Independence Day

We had a GREAT 4th of July!! Spent the majority of it at home, with a quick dash to Tokeland so the kids could play in the sand on the beach for awhile. (The boys would still be there digging if we had agreed to leave them...Not sure how we got such beach-loving kids!!)

In any case, it was hard to get back to work today. We stayed up too late BBQ-ing and laughing around our new firepit, and then the boys set off a ton of fireworks once it got dark. Tiersten enjoyed the fireworks immensely and thought that was some serious fun. Jennica fell asleep on my lap in complete exhaustion before it even started. :) Even the dogs were hoarse today, as they barked even while crated.

Some photos above of the kids at the beach! Hope you and yours had a great day!!

Top Photo: All four hooligans, digging to China.

Middle Photo: Tiersten, dancing with her shadow

Bottom Photo: Jennica, trying to get warm....bbbbrrrr

Tinker-bumbler

Tiersten likes Tinkerbell. I mean REALLY likes Tinkerbell. She can spot anything with Tinkerbell on it a mile away. She has a Tinkerbell blanket, and for her birthday, her brothers bought her a Tinkerbell "dress-up" oufit--complete with wings. They picked it out themselves, which was a rather cool thing to do.

Yesterday evening, she dressed up in her Tinkerbell outfit after dinner and was dancing around the house. She accessorized with a tiara and her high-heeled Cinderella shoes. It was quite the ensemble!

As she was twirling around, I made a suggestion about a leap I thought she should try. She very promptly tripped in her shoes, got tangled in the dress, and crashed into the piano on the way to the floor. Oops! Worth a couple of good bruises....

She's a cute Tinkerbell, but not a very graceful one.

At a Loss for Words...

This post has been rattling around in my head for a few weeks. It follows a rather bizarre visit one afternoon from a friend I hadn't seen in awhile, which I will detail below, and, more importantly, the thoughts and feelings that her perspective on my life have invoked. She made me feel strange about my own position in life.....something I'm not used to.....and I've given it a lot of thought since that afternoon. The visit went something like this:

My friend showed up at our home early on a Friday afternoon, totally out of the blue. I got to know her through a parent-child thing, but neither of us participate in that activity anymore, so I don't see her much these days. She is someone that I always say "hello" to, wave at as we pass on the road, but not really someone that I've ever spent free time with. So...she shows up at my house and makes herself at home in the family room that adjoins my office. I kind of played along, curious what she was doing here, and tried to shut my looming deadlines out of my mind for a little while.

She started out with commenting how huge our house is. Okay? And how gorgeous our new kitchen is. Okay? And how cool the murals are in the girls' room that we had an artist paint. Okay? And how clean everything is. Wanting to be gracious and not make her think that I am Superwoman, I casually commented that our housekeeper had just left. Wrong thing to say. Of course, I got a wide-eyed response, "You have a housekeeper??!!??" Well, yeah......we have a housekeeper. We have four kids, two full-time jobs, I work a lot of late hours when deadlines are heavy, the boys play every sport under the sun........Yes. We have a housekeeper. No big deal. Its a very wise investment for a very busy family and I recommend it strongly.

Turns out, she has just lost her job. I'm pretty sure that she was here hoping I would have some extra work for her, but I had just hired Jennifer. And, honestly, I need someone with expertise in a very precise field of work. So.....thats a "no go." She rambles a bit at this point about how she's not really qualified to do much. She had her first child right out of high school, got married, had two more kids........

Moving on...her oldest child graduated from high school a year ago and has spent the ensuing 12 months lying on her parents' couch doing nothing. My friend wants to know what she did wrong raising her daughter not to be more motivated. Hmmmm. I don't know her well enough to answer honestly, don't know the situation well enough anyway, so I mumble something pleasant and semi-reassuring. She comments that she doubts I will ever have the same problem as our kids are all so competitive and highly motivated. I think to myself that our children would be motivated by a boot in their hind end if they thought about lying on our couch for a year after high school. Once high school is over, everyone in this house is on the "Earn-or-Learn" program. There is no free lunch here.

At this point, I'm beginning to squirm. This conversation seems to be going nowhere and I've got a TON of work to do. Much to my delight, our dogs suddenly start barking outside. Ah-Ha!! An excuse to get up and go to the window, and then maybe lead her outside onto the porch, and we can start inching our way to her car.........and she'll go away. We make it to the window, the dogs are chasing shadows, and she starts a new conversation on how lovely our backyard is, how much land we have, how nice our fenced dog area is with shed and doggie door......and how she wishes SHE could afford to have a nice fenced dog area, etc. This is beyond the beginning-to-get-annoying stage.

Now out on the front porch, she comments on the black gouge on our newly painted siding. Thoughtlessly, I comment that the roofers damaged it when they put the new roof on our house the week before. She comments that their roof is leaking really bad, but now that she's lost her job, they won't be able to afford the new roof they need. And isn't our house new? Why did we need a new roof?

I idly start picking at the blossoms on the hanging planters on our deck. She comments that they are pretty, but that plants are so expensive. I pleasantly agree......sort of.

She asks about the Suburban and comments that she had to borrow money from her mother-in-law to buy a new tire for her car because something was wrong with it.

She FINALLY left. I came back to my desk and attempted to get back to work. But this conversation has continued to plague me. She made me feel GUILTY somehow, because of what we have accomplished in life! And then I got angry.....

HOW DARE SHE!!! I'm sorry that she is at a low-point. Maybe she is always at a low-point. I don't really know. But I have made good choices with my life to get where I am!! Mike and I both work hard and don't rely on anyone but each other--financially or otherwise. While we are not wealthy, we are in a great place in life and, if we're making the most of it, I wish people could say, "GOOD FOR THEM!!"

Two weeks later........I am still at a loss for words.

Obsessed with presents...

Jennica has decided that great things come in gift wrap and bows! She is so obsessed with presents that, in fact, we've had two funny things happen last weekend regarding her love for gifts.

First, last Saturday, Jennica and I attended a bridal shower for a friend of mine. She was all excited to be dressed up and going someplace alone with Mom. As we walked into the shower, the first thing Jen saw was the mountain of gifts. With eyes wide and a big smile on her face, she turned and looked at me and said, "Its my burp-day??!!??" (Its my birthday?) With everyone laughing, I had to break it to her that the gifts were not for her. :)

Second, on Sunday, the whole family loaded up in the suburban and ran out to my parents' home for a Father's Day visit with my Dad. The kids played, we visited.......all was fine. As we were leaving and Tiersten was getting buckled in her carseat, she yelled out the door, "Happy Father's Day, Grandpa Larry!! Hope you got lots of presents!" Jennica, who was not about to be left out, quickly yelled, "Yeah......Happy Father's Day! Bring lots of presents!!" My Dad is not known for true laughter, but he showed some teeth on that laugh. (My sisters will understand the "teeth" thing.)

Jen reminds me sometimes of one of the songs from the musical, "The Sound of Music." ........Brown paper packages tied up with strings.......everybody sing..........

Busted!!

Today, we made a family shopping trip to Walmart. Along with the usual laundry detergent, dog food, etc., I threw in a bag of peanut M & Ms. It is one of Mike and my favorite treats, and we enjoy snacking on them. I opened them this evening, as we were doing the basic evening tasks of picking up and putting away and getting girls ready for bed and all that jazz. I put them inside one of the upper kitchen cabinets, and Mike and I were both getting out a few of them at a time and munching on them as we moved around the house. When Dane and Grant got home, they joined in the snacking and were occasionally nabbing a few, but the girls were "left out of the loop" as there is just something that seems like poor parenting to allow 3-and-4-year-olds to snack on chocolate shortly before bedtime. Kind of like sending them to bed with a cup full of juice--good parents just don't do it!!! You know what I'm talking about......

So, we finally got the girls in bed. I've hugged and kissed Jennica and have her covered up, and I moved to Tiersten's bed while Mike came in to snuggle Jen. I leaned down to give Tiersten a kiss, and as I was standing back up, her big blue eyes snap wide open, "Mommy, what are you eating?"
Of course, I tried to play dumb, "I'm not eating anything."
Tiersten's eye's narrowed, "You are, too! You smell like chocolate!!"
Now what in the heck do you say to that? "Oh......it must be from that cookie I had at lunchtime. Good night!!" I can hear Mike snickering behind me, as I move out of her bedroom.
The next thing I hear is, "DADDY!!! You smell like chocolate, too?!!? What are you guys eating?"
I'm standing outside their bedroom door about 10 feet trying not to laugh when I hear Mike say, "Oh...I gave Mommy a kiss so thats why I must smell that way."

Yes........we lied to our daughter. Our defense is that if we had told her we had M & Ms, she would have wanted some, which is not good for her at bedtime, right? RIGHT??!!?? But talk about feeling busted!!! We were busted for eating M & M's because our 4-year-old smelled chocolate on our breath. How funny is that?? What a kid.......

Calgon......Take me away!!

Jennica has been giving us a "run for our money" lately. She is SO strong-willed and far too good at figuring out new ways to manipulate the adults in her life. Fortunately, Mike and I make a point of being absolutely consistent with discipline, and our Day Care also works with us, so behavior expectations are the same wherever she is and whoever is "in charge" at that moment. I shudder to think of what a monster she would be if she could play us all off of each other.

Even with great communication between all of us, she's still a busy little handful. Mike and I have stepped up our expectations at home and we're making sure that we're consistent on all the little things that make a huge difference--such as deciding how many times we ask her to do something before she is disciplined, etc. It is so easy to fall into the trap of asking them 10 times and then just doing it yourself, and pretty soon you've got a kindergartener that won't do so much as take their own coat to their room. We ALL know a few of those kids...

Life at the Day Care is a different story. She is driving them insane!!! We absolutely love our day care--the staff is fantastic, the activities are excellent, the cleanliness is superb, and their discipline is absolutely fair and consistent. I've seen it in action and have been nothing but impressed. However, Jennica has "got their number" for some reason.

The root of the problem is that she won't LISTEN. If you are saying something to her that she doesn't want to hear, its like you've flipped a switch to "off". You can even hold her little face in your hands, make her look you in the eye and repeat it, and she will continue to ignore you. You would honestly think that the child has a serious hearing issue, but if you whisper in the quietest voice, "Let's go outside...", the girl is grabbing her shoes and coat and she's ready to roll. It is SO annoying......

So.....Mike and I sat down the other night after she went to bed and brainstormed some solutions. We're intelligent people--we should be able to outsmart a 3-year-old. Right?

So yesterday, the Day Care started something new with her, which we will also be doing at home, in keeping with the consistency theory. We're going to add a reward system on top of the punishment system. Not rocket science--simply reward the good behavior as well as punish the bad behavior. Obviously, the reward needs to be something she looks forward to, but not something monetary, or food-related, which sends the wrong message. So......we decide to try stickers. Yesterday morning went well. Yesterday afternoon was a complete and total disaster. We're trying it again today.

In the meantime, we are continuing to verbally communicate positive and negative responses to her actions. I thought that I would help her out this morning by taking a moment alone to briefly go over the expectations again. When I pulled up to the Day Care this morning, I let Tiersten out and sent her into the building. Looking at Jennica still strapped in her carseat (a captive audience, literally), I said to her in an upbeat tone, "You're going to have a good day, aren't you?"
Jennica: "Yeah!" (excitedly)
Me: "Are you going to listen to Jodi today?"
Jennica: "Yes Sir!" (Not sure where they got it, but the girls have been answering that way for a week or so.)
Me: "How about Amber? Are you going to listen to Amber and do what she tells you to?"
Jennica: "Yes Sir!"
Me: "And Sheila, too?"
Jennica: "Yep!"
Me: "So what are you going to do when Jodi asks you to pick up a toy?"
Jennica: "Go to time out!!!!"
That wasn't the response I was looking for. Me: "No.........You're going to pick up the toy and put it away, aren't you?"
Jennica: "Uh huh." Getting serious wiggles in the carseat now.
Me: "Jennica, you need to listen and follow directions. You'll get a sticker if you listen."
Jennica: "Okay!" I mentioned stickers. She's back on board.......sort of.
Me: "No hitting, no biting, and follow directions."
Jennica: "If they hit me first?" I shouldn't have gone there.
Me: "No.......even if they hit you first you don't hit back. You tell Jodi."
Jennica: "Okay." Wiggling again.
Me: "So what are you going to do when Amber tells you to put your shoes away?"
Jennica: "Go to time out!!!"

I give up. We'll see how the day goes. Anyone know a good psychologist? Not for Jennica...for me. :)

Now this is a new experience...

Tonight was 8th grade graduation, at which Dane played in the band. Grant and I attended, while Mike got dinner for the girls. (Neither of us were up for trying to keep the girls quiet that long.)

Eighth grade graduation was frighteningly similar to what it was 20+ years ago when I graduated from the same 8th grade. FUNNY!!! And.........same as 20+ years ago, there is a dance afterwards. So we are in uncharted territory tonight. We're waiting up until 10:00 to go back down to the school to pick Dane up from the dance. The last day of school is tomorrow, so the staff decided to get the kids home at a decent hour. It just feels rather funny to be waiting up for Dane because he is at a DANCE.

Ahhhh........He's growing up.

Its June 11th ALREADY??!!??

I fully admit to sounding a bit like Rip Van Winkle these days........Where is the time going? GOOD GRIEF!!!

Life is hectic, but it sure is great!! As always, I'm feeling very fortunate to be healthy and active, with a healthy and active husband and four healthy and active children. Even though our calendar can be somewhat overwhelming, it sure beats the other alternatives.

Grant's birthday came and went last week and he is now officially TWELVE!!! He wanted cash, cash, and more cash and thats exactly what he got. I spent his whole birthday with him, as he lucked out and had a field trip that day at school and I was a chaperone. Next week, he and I have a hot date to run up to Olympia and pick out the new electric guitar he has been wanting. He's anxious to join in with Dane's bass. I see a band in their future.....

Dane has been enjoying a relatively lazy last few weeks of school. He's put a little weight back on since the end of track and he's no longer looking quite so emaciated. His energy level is also climbing back up to normal ranges and I'm so relieved to have him looking and feeling good again. Not quite sure what happened there in April and May, but he was definitely "off". He's pretty pleased tonight, as he found out today that he scored a 296, out of a possible 300, on a major report for end of the year grades.

Tiersten finished preschool with a bang and is now a "lady of leisure" until fall. She's on the verge of beginning to read, so its going to be interesting to see how fast she takes off with it. She also now has a big-girl bicycle and she looks really old riding it. For some odd reason that we have not yet determined, she's going through a rather annoying phase right now of calling Jennica "Coconut." NO idea where that came from......

And, wonder of wonders, Jennica is SLEEPING. She's going to bed at night sleeping on her bedroom floor (still doesn't like her bed), without being rocked and without an hour of screaming, and most of the time, she stays there until morning. Naps are still hit-and-miss, but we've decided we can live with that as long as she will go to bed at night. Mike gets all the credit for this one--not sure what he finally did, but its working. We've also found out recently that Jennica is a hard little worker. We've always got 20 projects going around here and she runs errands, LOVES to help, and talks a steady chatter the whole entire time. She's been negotiating with me for her very own pruning shears, but I'm not giving in yet. :)

Mike's workload has been heavy and stressful at times lately. I wish I could say that he comes home every day to dinner on the table, the lawn freshly mowed, and his underwear neatly pressed. Unfortunately, most of the time he comes home to the chaos of a very busy appraisal business run out of our home with the fax and phone ringing, Jennifer(my assistant) and I blabbing back and forth, boys in and out, girls needing to be picked up, and dinner sometimes started and sometimes still a complete and total mystery. With the addition of Jennifer, I AM working significantly fewer evenings and weekends, but its still crazy around here. On a good note, he is incredibly and always very loved. Beyond that......I wonder if he had any clue what he was in for with me?

As for me, its been an odd month. My Mom got suddenly very ill in May and spent a total of 8 days in two different hospitals. Thankfully, she is much better, but it was a harsh reminder that we are all mortal. I think my Mom handled her illness better than my Dad did. Oddly enough, it made me step back and reflect on their marriage as it was during my childhood, and the obvious strength of their marriage now. I'm also incredibly grateful to Mike, as he went and spent a long day at the hospital with my Dad when I couldn't be away from the business. And honestly, Mike was probably a better companion for my Dad that day anyway. Thank you, Michael.

Other than that, I have just been keeping busy with appraisals and family things. I'm incredibly grateful to be taking more time away from my desk and have vastly enjoyed digging into our yard and starting some long-awaited small landscaping projects. The big ones are still to come. I have solemnly promised my sons that I will not start any trees on fire this year. (You start ONE little tree on fire and everyone gets weird about you playing with matches....)

Somehow, it is already 8:30 pm, so I think I'm going to abandon the desk and pick up the reins in the morning. You know......I clearly remember watching the clock when I worked at the County thinking that the days would never pass. Now.....I find myself in exactly the opposite position--the days fly by with never enough time to accomplish all that I want. Is there ever a balance??

Happy Mother's Day!

Okay.........so it was two weeks ago that I said I was going to do better on the blog updating. I was also going to post some new pictures of the kids. None of that has happened. Oops! Great intentions......but once again, life got in the way. I'm still not in the mood to scan photos, so instead, I'll give a written update and another promise to add photos soon.

First of all, my new employee with the business started work this past week. WAHOO! Jennifer is turning out to be exactly what I needed--an independent self-started with extensive knowledge in legal descriptions and mapping. I pointed her at the computer, handed her a stack of files, and she's pretty much been on her own and figuring it out as she goes. PERFECT! Honestly, I don't have time to train someone, so I'm so glad she's willing to learn "on the fly". Eventually, she will work a part-time schedule, but I started this week behind and she pitched in and got me to the point where I am almost caught up. I am so grateful to have her!!

Dane is finally done with track, and I think he's actually relieved. This is the first time since school started that he will actually be riding the bus home on a day-in/day-out basis with no sports activities ongoing. He suddenly took a huge growth spurt and is now a solid two inches taller than I am. (WEIRD!!) He's also broad-shouldered and skinny!

Grant is about halfway through baseball season and seems to be having a great time in Little League. He's spending most games in left field, with occasional games at second base, and has had some decent hits. He's also got some end-of-the-year field trips coming up, which he always looks forward to. Its hard to believe he's going to be a 6th grader next year.

Tiersten has a couple of weeks of preschool left, and then she'll be done with school for the summer. I don't think she's figured out yet that school is going to be over for a few months, I don't think she's going to be real pleased about it, and I'm not sure whether to sit her down and talk about it, or just wait for her to kind of ease into it and figure it out on her own. She went outside with me today to help me poison some moles, and was pretty excited about it until Grant told her that we were KILLING the moles. :)

Jennica is still growing like a weed--she's a tad taller than Tiersten now, but don't tell Tiersten. Jen continues to be our "all or nothing" child. She has a huge bruise on her leg from a jumping game in the bathtub, and managed to ride her tricyle off of the porch steps this weekend. It never seems to matter how much supervision she has...she has an uncanny ability to wait until our backs are turned for 30 seconds to pull off whatever Evil Knievel stunt she's been working on. Sleep continues to be a low priority on her list, as well. Some days better......some days worse.......but she never seems to require as much sleep as we do.

All in all, life continues to be good, if a tad over-scheduled. Mike and I both kind of "hit the wall" this past weekend and are both committed to trying to get caught back up on rest this week. Monday should be a great start--the evening only has a baseball game and a band concert on the schedule. :)

MIA from blogging

One of my sisters told me a while back that she and our other sister had decided they could tell when I was really busy by how often I was updating the blog. I guess if she's right, than I've been REALLY busy lately... :)

And actually, I have!! Dane is in track, and Grant is in Little League baseball. April saw three birthdays in our family come and go. Mike and I escaped overnight to Seattle to a Mariner's game and are continuing to play Poker with friends one Saturday night each month. I hired a new employee to help me with the business, and have purchased a larger and more extensive computer network system so that Jennifer and I can set the appraisal world on its ear. The computer is great, but the network set-up and working through the kinks seems to be taking forever.

In any case, I'm back! Hope to be blogging a little more often in the near future again. I've got new photos to post of all the kids and I need to get caught back up with everyone.

Check back soon!
Beth

Happy Anniversary........to our kitchen?!?

On Monday, March 6, 2006, I decided to change the faucet on our kitchen sink. The previous faucet was just a tad leaky, and we had just bought a new one over the weekend. Being impatient, I decided that I would replace the old faucet with the new one before settling down at my desk to a day of appraisal reports. Hindsight 20/20, it was a bad decision, but at the moment, it seemed perfectly reasonable. I mean.........How hard can it be? You unscrew the pieces, remove the old faucet, put the new one on, and screw it all back together? Right?

Well....things did not go that smoothly. I had a small malfunction. Which resulted in a small pipe breaking. Below the shut-off valve. Which resulted in water pouring all over our kitchen floor. And we happen to have incredible water pressure. By the time we got the water shut off, we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 gallons of water. In our house.

In the middle of this, I made a rather frantic phone call to my husband at work. I'm hysterically yelling into the phone that I've got water everywhere, while he is still trying to figure out who the idiot on the phone is and why they are hysterical. I wish I had a recording of that phone call. Or maybe not.

For the first few hours, I mopped. And mopped some more. And tried to convince myself that it was just a little water. By that evening, Mike had convinced me that, perhaps, this was a bigger problem and I needed to pull myself out of denial. We continued to suck water with everything we could think of. We elevated carpets and increased air circulation. And in the morning, I called the insurance company. When they asked if we thought we should have a water damage professional look at it, I agreed hesitantly. Wasn't that a bit extreme, after all?

The professionals showed up within two hours, armed with state-of-the-art tools that measure water content in flooring and wall surfaces. It wasn't good. They packed out our flooring, and packed in 8 HUGE fans that made us feel like we were living at the end of the busiest runway at Seatac. They made suggestions about moving out, which we ignored. For heaven's sake, I operate a busy business from home and could not imagine moving the business, as well as our family of six, to a motel or apartment. So we lived on the runway.

The professionals came back daily and monitored the drying process. On Thursday, the insurance adjuster came and viewed the damage personally. We had water behind the cabinets and it wasn't drying, so our cabinets joined our flooring at the garbage dump. And our kitchen became an assemblage of boxes. A commercial-sized humidifier and more fans joined the original 8, and they erected a plastic tent around that whole portion of our house. We had to yell to hear each other just a few feet away.

Finally, after a week, we were pronounced, "Dry". Great. We looked around and our cabinets were gone, our flooring was gone, the sheetrock was gone up to a height of four feet, the insulation was exposed...we didn't even have a kitchen sink.

From that point, the arguments started with the insurance company. We fired the adjuster. We tried to fire the voice on the phone in Michigan. We became the "Homeowners from Hell." After three months of living with a family of six, through baseball season, without a working kitchen, we finally became fully functional in mid-June, with the help of a $30,000+ "donation" from our insurance company. There is a woman named Sarah in Michigan that works for the insurance company that REALLY doesn't like us. Because we won. Neener neener neener.

Our new kitchen is beautiful and we love it!! Looking back now, the three months was well-worth a brand-new custom built kitchen with exactly our tastes in flooring, cabinetry, countertops, appliances........the whole works.

But I have to admit that I will NEVER never ever try to replace a faucet. NEVER!!! My plumbing days are over. Its hard to believe it has been a whole year......

A Story for Dane

The past couple of weeks, Dane has spent more time than usual at home. First, he missed a week of school with pneumonia, and then he had a two-week break between the end of basketball season and the start of track, so he has actually been home after school. We also had three days off from school altogether for Mid-Winter Break, and the boys and I spent a lot of time together then. Its been nice.....

The other evening, Mike and I both commented to Dane at the dinner table about how lean he has gotten. With three full sports seasons already behind him this year, and one still to go, he has gotten almost downright thin. He is looking me in the eye right now, and I'm sure that by the end of the summer, I'll be looking up at him. As all Moms of boys this age seem to understand, its not just their HEIGHT that is shocking. His hands are suddenly large, his posture has changed from a boys to a young man's, and he's just so.......grown up.

As a final WOW, I was shuffling through pictures late this afternoon, looking for Grant's football photos from last fall. In the middle of the stack, I stumbled across some pictures of Dane from his 2005 football season. What an incredible difference 18 months has made!!! Mind-boggling!!! I'm sure I'm going to be saying the exact same things about Grant in a few years!!!

So Dane.......Here is a funny story for you. One that I remember from when you were very small. We were at Nana and Grandpa Larry's house for Thanksgiving, the year that you had turned two. Grant was about 5 months old. I had bought you the Disney movie, "Snow White" and you had been watching it off and on for a few weeks.

When we got to their house, Nana had a children's nativity all set up for you on the coffee table. The figurines were made out of plastic, so you could play with them all you wanted without having to worry about breaking her porcelain set. I was busy with Grant and not really focusing on what you were doing, until Nana pointed me to you and asked what you were doing. You had taken the figurines and lined them up, as if in a single-file line and seemed almost to be MARCHING them. It wasn't until you started chanting, in a sing-song voice, that it dawned on me, and I started laughing.

There you were, with Mary, Joseph, the three kings, the shepherds and all the rest of the gang lined up and singing, "Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Hi Ho.....". To you, they were the seven dwarves marching off to the mines.

I love you, Dane! You are a great son, a wonderful oldest brother, and a marvelous person. I'm so glad I have you in my life!

Love,
Mom

Minivan-Mom-No-More

For the past four years, I have been driving a minivan. A white Honda Odyssey, to be exact. Cloth seats, power sliding doors, boring, practical........YAWN!!!!

We have long been admirers of the big SUVs. We are those annoying people that show up on car lots (preferably when they are closed) and press our noses up against the windows of the vehicles just to look in them. Each year when the new models come out, we check out all the new options on the internet and debate whether we would want leather or not, and what color we would choose. And then we rationalize that they are gas-guzzling beasts and we don't envy those folks when they get to the pumps. Yeah right.....

Well.......GUESS WHAT???!!!??? WE BOUGHT ONE!!! Good-bye to practical and bring on the fuel!!!

It is a 2007 Suburban in Amber Bronze (please don't call it brown)!! Far and away, a more luxurious a vehicle than I expected to be driving at this point in my life. Leather, power moon roof, auto headlights, remote starter, OnStar, 6-CD changer, rear-parking assist......but we will be living without the heated seats (All together now......ooooooohhhhhh......bummer!). It is an absolute BLAST to drive. We got a great deal on it and, with the boys getting taller with every passing day, its sure nice to have the extra room. (And YES, there is significantly more room than in a minivan.)

Now...........if I could just convince Mike that he can't drive it. Except maybe on his Birthday and Christmas. Or when I want a nice long nap on a long trip. :)

Tuberculosis and Scarlet Fever???

I suddenly feel like I've been thrust into a "Little House on the Prairie" book.

Two children that attend our day care were diagnosed a couple of weeks ago with scarlet fever. SCARLET FEVER!!???!!!

And then, last Friday, Grant came home from school and said that Darrol, one of his good friends and a fellow basketball player, is very sick with something highly contagious that Grant couldn't remember the name of. But the school had told them that they needed to tell their parents to expect a letter to arrive in the mail on Saturday, and that all the kids in the fifth grade would be tested for it. Turns out, Darrol has active tuberculosis. TUBERCULOSIS!!???!!!

I'm feeling a little awed by all of this. Fortunately, none of our children have any immunodeficiency issues that could make these illnesses a high potential for being life-threatening. IF our family should contract one of these illnesses, it will require prompt medical treatment, but we are not at high risk for serious complications. (Thank goodness!!) Not that I'm trying to ignore the seriousness of the problem, but I'm also trying to be realistic and not panic needlessly.

But still...........SCARLET FEVER AND TUBERCULOSIS??!!!??? This is 2007, right? It is both fascinating and frightening to me to see these illnesses making a comeback. WHY is this happening? HOW do we prevent other illnesses that we thought were a "thing of the past" from recurring? Are we going to see a return of the Bubonic Plague and Smallpox??

WOW! I remember thinking that you were really sick if you had strep throat......

The ties that bind...

A few weeks ago, I read something about how common memories and experiences provide a bond for people of similar backgrounds and give them a "connection". I have to admit that I instantly related and understood what the writer had been trying to say. It doesn't seem to matter exactly what the connection is--its just a fact that if you put a group of human beings in one place together for very long, they develop memories, inside jokes, topics which are avoided, etc.

In my family, I grew up the youngest of three girls. As adults, my sisters and I are each very different (which definitely keeps things from being boring when we're together). As is so typical with families, we probably would never be friends if we weren't related--not because we wouldn't like each other, but because we probably just would never cross paths!!

In any case, sisters we are. When I think of the things we share, the things below are what come to my mind. I'm POSITIVE that they will, in every instance, know exactly what I'm talking about.

1) W-26
2) The 10-minute tree
3) The song we are supposed to sing at Mom's future funeral (Hopefully very DISTANT future funeral.)
4) Why masking tape is involved in making chocolate chip cookies
5) Pulling daisies (Not picking...)
6) Hand-dipped chocolates
7) The real reason for singing "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," from the musical, Oklahoma.
8) Spider checks
9) Nose mittens from Rose
10) How to cook toast on an open fire (Something I thought everyone did, by the way.)
11) Buck, the cow
12)And while I'm on the topic of cows, why we had to name them what we named them
13)Benji-Mom
14)"There's blue sky in the west........."
15) How it rains in Washington D.C.



I'm sure I'm going to think of MANY more as soon as I sign off of here, so I will have to add them later. Dinner awaits...

Dumb dog........

Last Saturday afternoon, our dogs managed to knock open the gate on their yard. One of them stayed home (because he is afraid of the world "outside") and the other one took a walk. We came home approximately 90 minutes after the jailbreak, and Parker was missing. I hate to admit it now, but we FREAKED.

Within minutes, we were walking the neighborhood calling him and within a half hour, we were looking for him by car. No sign of him. Vanished.

We continued to look for him until LATE that night, posted signs that same night on every stop sign in a three-mile radius, posted him on the internet, and went to bed very worried. I was actually awake at 2 a.m. staring at the ceiling, worrying about the dog. Did he get hit by a car and was lying in a ditch in pain somewhere? Had someone found him wandering along the side of the road and picked him up with no intent of finding his rightful owner? Was he lost and alone in the woods closeby and unable to find his way home? The HORRORS......

In my defense........this dog has been with us since he was 13 weeks old. He is a very high-quality Shetland Sheepdog that was actually sold as a show prospect as a puppy, and then had to be re-sold as a "pet" because he only dropped one testicle. (To the non-dog-showing-folks-out-there, he is unable to be shown AKC due to his "one nut" status, and therefore, needed to be neutered and have a career change to a performance event, which is based on a particular chosen skill rather than a physical rating of the merits of his body. Does this seem stupid to you? Too bad!!! Dog showing is a multi-million dollar business.......) So we bought him and actually had him flown home to Washington to live with us. He is/was Dane's obedience dog and was THE 2003 Washington State 4-H Pre-Novice Obedience CHAMPION. Applause is appreciated here.....blah blah blah.

We got up bright and early Sunday morning, and again went Parker-hunting in the car. Two more hours of driving around. We covered a bigger area this time, as he had now had all night to make it a farther distance. Still no sign of his hairy little body.

About 11 a.m. on Sunday morning, the phone rang. The Sheriff's Office had received an email from one of our internet-surfing friends, and had made the connection with a phone call they had received earlier that morning. Parker was found!!

As it turns out, our hairy friend had walked only a quarter mile or so. He had spent Saturday evening/night and Sunday morning being happily spoiled by the residents of the nursing home up the road. From the sounds of it, he was quite the celebrity. He visited all the residents in their rooms at bedtime, went to mealtime in the dining hall......the whole works. We went down and picked him up and he has been home ever since.

As the final insult of all our needless worry, I dropped by a local business in the middle of the week, and someone casually mentioned something about Parker and the newspaper. I gave them a completely blank look and said, "What??" They proceeded to open our local newspaper and show me that, indeed, there was Parker's photo, smiling happily back at me, with a nice note about how Parker had been found and was now home with his family. I have no idea who put it in the newspaper. The photo was the one we had posted on the internet, and is included above.

So..........I guess the moral to the story is that the dog came out ahead on this whole deal. He got treated like a celebrity at the nursing home.........and again got treated like a celebrity by us when he returned safe and sound. We spent endless hours driving around looking for him, posting notices, and staring at the ceiling worrying. He was happily curled up in a nice, warm bed being admired by old people. And in the end.........he got his flippin' picture in the newspaper.

Dumb dog!!!!

Miss Jennica Potato-Head

Today didn't start out on such a great note. Let me explain...



The girls were playing in their room while the boys were getting breakfast for themselves and I was picking up the random morning disarray around the house. Out of the blue, I suddenly heard Jennica give a blood-curdling scream. Not the "I'm-angry" type of scream, but a "I'm in serious pain" type of scream. Dane and I both headed for the girls room at a dead sprint.



As we dashed into their room, Jennica had her hands clasped to her head and was still wailing. Tiersten was standing quietly to one side with her hands behind her back. (Didn't take a genius to figure out that perhaps Tiersten had inflicted the obvious pain.) When I asked Tiersten what had happened, as Jennica was obviously too upset to tell me, she held up a Mr. Potato Head ear and told me that she had put it in Jennica's ear!!! Now......the peg on the Mr. Potato Head is quite long as it is meant to held the ear into the head of a plastic object!! As I pryed Jen's hand away from her ear, it was obvious that there was blood in the ear canal. She was still screaming, and promptly started throwing up, as we all know about the human gag reflex that we get when we cram something too far into our ear canal. (If you don't know about that, try it with a Q-tip!)



Long story short...Jennica will be fine. Her doctor confirmed that her ear tube is still firmly in place, the ear drum is intact, and the bleeding was caused by the plastic stem of the toy where it scraped the inner wall of her ear canal. A few days of antibiotic ear drops and she will be back to normal.



But I still felt like an idiot explaining that Tiersten tried to turn Jennica into Mr. Potato Head. When does this parenting thing get easier? ...........Sigh...........

The Dynamic Duo

Not sisters by birth, but we knew from the start, God placed them together, to be sisters at heart.

Loads of laughter...

I've had an interesting week with the kids. All four of them have made me laugh, in one way or another. Let me share my stories...

First, everyone went back to school on Tuesday (HURRAY!). As I was escorting Tiersten down the hallway to her preschool classroom that morning, an older elementary student that I vaguely know said, "Hi, Tiersten!!" As we passed her, I heard this same girl turn to a friend that was with her and say, "That's my brother's girlfriend." HELLO??? Tiersten is WHAT???!!!??? For pete's sake, she is three years old, so I'm not about it get my panties in a wad over the romantic imaginings of a 5th grader, but STILL its a little shocking the first time you hear one of your children identified as someone's romantic interest, and even more shocking still when it is your THREE YEAR OLD. Mike and I are still shaking our heads over this one.

Second, Grant is a math whiz and always has been. But this week, one day after school he was quietly working on some homework, and started mumbling and muttering. Within about five minutes, it deteriorated from muttering and mumbling to a full-blown crying fit and temper tantrum. This is WAY out of character for Grant. I finally got him settled down enough to talk to me. He had been assigned a Sudoku as math homework and it was sending him "over the edge". For a whiz kid that is used to flying through schoolwork like lightning, the methodical challenge of a Sudoku was almost too much. I got him calmed down and working on a system to get through it, went to pick up Dane at basketball practice and girls at Day Care, and by the time I got home, he was madder than a hornet again. He had started trying to skip steps again and messed it all up again. Finally, about 8:30 that evening, he and I had worked through the entire puzzle together. I think Grant needs more challenges that he has to take one step at a time. WOW...What a temper!!! Didn't know that side of him existed. LOLOL.

Yesterday, I received a new bathrobe by UPS that I had ordered. I haven't had a bathrobe in years, but I saw this online at an After-Christmas Clearance Sale, thought it might come in handy for those late nights and early mornings at my computer, so I ordered it. The funny part is that Dane thought it was HYSTERICAL. He immediately started humming the theme from "Rocky" and even went in is room to get his wrestling shoes and tried to get me to put them on. He said I looked just like a BOXER and thought that his wrestling shoes were going to be the perfect accessory. He griped a little because my new bathrobe doesn't have a hood, and every time I passed him moving around the house last night, he started cracking up and trying to fake-punch me. ??????? Who would have thought that a stupid BATHROBE would get him so excited??? Even more, the thing is lime green!! Who has ever seen a boxer in a lime green, fuzzy bathrobe with a zipper up the front?? Too funny!!

Lastly, I saw a purple sweater in the same clearance sale that I saw the bathrobe and ordered it. It arrived yesterday, in the same package with the bathrobe. So this morning, I'm standing in the bathroom putting on my makeup and Jennica walks in. She instantly said, "New shirt?" I was pretty impressed that she noticed! So, of course, I said, "Yes! Do you like it?" She got this very intent look on her face and I could see that she was REALLY looking at my purple sweater. Finally, she wrinkled up her nose in the way that she does when something stinks and shook her head and said, "No." I cracked up!! In absolute honesty, I'm not sure that I like it either!! Its a lot of PURPLE for me. I'm not sure what possessed me to order it, other than that it was something other than a dark winter color, and it was the right price. Its basically the color of Barney the Dinosaur, as Mike coined it. LOTS of purple!!! But the fact that Jen noticed it was new, and that she was honest when asked if she liked it, really cracked me up.

So I've had some laughter with day-t0-day adventures this week. Every day is a good day to laugh!! Hope all of you have had some laughter, too!!!

I'm baa-aaack........

December got away from me BIG TIME!!! Where did the time go?

In any case, we had a wonderful Christmas and New Year here. Visited a lot of family and friends, the kids have enjoyed their long time away from school (they go back tomorrow), and I have enjoyed a self-imposed sabbatical in which I worked long hours organizing/cleaning/purging/etc. in hopes that it will improve my turn-around times on my appraisal orders, relieve some congestion, and all that jazz. I actually wish that I had another full week of time to organize as I still have a few remaining things on my list , but I'm just going to have to accomplish them in the middle of grinding out reports. Like it or not, I've got reports due on Friday.

Dane starts basketball practice this next week, which means we have a couple more weeks before the games start. (YES!!!) Grant should be starting his practices next weekend, but we'll see......As much as we encourage our sons to play, and love to be there to cheer them on, the day to day challenge of meals, laundry, juggling girls, etc. when we are in full swing of one sport or another is sometimes exhausting. But, with that said, I'm also very proud of both of the boys and grateful for having healthy children that can and want to participate in EVERYTHING.

The girls seem to be maturing in a big spurt again. Jennica's speech development has taken another big leap and we've gone from 2-3 word phrases to full paragraphs in a very short time. She is so strong-willed and continues to stand toe-to-toe with us on so many occasions. Today, she absolutely REFUSED to come out of the jungle gym thingy at Burger King, so Mike got to climb up there and drag her out. :) Tiersten is also taking a big jump developmentally and wrote Mike's name on her Doodle Pad today with him just telling her M-I-K-E. (She can already write "Dad" so he had to come up with a new challenge.) Not bad for being 3!!

As a final farewell to the holidays, Mike and I spent New Year's Eve last night playing poker with a group of friends. We had a great time, but I have to admit that I have chuckled silently to myself today, as the biggest pleasure that came out of the evening for me was that I was incredibly glad to go home with MY husband. It is so enlightening to spend time with other couples, watch their interactions, and such a nice place to be in life when you can't imagine going home with anyone else. I love you, Michael!!!

My hope for January is to get back to blogging more. I have missed this venue to express myself, as its rather therapeutic for me. LOLOL.

Happy New Year!!!