I'm a Baby-Head

That's e's newest occasional name for me, or anyone she's mad at. It's usually preceded by "you're mean!" Well, what can I say. The REALLY bad people are "stupid-heads" and "shut-up heads." Fortunately, I don't ever get those titles. I just have to laugh.

E and e on a foot bridge during our hike

Finally getting a chance to post about our Mother's Day weekend. Last year, we tried a family camp located about three hours or so from here. We loved it so much, we decided to make it an annual tradition. The camp does a special weekend for Mother's Day every year. It's really a wonderful place. It's actually kind of the Wisteria Lane of camps, I have to say. Everyone is happy and smiling, the children all play well together....everyone obviously drank the punch on the way in.

e and E on the "kissing bridge"

There are non-stop things for us to do during the weekend. Arts and crafts, bonfires, tea-time and massages for the moms, hiking, boating (when weather permits), horseback riding, a zip line, archery, educational hikes, lots of other activities for the kids, you name it. Everyone stays in cabins and the camp does all the cooking. We eat with the same people every day so we get to know each other fairly well. There's lots of music and dancing around the tables when it's time to clean up the dishes (which we do ourselves), and lots of crazy activities/games to bond kids and parents. We had a blast. Sunday morning (Mother's Day), at breakfast, all the kids are asked to go to the kitchen. They then all come pouring out at once carrying flowers for their moms. I usually have a hard time holding back the tears at that one!

E climbed up the bank a lot faster than his mom!

Even though it's a long drive there, it's so much fun. This year, though, we froze! Friday night when we got there, we hardly needed a jacket. During the night, we had a great thunderstorm which, of course, brought the cold weather and made it VERY windy Saturday. I think it was in the 40s all day on Saturday, then into the low 30s Saturday night. While the cabins have heat, they are not insulated very well! So, the kids were fine, but I was freezing! It even SNOWED Sunday morning! After breakfast I took the kids on a long (cold!) hike around the lake - hoping that the cold air and long walk would put them straight out for the long drive home. No such luck! e slept for less than an hour and E merely rested his eyes for about 20 minutes. Oh well. The intent was good!

Busy Weekend

Wow, did we have a busy weekend! The weekend before finals, each semester, my university has a big party for all the students. This party includes lots of inflatable things to jump on, a band, lots to eat, and other stuff to keep everyone busy. It turned out to be a perfect day, so I took the kids over. They had a blast jumping, running, and doing everything they could to burn off energy. That evening, my Dean had an end of the year picnic at her house. The kids were absolutely exhausted by the time they got home that night!

E at one of the inflatables at the partye about to go through the obstacle course inflatable at the party

Yesterday was the last day of Sunday school for the year. There is always a big potluck lunch on the last day and other ways to celebrate the day. After the usual morning service, the kids got to paint one of the ceiling tiles for each classroom, then we had a talent show and the potluck. E did a magic trick which was actually pretty cool. Unfortunately, I had to help him with it...I felt bad for being the only parent having to help with their kid, but he had to ask an audience member to cut a string. If that audience member accidentally pulled on the string, it could have ruined the trick, so I told him to just call on me as his assistant. He was really excited about the whole trick. e didn't want to do anything this year...maybe next year.

E doing his magic trick

After Sunday school, the kids got a great opportunity to meet a concentration camp survivor. This woman was in a camp that did a lot of plays and operas. She played the cat in 55 performances of an opera called Brundibar. So, my university put on the opera with her as a guest. Fortunately, it's a lighter opera and is more kid oriented. It's about an organ grinder who has monopolized a city corner by bullying everyone away. A couple of kids need to get some money to buy milk for their mother and they want to sing on the same corner but keep getting bullied away. Finally the animals (cat, dog and bird) rally the help of other children to help them and overpower the bully - who runs home crying. They are finally able to get milk for their sick mother. It's a cute play, but of course, I was thinking about the origins of it and of this woman playing the same role 55 times in a concentration camp...all I did was cry through the whole performance! Out of 62 children in her camp, only four survived. Such a sad story. But, it gave me a great opportunity to talk to the kids about the Holocaust and how terrible it was and how few survivors are still around.

e and E with the Holocaust survivor they met...she wrote a book which she signed -- a copy for each of them.

All in all, a really fun weekend!

Just Thinking

I've been thinking more and more about either adopting another child or becoming a foster parent. I have no idea whether I could handle another child financially or otherwise, but of course I could. Foster parenting becomes more of a challenge when I start to think about the details, like what to do when we want to travel, and the fact that I may have to give the child back to a not-so-good home. That would just rip me apart. Of course, adoption has its challenges, too. It's probably more money than I want to spend right now, and would take a long time. I'm not getting any younger. So, I'm leaning towards the foster parenting. Has anyone done it? Any feedback on the process, challenges, etc? I am fully prepared to try to adopt a foster child if it works out. Isn't that cheaper than going through an agency? Not that it's all about the money. I just see so many kids out there that need a better home, and I think ours is pretty great.

Diary...or Something Like That

Yesterday, e found a little book that I had given each of the kids to make pictures in, scribble, draw, write, whatever. We called them diaries. She found hers on the counter and says "hey, Mom! I found my diarrhea!" I just couldn't stop laughing.

Purging

I've been doing a major purge of the house...it feels good. When the guys were working on finishing my basement, I took the opportunity to spend a morning with them and go through all the stuff down there. It has been a storage hell and it was nice to have help getting all the junk out. I ended up having him take a truckload of stuff to Good will and probably another truckload of trash away. There's still a bunch of stuff down there, but at least it's more manageable now. I'm ordering the carpet for down there today, so I should be able to get it organized once the carpet has been laid. I'm looking forward to having that space more usable.

I've also been going through my clothes. Already, I've given away about 9 trash bags full of clothes to Good will. All the winter stuff in larger sizes that I know I will never need again. Boy, it's really great to be able to say that. I put together three more bags just last week, and I'm sure I'll be able to come up with a few more by the time I finish cleaning everything out. I guess this says something about what a clothes horse I've been...But there was a lot of stuff, too, that I looked at and just decided that I had been keeping too long - regardless of the size. I suppose I could sell the clothes on eBay or something, but I just don't want to deal with it. I just want it all out of the house.

I went out with Rodney again this past weekend. This was the guy I went out with about five months ago. Between then and now a lot has happened with both of us, but we've stayed in touch via email. His son had a very aggressive form of cancer (doing better now but not completely out of the woods), and he's got some business stuff going on. Anyway, I really do like him as a person. There was no lack in the conversation and I think he's probably a fun guy. I'm just not feeling anything...no physical attraction.

I really need to get back on eH now that I've lost some weight. I'm feeling much better about myself, but I still think I have quite a bit of weight to lose. I had plateaued at a 35 pound loss forever, but this past week, I think I have finally moved off the plateau. I was down almost three more lbs on the scale this morning. I guess it's time to repost some pictures on eH and try again...I think I look a lot different (thinner and got a new do!), and we all know that with men, it's all about the visual.

The kids had a great weekend. I took them to the trampoline place up the street on Saturday because it was just kind of a cold day. After Sunday school, e had her soccer practice and then I took them to the rock wall gym. They slept well last night! The soccer practice is with ALL four year-olds. It's so funny to watch them play. They do a few training type activities and then they play three-on-three (not a lot of rules at this point, though). All goes well until a butterfly happens to fly across the field. Then the attention is no longer on the ball but on chasing the butterfly.

Lost Teeth

Well, E finally lost his first top tooth. He was SO excited about it! I picked him up from his after-school program last Friday and he ran up to me with a plastic bag with his tooth in it. Of course, I noticed the space even before he showed me the bag. The Tooth Fairy (whose name is Toothie - we know this because she left a note when he lost his first tooth) left a dollar and a coin from the Isle of Mann. The Tooth Fairy always leaves a coin from the last country she visited along with money (it's a good thing I've saved coins from many of my travels!). The second tooth on top will probably be the next to go....maybe in a couple months or so.

Poor e got strep again last week (she had it about three weeks ago, too). She was complaining of a sore throat Wednesday night and I noticed that her tonsils were also about as big as golf balls. So I took her to see the doctor on Thursday and kept her home with me on Friday. She really didn't feel too bad, but I didn't want it to get any worse. They put her on a different antibiotic this time that is sending her to the bathroom regularly. The doctor told me to just give her some probiotic yogurt. Let's hope that does the trick. She was so tired on Friday, she fell asleep on the arm of the couch. So cute. She just couldn't make it any further.

e also started with soccer practice this weekend. She looks adorable in her little uniform and is having a lot of fun.

Hand Slapping

Well, I've talked a little bit about how things have been challenging at work lately. Stupid bureaucratic stuff that would never happen in a corporation. First, I tried to get a study-abroad program approved. It took WAY longer than it should have and I lost my opportunity to offer the program this summer...and probably my opportunity to spend a good portion of the summer in Italy. The back and forth, back and forth process should have never happened, or at the very least, they should have told me to go ahead and advertise the program since we were so close. But no. Okay, fine. At least it was approved and I'll advertise it beginning next year.

BUT, I work for two different universities. My full time university and my part-time university. It's my part-time university that runs the program in Italy and I still want to try to fill the seats. I really only need to get ten people to go to justify my expenses. So, I tried to advertise it with my full time university...offer it as something that was offered by my other university but not yet endorsed by my full-time university. They said no. So, I went to the local Chamber of Commerce and asked if they would advertise the trip to the local population. They agreed to put an ad in the paper this week...seen by about 70K people. GREAT! Hopefully, we can get ten people to respond! The bad news is that when it came out over the weekend, it had the logo for my full-time university on it. So, D, one of the faculty members here who I'm having other battles with (which I will discuss in a minute), brings it to my Dean's attention...who, of course, sends the ad to me with a note attached. Obviously they are not happy. My only saving grace is that I really didn't tell the CofC to put my university's logo on the top and had no idea they were going to do so. Aaarrgh. Hand slapped again.

So, D is a faculty member who is very vocal about everything. You know the type. He's like a pitbull when he latches onto something. Sometimes he's right and sometimes he's not. He has decided that he is very against me teaching the online course that I teach in the summer. He's convinced that it is not in our students' best interest and he's doing everything he can to get it canceled. Suffice it to say that he's being a pain in the butt and his reasoning is not good. But, he squeaks a lot...and we all know what happens to the squeaky wheel. Hopefully, he will give up soon, but he remains a thorn in my side. It would be nice if he just decided to retire soon! But I suspect he will be here for a very long time.

On a positive note, the weather has been great and here are some new pictures of the kids! E is going to lose one of his top teeth very soon, so it looks like he's got a big space there. It's just the other teeth moving out of the way a little bit to make room!

e looking as beautiful as ever!e at the playground on the seesawThe neighborhood Easter egg toss...E and his partner won both competitions!The neighborhood egg raceE and e on the patio