Mother's Day, etc

Things have quieted down here on the home front after our slew of visitors coming through.  The next big thing on the radar was Mother's Day!  As is my typical fashion, my activity of choice on such a holiday is to be without my children which does sound kind of sad as I write it here. But considering I am with them almost 24/7, it helps to explain it some...I hope.  I'm sure when they are all grown and out of the house and one sends me a measly text (if that medium still exists) saying "Happy Mother's Day" I will think back on this.  In the meantime, I sure do enjoy the kidless outings to Goodwill!

I did get in at least SOME kid time though.  As I woke up Sunday morning, I could hear the kids hard at work in the kitchen followed by Brady and Colby bouncing into the room to snuggle with me in bed. A little racket and banging around later, in walk the girls with a tray of food - - breakfast in bed! As they come over to the me bearing the tray of goodies, Brady leans in and whispers, "Don't forget - - I got the spoon." He wanted it to be clear that he DID contribute to the meal.  It was precious.

Later in the day, after Goodwill closed, we had plans to meet up at Olive Garden for supper.  For some reason, I recalled eating there before in the evening on Mother's Day with not much of a crowd. Well, not the case this time.  It was at least an hour wait.  I made the executive decision to abort that mission and we all headed to the Crepevine instead.  This is a new-ish restaurant that opened a while ago that serves - - crepes. Crazy, I know.  You order at the counter so I figured it wouldn't be very busy and it wasn't.  I had been wanting to try it so this was a perfect chance.  I apologized to Elaine that our taking her out to dinner for the holiday was not very fancy but it turned out to be a really great experience.  We got to watch them make the crepes and then sat outside to enjoy our meal.  I had kind of a Greek crepe which was excellent and then had to get a dessert one at the end, of course. Duncan enjoyed his meal but he said it was torturous sitting only a few feet from the Indian restaurant and not be able to eat there. Sorry bro!

Eating brunch at Grandma and Grandpa's while Mom shopped.

The Crepevine

Speaking of that Indian restaurant, we had a family outing there the Sunday before last. We were studying India for school and I figured it would only be proper to eat Indian food to go along with it. I had been wanting to try the buffet at the restaurant which is served only at lunch so this seemed to be our chance.  We had soccer first (the next to last week) and then it was on to the restaurant.  Of course, the thought on my mind when we go to places like this is "What is Brady going to eat?" Fortunately he does like Naan (he generally likes all bread products since he's part Brace) so at least there was that.  Aubree has a vast palette and Calleigh is usually willing to at least try stuff so the buffet worked perfectly for them.  They tried pretty much everything (vegetarian, obviously) and liked some things better than others.  We couldn't have our Indian meal without mango lassies so I ordered up a round of those and Brady was all too willing to drink anyone's who couldn't finish.  So Naan and mango lassies...a very well rounded meal compared to some days.  As we were leaving, I struck up a conversation with one of the employees (owner?) about whether she had lived in India previously (she had) and how was the food in India compared to the Indian food here.  "Oh, this isn't Indian food," she says.  Ohhhh-kay, interesting.  We were headed out so I couldn't ask her to expound but there you go.  Guess I need to go to India and find out what she means.

At soccer first.  You can tell Aubs was playing hard just looking at that face.

This past Tuesday the ice skating classes started up again.  I wasn't sure if they'd all want to take the classes again but it was a resounding "yes" from both girls.  I knew Calleigh would want to but I wasn't sure about Aubree.  For some reason she seemed to have slowed down with her progress this past session (which was the second set of classes overall).  I thought some of it might have to do with her and Brady being together and her trying to stay at his pace so he isn't by himself.  But she really wanted to keep going.  Brady, not so much.  But, we still signed him up anyway and said he was doing it.  He gave a little fuss but not much.  When we got to the rink, we noticed that they had put Brady in a group with the 3- and 4-year olds and Aubree was with her age group.  So in different groups.  Oh boy!  Within about twenty seconds, both kids were crying, loudly, right there in the middle of where you put your skates on.  I mean, really!  Brady I could understand but Aubree is almost seven.  It's not like Calleigh and Brady aren't right there still and I'm in the stands watching for Pete's sake!  I finally got her calmed down and she went to join her class.  Brady, meanwhile, was just sitting there with the tears literally streaming down his face, like his puppy had just died or something.  I was trying to encourage him (you know, before you get to the stage where you say "I paid a lot of money for this class and you WILL do it) but it was no use.  A few minutes later an older lady in an RDV sweatshirt comes by and asks what the matter is.  I explained that that last two sessions he had been with his older sister and that he was feeling pretty bad that he wasn't with her this time.  She was so sweet and immediately said it wasn't a problem at all for him to be with her and he was welcome to be with her every time and it is never their policy to separate kids like that.  The tears stopped and off he went happily with Aubree.  Crisis averted!  I thanked her profusely, grabbed Colby, and headed to the stands.  A few minutes later, she comes back by and hands me two free tickets to the public skating sessions (value of around $22).  The kids get to go free each week if they are signed up for lessons and I've been wanting to go.  So it was perfect!  I proceeded to tell her that I hadn't been on skates in like fifteen years but it was like riding a bicycle, right?  She says "I tell anyone who hasn't been on skates since they were a kid to..." I didn't catch the rest of what she was saying because all I could think of was 'Does she think I was a "kid" fifteen years ago???' I'll take it!! Anyway, turns out her name is BJ and she runs the skating program.  She was incredibly nice so I feel all the better about giving RDV my money.

Not too much else exciting happening around here.  We are plodding along with school. Only four weeks left!  Actually, I used the word "plodding" but it has been fine.  We haven't hit the end of the year blues, yet.  The girls have gotten really good at doing a lot of their work "on the go" so that we can do other extracurricular activities.  My brain tends to shut off in the afternoon after lunch so our goal is to get everything accomplished before lunchtime.  Since we have art on Tuesdays (at 1:00), Homeschool PE on Wednesdays (10:00) and Gymnastics on Thursdays (12:00), it can be a challenge to get everything accomplished by the lunchtime goal on those days. Not to mention the days that we have some other random outing. To combat that, they will often take their individual work (like Math or English, etc) in the car with them to get it done.  They know the more work they get done before lunch, the more free time they will have afterwards.  Usually all they will have left after lunch is their Reading which consists of reading a book for fifteen minutes.  It does seem like we have a pretty good routine and I'm glad they are going with the flow of doing work in various places.

What the boys do while we do school. A car parade - - you can see it starts all the way back in their room.  To Brady's credit, he did pick it all up all by himself.

A mention about Colby.  This kid really kills me sometimes.  I know a lot of it has to do with the age. I don't remember two being quite so challenging.  As in, the screaming and crying over the dumbest stuff.  A few mornings ago he sat and cried for 20 minutes because the muffin I gave him had a "crack" in it.  There is no reasoning with it.  They won't, or can't, understand that the muffin still tastes exactly the same despite the crack no matter how many times you mention this fact to them.  I don't know what took me so long but I finally remembered that when he gets like that that the only solution is to remove him from the situation.  I put him on a chair in my room and told him he had to stay there until he stopped crying.  A few minutes goes by and then he strolls out, as if nothing had happened, and says "I all done crying." Then there are the messes.  They dump bins of toys out and make gigantic messes and then don't want to clean up, of course.  Admittedly, they are held to a slightly different standard when it comes to clean up time because they are in fact, only two.  I've had to remind the other kids of this several times..."You know, Colby is two.  When you were two, you didn't clean up all of this." So now last night, Colby had a mess upstairs and I told him he needed to go up and clean it. And this is what he says "I TWO!  I TWO!" As if he knows that excuses him from it.  When that didn't work, this is what he says "My legs are broken." He kept repeating it.  That little rascal.  But then, he comes up and says "I love you, Mom" and gives you a giant hug and you think he is pretty much the cutest thing in the entire world.  He has been saying "I love you, Mom" multiple times a day and it gets me each and every time!

Crying about his muffin.  You can tell that Daddy put him to bed because he's wearing the same shirt he wore the day before as his pajamas.  Ha!

But who can resist that smile?!

One more quote from Brady.  The boys spend a lot of time outside in the backyard. One evening this past week they were out there and it was starting to get dark which means the bugs start coming out. I was inside and all of a sudden, I see Brady tearing inside as fast as he can and he shouts "The mosquitoes are taking our bloods away!" Kids have such a way with words.

Some other pictures...

We were able to find our futon that we took out of Brady's room a good home at the Bergherms.  Here the kids look at a Lego book after art class.

Christmas in May.  They sure love to do dress up.

Duncan had a 24-hour business trip up to Boston and got a private tour of Fenway Park.  Notice what is written on the white sign in the middle.

Brought back a souvenir.

The kids bought another Lego set with the money they saved.  It was to be delivered via UPS on Thursday by 8:00 pm.  Usually UPS arrives between 4:00 - 6:00 pm so when it hadn't come by 7:00 pm, they were especially anxious and kept asking me "When is it going to get here?" After about the tenth time, I said, sarcastically of course, "Hold on, let me call up the UPS driver and ask him when he'll be here." A minute goes by and Brady notices I'm still just sitting there, "When are you going to call him, Mom?" Ha! It came at last around 7:15 pm. It's like Christmas morning around here!

Some fellow moms (Amy, Ashley, Jennifer, Vasti, Katrina, and Tangie) and I took a partial beach day after church to just sit and relax in the sun sans kids which we never get to do.  It was our pre-Mother's Day activity since some people wouldn't get to relax on the actual day.

A wedding unfolded before us and we were convinced it was fake because the bride and groom looked like they were 18.  The bride was wearing off white and the groom had on a blue shirt and bright white pants so we figured there was NO WAY they would wear that combination for a real wedding.  Alas, it was indeed real (upon closer inspection they looked to be about 25.  But the outfits didn't look any better!)

Playing some floor hockey in the Z's garage.  Looks like Aubree needs to learn how to hold a stick.

I decided I want a picture taken here every Sabbath so I can keep track of what the kids wear.  Some weeks the results may be better than others....

Swimming season is in full bloom.  The pool was warmer than the air at 5:30 pm the other day. Kids are resuming lessons next week.

Getting a haircut to continue to look like Brady who got a haircut a few days before.  I think I'm going to start wearing a sign that says "THEY ARE NOT TWINS."

Giving me a foot massage.  He and Aubree go all out giving me massages.  Yup, I have the best life!!

Happy Sabbath!