Ouch!

Rylee was being silly at bedtime and running around when her sisters were suppose to be getting ready for bed. While there was more than one version of the story, the result was the same. It ended badly for her.

She whacked her head on the door frame and managed to do it in a way that produced a hideous and sizable lump on her noggin.  Check it out!  Poor kid cried a while and needed an ice pack.  I thought it might turn purple, you know, like a giant purple pox, but it didn't.  It shrunk and faded to a greenish spot in a couple days and all is well.  But if she turns into a ditzy blond when she's older, you'll know why! 

Weekly Stats

Highlights of the Week:
**Going to our first official Mardi Gras Parade! Not only going, but getting to see my boy march in it!
**Finally making my 5 mile goal.  I ran 5 miles, and now I'm going to have to do it again.
**Lovely weather- down in the 45-55 degrees at night, 70's all week.

Lowlight of the Week:
**Migraines on Monday and Friday.  Bah, I say!


Running Review:
**Monday I did 5 miles with Levi!  We ran the flightline to the back gate and back and it was awesome.
**Tuesday I ran 3.5 with Levi in the early morning.
**Wednesday I ran/walked a slow 3.5 miles with the running group.
**Friday I had a horrid 3.5 miles at the track.
**Saturday a slow (but all running!) 3 miles with the running group.

Bread and Circus! Er, Beads and Mardi Gras

Today was our first official Mardi Gras Parade.  It was a slightly breezy 74 degrees and the sun was shining.  Yeah, I gotta brag when I can.  I was a little concerned about the day.  Joshua was marching with the school band in it.  Somehow, NONE of the other parents wanted to carpool.  Seriously?!  So I had to get him to the beginning of the parade 90 minutes prior, and I had to pick him up at the end. 

I had coordinated for Dan to pick up, and I took Joshua to meet his group.  After getting him uniformed, hemmed, watered, and situated, I took Marian and Callie a half mile down the road and we parked and staked out a nice spot.

Waiting in the shade. 

Nola's finest keeping the peace and keeping the roads safe.  See all the folks getting ready for the parade? 

Here I am in my awesome hat!  Love this hat. 

 Yeah, we got donuts to munch on while we waited.  And waited.  

It really was only an hour or so that we waited, but it felt longer.  The girls were really good for it all.  They were super excited for it, and could not wait for the first floats and beads.  Oh, they wanted those beads!  The floats rolled by and threw stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Random stuff.  Odd stuff.  It seemed like some of the float people had just gone in and purchased everything on clearance after every holiday.  There were foil Christmas gift tags, plastic toys, cups, funky straws, flowers, and the girls each managed to snag a set of devil masks and pitchforks.  They also collected a large variety of beads.  Mostly the cheap beads, but we scored some giant beads and some fancy ones as well.  Must get pictures next time!

The Queen of something.  

"Throw me something, Mister!"

Wait, who is that?!! 

Hey, that blond trumpet player is my boy!  So proud of him.  He did great.

The parade was shorter than I expected (only 45 minutes), and we were at a good spot, so once it was over, I realized I would be able to zoom on down to the end and park before he got there.  So I called Dan, and let him off the hook.  Marian, Callie and I drove to the end, and walked a bit back down the parade route to find a decent spot.  Fewer good spots at this end.  Rowdier crowd too.  The girls didn't mind.  They passed the wait time looking for broken beads to decorate the trees with.  Then we watched the parade go by again. 

This totally made me think of Bread and Circuses. You can barely see the crowd, clamoring for loot.  The adults were worse than the kids.  One guy would whack the sides of floats, shouting for beads. It was crazy.  I was sad that when the bands and cheer squads passed, there was silence, but as soon as a float came by, everyone was screaming for something. I thought after 4.4 miles that the kids walking deserved some cheering on, but I guess no one else did.

 And here, just before the end, I got to see our kids again.  You can't see Joshua here, but I thought the band did a good job.  It was a long, HOT, nearly 5 miles with their instruments.  I thought it a bit ambitious for a first year band, but it went well, and Joshua is ready to go again next week!  He really had a good time and loved the experience.  I'm glad.  I had been worried it would be horrible for the kids, but I'm glad I didn't tell him.  Joshua had a blast.

I didn't get pictures of the girls, because they had a bead-collecting system that made it hard to get pictures.  They would run down a good ways away from me and gallop back alongside the floats holding hands out for beads.  Plus, they were brave enough to walk up to the horseback riders and motorcyclists, who would hand them stuff.  They came home with quite the haul!!  I think we might have made it with no sunburns, so it was a good day.

Its Mardi Gras Season!

Mardi Gras is here!  The first parades rolled a week ago and things are in full swing.  Delaney had a fun assignment for school, to make a shoe box float.  I got some materials and we got to work.  Er, um, some of us got to work.  Some of us glued fuzzy green fabric to the shoe box and asked Delaney what she wanted next.  Delaney giggled and colored a picture.  Some of us glued beads to the float and asked Delaney what she wanted next.  Delaney giggled and counted pompoms.  Some of us glued pom poms on and actually got some help from Delaney!  Some of us made little pipe cleaner people.  Callie distracted Delaney further by deciding they needed to decorate their own masks.  I ended up holding the glue gun while they stuck all sorts of things all sorts of places.  They had a great time.  Delaney's float has no theme, and is pretty random, but that should be perfect for her!

Callie and her awesome mask!   

 Callie and Delaney showing off their masks together.  Lots of creativity here, people.  Lots!

Delaney's final product.  Isn't it glorious?!

And now, to brag.  Joshua is going to be in a Mardi Gras Parade tomorrow!  His school has a band for the first time this year, and they will be marching in the parade.  I got to see them practicing today.  Yikes!  Such a little group of little kids!  Well, middle school kids.  They have a small band, but I am super excited to see them in the parade.  And I hope all my worries are for naught!   (It is 4 1/2 miles of marching with an instrument in full uniform in 70+ degrees.)

Pictures of the parade will be posted after!

Bayou Signet Park

Joshua had one little thing to finish up before he could achieve his "Arrow of Light" for scouts.  His fabulous scout leader used the holiday Monday to meet us at Bayou Signet Park.  We figured it would be a good day to take all the kids out. We'd never been to the park, and it is a state park with a bunch of different things to do.  I thought we'd get some hiking and stuff in.  Sadly, we just hung out at the park and Joshua went off to do his thing.  I'd have liked to have gone hiking on some of their trails, but with a gaggle of girls, it seemed more prudent to just stay at the park, where they had an absolutely marvelous time.  It was a lovely day and it was nice to spend the morning at the park as a family.  Yep, even Dan was there.

We brought Levi with us, but I'm not sure how much fun he had!  We wouldn't let him off the leash, wouldn't let him chase anything, and wouldn't rescue him from Callie's repeated torture of him on the playground.  Poor, good natured dog!

 Trying to get a group shot.  Callie insisted Levi had to be in it, and no one would look at me.

Callie took Levi down the slide.... several times! 

 Note the death grip on the collar so he can't get away.

Such a good doggie!

 This was a fun little thing and the girls really liked it.

Delaney asked for her picture to be taken. 

Rylee was cute.  She had fun, until she scooped up some sand that had been part of an ant pile.  Ouchies!  She got a few fire-ant bites on her fingers.

Did I mention it was about 65 degrees?!  Gorgeous weather that day!  The girls kicked off their shoes and had a blast digging and building in the sand. 

Callie an Levi weren' the only ones to utilize the slide.

And Joshua is spotting wildlife.  I've got him super-zoomed here, and he didn't know I snapped his picture.  heh heh heh

Stats for the Week

Highlights of the Week:
** I got to see my friends at the Library.  Rylee wasn't awful and even participated a bit!
** We had the missionaries over for diner on Tuesday.  That was great because I made yummy Bourbon Chicken and an awesome Cheesecake for dessert!  It was Elder Green's last meal before going home the next day.
** Visiting Teaching Nancy on Thursday and then having marvelous success at the shoe store AND the Thrift store.  Yay for feeling fabulous about my day!
** Play-date/Visiting Teaching at my house of Friday.  I love visiting with my friends.
** Best highlight was going to the Temple on Saturday with my friend Mandi.  The drive goes so fast when you gab with someone you like, and going to Chili's for lunch after was great.
** Callie and Delaney would say the highlight of the week was Friday night's Daddy Daughter Dance!

Low lights of the week:
** Squeezing my stupid allergy shot between preschool pickup and kids getting out of school.  Making it worse, the nurse shot me too close to the nerve.  I've never had that happen before, so the incredible pain in my left arm worried me.  Fortunately, we have a friend and neighbor who is a flight surgeon, and he makes house calls!  He came over and told me it was because the nurse hit too close to the nerve and it would be better in 48 hours.  I loaded up on motrin and cried myself to sleep.  It hurt that bad.
** The rain.  The incessant gray, drizzly skies that lasted through Thursday.  So miserable.  I'm so happy the sun is back out!

Running Report:
* Monday- Took Rylee to the gym with me because it was raining.  Ground out a miserable 3.5 miles, with a 5 minute intermission to deal with Rylee.
* Tuesday- Ran the flightline with Levi in misty not-quite-rain. Had an awesome run of 4.5 miles!
* Wednesday- Yucky weather, no motivation.  Used the elliptical machine 45 mins.
* Thursday- Got up early and ran outside at 5:45.  Found a decent loop and did 3.3 miles.
* Friday- Decided to try the track. Did 4 miles while Rylee hung out at the park.  Levi did half the miles with me and then I locked him in the tennis courts so I could run free.  His feeling were really hurt.

And now for the pictures:

Callie's fancy hair for the Daddy Daughter Dance.  She wanted a bun, but her hair is a bit short and wispy, so it needs help to keep it all up. 

It came out nicely! 

Yeah, I parked her in front of the tv so I could work on her hair and she has no interest in looking at the camera!  Just wanted to watch her movie.   We are battling over the length of the bangs again.

Delaney wanted 3 ponies that met in one big pony in the back. She was cute.

Dan took the girls and said they had a good time.  Callie and Delaney talked about it forever and loved it! Delaney keeps telling me how she got out and learned to dance!  Now she can dance all by herself!

  Love these guys!

Mom Fail

I don't make Sloppy Joes very often.  I love that they are easy to make, can be put together ahead of time, and freeze well.  But it is not my favorite meal.  Thus, it has been a while since I last made it for dinner. I figured even though I didn't love it, the kids were big fans.

Sadly, that was a year or 2 ago.  Tonight, it was a colossal failure.  No one wanted to eat it.  Callie claimed she took a bite, but she really only bit into the bun.  Marian sampled it, nearly had a meltdown when her bun fell apart, and then bravely tried 2 bites of mine before claiming it was icky.  Rylee let me cut hers into quarters and nibbled from 2 of them before refusing another bite.

Yeah, I'm not feeling like a winner tonight.

Just For Grandpa

Marian had a project to interview a grandparent and put together a report on them.  She was so cute.  She was also quite behind, because she feels the need to make every single picture perfect and she's rather detail oriented.  She got permission to bring it home to work on over Christmas break.  I wanted to show her grandpa, but we forgot to take it to AR with us. I managed to get pictures of it before she finished though.  So, Grandpa, here it is! 

Young Love

Around Thanksgiving time, one of my children came home and admitted to having a crush.  A few days later, this child informed me with delight that their crush reciprocated the feelings.  Hmmm....  We had a little discussion about being too young to date.  The next day I was informed that at this school if you have a crush and your crush likes you back, then you are boyfriend and girlfriend.  This led to another discussion about being too young to date, and too young to have a girlfriend.  (Yeah, yeah, so it is my only son we are referring to!)

I told him that there would be no touching, not even hand holding, and no being alone together.  I suggested that this was a good opportunity to learn about being friends with girls and maybe a time to start thinking about the things he liked and might want in a future wife.  I know, too young to date but not too young to think about marriage!  She was a nice girl, quiet and sweet and they walked to and from school together.

Honestly, I'm still a bit at a loss on how to deal with it all.  I know they hung out at the park, but I think it was always with a pack of other kids, so I didn't make it a big deal.  It just seemed kind of cute and harmless.

Poor boy came home yesterday looking glum and said Emily (her name was Emily) had dumped him.  He seemed quite upset about it.  So I guess this whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing was more serious than I'd thought, which is not good. She dumped him in favor of another boy.  The brazen hussy!

I thought we'd talked about not having a girlfriend and it seems that was not really taken to heart.  Now I think I'll give him a few days to grieve, and then I'm going to have to lay the smack down.  Any advice?

Weekly blah, blah, blah

Sunday January 13, 2013

We made it through the first week back to school.  It went astonishingly well.  Sadly, it was an ugly, overcast week with a lot of drizzly rain, which was quite dreary. I got up early on Monday to run and was quite disgruntled to see that the street lights on the flight line were NOT fixed and now every single one of them is out.  Fortunately, I ran anyway and no MPs stopped me to tell me I couldn't be there.  It was a short run, since it was my first after 10 days off but it felt really good.

I made the mistake of thinking I could schedule my allergy shot before story time and still make it to story time.  I had to wait 30 minutes to get the shot and by the time I waited the 30 minutes after the shot, Rylee was done and it was too late. So we stopped by Walmart instead.  Somehow it wasn't the same.

Tuesday Levi and I ran on the levee and it went really well, but he got muddy enough I decided a bath was in order.  He was not pleased, but he sure looked nice. Wednesday the weather psyched me out and I spent quality time with the elliptical machine at home rather than running.  I also finally got around to converting Rylee's crib into a "big girl" bed.  Rylee was so thrilled.  Sadly, she did not want to actually USE it and did not take a nap,  Neither did she got to bed well in it that night and she didn't sleep well in it.  It did get better and she's back to napping properly and sleeping through the night (most nights!).

Thursday I had a 10am meeting at the school about Marian's 504 and I didn't have time to exercise.  The meeting was quick and painless.  I LOVE her teacher this year.  She really has a good one and I'm so happy about that.  Marian is doing really well and we didn't need to change anything on her plan. I had a massive headache by the time I got home and I was glad Rylee was in preschool so I could lie down.  That was about all I did the rest of the day till kids came home.  The headache finally went away around bedtime.  Ha.  The irony kills me.

Friday I didn't want to get up early and I didn't want to deal with the worry of getting caught running the flight line, so I didn't.  I went running after the kids went to school, which meant running with a stroller and a dog.  Sigh.  Not much fun either.  And it was an awful run.  My friend Jamie came over to hang out and let the girls play for a while and it was marvelous.  I love friends who make me feel like I'm interesting and they want to spend time with me.  I had a grumpy evening.

I got up Saturday to run with my running group.  It was suppose to be a "long run" but I was not going to try for 6 miles!  Fortunately, we have a lot of newbies in the group, so I went with them and we ran and walked 4 miles.  I was secretly glad.  It was a muggy 70 degrees and I know I'd have been down with a migraine if I'd tried to push in that weather.  So I was happy. I got out, I did some running and I stayed headache-free!

Callie and Marian had been invited to an awesome birthday party at the local animal shelter so I went to pick them up and then stopped by the commissary.  I got a little nappy-poo and Dan spent all afternoon and evening at Stake Conference.  The kids were really good and we had a nice evening.  Today was Stake Conference and I was so happy we didn't have to drive the hour to the stake center.  We got to go to our own building, so I was delighted to have an extra hour of sleep and delighted to not have to teach this week.  Did I mention it was 76 degrees today?  Thank goodness cooler weather is on the way!

So, a good week overall.  I think we're back into the routine of things and life is going pretty well.

How to be an Awesome Mom

Perception is reality, right?  People see you as awesome, therefore you are awesome!  Let's look into that some more.  

Here is how I portray this afternoon:

I let the girls make sugar cookies this afternoon. I rolled out the dough and gave them cookie cutters and they had a marvelous time.

I love Delaney's face here.  She chose the hand and foot shaped cookie cutters and was hilarious as she gave a running commentary on the hands and feet she cut out. Marian was methodical and meticulous.

Rylee wanted the little cookie cutters and took the cutting very seriously. 

Yeah, Callie really needs her bangs cut.  She was also not pleased to have a picture taken.  She was really good at rolling out the dough and cutting decent cookies.  After the first batch, I sat back and let them do their own thing and they rolled and cut and nibbled to their heart's content.

Then Rylee got distracted by Levi and went to play with him.

Now that makes me sound like I am an awesome mom.  Again, it is all in how you portray it.  Let's talk about how it really went down:

I found a tub of sugar cookie dough at the commissary for half off.  I thought, Hmmm..... $1.77 is a good price and I bet the girls would have fun with it.  So I got it.  I needed a bribe for good behavior so I could nap in peace today, so I offered cookie-making if they would play nicely.  They must have because I didn't hear them at all while I napped.

When I got up I thought I was an idiot for promising such an activity, but I dutifully cleaned off the table, thawed the cookie dough and turned on the oven.  Then I spent 10 minutes shouting- get out of the way, I can't roll out the dough when you stand there, move your cookie-cutters, no you can't use the Christmas ones, that's your sister's spot, move out of my way, no the dough isn't ready, get your hands out of the flour, stop shoving your sister, don't make me put this all away, get your hands off your sister's dough, I'm going to beat you with my rolling pin, don't stand right in front of me while I'm trying to roll this out, stop putting your hands in the flour bin, don't swat the flour, stop hitting your sister..... and on and on.   And I thought how this wasn't much fun at all.  So I got them set up and walked away.  

Surprisingly, they all got on quite well for the next 30 minutes, rolling and cutting and helping each other.  I popped the pans in the oven and took them out, otherwise I stayed out of it. It degenerated after that and I had to confiscate the last of the dough.  

The moral of the story is that I can make it look like a lovely family activity that was glorious for all.  In reality, it was work and sometimes not much fun at all, and I had grumpy feelings.  When I blog about it though, I can make me sound like I totally rock.  So this is a reminder that when you see all those crafty blogs and happy children, know that reality was probably much different than what is being portrayed!  (Or maybe it is just me!)

Just to prove that to my children I really am awesome, I let them eat all the cookies they wanted.  (It was store bought dough, so they weren't very yummy cookies anyway.)