Scenes From The Big One Three

We spent a Christmas gift certificate.

View of the Central West End from our table.

Surprise flowers from Rob, and a shared bottle of wine.

A good year.

Street lamp at night.

The most delightful part : Sixty-five cents, two pieces of gum, four mints, a hand made card, and a tree of love,peace, friendship and joy.

Our kids rock.

Get Your Souvenirs Here

It's icy and cold here in the St. Louis area - so icy that Jim Cantore is reporting from STL! OMG!!

In an effort to ignore all that nastiness on this Love Thursday, I give you a heaping helping of Aloha - in the form of some of the treats Rob's parents brought us from Hawaii.

They thought they grabbed the ever-awesome Caramacs - but we weren't about to complain!

Flower hair clips




Scented Hawaiian crystals.

Day old, but still fragrant, flower leis, and two fresh, ripe pineapples (the other may have already been on the chopping block).

Moving Space

Seems my map below is too wide for my column. I'm going to see if I can bump the entry down a bit...





[Edited]
Darn! Apparently I have to type actual words to do that - hitting the enter key a bunch of times simply won't do.

I've got nothing else to say - other than my face is still frozen and we've been back in the house for nearly 30 minutes.

I shamelessly let the girls go out with wet hair! They were wearing knit caps, scarfs, coats with the hoods up, gloves, etc. Still, one of them announced that one of the others had a shivery butt...and one announced that she'd farted on another's leg.

All for science, people.

The Internets Are Educational

Thanks to my friend Glenda for posting the link to this map site (hopefully I've re-arranged my text here so the map is below the sidebar ads).


I used the term 'visited' loosely, because Michigan and Ohio were mostly 'stop to see a sight or two on our way through' kinds of visits. We may have spent the night in Michigan en route to Canada - Amy, do you remember? Michigan, I believe, was the location of the famed Walt line, "There's no room at this inn."


Also, a big thanks to Why Mommy over at ToddlerPlanet - her note about tonight's lunar eclipse had the girls and I freezing out on the front porch tonight. We huddled like penguins.


States I've visited:



create your own visited states map

Dates

Coming up, just on Rob's side of the family:

Two more babies(of the three due this year) -one will be the first cousin my girls have on his side of the family.

Four weddings - one of those engagements just announced this weekend.

Several years ago we took a picture of Great-Grandma and Pop for the cover of the family calendar - well, we always took a picture of them for this, but this particular year we made a chart for them to hold in the picture. The left column showed married grandkids, and the right column showed great-grandbabies produced. WE, of course had E1, and one of the other cousins had also had a baby...but those other four or so couples? We were calling them out.

The expressions on Great-Grandma and Pop's faces were what made the picture though, as they had their palms upturned in a 'what the...?' manner.

Ahhh, memories.

I think we'd need a whole wall to chart marriages and babies now.

My Own Idiocracy

I have a terrible habit of clicking the 'reply' button instead of the 'forward' when I'm working with e-mail.

The first such instance was in regards to a gentleman from Germany who had been e-mailing with Rob regarding family history and surnames. German Guy was kind enough to send us a sound file of himself speaking our family surnames as they would have been pronounced. For those not involved in family tree research, this is helpful because many times those recording names for immigration wrote the names as they heard them pronounced. For example: in the case of Rob's family, we suspect the surname Rolfes became Rolves.

So, in my efforts to share the sound file with my parents I went to forward the email to them and wrote something to the effect of 'Rob got this through an email exchange with some guy in Germany...'.

Only I replied instead of forwarded.

German Guy was insulted that I thought so little of him and refused contact with Rob after that. I honestly meant no disrespect; I was just trying to avoid having to explain the whole origin of contact part to my Mom. I e-mailed an apology along with an explanation of my mistake, but he never replied.

I've done it other times as well, usually harmlessly.

But today....yipes.

Rob and I were conversing by email and he asked why the fourth grade teacher had sent out her newsletter today - was there no school tomorrow? I replied that I thought there was a half day. As I was working my way through the email list though, I soon learned from the school newsletter that there is indeed no school tomorrow. In a foiled again! response that I wouldn't have the morning with just E3 here to get things done, I emailed my realization to him. Or, I attempted to forward the school newsletter with my added comments...

DAMN! It is a no school day – I thought I at least had the morning for BLEEP’s sake. That’s my new favorite phrase, after reading the book Getting Rid of Matthew…for BLEEP’s sake.

Yeah. I replied to the principal's secretary.

It should be noted that I don't usually speak that way. I'm not saying I haven't...but when I do it's around people I know WELL and usually in a situation where we're all goofin'. I'll just say that the secretary was a little taken aback, and the person who handles the school's computers called to check and see if maybe I had a computer virus.

So, in honor of Love Thursday this Valentine's Day...I do have to say that I love that I know the school office personnel well enough that we could all laugh about my mistake.

But I'll admit, I was blushing furiously.

And I have to work the concession stand tonight with the person who received the email.

Let's all ignore the elephant in the room mmm'kay?

Need To Eat More Apples

There's a lot of snot and coughing happening around here, mostly from E1 & E3. E1 is maintaining with an antihistamine, but we've had to break out the albuterol inhaler for E3. My children could be used as an example for this research.

I made an appointment for E3's well-child check-up and it was to happen last Monday...but the Dr was sick and the office called to resechdule. We set the date for this morning at 10am according to my calendar...but upon arrival I learned that they had it noted as 11am. They were wrong. I would totally take the blame for the mis-matched times, BUT I pick up nephew F four days a week at 11:30 (the other day we are at gymnastics) and I simply would NOT have scheduled an appointment for 11am - we'd never make it back in time. Most likely, when the office called to reschedule they were slammed with trying to fit everyone in and we got penciled in at the wrong time. Still, it meant that we schlepped over there and un-bundled all for nothing. The earliest they can reschedule us is the end of the month.

I was hoping to get some reassurance that E3's cough and mucousy abundance was not moving into the scary zone today, but I guess we'll just have to keep on going as is. If an apple a day keeps the doctor away I think it's time to start serving them up with every meal.

Sleepover Update 2

Since the after school snack we've eaten fish and french fries, cupcakes and ice cream...and we're about to eat popcorn.

The treat bags were a big hit.

We're witholding movie viewing until such a time as we want to encourage sleep.

E3 thinks she's sleeping downstairs with the big kids. It's going to take some finesse to convince her otherwise without breaking her heart...or maybe it will just take the promise of a shower (which she asks for at least a couple of times a day).

Should I have caffiene or wine with my popcorn?

Sleepover Update

After school snack - check.

Gift opening because they just couldn't wait - check.

"Let's go play school!" - WHA?

Political Love Connection

Just in time for Valentine's Day!

Find out which U.S. Presidential Candidate is your best match with the Select a Candidate Quiz.

We did something like this in high school, and the first of my three recommended matches was my second cousin.

Feline Devotion

Remember Mr. White "Whitey" Whiskers? Monday night, the birthday eve gathering we had for E1, the weather was particularly balmy for early February and we had the windows open so we could enjoy the balmy (and humid) air.

Whitey came to celebrate with us.



He's a lucky neighbor cat, because Aunt Amy was kind enough to gift E1 with two cans of cat food - a white cat is pictured on the label which caused E1 to declare "It's for white cats!" Whitey has enjoyed one can so far, but we try not to feed him with any regularity so his next can will have to wait a while. He's already got his ears trained on our back door and garage doors and is over like a shot when he hears them. More than once I've had to leave the van parked on the driveway to retrieve the cat from garage before closing the door.



He really wants to be our cat.

Happy Love Thursday!

The Week In Weather

Over the last week we've had some wild swings in weather. Early last week, it was high winds that resulted in a 13-hour power outage which led us to camp out at the in-laws while they were basking in the Hawaiian sun.

Art was created, and homework completed by candlelight.

By Friday, we had ourselves a snow day.

Thankfully, the tree is still staked down from the time it blew over (it's been a year and a half!)

because it was leaning from the windy day earlier in the week.

I took a page from Chris' mom notebook and taped my kids together so they could play in the snow. She's got enough experience in this parenting thing that I figure listening to her is sort of like listening to E.F. Hutton on financial advice (at least before the check writing scandal).

Someone at our hardware store asked what I was painting.

"Nothing. Just taping the kids into their snow clothes."

If you can't be on a warm sandy beach, you can make due with snow.

What began as a row of snowmen, eventually became a snow fort.

Shortly after this was taken there was a methodically planned assault on the fort,

ensuring that their enemies would get no use of it after they left.

It involved lots of HI-YA's and giggling.

This week, we've had fog.

Mom, what are you doing?

Endangering our lives for a photo, sweetie.

The Birthday Week Commences

We switched things up a little this year for E1's birthday festivities. She's having a sleep over party this weekend, so instead of having the usual Grandparents & Godparents party with a meal and cake taking up most of a day we decided that in addition to age 10 being the time of sleep over parties, it's also the time of the evening cake/ice cream party.

Yes, it started out as being mostly self-serving in that it's less work for Rob and I. However, since I first suggested the change we've come to realize that it's another step toward gradually weaning them away from expecting a huge party for their birthday every year. My plan is that by high-school or college we can move to going out to eat as a family.

Tonight was the cake/ice cream dealie - actually ice cream cake - and it went rather well. She opened gifts, we ate cake, everyone visited for a while...and then it was done. No crusty crock pots to clean, no overflowing garbage cans. White "Whitey" Whiskers even popped up on the windowledge to peer in through the open window and meow.

Tomorrow she's bringing a birthday snack to school, and tomorrow night we'll have her requested dinner and the leftover cake - she decided to save her gift from us to open after dinner. Friday night is the sleepover, and so Saturday will bring the finale of birthday week.

It's different...but still good.

And let's all ignore the voice in the background that's shrieking, "YOU'VE BEEN A PARENT FOR TEN YEARS! SHE'S TEN! YEARS! OLD!" shall we?