Let the Holidays Begin!

I haven't written anything for a month!
Actually I've written several but they all end up whiney and then the whiney mood passes.


We had a fabulous Thanksgiving.  Ours is a multi day event, starting with dinner on Wednesday night and continuing until Saturday evening with a glorious revolving extravaganza of yummy food and playing games and a little shopping thrown in.  The only dark spot was a dominance problem with the dogs, who usually all stay with my sister, since dogs are persona non grata at my folks.  Her stepson's puppy was annoying all the other dogs so much her older, dominant dog seemed to feel the need to lash out at something, and it was Kelso, since he's the biggest of the little dog pack.  So we had to bring him over to my parents, where out of necessity he was tolerated.  Of course he did just fine, aside from a little shedding which my father politely didn't mention until asked later.  The shedding is not too surprising.

Oh, I took another one that shows even MORE hair.

I just HAVE to mention that when I took him for his Rabies booster shot he had hit a whopping 83 pounds.  He's 16 months old now and so has probably stopped growing.  Finally.



Since then it's been life back to normal.


Thing 2 has been having some friend issues.  Just when I think she's found a new one and we can relax about the whole thing, they have a falling out and she's unhappy again.  This time she tells me she asked the little girl what the problem was and was told, "you have too many other friends and I'm jealous."  We have tried to teach her to play with everyone, and apparently she's learned her lesson well enough to annoy other the other kids.


The countdown to Christmas has the girls very excited.  Thing 1 made a list which started out as a single page but then later gained a 2nd page and eventually a fully illustrated cover.


I didn't get out all the Christmas decorations this year, it just seemed like so much work.  The tree has quite a bit less of the usual flotsam and jetsam, I didn't set out any of the many nativities.  When I went to put up the outside lights, I found many of them had burned fuses and bulbs.  I put up what lights I could get to work, didn't want to deal with anything more than replacing a few bulbs, and called it good.  So far no one has complained about the relative decrease in festive clutter.  I think I'm the only one who noticed.

Hubby leaves tomorrow for a week in Paris, same as last year about this time.  He'll be back next Saturday and will be home for three weeks after, during the end of which is our week in Hawaii.

That's all, nothing big or exciting.

Three days at Grandma's

We got home late last night from my folk's.  The dog had a ball, the girls had a ball, and I actually got a couple things accomplished.

I wrote in my last post how we picked apples.  We also trimmed the trees a little.

Trimmed branches make dramatic (if somewhat unwieldy) swords.

The dog and his cousins romped and ran and growled and played.  We drove them out to a field and let them all play, trying to wear them out.  My father doesn't want all these hairy beasts in his house, so the dogs all go to my sister's.  This time she had her own two boxers, our collie, my brother's short hair/border collie mix, and her stepson's lab/pointer puppy. She doesn't usually have all these dogs and was worried they were going to keep her and her husband up all night, so she wanted to give them a good run to wear them out.

On the way back from that walk we saw three deer in someone's front yard. Just driving along in the middle of the neighborhood, and there are three deer.

The next day the girls and I went on a horseback ride with my sister.  (This was the highlight of the trip for them.)  A friend of my sister's came to help, so there were three grown-ups to herd the two little girls, who both did very well at steering their own horses and obeying the orders called to them.  

"Pull his head up!"  
"Don't let him eat the grass!"  
"Don't let her get ahead of the leader or she'll run home with you!"  
"Pull his head up!"
"Remember you're in control!"
"Don't let her stop and talk to those strange horses on the other side of the fence or we'll be here all day!"  
"Pull his head up!"

It helps that the horses they're riding are very well behaved.  They do what they're told, if they're told firm enough to notice, and are not too prone to misbehave. It's also nice they're not the "stick your nose in the tail of the horse in front of you and never remove it" kind of horses.  My sister owns the horses she and Thing 1 rode, her friend owns the horse she rode, and Thing 2 and I borrowed horses from a family friend, who used to keep my sister's horses.  

Thing 1, me, and Thing 2

The horse we borrowed for Thing 2 is "half draft" which means she's a little stockier than the others, which are mostly Tennessee Walkers.   She also had to trot to keep up with the long Walkers, which explains why Thing 2 spent so much of the ride giggling hysterically.  Apparently when you're 7 years old having your bones bounced out of their sockets while trotting is fabulous entertainment.
Seeing the little Thing 2 on the back of that big half draft reminded my sister of a cartoon she'd seen once, so she had to take a picture, which turned out better than she'd expected.

"Does this kid make butt look big?"

We also picked out pumpkins from a neighbor of my sister's who sells them much cheaper than the grocery stores.
We were driving back to my parents' house for dinner when I saw some kids out on a corner wearing bee keeper suits, waving at cars and selling their honey. The house looked familiar and so I stopped and bought some Raw, Local Honey, and sure enough the kids in the bee suits belonged to a good friend of my sister's (whose big brother I used to date) who has become something of a farmer.  She came out and talked to us, then took us to her garage and showed my girls her hives and gave us a brief lesson on how they get honey from the hives. 

We had really gone to the garage to see giant pumpkins they raised.  The bee hives were actually a bonus.

We had a great time, and got back very late last night. I still haven't unloaded all the pumpkins from the car.

In the Doghouse

I've been wondering if I should do anything for the dog's first birthday. Evidently the answer was "no" because it passed over a month ago, and we didn't do anything. But I've been thinking about how much he's grown up since we got him.

He's been so good, I've been writing a post in my head singing his praises. There was the time he was sitting RIGHT BELOW a plate full of link sausages, and he didn't even look up and smell it. He walked right by it half a dozen times, never even looked up. And the paper towel they were draining on was hanging off the counter! (I was so floored I took a photo!) And there are all those times he just walks out onto the porch to greet people who come over, and then comes right into the house with them. Without me even having to call him into the house. He is rock solid housetrained, he's friendly to everyone, person or beast. And for the longest time he wasn't hardly shedding at all. The list of good qualities just goes on and on.

Look at him ignoring those sausages!

Well, it turns out he does shed, I guess he was just fiercely clinging to his puppy coat or something. And he does get things off the table - he chewed up the cute little hand carved wooden spoon that goes in the wooden sugar bowl I brought back from Germany 15 years ago. He stole it off the table when I was out. And then yesterday he ripped out two strands of the drip sprinkling system in the back yard. I hadn't even left him out there very long, dang it! Hubby recently gave me a brief sprinkler tutorial and then turned the sprinkler maintenance responsibility over to me. This is a responsibility he is very happy to unload and I am loathe to accept. I found one blown sprinkler head in the front yard a couple of weeks ago and have been hand watering to cover the dry spot rather than fix the small geyser the broken sprinkler head creates. I had hoped the rest of the system would limp through the fall season and then we could turn it off and I could ignore it until next spring. But NO! The dog has brought the harsh reality of sprinkler responsibility in the form of little black tubes and uprooted petunias on the patio.

And then, the last straw, today he ran away. I had to run an errand in the neighborhood, and I just walked over since it was so close. The dog watched me go out the front door, and stood and watched me walk away, but somewhere down the line he grasped in his little brain that I wasn't just going out and right back in like I often do, I was ACTUALLY LEAVING ON FOOT and NOT TAKING HIM WITH ME. I could hear him barking. It is my theory that he got mad at me for leaving him behind and decided if I could go for a little solo walk then he could too. When I came back 45 minutes later he BOLTED out the front door and galloped into the next door neighbor's front yard. I went out on the porch and called him. He stood staring at me. I started to go into our house, as sort of a threat. This usually works. But not this time. He just stood there watching. I went back out to the porch and down to the front yard and called him. I started walking toward him with the intent of dragging him back by some of that fur. He saw me coming and RAN AWAY! He trotted down to the sidewalk and off up the street. I was flabbergasted! Verging on furious! He has only done this once before, and that time I dragged him home by the scruff of his neck muttering at him... obviously that didn't impress upon him the dire consequences of incurring my wrath, because here he ran off again!
I marched back in the house and got his collar and leash - I don't put a collar on him all the time because it cuts off all the fur around his neck and I like him looking big and fluffy. I followed him up the street. He was already most of the way to the end of the block, 5 or 6 houses away, by the time I got out to the sidewalk. He crossed a moderately busy neighborhood intersection (thankfully no cars around) and stopped to sniff a woman walking by. He sat on the sidewalk and watched me cross the street, and didn't run when I walked up to him and put his collar on him.

Of course I can't yell at him, because I don't want him to flee my wrath should he ever run off again. And he trotted along happily with me back to our house, it wasn't like he was dragging on the leash, he was happy to go with me.

It will be a long time before I let him darken my doorway without a leash clamped firmly around his neck. I keep thinking about his big furry butt trotting away from me, out into that street... I sure as shooting would have zapped him with the shock collar, if only I had one.

By the way I'm NOT buying a shock collar for the two times a year he misbehaves. But I do daydream about cranking the control up to 11 and zapping his furry ass.

Tadaki has shrunk

I haven't seen Kelly since forever so I took the girls and the dog over to her place after the first day of school.

We had lot going on after the school and it was somewhat hectic getting out of the house, but once we got over there the dogs ran in a wild pack, and the girls jumped on the trampoline. I got to admire Kelly's shoes, quilts, and everything else she's done since I saw her last; basically we had much needed grown-up girl time.

The funny part was how much Kelso had grown. I got a picture of him next to Tadaki soon after we got him last October...


Then Wednesday I took a picture of them side by side again.


I thought Tadaki was SO HUGE back in October... I think he's shrunk. Kelly said he's not so broad across his chest because he doesn't pull her around as much every day as he pulled each day in training, but she assured me he's not the victim of some tragic dog shrinking disease. Kelso has just been growing like a weed. He put on 10 pounds a month for the first 5 months we had him. At 11 months I took him into the vet for a weight check and he was 80 pounds. He turned 1 year old on August 1st, and I suspect he's gained a couple of pounds since then. I understand the bigger they are, the later dogs will mature... so I'll give him a couple of months and then have him weighed again.

First Day of School

Wednesday was the first day of school. Quite a day. Thing 1 has been pretty neutral about school starting up again. The only thing she was really looking forward to was seeing her 2nd grade teacher, Mr. C again. She wasn't really thinking so much about going into 3rd Grade, it didn't seem to be occupying her attention so much.

Giving the dog a hug goodbye, all ready to walk out the door to our first day of school!


We dropped off Thing 2 first, so Thing 1 could get a hug from her favorite teacher, now Thing 2's teacher.

Thing 2 has been floating so high, planning what she'll wear the first couple of days, how great it will be at recess, she is excited about school lunch, and she is deciding who is going to be interesting to meet based solely on their names, "Roger sounds interesting. And Hunter! I wonder if he hunts. I can't wait to meet them!" Going into 1st Grade from Kindergarten, and now into 2nd Grade from first, Thing 2 has been one of only a few kids (mostly boys) from her previous class that end up together. So every year is like moving to a new school, where she hardly knows anyone. There are three classes each year, you would expect that 1/3rd of her previous classmates would end up with her, but no. Only her and one other boy from their kindergarten class were in the same 1st grade class, and this year one other girl and two boys from 1st grade are in her 2nd grade class. But she was undaunted. She has Mr. C, Thing 1's favorite teacher in the world. Everything will be wonderful. She has been so excited, there was nowhere to go but down.

See that face? That is a happy girl! She is ready for school! Ready to learn! She has the world by the tail!


Thing 1 met her teacher, who will be great and I am pleased about.


When I met them after school yesterday of course I could tell immediately that Thing 2 was not happy. She was quite subdued, not normal for her. No, she did not have a good first day. But she didn't say too much. Thing 1 was her usual even-tempered self. Yes, her day was fine. The best part was reading, she was asked to bring a book from home to read and she's reading the 2nd of the "My Father's Dragon" books and loves them.

We walk in our front door and Thing 2 disappears. I found her on the family room couch crying. In a nutshell her laments are:
1) No one likes her.
2) Anyone who might like her is already paired up with someone they know from kindergarten or first grade.
3) All her friends from last year are in one of the two other 2nd grade classes.
4) Mr. C is NOT NICE. He is MEAN. He's mean? Well, maybe not mean, but he's certainly not what she expected. Sure, he told a few jokes, that was the best part of her day... but in between he was not nice.
5) She was the last one to sit down at lunch and there was no room at her assigned table. She had to carry her lunch tray around until she found Mr. C, he came to their class table and had everyone scoot together to make room for her. But she was HUMILIATED that she had to walk around carrying her tray and no one made room for her until forced to.

Horrible, horrible, horrible, it was just horrible. And she certainly didn't want to go back. Ever. And, furthermore, she has to share a locker. With whom? She doesn't know, some wild boy ran up to her and wanted to share her locker and was so excited to share her locker and since he wanted to so badly she said fine, whatever. Who is this boy? She doesn't know, can't remember his name. Horrible horrible horrible the whole day was horrible.

I held her while she cried, and told me her sort of jumbled myopic replay of some of the more painful moments of her day. While I know that just being held while she cried was mostly what she was looking for, I couldn't help trying to help just a little, and I pointed out that no one will want to play with her at recess if she's walking around moping, she should jump rope, or play hopscotch, or do something fun by her self, and maybe someone else will want to play with her. She insisted she hadn't been moping, she demonstrated her "I'm happily looking for someone to play with!" expression. So we talked about this a little, and I cited several examples from her own past about girls she had been friends with at the first part of 1st grade but things had cooled within a couple of months, and things will change, but mostly she concluded she doesn't like jumping rope or hopscotch that much, and whatever solution I tried to propose she'd just counter with the "No one likes me!" and more tears. I hate watching her face screw up and the tears squeezing out...

It just so happened that yesterday two packages arrived for the girls, one was the ants (for the ant farm we gave Thing 1 for her birthday nearly a year ago) that I finally ordered, and the other contained caterpillars (for the butterfly cage they received two Christmases ago) that I finally ordered. (On-the-ballness has never been a virtue I have been overly troubled with.) But both insect packages arrived and we got to look at the caterpillars (who will stay in their little environmentally complete cups until they go into chrysalises) and we dumped the ants into their cage. That was thrilling, the girls were very excited, and the horribleness of the day was put aside.

_____________

I should break here, and finish in another post. But I'm just going to push through.
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This morning I did my best to launch the girls on a good start to their day. I had noticed as I comforted her yesterday that Thing 2 needed a bath, but we got in late last night so they HAD to have one this morning. This is usually a recipe for hurrying and rushing and me getting tense and all of us being late, but I got up early and got them in the bath early, and they were downstairs clean and dressed and ready for breakfast early. They ate quickly, and we were ready to walk out the door about 10 minutes early. I made a massive fuss about how fabulous they are, how quickly yet calmly they performed the morning routine, how speedy they were in the bath, and how amazingly early we were. We practiced our silly walks to the door. We strolled to school, examining each interesting bug and flower that we passed and still arrived several minutes early.

I am a lousy housekeeper, an unenthusiastic cook, and I fail as a gardener. I wonder why I get to be a stay at home mom, because in many ways I'm terrible at so many of the aspects involved. I have many many failings, BUT I can be a great cheerleader. (Or so I like to believe. If you disagree please keep your opinions to yourself as I need to feel like there's at least one thing at which I excel.) I did everything short of donning a miniskirt and waving pompoms. I made it very clear that they had an amazing morning under their belts.

We took the dog to school, and instead of standing up at the edge of the school ground to kiss them goodbye, I brought the dog down the stairs to the playground where the kindergarten and 1st grade kids play and wait for the bell to ring. The dog and I accompanied them down the sidewalk past the 1st grade door to the 2nd grade door, where there was a clump of kids waiting for the bell to ring so they could go in the school. I don't normally do this because I am very aware that not all little kids like dogs, and even some that do are daunted by a huge beast who can nearly look them in the eye. I took him on a short leash, with the intent of bringing our handsome, sweet, huge, furry, attention-grabbing dog to the door where perhaps some of Thing 2's classmates will see him, become interested in him and this will translate to someone becoming interested in her. Maybe they will find they have something to talk to her about, and will look upon her in a more favorable light. I am nothing if not calculating. I plan to do this until she tells me she has a friend.

So I was on pins and needles today, to see how School Day #2 went. As I was waiting for the final bell to ring, another mother whose son was a friend of Thing 2's from kindergarten walks by and says Thing 2 and her son are sharing a locker. Really? Your son, who I KNOW Thing 2 knows is the pushy mystery boy who insisted they be locker buddies, whose name she completely forgot?

And Thing 2 comes bouncing over to where I always stand and announces today was great, everything is good. Did you make a friend? No, but she had a great time at recess doing the monkey bars, now she can traverse them hand over hand hanging from the bottom. Wahooo! Did you sit by anyone at lunch? Not at first, because she was toward the beginning of the line and everyone came and sat down around her when they got their food this time and school lunch was Chili with hot sauce! They have great chili! And she is one of the only ones who takes hers with hot sauce, the other kids are complete hot sauce wimps! I do not know where her hot sauce superiority stems from, but at this point I'm not going to argue with her that liking or not liking hot sauce doesn't make you a better or worse person. I'm just thrilled she's thrilled. Mr. C was much better today, he was hilarious and she has math homework, just one page and she knows how to do it and is excited to demonstrate her knowledge and this was a great day! I told her I had just talked to her locker buddy's mom, and was surprised she hadn't told me it was her friend from kindergarten. She said oh, yeah, she'd just spaced off his name. It's fine.

I should know better than to worry too much about her. As low as she will be one day, she'll probably be that high or higher the next. I hope I can help her navigate her roller coaster.

Pat and Luke Road Trip

Two of the most fabulous people on earth spent the weekend with us. They're on a visit from their native land of Britain, not just any Britain, but Great Britain. Pat is keeping a blog with photos and videos. We had a really marvelous time with them, they are gracious and funny and great company, the only problem was that they didn't stay longer.

We took them to the Gilgal Sculpture garden. I've lived here most of my life and never seen this before. Of course there was lots of conversation about how absurd everything was, especially the crazy brick pants those pioneers wore.


We took them to the Olympic Park.
I took this picture of Thing 2 just before the gate opened and she and I went down the zip line. She was excited but a little scared. The first time. 2nd time it was all fun.


You had to be over 100 pounds to ride the big zip line, and the girls are too small. So bless Pat's heart he stayed down and played with them while Luke, Hubby, and I took the big zip line. Luke lagged at the beginning, but he beat me at the end.


Luke rode everything but the bobsled, and Pat rode the bobsled. We got to watch the bobsled before we went down it.



I wanted to video the bobsled ride too, but no, there's way too much shaking going on for that. I barely survived the ride, gripping the sides for dear life and hoping my whole body didn't just spontaneously disintegrate. But we were fast, boy howdy. We had the best time of the day (so far).


Luke enjoyed Kelso, I think he misses Charley. Kelso slept by Luke's bed while he was here.


Thing 1 and 2 just enjoyed having someone else to horse around with.


The girls were very disappointed to see them go. Luke had been suggesting to Pat that he (Luke) stay on, so he could see Disneyland, Arches, basically everything else they haven't been able to pack into this trip. The girls are still working on their abilities to discern when they're being teased or not and they took this talk seriously. When we were reviewing what would happen the next day as we were tucking them in last night Thing 2 conspiritoraly told us that Luke is actually staying on, hadn't we heard? She was very upset when we assured her they were both leaving today. We completely foiled her plans to adopt Luke as her big brother.

Just before they got on their bike and rode away, off toward that horizon...


It could be argued that now it's our turn to go back to England to visit them. Either way, we look forward to their next visit.

Dolphin, not Swan

We're back! And we had a great time!

Hubby was there for the Agile 2010 conference, not that it matters for my part of the story, but the conference went well for him.

First of all, turns out we were at the Disney Dolphin, not the Swan. While we're talking about this let me state that The Dolphin is not really a dolphin. It has spikes and scales and is rather un-dolphin like. Hubby thought it's more like a sturgeon.


I was told it is a Dolphin Fish, as opposed to a Dolphin. Though a Dolphin Fish has a big fin up its back... Okay it doesn't look like either a dolphin or a sturgeon but when you say Dolphin, you don't think of that freaky big headed thing, you think of Flipper. A mammal. Smooth, squeaky clean, jumping ahead of the spray from a ship.

I think the Disney Swan and Sturgeon kind of has a nice ring to it, and certainly fits their motif better. Anyway, the Swan and Sturgeon (aka Dolphin) hotels are practically twin hotels separated by a lake and a walkway. They sort of share 5 swimming pools. The difference is at the Dolphin we were closer to the interesting pools. The pool next to the Swan is a big square pool - the one I put in my last post. The Dolphin had one of those, then a large 3 foot deep kid pool, then a volleyball pool, the waterfall pool (also pictured in my previous post) with a slide going into it, and another little pool on the other side. They're all connected by sidewalks, but the elevators right outside our room dropped us down to right by the kid pool and waterfall pool we were interested in, and it all worked beautifully.

Hubby got us a room upgrade, so we had a great big room. Sort of. The hotel room layout left us scratching our heads - so much space that could have been utilized so much more effectively. There was a big wide hallway down the side of the room... just a weird layout but it was bigger than the usual hotel room. The 2nd bed was a small uncomfortable fold-out couch which the two girls shared the first night. Since Thing 2 is a kicker and sleeps really hot and Thing 1 is always freezing, (and there was a perfect nook for it in that big room) we got a roll away bed in the corner the next night. The girls were enchanted with that and they swapped who got to sleep on the roll-away for the rest of our stay.

Hubby knows so many more people at these conferences than he knows in our home town so this was a real social event for him. Standing in line to check in or go to a restaurant or get on the bus and he has people saying hello and talking shop. I'd send him for a yogurt and not seem him for an hour. There's lots of networking with other computer conference buddies. He did blow off quite a bit of the conference to be with us, though.

A guy named David who Hubby works with sometimes has a 7 1/2 year old we'll call Thing A. David was coming to the conference and his wife is out of the country so he contacted us a couple weeks before to see if I would watch his munchkin at the conference while he was busy doing conference stuff. So my girls had someone to play with.

All six of us spent the day on Sunday at Magic Kingdom. My girls are old hands at Disney and were very excited to just fast pass Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain, which in DisneyWorld are very conveniently located right next to each other. Thing A and her dad have never really been to a Disney park before, and she wasn't sure about some of the rides. So we split up by families and Hubby and I took our little Disney veterans on everything we could fast pass. It was all in all a good day at the Magic Kingdom.

The other big Disney day was Tuesday. In evaluating our past DisneyWorld experience we had seen that there were just a few things at the three other parks besides Magic Kingdom that really held the girls' interest. So we figured maybe we could get a park hopper and do all three of the other parks in one day. Thing A came with us while her daddy stayed at the conference. We hit the Animal Adventure to do the Safari Ride, which last time we were there was amazing, this time there weren't too many animals around.

Thing 2 had been looking forward to having her face painted.

Thing A and Thing 2 with their face paint.

We saw quite a few animals, the most memorable was this mother and baby gorilla.

We were at Animal Adventure park for 3-4 hours, then hopped a bus to the Hollywood Studios park. The only thing there for the girls, really, was the Honey I Shrunk The Kids playground and a Toy Story ride. The girls all thought the playground was great, and we let them run around there for an hour. I stayed at the playground while Hubby walked over to fast pass the Toy Story ride, and found that they weren't Fast Passing, and the line wait was an hour and a half the first time he checked, and between an hour and two hours the subsequent times he checked. No Thanks. We gathered up the kids and took them to Epcot.

The Honey I Shrunk The Kids Playground



I hadn't given Epcot enough credit. We could have spent a lot more time there. Last time it seemed that Epcot was just about food and shopping from different countries, and we spent the whole time looking for the two or three rides that are there. But this time we went through Spaceship Earth, and didn't have time for all the other things to see in the front circle, before you even get back to the countries. As expected, we ran out of time. The girls wanted to shop in Japan for Pokemon stuff, and we promised them dinner in Mexico. We hit it all kind of quick, and didn't even get over to the Aquarium part, which we've seen before and is very neat. We ended up meeting David back at the hotel at 10:30 at night or so. 3 parks with 3 little girls in 12 hours. As we rode the bus back to the hotel Thing 2 told me, "Today's been a LARGE day."

At Epcot they give the kids a paper mask on a stick that they can color. At every country there is someone from that country at a desk who will stamp the kids' masks and put a hang tag on it representing their country. The kids think this is really cool.


The girls liked Japan.

The other days we mostly spent at the pool, or letting the girls play at the hotel room. They like to get me out of their hair when they're doing their pretend play, but with me there in the room with them they were a little inhibited.
I took the girls to a restaurant that had the kids menus on viewmasters. What a clever idea!

The last night we were there David and Thing A were going to a restaurant over in the Swan where they have Disney characters come around to the tables to say hello. We joined them and saw Pluto and Goofy. The girls were tickled pink.

We were scheduled to come home Saturday evening, tonight. However, on Thursday night as we were assessing what to do with our last day we looked at reviews for Universal Studios and saw that apparently the whole world is visiting Universal Studios to see Harry Potterville. There were reports of 2 hour lines for rides, and huge lines just to get into the shops. Since we hate lines so bad, and based on our experience with Disney's Hollywood Studios that there are more shows there than rides, we decided we'll wait until the kids are a little older to do that. We could have done a Cirque du Soleil show at Downtown Disney on Friday night. David and Thing A saw one and said it was wonderful. Then Hubby told me he was leaving home on a 6:00 a.m. flight Sunday morning, and had a boatload of stuff to do to get ready for that. So instead of getting home at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday and having him pull another all-nighter on Saturday, we decided to end our fun a day early. After Hubby went to the closing keynote speech on Friday morning he called Delta and found they could get us on a plane that evening.

The girls were very disappointed to hear they wouldn't have another day at the hotel pool, but we placated them with a couple hours at the pool with Daddy while I stayed in the room and packed us up. We were out by 2:00 p.m., which meant we didn't have to pay for the hotel that night, and we caught our plane to make it back last night.

Did I mention the rainstorms every afternoon while we were in Orlando? Anything from a good sprinkle to a real gullywasher would hit at least once each day, if not two or three times a day while we were there. As we were boarding the plane they said there was a micro storm burst coming in and if we didn't get out ahead of it we'd be stuck there for a while. Apparently we made it out just in time, and landed early back home. We quickly got in and unloaded the car, fed the last two living crickets to the gecko (who did just fine and is still fat tailed and happy), and got the kids in their pajamas. As we were brushing the girls' teeth the doorbell rang and who should be standing on our doorstep but my sister, with Kelso and her dogs. She and her darling husband drove the hour and 45 minutes down to drop off the dog, then they hugged everyone and turned around to drive an hour and 45 minutes back to their house. That's a three and a half hour drive for them, just because they're sweet, completely saving us a trip to go get him. Above and beyond!

Hubby started printing last night and has had the printer going most of the morning today. I doubt if he would have gotten much sleep at all if we hadn't have come home a day early. I'm sad to have missed a day of playing, but all in all this was better. The girls are upstairs happily pretending in their room, the dog is asleep at my feet, I can blog and run some laundry, and the gecko will have dinner today. Hubby can help me move the old TV out of the new Toy Room in preparation for the friends from out of town who will get here at the end of the week, in addition to getting ready for his next trip. It's good to be home.

More good things

Kelly Darling posted a wonderful list of some of her favorite things. A couple got me teary. She's fabulous at looking for the wonderful. Sometimes I don't do that so well. But she inspired me to give it a shot today. So here are some of the things that grease the wheels as my world goes 'round.


* My daughters' tousled hair, soft cheeks, and stillness when they're sleeping.

* The bell on the front doorknob janging late at night when Hubby lets himself in after a long trip.

* How the dog comes to the top of the cellar steps to wait for me whenever I go down to the cellar. He doesn't do stairs, but he does wait at the top.

* How Thing 1 gets so excited to write a note (and hopefully get a response) from any magical person such as Santa, a Leprechaun, and at this moment (as she prepares to put the tooth that came out this morning under her pillow) the Tooth Fairy.

* The notes that Hubby leaves on my pillow sometimes on his way out of town.

* Sitting on the front step in the evening and watching my neighborhood get ready for the night.

* The fact that when we're both sitting down on the front step I can look the dog right in the eye.

* Watching my daughters during their swim lesson - Thing 1's freestyle no longer resembles swimming underwater with the periodic heads-up-dog-paddle to breathe, her arms actually break the surface. Thing 2's is very splashy with her little arms slapping the water at each stroke.

* When Hubby cooks. Anything he cooks.

Funny Girls

We went to my folk's house last week for a couple of days. On the last day as we were loading the car, I noticed Thing 1 did not have her glasses on. One of my frustrations is how often she puts them down and walks off, and the resulting search required. My frustration increased as it got later and later, and we still had a long drive ahead of us. We searched everywhere, multiple times for nearly half an hour. Finally I was outside AGAIN and caught sight of them, one of the ear pieces looped over the webbing on the back of a patio chair. Thing 1 groaned and said, "Why is it we don't check the easy places first?!"


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When Thing 2 has a bad day everyone knows it. She is not one to hide her emotions. As I was tucking her in a couple of weeks ago after a bad day she seemed to need a boost so I started listing off some of her good attributes. She listened attentively, very quiet. I went on for a bit but eventually I ran down. She looked at me for a second and then she said softly, "You can tell me that again."

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As a reward for reading, here are a few pictures from a hike we took the girls on a couple of weeks ago. They whined a lot at the start, but made it to the top of the mountain and did wonderfully.

Hubby's Days

Hubby's birthday is so close to father's day, it's a problem to figure out how to celebrate them both. We usually celebrate Father's Day on Father's Day, but his birthday can be bumped anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months behind the real day, depending on his schedule, and the scheduling of my nieces' summer birthdays, since in the grand scheduling of holidays, kids take precedence. The longest we went between his actual birthday and the celebration was some time in August. This year we actually celebrated within a week of his birthday. Birthdays for the adults in my family are usually pretty small, my folks always want to attend and part of their gift is babysitting while he and I go do something. We went to a movie and then went mattress shopping. Not exactly thrilling, but it was what he wanted to do.

Father's Day was a bigger deal. Since he usually does such wonderful things for me for mother's day, I was feeling pretty inadequate about the fact that I had made no special effort for Father's day. We had a couple of gifts to give him, but I hadn't made a garden in the living room, or cooked a big breakfast, or anything like what he usually does.

While I was mulling this over on the afternoon of Father's Day I had an inspiration. I decided to turn our living room into a day spa. Our old mattress bothers his back (see how we spent his birthday) and he's always wanting a massage, so this seemed a good answer. The girls helped with the transformation. Thing 1 and 2 made signs. I hung a sheet between the dining room and living room to divide the two rooms into a reception area (the dining room) and a massage area (the living room). I brought the kid's table from the back yard to serve as a reception desk. When everything was ready Thing 1 told Hubby to come into the kitchen, then disappeared to her position. Thing 2 sat at her desk at the doorway from the kitchen to the dining room.

When Hubby followed Thing 1's signs to the Golden Day Spa --> Thing 2 was waiting for him. She was super polite. She greeted him in her best receptionist manner. "How can I help you, Kind Sir?" He was amused but not sure how to proceed. She asked if he had an appointment. He said "No."
Wrong answer. He hadn't rehearsed with us. But she took it like a pro. She said, "Well, let me see if you're on my list. What is your name?"
He gave her his first name.
She looked over her list of four names which she had written moments before. She hesitated. "What is your last name, sir?"
Lucky for him she found his name, first and last, on the list.


I don't think he noticed the "Best Spa" award Thing 2 had made to hang above her reception desk.


She showed him to the waiting room - a chair pulled to the corner of the dining room, and gave him a magazine. She pointed out the lovely painting in our waiting room (which she drew herself) and invited him to enjoy his wait.


Thing 1 then came out from behind the curtain, ushering our previous massage appointment. It was Kelso, with a towel clipped across his shoulders. She was leading him with a rope that he likes to trot around with in his teeth, and she chatted with him, asking him if he enjoyed his massage. (Using the dog as the previous appointment was Thing 1's idea.) (They wanted to figure out a way to work in the gecko, but I nixed that idea.)

Thing 1 then ushered Hubby to the dressing room (the small front entry alcove next to the living room), where she invited him to remove his shirt, and then she guided him to me, the masseuse, waiting in the living room. The coffee table was pushed to the side and I had laid towels on the floor, and had emptied our linen closet to place towels folded up all over the place. I'd had quite a time keeping the dog from messing them up.

The girls have never been to a spa, and their excitement at the whole process kept Hubby's massage from being very relaxing. I hadn't expected much privacy, but they kept up a continuous parade of patrons, taking turns escorting each other through the living room with towels across their shoulders, chatting about what fine massages they'd had, and what a great establishment the Golden Day Spa is. I finally sent them to watch TV for half an hour.
They were back in about 20 minutes theatrically whispering to me that it was time to send Daddy through the "gift shop" where he would receive his specially wrapped gifts.
I was quite pleased with how it all fell together, and it was fun to have the girls so excited to be involved.

hark, hark, the dogs do bark

The weather has been really nice today, for the first time this spring I think it crept toward 80 degrees. It dropped cool enough this evening to open up the house let some cooler outside air in. So an hour ago I was sitting in the kitchen and suddenly the dog freaked out in the back yard - using his deeper, Big Boy "I'm Seriously Gonna Open A Can With You" bark. I've only heard him do that once or twice before. His normal bark is kind of a sharp higher pitched bark, which is not what I would expect or choose for a dog of his size. I went out to the back yard to see what is going on, and couldn't see anything that would warrant a deep throated barking fit. My hushing him didn't affect his barking at all, he's looking over the fence at the neighbor's house and giving it his best "GO BACK TO HELL!!" bark... Suddenly I look up and froze... It was a scene right out of that M. Night (yes I had to look up the spelling) Shyamalan movie, "Signs," in which Mel Gibson has a crop circle problem... there's one shot in the movie where it shows the roof and there's an alien standing next to the chimney silhouetted against the night sky. The image has always sort of creeped me out... and there I am, looking at it on my neighbor's roof. I'm wondering how to respond when my neighbor's boyfriend calls down Hello, and tells me he's up there to summer-ize her swamp cooler. The conversation finally stopped the barking. Knowing it wasn't the alien from "Signs" seemed to have calmed Kelso down somewhat.

Not that I'm happy about the dog barking his head off, but that one was kind of justified. He's proving himself a good watchdog. I'm going to sleep better at night knowing he's downstairs waiting for a demon.
Hubby changed his flight to come home a day early - tonight instead of tomorrow. His plane should land in about half an hour. We only get him for two days (hence the flight change, it would have been just one day) so we'll have to get some quality time in. That's okay, he does quality very well.

Here's Kelso last week with his doggie cousins, Willo, Ruger, and Libby.

B&B &L&D

For Memorial Day I drove the girls and the dog up to my folk's house, 80 miles north. It is one of my very favorite escapes. In many ways I get to crawl back into the lovely childhood lack of responsibility. Don't get me wrong, I love my kids, and Hubby helps out a lot with them, but at Grandma and Papa's house, it seems I do about 1/4 of the work. I am a slob and I let my mother do most everything, including half or more of the responsibility for my kids, I do about a third, and my dad picks up the rest. It is a lovely vacation for me.

The dog stays down the road a couple of miles away with his doggie cousins at my sister's, since dogs are less than totally welcome at my folks'. My sister's husband was working a lot of the weekend, so she hung out with us quite a bit. She took the girls horseback riding, or rather, the girls rode on the back of one horse while someone else led it around the pasture, either from another horse or on foot. The girls took turns being in front, or being by themselves on the horse for nearly an hour and a half.


In the movie, the girl on the horse in front is one of our favorite babysitters, her mother is my sister's friend who keeps my sister's two horses in her pasture during the summer.

The horseback riding is really Thing 2's treat. The first two days we were up there it rained, and she was pretty upset. Every time the sun peeked out from behind the clouds for just a minute she was trying to stir up a trip out to the pasture. She is the one who talks about being a "Horseback Rider" when she grows up. Thing 1 is much less enthusiastic about the horses. All the way out to the pasture, Thing 1 kept asking, "Do I HAVE to ride a horse?" But once we started, Thing 1 was the most excited about it, and the most exuberant. She kept hollering "This is So Much Fun!" And of course the dog had a great time running around the pasture with my sister's dogs. Fun for Everyone!