Leaving on a Jet Plane

I'm in L.A. this week for work. For my family, at least, this is a long time and a long distance to be apart from each other. For Natalia, it has been emotional. She spent Friday clinging on to Jeff all day and then to me in the evening. Saturday we attended a birthday party for a good friend, which served as a good distraction (even if it meant the kids were crazy all day!). Due to post-party exhaustion, Natalia went to bed with little fuss by Natalia standards, but at 2:30am Sunday I found her sitting in her Elmo chair in her room just SCREAMING. When I went in, she burst into tears and just said, "I'm going to miss you!" I told her I would miss her too, promised to wake her when my alarm went off, and headed back to bed. She was back up 30 minutes later, at which point I tucked her in on the couch. At 5:30am, she asked to climb in bed with us. I was too tired to argue, so I ignored her and hoped she go away. Nope, she just crawled in bed and laid down right on top of me. By 5:50, I gave up on resting and the two of us got up.

Natalia and I had our usual morning battles until about 7:20, but when I went to finish packing, she was a whole new child. Suddenly, she was Helper Girl. She wanted to assist me. In addition to the usual clothes and toiletries, she packed a few other things she thought would be helpful. I started a tradition several trips ago of taking one of Leon or Natalia's stuffed animals with me when I travel solo. This time, in addition to packing Bunny, Natalia packed Bunny's blankie for me. Natalia actually got quite carried away, and I had to stealthily sneak things back out of my suitcase. Currently sitting in my closet at home under a pile of clothes waiting to be ironed are a baby doll, a Barbie, a Little People dad, and what Natalia calls her Harry Potter book which is a hard-backed journal on which she has "written" pages and pages of stories. However, in addition to Bunny and her blankie, I did end up with a few bonus items that made the transcontinental trek. My hotel room currently includes an Angry Bird, a chair for the Little People dad, a My Little Pony, a pair of working miniature binoculars, and a "guitar" made out of a Jello box and rubber bands.

Housekeeping is going to think I'm nuts, but I shouldn't get bored in my hotel room this week!
 

L.A., Part I

Hi guys!

I made it to California! I mostly spent the day waiting around or riding on planes and shuttles, so it wasn't too exciting. Here are a few pictures, though.

First I flew from Wilmington to Charlotte, then I changed planes and had to fly from Charlotte to L.A. There were lots of planes in line in Charlotte waiting to take off.

 This is what the tops of clouds look like!

What the ground looks like from way up high. (We were flying at about 32,000 feet or about 7 miles up!)

Bunny likes her new bed!

Angry Bird and Pony had dinner.

Can you spot Bunny? She was relaxing on the balcony outside my hotel room.

I hope you have a good night and a great day at school tomorrow!

Love,

Mom

First Day of Preschool

Natalia's first day of preschool was yesterday. To minimize drama, I didn't actually tell her when her first day of school was until bedtime on Monday. As her siblings were getting ready for bed, I told her that she also needed to set out clothes for Tuesday since she had preschool. She immediately started with a long list of questions, but thankfully, none of us lost any sleep over school starting. (In comparison to the boys, who stopped sleeping for about two weeks before kindergarten began. They had trouble falling asleep, and Michael especially woke up screaming with nightmares every night. We are still recovering!)

Yesterday morning there were some initial protests, but by the time we were ready to leave, Natalia was dragging me out the door, encouraging me to hurry because, "The teachers are waiting for me!!!"

It is clear that Natalia loved her first day, but getting the details of what actually happened at school has been a bit tricky. All she would tell Jeff about school is that they didn't go outside for recess. So I tried to extract some information from her when I got home from work.

Me: How was preschool? Did you have fun?

Natalia: (Smiling) We didn't go outside.

Me: Oh, okay. If you didn't go outside, what did you do?

Natalia: Everything!

Me: Wow! That sounds fun. What kind of things did you do?

(silence)

Me: Did you paint?

Natalia: No

Me: Did you play with blocks?

Natalia: No

Me: Did you play dress up?

Natalia: No, they don't have that.

Me: Hmmm. Can you tell me ONE thing that you did at preschool?

Natalia: (Still smiling) We didn't go outside.

Me: Did you have circle time?

Natalia: Yes. Two circles.

Me: What did you do in the circles?

Natalia: We didn't go outside.

And then Natalia ran off to play. So first day of preschool was successful. But what actually occurred is a mystery!

Hand Me Downs

We have always been lucky when it comes to getting clothes for the kids. When the boys were newborns, Jeff's cousin sent down boxes and boxes of clothes for them. She had a co-worker with twin boys who were about six months older than them, so not only did we inherit lots of clothing, they even had coordinating outfits.

As they've gotten older, they have a hand me down fairy. At the end of each season a friend packs up her son's clothes and sends it to us. A friend of my mom also periodically sends us bags of clothing, and collectively, the boys are set (especially when you factor in gifts from the grandparents). I was able to fully appreciate the pre-made wardrobe this weekend while I cleaned out their dresser.

It started simply. I am sick of seeing the boys get dressed for school each morning and they are wearing slipper socks, teensy little infant socks, or two horribly clashing socks. (Although I'm not sure the horribly clashing socks aren't intentional. Ree spent two years of her life wanting to only wear "mismatch" socks to school.) So I cleaned out their sock drawer, which resulted in an entire grocery bag of socks to donate to Goodwill. Then I moved on to their other drawers. When I got to long sleeve tees, by the time I purged everything that would no longer fit over Leon's giant noggin, there were two sad little shirts in the drawer. Pants were even worse. I had Leon try on several pairs of pants from last year. Every pair ended just below the knee. We were covered on rainy days, but I thought perhaps we might want some longer pants on frosty mornings.

So I went out to the garage where I keep the extra clothes we receive. Hello, instant wardrobe! I was able to refill their drawers with at least enough clothes to get us through the school week. No shopping required! Phew. Now the task is finding families to take the bags and bags of purged shirts and pants...

A Day at the Beach

We are quite spoiled and go to the beach all the time, but it's often just a quick (and somewhat tiring) break between other things. However, two weeks ago we managed to have an actual relaxing day at the beach. My uncle and cousins were staying at Sunset Beach, which is just a little over an hour from here, and we were able to spend a whole day with them relaxing and enjoying life.

We arrived around 10:30 that morning, and after my children roused the last two sleepy heads out of bed (nothing like waking to the gentle sounds of a herd of children running through the house screaming in excitement), we were on the beach by 11am. We played until around 1:00, and then we stumbled back into their beach house for a late lunch. We we hermits all afternoon, staying inside while the sun was its hottest. Both of my brothers and my sister-in-law arrived around 2:30 that afternoon, and their appearance just encouraged our air conditioner time. By 4pm, the kids were zombies from too many hours of video games, so we wandered back out to the water. We played for a couple more hours before eating a monster seafood feast. The only strange part of the day (aside from the fact that the fish for dinner was imported from Lake Erie!) was remembering that we actually had to return to real life the next day.

Charleston

We ran away from the kids. See Part 1 of our adventures here.

Hey Jewel, Leon, Mike, and Talia!

Yesterday we walked, and walked, and walked. We left our hotel around 10:45 in the morning, and we didn't get back until about 5:45 last night. In between, we saw lots of downtown Charleston. We stopped for food, too. We had lemonade at Chick-Fil-A, lunch at an Irish Pub, and we found a Godiva store that served swirl waffle cones dipped in chocolate. (The ice cream cones were bigger than your head!) Here are a few of the things we saw yesterday.

We walked by the campus of the College of Charleston. Their mascot is a cougar.

The city sits on a peninsula, like Wilmington does. The Cooper River runs alongside, and there is lots to see in the river. A famous battle in the Civil War took place at Ft. Sumter.

You can see a battleship.

We drove over an enormous bridge to get to downtown. (Jewel, you would've loved it!)

There are tons of big, old houses. They are really, really tall.

You can take carriage rides to see the houses.

You can see old battle stuff, too.

It was lots of fun, but even we wanted uppies after walking all day. We relaxed for awhile in our room, then we walked to dinner, which thankfully, wasn't too far away. We went to a local restaurant that had the best fried chicken EVER. Dad also got some collards, and I got okra and tomatoes. It was awesome.

Today we are off to Charlotte to see Liverpool. See you soon!

Love,

Mom

Myrtle Beach and Charleston

Jeff and I have escaped for a weekend away from the kids. We realized it was the first time we've traveled alone together for fun since our honeymoon!

Hi Guys!

I hope you are having a great time with Gran and Gene. We stopped for lunch today at a place called Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach. It's like Mayfaire where you walk around outside and go to stores and restaurants, but it has crazy stuff.

Like a castle.

And a candy store with the world's largest gummy bear. (It's hard to tell in the picture, but it is at least as big as your head!)

And a whole wall of candy.

There was even an upside down building!

 After lunch we drove to Charleston. It rained a lot while we drove, but it had rained even more in Charleston. Lots of the streets were flooded.

When we got to our hotel, we discovered that you could see a Burger King drive thru from the window of our room. Then we realized you could also see a McDonald's and a Wendy's from our room. (And, no, we haven't visited any of them yet.)