Friday Afternoon Revelations

1) Employment is really interfering with my blogging.  It's great getting paid and all, but I do not have enough free time left for goofing off.  Or cleaning.  Or reading.  And lots of other things.    

2) Red Wine in Spanish is vino tinto, not vino rojo, as I previously thought.  I've mentioned a couple of times that I've been studying Spanish, with my ultimate dream goal of some kind of gastronomic/ecological tour of Costa Rica.  So, imagine my surprise in Lesson 86 (EIGHTY-SIX!) to find out that Red Wine is not literally translated as Red Wine. Seriously, why was this important note buried all the way in Lesson 86??

If I were designing the curriculum, it would go something like:

• Where is the bathroom?
• Is this potable water?
• Where is my luggage?
• How can I get to the hotel/restaurant?
• I would like a glass of red wine.

I was flipping through my little course guide and "I would like to check my tire pressure" was waaaaay back in Lesson 56. CLEARLY, the person responsible for this course does not have children.

3) Ben has been making all kinds of self-discoveries over the past week.  Most of which are in the "way too much information" category.  However, along with these physical discoveries, he's been pummeling me with some tough spiritual questions, including, "Will I be able to hug you with my arms in heaven?" (sniff, sniff)

These tough questions have been interspersed with his curiosity about women's bodies -- NATURALLY ALL THE QUESTIONS COME WHEN DAD IS AT WORK.

Ben:  "Mom, how do you go to the bathroom?"
Mom:  "I just go, Ben, just like you."
Ben:  "No, I mean, where does it come out?"
Mom: "It comes out of my girl parts."
Ben:  "Can I see them?"
Mom (grimacing):  "No, I don't think so, those are private."
Ben (now chasing me down the hall):  "I need to seem them.  NOW MOOOOOM!"

So, you can now imagine the scene of Ben chasing me down the hall and around the house with this conversation, which he refused to drop until I decided to turn on a TV show. By the way, these types of parenting experiences are an excellent example of why vino tinto should be in LESSON 1!!!!

4) Lastly, the next time it is 70 degrees in February.  Don't send the children to go play in the backyard because it is way too muddy and will result in at least one load of laundry per 15 minutes outdoors.  Instead, you should consider going Snow Tubing.  Counter intuitive right?  Warm weather = Snow Sports.  But, we went tubing with Grandad last Friday when it was 68, and it was awesome!  Not crowded, super fun, and not cold at all!

Caroline

Channeling Laura Numeroff

If you give a mom a break, she's probably going to want a cup of coffee to go with it.  If she gets a cup of coffee, she's probably going to need a little cream too.

She'll get the cream, and when she's putting the empty cream container into the recycling bin, she'll spy the furnace filter, which reminds her that she needs to change the filter.

She'll head downstairs with the filter, and change it, and then she see that someone has emptied half a bag of shredded paper on the floor, which will remind her she should finish shredding and take the bag outside.  After some very satisfying shredding, she carries the bag to the garage. 

On the way back in, she'll spy the washing machine, and she'll remember she should start a load of laundry.
When getting the clothes ready, she finds a coin in the pocket of some pants. So, after starting the laundry, she'll put the coin into her purse for safekeeping. 

While she's in her purse, she'll find the lacrosse receipt that she needs for the taxes.  So, she'll take the receipt out and put it in the tax folder.  The tax folder, now complete, is sitting by the computer, so she takes a few minutes and finishes up and ships out the federal taxes to get a tax refund. 

The tax refund reminds her that she still needs to start thinking about summer plans, so she'll get up and take a look at the calendar.  The calendar is next to the dishwasher, which reminds her that she needs to empty the dishwasher and load up the breakfast dishes.  While emptying the dishwasher, she'll find a clean coffee cup, which reminds her it is time to take a little break.

And, when mom takes a little break, she's probably going to want a cup of coffee to go with it.

Finalmente!

Exactly one year to the day after beginning Spanish Level 2 en mi coche (Está aquí) , I've finally graduated to Spanish Level 3 of the "Learn in Your Car" CD series.  The 12-minute lessons of unrelated sentences at the end of lecciónes setenta y dos and setenta y tres really took a while to get through.  A long while.  But, I'm finally onto reflexive verbos.   Sadly, I still no travel plans to actually use all this excellent knowledge.  Perhaps I'll try to plan something as a nice reward after I finish the third disc in Level 3.  Based on my current rate of progress, that will be around mid-febrero del próximo año.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) I have 2.5 years left of carpool lines for preschool and kindergarten pick-ups, which should be plenty of time for this last set of discs. 

My progress has been impeded a bit because Ben has grown tired of listening to me repeating Spanish oraciones, and has been requesting Disney music or rock n' roll instead.  While I can't blame him, I practically know all the words to Disney Greatest Hits Volume 1 and Volume 2.  That's valuable mental real estate that I'd rather fill with all the possible Spanish words for food items that I can use when ordering dinner in los restaurantes en Costa Rica.  

Do you know what is just a tad frustrating?  I took a little online Spanish test to see how well I'm doing.  So, after four years of school study and 73 Spanish lessons in my car I still speak Spanish as well as.....
a young child.  Actually, a very young child with an extremely limited vocabulary.  Awesome. 

That is not discouraging at all.

Up, Up, and Away

One of my New Year's resolutions was to do something FUN with the kids every weekend since I felt like we were getting too bogged down with chores, obligations, and/or home projects on the weekends.  We didn't officially announce this policy to the kids since I don't want to have to field the "what are we doing this weekend" question.  Also, the FUN may or may not involve going anywhere special, but rather could include playing a few board games or sledding or something free.  So far so good. 

This past weekend we gave the indoor rock climbing gym Vertical Extreme a try.  Abby has been requesting a visit there ever since last year when Scott and I went there on an action-packed adventure date.  I think the year-long build up must have morphed into some kind of pent up climbing prowess;  Abby was so excited to finally (insert dramatic sigh!) go she forgot to be scared and successfully climbed to the top of the gym again and again and again and again and again.  I was suprised how well she did -- she even scaled up one of the courses that leans out away from the wall so you have to support all of your body weight.

Abby at Top

Caroline and Ben even got in on the action.  Caroline was a bit timid at first, but climbed higher on every try and finally made it to the top at the end of the day.  Ben was a wee bit too short to really be able to reach up between the handholds, but he enjoyed hanging from the harness and literally bouncing off the wall and swinging out and bouncing again.  "Bouncing of the walls" is no longer just a figure of speech for us.

Caroline at Top

Summer Camp Sensory Overload

I hit my winter threshold this morning at 8:16am.  Even though we didn't have our weekly winter storm this past week, I am officially finished with cold weather.  It was a chilly 15 degrees at the bus stop this morning.  Packing for school has become an excessivly long daily ritual since the kids take all their winter outerwear (boots, snowpants, hat, and gloves) to play in the snow at recess.  I think it is wonderful that they are allowed/encouraged to play in the snow, but when you multiply all those individual pieces of outerwear and bag times 3 kids, that is an additional 21 items to track before 8am.  I've been doing a pretty decent job of outerwear containment after school, but there always seems to be at least one something that we can't locate without an exhaustive search. I guess I shouldn't complain too much, though, I saw it was only going to be -11 in Minneapolis today.  

Instead of dwelling on the cold weather and months of snow cover, I have turned my thoughts to summer. Depending on the number of snow days we end up having, we will have about 10 or 11 weeks of summer vacation after school ends.  For the sake of discussion, let's figure 75 days of full-time togetherness. There are weekends in there.  But still, lots and lots and lots of together time.  Definitely too many days to just play at the house and visit the local parks if I want to maintain any kind of semblance of sanity by summer's end.  It seems crazy to me that I am doing summer vacation planning in February, but I learned last year that February/early March is summer planning season, just like October is when I have to remember to look for sleds.

Last February, I went to a local summer camp fair to see what kinds of opportunities there were in the area.  I plan on attending this fair again in a couple of weeks.  But, this year I'll be mentally prepared.  The fair was really overwhelming last year.  I had no idea just how many options there are out there. There are a LOT of summer camps available to send children; there were no less than 100 camps with booths at the fair.  There's a huge range in price and an even larger range of topics: science, horseback riding, art, every kind of sport, girl scouts, sailing, swimming, nature, Indians, etc., etc.  To further compound things, most of the camps had multiple options for activities.  I found the number of choices almost paralyzing.  Too many choices!!!  Fortunately, I have realized that it really doesn't matter what I pick, the kids will enjoy almost any type of diversion, as long as I pick something that doesn't require a long drive, gets them moving around, and involves non-siblings. 

Last summer we settled on a field hockey morning camp for Abby, and a week of a local Township's garden camp for Abby and Caroline, and the library's Science in the Summer program.  Lesson learned from last summer:  Do not send girls to camp together if they will be in the same group.  While convenient from driving perspective, they need a break from each other. 

This summer, Abby is begging to go to overnight scout camp, which I think I am going to let her give a try.  They have a mini-program that is only 2 nights away from home, which is probably the right amount of time for a first overnight summer camp.  The girls are also asking to take gymnastics.  I was considering starting piano lessons.  Abby wants to try horse-back riding. Caroline wants to do artwork And then there is just regular outdoor camp.  What about sports camps?  This wouldn't be nearly as hard if I wanted to send them to 10 weeks of camps, but I'm only looking for 1 or 2 weeks per child.  Ugh.  I'm back to where I started.  Too many choices!!  

Return of the Harbingers of Spring

Almost a year to the day that I reported on a massive flock of robins enjoying our holly berries (see Harbingers of Spring - 2010), a migrating roost of robins has returned to feast on our prolific holly berries.  Although last year's flock numbered well into the 100s, so far I have only counted about 15 robins.  It's a very windy day, though, so I'm wondering if there will be more robins later in the week. 

The bellies of the mini-flock that has returned are quite plump, which means they have been well fed this winter. They are a most welcome sight since it means that spring is just around the corner!

Tasty Berry!

How many robins can you find in this photo? 

(Answer: 8!)

The Cadbury Creme Egg

Guess what tasty bit of chocolate and fondant perfection I purchased from Wegmans this afternoon? 

Oh yes.  The delicious Cadbury Creme Egg.  The seasonal nature of this delightful confection makes the first bite even sweeter. 

And, to make this year's purchase even more precious, I got the very first egg right off the stock cart.  The staffer even opened the box just for me.  The first box!  The first egg!  All Mine!!!

Who cares Cadbury mass produced this particular egg months and months ago.  And, who cares if I looked like some kind of Cadbury creme egg addict by interrupting the stocking of seasonally wrapped Reeses cups.  After I eat my healthy dinner of fish, couscous, and salad, I am going to unwrap that little baby (and it really is littler now than I remember from previous years) in all of its preserved and food-dyed glory and enjoy every blessed calorie.  Oh, sweet little Cadbury creme egg, I will see you again in just a few short hours.

TGIF

It's been a fun week here, but it has seemed like a loooong week because of the unusual schedule.  Monday was a Caroline's birthday and family party (actually, the second family party).  As I'm typing this, I can't seem to remember which days were snow days and which days were 2-hour delay, but we had some of each and also today was a 1/2 day for teacher in-service.  All of that has added up to a lot of time together. 

Thank goodness for the neighbors and for the gym, which remained open all week with their Kidzone fully staffed.  Nothing like a nice run or yoga or an exercise class or a long swim to take a break.  Or all of those.  Actually, maybe it was good we had such a strange week -- I got in a LOT of exercise.  Also, I had time to take the girls to get haircuts, start the taxes, and catch up on some paperwork.  And, Caroline celebrated her birthday yesterday with Grandma & Pops (her third party, lucky girl!).  So, the week summary:  a lot of snow/ice and a lot of parties.

Happy Family Portrait

I've also been listening to Abby do dry runs of her "How to Make a Salad" oral presentation (over and over and over again).  On the plus side, I'm thrilled she was willing to work on this project early and practice every day (unlike last year's oral presentation).  On the bad side, I have learned that there are only so many times I can really attentively listen to the same speech.  I'm thinking back to grade school when everyone in our school had to compete in oratorical contests sponsored by the Kiwanis Club, with great topics like "I Think the Best, I Expect the Best" and "Optimism: A Way of Life".  Now I'm realizing just how excruciatingly painful that process must have been for my parents who had to listen to countless repetitions of those speeches (which we had to memorize!).  I practiced those speeches so much, that I still remember some of my opening lines.

On an unrelated topic, Ben has been regularly cracking me up this week.  Here's an exchange over lunch yesterday.

Ben:  "Mom, can I have that Chinese cheese for lunch?"
Mom:  "What??"
Ben:  "That Chinese cheese.  You know, it's white and lumpy."
Mom:  "Oh! You mean COTTAGE cheese."
Ben:  "Yes, I want college cheese for lunch."
Mom:  "Not College, Cottage.  Like a little house.  College is school."
Ben:  "I definitely do not want to go to college."
Mom:  "Yes you do.  College is lots of fun and you can study whatever you like."
Ben:  "Fine.  I'll go to college.  But, I want Chinese cheese for lunch."
Mom (sighs):  "Chinese cheese it is."

   Caroline Modeling New Haircut,

(In Snow, Naturally with a Skirt on)

Mr. Hilarity Himself, Always A Perfect Angel