First Day of School: 2011

It's started!!   I'm a broken record when it comes to writing the yearly back-to-school post:  I hate seeing the end of summer and the beginning of the school year.  I hate being tied to a schedule, the morning rush of piano practicing/breakfast/lunch-making, etc., the after school schedules involving shuttling kids all over town to activities, fitting in homework, dinner, baths, clean-up, and anything else all before an early bedtime.  In this way, I'm a lazy, lazy mom.  I'm already counting down to next summer, never mind the upcoming weekend.  But, I'll admit, there's something kind of magical about the first day of school....especially this year with a new Kindergartener (which I can't believe!).

 She was so excited.  She insisted on wearing her "cat ears" headband.  Why not!

 5th grade!  Last year of Elementary school--which I can't believe either!!

 2nd Grade, and loving it! Although, I particularly wish she were still home with me--my best helper ever!!

 Isabel was so quick to get on the bus (no tears, no anxiety, no waving goodbye even) that I missed getting her in the picture.  

So I got her coming home.  So happy and thrilled with her first day.
The first thing out of her mouth was, "I have homework!" She's been waiting a long time for this, apparently.  

As soon as we got home from walking the kids to the bus stop, this little dude plopped himself right down on the sofa in front of the TV and handed me the remote.  I guess he figures that there's nothing interesting left to do at our house with everyone else gone.   

Tornados, and Earthquakes, and Hurricanes....Oh My!

Old news now, but last week we had our first East Coast earthquake--5.8.  Very exciting.  Don't tell my old elementary school principal, Mr. Allred, but I didn't put into use any of the training from the many, many earthquake drills we had back then.  But maybe I can blame that on there not being any desk immediately available to duck under.  Instead I just sat on the bench in my kitchen where I was sorting mail and wondered if this was an earthquake or if Max was just running around upstairs instead of cleaning his room like I'd instructed.  I only had to go and check Facebook to know for sure!  No, just kidding--I checked the usgs.gov site.  Wow, it's amazing how quickly information can be available these days--and all while I stayed sitting on the kitchen bench and looking it up on my phone.  I love living in the future!

favorite pic going around the web describing the earthquake's impact.  source unknown.

But to up the ante, last weekend we met Irene--our first hurricane.  And since we (thankfully) had no power loss, resulting flooding, or tree damage, I can look back on it and say that it was also quite the exciting adventure.  We spent Saturday prepping for the storm: clearing toys/bikes/scooters out the yard, finally weeding the front planting beds so we could spread out the remainder of the mulch pile that had been at the top of the driveway since June, tying down garbage cans, baking bread and brownies and banana muffins,  finishing laundry, and generally doing anything else that would need doing in the event of several days without power.  I can't believe how much we got done. We even had our back-to-school dinner, got the kitchen completely cleaned up, and kids to bed early, so that we could get watching The Two Towers while waiting for the storm to roll in.  Frankly, I should be threatened with a hurricane every weekend.

But the biggest news around my neck of the woods was not Irene or the earthquake, but our very own local (albeit small) tornado.  And, as with earthquakes, I apparently have no idea how to follow natural disaster instructions/recommendations, and I stood at our glass-paned front door and front room windows with my friends and our cumulative twelve children and watched as the sky darkened and the heavy rain started to blow sideways.  Then it really looked like the wind and rain were coming right down my street and branches started falling from the trees--lots of them.  We watched one especially large limb take out the power lines in the front yard, knocking out the power.  Turns out, there was a tornado watch in effect for that day, I just had no idea.  When the rain cleared about an hour later (and it was gorgeous and sunny), we went out to survey the neighborhood.  The result was a lot of carnage.....including, unfortunately, my friend Melinda's car that had been sitting in my driveway.  All I can think to say is what a headline in the good ole' Provo Herald read once after a major storm that happened when I was in high school:  Microburst; Macrodestruction.  I like to say that catchy little title the way that an announcer at a monster truck rally would read it.   I'm tempted to add about a half-dozen exclamation points to that so that it sounds right.

This is from the tree in our front yard.

Here's the view from our driveway into the neighbor's backyard.

Uh, oh....the van.

This is the house across the street.  When they came home, they found a branch from a tree in the front yard that had gone right through the back of the house and into their bedroom.

This was a huge surprise.  It's one of the neighbors on another street.  They had all three of their cars smashed too.  It ended up that a total of 3 houses in the neighborhood were damaged so badly by trees that the county declared them condemned.

Luckily no residents were hurt at all.

Here's a link to the article the local paper had about the storm.  The biggest news from the article is that apparently our neighborhood is considered "upscale."  Thank goodness, because I certainly would never live anywhere that wasn't upscale......so, phew!  

And, with tomorrow being the last day of August, it's the end of a very exciting natural disaster month.  My dad suggested that we name our new baby-to-be Irene.  Tempting.....but, no.  

Hypothesis

Yes, Max, that razor in my shower will actually shave your hair off if you use it.  

But, by all means, you don't have to take my word for it.

Spring Break: the rest of it

Prepare for a spring break photo extravaganza.  We spent until Thursday afternoon in New York, where it appeared that the magical spring fairy came, and overnight the weather was perfect, the trees became green, I found parking within five minutes (twice!), and every other spring-breaker went home since their spring break ended with Easter and Passover.

However, we got a little preview to our spring break vacation this year when the Burton clan made our place a little stop on their own spring break tour.  I felt no compunction about taking the kids out of school for the day and heading up to Philly to see some of the sights, including the boring old bell with a big crack in it--and that's a direct quote from at least two of my kids.  After the Liberty Bell, a walk about Independence Mall, and a tour of the Betsy Ross house (including a demonstration from ole' Betsy herself), we went to find some cheesesteaks and pulled-pork and brocoli rabe sandwiches at the Reading Terminal Market.

We loved having them visit, and it was a great time for catching up, talking late into the night, kids playing together, and working on the grand plan of someday marrying off our perfectly-matched children.  See, look at how cute those babies are together!

Once in NYC it was all sorts of good times.  We started the week with a trip to the Dinosaur playground in Riverside Park.

And the girls got to go with Sha-sha to get their nails painted.

And because I haven't been a parent for 10 years without learning anything, Max got his own special outing.  He wanted to go to Chinatown to hunt down a particular kind of hat.  Amazingly enough, we were successful, despite the fact that it wasn't one of the only four different hats that every single store on the street is carrying, which is how Chinatown works--in case you've never been there.  We found it at the very last store...hiding. We celebrated with a hot dog from Gray's Papaya on the way home.

We also went to the High Line, an old elevated subway line on the west side that has been recently converted in to a park. We'd never been there before and I'd been meaning to check it out for a while, and since it was a sunny day we packed a picnic and ignored the stares that accompanied walking through Chelsea with four children.  It was fantastic. And it wasn't until after they'd bagged the donuts we ordered when stopping at the at the Donut Pub that I realized that I'd left my wallet at home.

There is a section of the High Line with a little water exhibit, which after about two minutes Saul decided it didn't matter that he wasn't in swimwear and he might as well lay down in the water anyway.  

We then went over to Central Park with Sha-sha and our friends M & L to take a ride on the carousel and spend the rest of the afternoon playing at  Heckscher playground.

We met up with M &L again on Tuesday to tour the Intrepid.   

Just two preggers women out with our cumulative brood.

Since this was the trip of doing things we'd never done in NYC before, on Wednesday we drove up to the Bronx Zoo (and this time just M came with us).  This was mostly so that I could say that I've driven in the Bronx all by myself and so that Max could get a chance to wear his new hat in a somewhat wild setting.

On Wednesday night, Sharon took the kids out for a treat and sent me away with a gift certificate for a manicure, her unlimited metro card, and her blessing to take the rest of the night off.  Once my nails were a deep red, I went shopping and then to the late showing of Meek's Cutoff at the Film Forum. (Amazing.)

When we came home on Thursday, it turned out that spring had come to Delaware too.  The blossoms were out on the azaleas and dogwoods, and the lawn was knee-high.  Wasn't I only gone a few days? We finished out the week with the first trip of the season to Woodside Farms for icecream.  Ahhhh....and only a few more weeks until we're finished with school and the good times can continue.

Surprise!

We had an ultrasound today and from the photo it looks like we're having a baby seal.  We started debating between the names "Flipper" and "Shark Bait" but after a quick Google search we realized these names were already taken by a famous dolphin and a cartoon clown fish. Who knew?  Alternate suggestions are now welcome.

Baby seal due at the end of September.  It's a boy.

Easter

 Happy Easter.

This year we were without Adam for Easter.  He left on Friday for a conference in San Francisco and was going to be there for the entire following week.  So, rather than spend the holiday weekend and the next week's spring break in our boring old house where I'd just feel pressure to do stuff like mow the lawn and hassle the kids to clean the playroom, I decided to ignore all of that and head out to NYC for the week.  Besides, we couldn't be upstaged by Adam's trip and the resulting phone calls sharing the details of events like  going to church in the Berkeley ward, game nights with the Marosticas, et al, each lunch/evening's outing with Berkeley friends, Easter dinner with the Childs, camping with Kami in Point Reyes, and/or eating my favorite Bay Area foods. I have to trust him that he did actually attend the conference at some point.  And, he is apparently bringing me back something like 75lbs of bulk-food treasures from Berkeley Bowl, so I can't complain too much.

So we started the weekend with an egg hunt on Friday sponsored by some friends.  Then we headed out on Saturday for NYC.

 The obligatory Easter-day pics--post Church.

The weather was so fantastic that Max and Saul and I decided to walk home together.  Max wanted to take my picture....along with about 3000 other photos during week, which I'll spare you and let him save for his own blog.

The night before we dyed some eggs with Grandma Sha-sha.

Then after church we had our little in-apartment egg hunt.

The rest of the week just continued to get better (as well as the weather).  Hopefully I can actually get that posted soon, just to show Adam up....um, I mean, show Adam.