Thank you Kat, for the inspiration to update. I tend to blog more when Joe's traveling and I need a place to vent. My lack of blogging is a blessing. We've had daddy home much more than we're used to having him home--as evidenced by the sobbing mess our middle child became when she came downstairs this morning asking for him, only to find he had already left for work. You would have thought I said, "Oh, Daddy just moved to China. We'll see him again in a few years". Not a pleasant way to start our day, but the meltdowns (both the mommy and child variety) are few and far between these days. Another reason for my lack of blogging I guess. I tried to change my blog into just a docu-blog for our family with the intent of printing it all out eventually, but that feels a tiny bit more boring than the letting it all hang out type of blogging I did in the beginning. Honestly though, we're just kinda plugging along here. Nothing really dramatic to blog about and for that, I'm truly thankful.
Present much more often than the sobbing mess I mentioned earlier, is this smiling, sweet and loving 7 year old. This picture was taken on her birthday with the two gifts we held on to for the actual day. The smile, I have learned, can be obtained by just teasing her right before the picture is taken. Of course, there is the doubling over in laughter thing...not sure how that is going to work in the family pictures we are planning to have taken on Saturday.
However, the above pictures are much preferable to this:
Horrible scan, but clearly this child does not look as happy as the one above. In this day and age of digital photos, should a school picture ever look like this? Initially my answer to that was, "NO!" I was very careful in how I approached the topic of retakes because I did not want to hurt any super-sensitive girl feelings, but I did mention that they were available should she want to try again and smile her "normal smile". She insisted that she loves these pictures because she was showing her missing tooth. By the time retakes were available, there was no more missing tooth. This is not a battle I wanted to fight. Twenty something dollars later, we have pictures that we will always remember she was insistent we keep to document her first missing tooth. My apologies to the photographers.
No complaints about this one this year. No scabs or active bleeding. No visible mud. In that sense, this picture is not true to life. He is going to a sleep over birthday party tomorrow night before our family picture on Saturday. I'm thinking about putting him in a helmet.
My real apologies to the photographers came after I was present for this photo session. Picture day at school coincided with surgery day so we had to come in on a non-school day for re-takes. She was fine at home. She let me pick out her dress (although she is wearing jeans underneath) and I had some input on her hair. As soon as we walked in to the school and she realized none of her friends were there, her teacher was not available and there was just this strange woman in a room with plans to take her picture, she became "challenging Sarah". Challenging Sarah does not make appearances at school and her teacher still doesn't believe that she could ever be difficult. (I really am thankful they save their yuck for me). I ended up having to leave the room, but I heard what the photographer went through to even get this picture. There was a pretty intense game of catch and there was no chance of grooming hair or straightening out clothes in between. I am actually fine with this picture. Twenty something dollars fine? Not really, but we will have the class picture for the memories and that is the ultimate goal. I do miss the days of lining up the kids in rows rather than this photo shopped class photo we get. Although, if they still did that, Sarah would not be in her class picture this year.
So we're going to a park with a friend on Saturday in some pre-planned outfits with carefully groomed children and parents. I'm just hoping it goes as well as it did when we had the (mostly) impromptu one in England a few years ago. This is way more effort than I generally like to put into grooming and photographs, but thanks to facebook, I feel like we're the only ones who don't regularly get fancy and document it.
See what I mean about the grooming and documenting? Thanksgiving 2011 was fantastic. Last year this break was a little rough. There were things about expat living that I was especially missing at this time last year and add in the missing family quotient--I was a little depressed. Something about not knowing what to expect or being disappointed in what I had expected? Not sure. This year I was kinda dreading all of the food prep work. I was trying to encourage steaks rather than turkey (I know, I'm a horrible person), but these kids were not having it. Even the middle one, who really doesn't seem to like turkey. We went with turkey breasts in a bag and homemade everything else. Practice does make improvement. Everything was much better this year. We ate right in the middle of some really good football, so we stayed in the kitchen rather than forcing everyone to go into the dining room for 10 minutes like last year. We went around the table multiple times to say what we are thankful for this year. Lots!
The weather was gorgeous. We got a new roof courtesy of a hail storm in July. They started on the day before Thanksgiving and finished up Thursday morning. It was a little weird to have people all over the place for those two days, but the end result is nice and they got it done just before all of the cold weather and snow hit this week.
There was one point when Nathan and I were out shopping for some things over the weekend when we marveled about not wearing coats--well, I mostly marveled. It was nice. Lots of together time. No real schedule or agenda. Play time with friends. Lots of football. Lots of Christmas decorations--all thanks to daddy. A Muppet movie that made us all laugh for different reasons--even if Daddy did say he wants his money back.
The weather has officially caught up with the date. It actually feels like December today. We had snow and ice yesterday (after flooding rains the day before), but all of the snow is gone and hopefully some of that water will go away with the sunshine yesterday and today. Because we don't want our family pictures to look like this one, we're hoping for some tolerable outdoor weather on Saturday. This picture is from this morning--all crammed in the back of Daddy's car (I don't think I ever mentioned that he traded in the Acura for an Edge). Our Odyssey (that we are very thankful for--with the easy in/out for three bundled kids and all of their school bags), is in the shop today getting checked out and fixed up. I'm also thankful that my husband got up early, dropped it off and got a ride to work (even if Hannah is less thankful) so that I didn't have to sit in a waiting room for several hours with our youngest daughter.
We've had a great week back to school and we're looking forward to the next three busy weeks before we load everyone up and head south. I feel a little torn about traveling for Christmas this year. It was so relaxing being home last year and we didn't have to think about any of the Santa complications (and by we, I mean, me). After all of the traveling Christmases we've had from the Belgian years, they seem to be pretty go with the flow with whatever Santa does. Good thing because I really haven't figured out what we're going to do yet. This year we arrive on December 23rd. I don't really like shopping to begin with--and I certainly do not want to be shopping on Christmas Eve. Ick! Thankfully their needs and wants are fewer this year. The excitement of cousins and Texas really does feel like their big focus.
We'll be there in 22 days! Can't wait! Life is good.
Wait, one more thing. Super-cute group picture from Hannah & Kate's birthday party a few weeks ago. We used foamie glitter letter stickers to put their names on foamie frames and framed this one for each of the girls. Thankful for this time when they are still sweet--even her first grade teacher mentioned that the catty-ness will start by the end of the year. Boo! Can we just freeze them at this age for a while? L-R: Julianna, Ella, Hailey, Maya, Kate, Hannah, Francesca, Renee and Kierin
Last night, we saw Kierin at the tree-lighting event thing we went to and they squealed, hugged and jumped up and down as if they hadn't just seen each other at school all day and at dance class an hour earlier. Another little boy I don't know stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Hannah in the hallway. "Hannah!? I had no idea you were going to be here!" I think it is so cute when they are genuinely surprised to see each other outside of school. Kids are cute. Mostly.
No comments:
Post a Comment