Family Fun Day

Ree got out of school last Friday and is on fall break for the first three weeks in October. In the back of my mind, I've had grand plans for a long weekend off, either as a staycation, or, even better, a mini-getaway during her break. The reality is that's not going to happen. Work is too nuts right out. I was out of town last week, I am out of town again in two weeks, on Monday I was asked to join a committee that meets in Chapel Hill (a little over two hours from here) every two or three weeks, and we are an office of 4.5 employees that's currently working with two employees. And, on a personal note, we have visitors coming for a week during the break. Things are a little nuts.

But I did decide to take time off. I took off today, and I am taking off at least one more day, for Family Fun Days. It turns out, it feels really decadent to take off a random Thursday. And only being off one day, I didn't really feel any pressure to check my email or get stuff done. That was nice. Even better was having a random day to just do fun stuff without any guilt about cleaning the house or getting chores done.

Today we headed to the Children's Museum of Wilmington. We were kind of overdue for a visit. The last time we went I had to stop and nurse baby Leon when he got overstimulated. It was good to go with kids who were big enough to get out of their car seats to play.

Every now and then Almost every time we plan a new outing that seems like it will be fun, it becomes a new form of torture. It does not go well. (I'm still scarred from taking the kids to the Cincinnati Zoo in the summer of 2012. Who knew they could be so miserable???) But, surprisingly, miraculously, we had a great time today. Not only did the kids have fun, we were injury free. Amazing. Some of the highlights of our adventures:

While Ree, Natalia, and Mike painted leaves with cotton swabs...

...Leon made "apple pie."

 Leon and Natalia in their fishing boat.

Ree digging for "gold."

While everyone else was busy, Mike found a quite spot to read.

Natalia was manning the cannon on the pirate ship. Yikes.

A budding scientist???

The picture is blurry, but the space room was awesome, and lit only with black lights. Leon was playing with glowing Legos.

Everyone building.

One of the favorite stops of the day was the "dentist office," complete with sheets the dental assistants had to complete for each patient.

After playing for over three hours, we were all starving, so we headed to Flaming Amy's for lunch. Here's Natalia passed out with a full tummy and a Flaming Amy's bumper sticker proudly displayed on her shirt.

Norfolk, Day 3

I took a walk yesterday afternoon. I saw mermaids!

I finally saw a sign explaining them. 

I'll keep on the lookout for more!

Norfolk, Day 2

Hi guys!

I miss you! I hope you're having lots of fun with Dad.

My room is on the 15th floor of our hotel. Here is the view from my window in the daytime.

And here is the view at night.

I spent all day yesterday in meetings. At night, we went on a boat ride around the harbor. Here we are walking to the boat.

Here's a picture of the boat. It was big. There were almost 500 people on it.

We ate dinner on the boat. We even got dessert. It was delicious!

I hope you are having lots of fun, too!

Love,

Mom

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.