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!!!

Impending Christmas from Jennica's viewpoint

This blog is my estimate of what Jennica is thinking and feeling, based on her recent activities. :)

1) Mom and Dad put a tree in our house, covered it with bright lights and shiny things and expect me to stay away from it? Yeah right......

2) Mom and Dad wrapped PRESENTS and put them under the tree and want me to stay out of them. How stupid can they be? If they wanted me to stay out of them, why did they put them UNDER the tree where I can get to them?

3) I've got this cool new red dress, but even cooler is this net thingy underneath it that goes way out when I spin really fast. I'd really like to show everyone I meet this cool net thingy, but Mom and Dad call it "flashing" and don't seem to like it. Too bad!!!

We'll see what else she gets into in the next week...It could get interesting.....

I'm going to the Nutcracker!!

I got a phone call the other day asking me if I was interested in a "day trip" and I'm SO excited!! I get to go to The Nutcracker in Seattle!! I've wanted to go for years, but have always been out-voted by the three males in the house. Since the other two females aren't old enough to vote yet, I've lost every time....

But everyone keeps laughing at my adventure when I tell them that I'm being chaffeured to Seattle in a big yellow school bus and I'm being accompanied by 60+ fifth and sixth graders plus some other parents and teachers. Seems that people don't think that 10-12 year olds are going to be real attentive to the production. Hmmm........They may be right. However, I refuse to be swayed and I'm going to go and have a GREAT TIME!!

So why did the school call ME? Do I have "sucker" tattooed across my forehead? Hmmmm.....

Good Riddance November!

Any of you that check my blog regularly may have been wondering where I've been lately. Or not!! Hee hee hee. Whether you want to know or not, I'm going to tell ya!! (Once again, I remind you that you are here voluntarily.......)

As I've already mentioned Mike and I went to Seattle overnight over Veterans Day weekend. Prior to that, I had taken a day off ALL BY MYSELF and gone shopping out of town just for a day. We hardly broke the bank during either of these trips, but it is rare for us to do two things like this back-to-back simply "for the fun of it."

So.......I guess you could say that in the middle of this month, I felt like maybe I needed to take on more work than I normally would have to make a little extra and atone for our expenditures. So as the appraisal orders kept coming and the phone kept ringing, I kept saying, "YES!" Big mistake, huge.......GI-NORMOUS!

Up until Thanksgiving, I was sailing along happily in denial as to what I had done to myself. But after Thanksgiving, the bell tolled loudly and I was shackled to my desk for my sins. I honest to goodness NEVER want to repeat a month like November. I'm simply not greedy enough to lower my quality of life to the extreme of working those kinds of hours!!

Finally, at 11 pm on Friday, DECEMBER 1st, I completed the last order that had been due in November. Only 24 hours late, technically speaking. My tendons in my wrists are still aching tonight, Sunday evening, from the stress of hours spent at the keyboard last week.

So........moral to the story?? GREED does not pay!! Not to me anyway!! I was happy to usher in December, which is already much slower, as the market tends to lull this time of year a bit.

So you can picture me, with huge bags under my eyes and my hair still smoking from being on fire that last week and LAUGH!!! The office is CLOSED, until Monday morning at 8 a.m. and will be closing promptly at 5 p.m. No more 16+ hour days!! At least not until I forget how awful it was the last time...

My Stick Person

I saw this little guy on someone else's blog and I liked him, so I kidnapped him. :) Life is good right now!! I made some headway on the pile of stuff on my desk today and am rewarding myself with the evening off!! WAHOO!!! I hope that wherever you are, you are enjoying a day/evening with family and loved ones!!

My "Gremlin"

Grant is now 11 and doesn't really like it when I call him "Gremlin" anymore, which has been my nickname for him since he was about a year old. He says he doesn't mind "Grant-ster", another one of his nicknames, but really prefers that we avoid "Gremlin". I'm having a hard time breaking the habit, but I'm working on it as I'm trying to respect his wishes and the fact that he's growing up.

Since he IS growing up and I've been blogging about the funny things that the girls do and say, I've come to realize that with the passage of time, I have forgotten some of the funny things that the boys did and said when they were in toddler and preschool stages. The boys like to read my blog and have asked me if they did/said funny things at the same age. So I've decided that I'm occasionally going to blog things about the boys from their early childhood to journal those events for them. Today, this one is all about Grant. The photo I will attach of him was taken at about the time this conversation happened. Check out those dimples!!!

When Grant was about 4, he was attending Preschool/Day Care while I was at work. He had a habit of coming into the bathroom in the morning, perching on the bathroom counter, and chatting with me while I got ready for work. One November morning, I was asking him what he was learning at Preschool and he started chatting about pilgrims. The conversation went like this:

Me: "What have you been talking about at Preschool?"
Grant: "Indians and pilgrims. Pilgrims rode on a boat."
Me: "Did the indians help the pilgrims?"
Grant: "Yep. The indians helped the pilgrims build houses."
Me: "That's cool. Did they live in houses like us?"
Grant: "No. The Indians lived in tee-pees." (I don't really think the indians of the Atlantic coastline lived in tee-pees, but he was four, so I didn't argue.)
Me: "Wow. Did you know that indians here lived in big houses made of wood?"
Grant: "They did?"
Me: "Yep. What other kinds of houses do people live in?"
Grant: Blank look here.
Me: "How about igloos? Who lives in igloos?"
Grant: "IGLOOS??"
Me: "Yes....igloos? Who lives in igloos?" (I thought this was a word he was familiar with.)
Grant: Big pause. Thinking. And then, "Oh. Oh. I know!!! DOGS!!!"

It took me a minute. Is it taking you a minute, too? Hint here: My Mom and Dad had a Golden Retriever at the time with a Dog-loo from Walmart. I was laughing too hard to explain that the answer I had been looking for was eskimo. And, after all, he was right!! The retriever DID live in an igloo. :))))

Yes, Grant, you also said/did funny things at a young age. I love you, Grant-ster!!! You were a wonderful 4-year-old and you're an even better 11-year-old. I'm proud of you!!!

The wind blew and the trees fell

This past week, we had a doozy of a windstorm. It started blowing here about noon and went to full force at about 1:30. I grew up here in the Pacific Northwest, am accustomed to life beneath the trees with the coastal winds that blow several times each year, but this was UNREAL. I'm not sure that I've ever felt it blow this hard. And oddly enough, at about 4:30 pm, it was like God turned the switch off and the wind stopped. Very strange.

In any case, during the course of the storm, we ended up with at least four trees down on our property. A year ago, we hired a faller to come in and take out 13 hemlocks close to the house, several of which were rotten, and we are so thankful that we spent the money and had it done. The four trees that fell in this storm were out along the driveway, made a huge mess with limbs and debris, but our home was not threatened. One of them was a BIG one, which took out a couple others on its way down. I got the adventure of driving the van across our yard to get out the driveway that day, but other then a minor four-wheeling event in a minivan, no major thrills. I have to admit that it was fun to see Grant's face when he got off the school bus and had to climb over a fallen tree to get to the house. He came in the door and said, "Uh, Mom?? Did you know we have a tree in the driveway??" No kidding. :)

In any case, Mike is out playing lumberjack this morning. His chainsaw will cut up all the limbs and the smaller-midsize trees, but we're probably going to have to hire someone to come in and do something with the big one. Its going to require a serious tree-eating piece of machinery. Since we don't have any sort of wood-burning heat, I guess Dad & Mom will get first crack at a bunch of free firewood.

Hey Marj--If you guys have some sort of wood heat in your house, I'll give you a free load of firewood for Christmas to take back to Spokane in your trunk with you!!!

Feeling humbled this morning...

Jennica was up during the night and not in a pleasant mood. We finally determined that it was a stomach ache (won't go into the details of how we figured that out). I'm tired this morning, and I got, by far, the better end of the deal as Mike sent me back to bed and stayed up with her. He stumbled out the door at 6:30 this morning to head to work and I know he's exhausted today.

I'm not really a morning person to begin with, and with a lack of sleep, I'm even worse. Of course, Jen managed to wake up bright and sunny today, which thoroughly annoyed me. Until suddenly I remembered...

This is the little girl that is supposed to have severe, inherited disabilities. This is the little girl that we almost "lost" to her birth family on the East Coast. This is the little girl that we were not sure would walk or talk. This is the little girl that we hauled to a neuro-developmentalist at 8 months so we could begin the process of identifying her disabilities and start early therapies.

Instead what we have is Jennica. Rambunctious, stubborn, demanding, delightfully funny, lover-of-books and any lap that is still long enough for her to climb into it, brown-eyed Jennica. She actually doesn't ever really walk.....she runs!!! And sings. And when she laughs, she laughs with her whole body.

So, I am again humbled by our youngest daughter, reminded of what a miracle she truly is, and what a miracle God has worked right in front of us in watching her grow from the tiny 7-week-old infant she was, to the rowdy 2 1/2-year-old she is today. We took custody of her fully knowing that she was the biological child of two developmentally disabled adults, and that she had two autistic siblings. NEVER did we question our decision to adopt her, and I feel so strongly that God blessed us with a MIRACLE.

Now, if I can only remember all of this the next time that she is wide awake at 5 a.m. and singing, "....winkle tar......winkle tar.....ding dong ding.....ding dong ding....." (Her own delightful rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Frere Jacques" combined together.)

Benefit of getting to preschool a few minutes late...

Tiersten's three-year-old preschool class in our elementary school starts at 8 a.m. The rest of the elementary school, and the Jr High/Sr High School across the street, don't start class until 8:25, so when I walk her into her classroom, I get to see all the elementary kids in the hallways, shout a "hello" to any high schoolers I know standing around on that side of the street, and chat with staff members and other parents that may be loitering before school starts. Our boys prefer to ride the bus to school in the morning rather than ride with the girls and I, so sometimes I get to see them, on their own respective sides of the street, chatting with their friends and doing the typical before-school activities.

I have discovered that if I'm running a little late, I get an added bonus that I really enjoy. Every morning, a high school student reads the bulletin over the loudspeaker, which is broadcast indoors and outdoors over the campus. It doesn't broadcast inside the elementary school, but if I'm outside the building, it is loud enough that I can hear it from across the street. It is truly GREAT fun!! As Dane is only a 7th grader, he doesn't seem to know how the reading student is chosen, but I'm guessing it is probably a member of the ASB?? In any case, it is great to listen to. They always recite the "Pledge of Allegiance" and then go through the day's announcements--which teams won or lost a game the previous evening, the lunch menu, all those types of things. Sometimes, I can tell that the reader is a little uncomfortable with the microphone because they will read it all pretty quickly in a monotone. Other days, you get someone who can "ham it up" a bit better and they'll throw in a "woo-hoo" behind the team announcements if a game has been won, and add some fun adjectives to the lunch menu. It makes the days announcements so much more interesting to hear them from the teenage perspective and I really enjoy listening!

I can't help but wonder, when my children take their turn at the microphone, will they be the shy ones, or the extroverted "woo-hoo" and "DEE-licious Macaroni and Cheese" kids??? :)

A weekend in the BIG CITY

I've had a long day, but I've been anxiously trying to sneak a few minutes in for the past few days, so I'm finally doing that, despite the fact that completing a sentence is a tad tough tonight. Not sure where all these appraisal orders are coming from, but I'm scheduling late November now and I'm still buried. In the "World of the Self-Employed", we all try to remind ourselves that it is better to be too busy, than to be twiddling our thumbs waiting for the phone to ring, but some days when the phone won't stop ringing, its hard to remember that. Am I rambling? I think I'm rambling. I have a tendency to do that when I'm tired and over-stimulated and a half hour ago the fax was still ringing with new incoming orders. I'm still doing it, aren't I?

Before I forget, I've posted a few new "Tiersten-isms" on that blog post from August, so for those of you that like to hang out and wait for my daughter to come up with her latest phrase, check it out!! And she has the "T-I-E-R" down in writing her name so I figure that in about a year, she can have her own blog. I'm still rambling, aren't I?

ANYHOW, Mike and I ran away this weekend to Seattle. (If there are any of you out there that think that its strange that people go to the CITY on the weekend instead of the other way around, you need to realize that if you live in Smalltown, USA it is NOT a treat to spend the weekend in Smalltown, USA. We can sit around and debate about which of three restaurants to eat at any old time we want. We want CHOICES when we run away...The rest of you can enjoy coming to the country when you want to escape the city. Not us.)

We stayed downtown in a high-rise hotel with a view of Elliott Bay, ate at a restaurant with authentic Cajun food and live jazz music, and....drumroll here.......a very first for me.....we rode in a TAXI....TWICE!!!! And for me, there is nothing quite like the helpless feeling of being from a small town, pulling up in front of a nice hotel, and having your car and luggage both removed from your possession in the first 60 seconds by a valet and a bellhop. It leaves you standing on the sidewalk feeling a little lost and out of control, but I think I could get used to the spoiling with a little bit of practice!!! Its just a very odd feeling when you are used to being self-serving in a rural area that doesn't have a single valet parking place in the ENTIRE COUNTY.

In any case, we laughed a lot while we were gone. Mostly at ourselves, but it sure felt good. It was nice to not have a restless toddler and preschooler tugging on our arms, and know that they were both in excellent care at home and enjoying some one-on-one time. (We split them up and sent them different places, so that they could have some "special" time, and they are such a handful together that you feel like you're burdening someone to hand them both off at once.) The boys were happily hanging out with their Dad and stepmom for a couple of extra days. We slept late, we enjoyed a variety of art, we ate, we strolled, and we enjoyed. (The Pottery Barn in downtown Seattle is to die for. I ended up not buying anything there because I couldn't narrow it down. I wanted the whole store!! Ohhhh.....the shopping!!!) It was so nice to have a concrete reminder that life DOES exist beyond our usual activities that absorb our daily lives. Ahhh.......culture.

Today, life was back to chaos as usual, but I feel a bit more rested than last week. Maybe not so much rested in a physical way, but definitely rested in a mental way. In the larger world, I'm just one little ant putting one foot in front of the other. Going to the city where there are so many ants put it in perspective.

A good day for Dane

Today was a good day for Dane. Which means that it was a good day for his Mom, too. :)

His progress report came in the mail today and he is doing VERY well in all of his subjects. Great to know!!

But more importantly, to me at least, is that he was awarded the "Coach's Award" this evening at the Jr. High Sports Banquet for football. Way to go, Dane!!!

Academic achievement is a good thing, but I am even more proud of his accomplishments that earned him the Coach's Award. He was chosen for his upbeat attitude and work ethic. In the bigger picture of life, I think those are the characteristics that carry us the farthest.

Just bustin' my buttons a bit tonight!!! For those of you who knew him as the holy terror of a toddler he was.......I guess this is our reward!!

Congratulations, Dane!!!

I don't "get it"!

The following are things I don't "get" in life...about other people, about human behavior, about how we think, and just in general. Please keep in mind that this is MY blog and you are here voluntarily. If you don't like what I have to say, uh........too bad!!! Feel free to post comments and tell me I've totally lost my mind. :)

1) Why did two boys this morning totally miss the point of, "Can you guys watch your sisters while I take a shower?" The phrase "watch your sisters" was not intended to mean "watch them make a mess of the house", or "watch them fight over toys", or "watch them slam each others fingers in doors". In the future, I guess I will need to be more specific. I will try to use the phrase, "Watch your sisters AND INTERVENE as necessary...."

2) Why do people care whether Britney Spears and Kevin Federline are fighting or not this week? Why do people care if Madonna is adopting a child from Malawi? And why do people care if Angelina Jolie took her children with her to the grocery store today to buy lettuce? Let me make it clear here...I DON'T CARE!!!! I can, to a point, understand people's desire to know that the lives of the rich and famous have some of the same problems and issues that we ordinary folk do. I can, to a point, also understand that we all like to think that somewhere/somehow/some way there are people out there that do NOT have the same problems and issues that we ordinary folk do. But all it takes is one trip to the newstand these days to realize that we are WAY beyond that point. America is obsessed with the personal lives of famous people. I think its weird!!!

3) Someone explain hunting season to me. Keep in mind that I live in a rural community where, every fall, a large percentage of the male population dons orange and camouflage clothing, climbs into pickup trucks, and drives around the countryside with the intention of killing animals with firearms. I can relate to the desire to drive around "off the beaten track" and enjoy the country. I can relate to the desire to have an excuse to experience some time away from the house and go off and enjoy a hobby. For those who choose to enjoy this hobby only with other men and/or large quantities of beer, I can understand that, too. The part that I don't "get" is that it involves killing something. What is the point? DO NOT insult my intelligence by telling me that it is about feeding your family. If this was 1890, I'd accept that, but this is 2006 and we all get the vast majority of our meat from the grocery store. If you want to tell me that it is about celebrating your heritage, give me the gun and the truck, and start hiking with your bow and arrow. Maybe I'm the one thats weird here, but I'd rather be weird than view every deer and elk and try to imagine how he's going to look dead in the back of my truck. I like them better alive. Are there hunters that agree with me, but want to be a part of "the club" so they drive around all month and hope they never see anything that their buddy wants to shoot?

Just some things I think about...

The Art of Procrastination

I should be working, but I don't want to, so I'm blogging instead. sssshhhhhh....

Halloween was a little bizarre and anti-climactic this year. I think our Halloween highpoint was carving our six pumpkins on Saturday evening and then watching "The Blair Witch Project" with the boys. Halloween itself consisted of the girls having parties at Day Care and Preschool in the morning, trick-or-treating after school around the downtown businesses, and then trick-or-treating at my parents' home and the home of Mike's boss. Dane had his first wrestling practice on Halloween, we had to pick him up at the school at 5:30, and it just didn't work out right schedule-wise to do what we normally do. We might have tried to extend the trick-or-treating a bit more, but Dane injured his foot at practice pretty good and we needed to get him home to evaluate the damage. (No permanent damage, but a fair amount of blood and a really nasty bruise. His entire big toe is about the color of grape juice right now. Really special!! I can post pictures if you want? Nah.....didn't think so. You wimps!!)

In any case, Halloween is over for another year. Next year, the girls will be 3 & 4 and will be a little easier. This year, we were still really on the edge of that nagging question in the back of your head that says, "Why are we stuffing our children in costumes that they don't want to wear and dragging them out to gather candy that they will never eat?"

Well.......While I've been blogging I haven't seen anyone show up and start working on my appraisal reports. Hmmmmmm. I guess I'm going to have to do them myself. Back to work.

A photo...but not of Jennica

Okay......so I'm not posting a new picture of Jennica. I had great plans, showed up early to pick her up at Day Care so I had plenty of time to play "paparazzi", but totally spaced on the fact that it would be getting dark an hour earlier. And it is suddenly COLD here. We got our first good frost last night, and at 4:30 this afternoon, it was pretty obvious that it is going to freeze again tonight. I decided that trying to get natural smiles out of a cold toddler was going to be miserable. Will try again on Wednesday. Tomorrow Jennica's schedule (and that of her chaffeur) is booked for trick-or-treating.

In any case, I did get a few good photos today, although they are totally unrelated to Jen. I had a home inspection in Timbuktu. Seriously--2 miles from the nearest paved road--I clocked it as I will need to note it in the report. But Timbuktu has some gorgeous fall leaves, so I took time to smell the roses, or photograph the leaves, as the case may be. :)

Happy Halloween tomorrow!!!