Amazing Kids

This time, I'm not talking about my own kids! We are in the midst of the budget cycle for our school district, and tonight is the first of three nights of public hearings. Last Friday morning and again this morning I worked with two girls who are getting up at tonight's meeting, and in front of an auditorium full of parents and other assorted folks, are speaking.

First off the idea that they were not only willing, but that they wanted to get up and speak is impressive. And secondly, the speeches they wrote, well, let's just say that they hit the nail on the head. I couldn't have asked for better speeches from adults. So often adults get lost in the intricacies of the language and in our attempts to be concise or accurate, or whatever, we lose our message and our emotion. These two girls really hit home runs with their speeches. One even walked in with her speech complete, and after a few very minor edits, she is good to go. I am so proud of these two girls I can't even begin to express it. I fully expect at the meeting tonight a raucous crowd full of folks listening for exactly what these little girls are saying, and they'll definitely be happy when they hear these two speeches! So, to M and B, congrats on speeches well done ladies. You two are going a long way in life!

Kids behaving badly...sort of.

I HATE when the boys get up in the middle of the night and cause trouble, sneak stuff, whatever. It's the middle of the night and while some folks work at those terrible hours, for the rest of us the middle of the night is meant for sleeping.

Apparently my boys didn't get that memo from the home office. They were up at 5am night before last...playing Monopoly. Monopoly, really? Sneaking candy, reading dirty magazines, but Monopoly? I wonder if this is a sign of things to come. Needless to say we sent them to bed early that night.

Wordle

Here's the scoop on us in a cure little word cloud:

Apparently I know kids, I'm sleeping often, and I like work. Then again I'm particularly romantic, I have a nekkid cat, and a journey to Disney is wanted. Yep, that's me in a nutshell...at least this week!

Haiti

To all of those

we have lost

over the past few days,

may you

find peace

in the remainder

of your journey.

And to all of those

who have lost

everything,

you are in our thoughts

and prayers.

Pearls of Wisdom

Also know as - answers MOM has to come up with on the spot in the car (of course)!

Ian: Mom, where do you get money for your bank account? Uhhh....

and then a few minutes later:

Max: Why do you sing so soft when you sing in the car? Yeah....

Both took me completely by surprise and we ended up with a request for me to sing louder (agreed to as long as I know some of the words), and a long discussion about work and how we divide assets, etc, when the mom doesn't work outside the home and the dad does. The questions just kept coming. But hey, they told me that they wanted to hear me sing, not to be quiet, so I'll count this particular car trip as a win.

Are we missing out on vacations?

I often wonder if I'm missing the boat here by not taking more vacations. Granted, we generally sneak away once a year to Disney, but we don't go on all of those other fun trips that I so often read about on friends' blogs, in their holiday letters, or even on Facebook. One friend was even trying to decide this afternoon if she was taking her kids skiing tomorrow. And there's not nearly enough snow on the ground here to go skiing, so I assume that she's hauling them off somewhere.

So are we missing out by NOT taking vacations more often? I certainly don't feel like it all. I'm sort of a homebody these days, and would rather hang out here with the family than pack it in and trek across the state/county/world to see some sight. And doesn't everyone (well, except the kids) know that vacations are ten times the work for moms? It's not only getting ready for the vacation, but it's wrangling the little kids the entire time - being hyper vigilant because you never know what they'll get into in new surroundings - and thus it's ten times more stressful than a romantic getaway for two. Can't even remember what those things are like though - it's been years.

So I guess I'm looking over that fence, and while the grass is greener, it's still not enough to get me off the couch. Then again maybe when the kids are older it won't seem like such a daunting task.

Sound asleep

If I could, I'd sneak into my kids rooms every naptime and at night and take pictures of them sleeping - watching them grow and change over the years. I have pics of Max as a baby cuddled up next to the cat (rather, the cat cuddled up next to Max). I have pics of Ian and Sam, buck nekkid, sleeping UNDER their beds as toddlers. And now I have a pic of darling Lucy cuddled up with her favorite cuddles and hanging her feet out of the crib:

Go Muppets!

I absolutely LOVE this (and I think you will too!):

Ten Reasons Why it Sucks to Be the Parent

Definitely agree with these. As if I had written it myself.

Thanks Stimey!

My 2009 According to Facebook

Late in 2009 I jumped on in and joined the Facebook wave. Yeah, even though I swore it off before, I realized that there were a lot of connections that I wanted to make with folks and this was the easiest way to do it. And then this nifty little thing popped up - a brief summary of sorts of my year. But for me, apparently it's all about the back injury...and courtrooms...and a lack of delinquent kids (yeah, it was me in traffic court):

Funny, my 2009 was so much more busy than that. Guess I'm still not 100% plugged into Facebook!

Who cleans YOUR house?

As the kids sat eating lunch today I was finishing up my daily task of cleaning something around the house. It's a big house and requires some maintenance on my part, just like everyone else's house. But apparently the boys thought little cleaning gnomes come and clean up:

Max: "What are you doing?"
Me: "I'm cleaning. I usually do this while you are in school, but since you're here you get to watch me clean!"
Ian: : "Oh. You clean the house?"
Me: "Well, who did you think cleans the house?"
Crickets....

Our very first blizzard!

As you can see from all the prior posts - I'm a wee bit excited about the snow. But, I'm not the only one in the family that was excited: Hope that you are enjoying you holiday too!

OMG!

And this us what I woke up to. Last count we had 7", and that was at
7am.

It's SNOWING!

In the time it took us to pop into Best Buy tonight, our car looked like this! (Ans yes, I'm a little excited!)

Spell with Flickr

Check this out:





Mine is all red and pink, but you can make you own HERE. Pretty cool!

Lucy loves...

this commercial:



She stops dead in her tracks, smiles, and starts to dance every time she sees it. Too bad for the Gap that this 17 month old doesn't have any buying power!

First Snow of the Season

It was beautiful - and it snowed enough to fill my eyes with wonder as it does every time.

Our street, front yard, and out in front of the house * Saturday, December 5, 2009

Finally coming out of the fog

For the past two months, someone has been sick every week. For the first 6 weeks it was one kid, for 12 hours, with a low grade fever. Of course the fever was high enough to be sent home from school, so it meant that they had to stay home the next day when they were perfectly fine, but hey, no biggie. It was only 12 hours and no vomiting or any other gross bodily functions were involved. It was my kind of sick.

As I was counting my blessings that neither Tom nor I were catching anything that the kids were bringing home and sharing, I noticed a tickle in my throat. Now, for me this normally means that I'm getting a "sinus" - you know - upper respiratory thing that lingers. But this time it went straight to a cough, lost my voice, and then I felt like I was run over. Problem was - I looked over at Tom and he looked about the same. It was all we could do to drag our butts out of bed and barely function. And here I am almost three weeks later, finally getting back to where I can say that I'm healthy. There were days that I didn't (couldn't) eat, days that I didn't shower, and a few days that I didn't get out of bed until 1pm. Tom would take the morning then crash, and I'd sleep and take the afternoon. He missed a full week's worth of work. He went in one day for a critical meeting, but came crawling back home as soon as he can. So now he's playing catch up. Which means, at 9:45pm as I type this, he's still at work. And this was like two weeks ago that he was out from work. And a friend of mine noticed the drop off in my online presence - not as many e-mails she said. The computer was not the absolute lowest priority, but it was certainly way down the list, so for some we did completely disappear.

But here I am, three weeks later, healthy. There I said it. Now does this mean that I catch the swine flu, or the plague, Ebola? Yikes. Hope I didn't just jinx myself. But it does beg the question - who will take care of us if we both get sick again? It's something that I pondered over at DC Metro Moms. Hope that as I finish this up that little tickle in my throat isn't the "sinus" coming back to kick my butt again...

One year ago today

It was a Tuesday. Lucy was a mere smiley babe:

Sam has enjoyed his Thanksgiving Feast at school:

And Ian enjoyed the company at his Feast:
Max was on his way to being toothless.

And Tom and I were coming of of a high from FSU beating Maryland (and an in person viewing in the freezing cold!)

I think my cat IS trying to kill me

This is just too funny not to share. If any of you know my cat Bunsen, he's the most loving, snuggly kitty out there. He's always sitting on my lap, sleeping in my bed, and, oh, wait...

How to Tell Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You