Norfolk, Day 1

This is really for the kids, but feel free to read even if you are not one of my children!

Hi guys!

I am in Norfolk, Virginia. It was a pretty short trip. I only went through two states (North Carolina and Virginia). Here's a map of how I drove. I followed the blue line from A to B.

Bunny was a good passenger. She wore her seat belt in the car.

I got to drive through a long tunnel that went under a harbor (an area with lots of water). It was pretty cool, and no, you couldn't see the water.

My hotel is nice. There is lots of art work in my room. There is even a painting in the bathroom. Here are some of the pictures by the beds.

There are two beds in my room. Bunny is excited because she gets a whole bed to herself. It's a little bit different than what she's used to in the sleep room. I hope she doesn't get scared!

I hope you guys are having fun with Dad!

Love,

Mom

Birthday!

Last Saturday, Ree (aka Jewel aka Rebecca aka our oldest child) turned 7. Seven years old. Sheesh, she's getting old. To celebrate, she requested a party at her dance studio.

Sidewalk chalk drawings and a sign welcomed our guests.

Different rooms in the studio were set up for eating, doing crafts, and, of course, dancing. The day before, Ree and I went to the decorate the studio, and when we got in the car, she had a large mixing bowl filled with pink paper. She had taken Victoria's Secret tissue paper and turned it into confetti to decorate the table. Clearly, there are glue guns in my daughter's future.

One of the high school girls who takes lessons at the studio was the helper for the party. She also performed a solo from Sleeping Beauty for the party goers to watch. Ree got to watch her rehearse.

The first "guests" to arrive were her siblings, and Leon and Michael were quick to join in the dancing.

As everyone arrived, they got to put on costumes.

The teacher led everyone through a short ballet class, and Leon and Michael disappeared when the ballet began. Throughout the party, we found them in various rooms of the studio, always playing Angry Birds.

Natalia, though, loved every minute of the class and did her best to follow along doing everything "Jewel" did.

After they finished dancing, it was time for pizza, followed by crafts.

Finally, it was time for cake. Ree had looked at cakes online, and she fell in love with a pale pink cake covered in marshmallows. We did our best to recreate her vision. (In doing so, we learned that Target marshmallows are not remotely uniform in size. And that perhaps we shouldn't decorate the cake 90 minutes before the party. There was also an incident with the original batch of strawberry buttercream frosting that will not be discussed. What you see is a proud work of chemicals held together with Crisco and sugar. (Did I mention the underlying cake was a boxed red velvet cake loaded in dye?) Disturbing as it is, the kids, of course, loved it!)

After cake, there was more dancing. And no party is complete until someone teaches Dad how to do ballet.

Ree's Room - Planning

Now that we have a functioning dryer again (heating element was broken due to overuse/abuse), we are hopefully done with home repair. That means it's time to move on to home improvement!

First up on the desperately needed home improvement list is Ree's room. She is getting a serious upgrade because:

• She has always hated the color of her room. She is turning 7 this week and has lived in the room for over 4 years. I feel kinda bad making her spend over half her life in a room that doesn't make her happy.
• Her ceiling fan is broken. You either get the fan and the light or nothing. This means she can't sleep with just the fan on in the summer, and it's a bit drafty in there in the winter if you want to see after dark.
• She is allergic to the carpeting. The previous owners had a cat that slept in there, and I've never been able to get all the dander out of the carpet.
• She is still sleeping in a toddler bed. As petite as she may be, this got to be silly about a year ago. At this point, it is getting to be borderline ridiculous.
• We are (finally! hopefully!) moving Natalia in there this fall, and we thought we would at least make the room nice before Ree is stuck with her little sister in "her" space.

Our first step is painting. A few weeks ago, Ree and I stopped at Lowe's, and she instantly fell in love with a line of paint for kids' rooms. She went home with a big stack of paint chips in really bright colors. I didn't think much of it, but that afternoon she spent a lot of time in her room. Around dinner she emerged with this sheet.

If you can't tell, the sheet has four columns, each with a theme and four colors of paint listed. She had decided to paint a different scene on each wall of her room. She then went through the paint chips and narrowed down the color scheme. She proudly told me, "We only need seven colors of paint!" Oh boy. I do have to give her credit in that they at least look pretty good together.

Since then there have been a few discussions with her on the cost of paint and what we can realistically accomplish. Last weekend we stopped by Lowe's again to get samples of four of the colors. I think we've narrowed it down to painting two walls fuschia and two walls royal blue with light pink accents, white trim, and white bunk beds. I am hoping the light pink and white break all the color!

A Tale of Two Siblings

My parents are visiting, and Natalia decided to take advantage of my mother on her first night in town. At bath time she led my mom into the kids' bathroom and acted like she takes a bath there every night. She doesn't - the kids always bathe in our bathroom which has more space and a bigger bathtub. Natalia also tends to run around when eating if not buckled into her booster seat, and we've spent all week fighting with her about this. (She was given many attempts to prove she is ready to sit on her bottom and eat in a big girl chair, and she failed miserably every time.) Still, at snack time tonight she informed my mom, "I eat in big girl chair." Natalia can be a sneaky little thing!

And then there is Michael. The kids had watermelon for snack tonight, and after snack there were a few slices left on the cutting board. My plan was to put them away after the kids went to bed, and I didn't pay much attention to the leftovers as I ran back and forth through the house trying to wrangle everyone to their rooms. At one point Mike stopped me and pointed out that one of the slices was actually mostly eaten. The cutting board was on the edge of the counter, and I assumed Nati ate it, and if not her, then possibly Leon. The following conversation then took place.

Me: (Casually) So who do you think ate it?
Mike: I don't know.
Me: Come on. Think about it. Who would sneak watermelon off the counter.
Mike: Um...(really long pause)...um...Leon?
Me: Maybe. Who else would do it?
Mike: Nati?
Me: I think she might do something like that.

I started to comment about Ree probably not being guilty when he interrupted me.

Mike: It was an accident! I was still hungry!
Me: (Confused) Wait? You ate it?
Mike: It was an accident! I was still hungry!

The poor child was almost in tears, and I was at just the right level of exhaustion to find this absolutely hilarious. I had to very carefully tell Mike that I was proud of him for telling the truth and that next time he should have a grown up help him if he wants more to eat. And then we discussed how awesome that watermelon was.

Lesson learned: In her junior high and high school years, Natalia is definitely sharing a room with Michael.

Home Repairs

We've lived in our house for a little over four years. Amazingly, in the first three years we had to deal with no major home repair, and aside from the usual clogged sinks and leaky toilets, almost no maintenance. It's like the universe took pity on us. After all, when we moved in, Ree was the same age that Natalia is now..

...and my little men were only five months old.

We moved in May, and by mid-July we had made two week-long trips to Ohio with the whole family so that we could go to weddings. Clearly, we were nuts. So nuts, in fact, that within two years we added another little munchkin to our bunch.

During Natalia's first year, we went through our first hurricane and thought we lost a tree (it's as big as ever, two years later) but the house was still fine. Apparently our honeymoon/grace period ended last summer. It started with us having an emergency heat pump replacement. That was followed with a refrigerator that started dying at Halloween and was replaced by Thanksgiving. Within a week of the new refrigerator being delivered, our oven started acting funny, and we replaced the heating element in it just in time for me to bake Christmas cookies. (Funny Natalia moment of the new refrigerator saga: The new ice maker is quite loud. You can hear it dump ice and about two minutes later you can hear water fill the ice trays again. For the first few days we had to stop what we were doing every time this occurred to discuss the ice making process.)

Things were quiet for awhile, but two weeks ago our air conditioner went out. Again. Thankfully this time we just had to have a wireless thermostat installed, rather than replacing a heat pump. And we were only out of our house for 3 days instead of a week. And instead of staying at my parents' apartment 20 minutes away, we were able to stay at their house 10 minutes away. Not to mention, the repair guy was nice enough to leave us a large, portable window unit so we could at least keep the main part of the house cool for the dogs while we ran back and forth between houses. (Funny Natalia moment of the most recent air conditioner saga: For the first few days back in our house every time the air conditioner turned on she cheered, "Yay! Air conditioner works!" and every time it cycled off, she got very concerned.)

We've been down to one toilet since April or May, and staying at my parents' house helped us remember the beauty of having two toilets for six people. Plus we really ought to potty train Natalia one of these days, and it would be very helpful to have two toilets for that oh-so-fun process. So I went toilet shopping. (Jeff had already spent several hours working on the existing toilet when it first stopped working to no avail.) The new toilet was installed last Wednesday, and, inevitably, there was fighting and tears over who got to use it first. (Michael took the honors, Leon was "very sad" about the outcome.) Interestingly, it has gotten little use since then. We aren't sure if the kids are forgetting we have it or if they are afraid of it. (Funny Natalia moment of the toilet saga: On Wednesday night I asked her if the plumber had been to the house. Her response was, "No, just the toilet guy.")

Because we were obviously bored, yesterday Jeff got to spend a couple of hours battling a fully clogged sink. He eventually plunged it, and now it's working better than it ever has. (I never would've thought to plunge a sink. Thank you, eHow.) Today I was in the midst of battling a trashcan that STANK of dead fish despite it having a clean bag in it and us not having real fish (i.e. not canned tuna) for weeks when I discovered the dryer wasn't actually drying clothes. I then spent an hour cleaning out the lint filter, pulling the thing out from the wall (it has a storage drawer underneath which is wonderful, except when you need to pull it out from the wall), disconnecting it and cleaning it, and then putting it all back together. No luck. And having just seen something yesterday about half of home fires being started by dryers, I took that as a sign to leave it alone and call in a professional. So now we will wait for our dryer to get fixed. I would really like to just skip to the funny Natalia moment of this saga. And hope for no more home repair sagas, at least for a good, long time.

Blur

So, all of a sudden, it's the night before the first day of school. How did this happen? I mean, I KNOW how it happened, but WOW that was a quick summer. Admittedly, Ree does go to a year-round school, and summer break was only five weeks this year, but sheesh!

Tonight I was all proud of myself for having Ree set out her clothes for tomorrow and for remembering to ask her what she wants in her lunch and in her snack. Then as I was tucking her in, I realized we need to take first day of school photos tomorrow. (Mental note: Get up 5 minutes earlier than usual for a school day.) It wasn't until she was in bed that I realized Oh! I should get the school supplies out of the shopping bag (in her room, of course) and label them and put them in her backpack, which I still need to find (also in her room, of course). More to do in the morning! Better make that 15 minutes early.

You know, I used to be an organized person. Really. But I've read articles noting research has proven that we only have so much willpower/patience, which is why we are supposed to do things like exercise in the morning and why you don't want to be the last case of a day that a judge hears. I think this is what happens to me in terms of organization/productivity/coherent thought. I start out strong in the morning, and by the end of the day, I am shot. Brain is mush.

This morning started out great. Michael woke us up at 6:15, but I actually felt pretty good for once and I was out of bed and functioning by 6:45. (I couldn't get up right away. Really. I had to at least somewhat enjoy my last day before having to rush around in the morning again.) Got everyone breakfast, cleaned up, worked out, brushed the dogs (they are shedding like mad), vacuumed (to deal with the dog fur everywhere), showered, answered some work emails, and got the family out the door by 9:45. Not to bad by our standards.

Then we headed to Jungle Rapids where they have an indoor play area with lots of climbing stuff and ball pits. When we got there, we were the only people in the place and there was no music or any other noise. It was kinda creepy, but the kids had a great time. We stayed for almost two hours, and at the end it was pretty crowded and my tired, hungry children seemed to get injured a lot. (Nothing serious, just lots of whining.)

We had a gift card for Applebee's, so we headed there for lunch. Natalia asked for a high chair (hallelujah!) but then refused to sit in it (boo!). She had ants in her pants while we were waiting and didn't even want to read books with me. She mostly just climbed in and out of the booth. She did okay with her food at first, then she just wanted to lay on the booth. Actually, she and her brothers just wanted to lay on the booth. They were exhausted.

Although Applebee's is only 10 minutes from our house and we employed every possible technique to keep the kids awake (stay awake or you have to listen to Mom and Dad sing!), Leon passed out on the car ride home. Miraculously, he let me tuck him back in when we got home. Unfortunately, he chugged a juice box at lunch and didn't go to the restroom before we left the restaurant, so 30 minutes later he was back up to potty, and I don't think he ever fell asleep again. In the meantime, we'd had an epic battle getting Natalia out of the car (most of our days are filled with epic battles with her lately, hurray for being 2 1/2!) and I was trying to get some work done. (I technically work half days from home on Monday, but I have all weekend to get in the work. I always have grand plans of working two hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday so that all I have to do is periodically check email on Monday, but I almost always have at least two hours of work left to do on Monday.)

Got some work done, and then I took off with Ree to get her new dance shoes. She outgrew her ballet and tap shoes around April, but I avoided getting her new shoes since she was on the fence about taking dance again. ("I want to try ice skating!") The poor girl practically limped through the dance recital. Then she stated summer dance classes last week, still wearing the old shoes. So I promised her that we would get her new shoes before tomorrow's class. We did try and go on Saturday during a super-epic shopping trip, but we discovered the dance store is not open on the weekends in the summer.

Thankfully, shoe buying turned out to be incredibly easy and when we were done, we headed to a local frozen yogurt place where I was able to find not one, but two flavors of dairy-free sorbet to eat. (I've recently discovered I have all sorts of food allergies and sensitivities. It's been an interesting journey.)

We made it home within an hour of leaving. I sat down on the bed with my laptop, intending to work until it was time to leave again to go to the open house at Ree's school. The room felt warm. I mentioned to Jeff that I had noticed the thermostat was set for 78 degrees, but it was reading 80 degrees in the house, and that seemed weird. (I was too tired to have a though beyond it being "weird.") That's when we discovered the A/C wasn't running. We couldn't even get the fan on. Then it occurred to me I had been awfully hot around 4 or 5am and the air had probably been off since then. We have ceiling fans in every room, and we had been gone so much, that we hadn't even noticed the heat building all day. Thankfully, after a series of phone calls and texts, we were able to get people from the company that installed our heat pump out to our house within an hour or so. It turned out to be a quick fix, and we are cool again.

We had planned on getting to the open house at 4:00, but it was 4:15 by the time we left, and the kids were engrossed in Arthur, a show they don't normally get to watch. So they finished it, and then we all headed off to school so that Jeff and I could both see her classroom. Ree met her teacher, saw that there is very little to see in a first grade classroom (just her desk and the reading center in first grade versus her table and the art center and the reading nook and the club house and the centers and the baskets of toys in kindergarten) and we were quickly back at home. I made dinner, and then was finally able to sit down and finish work. Of course as soon as I finished it was time to walk the dogs and start the bedtime routine...

I am thinking that is how a lot of our days go, and perhaps that is why summer has gone by so quickly. Maybe things will slow down with school starting. Hey, a girl can dream!

Vacation

So we got back from a family vacation last Friday, and I haven't posted anything about it. Anywhere. In the modern world of instant gratification and constant status updating, I am apparently a complete and utter failure. There was no grand announcement of my vacation plans, and no steady stream of fabulous pics while we were away. Part of my reason for not posting is I do a lot of work in internet security, and there is nothing sillier than posting, "Can't wait to be gone on vacation!" (Translation: Come rob me soon!) followed up by, "We are having such a great time at this distant destination!" (Translation: Now! Rob me now!) Granted, we don't really have anything worth stealing. Our house is mostly filled with broken toys and stained children's clothing with the occasional outdated piece of electronics thrown in for fun. We do possibly have the world's largest collection of toddler-size Angry Birds underwear, but alas to would-be preschool looters, we took most of the collection with us.

But the other reason for not posting is the pressure. Yes, the pressure. Have you looked at what people say? This great! So glad to be away! The beach is wonderful! Fun! Fun! Fun! This is the most amazing thing EVER.

Our vacations, especially with children involved, can never live up to that. Personally, I think everyone writing things like that is lucky, insane, or has a very selective and limited memory. (Helloooo vacation Jello shots!) We've been fortunate enough to have a wonderful vacation with our children. My cousin got married in Orlando around Thanksgiving 2011, and we got to spend a week there. In addition to going to the wedding, we celebrated Leon and Michael's birthday and spent a couple of days at Disney World. Things went really well, but they weren't perfect. Natalia screamed in the car on the way down and the way back. (Not to mention, thanks to holiday weekend traffic, the return trip on I-95 took 13 hours instead of the usual 9. On the bright side, that allowed our kids to experience the fast food trifecta of having McDonald's for breakfast, Wendy's for lunch, and Burger King for dinner. That clearly has to be on someone's bucket list.) Then there was Michael. Poor little guy got so stressed out he broke out in hives every morning, then they miraculously disappeared the day after the wedding and he was fine for the last day away. His suffering did lead to some (unintentionally) entertaining memories such as Michael (that's him on the left) walking around Disney World in Ree's sun hat to cover his skin since we were afraid the hives were an allergic  reaction to sunscreen.

And then there was last summer's vacation. It wasn't horrible, but I suppose I did have unnaturally high expectations after the Orlando adventure, and last summer's vacation was more, um, real life. Among other things, there was no air conditioning in our hotel the first night, no electricity in our friends' house the last two nights thanks to a freak derecho, and we got to come home and buy a new heat pump (air conditioner) for our house.

I would say this year's vacation fell somewhere in the middle. We went to Cincinnati to visit family, and we had a pretty good time. The kids had fun, and we all survived. So maybe those of us with kids can just start sharing that. Went on vacation, and we survived! For our family, at least, that pretty much sums it up.

(And don't worry, vacation photos will be shared at some point. There were actually many enjoyable times, and we even have some pics to prove it.)