Crashing to a Close

With just three early mornings left, the school year is crashing to a close. Over the last month we've made it through:

Book Character Day

The Fourth Grade Spelling Bee

 

 Earning New Belts in Karate

Fun Day (Field Day)

Dance Recitals (Hmm. I really need to get some photos of oldest child in her costumes, too.)

Blueberry Picking with Grandparents (not a school activity, but happened during the end-of-school crazies)

Colonial Day

Random Birthday Parties

And Kindergarten Graduation (even though we haven't graduated yet)

Amazingly, this time has not involved in major illnesses or injuries. But it's not for a lack of trying. Natalia in particular, seems to have a need to create chaos and drama when she is nervous. When Mike gets nervous, he becomes overly helpful. It can be a bit much, but I really won't complain when an eight-year-old decides to pack lunches for himself and his siblings. It may all be packaged goods from Costco, but at least he uses the organic Go Go Squeeze...

But not Natalia. She is something special when she is nervous. The emotional roller coaster is something to behold. And the day of her dance recital, she took the nervous fun to a whole new level. It began when I looked down at the grocery store that morning and noticed her hands were pink. And not just a little red. Bright, opaque pink like the child had coated her hands in Pepto-Bismol. Except they were dry. I foolishly asked what happened and which point she went into evasive mode. Now keep in mind the girls aren't allowed to wear nail polish for the dance recital because it is distracting, and the child looks like she is wearing pink gloves. So when we got home, I made her scrub her hands. Nothing changed. So I scrubbed her hands. Nope. Still nothing changed. So I got out nail polish remover and ran it over he hands. That helped. A bit. So after much alternating between nail polish remover and soap, the crazy pink was gone, and her hands were the normal pink of having just been overly scrubbed.

After that fun, I needed some time alone to stuff my face with brownies, and so when she asked if she could play in the garage, I agreed.

Side note: Most garages in Wilmington are teetering mazes of Christmas decorations and outgrown clothes and all the stuff that doesn't fit in a house that you can't quite part with. Garages don't actually hold vehicles or lawn equipment or anything I associated with garages when I lived in the Midwest. Our garage had hit teetering maze-level in the late winter, at which point I did a massive purge, and it was clean and spacious again. For about a week. And then it slowly began refilling itself. We are not at teetering maze-level again, but it's not exactly empty either, so while it's not a super dangerous death trap, it's not the greatest place for a kid to play either. (Which, I'm sure, is the major attraction.)

After about ten minutes, I went out to check on her. That's when I found her riding her brother's new bicycle around the piles of stuff on the floor. Of course her brother's bike did not yet have training wheels, and she has never ridden a bike without training wheels, and she was complaining about how difficult it was to ride. And she was wearing a long, flowing sundress. And no shoes. She was a broken arm waiting to happen, but miraculously she got off the bike in one piece.

Thankfully, the Natalia-related special events have come to a close and she is (somehow) going to be heading to first grade next year. Now we just need to make it through three field trips tomorrow, and a couple of class parties on Wednesday and Thursday. We can do this. And fingers are crossed that we continue to stay accident free.

Fire Pit

There's just something about a good fire. Something relaxing. Something soothing. I find it hard not to be around a fire, whether it's in a fire place, in a fire pit, or it's a bonfire, without stopping and just watching the fire. It's so easy for me to be fully present and in the moment.

Jeff and I give each other traditional anniversary gifts each year. The traditional gift for the sixth anniversary is iron, and for our sixth anniversary I got Jeff an iron fire pit. The thing was a behemoth that was loaded into my car at Lowe's by two workers, and it remained in my car until Jeff and I wrangled it out. Jeff and I somehow managed to get it to the backyard, and it sat there untouched for many, many years. The kids were too young, and we never made time to use it.

But then last summer we went to my grandmother's house, and she has a build a bonfire in her backyard. And the kids LOVED it. We had a fantastic time around the bonfire.

And we realized that if the kids could handle an open fire in a backyard, they could probably be respectful of a fire in a nice, controlled fire pit. Still, building a fire in the yard isn't something we make time for every day. We enjoyed a fire on Thanksgiving. And that's been about it.

I was a grumpy pants all weekend. I wasn't fun to be around, and the things I did weren't turning out quite right. Nothing seriously wrong, but nothing going smoothly like it does when I can feel myself on the right path. But then Jeff suggested a fire this afternoon. I went along with it, even though it didn't make sense. I had a million things I wanted to do. It wasn't what I had planned. But it sounded...nice.

And so we all headed outside around 4:30 this afternoon, and Jeff lit in a fire in our fire pit. A funny thing happened. Once I got out there I relaxed and read. I also discovered that while our front yard is looking quite lovely, I hadn't touched the back yard yet this spring. So when I asked the kids if they wanted to eat dinner outside and they excitedly said yes, I found myself actually wanting to weed the patio (we have pavers and the weeds love to grow between them). I weeded the patio, and we ate, and I definitely made time to watch the fire. And I felt a wonderful calm come over me. So although I didn't do all the things that I planned to do (that I couldn't have crammed into a few hours on a Sunday afternoon anyway), I still feel ready for the week. It's amazing what a little bit of calm can do.

 

 

(Yes, even this crew, this close to the fire pit, can help me relax.)

That There Clark's An RV

This weekend Nati asked if we could go to an RV show. Late last week we'd had a deep family discussion regarding whether or not campers and RVs have bathrooms. We have never been camping in any form, and I don't know what prompted the discussion, but it was fresh in her mind when we were out driving on Saturday morning. Thankfully, she is finally reading which, in typical Natalia fashion, she is using against us. As we were driving, she spotted an outdoor RV show which had large signs announcing free admission. The word "admission" was lost on her, but my little bargain shopper knows the word "free" and she began campaigning to go.

I happen to be off work this week while the kids are on spring break, so we actually have time for random adventures. And so we headed to the RV show on Sunday afternoon. 

When we arrived, I learned one of the selling points for Natalia was a bouncy house, so we immediately went to that. It, like the show, was free, and she was very proud of herself for finding such a great outing. Interestingly, within five minutes, Ree was asking to actually look at the RVs, and Natalia was actually willing to look too. Well, she was willing to look as long as we promised to come back to the bouncy house before we left.

Leon has been sick for nearly two weeks with an icky virus that turned into a sinus infection, so he opted to stay home with Jeff and rest, but the four of us in attendance proceeded to spend over an hour climbing in and out of the various trailers and motor homes on display. 

The kids have an obscenely practical streak, and they quickly determined the best thing for our family was a trailer with a bunk house so that there would be permanent beds for 6 (rather than needing to convert the couch or dining booth). 

And they were happy to discover the large travel trailers all had bathrooms with a toilet and at least a shower. The trailer they declared "ours" and we toured three times included a bathtub too. 

Not that we were even remotely serious about getting one, but I had to admit I could definitely see myself cooking in the kitchen. I had expected a two burner stove and maybe a fridge, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover a three burner stove, an oven, a microwave, a fridge, a freezer, and ample counter space and storage. 

The deal sealer for Mike, of course, was the large flat screen TV. Because what is camping without Cartoon Network?

After the RVs, it was on to the boats! The kids enjoyed looking at them too, but they asked to go see the RVs one last time afterwards. They were smitten.

I have to give Natalia credit. Her random free afternoon was quite enjoyable.

January

Around the first of the year, I set an intention to slow down. The universe got a nice little chuckle out of that and said, "Um, no." Home life went at its usual pace, and admittedly, there's only so much room to slow down when people still need to eat daily and occasionally get clean and wear clean clothes. But everything else sped up. A lot. Despite the madness, we still had a lot of fun, and everyone managed to stay relatively healthy. Phew.

So here's a little from our January:

Our passes to the The Children's Museum of Wilmington were expiring, so we squeezed in one last visit.

The black light reduced Mike to nothing but a pair of socks.

We made it to the 100th day of kindergarten! Where substantially more effort MAY have been invested in "family projects" for her older siblings, youngest child was reduced to wearing a last minute outfit made from a hand-me-down shirt from her brothers and leftover puffy paints from her sister's 9th birthday. Thankfully, someone didn't seem to mind.

We saw ice! Outside! And not melting in a drink. The kids deemed this photo-worthy and checked on the frozen drip at the end of the down spout every time they went outside for 48 hours.

Someone had a birthday. She insisted on making her own cupcakes. I was only allowed to turn on the mixer, use the oven, and fill her piping bag with icing.

For Natalia's birthday, in lieu of having a party, she asked to go to Raleigh to go to Marbles Kids Museum and stay in a hotel with a pool. I spent about 13 second debating before realizing that going out of town with 6 people was substantially easier (and possibly cheaper) than hosting a birthday party for a six-year-old.

So January may not have gone as planned (actually, I never had a plan - maybe that was the problem), but at least when it came to my family, I enjoyed the ride. However your year is going, I hope you are enjoying it too!

Slow

We are easing back into regular life. If I had to pick a word to describe what I'd like my 2017 to be like, the word would be "slow." 2016 was just too fast. It was busy. It was crowded. It was a blur. I want to take time to actually enjoy 2017.

So far so good. Things actually started to slow down for us on December 22. That's when we began The Twelve Days of Mom, or the kids' title for my time off work. We had a really nice Christmas and a nice New Year's. In between, we had to deal with quite a bit of real life. Thankfully, we had the time to deal with real life, and we still found time to do things like play outside every day.

The kids' school schedule is helping me ease back into real life. Last Tuesday I headed back to work, and evening activities began, but school doesn't resume until tomorrow. And even Mother Nature is helping us out there. School is on a two hour delay tomorrow due to anticipated wind chills in the single digits.

We'll see how I feel in a week after a week of packing lunches and tracking schedules, but for now, I feel relaxed. I am enjoying the pockets of time, even brief ones, I find to do things like write and color and play games with the kids when I just slow down.

In the middle of December, we made time for a beach break. I was already trying to slow down then!

Some days over break we didn't bother to get dressed. Stomp rockets are more fun in your pajamas.

Someone finally got her own bike. And yes, she rode it outside too.

Game time!

Over break we made time to visit an exotic "new" aquarium with friends.

 Sometimes, it's the little things. I'm pretty sure a trip to Game Stop was one of Leon's favorite moments of break. Mike may have felt differently.

Whatever your plans are for the year, I hope they are fulfilling and enjoyable!

Hurricane Matthew

Who would've guessed the safest place to be in a hurricane was right on the coast? But that's exactly what happened over the weekend. That's how I felt, and as I noticed at work today, that's clearly how many people felt. Although all of our yards have large piles of debris and look like this

and uprooted trees are rather ubiquitous since the only ones that have been cleared were blocking roads and power lines,

we all recognize how lucky we were.

I'm used to people telling storm stories, whether from tropical weather or winter storms, where everyone tells how bad they had it. But this was the exact opposite. Everyone downplayed their stories in gratitude, until some of them sounded reminiscent of the Black Knight in Monty Python. "Our power was out for 24 hours and our water was out for 16 hours, but no big deal." "A coworker is stranded in Lumberton and is running out of food and water, but at least the flood water isn't getting to her house." Just a flesh wound.

For us the storm adventure first began last Sunday, October 2 when I checked the weather on my phone before getting out of bed in the morning and happened to notice something kinda icky brewing. Although I typically ignore tropical weather until it gets much closer, this one seemed to suck me in, and after living here for nearly 9 years, I found myself dutifully checking for updates every 4 hours. I couldn't let it go.

On Tuesday afternoon things got real when the afternoon update suddenly showed Wilmington getting a direct hit from a strong Category 2 storm. Yikearooni. That's when UNCW decided to evacuate students by noon on Thursday. Tuesday night while the boys were at karate I decided to make a supply run, just in case the forecast didn't change, and people went crazy at the store later in the week. I found Target already out of cases of water. Thankfully the grocery store was much better prepared and had filled all of the perimeter aisles with pallets of bottled water.

After all the Tuesday drama, the forecast looked much better Wednesday and Thursday. Lots and lots and lots of rain, but for the most part, Wilmington can handle that. Our soil is sand, which is lousy for gardening, but great for draining heavy rain. And the neighborhoods built after Hurricane Floyd have retention ponds and drainage ditches and other modifications to help manage storm water.

Thursday night as I was going to bed I got a voicemail from the power company saying to "anticipate prolonged power outages." I had never gotten a message like this before and didn't know if it was ominous or comical given that it arrived at 10:30 and the first bands of heavy rain arrived around 3am Friday morning and didn't let up until around 4:30. Not exactly a lot of time to prepare if you hadn't done so already!

I had to work Friday morning, and campus was mostly shut down with the students all evacuated. 

There was no Subway to eat

 

and no Jamba Juice to drink.

 

The forecast was for 12 - 18" of rain and while Wilmington IS built for rain, the amount of standing water already on the ground was a bit disconcerting. 

 

Everything changed around 11am when everyone's cell phones began vibrating madly. Unexpectedly, Wilmington had just been upgraded to a hurricane warning. The rains looked like they would be mostly to the west, but we were anticipating heavier winds. Work was suddenly a flurry of activity as we went to really close up show.

UNCW closed at noon on Friday. Given the storm upgrade, when I got home, Jeff and I went to work on the yard. While we were busy moving everything to the garage, the kids played a giant game of Dungeons and Dragons with our tile floors and their stuffed animals.

 

Friday afternoon was relatively quiet as we waited for Matthew to arrive in earnest. When Natalia learned I had the afternoon off from work, she planned a flurry of activities for me to do with her, and we managed to get in the first of many Mommy-Talia crafts.

Saturday morning we woke up to a tornado warning. I spent so long in bed contemplating what to do, that the warning thankfully expired before I had to take action. At that point I was wide awake, so I moved on to the delicious task of using up as much perishable food as possible before we lost power.  So we had chocolate chip pancakes and blueberry smoothies for breakfast, then Natalia and I made banana bread. The power flickered a few times while the banana bread was baking, but it was able to finish baking. 

 

While we had power, I also worked on cleaning the house, and while I cleaned, the kids painted. 

 

We lost power around 1:45 in the afternoon, while watching NC State play football in abysmal conditions (although it was fun to watch the waves of water come off the field any time someone was tackled). Amazingly, our power was only off for about 90 minutes.

Things actually improved in the late afternoon, but around dinnertime the winds began picking up again, and by 7pm the house was shaking and our front door, which is recessed and protected by a large porch, was shaking. There is a very tall tree in our backyard that makes me nervous, so to keep the kids away from it and the wall of glass windows in our living room in the back of the house, I had a sleepover with the kids in the girls' room on Saturday night. Despite the storm noise, the kids actually slept great. I think they were just happy to all be together.

We woke to a beautiful, if cool, day on Sunday. There were still strong winds in the morning, but it was a clear blue sky. Looking out on our street, I didn't see much damage aside from our neighbor's mailbox that had blown over. It wasn't until I tried to go grocery shopping around 1pm that it dawned on me that there really was storm damage. I drove by our old neighborhood and saw that everyone's 6' wooden privacy fences had blown down. I tried to go to Walmart but it was without power and closed until further notice. When I spoke to a lady at the grocery store working in the produce section, she said that there were power lines down with live wires all over her neighborhood but "luckily" some guy had a horrific accident in his truck and when the police and fire fighters came to help him, they moved the lines out of the way so she could get to work. (Perhaps this should've been my first clue of the type of story telling to come.) 

So Sunday we picked up our yard, and on Monday we picked up my parents' yard and then headed to the park. I returned to work today, and for us, it is pretty much business as usual here on the coast. But we are all thinking about the people further inland who were not so lucky.

Beach Bums

The kids are finishing up their second week of fall break. As luck would have it (or as the calendar worked out) I was able to take off all of last week to spend with everyone. As much as I wanted to spend time with my family, I think I wanted even more to catch up. I was so tired of feeling overwhelmed. So my plans for the week were to hang out with the kids and Jeff, to play outside every day, to spend two days away on a mini-vacay, to do lots of shopping and cooking and eat wonderful meals and fully stock the freezer with premade meals, to really clean the house, and to spend two half days working so I wouldn't feel like I was drowning when I went back to work. And I have to admit, I honestly believed that could all happen. (I have a long history of seriously overestimating the amount of things I can cram into a small window of time. But in my defense, I am really good at cramming lots of things into small windows of time.)

It wasn't long, though, before I realized my plans were doomed. It wasn't going to happen. And on a certain level I was pretty frustrated and upset. I couldn't figure out how I could possibly survive the rest of the fall without cramming all of that into a week. But I didn't want to stop playing outside with my kids. Or taking naps. (Yes. Naps. Glorious naps!) Or cooking normal amounts of food.

And it turns out as much as I thought I needed to do stuff, what I really needed was to rest. This week I've been a whole new person because I did spend time playing with the kids and reading books and watching movies. And it turns out it's great that I didn't stock the freezer because it's looking a bit iffy on whether we'll keep power all weekend. And we got to go to Wrightsville Beach twice, and spend a day in Myrtle Beach, and another day in Sunset Beach. Not only were the beach days nice (how many people get four beach days at three different beaches on a staycation?), but who knows when we'll be able to go back to the beaches because a significant amount of beach erosion is predicted this weekend. As for getting the house clean, it looks like I will have all day Saturday indoors to get it done, so that will take care of itself as well. So the lesson learned is...procrastination pays! Or something like that.

But on to the pictures.

We had gorgeous weather for Wrightsville Beach, part 1.

Then it was on to Myrtle Beach, where we spent most of our time exploring the boardwalk.

 

We actually went to Myrtle Beach because oldest girl child wanted to ride the Skywheel, and it turned out to be closed. Doh.

Since John Candy wasn't around to break us into Wally World the Skywheel, we settled on spending an afternoon in an arcade. We all went crazy with the quarters and had a ton of fun. And brought home a ton of stuffed animals.

We did actually spend a little time at the beach at Myrtle Beach.

And then it was on to Sunset Beach. The kids didn't even want to go to the beach - we had to drag them out to the sand. But then they remembered the awesome part about Sunset Beach is we can go out past the breakers and go swimming, and then, of course, they wouldn't come in from the water. But the real highlight of Sunset Beach, as always, was playing the Game of Life.

Our week ended with a second trip to Wrightsville Beach. There was a storm passing offshore and we found relatively big waves. Natalia liked watching all the surfers. I had to work pretty hard to keep Leon from swimming out and joining them.

All told, it was a great week, even if it's not what I had planned. And I'm so glad I went with the change in plans.