Category - Family Life

In the last four days I

Prepared for Friday’s homeschool group craft
Sent multiple emails about our Girl Scout meeting next week
Got the papers signed officially appointing me the Girl Scout leader
coordinated 2 families worth of breakfast food to be delivered to our hotel
cleaned all our bathrooms
mopped all the bare floors
talked to Bip’s doctor to renew his prescription
roasted pumpkin seeds
sent in the paperwork for a Girl Scout scholarship
took down the Halloween decorations
arranged transportation with the Disney Magical Express
made new covers for the children’s autograph books
wrote an article for the Homeschool Classroom
found our Vacation Club cards
washed 3 loads of laundry
packed almost everything
printed out luggage tags and address labels

I did not do any school.

I still need to

move our CDs with pictures to the fire safe box.
buy and pack snacks, ponchos and blister pads (I delegated that to Philip)
type up our daily itineraries
order Pumpkin new folklorico shoes
clean the kitchen and entryway
call my friend Niki
pack our carry-ons

We’re not leaving until Saturday morning, so I feel pretty good about what’s left of my list.  I’m a little annoyed with myself because so much of it could have been done weeks or even months ago. I got really overwhelmed trying to plan this trip, so I put it off til the very last second.  Do you ever do that?  I was like a little kid with my hands over my ears, saying “nah nah nah nah, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”  Which is not really the way to plan a trip.  But what’s done is done and we’ll be fine.  We’re going to have a great vacation with mild weather and low-ish crowds.  Boo may have to wash some dishes to help pay for admission tickets now that he has to pay full adult fare and Bip needs a ticket now, too, but that’s ok.

Alright already, I need to get off the computer and get busy!

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Don’t worry, I’m not getting all existential on all y’all.  I’m not navel gazing or pondering the meaning of my exisitence.  I know exactly why I’m Here: To keep my children from killing each other.

What I’m actually wondering is why I’m here, at the computer.  I’ve got a to-do list that’s really long and some of it needed to be done last week, a good portion needs to be done by tomorrow and in 9 days we’re all going to Disney World.

Yes, indeed we did go on a Disney Cruise just last year.  And uh, yeah, Disneyland the year before that.  Almost 2 years to the day that we’re leaving for this trip.  What?  Obsess over the Mouse much? Why do you ask?

And in between now and then, I have a million things to do.

Like finish my article on Martinmas and the one on planning for year round school for the Homeschool Classroom.

Prep for the lantern project I foolishly said I’d teach the day before we leave.

Make sure my Brownie co-leader and my substitute are prepared for the meeting while I’m gone.  Oh yeah, and I should probably tell my substitute that she’s subbing for me. (Hi Tami!)

Figure out which MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation office) to buy the Disney tickets at.

Wrap Boo’s birthday presents.  I accidentally sent him to deliver clean sheets to the guest room where his birthday presents are “hiding.”  Probably in plain view, once you enter the room.  Of course the Boy can’t find the nose on his face, so chances are he didn’t see the presents.  Oh well.

We’ll be carving pumpkins at some point, too.

And there’s the Cub Scout pack meeting, in costume, tonight.

At least Boo’s birthday cake is finished and I remembered to order Bip some more pants from Land’s End with my free shipping coupon.

Actually, I do know what I’m doing here.  I’m hoping that list takes care of itself.

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I didn’t really want to get into politics on my blog, but an important issue has been brought up and it cannot be ignored.

When purchasing or making a hat or scarf, do you coordinate it to the color of the jacket it’ll be worn with?

Hanging preposition and all, this is serious stuff.

My neighbors and I were sitting around knitting, like all good Christian mothers are wont to do on a late Friday afternoon, when one mentioned matching a scarf to match her daughter’s jacket.  I’d never heard of such a thing, and neither did the other ladies in the room.

Now I will admit that it might be a cute idea, a pink scarf to match a pink coat, but I wouldn’t deliberately try to match them.  In our family, we buy children’s winter coats in gender neutral colors like blue and red so that they can handed down from boy to girl to boy.  I knit scarves based on the preferences of the child – an alligator scarf for Bip, a white one with multi-colored fleck for Pumpkin Girl and a blue and red striped one for Boo.

Philip is in possession of the Boyfriend Scarf, a multi-year, multi-boy project that deserves a post of its own.

So I am fascinated about the act of going out with willful intent to match a scarf and hat to a coat.  Of course, I wear a blue coat with a pink scarf and a Roots Olympic Beret.  I also wear pink Hanna Andersson clogs regardless of what color I’m wearing, so what do I know?

So what say you all?  Do you coordinate your scarf or hat color to your coat color?  And in which state did you grow up?  I’ve got a theory about this.

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Our first Brownie meeting of the year is out of the way and I can feel the weight being lifted off my shoulders. It’s amazing the amount of work that goes into the planning and execution of one simple meeting. The girls seemed to enjoy themselves and that’s the main thing. One girl who is new to our troop said that she didn’t have much fun in her Brownie troop last year, but this year was going to be much better, she could tell already.

It could have been the s’mores we made in the microwave that convinced her, but that’s the kind of feedback I like hearing!

So as we start our new Girl Scout year, my co-leader from last year and I got together to finish up our financial report from last year. Despite book keeping on my part that amounted to me tossing bank statements and receipts into a folder and writing a cryptic note about Girl Scouts owing me $55, we got our checkbook, bank statements and financial report to all match up exactly. So I just mail that little form off and forget about it until next year.

We did notice that our troop is lacking a receipt book which would have solved the question of the $86 discrepancy a lot sooner than we managed to figure it out. So I’ll add that to my shopping list. I’m not sure how I got made treasurer anyway.

When we were pretty much done with the number crunching, we sent our children off to play at the park. Not 10 minutes later I got a call from Pumpkin Girl on the two-way radio saying that Bip was stuck in the swing. So off the park went Jenn and I to unstick stuck Bip. Then we stayed and chatted at the park.

I really like being outside in the Fall. It’s been overcast and rainy the last two days, but not too chilly. Chilly enough though, for the first soup of the season, served up in our pumpkin tureen. Fall – I love it!

Oh, but wait – I forgot! As Jen was gathering up her children to leave, I saw Philip walking up to the house with another Army guy. It was our friend George who was in Iraq, then Afghanistan and is now on his way to Italy. I guess he showed up at Philip’s office and they came home for lunch. What a fun surprise.

George stayed for lunch and managed to keep from laughing too much over our children. They regaled him by quoting Thomas Paine, using “crossed the Rubicon” in a sentence and singing the countries of Southern Europe.

What a good day. I even got a nap.

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Boo had his first soccer game of the season last night.  Wow, what a great time!

His uniform this year is orange and black and the team chose the name “Mustangs.”  Mustangs is a good name, but it has nothing to do with the color of their jerseys.  My suggestions were the Pumpkin Heads or Orange Julius, with the battle cry, “Hail Caesar!” Alas, my suggestions were voted down.

Here they are, waiting for the game to start.  They’ve got nifty player’s benches on the sidelines this year.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Boo is not the smallest person on his team this year.  I have to admit that I worry about him and his size because he’s a boy.  But it looks like all the eating and sleeping he’s been doing all summer has caused him to keep up with his age peers.

What did surprise me was his increase in athletic ability.  Athletic ability has never been his strong suit and for his first two years of soccer, nobody was all that good so it didn’t matter.  The next two years saw the increase of the skills of his fellow players, but he was only OK.  He had a real stick-to-it-ness, though, and a happy go lucky spirit that made his team mates like him.  His best skill was his ability to charge at an opposing player and cause them to panic and kick the ball before they were ready.

This year he started the game at center half back, in a slightly different line up than I’ve seen before.  His job was to play offense when his team had the ball, defense when they didn’t and to be ready on the left, right and center at all times.  In other words, he was to run like crazy.

(He’s on the right in this picture, looking like he’s running on air)

That boy was amazing.  Wherever the ball was, there was Boo.  He wasn’t a ball hog, though, and passed to teammates who were open, and fell back to receive passes when he wasn’t needed.  He would come from out of nowhere to take control of the ball.  At one point the opponents had the ball and were running towards the goal.  Boo came running from behind, down 3/4 of the length of field, overtook the player with the ball and stole it.

During a lull in the action, the coach called out,”Boo!  Are you ok?  Are you hurtin’?”  Boo shook his head, but the coach pulled him out for a breather.  Other than those 5 or 10 minutes, he played the whole game.

Check out this great picture I got of him.  What a game face!  Go ahead and click on the picture to enlarge it and be scared of that face.  How would you like to see that charging down the field at you?

The first game tied at 1-1, not that we’re keeping score or anything.  But it’s good to open the season with a non-loss.

Here’s Boo coming through the Victory Tunnel of Parents.  We should have those at the Olympics.

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So what do you do after a day like Monday?  You put it out there, such a tragic event, and then just coming back to the ol’ blog with my usual upbeat self seems strange.  But that’s how life is sometimes.  It knocks you flat and you get up and just keep swimming, just keep swimming.

Monday actually turned out quite badly, but for reasons totally unrelated to Becca.  Let’s blame it on Boo, shall we?  He’s reached a stage where he churns out his school work quickly in order to be done and free for the day.  Let’s just say it’s not his best work.  I really don’t think he cares.  I’m whipping out Lecture 15: I Just Don’t Know What To Do With You Anymore and he’s got this totally zoned out look on his face.  Um, excuse me? You may NOT look at me like that until you are at least 12.

And all of a sudden I have great empathy for my dad.  Because if that’s the way I looked at him during his lectures, then good grief, it’s a wonder he didn’t haul off and pop me one.   What he did instead will live in legend forever.

After getting good and fed up with my teenage self, my dad would start in on Lecture 3a:  Heed Me Now or Be Grounded Later.  I, caring about as much as Boo cares about his handwriting, would have totally tuned him out and was pondering greater things like which shoes to wear the next morning and when the next Duran Duran video might be on MV3.  No, not really.  I was actually listening in case he called a pop quiz and wanted me to tell him what he just said.  But I’m pretty sure I looked like I was zoning out because out of the blue my dad would turn away from me and yell, “HELLO, WALL!” and would go marching off.

I was smart and kept my mouth closed, but inside I was thinking – what?  What’s that all about?  I really think he’s losing it this time.  Oh well, I guess I can go.

And I’d retreat to my room to listen to Duran Duran albums.  I’m talking actually record albums here, of course, this being the early ’80s in all its big-hair glory.

Another lecture I got often was something about Living the Life of Riley.  My dad lost me as soon as this one started.  First off, who is Riley?  And why am I living his life?  I didn’t think he was a teenage girl growing up in Southern California, but you never know.  This was back before Al Gore invented the Internet, so to find out about who this Riley person was would have required actual effort on my part.  And you have to give me huge credit for not asking my dad who Riley was.

Of course, pondering Riley and his life while my dad was talking would have caused my eyes to glaze over, prompting my dad to give up and go talk to the walls again.

So here I am all these years later with a girl who is a Mini Me in almost every way and a boy who at almost 10 years old is causing me to wonder if I’m talking to the walls.  I looked up Life of Riley, too.  If that boy isn’t living it, I don’t know who is!  Speaking of which, it’s high time I started school and another round of lectures.

Pray for me, I’m going in!

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