Please Do NOT Show Me The Way To Amarillo

We got back yesterday from a super-fun trip to San Diego. I have pictures and stories and so much to tell you. The problem is that we were supposed to have gotten back on

Saturday

from a super-fun trip to San Diego and are now recovering from the airport nightmare.

No, not the nightmare that involves terrorists and bomb sniffing dogs. The nightmare where you’re flying into Dallas for a layover and there’s a thunderstorm so you get “diverted to Amarillo for a few minutes for re-fueling.” Then, when you’re on the ground in Amarillo they discover a mechanical issue that will just take a few minutes to fix. Two hours later when the plane’s toilets are starting to overflow and the kids are trying to discover how to make the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, they tell you that the mechanic is in another city and has to be flown in along with a replacement flight crew so they let you off the plane, into the Amarillo airport where you spend the next four hours thinking wistfully of your own bed.

Then, when you fly back to Dallas at 3:30 in the morning you find that there’s no way to get to a hotel and back and get any kind of sleep in the five hours before your re-scheduled flight home so you set the kids up on cots and make the best of it. That nightmare.

In our version, Rich did not get to sleep at all because of a teeny snoring problem that he has. If he sleeps, no one else on the concourse can. Also, he had packed his glasses and contact lens solution and checked them in his baggage. So he stayed up the whole time - and took pictures, apparently.

Hayden is under the row of benches on the right. The lights were not dimmed at all, so he put on his sunglasses and got in the darkest spot he could find and slept there. I kind of envied him. I slept for about 45 minutes before the light and the constant intercom announcements got to me. Not only were the lights bright, but they buzzed like a gigantic, glowing mosquito hovering overhead. Not restful.

We finally got home yesterday morning. Unfortunately, our luggage did not fare as well. It arrived late last night. Rich had to play guitar at an outdoor “summer bash” at church last night so we all grabbed an hour or two of sleep in the afternoon and headed to church where we stayed until they finished the fireworks at 10 p.m. I’m glad we had somewhere to be so that we got semi on schedule sleep wise, though we slept till 11 this morning. Rich’s eyes look like he rubbed them with sandpaper.

Other than the ride home, we really did have a super-fun trip and when I catch up on laundry, I’ll get pictures and accompanying stories right up!

Not As Bad As I Thought It Would Be

A couple of weeks ago, our dishwasher went berserk. It would not stop filling and water went all over the floor and soaked through and was coming down the walls in the basement. This particular dishwasher has given us problems before and we know from experience that getting it repaired is not cheap. Also, dishwashers

last about 10 years

and we were on year number eight of an appliance that often got used twice a day. So fixing wasn’t a sane option.

On the other hand, I wasn’t really in the mood to buy a new one. We just replaced the stove which was throwing sparks across the kitchen (do the machines talk to each other a pick a break down date?) and we have a vacation coming up and I have more fun things I need to spend money on than a dishwasher. Rich and I hashed out all of the options in the appliance section of the home improvement store and finally walked out empty-handed. I had a plumber come out and remove the old dishwasher and check the pipes and now there is a big empty space where the dishwasher was. Well, actually I put the trash can there, but it is mostly empty.

I have

never

been without a dishwasher before. My parents always had one, every apartment I rented in college had one, all of our houses have had one. I had to go out last week and buy a dish drainer because I didn’t own one. I really didn’t know what to expect here but I was expecting the worst as far as time spent and coaxing the children to do the chore. I was wrong.

Perhaps it’s the novelty of the sink of suds, but the kids like doing the dishes better this way. Also, the dishes are a lot cleaner and because they get washed more frequently, we never run out of spoons anymore. When I take my turn, I find that it’s kind of soothing and peaceful to stand over the hot water and get everything so clean. Of course, I’m not planning any giant dinner parties or elaborate meals in the near future.

It turns out, that contrary to my thinking, dishwashers are not a necessity. We’ll probably get a new one in the fall when I’m back to work and have less time, but for now we’re making do and it’s going just fine.

Dance Recital 2008

So much fun. We had SO much fun this weekend! It would be very convenient right now to refer you to the bit I wrote last year about recital weekend and all of the vicarious living that I do through Faith. Of course that isn’t possible since the blog monster came and ate all of last year’s entries. In summary: Faith has a happy amount of rhythm and grace and athletic ability - all things that I am in short supply of myself. What we have in common though is a love of drama and having all eyes on us so she has a great time at her dance recitals and she takes me along for the ride. I get to appreciate the flurry of preparation and applause through her. It’s fabulous.

This year’s recital theme was “Icons.” Each class picked a popular icon and designed a dance around them/it. For ballet, Faith had “

Sacagawea

” (the above costume which I do not love because what kind of Native American wears aqua sequins?) and for her jazz class they had “

Eartha Kitt.

” All three performances went off without mishap and to great applause. In fact the whole show was wonderful - full of adorable little kids who didn’t know their steps (and didn’t care) and really talented older girls who were deliciously overly dramatic about

everything.

Plus, for the first time, my parents were able to make it out from Denver to watch. With Rich’s mom also in the audience, Faith felt like she had quite a fan base.

My very favorite part of this year’s costuming was Faith’s ponytail. She cut her hair short at Christmas and while it was adorable, it has not grown out enough to make a decent ponytail which is what she needed for her jazz costume. So we bought one. For $13 at Sally’s Beauty Supply we got a gorgeous pin-on ponytail. Items like that make it fun to be a girl. Here’s a pic of the ponytail, the rest are On the Fridge.

Sneak Preview

It is dance recital weekend! Woo-hoo! The one weekend a year where everything is all about Faith (and Mindee’s frustrated-inner-child-performer). Dress rehearsal was tonight and I took this picture. You know that by Sunday a whole album will be up On the Fridge with all the details.

Stay tuned . . .

Live From The Basement

I’m snuggled into a bean bag chair with Faith in our very cluttered storage room in the basement. We have lived here 8 1/2 years. In that time, the tornado sirens have gone off four times. One time was last Wednesday and two times were tonight.

A half hour before the sirens went off we told the kids to gather their pets and beloved items and head for the basement to play. Once they called the warning, we all went to the interior room. In our walk-out basement the only room without windows is the storage room where we also have the furnace, water heater and deep freezer. It is not scenic or comfortable. The cats are both shoved into the single cat carrier. They are not comfortable either.

Both girls have suddenly discovered that they had to pee so Rich has had to accompany them to the bathroom. To top it all off, Hayden keeps farting. Nasty, smelly, farting. He’s not my favorite right this minute. Why the poodle has not abandoned her spot next to him, I do not know.

Rich is disgruntled at the whole scenario. Given his choice, he would be standing in the driveway with binoculars but every time he leaves the room, the kids and I whimper and make him come back. He grew up in tornado country and is very blase about the whole thing. However, the man on the radio is talking about funnel clouds hanging over the city so my panic overrides his calm, because the science is on my side this time. He did get away long enough to take the picture at the top of the river that has appeared in our backyard. I had to way over-expose it to be able to see anything because it’s so dark out. Oops. Hold on a minute.

Yeah, so this hole behind me that would have a sump pump in it if we had one, is filling with water. It hasn’t ever done that before. How . . . . interesting? I’m going to go deal with that. I’ll update tomorrow and let you know how it turned out.

Thursday morning:

After two hours in the storage room, I threatened to send Hayden down the stream that was flowing behind our house. That was the worst of it though and we’re feeling pretty fortunate about that this morning.

Horrible things happened

in our general area, but my neighbor and I walked the neighborhood this morning and only saw two trees down. No tornadoes touched down in our town and while I’m sure that there are many wet basements and impassable streets due to flooding, it appears that no one was hurt. As for our basement - we sucked the water out of the sump pump hole with the shop-vac and all was well.

Second Week Of Summer

Last week I got our bedroom stripped of wallpaper, spackled, sanded, primed and painted. Actually, Rich did the hard work of the sanding which is good because he is much more of a perfectionist than I. If I had done it myself we would have a lumpy wall.

Right this minute I am blogging to avoid going upstairs and vacuuming up all the dust and putting the furniture back. Then I need to complete the laundry because the washer and dryer are in our bathroom (see “Morons”) and stripping the wallpaper in there is the next project.

The kids had a good first week of vacation. We’ve been to the pool and stayed up late and had water gun fights. Also, Reagan and I were nearly killed by a tornado which was terrifying but is making for a good story this week. Actually “almost killed” may be an overstatement as no tornado actually formed in our immediate vicinity, but the sirens were going off, the clouds were black and the rain was torrential and we were in the Suburban which is heavy, but not that heavy. It was enough to make both of us cry.

They are starting to crack a bit this week. I’m hearing more “I’m bored” and “Can I have a snack?”. This morning, Reagan and Hayden got into a HUGE fight because he asked her opinion on his singing and she told him that he sounds like Johnny Cash. Apparently he finds that insulting. I walked into the kitchen to find them both red-faced and screaming. Hayden was rolling around on the floor clutching his face and wailing. He had kicked Reagan and she had shoved him and her finger got in his eye. He was insistent that she had “poked his eye out.” I told him that he’d better pick it up and put it back in before the poodle ate it. Then I made Reagan make his lunch for him because it’s hard to assemble a PBJ with only one eyeball. Over lunch he made a recovery and Faith insisted that they forgive each other which they finally agreed to. I think she had an ulterior motive though. They’ve been playing a game they made up called “Dancing With The Siblings” where Faith and Reagan get in costumes and perform dance routines and Hayden critiques them in a British accent and gives them (usually) good scores. Faith loves this game and knew that if they were fighting that it would be off the option list for this afternoon.

Let me assure you though that all of this is better than going to work.

Morons

I am taking a small break from stripping wallpaper to eat lunch and vent.

No matter where you live or how nice your house is, there is a homeowner rule that it universally true: The previous owner was an idiot. More often than not, an idiot with bad taste. If you are the first owner of your home, then the builder was an idiot. In our case, the previous owner was also the builder so the idiocy is compounded.

When we moved in eight years ago, I hated the wallpaper in our bedroom and bathroom but learned to live with it because that’s easier than stripping wallpaper. However, we have now re-done every other room and I can’t put it off any more so the wallpaper is coming down. This morning I scored it and sprayed on the stripping solution and started to remove it and discovered that THEY DID NOT PAINT THE WALL BEFORE THEY APPLIED THE WALLPAPER! There is one measly coat of primer up and that is all. So along with the wallpaper, the top layer of drywall is coming off in some places which means that I’m going to have to spackle and sand a whole bunch before I paint, and even then I’ll probably have to hang lots
of pictures.

Thankfully, in the bedroom they just papered one wall and put up a border. When I get to the bathroom though, every inch is covered. I’m going to have to learn some new curse words because I don’t think that my current vocabulary is going to cover that situation.

Thanks for listening.

Almost To Funny

I wrote the following a few months ago. At the time, it was decidedly not funny, but I could see that it might be after I had calmed down. I’m almost there. Hayden gave me permission to post this because he’s pretty proud of his planning and foresight.

Yesterday was report card day for Hayden and Faith.  Teachers hand them out at the end of the day in sealed envelopes to take home.  Hayden was already in trouble before he got his.  He had kind of manipulated information this week (he's too smart for outright lying) and misled his teacher to get extra library time.  His teacher is not actually as stupid as he thinks she is and figured it out so he owes her two recesses but he still had to face me.  As soon as he got to my desk after school, I let him know that I wasn't pleased. We walked out to the car while I lectured and headed home.

I always let the kids open their report cards and look at them before I do so that they know what they're in for.  Our grading system is as follows:
4 = exceeds requirements
3 = meets requirements
2 = getting there but needs more work
1 = failed

In the car, Faith looked over her report card and bounced around and fluttered it in my face because she got all 3s and 4s.  Yay for her!  Hayden didn't say anything.  When we got home, I took his report card.  He is allowed a 2 for Handwriting, but is expected to have 3s or above for everything else.  He had three 1s (handwriting, spelling and writing mechanics) and numerous 2s - mostly for behavioral stuff.  I was beyond mad and had to go pick Reagan up from track so I told him to get a snack and go to his room and we would talk later.

When I got back with Reagan, I was still very, very mad. Furious even. Enough so, that I had no plans to deal with Hayden any time soon. I parked in the garage and noticed a lot of dog food on the floor.  This was annoying but not unusual.  Reagan went upstairs to shower.  Much yelling and banging on doors ensued, followed by Reagan hollering that Hayden wouldn't let her in the bathroom.  He is known to take elaborate amounts of time pooping so I told her to go use our shower.  I then went out to start the grill for hamburgers.  As I was going out the back door, I noticed that the dog's water bowl was missing.  I chose to not think about that for the time being.

Things were going along quietly although Reagan kept trying to tattle on her brother for something and I kept telling her to be quiet.  I went out and brought the hamburgers in and tried to assemble dinner but could not find the hamburger buns.  I had had a pack of 12 of them sitting on the counter and that's kind of a hard thing to misplace.  It's not like you go into the bathroom and leave the hamburger buns behind (although I did check there just to be sure.)  Finally, I turned to Reagan and said, "This may sound weird, but would you go upstairs and see if your brother has the hamburger buns?"

A few moments later, she was happy to report that he did indeed have the hamburger  buns and was refusing to relinquish them.  I trudged up the stairs and found my son barricaded in the bathroom with the poodle.  I convinced him to hand over the buns but he refused to come out because he "didn't want to get yelled at."  Fine.  I told him dinner would be ready in five minutes and  to get downstairs.  I did not say it nicely.  Of course he did not come down, so I called Rich, filled him in on what he was about to walk in on and sat down to eat with the girls.

Rich came home all calm and nice and ate with us and then we headed upstairs.  Rich nicely, but firmly, told me that he would handle this.  He may have hinted that I was in an irrational state of mind.  He may have been right about that.  He walked to the bathroom and asked Hayden to come out and explained that if Hayden thought he had the only key to the door, he was sadly mistaken.  Hayden came out.

They had a nice, logical conversation about Hayden's grades, his lying and his bathroom blockade.  It ended with loss of all video games for the rest of the school year for the grades (and longer if there were still 1s on the final report card), a threat to have him removed from the mentor program if he tried to pull one over on his teacher again and a week-long loss of his bedroom door for the bathroom stunt.

Then we went into the bathroom.  Hayden had stockpiled trail mix, oranges, apples, bananas, hamburger buns, books, pillows, dog food and the water bowl.  He also had a pile of grocery sacks that he had planned to hold under the dog when she had to "go" and then he was going to flush the contents down the toilet.

Hayden would like you all to know that he chose the bathroom because of the toilet and running water and because it didn’t have a window that I could “bust in to get to” him. See what I mean about how 5th grade was a rough year for Hayden and everyone else here? Thank heavens it’s over.