Thanksgiving - Part II

The rest of our trip was pretty uneventful. We had a pleasant Thanksgiving day surrounded by family and good food.

Our drive home was long, very long... it seemed even longer than the drive down (it rained most of the way). We left dad's house at 9:44am (Sat) and didn't get home until 2:16am (Sun). Originally, we had planned to stop over along the way and make the drive over two days, but once we were in the car headed home... we decided we really just wanted to get home.

I have been thinking for many years now... at what point do we start having Thanksgiving at home? I would like to start traditions of my own. I want a funny anecdote of my own to share about something that went wrong the first time I tried to cook a Thanksgiving turkey (a shout-out to Kerin's undercooked turkey and Kelly's thawed chicken breast). I want my kids to have fond memories of the warmth and comfort of the holidays at home that I remember from my childhood. The struggle is that I also understand the importance of extended family, especially around the holidays. So I ask again... when do we start having Thanksgiving at home??

Which brings us home... and some sad news. Our television died this morning. This was obviously not in the plan. It was 10 years old. We bought it while living in our first apartment in Washington state... I remember at the time it was the only thing in our living room and it seemed so huge in that tiny place. It has survived many moves and even the failure of a voltage regulator (yes... 2 1/2 years ago we had it repaired instead of replacing it). Jason was not sad at all... he has been wanting a new TV for a while. On the whole, I tend to be slightly averse to change... and I liked that TV, even with the power button on the console that hasn't worked in nearly a year. I guess we'll be TV shopping in the coming week(s). In the meantime, we've brought the old TV from the basement up, but it is a pathetic replacement.

Our Thanksgiving Trip - Part I

I'm writing this post from my dad's house in Florida. I really just wanted to break up our vacation into smaller portions, especially since it is quite front heavy. The drive here went pretty well, although I'll admit to getting a bit of a bumpy start. In all, it was a 15-hour drive (that leaves about 2 hours of stop time since Yahoo Maps gives a drive time of 13 hours). The kids did really great! And for all of you out there curious if the Dramamine helped Clara this trip (oh how she gets carsick)... YES!! A big thanks to all the parents who tipped me off on that little miracle worker... how I wished I had known about it sooner. We arrived here at 9:39pm (leaving the house at 6:22am) and put the kids right to bed. Following that marathon drive, we pretty much rested up all weekend. Unfortunately, what I forgot to mention was that both Clara and Lucas were sick. Clara complained of an earache at 1:00am the morning we were leaving and I figured we would have her checked out once we got here. She says it feels much better, but still hurts. Lucas came home from preschool on Wednesday with a fever and a cough. The fever eventually went away two days later, but the cough definitely got worse. In fact, the second night we were here, many times during the night he woke up in these coughing/screaming fits. It was terrible. Jason ended up sleeping in the bed with Lucas for the next couple of nights, while Clara slept with me. It just didn't seem fair to leave her in the room with Lucas and not let her get a good night's sleep. Honestly, we were starting to worry that Lucas wouldn't be well enough by Monday when we planned to take them to Walt Disney World.

Which then brings me to Monday... our day at the Magic Kingdom: "Where Dreams Comes True." I've been so anxious about this day for months... ever since we told Clara we were going and she insisted that when we got there, she was going to turn into a fairy... her one true wish. There was a fairy meet and greet, for which we waited in line over an hour. It was funny... the guide met us at the door and told us that we were now shrunk down to pixie-size and Clara's eyes got huge, she was so excited. Then we went and met three of the Disney fairies (for those interested... they were Tinkerbell, Iridessa, and Rosetta). I took lots of pictures. Then many hours later, in the car leaving the park, Clara informs us that it was all just pretend and that they were not real fairies at all, just people in costumes. The girl is crazy intuitive! Ok... the one bad thing - Eli started getting what Lucas had (so all day at the park, he was running a fever, and gross as this is, he even threw up in line and all over me waiting for one of the rides). Aside from all the above... what a great day it was!! We all had a such a wonderful time, yes... even Eli. Roseann, a dear family friend and her two boys acted as our personal tour guide, making sure we hit all the good rides and providing a bit of comfort and familiarity in a situation that could have had us floundering. Roseann's boys made sure that all the roller coasters were points of interest... they even got Clara to ride a few of them. Lucas loved the trains and Eli just enjoyed looking around at everything (when he wasn't asleep). The Haunted Mansion was a bit scary for Lucas (he was so worried that a ghost was really going to follow us home), but all three kids were fascinated by the It's A Small World ride.

And finally, this vacation hasn't been all sunshine and roses. As some of you are aware, I had a bit of an emotional stumble Sunday night, but this blog isn't really the place for that. Let's just keep good thoughts and hope all that is behind us and that the rest of the week is a wonderful visit for all of us!

and so it goes

So the weekend was a bust. I've been sick since Thursday (although I didn't really feel sick until Saturday). My voice completely disappeared for nearly three days and it's finally starting to come back and it brought this nasty cough with it. Of course it goes without saying that all three kids are sick now. Let's hope the cough and all the sickness goes away before we leave for our trip on Friday morning.

One noteworthy thing that occurred this weekend was that Jason took Clara to see her very first play. It was a high school production of Fiddler on the Roof. I'm pretty sure she liked it. They left at intermission (she wasn't feeling very well and they had already been there for one and a half hours). The story probably was a bit old for her, but she knows the songs and music as we play the soundtrack at home. She said her favorite part was the curtains opening and closing (she liked to pretend her hands were the curtains). I would still very much like to take her to one of the Nutcracker ballets going on around here. Mental note... check the Events section of the paper to find out the where and when.

Jason spent most of Sunday pulling the vine roots (honeysuckle and another unknown species) out of our azalea bush in the front yard. That has been an ongoing project for him and it is wonderful to see it finished. I'm sure the azalea is much happier. I can't wait to see how much improved it is come spring.

A friend made me realize that I haven't really mentioned how Clara is doing since she started as a permanent 1st grader. So here is a brief update. She is loving it completely. Every day she confirms that we made the right choice by running out of the school smiling and so full of energy. Funny... all the teachers and parents who were trying to dissuade us from promoting her for whatever reasons have even conceded that this was definitely and obviously the right move. And as a 1st grader, Clara now has opportunities that weren't available to her as a kindergartner, i.e. an extra-curricular Spanish class. We enrolled her yesterday (Monday) and she started this morning. It's an hour long class in the morning directly before school one day each week for 20 weeks. The ONLY down side is trying to get the 3 kids ready and out of the house by 7:30am.

I took one of the side rails off of Lucas' bed today, not because he doesn't need it anymore (although that may be true), but because he broke it! He uses his bed rails as a ladder of sorts... climbing up and then propelling himself into the bed. If he manages to not fall out of bed for a few nights, I'll take the other rail down, too.

Eli is officially a toddler. Forget that crawling business. And he is fast on two feet! I'm still going back and forth about moving his crib in with Lucas... one of these days, I'll just do it and be done with it. The more I think on it, the more reasons/excuses I come up with to postpone it.

And finally... I found out today that a good friend of mine from the past is expecting her first baby. Congrats!! The back and forth emails brought back those feelings when I first found out that I was pregnant with Clara... all the excitement and expectations. It seems like so long ago now...

Bulbs, Ballasts and Books

I had to use that title for this post... only because as I was thinking about our past weekend, that pretty much sums it up. Of course, here it is Thursday and I'm just now posting about last weekend? The week itself has been fairly uneventful, therefore... on with the about our past weekend news.

I'll go in order. Our kitchen light hasn't been working properly for quite a while. It is a four tube fluorescent fixture, which gives off great light when it works, but for nearly a year, it has only been functioning on two bulbs, which was still decent lighting... probably why we put off fixing it for so long. Then a while back we replaced the two bad bulbs and the light was great for about two weeks or so, then those same bulbs went out. After replacing the two bad bulbs a second time, the entire four bulbs just started dimly flickering. It was maddening! We researched it online and were trying to debate replacing the ballasts or the entire fixture. Replacing the two ballasts ended up being half the cost of a new fixture... guess which direction we went? It was actually pretty easy to wire in the new ballasts, just uncomfortable as it is all above the head work. Now our kitchen light works better than ever!! It always feels so good when we can do home maintenance ourselves. Rarely do I actually have the confidence to trust that I can successfully complete home mainenance/improvements.

Which brings us to the books part of last weekend. The Fairfax County Public Library book sale was last weekend. I love these book sales. They occur twice a year (once in spring and once in fall) and I make it a point to attend both. Lucky for me, two of our local FCP libraries were holding their sales on the same weekend. Buying books is definitely a weakness for me, so at least I wait and buy them used at a great price and help out our local libraries at the same time. I ended up with a paper bag full of books for each day that I attended the sale (three). Keep in mind that they aren't all for me, lots for the kids and a few for Jason... but that doesn't really matter when the fact is that our bookshelves here at home are overfull.

Yesterday, the painter finally came to touch up the damage from the woodpecker . Let's cross our fingers that infernal bird relocated far far far from here!!

This coming weekend is our last weekend before our trip to Florida for Thanksgiving. I'd say that we won't be doing anything other than preparing for our trip, but who are we kidding? We truly never begin preparing for any trip until the day or two before we are set to leave. I'm actually getting excited about the trip this year. It could be our plan to take the kids to Disney World... maybe the excitement they are feeling is infectious?

Videos... Finally!

Here are the videos that I said I would post eventually.

Clips from Clara's Soccer Game



Eli Walking

The turning point

of our day was when we left the corn maze. We had such a wonderful time at the corn maze. The kids loved the playground and the animals. It was nearly impossible to drag Lucas away from the obstacle course... he loved climbing up and going over the wall. Every time he started to climb the wall, my mind flickered to that scene in 'An Officer and a Gentlemen' and I wanted to cheer him on. He didn't need any cheering though... he was quite proficient. Eli could have sat in that corn-filled tire for hours. Anytime he can repeatedly throw things without getting in trouble is perfect for him. And Clara was all over the place, she had to try everything and read everything. And the actual maze was so fun. We let the kids determine our path for the first half and they didn't do too bad, but by the last half Lucas was getting tired and we were looking to just find our way out. As tired as the kids were, they didn't want to leave. It was such a great day until that point... which brings me to the title of this post. Once we left, things just skipped from bad to bad to bad. We stopped at two different JC Penney stores looking for a specific item that we never found. We drove around and around looking for a specific restaurant that we never found... meanwhile all this driving and looking took us hours and Clara was getting carsick and we were hungry and tired. We finally stopped at this restaurant that Jason had been wanting to try for a long time, just glad to finally almost be eating. How this place ever passed it's health inspection is beyond us!! Not only was the food subpar, but the worst part was all the gnats flying and landing all over our food... so disgusting! The funny thing was that Clara was fascinated by the gnats... she kept calling them beetles. She fixated on three of them that were on her plate, she even named them. If we hadn't been so tired, hungry and it so cold outside, we would have just taken our food and left. Of course, looking back, we just should have! What I found amazing about the whole experience is that on our way home, Jason and I couldn't seem to get out of this bad mood, even after the wonderful day we had before the horrible turning point - which makes me wonder... how is it that no matter how much good occurs, one little bit of bad can ruin the whole?

A Wizard of Oz Halloween

My intention to get pictures up on Flickr fell through... the night was spent playing Scrabble and messing around on FaceBook. So I'm planting one picture of the kids in their costumes here to appease those anxious for more and promise to get more pictures up in the next day or two.

Halloween truly turned out to be an enjoyable day. With two parades, a party, and of course trick-or-treating around the neighborhood... the kids were exhausted by bedtime. Some highlights from the day:

• When asking Lucas if he was a mean and scary lion, he would respond "Nope. I'm a cowardly lion."
• At the doors of the houses during trick-or treating, Lucas would say "ROAR! Trick-or-Treat"
• The yellow rubber bands in Clara's hair were meant to represent the yellow brick road... totally her idea.
• Lucas preferring to go to bed rather than have some of his candy.
• Clara preferring to have an Almond Joy out of our treat bowl rather than something out of her treat bag.
• Scarecrow Eli coming to the door to help hand out candy.
• Lucas being the leader at his preschool parade.
• Clara being only one of two Dorothys in her school parade! (I was so afraid there would be an abundance of Dorothys).

We didn't go all out this year (no pumpkins carved, no ghost lights hung). It didn't really matter in the end. A good time was had by all.