This week is spring break. No school or ball practices. I’m going to give them a chance to cook a couple of the meals.
Burgers
Carrot Soup
Spaghetti
Lasagna
Fajitas
Kay’s Parmesan Chicken
Pastor Ryan’s Spicy Orange Garlic Shrimp (or chicken for some of us)
Chili from Posie Gets Cozy
Grilled Chicken with sweet potatoes
Caesar salad with chicken
Greg’s shoulders were bothering him so I started to rub some generic version of Icy/Hot on them. Allison asked if she could have some and I told her it was just for old people. Nathan and Zoey chimed in with questions like, “How do they determine old?”, “Who says it’s just for old people?”
I told them that it mysteriously showed up in a package on the doorstep last year when I turned 32. Kids are kind of gullible and they believed me.
Allison then proceeded to explain to us that we weren’t old, “Are you guys crazy? Old people are stooped over and walk with their legs spread apart all wobbly.” Like this:
I know the video quality isn’t fantastic, but this is her demonstration of an old man walking. I’ve been waiting for Vimeo to load up, but I don’t want to miss my daily deadline.
I’m not sure what is going on at our house. Over the weekend we cleaned almost the entire house The only things left were straightening up a few things and folding an putting away the laundry. Somehow, we never manage to fold and put away all of the laundry. Maybe because we never manage to wash all of the laundry. With five of us, it never ends. Where is the robot that does the house cleaning and laundry for us? This is the 21st century, right?
For us the answer has been Zoey. Somehow I convinced her that if she tidied every room in the house every day for the whole week, I would pay her. She thought about it for maybe one second and decided I had made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. She started cleaning like crazy. The whole house has stayed relatively neat and tidy all week.
For the low price of two dollars a week you might be able to convince her to straighten up your house also.
I apologize for the lack of posting. I’ve just been lazy the past week. I have pictures, but they are not uploaded to flickr yet. There may be a video or two in the works, but I had to free up some hard drive space on the kids’ computer (it is the one we use for video editing since they don’t need all of the space videos take up). There is also a point to be made that there just hasn’t been anything worth posting.
During the summer when my brother and I were little, I think we spent almost every day that we could at the city pool. There was a deck for bathing in the sun’s evil rays that was the prime spot to put your towel if you wanted it to stay dry. It never failed that someone had a portable radio that would be drowned out by the sound of everyone splashing and swimming. We would have contests to see who could dive off of the high dive and swim the farthest towards the shallow end without coming up for air, or who could do the best cannon ball and splash the life guards or try soak the people on the upper deck.
This picture is of the newly renovated pool (ok last year) but it looks like they took out the high dive and the slide. The kids who swim there now don’t even realize the fun they are missing.
Because there isn’t a community pool here in our little town, we were lucky to find a lady that offered swimming lessons from her own pool the first summer we moved here. Last week was the last week for swimming lessons and Greg took the video camera with him so that I could see that Allison really does swim like a fish.
Because they have been taking lessons for the past 5 years, Nathan and Zoey just work on perfecting the strokes and dives they have already learned.
Zoey still usually jumps in because on her dives, she goes in knees and belly first.
During “free-time”, the kids take turns surfing across the pool on a boogie board.
How did you spend your summers when you were growing up?
Zoey’s slumber party weekend was a success. All of the girls arrived ready for some fun and we sent them home exhausted. I hope their parents forgive us. Between the trampoline, swing set, pillow decorating*, and karaoke** we had plenty of activities to keep everyone entertained. At the end of the night we had them settle in to watch a movie, hoping that they would all drift off to sleep. Fat chance. Eventually we turned on Radio Disney, turned off all of the lights, and the grown ups feel asleep to the sound of whispering girls.
I felt like I was teetering on the edge of insanity for most of the night. There wasn’t really a time when things were out of control, but I felt like there was a huge possibility that one thing would send the whole night into chaos. Eventually, two of the girls decided to storm out of a room declaring that no one was paying attention to them. This cracked me up, since a) they did it together and b) 10 seconds later everyone was looking for them because it was their turn to sing. Thankfully, the crisis were easily repaired with a few words and a hug or two. No one’s feelings were hurt too badly (with 7 little girls there is always a good chance for tears).
Somehow it came up in conversation that you say boys are handsome and girls are beautiful. The end of this part of the conversation went this way and sent all of the girls into a fit of giggles.
Girl 1 – “actually girls are beautiful and boys are ugly”
Girl 2 – “what if you were a boy?”
Girl 1 – “I would be the only handsome one, all of the others would be ugly”
*Ugh, what a mess. (hopefully, I did not ruin my favorite skirt since I was an idiot and forgot to change clothes)
** We have some great video footage of the girls singing along with High School Musical.
*** I thought it would be funny to put on black bars a la isabel.
Yesterday was the last day of school and with it came the award ceremonies. We’ll start with Nathan and finish up with Zoey.
It sounds a little weird, but I feel kind of like Nathan floated through school this year. He made decent grades, but didn’t really go out of his way to do anything else. It’s like he was just along for the ride. He finished out the year with all A’s (for AWESOME!). Here he is getting his certificate for AB Honor Roll.
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned or not before, but Zoey loves school. Okay, it’s actually a pretty common theme around here when her name is mentioned between the months of August and May. Zoey cleaned up at the third grade ceremony. She came home with medals for commended performance on TAKS tests and A Honor Roll along with a certificate for doing well on the science pre-TAKS test.
A few days before the awards ceremony her school sent home a note with checkmarks next to the subject she would be getting an award. On the form there was a box marked “Other” and it had 2 written next to it. I kept wondering why the “Other” was written on the paper. If you list everything else out, why not list those also? It’s so the parents and teachers can be surprised when they announce who receives the Citizenship Award. Each teacher nominates a boy and a girl from their class who they think deserves the top honor of the school. Each of the nominees gets a certificate and they all get to stand in front of the assembly together.
Here’s where I was surprised. They read each of the nominees and didn’t even call out Zoey’s name. I know I am biased and all, but what total freakishness to not even be nominated. That’s when the principal started reading statements about the boy and girl that won from their teachers.
“If each class was full of Zoey’s, all of the teachers would have smiling faces every day”
That’s the only line I can remember from what Zoey’s teacher wrote. As Zoey walked up to get her award, I looked over at her teacher and she was wiping tears from her eyes. It’s well known what an impact your child has on your own life, but it’s pretty amazing to realize the affect they can have on others.
All in all a pretty good ending for a school year that had such a awkward beginning.
At the very beginning of the season, Zoey picked Blake Lewis to win. Right from the start she wanted to call in and vote for him. We told her that she would have to wait to vote until the show reached the top 5. This is where she was thwarted by sports and technology. Because we are seldom home on Tuesday nights, we watch the Tivod* show on Wednesdays then fast forward through the recaps and get straight to the results.
On the night of Blake’s Bon Jovi performance, since she didn’t get to call in her vote, she drew a picture to support him instead. Then she quickly hung it by the television and there it has stayed.
Last week, was a typical Tuesday night, filled with baseball and softball, then dinner, baths and into bed. When we started watching the results show, Zoey was worried. This only increased when the it was narrowed down to Melinda and Blake on who would be sent home. Zoey sat on the sofa chanting to herself, “Please don’t let it be Blake, Please don’t let it be Blake.”, over and over again. She also threw in a few, “You should have let me vote! Why didn’t you let me vote? The agony!”.
Immediately after he was announced “safe”, Zoey grabbed a pencil and ran to her drawing on the wall and added, “Final Two!” to her drawing. Complete with check mark.
Last night, we didn’t watch the show live. Since it was the final chance to vote, at 8pm, Zoey turned on the TV so that she could find out which numbers to dial to vote for Blake. Then she spent the next 20 minutes, sitting on her bed hitting redial and listening to Blake say, “Thank you”.
This morning she told me she had so much fun voting. Since I stayed up and watched the show last night, my money is totally on Jordan. She’s young, pretty, and when she ended “This Is My Now” she used the waterworks that made all of the moms and dads say, “Oh how precious, she’s such a sweet young girl”.
I’ll report back with Zoey’s reaction to the final results.
*Is tivod a word?
To add further proof that Zoey is our resident genius and geeky girl*, last Wednesday the eye doctor told us that she needed glasses and would have to wear them full time. Between my parents and Greg, the odds were high that one of our kiddos would not have perfect vision.
We were a little worried that she would be bummed about having to wear glasses. So far that isn’t the case. On Friday afternoon after they stopped and picked up her new specs, she let us know, “”I can actually see the words at the bottom of the screen when Dad has it on ESPN!”.
It doesn’t hurt that she looks incredibly cute. The real test will be today at school. I hope no one picks on her. I don’t think they will because glasses are more common for kids then they used to be. She also seems to be pretty well-liked. Even with that, some kids can be mean. Here’s hoping that we have given her enough self-confidence to ignore the teasers.
More evidence that Zoey is a little clone of my mother.
So, this was supposed to be posted on Saturday, but the wireless network card on my laptop decided to go kaput. Sure I could have plugged it up via the ethernet port, or even used the kid’s computer but that would have made too much sense.
*I think it’s perfectly fine that she is a geeky girl. She gets it from her mother.
So, this isn’t really going to be full post worthy, more like a little spot. Today while Zoey and I were driving back from the beauty salon* a song played in between one of the reports on Marketplace. Zoey got really into the few seconds they played. After it was over she told me how she thought it was, “some of the most awesome music” she had ever heard.
Since she liked it so much, I decided to do a little detective work and see if I could find out just who made this wondrous music. Searching for Marketplace music took me to a post on Defective Yeti from a couple of years ago. It’s a little outdated. They no longer have the “special features” section. Instead you can click on the contact link and it will take you right to the music.
As it turns out, Zoey is going to be a techno-head. Her new favorite song is “Keep Your Fare Down” by Global Goon.
*I don’t know why, but saying that makes me feel like I could be a Golden Girl, or a character in Steel Magnolias.
It’s time for some parental bragging.
This weekend Zoey and I went to Crockett, Texas for a UIL contest. On the way we got to drive through the Davey Crockett National Forest. It was pretty cool. I kept expecting a man to walk through with his coon-skin cap looking for a bear. According to Wikipedia though, it’s named for him because he may or may not have camped there on his way to defend the Alamo.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. In Texas they have this thing called UIL. From what I can tell, it’s sort of like an academic contest based on grade levels. Along with 2 other kids, Zoey was selected to do the Spelling portion for 3rd grade at her school.
We left early on Saturday morning, Zoey on the school bus and a line of parents driving behind. For some reason we weren’t allowed to ride the bus, and the kids weren’t allowed to ride with their parents. When we got to the school hosting the event, the place was a madhouse, there were so many 3rd through 5th graders who were each given five dollars for snacks and lunch. The concession stand had way too many sugar options. Kids were truly spinning around in circles then crashing to the ground.
About 20 minutes before it was time for the spelling event, Zoey must have started to get nervous. She told me, “Mom, I just don’t feel like this is the right day to do this.” After she finished she was all smiles. She said she didn’t realize it was going to be so easy. For some reason she thought the person telling them the words would say them so fast that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with them.
I signed her out of the school’s custody so that she could ride back home with me. Even though the buses were leaving, we decided to stick around and hear the results. We figured after all of the practice she had done and the long trip to get there, we may as well.
Out of all of the third graders there for our region (I think her teacher said somewhere between 30 and 40), Zoey tied for 6th place! Johan, the little boy she tied with was on her team. Her teacher told us that they each missed the same number of words and both missed the same tie-breaker. She also told us that they had been doing that all throughout the preparations.
I don’t know what I was thinking, because I didn’t bring the camera with us. Johan’s mom managed to take a few of the ribbon winners though. As soon as I have a copy, I’ll put it up here.
|
