lip-syncing Miley Cyrus, Skippy wrestled his 20 pound bird into the oven, slathered in white wine garlic butter and ready to roast throughout the afternoon.

The kids and I stayed warm and snug in a nest a blankets until close to the end of the parade, when a truly blissful holiday event took place - all of my children took naps at the same time. This miraculous and heavenly event gave me the opportunity to run to the grocery store for (only) the forty second time this week before attempting to find an available copy of Wal-E somewhere around town. Defeated on the movie front, I did at least manage to make it back home with the last necessary ingredients for our Thanksgiving Day Feast.

Skippy and I puttered around the house until sometime in the early afternoon when our kiddos roused themselves from their assorted beds and we all shared a snack while we enjoyed another Thanksgiving tradition - watching the Dog Show. We LOOOOOOVE the dog show in the W house. Skippy and I debate the merits of all of the pooches and the kids laugh at me while I watch each and every commercial despite the glory of the DVR. I am completely and irrevocably addicted to dog commercials. Skippy calls it "The Amy Demographic" - if a commercial has a dog in it I immediately love it, no questions asked.

The bonanza of four legged fur kept us busy for most of the afternoon. Then around three the bird came out to rest on top of the stove and a bunch of wonderful-smelling side dishes went in to heat up. Green bean casserole (blech) bubbled alongside an old OHS Drama Club staple, cheesy potato casserole while we all changed into our dinner duds and started ferrying stuff out to the car.

And at four p.m. sharp, we drove up the hill to share dinner with some very dear friends, the B Family. Katy and Aaron were gracious hosts, Kat had a beautifully elegant table set, and we all enjoyed spending a few hours eating and visiting with each other while we sipped on apple cranberry cider and found extra room for dessert. The highlight of the evening (other than Skippy's unreal turkey) was when we asked all of the kids to share what they were thankful for. My girls were fairly predictable - friends, school, mom and dad. But bless the little B man, who without hesitation announced his never ending thanks for a world that included Bon Jovi music to dance to.

Before we knew it, the kiddos wound down and it was time to head home. The munchkins were in bed by eight and Skippy and I were left to reflect on what a wonderful day it had been before I caved in and crashed early along with the kids.

It really was a perfect day. We've been through a lot in our (almost) seven year marriage but on days like Thanksgiving, I reflect on how far we've come and I think that we are stronger than ever. My children are the greatest blessing I could ever ask for. And on Thanksgiving, it's easy to let go of the bad stuff because I feel so especially thankful for all of the good. I can only hope that your day was as nice as mine!

Did you know?

2008-11-20T09:36:00.000-08:00

My Kbear turned FIVE! Five....that's slowly but surely moving out of little kid territory and into big kid land. Five means that she can go to Kindergarten. Five means that when someone asks her how old she is, this is the last year she'll only use one hand to show them.

Five is a big girl.

Kbear's birthday rocked this year. I am so proud of the party we put together. In between all of the stress over Chunker's surgery I wasn't sure I could pull it off but in the end, it was fabulous.

A few months ago, I asked K what kind of birthday party she wanted. I had already decided that I would take the plunge and invite all of her pre-school classmates - usually I just pull together a list of all of our adult friends, with kids and without and we go from there. But everyone is busy with the holidays coming, and I thought it would be fun to let K decide who came.

It was....an adventure. LOL

Anyway, Kbear had asked for a "Puppy and Kitty" party. And during our brainstorming session, she had an epiphany that only a four year old would have - "Let's get presents for kitties and doggies, Mom!"

I was intrigued. With Christmas right around the corner, complete with it's influx of STUFF, I certainly knew that the last thing we needed was more toys for me to trip over in the middle of the night, but I wasn't sure how to turn the concept into a party. Finally, the light bulb came on.

On Sunday (the day before Chunk's hospital visit), we welcomed all of Kbear's friends to "Dr. K's Pet Clinic" and had a blast. We had asked each guest to bring their favorite "stuffed animal pet" for a check up and instead of gifts for the birthday girl, we asked each family to contribute something that the local animal shelter could use. The response was absolutely awesome - I was blown away by every one's generosity.

This year I decided not to even contemplate having a dozen kids at my house. We reserved a community room in town and it was the best move I've ever made, birthday party wise. When our mini-guests arrived, we had name tags ready for them that signified them as "Guest Vets" for the day. We read the book "I Want to be a Vet" and then sent them on their way - The kids made collars for their pets out of paper and stickers, they colored pictures for the animal shelter, and we had an exam station set up - complete with charts and checklists for each pet, measuring tapes, a scale, gauze, and an assortment of toy doctor odds and ends. We all snacked on "rabbit food" (a veggie tray), "Lizard dip" (spinach dip and crackers), and "Kitty Kat Crunchies (pretzels).

The kids played "bandage the puppy" where they wrapped each other up in toilet paper and then they raced to see who could push kitty jingle bells across their room first - using only their noses! We had a cake shaped like a bone (courtesy of the forever-creative Skippy) and ice cream and orange soda.

We had 14 kids in attendance, and it was loud and crazy and fun. I think that K had a fantastic time. And when it was all over, we had a TON of stuff for the animal shelter. Many of K's friends were sweet enough to include stickers or small gift cards or five bucks in her card as well, so she still got a little bit of loot but the majority of her haul was for the animal shelter. It was a blast.

Her party was on Sunday. Monday was Chunk's whirlwind day at the hospital, and then Tuesday, K got the spotlight again when we celebrated her actual birthday. After we dropped off all of her shelter donations (much to the overwhelming delight of the staff) we had lunch at Google and then she had her hair cut. She requested spaghetti for dinner, we opened presents from family, and then we ate cupcakes.

The two days combined to make a memorable and fun herald to my little (big) girl's fifth birthday. We can't thank her friends enough for helping us pull it off with their wonderful contributions, but most importantly, my kid had a great time.

THE CHUNK UPDATE

2008-11-18T21:07:00.000-08:00

I seriously needed 24 hours to recover from yesterday. Twenty four hours that included at least ten hours of sleep (I got eight) and at least four advil (I took six).

It was without a doubt one of the longest and most stressful overly emotional days of my parenting career. This is the stuff they don't talk to you about before you have kids - moments like the one when they wheel your baby's metal hospital crib away from you towards the operating room.

I cried, of course. I do that. I'm a crier. But Skippy told me that all things considered, I did very well. Thank goodness he was there to keep me under control. He is the reason I was a pudding-like mess instead of a plain old puddle of snot. And in the midst of all of the emotional angst, I gained a new appreciation for the overall health of my kids. Some people there have been through hell, and I have so much admiration for them, although I know that they are just doing what they have to do. This was our first visit to a children's hospital, and the chances were excellent that it would be our only one. Some of these people consider it a second home, and even though your heart breaks for them, you feel so blessed.

But anyway, here's how it all went down at Emanuel Children's yesterday.

We hit the road at about 5:40. We needed to check in at 7:30, and it's a long dark drive through the Gorge before sunrise. Skippy took the wheel while I self appointed myself to deer duty, much to my husband's annoyance. But seriously, not too long ago he took out not one Bambi, and not two Bambis, but THREE so I wasn't taking any chances, since he appears to be some sort of cosmic deer magnet. Luckily, traffic was heavier and it was no longer mating season, so I guess the combination of cars and the lack of hormones kept the deer snug in the woods doing whatever deer do. For his part, Chunk seemed puzzled about the entire endeavor, but pleased to be spending some one on one time with mom and dad. He chattered at us for the first bit of the trip and then settled into his seat to watch the scenery go by (and presumably to help me watch for deer, of course).

We checked in on time at the hospital (a major feat for us, we are notoriously late) and for the next few hours we proceeded to bounce between Chunk's room (shared with three other cribs), pre-op preparations, and the kids' playroom. He looked adorable in his hospital-issue jammies and he was in high spirits, but I couldn't quite shake the butterflies in my stomach. And then suddenly, they were ready for him.

When we brought him back to his room for his first doses of medicine, he was absolutely WOUND from the lack of sleep and the excitement of the morning. But we got him to lie down and he impressed the nurses with his stellar medicine-taking skills - Chunk takes meds better than any baby I've ever seen. They told us that within the next five to ten minutes, the liquid valium would kick in and he would start to get woozy. At that point, we accompanied him and his crib down to the waiting area for surgery, kind of a crib holding pattern if you will.

This was when I started to struggle. I knew that they would be coming to get him, and I knew that I'd have to let them. This was for the GOOD of my baby, no matter how much I hated the thought of them putting that big plastic mask over his face and then sticking stuff down his throat. Skippy kept on calmly reassuring me that we were doing everything right, and that everything would be fine. We distracted ourselves with amusement when Chunk's meds kicked in full time and you could tell he was seeing three sets of mommies and daddies instead of one. By the time his surgical team arrived, Chunk was resting comfortably in his crib counting ceiling tiles or possibly doing calculus in his head.

And just like that, they wheeled him away and we were ushered to the waiting room. The assured us that the meds would keep the baby from remembering much of anything - even leaving us, but I think I'll always remember that one single split second when I wanted to jump up, yank his crib rail down, and sprint away with him while yelling "MINE!!!"

I fidgeted in the waiting room. They told us that it would be about 45 minutes. So when our surgeon showed up after only 30 minutes, my initial thought was pure panic. He must have seen it in my eyes, because he very quickly flashed us a big smile and said that "sometimes, you find what you're looking for pretty quickly."

The verdict: A "mushy trachea" Obviously, that's not a medical term, but that's the way it was explained to us. Basically, when Chunk's windpipe developed, the cartilage down near the bottom never firmed up as fully as it should have. As a result, it's not as strong or as dense as it should be and when he breathes, sometimes the air gets pushed through there and that's when we hear that wheezy rattling noise. To further validate me, the doctor went on to say that the reason Chunk seems to get hit so hard whenever he gets sick is that it's much easier for that area to get swollen or irritated whenever he catches a bug, and that's what produces that horribly croupy cough and the more intense illnesses.

The good news (hell, the GREAT news) is that all of this is something that he should outgrow by the time he is three. Four years old, tops. If he DOESN'T outgrow it, we may have to do it all over again, but it doesn't sound like that's likely. Basically, short of the surgeon coming out and telling us that there was absolutely nothing wrong, this was the best possible outcome AND now we know exactly what the issue is, and how to deal with it more proactively when Chunk gets sick while we wait and see if he outgrows it all together.

Naturally, we were thrilled and relieved with all of this news. We settled back into our chairs to wait until they came to grab us after Chunk woke up. I was antsy. I wanted to see my baby. Little did I know how rough it was going to get!

An hour later, they finally came to retrieve us. The nurse cautioned me that he was still very much out of it, but I really wasn't prepared for how awful it was. The poor boy was sweaty and disoriented, with his wrist all bandaged up around an IV and half-open, tired eyes. I stroked his matted hair away from his face and tried to soothe him, and he broke my heart when he barely croaked out a "maaaaaa" for me.

Then he realized his IV was still in and he decided that he had absolutely had enough of this hospital crap. He got.........mad.

No, to say he got mad really doesn't do justice to it. He became somewhat possessed by the devil. Basically, they had given him some pretty neat feel-good medicine and he had taken a nap and then woken up feeling like crap with the worst sore throat of his life and a needle stuck in his hand. Face it, you'd be pissed off too.

We weren't really prepared for how bad that part would be. Back in his room, Chunk proceeded to throw himself around his crib like a mini sumo wrestler who had just been told that the all you can eat buffet was closed for the night. Our nurse arrived in our room, appraised the situation in about four seconds, and quickly moved in to take out the IV. An for the next hour, we did all we could to calm him down. You couldn't touch him. You couldn't hold him. You couldn't even LOOK at him without sending him into a renewed baby-rage. It was insanely and horribly awful.

Finally, he worked it all out (or detoxed, whatever you prefer) and he fell asleep. When he woke up, he was ready for apple juice, a fresh diaper, and we hit the road for home.

Today he did extremely well. His fever is gone, his IV site looks great, and his voice has lost most of his hoarseness. If he was a little bit more cuddly than usual, I can't say I blame him. We celebrated Kbear's birthday with a quiet night at home and he went to bed without a peep until I came in here to blog. As I sit, he's peering at me over the crib rail, occasionally sharing some deep thought with me, and I simply don't have the heart to lay him back down just yet.

I am just so happy that he is healthy, and that it's over. Validation is not a bad thing after having two doctors blow us off shortly after Chunk was born, but mostly I'm just thrilled that we got good news, and grateful to the wonderful staff at Emanuel for taking such good care of my little man.

Kendall's birthday blog will be up tomorrow. For now, someone needs to go to SLEEP!

Mini Update

2008-11-17T17:49:00.001-08:00

We've been on the go since 5:15 this morning. I am TIRED.

We are home and all is well. We got some answers, and it's all good news.

An update is coming but right now, my baby and my couch are both calling my name, one figuritivly and one literally!

I'm staying busy

2008-11-13T22:08:00.000-08:00

This week has been hectic for me. I've been trying to keep busy, mostly with housecleaning and catching up on laundry. I tell myself it's because I want a clean house for the weekend, when my mother-in-law comes up for Kbear's birthday, but a lot of it is just fluff...I know that she doesn't care about the state of my house. When she's here I have to chase her away from the washing machine. Really, I'm staying busy because I'm stressed out about next Monday.

As usual, I'm stressed out about other things too. I'm a worrier. It's a crappy habit that I got from my Dad, and I'll probably be trying to break it for the rest of my life. There's just so much going on! Banana's family tree project is due next week and we are a bit behind on our work. But really, I know that we'll get it done. I'm stressed because Kbear's birthday party is on Sunday, and I have no idea what to expect. I'm stressed because my husband is out of town. And because I'm tired of the rain and I want to mow my grass one last time this year. And because I'm trying to get laundry done and clean my house around three small children who constantly seem determined to mess it up right behind me. Dog hair. Dog hair stresses me out. I love my dog, but GOD, the hair...I could build a small poodle.

But really, underneath it all I am stressed out because next Monday we have to bring our baby boy in to one of the children's hospitals in Portland to see if we can find out why the munchkin has been such a noisy, wheezy breather for his entire little life.

A little background on our Chunker - he was born slightly ahead of schedule but otherwise healthy, aside from the fact that he is LOUD. When he was a newborn we would lay in bed and listen to him wheeze and gurgle from his bassinet a few feet away. Our first two doctors told us that some babies are just noisy and that he would outgrow it. Then he started getting sick. And forget the usual round of baby ear aches and runny noses - Chunker gets croup and chest infections regularly, and was treated for both pneumonia and hospitalized for RSV last year. It just seems to hit him really hard in the upper chest region. Our current ped took one look at him and asked me, "Does he always sound like that?" Before I knew it, we had a referral to an ENT specialist in Portland and my baby was being scheduled for a bronchoscopy and a larynxoscopy. Big words = nervous Mama.

Now as any parent knows, the internet is a strange beast. And by the internet, of course I mean Google. (As if any other search engine would do!) When you need the phone number for the Chinese restaurant in town, it's great. I use it all the time to check the weather, catch up on news, and find recipes when I need a new way to make chicken breasts. But when you want to get some basic information about a medical procedure, Dr. Google can be a scary and often all-too-knowledgeable source of facts and figures.

If Skippy were here, he'd fix me with a stern eye and tell me to get the hell off of the computer. A few days ago my Mom told me that it was no good to worry about something you couldn't know anything about until it's on top of you. They would both be right. And yet, I Google. I tell myself I want to be prepared for every possibility. This is my BABY that we are talking about. They are going to take him away from me and knock him out and stick a camera down his throat and I'm sorry but as a mama bear, that is scary.

In my deepest heart of hearts, I genuinely believe that everything will be just fine. The doctor is going to come out and tell us that our kid is just noisy, he'll outgrow it, and that as soon as he wakes up we can take him home. I KNOW that is what will happen.

But underneath all of that, I can't shake that small twinge in the pit of my stomach. I worry. I think that once you become a mother, worrying becomes an integral part of who you are. I try not to let it control me. Most of the time I succeed. But tonight, sitting here typing away while my son wheezes just a few feet away....I worry.

We are not the most religious people. We don't attend church. Most of the time we seem to find ourselves with more questions than answers. But we believe in SOMETHING. Something that is inherently good. We are raising our children to have open minds so that they can form their own opinions as they grow. But that doesn't mean we can't use your good thoughts, well wishes, and prayers.

I'm going to try to make it back to the computer this weekend to tell you all about Kbear's birthday party - it is going to rock the house. But just in case that has to wait until next week, please keep our boy in your thoughts. We will update just as soon as we can, and I'm sure it will be good news.

Land of the free

2008-11-11T23:53:00.000-08:00

On Monday Banana bounded off the bus with extra flair and excitedly informed me that she had no school the next day, because it was "Veterinarian's Day."

After I swallowed a chuckle that would have surely embarrassed her, prompting a series of eye rolls and "Moooo-oooom" groans, I tactfully corrected my girl, explaining that the following day was VETERAN'S day - a day when we take special notice of all of the men and women who have fought in wars and kept us all safe and free.

She thought about this, (Banana is my deep thinker) while Kbear piped up from her booster seat, "Being free means like....getting to drive wherever you want right? And being allowed to buy whatever you want at the grocery store, right Mama?"

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. In a way, I suppose she wasn't too far off.

Anyway, today was Veteran's Day. I personally took a private moment to think about the people in my life, and in Skippy's, who have fought for our country. But in general this year's Vet's Day seemed somehow more poignant, perhaps because of the recent election -- the changing of the guard so to speak.

Late this morning I met up with my girlfriend Laura. Laura has three boys. She is a saint and she makes me feel so.damn.normal. As a fellow Mom, she is one of my true parenting soul mates. We parked at "The Place With The Golden Arches That Must Not be Named" and claimed some curb space next to an elderly couple and their pomeranian to watch our very small town's very small parade.

It lasted about eight minutes.

Seriously, it was the local police, some of our local veteran's, a couple of horses, and of course, the fire truck. At first, I was somewhat disenchanted. I guess I had been expecting more.

But then, I noticed the older lady that we were sharing the sidewalk with...the one sitting next to the man wearing the peaked hat that signified his service.

She was crying.

Not just looking teary eyed, but full-on shoulder shaking, wiping her eyes and sniffling crying.

And then I took a new look at my kids, and at Laura's kids. They were waving and jumping up and down and I heard Brianna saying "Thank you! Thank you!" to those wonderful brave old men going by.

I took a new look at the parade. It was a good parade. A GREAT parade even.

Wait....what? Halloween?

2008-11-07T23:32:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah. I promised pictures didn't I? Sadly, this year's Halloween does not represent my finest picture-taking moments. Pathetically, that shot right there is one of the best I got all day, where Banana is missing part of her costume, Kbear looks exhausted, and Chunk is eating a sucker that he stealthily unwrapped while people watching. But hell, they still look cute.

Well shoot, what can I say? Things got busy. And I got sick. And people, I NEVER get sick. I'm the one who takes care of everyone ELSE when they get sick. So when the icky karma bug finally gets a hold of me, it chomps down hard. I must say however, that Skippy is a kickass nursemaid.

So Halloween came and went. I am really rather disappointed in myself this year because I just didn't take the pictures like I normally do. And I was insanely proud of the costumes that I made for the kids so really, what gives?

Honestly, I'm not sure. All I know is that by the time it was trick-or-treat time, I was already beat and it took everything in me to take the kiddos out around town until it was Dad's turn to take over. And holy crap did they bring in some mad crazy loot. We (I mean THEY) are still eating it. Thankfully, we are starting to get to the whoppers and smarties and other crud that no one really eats, so this weekend I'm pitching whatever is left in the bowl. Although I must say, it has come in handy for getting the girls to keep their room cleaned up!

After last year's costume making extravaganza, I swore I would never EVER put myself through that velcro hell again. But as September waned into October, the glue gun started to call my name from the dusty depths of the craft closet. And finally, I gave in.

Banana was a kitty cat this year.

Easiest.costume.EVER.

She wore black tights, a leopard print skirt, a leopard print leotard (both fabulous hand-me-downs from my Aunt Jane) and a black long sleeved t-shirt. I bought her a set of fuzzy ears and a tail but kept back the bow tie - I wasn't dressing a damn play-boy bunny for goodness' sake. Skippy painted whiskers on her face and she was ready to go. Way simple and way cute. Unfortunately I never got a good picture of her - all I have is one that I took that morning at school when I went to see her receive "The Fantastic Friend" award. By the time she got home on the bus that afternoon, she had realized that her ears were long forgotten at school, but we soldiered on. So forgive the horrible picture quality, just admire my cute cat!

Kbear's costume required a little bit more creativity this year. One night in Walgreen's, she spied a "fairy" costume on the rack. It wasn't really much of anything - just a frilly white dress with wings. But she WAAAANTED it. Mean mommy that I am, I said no - after all, it wasn't really ANYTHING.

A few days later I was back in Walgreens and I saw the dang costume again. This time it was marked down to ten bucks. So being the mean-yet-soft-pushover mommy that I am, I bought it for her. The next day we spread it out on the coffee table and I asked her what she thought it could be.

My little costume genius pondered for a few minutes before blurting out "A snowflake fairy!!!"

So just like that, we ran off to the Dollar Store. The one and only perk to retail stores dragging out the Christmas cack in August is that you can spend a few bucks and make your kid into a totally adorable snowflake. She loved that she "was all sparklies" and everyone we saw thought it was adorable. I sewed snowflakes on the sleeves of an old white shirt, made her a garland out of an old headband, and sewed a big foam flake in her front. DONE. And PERFECT.

That left the Chunker. Or as we constantly call him, "The Stinker" The only logical costume was of course, a skunk.

In case you haven't noticed, I have a complete and utter inability to sew. It's actually quite embarrassing. Someday I am going to learn. My crafty goddess girlfriend Charlotte can sew anything. But me.....I've got a glue gun.

So we took a little black sweat suit and a little winter hat, added in some felt and some fake fur, and worked some magic. Then, because I wanted a tail that he could sit in a stroller with, we went the "no-sew fleece blanket" route. When all was said and done, I realized that I could have saved myself a lot of stress and emotional angst, because he would have been stinkin' cute no matter WHAT I did.

And that was that. Hours of glue-gun burned hands and needle-pricked fingertips. We went trick or treating. We went for pizza. We went for MORE trick or treating. We carved pumpkins. And then we collapsed. It was a GOOD day.

I think next year I'll buy costumes.

Yes we can...yes we DID!

2008-11-05T11:30:00.000-08:00

Halloween pictures are coming. I promise. But right now there's more important things to talk about. I know right? As if anything could be more adorable than my pictures of Kbear the snowflake. But seriously, I'm emotional today.

Four years ago in Sycamore, Illinois I went into the voting booth to cast my ballot. Even though the Presidential race was at the forefront of my mind, there was another vote that I was anxious to cast - that for a young would-be senator from Chicago named Barack Obama.

Skippy and I had already done some research on the guy. We liked him. We shared his ideals. He was smart and funny. He was charming. And to myself, I thought he was pretty darn handsome to boot! When he spoke at the convention he knocked our socks off. And somewhere in my mind that night four years ago, I thought that maybe - just MAYBE, my vote would in some small way help get him on the road to even greater things. Maybe someday he would rise higher than the senate. Maybe someday he would lead this country from the White House. Even then, I thought that if any man had the potential to make history, it was this one.

I never imagined that it would happen just four years later.

Last night I was elated. I sat on the couch and watched the scene unfold in Grant Park and I even cried a little bit from the sheer emotion of the moment. And for a little bit, I was homesick. I watched the people celebrate in Chicago as they cheered for a hometown hero and our new President Elect. And then, the yearning for the Windy City was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. Because then they started showing scenes from in front of the White House. From San Fransisco. From Times Square in New York. From all over - people celebrating a momentous event - not only the election of the first black man to the highest office in the country, but also the rebirth of hope after eight long and dark Bush years. And I realized then - REALLY realized, how big this was.

I am so proud that I was able to be a part of this, and that my girls had a chance to put our ballots in the big shiny "VOTE" box yesterday. I love that my four year old was proud to help vote for "Rock Omama" and that my six year old asked me, "Who won, mama?" the second she woke up this morning. My kids are here to see history made. This will be part of their story. It will be part of all of our stories.

No one is saying it will be easy. This inspiring man is inheriting one of the darkest, dankest, smelliest legacies in modern history. But I think he's up to the task. I feel in my heart of hearts that he will continue to unite this country and make us all realize that there is so much out there that is bigger than us, bigger than race, bigger than pettiness, bigger than anything we've ever experienced.

It's a good day. Way to go America.

All Hollow's Eve....Eve

2008-10-30T23:08:00.000-07:00

Ok. It's a little after eleven. I've gone through two dozen tissues, half a box of sudafed, and a 2 liter of 7-up in an effort to stave off the sinus infection that has been keeping me from finishing the kids' Halloween costumes.

Tonight we carved pumpkins. Always messy, always fun.

And let me tell you, I may not sew like my craft-goddess girlfriend Charlotte but I am a mean someofabitch with a glue gun in my hand. Although if I had a nickel for every time I burned myself this past week....well let's just say the kids' college funds would be secured.

Anyway...

1 Skunk Costume - check
1 Kitty Costume - check
1 Snowflake Costume - check
2 teacher treat bags - check
12 pre-school treat bags so that my kid is cool - check

1 tired mommy.........check

Happy Halloween kids! Costume pictures to come!

How to have fun on a fall day

2008-10-25T22:28:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me say that I do indeed remember that I have three kids. My husband has reminded me of this fact several times since my last blog entry. Here's the thing; I blogged about my firstborn and then got sidetracked by not only her, but also by her younger counterparts in crime, monkey2 and monkey3 so trust me, it's not that I've suddenly plunged myself mentally into the world of having an only child, it's just that the little ankle biters won't stop climbing the walls every time I turn my back for a few seconds. I can't remember the last time I peed alone, let alone got enough time to do justice to a blog entry. In fact, as I sit, Chunk is pacing his crib yelling at me and playing every parent's most hated game "I drop it you get it." But trust me, I have plenty to tell you about my Kbear and my Chunker...when I get around to it.

So for now, enjoy this brief and informative blog, How to have fun on a fall day.

Start your day off with a healthy breakfast. As you know, they (whoever "they" are) say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's what your Mom tells you anyhow.

And if it's a special day with fun activities planned, you may want to treat yourself to breakfast out with friends. To keep busy while you wait for your scrambled eggs, build a tower with creamer cups - this gets chuckles out of all the old folks.

Then you want to go out in search of some family friendly fall activities. On this particular day, we decided to go enjoy an apple harvest celebration in Hood River, Oregon with some friends. We found lots of fun stuff to do. Suggestions include the following:

You should definitely climb on a tractor. It will make you feel big and strong and way cool.

And you can also climb on hay bales with your friends. In our case, we also climbed on trees. (But we didn't get a picture because Mommy was too busy yelling "GET OUT OF THAT TREE BEFORE THE FARMER GETS MAD!")

But most importantly, if you get a chance then without a doubt, you should hug a pumpkin.

Now if you get really REALLY lucky, and it's a super special day, then you may be able to do something else that is really neat and cool and fun -- you can make your own apple cider.

Making your own cider is seriously neat. First, you and your daddy need to select your apples. About ten pounds makes half a gallon of cider. It's best to use a mix of apples and that way your cider isn't too sweet or too tart. As Goldilocks would say, "It's just right."

After you pick your apples, you have to wash them. You can do this while your daddy signs the waiver at the register that says that if your farm fresh unpasturized cider makes you sick, you won't sue the farmer. The washing part is way important, even if the water is freezing and makes your hands cold. You can get your friends to help.

Then the nice guys who work at the farm will press your apples. They put them into a big wooden bin that is attached to a complicated doohicky neat-o old fashioned apple press and they start to grind them up. While they are doing this, you should double check that your pitcher is in place to catch your cider.

If the cider guys offer you a chance to turn the big wheel that grinds up the apples, you should totally try it. It's really hard but very cool. After you get it to go around once time (this takes about five minutes) you should probably let your Daddy do the rest of the work.

When the apples are all chunked up, the cider guy will put them into a different part of the apple press and then a big round weight will press down on them, squeezing out the cider. After that, you get to try it and it tastes soooo good - even better than what you can buy at the store - even if you do have to sign a waiver to get it! We made a half gallon of apple cider and one of apple/pear cider and we have had it with dinner and with breakfast - it's really yummy! Mommy likes hers warmed up but we like it anytime. So if you ever get the chance to try it out, you really should make your own apple cider. Banana and Kbear approve of this fall fun activity wholeheartedly.

Now as if that's not enough, there are lots of other things you can do to have fun in the fall. We've spent the last few weekends working hard to find them. You can gather leaves for crafts and you can help mommy stack firewood. You can work on your Halloween costume. And you can do other stuff too.

You can ride in a train made out of barrels, towed by a crazy teenager on a four wheeler. You have no idea what "redneck train" means or why mommy and daddy think it's so dang funny, but it's a good time.

You can hold chicks. Chicks are soft and cute and cuddly and they like to be snuggled.

Or you can just sit back and enjoy the ride. After all, winter will be here before we know it. So you need to get in every last bike ride, trip to the park, and hour spent playing outside that you can. We had our first frost last week, and pretty soon it will SNOW!

The very very VERY best way to have fun on a fall day, is to have fun with your family.

You can see all of our pictures from this autumn by cutting and pasting this link into your browser!
http://picasaweb.google.com/freckledmama/AwesomeAutumn2008#