We woke up to snow this morning.
This is from my front porch, looking across to the park.
It’s not a lot of snow, but still…it’s October! And it stuck around til lunch time.
Of course, this was the scene, back in September:
(I know it’s hard to see, but trust me, that’s snow.)
So if we wanted snow, I guess we picked the right place to live.
Our impromptu trip to Disneyland was success. We were able to pull it off because of the military appreciation tickets that Disney was offering, by staying at the Disneyland Hotel for free with our vacation club points and getting good air fare. It all just came together like it was meant to be.
We were able to spend a whole day with my grandparents and nuclear-extended family (as opposed to the whole, entire clan). Pumpkin Girl just loves my grandparents house – she says she feels cozy there. The boys love it, too. It’s hard not to have fun when you are surrounded by love! The next day, my cousin April and her son joined us at Disneyland, which was a nice treat for all the kids.
I won’t bore you with all the details, since we seem to have a Disney trip every year. But here are some of the highlights:
Boo rode on the Haunted Mansion, with his eyes open this time.
I went on the Matterhorn for the first time in years. I’ve been pregnant during almost every trip, except the last one and that time the Matterhorn was closed.
In an attempt to curb the souvenir buying frenzy this year, we limited the children to 2 souvenirs each. We suggested that they keep lists during the week of the things they saw and we’d come back later to buy their top 2 selections. This worked wonderfully for Pumpkin Girl who divided her list into three parts, ranked by how much she wanted each one. The plan totally backfired on me when I told Bip to put the stuffed Eve (from Wall E) on his list, and when he talked about it constantly and was very, very sure that that was something he wanted, returned to buy it…and it was sold out. As in, the whole darn park was out. I spent 3 days looking in every darn store, asking cast members, all in vain. We were successful in finding her before we left, so a catastrophe was averted.
Boo coolly turned down Jedi Training Academy again this year, stating matter of factly that he was already a trained Jedi. Pumpkin Girl, however, wanted to attend. When the Jedi master began choosing Padawans, I told her to jump up and down and wave both her arms and make lots of noise. She was chosen, trained and then battled Darth Vader. He found her lack of pants faith disturbing. She defeated him anyway. She’s fierce.
We happened to be at the right place at the right time when the Monorail arrived and asked to ride in the rear compartment. These private compartments are bigger now, so our whole family fit and we got an amazing view on our way into the park.
Hopefully, this trip will give us our Disney fix for a while. Though I hear another cruise is in the plans…
We started school three weeks ago. I knew we’d be feeling sad that our house guests had left and Philip was gone, too. Our Nomad friends had to be moving on to their own brand, new home. I don’t blame them and even though their visit was a short one, it was a great one! Unfortunately, their leaving coincided with Philip’s return for Washington, DC. In a great feat of government efficiency, his employer wanted him to return for an all expense paid (by the taxpayers) trip to undergo a polygraph and psychological evaluation. Even though he is going to be working the exact same job that he’s held for the last 4 years, it was important to determine whether or not he is the type of person that would sell our nation’s secrets and then lie about it. We’re assuming he passed.
So anyhoo, left alone for the first time in a new city, I thought it best to dive into school. The children were predictably excited to be starting American history with Sonlight’s Core 3. Their new school books had been waiting for them for about 3 weeks, just taunting them.
Our first day back took forever. We’ve never taken the summer off before and I was astounded at how much math knowledge was lost and how much hand holding was needed. However, Boo and Pumpkin Girl were very supportive and assured me that in a few days, it would all come back to me.
After a late afternoon nap with Bip, I herded everyone in the car to go register Pumpkin for ballet. It took longer than I’d anticipated because I missed my turn and had to backtrack, and it was rush hour. Actually, rush hour had nothing to do with it because rush hour traffic here is like normal DC traffic. In fact, I didn’t even realize it was “rush hour” until after we’d finished with the dance studio and someone piped up that they were hungry.
So we headed off to the McDonald’s near our house 1)because kids can never get enough of McD’s, 2)Bip had been trying to get a beany baby Grimace in his happy meal since we moved here and 3) they have a play area. Sadly, they were out of beany babies, but we ate there anyway.
After we ate, I let the children play. I heard a crack of thunder and wondered if I’d remembered to close the upstairs windows at home. It wasn’t worth worrying about or dragging the children home for, so I turned my attention back to watching people go through the drive through. Then it started to rain. Actually, it started to pour. And you know what – this particular McDonald’s has a skylight-type roof over the play yard and the rain was really loud. And it got louder and then I noticed the hail bouncing off ground outside. Just pea size hail, no big deal. Hail storms don’t really last that long, right?
Right.
All hell broke loose and the hail kept coming and grew bigger and bigger. At some point the noise in the play yard was deafening, so I gathered up the children and took them into the restaurant, which had a normal, quieter roof. There we watched the hail pound the parking lot and cover both it and the cars with ice. It was really quite impressive, except for the fact that our car was out there, getting pounded by hail that was now the size of peach pits.
After the storm passed, the children kept playing while we waited for the ice to melt. I wasn’t too anxious to see what sort of damage was done to the car. I skipped my usual iced vanilla latte out of guilt for going out for fast food and getting the car all dinged up. Turns out, it wasn’t that bad. A couple of spots may or may not be hail damage, but nothing to get fixed right away. We’ll probably wait until the car looks more like a golf ball before heading to a body shop.
Upon our return home, we found our upstairs windows open and hail on the (brand new) roof, in the grass and on the back deck. We wiped up the water on the window sills and went out to play in the ice. We took some pictures for the blog.
Our piano has arrived. A week later than expected, but it’s here. When asked about the delay, the mover said “it was bigger than we’d expected, so it took longer than we expected.”
I’m wondering if maybe they had strapped it to their backs and hiked over the Rockies with it. No matter, it is here now.
We were actually pretty impressed by the movers. They got this 900+ pound piano off the truck, up two porch steps and into the house in just a couple of minutes. As they stood there catching their breath, one guy said, “There’s no air up here!” I can’t imagine the effort needed to move a piano at 6,500 feet above sea level!
They reassembled the legs and pedals and moved it into position, then one guy lifted it while the other slipped the cups under the wheels.
Pumpkin Girl and I are thrilled to have it. It looks great in our house and it sounds beautiful, even though it probably needs to be tuned. I have to say that I love this piano! My mom has been saving it for me, waiting for us to stop moving around. And now we have and here it is! I’m having fun playing it again and I’m working on getting a couple of my more impressive pieces back up to speed. And now I’ve got to find a piano teacher for Pumpkin.
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