Okay, so I'm not keeping up with my blogathon sister and sister-in-law. It's certainly not for lack of things to write about. The problem is, actually having time lately.
For example here is how today went and what we're expecting for the weekend.
Woke up late at 6:15. Worked on speed cleaning the house.
7:30am Rob calls me outside to show me the huge mess the neighborhood bear made of our trash for the second time this week.
8:15am My friend Anne calls and says that because of the Sniper on the Loose, school has been cancelled for the day. She had a flight out of town in the afternoon and her husband couldn't take off work. Sure, they can come over, but wait until after lunch.
9:15am off to Wal-Mart, Sam's, Whole Foods, and to get gas.
12:00pm home again and quickly put up groceries and fix lunch.
1:30pm Grandma Mary and Grandpa Bob arrive for the weekend.
2:00pm Katie and Ellie are on my doorstep, Anne is waving bye while backing out of my driveway to rush and catch her flight. I don't need to describe the mayhem of five children over the next 4 1/2 hours.
6:30 the girls' Dad arrives and I serve dinner to 10 people. Thankfully, Grandma Mary helped
whip something up to go with my tacos.
7:30pm Straighten the house and take a 15 min nap.
8:30pm Kids to bed and start on my to do list for tomorrow.
And the rest of our weekend?
Friday, take kids to Children's Musuem downtown with Grandma and Grandpa so I can count a day of school. At 4:30pm is Alton's 9th birthday party at our house.
Saturday, the Charlottesville 10-miler. My first 10 mile race which I've been training for for 5 months now. Did I mention I'm 3 months pregnant? That evening a birthday cookout for our neighbor's little girl is Avery's best friend.
Sunday, run up to D.C. to look for houses again. If we don't make a bid on one before April 1st. then banks are now requiring 15% down.
So hang in there with me and hopefully, you see blogs more often after this weekend...maybe even with pictures!
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Easter Festivites
Running a little late this year, I realized that we had not yet dyed Easter Eggs and as I knew I wouldn't want to see them sitting around for too long after Easter Day, I decided Thursday was the day to get it done.
This year, Avery would be joining in the fun. I didn't really think twice about this, having happy memories of Alton at age two amidst two parents, a grandma, and I think Aunt Amy and Gigi, happily teaching him the tradition and how he was the perfect little student. I don't specifically remember when Alayna joined in the fun, but I don't recall there being too much stress involved.
Perhaps this is why I spontaneously decided to fit it into our day at about 4pm before I fixed dinner and then headed to choir and praise team practice at 6pm. We had 18 eggs to color and decorate and between three children, I didn't think it would take long. Rob was home, but was out cold upstairs having taken a very draining test that morning at school. He didn't feel a need to be involved and I felt confident that I could handle things.
Avery was very eager about the whole thing and no sooner had we taught him to drop the eggs in, then things became chaotic. For one, if I haven't already mentioned this, there are two mothers of Avery in our home. The six year old mother was completely stressed out and frazzled that Avery was trying to touch the eggs. She was having difficulty maintaining the control that she so desired over the whole process. She was shouting commands or mostly reprimands and I calmly told her to just let him experience it. If he broke an egg or two, oh well. Things calmed down momentarily and so I broke out the video camera. I only got about 2 minutes total video and this only in about 30 second spurts, because the 6 yr old mother kept losing her temper. Each time I turned off the camer, I reminded her that he was two and did she really want to watch herself yelling at everyone while decorating Easter eggs when she got older.
Video back on and Alayna becomes frantic as Avery is putting more than one egg in the cup. "He's going to spill it! He's going to spill it!" "Alayna just let him....okay, we'll we were done with the blue coloring anyway." I get a few more seconds in before the green is spilled. The eggs are done in record time thanks to the multi tasking of the two year-old. Alton only dyed three I think. He was too concerned with peeling and eating the egg he "accidently" dropped.
And so with that done, the kids went on in pursuit of holding an egg hunt outside. I provided them with at least 50 plastic eggs we had on hand and sent them outside so I could accomplish the clean up and dinner before I left.
As I was heading out the door, I informed Rob that his presence was requested outside for the egg hunt. A look of panic crossed over his face especially when Alayna came and announced that Alton had hidden most of the eggs in our woods out back.
My conclusion is that Easter festivities are best performed among a multitude of other family members and not by two tired and stressed parents! Perhaps we will try to make it home for next Easter.
This year, Avery would be joining in the fun. I didn't really think twice about this, having happy memories of Alton at age two amidst two parents, a grandma, and I think Aunt Amy and Gigi, happily teaching him the tradition and how he was the perfect little student. I don't specifically remember when Alayna joined in the fun, but I don't recall there being too much stress involved.
Perhaps this is why I spontaneously decided to fit it into our day at about 4pm before I fixed dinner and then headed to choir and praise team practice at 6pm. We had 18 eggs to color and decorate and between three children, I didn't think it would take long. Rob was home, but was out cold upstairs having taken a very draining test that morning at school. He didn't feel a need to be involved and I felt confident that I could handle things.
Avery was very eager about the whole thing and no sooner had we taught him to drop the eggs in, then things became chaotic. For one, if I haven't already mentioned this, there are two mothers of Avery in our home. The six year old mother was completely stressed out and frazzled that Avery was trying to touch the eggs. She was having difficulty maintaining the control that she so desired over the whole process. She was shouting commands or mostly reprimands and I calmly told her to just let him experience it. If he broke an egg or two, oh well. Things calmed down momentarily and so I broke out the video camera. I only got about 2 minutes total video and this only in about 30 second spurts, because the 6 yr old mother kept losing her temper. Each time I turned off the camer, I reminded her that he was two and did she really want to watch herself yelling at everyone while decorating Easter eggs when she got older.
Video back on and Alayna becomes frantic as Avery is putting more than one egg in the cup. "He's going to spill it! He's going to spill it!" "Alayna just let him....okay, we'll we were done with the blue coloring anyway." I get a few more seconds in before the green is spilled. The eggs are done in record time thanks to the multi tasking of the two year-old. Alton only dyed three I think. He was too concerned with peeling and eating the egg he "accidently" dropped.
And so with that done, the kids went on in pursuit of holding an egg hunt outside. I provided them with at least 50 plastic eggs we had on hand and sent them outside so I could accomplish the clean up and dinner before I left.
As I was heading out the door, I informed Rob that his presence was requested outside for the egg hunt. A look of panic crossed over his face especially when Alayna came and announced that Alton had hidden most of the eggs in our woods out back.
My conclusion is that Easter festivities are best performed among a multitude of other family members and not by two tired and stressed parents! Perhaps we will try to make it home for next Easter.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
I'm Back!
The last ten days things have been well, completely insane. I think it is my consequence for publishing a blog entry about hum drum days because they quickly dissapated right after that blog.
It all started with a weekend trip to our next location to look for a home. To say it was a frustrating experience just doesn't do it justice. Yes, house prices are going down and there are many foreclosures to choose from, but somehow it seems odd that for the amount of money we will be spending that our final choice for a home came down to two foreclosures, one we'll call the urine house because somebody must have shut up 20 dogs or cats in that house over a weekend to get back at the bank, and then number two house is the the foreclosure turned rental that doesn't need near the work, but we only spent about four minutes in because there were like 20 people living in it spread all over the house, in every room and some sleeping on the beds. There was also about a 400 lb occupant working on a souped up lime green car out in the front yard. We came out very traumatized and had marked it off our list. That was in the early idealistic stage of our search. We have bid on that one first and are now waiting to see if our offer is accepted. If not, we move on to the urine home.
That was the weekend. We came back to the busiest week we've had since living here. It's Rob's writing week and he has to finish his scholarly paper by tomorrow at 5pm It's going pretty well except for the 250 citations he is required to shorten. They had to be written the long way for his first draft and now he is required to shorten and abbreviate all of them. As I write this, he is currently alternating between lying in the fetal position on our bedroom floor moaning, "I loathe this paper" and doing push-ups to get his blood moving again.
I haven't been much help for him because I was gone every single night this week and will be tomorrow night as well. I've never done that not even in years. Our church Easter musical ran Fri, Sat, and today. Practices were Tues and Thurs. I would've dropped out, but I accepted a solo a long time ago and didn't want to flake. Wednesday night I had to go shopping with one of my military spouse running buddies because I agreed to host Bunko with her almost nine months ago. It is tomorrow night and will have a St. Patrick's Day theme. I have had all the green I can handle already.
Saturday morning I ran 10 1/2 miles with my running club. The race is in two weeks and so I can't really miss any opportunites to practice.
My kids have been watching a ton of videos and my house is trashed. This does not help my mental state. This blog is a splurge because I should be working on lesson plans for the kids' school this week. Maybe I'll pull an all-nighter with Rob...maybe not.
It all started with a weekend trip to our next location to look for a home. To say it was a frustrating experience just doesn't do it justice. Yes, house prices are going down and there are many foreclosures to choose from, but somehow it seems odd that for the amount of money we will be spending that our final choice for a home came down to two foreclosures, one we'll call the urine house because somebody must have shut up 20 dogs or cats in that house over a weekend to get back at the bank, and then number two house is the the foreclosure turned rental that doesn't need near the work, but we only spent about four minutes in because there were like 20 people living in it spread all over the house, in every room and some sleeping on the beds. There was also about a 400 lb occupant working on a souped up lime green car out in the front yard. We came out very traumatized and had marked it off our list. That was in the early idealistic stage of our search. We have bid on that one first and are now waiting to see if our offer is accepted. If not, we move on to the urine home.
That was the weekend. We came back to the busiest week we've had since living here. It's Rob's writing week and he has to finish his scholarly paper by tomorrow at 5pm It's going pretty well except for the 250 citations he is required to shorten. They had to be written the long way for his first draft and now he is required to shorten and abbreviate all of them. As I write this, he is currently alternating between lying in the fetal position on our bedroom floor moaning, "I loathe this paper" and doing push-ups to get his blood moving again.
I haven't been much help for him because I was gone every single night this week and will be tomorrow night as well. I've never done that not even in years. Our church Easter musical ran Fri, Sat, and today. Practices were Tues and Thurs. I would've dropped out, but I accepted a solo a long time ago and didn't want to flake. Wednesday night I had to go shopping with one of my military spouse running buddies because I agreed to host Bunko with her almost nine months ago. It is tomorrow night and will have a St. Patrick's Day theme. I have had all the green I can handle already.
Saturday morning I ran 10 1/2 miles with my running club. The race is in two weeks and so I can't really miss any opportunites to practice.
My kids have been watching a ton of videos and my house is trashed. This does not help my mental state. This blog is a splurge because I should be working on lesson plans for the kids' school this week. Maybe I'll pull an all-nighter with Rob...maybe not.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Prince Avery and some Hum Drum Days
Here is Alayna giving Avery the royal treatment. A snack and a wagon ride. They play really well together when they aren't fighting....And that's about the only excitement we've got going on here lately.Life on cruise control can be a good thing I know. But recently, I've felt like I am driving down the same road day in and day out. All our days are the same, with little break in our routine. It's making me really restless too. Lately, I am itching to get out of this house and go somewhere...anywhere! Today, Alayna read the story of Frog and Toad, and I was completely empathizing with Toad who kept eagerly looking around corners for spring. Spring never seemed to be around any corner that he looked.
I'm stuck in a strange kind of limbo life. Living somewhere for just one year can be a challenge. You can't really throw yourself into church, the community, etc...because well, you're leaving soon and it takes some doing once you've attached yourself to a place to then again unattach yourself. As a military wife, I've become an expert at this. One of the coping skills I've developed (as I think most army wives do), is to invest myself less in a location the shorter the time I'm there. For me however, being involved in things only half-heartedly leaves me wandering aimlessly. I still miss where we came from and am not particularly excited about where we're going and then here I am hanging somewhere in between these two lives in yet a different location!
Okay well, after that spontaneous pity party, I realize that Rob at least, had something very exciting happen to him today. He was sworn into the Supreme Court. This means he could technically practice in front of the Supreme Court. While that is not likely to happen, it's still cool! Basically, it's something else to hang on the wall in his office. Afterwards, there was a reception with a few of the Supreme Court Justices. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience. I may have pictures later. They wouldn't allow them in the Court room for security purposes, but there should be some other pictures from the event floating around soon.
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