Summer's end: Post office

Today as planned we went to the library. The kids got to pick the books they earned for summer reading some movies and books.

Then we went to the post office to mail their post cards. The kids were so excited to be able to go in with me and they got a special treat. The postal worker could tell this was the kids' project and so she tried to find stamps that they could put on their post cards but no luck. So she invited them behind the counter which was fascinating in and of itself, but then she let them run their post cards through the postage meter. COOL! Zurich called it a "mail robot." They each got a turn to do a couple.

I never explained my plan to the kids but this morning Olea asked, "So what fun thing are we going to do today?" and rather than answering, "I don't know," or "we'll see," I had a good answer for her. And then she asked, "and what job are we going to do together?" Okay, I can go with that, "Your bathroom really needs cleaned."
She was still excited about the job after we got home, fed the baby and had lunch. The bathroom is done, except for Olea's self imposed finishing touches. I hope to get her help to clean up the kitchen after dinner since we are having YW at our house.

Summer's end: Postcards

So how did today go?

We got olea's room generally picked up and since I had helped her do that she was in a much more helpful mood and swept the floor etc and i had the kitchen table cleaned off. By 2pm I put Nev down for a nap and got out the post cards and sharpies. Trying to keep Zurich from drawing on the address area was a bit of stress. But we had a good time. We used some pre-made post cards and then zurich drew some giraffes on 5.5x4.5 rectangles of heavy card stock.

His giraffes looked like upper female anatomy, and he did it generally the same every time. Zurich had drawn one on our "untellaga" newsprint under paper and it was perfect size so when Gary got home I held it up to corresponding anatomy and told him Zurich had drawn it. His eyes got big and his mouth dropped open. I laughed and explained that contrary to what it looked like, it was a sweet unassuming giraffe.

Nev didn't stay down for her nap and so she joined us  in coloring.I was too busy capping pens and stopping sharpie colored arguments while holding Giddy to get a picture of her. But some of her cousins will be privileged to receive an artistic rendition from her.... And some will get offensive giraffes.

Olea wrote notes on some and just colored on others. Zurich dictated some notes for his postcards. Nev named her works of art and I was impressed with her color recognition since we played her version of Chinese checkers two weeks ago. Apparently she learned more than just white.

Tomorrow we will go to the post office to buy stamps and mail their post cards and they will all get to come in to do this rather than sitting in the car with the AC running while I run in to our sweet post office. It's little and hotter than the van. Then we will go to the library.

Mail

Today was a good mail day.

The end of summer...

This morning all energetic and annoyed with the fact that the kids were watching tv I had an idea.

I thought maybe if I planned to do something engaging each day with the kids that fell into one of 6 categories that we might have more harmony and keep our brains active. These areas came to mind: craft, color, math/science, reading, writing, physical. I figure it's cool if they overlap. Some items that came to mind: rainbow cake, clocks, oral story telling, poetry writing, goo, number games, sets, puzzles, Lino printing, toothpick structures.

We generally do projects but it's stressful because they are thrown together in the heap of things. Or I get to spend time with one child but not another. Having a nursing baby takes a lot of time and it seems like when any task is completed its time to feed again and the kids are found still wanting. They need time with me too. So I wanted to set a precedence an expectation, an excitement, something to look forward to, a reason .... to get dressed (Olea has a problem with this recently).

I have ages 7, 3.5 and 2 (Giddy will be left out...) so I need to pick activities that can engage all of them for a while, and be modified in the process for each child's skill level.

Here is the goal: do one organized (premeditated the night before) activity each weekday, it can take as little as 15 mins to 2 hours. But it's me and the kids doing something fun and creative together. Take a picture. Have the kids journal once a week about what they like, what are grateful for. For Nev, this will be scribbling in a notebook and that is fine. Zurich I hope will draw pictures.

I'm no dummy though. I'm starting simple and moving forward flexible. Today we will write postcards to some of their cousins. How much does a post card cost these days? 29 cents. It falls under writing.

The idea is more for my sanity and simplification. Call it lame, or wonder why this has to be a goal, or judge me, or whatever. I don't care. I'm posting it so I have it written down. So I have something to commit to. Because maybe just maybe the kids will have a drive to get up and help out more often if we are engaged in something together more often.

Circus

Let's call last week the kid's vacation. I mean seriously, they got to stay in a hotel, be in the car for over two hours (demonstrates that it was far away), go to an aquarium, send a vacation postcard,

get a souvenir, ride a trolley, check out a view, go on a tour, eat at restaurants, meet up with a fun person, play at the beach, watch some sunsets, stay up past their bedtime,

go to a circus, eat cotton candy, etc.

At the circus we had pretty good seats.

It was so fun to watch Nev's face as she saw bizarre acts for the first time.

It was a pretty good circus. The ribbon acrobat was neat to Nev and she stopped watching to try her own poses on the floor in front of us. She soaked up the audiences reaction to the performer as her own. As gross as it was we couldn't get her to stop and as floors go it wasn't horrid. It made me laugh though.

Zurich after seeing some grotesque backbends by a young male acrobat dressed like a hobo posing on a coat rack who also did the splits tried to do the splits himself. The baby flexibility has clearly left him. He also told me, "he is a mailman." I don't get the connection.

Aside from the fact that the kids wanted to take in some of the extra activities that were supremely overpriced and the budget had already been spent on concessions it was a good evening. I am really hoping to find some decently priced pony rides for Zurich in the near future.

We stopped off at a grocery store to get some of these on the way home.

Way better than cotton candy.

Nascar Race

One of the worst things about living somewhere and then moving is having regret about not taking in what was great about where you lived. For instance, in 2010 I finally went to Yellowstone. (Which apparently I never blogged about... ) I had lived in the near vicinity all my life and had never been. I am so glad we created the opportunity to go before we moved south east.

So now that we are here I have this desire to make sure we take in the opportunities about the area we now live as much as we feasibly can. So we won't say years down the road that we just never got around to it. Gary had heard that some Nascar races were going on and given Zurich's excitement over Cars and racing, we thought it would be fun to take Zurich to a race. We were surprised with a bonus and I got home one day and Gary had purchased tickets. I admit I was very nervous about taking everyone to it... I had wild imaginative episodes of how unpleasant and unmanageable it would be. The kids were very excited and kept singing, "We're going to a cars race."

I am happy to report that it really went very well.

We parked in Free parking and took a school bus shuttle to the track. The bus ride was VERY exciting. It was crazy. The kids kept saying,"This is a race car bus." It was a bumpy and g-force packed bus ride. :)

Our seats were in front of the beginning of the pits. This was a great spot to be for having kids. We got lucky and no one sat in the row directly in front of us which provided a better view for the kids.

Zurich was very excited and kept giving me this great cheese face and looking for Lightning McQueen. :)

Pre-race line up

Hard not to be emotional when the forces unfurl a huge flag like that for the national anthem.

It was the Sprint something or other... sorry race fans. It was 160 lap race. And at about 56 laps Zurich was bored. So thanks to the Subway car having breakdowns and pitting over and over with fires right in front of us that helped keep Zurich's interest up. He just needed some explanation of what he was looking at and some understanding of what was going on. And so I kept him close to me so I could re-direct his attention at appropriate intervals.

Nev, laid down ready, when she saw Gary get diapers out to change Giddy. We didn't change Nev there though.

Check out them eyes. yum.

Olea is easily influenced by a crowd. The cars were going fast, and people were excited, that was enough for her. :)

When the race was down to the last few laps there kept being crashes. The last one was right in front of us. It's crazy scary how fast they are going and how fast things change. Because of all that there ended up being 170 laps.

There was a fireworks show after so we got our 4th of July Pyro fix from that.

After Gary took Zurich to the bathroom and took a while coming back so Nev entertained herself on the now empty seats.

It was noisy. That is an understatement.

But it was a good experience that now we can say we have done. But getting the kids to bed at 2am is not something I need to repeat any time soon.

Mini Vacation

My brother was in the general Florida area for a journalisim confrence and Gary was scheduled to be working in the same area earlier this week. So I got all crazy and decided the kids and I would drive down separately and enjoy Gary's hotel with him and go play while he was at work. That evening after arriving we picked up Uncle and went to the beach.

The next day we rode a trolley, went to the pier, an aquarium and a down town tour. Then met up with Gary and Cim to go to the beach and eat dinner. 4 kids by myself, I'm just not used to handling them all to myself in public yet. And sadly they weren't on their best behavior... It was crazy at times, okay most of the time.

We were in a restaurant that had a bunch of ceramic hand painted items in baskets and bins all over. Right at kid height. I couldn't get Zurich to listen to me and he kept touching them. While we were waiting for a table a stand of them crashed to the ground... The ceramic tile floor. I just covered my face and took deep breaths. We were blessed. The top bin that spilled out and made all the clatter was just a bunch of key chains, which were unharmed. Zurich was holding a painted ceramic thermometer, the bottom bin had them in it. The restaurant host that was leading us in put the stand back together and said, "we're okay, Ma'am." I have my suspicions that particular stand was not locked in right. But either way it was not the place for us which I more fully realized when I saw the tables were just as big a land mine for my bouncy, obedience impaired little boy. I hauled my four lethal weapons out and we ate somewhere else.

As we were getting ready to leave the pier Nev decided she was ready for her nap and just dropped right where she was and laid down, right in the middle of the walkway. I tried to encourage her to come on her own the old fashioned way, by just saying good bye and walking away. I was carting Giddy on my chest the diaper bag and the bag of souveniers.... Didn't much want to carry a child who could walk. Zurich started crying and freaking out because Nevy wasn't coming. In fact she just looked at us and rolled over so she couldn't see us. So I went back and told her that if she would at least put out her hand that I would carry her. We just barely made it on the trolley.

2 am reflections

Here I am again, awake at 2 am for no good reason listening to the sounds of sleep and night... Which for the record isn't all that quiet.

But tonight, unlike last night, I am grateful and optimistic. Last night I was irritated and pessimistic. I tried to calm my mind last night by thinking of things I was grateful for. It didn't go so well, whenever I came up with something I would find myself digressing into the negative.

Finally I gave up and took a quarter of a melatonin. As it was kicking in I flipped over to see a head silhouetted against the window which was lit by the light of the moon. Startled as I was I didn't have enough umph left in me to send the child back to bed and I let him crawl in next to me and listen to him tell me how he was afraid of the dark (this is new) and he had a bad dream about an alien with glowy green eyes that wanted to shake him and take him away. I soothed him and as we both drifted off to sleep a thought struck me as my husband, in sleep, reached out to hold my hand.

I have it.

It's amazing how stuck we can get in the negative energy, how hard it is to shake. Life is hard, if you don't think so, you aren't living it. But it's not bad. Sometimes we just need that little boy, who is closer to heaven, who needs us, or that touch that reminds us. Sometimes all we need is some good old fashioned hard work.

Today I had a happier start to my day but also a thought that my sister had shared with me from the night before. "Why is it so easy to be pessimistic? Because it is SO easy."

We set things up for a morphed ward party: which was more work than you'd think. And Hot and bug bitey and I wasn't even out there the whole time. But we also got some other work done that needed doing and that is so therapeutic to me. I love having little check marks ticking away in my brain's list. Some of the most pleasing things to me today were: the ward party turned out well all considered. The kids played in the back yard by choice, they seem to just need a little distraction and fuel to their imaginations. We got our porch swing hung up and Gary and I got to swing out there for a bit and enjoy the noisy night and a little reflection. I also used a frame from the house and some matting from a previous framing project to frame the ink drawing I did for valentine's day and hang it up in our bedroom. I am liking the house more as I get things put together.

It is starting to feel like home.