We interrupt the holidays....

My next post was going to cover my Christmas list and all the wonders I'd love to see under the tree on Christmas morning, but instead I'm interrupting the holiday season for a birthday party. That's right, we celebrated a birthday this past weekend. If you assumed it was mine, you'd be assuming wrong. Then again, you know what they say about assuming....

No, this weekend was the official party to celebrate Miss Sophia turning 5. Though she actually turned 5 the end of October, our schedule just didn't work (and Kelsey Creek Farms didn't have any party openings) until now. Sophia didn't mind the extended birthday - who wouldn't love more presents six weeks after your actual birthday - and got to spend the afternoon touring the farm and seeing the animals with all her little friends.

Happy Birthday my darling, spirited little girl!

Believe

Each year I watch my kids start months in advance prepping and preparing their Christmas lists. For Hudson and Sophia we mostly translate, though this year Sophia can write her own list for the first time. The lists always have pictures that go along with them, just in case Santa gets confused and needs some visual aid. For Isabelle, the list is long and extensive and complex above one's wildest imagination. Oh, and expensive. Did I mention expensive?

Fortunately, as least as far as I know, Isabelle still believes in Santa...and it literally brings tears to my eyes that she does. Some might say it's naive, that she's too old to believe in such a thing, but I adore that she believes, and that she encourages her brother and sister to be good so Santa will come. I want her to believe for as long as possible. I see no reason to burst the bubble and tell her that Santa, in the way she knows him, does not exist. I accept that the day will come, and every season I pray "please don't let it be this year," but I accept it's coming. And when it does, we'll keep the magic alive for Hudson and Sophia as long as possible and she'll find the joy in being excited for them like we are right now. But when it's gone there's no getting it back, so I'm enjoying it now.

I remember making my Christmas list growing up. The anticipation, the hope that when you wrote something down on that piece of paper that maybe, just maybe, you'd find it under the tree on Christmas morning. I wish I could give my kids the world. I wish I could give Isabelle every single item on her 50 item (no joke) Christmas list. I wish I could give Sophia all the American Girl dolls that she wants, or Hudson every Lego set on the Lego aisle. Alas I cannot, but I still encourage them to write, encourage them to wish, and encourage them to believe.

Next update...my Christmas list. :)

Four minutes of sanity

It is exactly .89 miles from Sophia and Hudson's preschool to my office. I completely bask in the glory that is the two minutes (each way) of alone time that this trip allows me. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's these four minutes that allow me to cling to my sanity at times.

Each day I cannot wait to walk both of them to class, give them a hug and kiss, wish them a good day, threaten them that they better be good, and then wave goodbye as I leave. The threat is a guarantee; the hug and kiss may or may not happen depending upon their attitudes in the car going to school. But the threat? I fear for their teachers, if I were to forget the threat. Sophia gets dropped off first, and then Hudson. After my last "be good," I am practically skipping out the door and up the steps to the car.

People must think I'm just that excited to get to work. Hardly.

In reality, I know the next two minutes are all mine. The music I listen to is something I want to hear and it's typically some pop song that is no longer "cool" in Isabelle's eyes. Most days you will find me around 900 AM driving through Factoria singing at the top of my lungs, head bobbing and ear drums on the verge of shattering. The kids make fun of me when I sing (I suck), and complain when the music is too loud. They are incredibly lame and I can hardly believe they are mine most days. Other days I listen to sad bastard music that reminds me of older times and when played in the car with Isabelle causes her to start making gagging noises followed by her simulating death. (Missing You by John Waite...More Than Words by Extreme...Be With You by Mr. Big....man, it's 1993 all over again.) She doesn't appreciate my high school classics.

At 300 PM the cycle starts all over again. I leave work and know that my two minutes are counting down from the moment I hit the car. At this point, I usually don't care enough about the day anymore to attempt excitment over a song. I merely ride along in silence, gearing up for the night ahead...homework, soccer practice, constant requests in the car of how to spell something, breaking up fights like a WWE ref (foreign objects in the ring a given), after school activities, dinner...you get the idea.

But those four minutes? Man, they're good.

This update brought to you by Initiative 1183

As I sit here next to Isabelle while she writes out her thoughts on the King County election taking place this week, I find myself with some time since we just finished our hot debate on Initiative 1183. Therefore, I figured I'd knock out a quick update on the month of October in our house. (On a sidenote, I'm not sure my 9 year old should be writing her election thoughts on a topic in which she's arguing on the side to close state liquor stores so that Mom and Dad can buy liquor at Costco...but whatever. In her words, "why does the state get to add so much tax and make so much money and not everyone else." Amen, sister.)

ANYWAY...while she writes down her final thoughts, here are a few pics from this month. In quick summary, we did the following:

1) Watched/played a lot of soccer games (approximately 20 in October)
2) Remodeled the kitchen
3) Went to the pumpkin patch (3 times, in fact)
4) Grandad came to visit
5) Drove many many many miles between practices, extracurricular activities, dance, etc. to the point that I'm pretty sure the state will be building me my own lane on 405...or at least they should
6) Celebrated darling Sophia's 5th birthday
7) Wrapped up the month with our now annual tradition of the Halloween Death March. This year with an astounding 28 people in the group. We clean houses out of candy, people. No lie.

Hope everyone else had a magical October. We leave for Hawaii in a week and a half and I. CAN'T. WAIT. It's 40 degrees here right now...and 83 in Hawaii. Yeah, that'll do just fine.

Questions

I haven't written much in a while, so probably no need to start now. But for your entertainment, I'm stealing from Crystal to switch things up a little.

1. What ringtone do you have on your cellphone? If Todd calls, it's Baby by Justin Bieber. (I know. No, really, I know.) For all other calls it's All Summer Long by Kid Rock. With summer coming to a close (boo!), it's probably time to change that. And probably the Biebs while we're at it.

2. What is your favorite memory from this summer? Wow. Tough one. Early summer we went to Disneyland, which is always memory making. Late summer I watched my daughter win her first soccer tournament championship at Bigfoot. I took a spectacular trip to Vegas with friends and spouse, and was fortunate enough to have my mom and my dad both come visit with us this summer plus see dear friends from Texas that I don't see enough. Impossible to pick a favorite.

3. Paper books or ebooks? Can't lie, I love my Kindle. Paper books are still cool but the convenience of downloading whatever I want at will, and switching books without having to leave the sofa...my lazy side gives that a standing ovation.

4. If you could have one home upgrade, what would it be and why? Currently we are more than 75% done with a kitchen remodel that we've longed to do since we bought our house 5 years ago, so I guess I'm taking that off the list. Past that, it would have to be our second bathroom downstairs. It's embarassing and must be shown who's boss in the very near future. That remodel will also gain me a laundry room/area (bonus!) so that rocks. As for the why of this...we have five people in our house and share one bathroom. That has one sink. You do the math.

5. When was your first serious boyfriend/girlfriend? Probably 7th grade. We went out the entire year and he was the first boy I kissed. By 7th grade definition, it was "serious." For what I would define as "serious" now, I would have to say Todd was my first serious boyfriend. And that was high school, which I think justifies definition of "serious" much more realistically.

Sea Fair Weekend

WA Games Tournament

Lake Wilderness

Water Park

Low Tide

Pixar, I bow down to thee

MSN released an article today of one critic's ranking of all 11 Pixar movies released to date; this did not include Cars 2, which opens this Friday. Now, we drink the Disney Kool-Aid. They make some good stuff. But since we've been parents, Pixar has been THE. SHIT. in our house. All my favorite kid movies can be found on this list. I can't say I completely agree with the rankings given by the critic today (though I enjoyed his reasoning behind each placing and can see where he's coming from on some), but it did inspire me to come up with my own thoughts of how I'd rank these masterpieces. And yes, I think they are all masterpieces in their own right. You know you've made some kick ass movies when Toy Story 2 is coming in last on the list. You can find the MSN article here.

Here's my list.

11. Toy Story 2
10. Wall-E
9. Ratatouille
8. Bug's Life
7. Up
6. Cars
5. Monsters Inc.
4. Toy Story
3. Finding Nemo
2. The Incredibles
1. Toy Story 3

Overwhelmed is an understatement

I won't bore you with details of the past month, and why we've dropped off the face of the earth, can't return emails timely, and generally seem...off, but here's a brief wrap of the happenings.

disney was great. second vacation didn't happen. got bronchitis and was sick for two weeks. soccer is barreling ahead full blast. school is about to end and summer is nowhere close to planned out. life is dumping us some challenges right now not even worth listing.

That's right. Challenges. And not just in one area, but all the way around. I've tried to take the approach of taking a step back and dealing with just one thing at a time, but that honestly just made it worse. So I moved next to jumping in with two feet and fighting it all at once, but it just. kept. getting. worse. Me=Some highly level above overwhelmed.

So now I'm kind of in the "I give up and shit will just work itself out" mode. Mentally, I've already skipped ahead to 2-3 months from now, where everything is neat and pretty and all problems have magically been solved. (I know! It's so great to see me grabbing reality by the horns and bending it to my will. *side eye*) I will also accept the scenario of waking up one morning and the problems have been solved. That works for me too.

Hey, this isn't your life. Please feel free to just observe from afar, as you really don't want to get in the thick of things.

Party like a Princess

In addition to the regular craziness of life, plus leaving to go on vacation next week (and then leaving on a second vacation with the three kids by myself just 10 short days after returning), I'm also trying to plan Isabelle's 9th birthday party. Sigh.

How do you plan a birthday party for an only child with a brother and sister? With a full blown idea board, of course. She likes things in a "visual" format, so she can see how it's all going to come together. Fortunately (for me...and my wallet) I can DIY a lot of this myself (I think...besides, who needs to sleep?), and a friend is scoring me a super-sweet deal on the white tents. (Ha ha. I laughed as I typed that. I'm putting white tents up in my backyard for a 9 year old's birthday party! It's official, I've lost it.)

Did I sigh already? Yes? Okay, I'm doing it again. Sigh.

Party like a princess, folks. It's good to be Isabelle.

Kindle me this...

I try to not get geeked up about too many things, but for Mother's Day I got a Kindle. To say the least, I was stoked. I have "casually" dropped hints ("Wow, it would REALLY be great if I had a Kindle." "Hey, you know what would be great to have right now? A Kindle." "Isabelle, tell your Dad to buy me a Kindle.")...see, casual...that a Kindle could, on occassion, be something good to have. Finally, the family came through. I'm also working on "casually" dropping the hint that I want an iPad 2, but I don't see that turning out the same. Oh well. Beggers can't be chosers.

At any rate, the Kindle is just as fantastic as I imagined it would be, and then some. I could honestly entertain myself for hours just from the sample downloads of stories, never mind actually getting the full thing. And my Kindle has the Wi-Fi 3G capabilities, so I can download a story anytime, anywhere, without having to plug in to my computer. A bookstore at my fingertips? Dangerous. Which leads me to my real point. (Hey, it only took two paragraphs to get here!)

I now view everything in Kindle purchases. (If I don't buy this coffee, I'm $4.35 closer to another book purchase. Sheesh.) If I just went stark raving crazy and purchased every book I came across that I wanted to read, we'd be poor in a week. I've got to find a way to just not click the "Buy" button at will. I haven't found anyting over $10, but I feel as though I'm fighting an uphill battle. You can only read one book at a time, I tell myself. LIES! The Kindle allows me to have something ridiculous like 3,000 books at the push of the button, any time I want them. I can change books ten times in an hour, and never have to leave the sofa. I'm telling you, this is brilliant.

And dangerous. And I probably need to set up an off-shore account for my Kindle purchases to hide them from Todd. Kindle = my new crack.



P.S. Thank you, family. I'm very happy with my new device.

Happy Mother's Day!

This is a slight bit belated but a huge Happy Mother's Day to all the fabulous moms that are sleep deprived, pulling out their hair, crying tears of joy (and sorrow), cheering, scolding, hugging, counting to 10 to find another dose of patience, washing uniforms in the middle of the night, packing team snacks, sitting at the family table doing homework, rocking a fussing baby in all hours of the night, watching another episode of (fill in the blank favorite movie or tv show), changing shirts (yet again) cause you were spit up on...all in the name of trying to raise the best kid(s) we can. As we all know, we will make mistakes; it's recognizing those mistakes and trying to do better the next time that's the best gift we can give our children. Take it one day at a time, but never underestimate the strength of your child and yourself.

For my mom and the three wonderful children that I am so blessed to have call me "Mom," I love you guys.

Fresh New Beats

You've heard, right? About the Beastie Boys releasing their first new album since Jesus walked the earth. (Okay, not that long, but feels like it.) It came out yesterday...check check check it out.


But, wait. What's this? Eddie Vedder is also releasing a solo album this month? Stop. Too much. Pearl Jam is my all-time favorite band (BB running a close second), so this is too much for my little near middle-aged heart.

It's the early nineties all over again. But with three kids. And a minivan. (Ouch)

Soccer Sunday

I have tried to resist posting much about soccer on here, as words cannot describe how much is played in our house. It's 7 days a week. No lie. No exaggeration. Today Isabelle is on her 6th straight day of soccer. See? Ridiculous. But today, well, today was a big day in our house.

SOPHIA SCORED HER FIRST GOAL!!!

(Here's a secret...it took Isabelle three seasons before she scored her first goal. And we all know how good she is now.)

So here is an extremely brief photo recap from an extremely proud mom. Even if I don't post about it here regularly, they are my superstars.

Happy Birthday Hudson!

His birthday was technically 13 days ago, but since we're still in the month of April, I consider this timely. That's the way time rolls in my world. Same month = on time.

My sweet little boy is now 3 years old. Stop. I can't even wrap my head around that idea. He was just born last year, right?

Hudson is the brightest light that burns in all our lives. He is deeply loved by all around him and has the sweetest soul. His sisters adore him and I could not imagine our lives without him. He brought a balance we did not have before, and made our family complete.

Happy Birthday, Big Man! Now show us all your Spiderman pose....

Happy Easter!

I have about 2 hours worth of laundry to go fold, but a few pictures from our wonderful Easter. I hope each of you had a very blessed day.