gyros and eulogy

The first weekend in November the girls had a dance performance in the mall.

Grant and William spent a lot of time travelling back and forth to dance rehearsals. Here they are taking a peek at Caitlin's class.

More unpacking discoveries.  Kyle has been our french toast fanatic.

Still trying to make sense of things, piece life together, find my direction, move forward. This is the basement after the box opening.  Looks hopeless.  Olivia pointed out to me, during a moment of my own frustration, that we once had an enormous laundry pile in the basement hallway, and now it is gone, so we can make it through this, she said.  I was grateful for her encouragement and wisdom.

Here is where all the boxes were in the pictures that I posted before. So she is right. We can make sense of things, little by little.  We call this the clean room. I was hoping to sell the big sofas that our old land lords gave us, but they never sold.  Ben and I lugged them to the garage, where perhaps they will stay when I create the clubhouse of my fantasy out there...someday.  I replaced them with these chairs from Ecuador. They leave more room for the music.

Second week in November.  Grandma Martha and the at home kids and I had a fun day driving to Salt Lake City.  I had to go pay for my massage therapist license.  We had lunch at one of our family favorites, Crown Burger.

This gyros was amazing.

The last of our hamsters passed away so Kyle and his friends held a funeral...

New Orleans style.

under rested

So you wouldn't guess from all my talk of the ten, the transitions, and my general neuroses that I lose sleep from time to time.  Sophie slept through the night at least twice last week.  I was grateful for that. But Thursday night I went to bed with the house so messy that I couldn't sleep.  I woke up about three a.m. thinking about the disaster downstairs and just questioning if I had anything in my life in order.  I thought about my parenting and how I do a lot of blogging about my myriad of weaknesses, but could I do something about them? Could I make our house more functional, calm, predictable?  Well you just have to start where you can start, so I went downstairs and started with the dishes, and moved throughout the house until the sun came up and it was time to wake up the kids. That was Friday morning.

But back to Monday morning, November 15.  We had kind of a late start.  Sunday night had been filled with our kind of regular irregularities.  It started to snow in the evening so the kids went out to play in it.  Then around scripture time Bethany opened the front door to check on the progress of the precipitation.  Just like out of Jan Brett, there was an unpredicted, four legged, guest at our door.  Roxie was her name and she looked cold and confused and insisted on coming inside.

Here's what she looked like to William.

And what we looked like to Roxie.

So bedtime was predictably delayed with all the excitement of a new dog friend, who by the way, found her way home Monday morning.

So Monday I was driving Sam and Ben to school, imagining to myself that I was right on time for a change, when Sam started to panic...only five minutes to the bell. I started to smell stressed out teenager. How to diffuse? No Nacho Libre lines came to mind so I just said "Come on Sam, You gotta look at the half-glass full."

"Half-glass full? Okay, fine, but how's that supposed to apply to this situation, Mom?" he responded.

And I said, not wanting to be dismissive, just defusing, "It doesn't apply at all Sam."

Because now and then, when I'm trying to be a parent, things just come to mind randomly, and in this case it was Jon Stewart's Daily Show segment about Dick Cheney. Check it out...

 http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-31-2007/half-glass-full

I said," You know Sam, Some people say the glass is half empty and some say it's half full, but George Bush say that its a  "half-glass-full."

So then a miraculous thing happened... my van-full of stressed out middle school-ers started to laugh at my random interjection. That's when I thought that it was a moment so beautiful, so triumphant that I had to write about it.

Laughter is everything you know. I think everything is falling apart, and then two of my kids get together and laugh together, and it's all worth it again.

So I dropped the boys off at middle school and it was Caitlin's turn to get on my case. "Now we're late for my school," she said. "But don't drive too fast or we'll get under rested."

Just one more incidence of under rested. As part of my commitment to helpful blogging, and part of my desperate attempt to make up for some (ahem) overspending.  I am going to personally investigate the topic "Can you earn money taking surveys at home?"  So the other day I came across a new blog via blogfrog.  Here it is http://www.wahm-solution.com/  and from there I linked on to what seemed like a fairly credible review of work-at-home Internet options.  Did some reading.  Did some buying-into. Stayed up past two am Saturday night (fortunately we're on the eleven o'clock church schedule) Grossed one dollar.  Won't admit what I invested in case Rob is reading.  But I haven't given up...so more on this later.  I will let you know when and if I find something more remunerative...because I think we're all wondering.

That's all for now, since it's late again and I start to admit to things that  shouldn't.  Next post...the Deathly Hallows...

classic skate

Last week Caitlin approached me in the kitchen with somewhat of a reprimand. "You need to stop thinking about the Jonas brothers," she said.

I wasn't aware that was one of my neuroses.

This week I felt like I wasn't keeping up so well.  The laundry room was nothing to celebrate and the general clutter seemed to reproduce spontaneously.  I was grateful for Grandma Martha's help.  I was busy with parent teacher conferences, birthday celebrations, and three great nights of Ben's middle school musical, Alice in Wonderland Jr.

Friday after school Bethany had a skating party with her friends at the Classic Skate.

Sophie was invited too.

 I was grateful for the fall colors. I took this from my bedroom window.  Didn't realize I had such a nice view of the park bathrooms.

autumn joy

Autumn joy. Leaf love. What to do when there's too much to do.  Giving in to doing nothing but embracing everything.

That was Saturday, before the trick-or-treat.  Another Saturday thing was the Supersonic Wash.  The simple, squealing pleasure of  green foam, wiggling and waggling hoses, long yellow strips of sponge slapping against the windows as the van moved mysteriously along the tracks through the fun house of a car wash, all for ten bucks. My kind of multi-tasking. Wish I'd brought the camera.

Here's Sunday. Nothing says aftermath like the candy wrapper clutter of All Saint's day, even if it technically wasn't. I refrained from exposing our morning after mess with a photo,  but doesn't Mary look striking in this purple dress that Grandma Martha gave her for her birthday?

And Sunday amidst all the sabbath commotion I neglected to diaper William promptly, which brought about his first lesson in potty-training--the dishwasher is not a urinal. (Not pictured.) 

Sunday night I had to admit to kids that they'd been really well-behaved all day, which would lead a behaviorist of my leanings to believe that they should eat five pounds of candy and stay up until midnight every Saturday night.  The family erupted in cheers.  I enjoyed my sure to be short-lived popularity.

Monday, niente.  E poi martedi.

This is Tuesday.  Don't you hate it when every one's plundered, shaved, surgically removed all the frosting from the birthday cake and they just leave the dry, but nonetheless sugary and therefore still tempting to anyone over thirty-five cake bones sitting on the counter, so you pick at it all day until you realize that that's all you've had to eat and you feel totally sick but does that stop you, no?

 

Well, I guess I wasn't the only one.  There's the ominous black chair, William's regular partner in crime.