Memorial Day Weekend

Sometimes life is such a blur that I don't even notice how busy it is. The last week was like that. It didn't register with me that we were busy at the time, but looking back, I guess things were kinda nuts.

It started with Ree's Girl Scout bridging ceremony last Tuesday. The girls are no longer Brownies. They are now Juniors!

 

On Thursday the boys finished karate for the year. I was not invited to witness this momentous event, but apparently they were allowed to put on protective gear and beat each other with foam bats for a good portion of the class. They, of course, declared it best karate lesson ever!

Friday morning Jeff and I got to witness Natalia's preschool graduation. I suppose I could've been sad, and I admittedly got misty eyed when one of the teachers started crying (I'm a weeper!) but I was too excited. Do you know what this means? After seven years, we are done paying for preschool! And before anyone needs orthodontia!

Natalia (and some of the other girls) were not too sure about this graduation thing.

 But Nati did manage to get her diploma.

 

And she was happy when they got to dance.

The weekend forecast was abysmal with at least an 80% chance of rain every day, so we sent the kids outside every time we could. Friday afternoon they were tired, and Ree had dance at 5:00, but we still managed to squeeze in an hour of outside time after school. Ree also had a dance rehearsal from 10:00 - 3:00 on Saturday, so Saturday morning we were back outside at 8:30. (I figured someone else was already mowing. Sending my herd outside at that hour wasn't that much worse than a lawn mower. Really!)

Saturday morning we also managed to squeeze in some emergency blueberry picking. We picked about four pounds, and they are almost all gone. Without any used in baking. Someday we will actually pick enough to have some left to make a pie or at least some blueberry pancakes.

 

As it turns out, the weather was never really bad over the weekend. It rained every day, but mostly at night, and in between it was bright sunshine. So we had lots of outside time all weekend.

We had planned so stay home as much as possible, because traffic in Wilmington is horrendous on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day. Except it wasn't. It was a ghost town. Except for Costco. We are relative Costco newbies and made a complete rookie mistake and went there on a holiday weekend. Holy cow. I should've realized that everyone and their brother is going there because with guests in town they can actually use that 24 pack of pre-made burgers and the 36 pack of super hextuple rolls of toilet paper.

Don't my redneck children look thrilled to be shopping? (And despite their faces, they had an amazing time at Costco since everyone, even with their picky preferences, got double digit samples including ice cream sundaes.)

Monday afternoon we had friends over. We discovered the best way to get eight kids to sit down quietly is to let them stuff their faces with Jello. 

 

The downside, of course, to the Jello eating (aside from the consumption of so many chemicals and dyes) is a whole lot of energy. But thankfully the weather cooperated, so it was outside to play with poppers.  

 

The weekend ended with Natalia passed out at 6:30 Monday evening next to Jeff while he watched the Reds game. Obviously the sign of a good (and busy) weekend. 

New York, Day 3

Yesterday morning we took Kramer to the farmer's market in Prospect Park. The sun was finally out, and it was pretty.

There was lots of great food for sale there. 

Monster and Olaf came too.

On the way home, we saw Darth Vader and some storm troopers.

We went to lunch at Uncle Andrew and Aunt Yuka's apartment. Aunt Yuka made taco, but not the tacos you're thinking of. It was octopus! (And it was delicious!)

In the afternoon we all went to a park in Queens to play wiffle ball. I'll have to show you a map of all the places we went. 

On the way home, we saw lots of school busses with all the writing in Hebrew. 

Last night we had dinner at a food truck. They had the kind of tacos you know (although I had a burrito).

Hope you are having an awesome weekend. I will see you soon! 

New York, Day 2

Hi!

I hope you had a great day today. Here are some pictures from my adventures last night and today. (Sorry some of the pictures are in a crazy order!)

Alex and I spent some time playing Mario Maker with Alex last night. 

Uncle Andrew and Aunt Yuka came over for dinner last night. Alex and Andrew sometimes get a little crazy when they see each other. 

A little Kramer came to sleep with Ugly, Olaf, and me last night.

Ugly had to rescue Olaf when Olaf got stuck in the pantry.

Yesterday we went to Target. The Brooklyn Target looks a bit different from the Wilmington Target.

Target has 2 floors, and all the signs are in English and Spanish. 

There is an escalator to get from one floor to the other, and there is a special escalator for carts.

We went into Manhattan today. Can you guess what store we went to?

Leon has his own diamond shop!

This band was playing by the subway this afternoon. 

Hanging out with Donkey Kong.

A sign in the subway station.

The subway runs above ground by Alex and Reiko's apartment. 

Uncle Alex with a giant inflatable bunny.

We ate lunch at a restaurant in China Town today. 

Happy weekend! 

New York, Day 1

Hey guys!

It took one automobile, two planes, and three trains, but Olaf, Ugly Doll, and I made it to New York!

Our first stop was the Atlanta airport. It's the biggest airport in the world, and there are lots of planes there.

This was the view flying into New York. There were a lot of houses!

Ugly and Olaf had fun checking out the planes.

The subway is mostly underground, but some parts are up high. We were level with the top of this house. 

Ugly wanted to check out Alex and Reiko's garden. I think Olaf stole a bite or two.

This is what Alex and Reiko's neighborhood looks like. 

Found this place for Dad.

The Brooklyn Bridge.

See? I really am in New York. There's the Statue of Liberty. 

There are lots of trees and flowers everywhere, even though there are tons of buildings. 

I found a Sugar Shop!

I hope you guys have a great night! I love you! 

Christmas 2015

Our Christmas was pretty quiet. After having guests for 9 days, we enjoyed a few days at home by ourselves. And with obscenely warm temperatures, we were able to enjoy our usual late summer/early fall activities. 

The kids asked to go to church on Christmas Eve. Apparently they were going to drag their heathen parents whether we liked it or not! The kids were amazingly good and did a nice job of participating.

Christmas Eve Jeff and I had hoped to go to bed early. However, Ree couldn't sleep and I think her last time to come out for cuddles was at 10:37. Yawn. Poor Santa thought he would never be able to visit our house. It's funny. We thought Ree was on the fence about Santa 2 years ago. So I cooked up a scheme for Santa to bring her a ridiculous gift. Santa brought her a Barbie dream house. It was expensive and enormous. And we had to bring it back from Ohio. That did the trick. 

I sensed some doubt creeping in again this year  (her best friends are all oldest children, so we are sheltered on that front ), but on Christmas Eve it became apparent that any doubt was just due to the mathematical impossibility of it all. We had been watching the Google Santa tracker before bed. Well, technically most of the family was checking it. Leon actually stood there and watched it until we closed the browser window and dragged him away from the computer. Around the time the kids went to bed, Santa had visited over 5 billion households.

Ree was pondering this as she lay awake in bed. So when she asked me about it, I started by saying the magic involved was probably a lot more complicated than they ever show on TV or in books. Then I pulled in math. I argued that Santa has a window from 11pm to 5am to visit each house, and there are 24 time zones in the world so that gives Santa a roughly 30 hour window to make deliveries. That made sense to her and we agreed we probably should've left Santa some strong coffee. Finally, I joked that maybe Santa has a time turner. She laughed and relaxed. Harry Potter for the win!

The kids were given strict orders to stay in their rooms until we got them on Christmas morning. When we weren't quite prompt enough for him, Leon decided to be the human alarm clock. At exactly 7am he opened his door, shouted, "Beep, beep, beep!" and shut the door again. We got the message and were in the kids' rooms by 7:03.

Santa did come (phew!) and the kids loved their gifts. The big kids got Legos and were so busy playing with them that at 9:30 we had to tell them that their little sister might explode if we didn't open gifts soon so they had to stop playing at 10. Then when we did open presents, they wanted to open them one at a time so they could all see what everyone got. Who are these children???

Over the past few days the kids have spent a lot of time playing with their new things. They received several games and a circuit set, so there have even been group activities. We've managed to spend some time outside every day including a Christmas day trip to the park and a beach trip on Sunday.

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas! 

Sights and Sounds of the Season

It's the season for loving and giving so, of course, our house is full of hate and greed. Who knew certain children (who will not be named) could fight so much? And over such silly things? Natalia woke me up the other morning at 5:45 just to fight with me. Why does she do this? It would be so much easier to just sleep in a bit and not fight. But, noooo. And if the volume of the children goes up to 10, it has been permanently set on 11 for awhile now. Thankfully, there are occasional breaks in the squabbles and battles and no one has seriously injured themselves or their siblings (yet), so we have that going for us.

I had a moment on Friday night when I realized how much our kids do actually like each other, despite the indications otherwise. I went to put presents under the Christmas tree and discovered that there were already colorful Ziplocks of stuff under the tree, neatly labeled with each of our names in Sharpie. It turns out that Leon wrapped presents for everyone. Some were paper games he had made, others were real gifts he had "purchased" from the treasure box in his class. But before I could get too enamored with my thoughtful son, I did find the "dead" gingerbread man he decorated and hung up on the wall. (I have to admit though, the sword is a nice touch.)

The kids have actually been decorating the house like mad. Every time I turn around there are more decorations Scotch taped onto the walls. It is fun and festive (although it would drive a minimalist nuts.) Over the weekend the kids also decorated gingerbread houses. I have to say, I am impressed at how their decorating skills have improved. 

So now that the house looks like Christmas, perhaps it will start sounding a bit more like it too. The kids are actually getting better as we get closer to Christmas. (It helps that school and activities are done.) Fingers crossed that everyone actually finds the Christmas spirit by Friday!