A Picture's Worth A Thousand Words

Junk in the...

So the other day on the way to the racetrack, we were stopped at a gas station. I was looking for something in the back seat amongst the luggage, and I said to L, "We sure do have a lot of junk in the truck."  She immediately replied, "Well, at least we don't have a lot of junk in our trunks!"  I couldn't stop laughing, and then I made her tell her dad when he got back in the truck.  I didn't realize that she knew that expression!
Yesterday she was mentioning it again, and I told her that I hadn't realized she knew what the expression meant.  She said, "Well, I was pretty sure that it means that someone is fat."
I'm just going to go with it.

Noxema

I just had a realization - in the shower, of all places - about one of the obscure tidbits that proves to me that I'm getting older. 
I have a horrible cold, and I have Vicks Vapo-rub on my nose.  I was thinking about what a distinctive scent it is, and about how the special kids' version we have for L smells so much better.  That got me thinking about my grandma N and how she always smelled like Noxema.  In the face soap aisle in Target, that scent immediately makes me think of Grandma.  And my mom always used to smell like Oil of Olay face lotion.  It's funny how those scents are so evocative of those specific people to me.
However, my kiddo will never say, "My mom always smelled like _____".  I was thinking about how I have a bunch of "favorite" body washes and lotions, and I just choose what I feel like for the day - Reliv brand, pumpkin scent from Bath & Body, Amber lotion, etc - it varies from day to day.  And I was thinking about how many more choices we have than WHEN I WAS A KID - argh, I'm making myself sound old!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

All sorts of eventful-ness have been happening around here lately: Yesterday was Buhler Frolic, with all of the accompanying chaos, to compound the typical chaos that already reigns supreme here.  For the first time in many years, we did not ride in a fire truck in the parade - Lauren and her cousin made a float (with lots of help from Stuart) and drove it BY THEMSELVES in the parade. They turned Grandpa and Grandma's golf cart into an enormous hay bale to advertise Grandpa's hay mowing service.  (I'm not sure that Grandpa actually WANTS any more customers, but the kids were so gung-ho about the whole thing that we couldn't bear to rein them in).  They were so responsible about getting it done, spray painting it, making signs, etc.  Lauren and Stuart did all kinds of research to find out how to say "Paint the Town Pink" in Low German.  "Paint the Town Pink" was the theme of the parade, and it had to be featured on your float if you wanted a chance to win the prize for best float.  Lauren decided a couple of days before the parade that she wanted to write it in Low German as a surprise for Grandpa and Grandma.

They were so careful while driving in the parade - I'd been a little concerned that the sheer euphoria of driving without an adult in a PARADE might lead to silliness, but they are both such little type-A kiddos - they did an amazing job.  By the end, Justin was waving with his left hand out the window and driving with his right hand. Lauren said that he told her he would wave out the window, but wouldn't look out because he didn't want to get distracted from his driving. :)

So then after the parade, Lauren and I went back to the Frolic to play on all of the inflatable toys in the afternoon.  Katelyn and Blake went to his rugby game in Wichita in the afternoon, so I got to watch their 4-week old baby for a few hours.  I took her back to the Frolic with us - it's amazing how tiny she seems - 8 pounds seems like nothing.  So I sat on the ground by the fire station with a bunch of other moms and passed around the baby and watched Lauren on the bouncy toys. All of a sudden she same running to me, screaming hysterically that she had been stung.  We've thought for years that she is probably allergic to bee stings, because her grandpa is, and she is terribly sensitive to mosquito bites.  So I asked one of the other moms to watch baby Ella, grabbed L and started running for home, since I hadn't brought her sting kit along with us.  Then I realized that we were beside the fire station and that if she was going to have an allergic reaction, it would probably be safest to have it there, rather than somewhere between there and our house, with no cell phone. So we stopped for a few minutes to see if she began to have a hard time breathing or anything.  She was doing okay, so we ran for home and wiped her finger down, and she was fine.  THANK GOODNESS.  So, now we
know that she probably isn't allergic, which is a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders.

We have 2 of the pups left at our house - a black and a brown. They are going to their new house this week, I think, or maybe next week.  In an unusual twist, all of them have gone in pairs, except for 1.  We are super attached to these two, since we have had them by themselves for a couple of weeks and gotten to spend more time playing with them.  It's going to be hard to see them go.  We call them Brown and Black, since we told Lauren that she can't name them.  :)

We are making the semi-annual "closet switch-over" this weekend, which throws us into all kinds of craziness.  We only have 2 closets in our house and Lauren & I share one of them.  That doesn't give us much room for clothing storage, so spring and fall are always a challenge, to decide which clothing to pack up and which we'll use.  I've been running, and a bunch of my clothes don't fit anymore, which is good news, but it adds an additional section of Rubbermaid tubs as I try to figure out what to keep and what still fits. 
I'm really excited that Stuart thinks he might get his car running pretty soon, so we might get to do a little racing yet this season. This is my favorite time of the year to go to the track - no worries about bad weather like in the spring, and no scorching heat like in the summer.  I'm hoping that we might go to Kansas City and maybe to Oklahoma or Texas yet this fall.  Having that travel time with my family is one of my favorite things in life - no other distractions, lots of conversation time, new experiences together.  And we're pretty familiar with the track in KC, so it's nice to go there and know where everything is. 
Well, I have my menu for the week planned out and my accompanying grocery list made -time to head for town and gather food for the week.  I'm trying to motivate myself with the idea that if I get it done early, maybe we can head to Grandpa & Grandma's for s'mores by a bonfire this evening.  :)

Pups - One Month Old

Our pups are one month old now.  It is amazing how quickly they grow and change - so different from humans.  They romp around now and chomp on each other's tails and noses.  They whine when they can see their mom outside of the pen, but can't reach her.  They explore anywhere we'll let them go -all over the yard, the basement, everywhere - and then suddenly plop down and fall asleep, right under a bush. 
I'm linking to a video of the pups this afternoon, having their meal and playing.

Fight vs. Flight...aka Panic vs. "Reasonable-ness"

This past Friday, I did not have recess duty.  One of the joys that I discovered last year was getting to see L at recess and see her interacting/playing without watching over her shoulder.  At any rate, I didn't have duty on Friday.  There was a storm front that was supposed to move in at some point during the day and it hadn't hit us yet - not anything big, just some wind, maybe some rain.  The kids had been outside about 5 minutes when I could hear a STAMPEDE in the hallway and they all came rushing in the doors and into the classroom with much commotion. A couple of them were crying, L included, because they thought it was a tornado.  Apparently the storm front had a very defined line, and they watched it approach while they were outside, and it was VERY windy when it hit.  It was carrying quite a bit of dirt from the nearby fields and so it made the storm front very visible, plus they all got dirt in their eyes.  So I calmed everyone down, explained that it was just strong wind, no rotating.  The recess teacher came in and explained that the kids were like lemmings - as soon as one of them freaked out about the wind, they ALL freaked out and stampeded into the building as if their lives were on the line, with much screaming of "tornado!" and waving of arms in the air.

So...L and I are taking a walk last night.  As we walk, she decides to tell me about the whole recess/storm incident.  She is a verbal processor, and often has to tell about an event a couple of times in excruciating detail before she's really done getting it out of her system.  So, she's explaining how she was beside the rock climbing wall and she & her friends could see the brown wall of wind approaching.  She said that it was like living during the Dust Storms, watching it get closer and closer.  "And then Mrs. J blew her whistle early and told us to hustle and line up.  And it was like my reasonable-ness got shoved into the back little space in the back of my head (demonstrating head divided into about 1/3s here, and pointing at back third) and the panic just took over the rest of my head.  And when the panic takes over the rest of my head, I can only think about the panic.  And so even though I KNEW that it was probably only a shelf cloud, not a wall cloud (Thanks, Dad, for being a storm watcher and teaching some identification skills!) and that it wasn't rotating, my panic took over!"
Yep, that about sums it up!

Out of the Mouths of Babes

On Friday afternoon, as the students were all pouring out of their classrooms and heading to buses, I stood in the hallway, attempting to wrangle my class into a line.  As the older students walked past, one of them stopped and gave me a hug.  This student, a special-needs kiddo, was in my class last year, and I hadn't really seen him yet during this school year.
He hugged me and then said, in a shining example of a double-edged compliment:  "Mrs. Goertzen!  You've...you've been taking a diet!  You're belly isn't as fat as it was last year!" 
Um...thanks?   :)

Frog Funeral

8/24/10
So our classroom has had two little aquatic frogs as our classroom pets - until today.  Mister Hop died today, sometime during the school day. I realized it during the morning, but didn't say anything, just kind of moved their tank a little behind a flower vase, hoping the kids wouldn't notice. Which was, of course, not to be.  So the kids realized it in the middle of the afternoon, and we all crowded around to see the dead frog.  Anyhow, the ultimate outcome was that we had a frog funeral after school today. L and her two friends, M & B, planned the funeral during my staff meeting after school, and they were all ready to go when my meeting got out.  They were longing to dissect it, but since it was only about 1 inch long, I ruled out dissecting.  We rounded up a few plastic spoons to serve as dead frog transport as well as grave digging tools and headed outside.  The girls decided on the "reading garden" beside our playground as his ultimate resting spot, and used the spoons to dig a hole.  Then L read the eulogy she had written for him, which was truly one of the proudest moments I can remember in recent history.  I asked her if I could borrow her writing journal so that I could copy it here:
"We stand here today to honor Mister Hop.  He was a good frog.  But sadly he has passed on without us.  So we only got to know him for a short while before we bury this young frog.  His pages have been turned and his story read so that we could fully understand him."
For a child who has never been to a funeral, I thought that was a pretty good eulogy!

Laying Mister Hop to rest

The mode of funeral transport

L reading the eulogy

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school, and in a cosmic collision of fates, it is the first day of 4th grade for BOTH L and I - in the same class!  I had been compulsively thinking through all of the "what if" scenarios - "What if other kids tease her about it?  What if she hangs onto me at recess instead of playing? What if I regret this in the first week and can't do anything to change it?" But I think that it is all going to be okay - everything today was so smooth and comfortable.  I'm so excited to be part of L's school life for a year - to have the chance to impact this area of her life for this one school year!

Puppies

Oh, where to start?! 
We are the proud owners of ELEVEN puppies, born about 1 1/2 weeks ago.

Muddy had eleven puppies during the night - 5 of them are weimaraner colored and 6 of them look like their black lab father. They are absolutely adorable!

L spends most of her free time cuddling puppies, now that Muddy is slightly more comfortable with allowing us to handle them.  They are growing astonishingly quickly - they have doubled in size in 10 days!  We had prepared Lauren from the very beginning for the fact that some of them probably wouldn't live - eleven is quite a few puppies for one young new mama to provide for.  However, they are growing by leaps and bounds, so we are feeling cautiously optimistic about them all living.

Tooth or Toast

Lauren just had Daddy pull her loose tooth - her 2nd molar to go.  It took a lot of working-up-to, and there were quite a few tears (before any actual pulling happened, mind you), but it is out.  She told us that she understands the expression now "It's like pulling teeth" - about how you dread something so much but then once it is done, it isn't such a big deal, and it is a big weight off your shoulders.  :)
Anyhow, she is writing a note to the Tooth Fairy.  She is kind of hoping that the Tooth Fairy will make Muddy have her puppies tonight as Lauren's reward for the tooth.  So, anyhow, she is drawing little pictures of teeth along the top of her note like a little border, and she just said, "Mom, will you come look at this?  Because I was trying to draw teeth at the top here, but I think it kind of looks like dancing toast instead!"  :)
I love that kid!
She's writing her note on a hot pink notecard, explaining how our dog is pregnant - hint, hint!  I wonder what kind of response she'll get from the Tooth Fairy.  She writes the sweetest notes to the Tooth Fairy - makes sure to ask her questions about how she is doing, tells her that she hopes she is having a good summer, and so on.  She told me once that she thinks most kids don't ever think to do that, and she wants to be a good friend to her, instead of just some regular kid who isn't thoughtful. 
Again, I love that kid.

It has begun

It's 9:10 p.m.
Do you know where my 9-year-old is?
And has been for the last 45 mninutes?
Outside, talking on the phone to her "bestie", Rachel.  Because there is, apparently, not enough privacy in the house, so the 98 degree heat is preferable for her conversation.
I didn't realize that 9-year-olds did this.  I remember being in this situation, but I think I was 16.
During the time that she was in the house and I was in earshot, they were talking about the noises that rabbits make and whether Darby, Rachel's dog, likes to lick people's feet.  :)

Swimming lessons

Lauren is taking swimming lessons this week - today is the last day, actually.  She was INCREDIBLY nervous before they began - the kind of nervous that doesn't allow you to sleep, weighs on your shoulders, etc.  Dreading it.  However, getting that first day over with was good for her, and she was much less nervous about the next couple of lessons.  Every morning she would say, "I am nervous and excited about swimming today."  So I was feeling pretty good about the decision to have her take lessons.  She is taking private lessons from someone locally, at their home pool.  I don't have ambitions for her to be a phenomenal swimmer, I just want her to be able to not drown if she gets into water that is over her head.  So, as I said, I was feeling pretty good about things. We had the library swimming party on Tuesday night (after 3 days of lessons) and she was going underwater to pick up toys and floating all over the pool using a noodle when it was over her head and having a good time with a friends - a significant change from typical pool experiences until now. 
Then, yesterday, day 4 of lessons...
I've been sitting in my car during lessons for at least part of the time.  I think that she is braver if I am not there for her to run to.  But I don't want to drive all the way home, sit for a few minutes, and drive back, so I've been reading in the car.  Occasionally, she has come to get me to have me watch her do something new.  So yesterday she came to the car and I figured she had mastered something and wanted to show me.  Nope.  Her teacher was asking her to try sit-diving off the edge, and Lauren was freaking out about it.  She wanted me to come into the pool area and stand near her, which was fine.  But she sobbed the entire time, and had a really hard time calming down.  It is so hard for me to watch her be so distressed - my instinct is to not make her do it.  I don't know that sit-diving is critical to the swimming process - I can't do it - but I was trying not to undermine her teacher, so I sat near L on the side of the pool and talked her through doing it.  Twice.  She was such a tense little trooper - I could literally SEE in the set of her shoulders that she had realized that no one was going to save her and she was going to have to find a way to make it through this nightmare before we could go home.  I felt awful.
So we finished up, went home, cleaned the house, had a friend over to play, then she went to the friend's house to play, went to Book Cooks class, and came home.  She asked if we could cuddle together in the chair, and told me that she was dreading tomorrow, because she doesn't want to sit-dive any more.  As it turns out, it was freaking her out that she had to do it in the deep end, where she can't touch, and can't swim on her own.  She thought that if she failed at it the first time, she would drown.  Which I think is a fairly valid concern when you are little. 
So, I am going to ask her teacher to skip the sit-diving today, or at least work on it in the shallow end.  I have the gut instinct that I am bailing her out of something that might be character building...but I just can't bear to put her through it when she won't be learning anything important from it. 
You know that quote about how once you have kids, a part of your heart lives outside of your body?  Case in point.

Lauren and Grandpa

Is this the sweetest photo ever, or what?  Lauren and Grandpa, on the dock examining how much all the rain has filled the pond, before setting off fireworks with the cousins.

Upcoming "Additions"

So it appears that we'll be having puppies at our house in the very near future.  A few days ago, we realized that our weimaraner was looking different.  Weimaraners usually have fairly extreme tucks, but Muddy's belly was rounding out and she's been extremely lethargic.  So we started doing a little counting-backwards math and realized that, yes, the last time she was in heat would be about 8 weeks ago.  And yes, that was the day that she was left tied up outside in the shade, not in her pen, and there was a boy dog in our yard when we got home.  Oops.
So we spent yesterday in a frenzy of preparation, because her physical changes have been happening so rapidly that we keep moving up our totally-guessing-even-though-we-aren't-professionals due date.  Stuart made an AMAZING whelping box. It is even air conditioned, since the heat index has been around 110 degrees every day for the past week, and looks to be that way for at least the next 10 days. He even painted the box to match our garage, since the whelping box sits up against the garage.  Lauren said this morning that she thinks we should contact the Guinness book of world records, since she is sure there has never been another whelping box as nice as this one.  :)

It is 6 feet tall at the back and 4 feet across - yesterday Stuart, Lauren and the dog were all hanging out in there together, so it is plenty big!
We filled the bottom with rags and fabric and let Muddy in.  I think she's come out about twice since then!  That dog knows when she's got it good!

Lauren had swimming lessons this morning.  It was day 3 of her lessons, which she had been markedly unexcited about initially.  However, she has a great teacher and she's enjoying them more and more each time.  Not enough to take 2 extra days of lessons (which the teacher offered to us this morning), but I'm thrilled that she is enthusiastic now.  We have a swimming party tomorrow night, and after lessons today she was disappointed that the party is not today, because she can't wait to show off her new knowledge to her friends!  I've been sitting in the car during her lessons so that she doesn't watch me for my reactions to things. I think that she is braver when I am not there as a possible "safety net".  But she came to get me from the car today, excited, for me to come watch her pick up toys from the bottom of the pool.  And then her teacher had her float on her back all the way across the deep end!  She was practicing keeping her face in the water while she did arm strokes, and also jumping into the pool and remembering to blow out through her nose, so that she doesn't get water up her nose.  I can't believe how much she has learned in 3 45-minute lessons!  It's unbelievable to me that she has come so far in such a short time - I'm so proud of her!

Running

Tonight, I started the Couch to 5K running program.  Again. 
I started jogging a few weeks ago, in an effort to lose a few pounds and not sound like an elephant when I have to hustle anywhere for very long.  Lauren has been very enthusiastic about tagging along with me - in fact, more enthusiastic than I would prefer, to be quite honest.  For the first several nights, she came with me and we walked/jogged around town, then we made the connection that we could walk to the high school, run on the semi-squishy track, and then walk home - if my knees could talk, they would be saying "ahhhh" right about now.  So we did that for several nights.  But Lauren doesn't run as fast as I do, and she doesn't want to run as far as I do, but she doesn't want me to leave her behind.  So she was cramping my style.  :)
She was perfectly comfortable with the idea of walking to the track with me, playing in the infield while I ran, and then walking home with me.  And, in theory, I'm fine with that.  However, in practice, there are other people there.  People I don't know.  People who PROBABLY are not wierdo child-snatching stalkers, but I'd hate to be wrong about that.  So I keep making her walk & run along with me - I'll run ahead, then turn around and run back to her, then walk with her, then repeat the process. 
Finally, one day, after my patience was wearing thin, and it resulted in Lauren crying because she didn't want to make me feel impatient, she and I struck a deal - she'd come with me every other night.  And I also realized that my mom has a treadmill, so I could go run over there and Lauren could play while I run.  Jackpot!  I've been loving running on the treadmill because it doesn't let me slack off.  It forces me to keep running at the pace I set, AND it counts my calorie burning.  That's very motivating for me.  I need a chip in my wrist that shows me that at all times. :)  I bet I'd mow the lawn more often.
So I was feeling good about the fitness plan, and my running stamina, and fitting into some shorts that I couldn't fit into earlier this summer (or all of last year).  And then we went away on vacation.  And then it was raining all the time.  And we had 4th of July celebrations in the evenings.  Ugh.  I totally got sidetracked from the running program.  And I was doing some crazy vacation eating, too - you know, the whole "calories don't count if you aren't at home" mentality.
So, today, I started fresh.  Well, okay, to be really honest, I stared with a piece of my mother-in-law's chocolate cake for breakfast.  Because it is pretty much criminal to let that go to waste.  But after that, I started fresh.  I had Rainier cherries for a snack - one of my favorite foods ever - and Subway for lunch, and a chicken sandwich for dinner, with no other snacking.  Fairly reasonable. 
With the knowledge that I'll be eating cake at my sister's baby shower tomorrow.  But then I'll run in the evening.  Balance, right?

An Anniversary, of sorts

I'm always posting a day late...
Yesterday, July 5th, was an anniversary of sorts for us.  12 years ago yesterday, Stuart asked me to marry him, sitting on the futon in the living room of my apartment in Hutchinson.  I had long since made up my mind that this was the man God intended to be my partner, so it was a blessing to be able to joyfully say yes, with no reservations!  What a blessing to have been married to my amazing husband for these past 10 1/2 years and to be raising my daughter together with this man who is committed to being a role model of moral and Christian character traits. 
Going away on vacation this last week was such a gift for us - a reminder of how much we enjoy spending time together.  It's so hard when we are both working, and when Stuart is so pressured by keeping his business afloat, to squeeze out that time to spend together, just enjoying each others' company.  Spending that uninterrupted time as a family reminds me of how much I cherish my husband and daughter and how much I appreciate the minutes that we spend together.

Friday, July 2, 2010

I'm actually writing about this on Saturday - the day was so busy yesterday that I literally fell into bed at night and fell right asleep, and didn't even think about writing about the day.
We started the day in Estes Park,  mailing the postcards that we'd been writing all week.  Then we walked around some more on the main streets, checking out the little stores, looking at the river that runs through town, and shopping a little bit.  Lauren and I spent some time in a Nepalese shop, looking at beautiful clothing, but Lauren couldn't find the skirt she wanted in her size.  We bought some hand-carved animal beads there for Lauren and I bought a Buddha necklace.  Then we had pizza at a little pizza shop where all of the bricks inside had been written on - people's autographs carved/drawn on them.  We got some treats at a candy store, too - chocolate covered strawberries, handmade caramels, and chocolate-cherry fudge!  Lauren also bought a turquoise pendant at the Science & Nature store (which I could have spent HOURS in, exploring all of their stones/gems/geodes). 
After that, we went to Fun City on the edge of the main area.  They had a go-kart track, and that's the first thing we did - it was one of my favorite things that we did on vacation.  They had 2-people karts, and single carts, so Stuart and Lauren drove together.  They had clearly outlawed bumping other karts, however, so we were well-behaved.  Lauren and Stuart went down the enormous slide, too, but I opted out of that.
After Fun City, we decided to head for Denver.  The 1 1/2 hour drive seemed like nothing, compared to all the driving we've been doing lately!  We headed for the Denver Zoo, since it's ranked really highly in the list of U.S. zoos.  We got there about 4, and they closed at 6.  I thought we wouldn't have enough time to take it all in, but it wasn't such a great experience for us.  It was HOT, so that took some of the fun out of it.  And the employees were preparing for some sort of special event being held at the zoo that night, so no zookeepers were around, and, worst of all, no employees were around to run the carousel (crushing disappointment for Lauren).  So, we did some looking around and then headed on out.
Our next stop, and the best part of the day, was Casa Bonitas!  I didn't really know what to expect, but it was really fun.  We got seated in the room where the magic show was held, and we got there about 5 minutes before the show started - perfect!  The show was great - Lauren said, "That guy could be a professional comedian!"  And they had amazing sopapillas for dessert - to cover with honey and eat hot - yum...  Then we went to watch the cliff divers.  We got to see him dive a couple of times, and he swam up to the side of the pool and gave all of the kids high-fives.  We walked around the restaurant, went through Black Bart's Hideout, and then got to see a 2nd cliff diver show, with a bad pirate and a good guy and a princess in a red dress.  They had a sign on our table that said they can hold 900 people at a time in Casa Bonitas, and they were PACKED - it's hard to wrap my brain around that!
We headed for our hotel after dinner - it was around 9:15 by the time we got there.  Lauren and I went swimming for a little bit in their outside pool, then cleaned up and went to bed (in the king bed in our suite - it was a really nice hotel room!)

And then today is Saturday, July 3rd, and we are actually home as I write this.  We left Denver this morning at 9:15, and we got home about 6:15 this evening. 
We had an amazing vacation, and I'm so glad that we got the chance to build these memories with Lauren.  I'm thinking that our next vacation needs to involve less driving, or at least driving in a more comfortable seat - maybe an RV.  But I just can't beat the idea of going to explore some of the nation's most historical sites with my family!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Today was an amazing day - definitely worth all the craziness that we went through yesterday!  We woke up this morning and opened our blinds and got our first view of Estes Park and the Rocky Mountains around us.  We got to have a lazy start and then head to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.  It was so nice to be able to leave our luggage in our room for the day, and not have to check out again right away this morning.  We headed out to our car then, and had an interesting experience - there were some college boys outside smoking marijuana in the parking lot.  Lauren kept saying, "It smells funny out here.  Kind of like burning trash."  Yep, sure enough.
Anyhow, we headed into downtown Estes Park and spent the next few hours wandering around downtown, checking out all of the little stores.  One of the things that we noticed is the huge amount of dogs in this town - they are welcome in many of the stores and so many people are walking their large dogs on leashes as they shop.  At the place where we parked, there was a horse tethered nearby in a small nature preserve in the middle of town, with a small stream running through it. Lauren, of course, was smitten with that whole experience. We walked all the way down the main thoroughfare, and spent some time in the glass-blower's shop at the far end - we could watch him work and make specific pieces for customers who came in with a request. After wandering around for quite a while, we had ice cream from one of the little shops, and then headed into the Rocky Mountain National Park.
We had decided that we wanted to go to the Continental Divide (although, to be honest, at that point, we hadn't looked at a map yet and didn't realize how far into the park it is).  That drive was the high point of my day.  I detest driving up mountains when there is a sheer cliff on one side, so for me to have enjoyed it is quite a feat.  It was unbelievably beautiful.  Lauren wasn't quite so enthusiastic about it at first, since she loves sheer sides about as much as I do.  However, there are many pull-off stops, and we got to do quite a bit of walking around.  We got to feed chipmunks about 1/2 way up the mountains (yes, I know, you're not supposed to do that, but they were sniffing our hands for food and Lauren was squealing with delight.  So I let her feed them a Fig Newton). 
It was amazing to see how the land changed when we reached the tree line - the sign called it the Alpine Tundra - only little scrub bushes instead of the huge towering pine trees.  And then we got up into the snow, and we got to go play in a big snow field, which was fun.  It had clouded over by then, and although I had been hot in Estes Park in the morning, we were all wearing sweatshirts by this time.
As we continued, we saw herds of elk by the sides of the road.  There was road construction for about the last 1/4 of the way, off and on.  We passed the visitor's center on the way to the Continental Divide and decided to stop there on the way back instead, since it looked like it was going to rain.  And sure enough, while we were at the Divide, it started sprinkling.  By the time we got back to the Visitor's Center, it was raining - but it wasn't exactly rain, more like a cross between rain and snow - slushy.  It was fun to have snow accumulated at the bottom of our windshield in JULY!  We waited in the car for a while before heading in to get a few postcards and get a Junior Park Ranger book for Lauren.  And I got a sweatshirt that shows that I made it to the top of the highest point!
On the way back down, the weather cleared up and was just sprinkling in patches.  We stopped several times to do some climbing and hiking.  We stopped by a snowmelt "waterfall" on the side of the mountain to put our hands in the cold water, climbed some big rocks (okay, I personally did not climb, I took pictures!) where Lauren got bitten by a big red ant that didn't want to let go, and explored near the stream that meanders down the mountain and has cutthroat trout.  We could see them swimming around - Lauren wanted to try catching them by hand, but it started raining again.  When we stopped to climb the big rocks, we saw 2 badgers in the scrub bush nearby, which was pretty exciting.
We headed back into Estes Park after that and headed to Subway for dinner (Lauren's first choice of all of the options!)  We were hoping to head out and do a little more window shopping after dinner, and get some chocolate for later - there are little mom-and-pop homemade candy shops all over the place - and then head to a go-kart place.  But it started pouring, and it looks like it's going to rain for the evening.  So we're back in our hotel room.  Lauren and Stuart are watching "Wipeout" - their favorite show, which they love to watch together.  And I think Lauren and I are going to head to the hotel pool in a bit.
Tomorrow we are going to do a little more window shopping, I think, downtown here and then head to Denver.  We want to take Lauren to eat at Casa Bonitas, and maybe go to the zoo.  I really want to go to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, since they just opened the King Tut exhibit, but we'll see how many hours are in our day!

Wednesday, June 30th

Well, as it turns out, today wasn't quite the day that we had planned.  Before we went to sleep Tuesday night, we had decided that we were ready to move on to Colorado today. We did some looking and decided to head to Estes Park, and made a reservation for tonight.  So we got up in the morning & had some breakfast at the hotel.  Lauren's been starting a cough/cold, and she had a big coughing fit in the middle of breakfast.  It was a little scary to me because she was shaking afterward, like having tremors, and went right back to the room and got back into bed. I was worried that she was getting sick, but I think that she had just scared herself, because in a couple minutes, she was fine.  So we headed out and went to Bear Country.  It's a drive-through park with wolves, elk, bighorn sheep, and about 100 bears.  They can walk up to your cars - there's a rule that you have to keep your windows closed, and we noticed that they were washing some people's windows/grills before they drove in.  We realized the reason for that when we got into the section with the bears.  Several times bears walked close enough that we could have touched them, just meandering around in their section.  It was amazing to be that close to a big bear.  Then after we drove through the park, there's a portion called "Babyland" that you walk through.  We got to see all kinds of animals in a more zoo-like setting, but the best (by far) was the baby bear cubs - about 20 of them, all playing together.  So cute!
After Bear Country, Lauren and I took some Dramamine and we headed out to Jewel Cave.  We knew we'd be driving back though the windy roads in the Mount Rushmore area.  We stopped in Custer and ate lunch, and I have solidified my opinion that Custer is the place to stay if we ever take this vacation again.  So after lunch we headed for the cave, which is the 2nd longest cave in the world, and has formations that look like jewels.  Lauren was pretty excited about this cave, due to the "jewels", of course!  The cave does have 723 steps, though, so she wasn't too excited about that - Wind Cave had about 300, and she felt like that was a lot. However, when we got there, they were having elevator problems, which is their method for leaving the cave, apparently.  It was 1:20, and their next cave hike started at 4.  We decided that if we were going to head to Estes Park, we couldn't wait that long.  So we walked around their Park Ranger station, checked out the gift shop and headed out. 
And that's where things went downhill!  We crossed over into Wyoming and hadn't gone too far - I think about 30 miles, when all of the traffic ahead of us had stopped.  There was a sign  on the side of the road that said "Wreck ahead".  We sat (it was about 95 degrees outside) in line for about 1/2 hour, then used the atlas and the GPS to look for a backtracking route.  If we went back around 15 miles, there was a road that would angle back and get us back onto the main road that we were on.  So we turned around and headed that way.  However, that angled road was a rutted gravel road that we didn't want to take in our rental car - it didn't look passable in a car.  So we headed back and got in line again.  Many people were out of their cars and walking around, walking their dogs, etc.  After a while, maybe an hour, there was a sudden exodus of many of the cars.  We couldn't decide what to do - whether to cancel our reservations in Estes Park, whether to drive back to Hot Springs and try a different road, etc.  We spent a total of about 2 hours waiting, and then a police officer came along and recommended that we go back and take that gravel road - he said it was passable in a car.  So that's what we did.  It was such a crazy experience and Lauren was a total sweetheart the entire time - no complaining, no whining, being such a little gem.
Anyhow, we headed to Cheyenne, and stopped there around 10 p.m. and had some dinner.  Lauren didn't feel well, so she didn't eat anything, and fell right asleep when we got in the car.  We got to Estes Park around 11:30, checked in to our hotel, and Lauren climbed right into bed in her clothes and fell right asleep. 
And that's where we are now - it's Thursday morning, and Lauren is reading the newspaper in bed next to me.  We're trying to find information about that accident in the paper, so we can find out what kind of wreck would close the road for a few hours.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Today was a fabulous day - definitely the highlight of the trip so far, and the thing that I'd been looking forward to the most - visiting Mount Rushmore!

Lauren and I woke up early - around 6 a.m.  I had been expecting to sleep late, since I woke up at 5:20 yesterday morning, but my internal clock must be off!  Lauren and I laid in bed and read books until Stuart woke up.
We got ready and checked out of our motel - we had a really good experience and would recommend that motel to anyone!  Anyhow, it didn't have a breakfast, so we snacked in the car on the way to Keystone/Mt. Rushmore.  The path to Mount Rushmore took us back through the area we'd gone through yesterday.  We were so excited to see buffalo as we went past Wind Cave area - first we saw a herd of them, quite a ways from the road.  We stopped and took some pictures, then went a little further and saw 2 right beside the road -about 8 feet away from us!  Of course, Lauren and I were squealing and excited about being so close - I don't know why it seems so different than seeing a buffalo in a pen.

So the next big exciting thing is that we saw the Crazy Horse Monument - I'm going to attach pictures of that, too.  You can see the white chalk outline of where the horse's head is going to be.

On the path closer to Rushmore, we saw 2 mountain goats, one older one and one little kid.  The path near Rushmore is incredibly windy and felt like the road up Pike's Peak.  The park rangers were thinning trees (apparently, that's our guess, anyhow).  There are small piles of brush everywhere, shaped like cones.

We couldn't see the carved part of Rushmore until we were right at it.  We unloaded and walked to the monument.  It's hard to explain the experience of walking up to Mount Rushmore - all of the state flags lining the path and the stone arches.  After we took some photos and walked to the main pavilion, we went back to the cafe and got Lauren some food, since she was feeling a little sick.  Then we went back and walked the path up under the carvings -  that was an amazing experience.  Lauren kept saying that she could see up the Presidents' noses - the path takes you closer to the monuments and closer to the pieces of rock that were sheared off during the carving process.

We talked to a Native American park ranger about using buffalo parts/tipis at a large ranger exhibit area beside the hiking path.  We got to touch a fresh (stinky!) buffalo hide that was stretched out to cure in a traditional method.  Lauren got to touch buffalo bladders to be used as a water canteen, and to use buffalo vertebrae in a buffalo-hide bowl to grind prairie turnips.

Before we left, we visited the crazy-busy gift shop.  We got Lauren a Mt. Rushmore shirt, and she chose a few souvenirs to buy on her own - a stuffed animal buffalo and a small sterling silver horse necklace, and some postcards to send to friends & family.

On the way back down the mountain from Mt. Rushmore, we stopped and climbed down to Horsethief Lake - we fed fish small pieces of corn that we found on the dock and watched a girl jump off one of the high rocks. 

Then we drove on to Rapid City.  We went through the city of Custer, and if we ever take this vacation again, that's the city where I want to stay!  On the outskirts of Rapid City is Reptile Gardens, so we stopped there before we went to our hotel.  That was a perfect match for Lauren - we got to see an alligator/crocodile show and also a snake show.  The presenter brought out a cobra in that one and it kept striking at him, which made me nervous, but I guess that's kind of the point of it!  In the crocodile show, he sat on the croc's back and held it's mouth open and then closed.  The crocodile kept trying to walk away with the man on his back.  When it was feeding time, he brought out a bucket with chicken pieces in it.  The crocs responded a little more enthusiastically than usual, apparently, and he kind of got backed into a corner for a little bit.  Glad that's not my job!  We got to see about 500 snakes and Lauren got to pet a tortoise that is 129 years old!

After Reptile Garden, we headed to our hotel in Rapid City.  It's right next to a Chili's, so we walked next door for a nice sit-down dinner, which was a refreshing change from fast food.  :)
We are taking it easy tonight and I think that we are going to head for Estes Park tomorrow.  We had planned on staying in this area another day, but we hadn't anticipated how carsick the roads would make Lauren and me.  So I think we're going to go to Jewel Cave on the way to Colorado tomorrow, and wind up in Estes Park by the evening.  I've never been in that area before, so I'm excited to go explore there, too!

Monday, June 28

Okay, so I forgot something from yesterday.  On the drive to Alliance, somewhere between Grand Island (maybe) and Alliance, there was a musical road.  I think.  The way that it made the tires hum sounded like it was creating music.  On YouTube, or somewhere, I once saw a road that played a certain song when a car with a certain size wheel base drove on it.  I don't know for sure if that's what was going on, or if it was just a strange coincidence, but it was quite an experience. Near the end of that section - a few miles - there was a sign that the road was made from recycled tires, so maybe that was all.  However, it was so interesting, and it kept us all guessing about what song it might be.

So this morning when we got up, we got ready, had breakfast at our hotel and then headed for Carhenge.  Carhenge is a replica of Stonehenge, created from American cars painted primer gray and set in a field outside of Alliance.  There are also several other car/car part sculptures. It is huge and unusual and unlike anything else I have ever seen.  We walked through the fields to explore all of the sculptures until the mosquitos drove us away!  I'll post pictures after I download them from my camera - it's one of those things you have to see to understand!

Then we drove to Hot Springs, SD - a drive of about 2 hours.  We took a route that wasn't the shortest route (thanks, GPS!) and wound up driving around a beautiful lake, with houseboats and a land bridge and a beautiful spillway.  The road was really windy, so we gave Lauren some Dramamine again, even though the drive wasn't too long, and we also let her ride in the front seat (in her car seat) so help her.  She fell asleep and slept through crossing into SD, which she was cranky about later - she'd been expecting a big change, I think.  :)
As soon as we got to Hot Springs, we checked into our hotel and then had lunch at Pizza Hut.  We had actually been heading to the Subway restaurant, but when we got there, it was both a Subway and a Casino building.  That was a new one for us.  So we decided that we'd just go to Pizza Hut!

After lunch, we went to Wind Cave National Park.  It was a beautiful park, with a beautiful drive to get there.  We saw herds of pronghorn antelope and a few buffalo on the way there.  It is amazing how pristine and untouched the land is here - especially in the national parks, with no fences, no power lines, etc.  The only sign of people is that there are cattle guards in the roads in a few places to keep the buffalo in.  All of the land is green and rolling, and there are mountain ranges on all of the horizons.  This would be an amazing place to live, but in the winter I think it would be so isolated.  Everything is so far apart from everything else.  Most houses have horses in their yards. I've seen more horses in the past 24 hours than I've ever seen in my whole life. 
There are very few fields of crops here - almost everywhere is cattle farming instead.  There are boulders sticking out of the ground all over.

We toured the cave, after buying Lauren a sweatshirt in the gift shop so that she wouldn't freeze - 58 degrees!  Our tour guide was super goofy - it was not the experience I'd expected.  I have toured the Cave of the Winds in Colorado Springs a couple of times, and I was expecting something like that.  There was only one type of formation, and so it wasn't what I was thinking it would be - no stalagmites, no stalactites.  The tour guide shut off all of the lights at one point, which was fun, though, and showed us what it would be like to be one of the first cave explorers with only a candle. 

When we were done, we went back to the hotel. Lauren and I went swimming in the hotel pool - outdoor and heated.  And we got in a little sunbathing time, too!

After we'd showered and clean up, we walked to the DQ across the street for dinner - it was so nice being so close to a few restaurants.  We stayed at the Budget Host Hills Inn and loved it.  We had one of the few 2nd story rooms, and we had a front door and a back door.  Lauren loved it because it felt like a little house.

We were going to go miniature golfing after we ate, since the motel had a mini-golf course attached to it.  However, it had closed already, so we walked by the river.  The river was the mineral water river.  We climbed down beside it and put our hands in - it was warmer than the hotel pool had been!  That was my favorite part of the day.

Trip to Mt. Rushmore, Day 1 6/27/10

So today was Day 1 of the Great Goertzen Trip to Rushmore.  And it was a doozy.  Actually, everything went swimmingly for the first 9 hours, until carsickness set in.  At the point where we were pulled off onto the side of the middle-of-nowhere road, with Lauren pacing beside the car, trying to decide if she was really going to throw up or not, I realized that I might have been feeling a little too optimistic about the whole driving experience.  Fortunately, after some walking around, some Dramamine & 7-Up, and a move of the carseat into the front seat, she fell asleep.  Phew!  I detest puking, particularly puking in the car.  Particularly puking in the RENTAL car. 
So we have made it to Alliance, Nebraska.  In about 11 hours. Tomorrow we are going to take in the wonder that is Carhenge - Stonehenge made out of American cars.  Nothing sums up the roadtrip experience like roadside attractions of this magnitude.
Today we got to see pronghorns in the fields, an astonishing number of open-top train cars piled high with coal, some wild swans, and more horses than I have ever seen before in my whole entire life, EVER.  Who knew that part of Nebraska is like the untouched wild?  It was literally hundreds of miles of untouched rolling green land, scattered with fences and cattle.  Unbelievable numbers of cattle.  I was taken aback by how near I really was to this mostly untouched land.  It made me feel a little like a pioneer must have - just this vast expanse of land, without houses or many telephone poles or much of anything at all.  And while we were not in mountains, per se, the land was different than Kansas land - rolling and textured, full of shapes that weren't exactly mountains, but that weren't exactly just little hills.  Lauren kept saying that it reminded her of fabric that had been laid with folds in it - she said that she felt like an ant at a picnic, standing in the grass beside an enormous blanket.
I am appreciating the fact that tomorrow will only entail about 2 hours in the car.  We are going to head for Hot Springs, SD tomorrow and take in the Mammoth Site, Evan's Plunge (a large hot springs) and a cave - either Wind Cave or Jewel Cave, I can't remember which one is closest to Hot Springs. We are going to drive around and do a little exploring of the Badlands/Black Hills area.  And we are going to swim in the hotel pool, as per Lauren's big dream for how to spend her vacation time.  :)

Geocaching with the fam

Yesterday, L and I took my mom and my brother geocaching with us.  L and I love to go geocaching; the big draw for L is finding caches with "treasure" to trade. We have found all of the caches in the area that are big enough to have fun treasures to trade, so we decided to branch out into the next county, and it seemed like a fun day to invite some company along.  We picked up Nana and Uncle Scott at 9 a.m., printed out the cache info, and headed out for our adjoining county.  Typically, I write the coordinates for our cache goal on a notecard along with any clues that I've read in the notes on that cache's website, but the 2 caches that we were going after were both a little atypical.  They were both part of the Santa Fe trail - historical markers and landmarks - so I wanted the background information to take along.  You know, my teacher side doesn't turn off in the summer, so this was like a little history lesson just sitting there, waiting for me to pluck it!
Anyhow, once we were near the first location, we pulled over on a side road and had a little lesson on using a handheld GPS - how the numbers get smaller/larger depending on your movement, how to decide where to travel based on the numbers, etc.  My mom was surprisingly good at this - I hadn't been sure how comfortable she would be with this new technology tool, but she was a great navigator!

We drove to the first location - a one-room schoolhouse, made from stone that was originally part of a trading post created by some of the first settlers to create the Santa Fe trail.  We found the cache, traded a box of Jolly Ranchers and some magnet bookmarks for a Sonic coupon and FAKE NAILS.  This was, apparently, similar to the Holy Grail if you are a 9-year-old whose mother doesn't really condone fake nails.  Ahh, mom can't really say "no" since we aren't paying for them - they are a prize!  (What she doesn't know is that they take special glue or something, which we don't have!)  

The pictures above show our little geocaching group - Uncle Scott, L and Nana in the top picture, L with me in the middle picture in front of the stone schoolhouse, and some random cacti that we found growing in the prairie grasses.

Our 2nd cache was a multi-stage cache - three caches that "connect" to each other. You go to the first cache, and use some numbers found there to lead you to the next one, etc.  We found the first 2, which were signs, and we knew that the last one was the Marker Cottonwood.  It is a 200 year old cottonwood tree that was spared on the prairie, although trees were scarce and important, because it was the northern marker of the Santa Fe trail.  However, we couldn't find the darn thing!  You'd think something like that would be visible - and we even had been GIVEN the correct coordinates - but by golly, it just wasn't our day, apparently.  That was a pretty big disappointment...so we drove through Hutchinson on the way home and stopped for milkshakes.  You know, in the "sugar makes everything better" school of thought.

L's unexpected plant

Last year, like always, I took L with me to the plant nursery and let her choose some of the plants for around the yard.  She chooses by texture and general prettiness, which is just fine.  She found this unlabeled plant that reminded me of lamb's ear -that same fuzzy, pale green type of plant, about 3 inches tall, maybe 5 inches around.  So we got two of them to plant beside the driveway.  By the fall, they were still fuzzy, soft plants, maybe 10 inches across and about 5 inches tall. 
This year, they unexpectedly had an explosive growth spurt - the larger one has a  4 foot tall spike, which is still fuzzy and is also covered with small yellow blooms.  We did a little internet research and I think they are mullein plants.  The good news is that they are attractive to butterflies and goldfinches.  The bad news is that they get larger each year, up to 8 feet tall.  It has been growing about an inch a day!

May 30, 2010

Somehow it is already summer vacation.  I guess that, technically, the kids have had one week of vacation already.  However, in the stinks-to-be-a-teacher's-kid category, I had meetings all of last week, so L had to spend the week at school with me.  No escaping that place...
It hasn't really hit me that it is vacation time yet.  I am super-compulsively-Type A and typically have a list by now of things I want to accomplish each week of the break and what "extra-curricular" type things I want to do with L each week, etc, etc.  That just hasn't happened yet. I've re-read the entire Twilight series and I've weeded my garden and caught up on laundry and done a little baking - all of this in the evenings, mind you.  And that's IT.  I feel a compelling need to deep-clean my house.  And I think I'm going to dangle a little carrot in front of myself for motivation - that when I get the house really, really clean, then I get to paint the laundry room.  Which is really not sounding like motivation as I type this, but I truly want to change my laundry room and just don't have time during the school year.  I want to paint it teal and brown.  I do NOT, however, want to strip the wallpaper, so we'll just see how that goes.
Anyhow, I'm feeling a little more like myself already after this week.  By the end of the school year, I was feeling the stress of state assessments (3, count 'em, 3), end-of-year-big-projects, my partner teacher having a baby (so I was planning for her sub as well as myself) and helping the teachers near me move into new classrooms (I'm getting a new teaching partner), as well as becoming the president of our library board, running the social committee at work, AND planning some technology presentations for our district staff and two state-wide conferences - it was like I couldn't even really remember who I really was.  My poor family.  I'm lucky my husband stuck around through that.
Fortunately, baking and working in the garden are like really cheap therapy for me, so I'm feeling much better.  I am covered in chigger bites, however, so I'm going to have to find something fabulous to ward those suckers off.  Those are one of the mysteries of life for me.  I buy into the theory that everything has a purpose within God's creation, even if I can't figure out what that purpose might be, and let me tell you that chiggers have me stumped.  I'm sure God uses them for something - right now they are making me crazy, though.  However, not crazy enough to stop weeding the dahlias.

I love this kid

I don't know if you ever have days like this, but this was a day that just affirmed how much I love my kid's personality. Some days really seem to grab me with what a great kid she is, how curious and thoughtful and just thoroughly delightful to be around. We went on a walk tonight after dinner, delivering some fruit salad to my mom and meandering around town because the weather was nice. I adore just hanging out like that, discussing inconsequential tidbits. I realize that some day in the not-too-distant future, hanging out with Mom is not going to be on her list of life's pleasures. I hope that I can stave that off for a while. I've never done this parenting thing before; I'm hoping that my kid will have a short rebellious period because I truly delight in her company and personality.

Monday night we took the dog to the vet. Somehow she had gotten injured, probably out at the shop, but that part is kind of up in the air. She had a gaping wound in her chest, about half the size of the palm of my hand, where we could see her muscles. It wasn't bleeding really, just open to her insides. So Stuart called a friend whose wife is a vet and checked to see if she would examine Muddy. Yes, on a Monday night at 8:30. Bless her heart, she said yes, so we all loaded up and headed over. L was so excited to go meet a "girl vet". Anyway, long story short, L got to help put stitches in the dog. That vet is AMAZING, a wonderful person - once L told her that she was interested in being a vet, too, she took L under her wing. She let her sterilize tools, explained every detail of what she was doing, let her help shave Muddy's fur in that area, offered to let her help clip off the dead skin around the wound (L turned that down in a hurry), and let her help put in the stitches and clip them. It was like L's own little glimpse of heaven on earth. She delighted in watching Muddy come out of her sedation and in listening to the vet talk about dog care. The vet showed L how dogs have a third eyelid, let her feel some of Muddy's bone ridges and her teeth while she was sedated, showed her parts of the ear canal, etc, etc. When we finally loaded up the L and the dog to go home, she collapsed against her seat and said "I DEFINITELY want to be a vet." I guess an experience like that will convert you to one side or the other!

Surprising my kid

One of the side effects of owning our own business is that L and I often get recruited to help run errands for the shop. This typically is no big deal; L actually likes going into many of the car parts stores for parts or delivering things. Yesterday, Stuart had to deliver a car to Wichita to be tested on the dyno. He had to drive the customer's car there, since it was lowered so significantly that it couldn't be loaded on the trailer. So L and I followed him in our car so that we could drive home with him. However, what we did not tell our dragon-obsessed child was that we were going to stop at the Warren Theater to watch the movie "How To Train Your Dragon". L has been fascinated with dragons for about 4 years, creates her own, collects stuffed animal versions of them, miniatures, etc. So she's been dying to go see the movie. And she's never been to the Warren, with the comfy plush seats, the tuxedo-wearing staff, the malt shop, the cool lights...an experience. So we pulled into their parking lot and she didn't even seem to notice - she was reading a magazine, and was apparently in her own little world. However, it was PRICELESS to see her face when she focused on our location and realized what we were doing - her little face seemed to actually shine with excitement. She was feeling a little car sick, so we went in and got a root beer and some popcorn to settle her stomach. I love being able to surprise her with new experiences like that - as an only child, she is privy to way more of the adult world than your average child, and as a teacher's kid, she goes with me to work every day. There is very little that goes on in our lives that she is not part of, so the experience of surprising her with a genuine "I-have-no-clue-this-is-coming" surprise was memorable.

Homemade Macaroni 4/2/10

So today was a rather lazy day for us - it is Good Friday, so we didn't have school. L and I slept late, played on the internet checking out funny Google map photos, etc, all morning. We went to town this afternoon, ran errands, stocked up on groceries for the next week - all of the necessities, which L tolerates, but not well. We stopped at the shop on the way home and dilly-dallied there, too - the point of all this is, we didn't get home until about 6, when we usually eat. And I had my heart set of making a specific new recipe tonight for dinner, one from The Pioneer Woman. Everything on her blog is amazing, and none of her recipes have ever failed me. I had my heart set of making her "Fancy Macaroni", so I gave L a banana to tide her over and made the macaroni. We wound up not eating until 7, but it was so worth it. Homemade macaroni with bacon in it - made from scratch with egg yolks and cream and butter and all of that good stuff. It was heavenly comfort food. So my family pitched in to help create it and then watched Cars on TV while it baked. I took dinner out to them in the living room when it was ready - yes, I know that isn't actually great parenting to eat dinner together in front of the television, but that's real life around here sometimes. At any rate, L cleaned her plate before I even sat down with my plate and my book. She asked for more, so I directed her to the kitchen to serve her own. She returned with a helping of macaroni bigger than her own head and said "This will do for now". I laughed so hard I couldn't eat, but she actually proceeded to eat every bite of it. I guess I'll chalk that up to appreciation for the recipe!
My other funny moment with L today was as we were sorting through her school papers from the week, deciding what to keep in her file box and what to recycle. There was a drawing that I could tell wasn't created by her, but it wasn't signed by anyone else. I put it in the recycle pile, thinking it was a note from someone or a mistakenly-picked-up paper, but she said, "Actually, I'd like to keep that. (Boy's name) made it." Well, that got my attention. This is the same boy that told her he really liked her a few weeks ago, and she told him that she thinks he's a really nice person, but she doesn't think she's old enough to like boys "that way" (thank goodness!) Anyhow, I was intrigued that she'd want to keep the drawing from him; I just said okay and moved it into the file pile. Then she said, "Actually, I was thinking we could give it to cousin G for his birthday - the drawing is kind of monster-ish and G likes monsters." Ahhh, that's better - not keeping it for the sake of sentiment, but RE-GIFTING it...

Lullabies

Nothing on earth makes me feel more mom-ish than being able to sooth my crying child by wrapping her in a cuddle in our "big blue chair" and sing to her to calm her down. Feeling her sobs slow down while her head is tucked under my chin, feeling her breathing slowly return to normal while she cuddles up while I sing "The stars are out, the moon is out..." - that's what being a mom is all about. My kiddo is growing up so quickly - I treasure these little moments where I still have the power to soothe her. I pray that I'll be able to retain some of that ability to make things better, to be someone she always turns to when she is troubled.

Friday 3/26/10, take 2

So today, after we went to the great Tanganyika Wildlife Center, L and I grabbed some fast food for lunch. McDonald's for L, since they currently have toys from the movie "How to Train Your Dragon" and my kid is dragon obsessed. She's been a dragon fanatic for years, so this movie is right up her alley. I think that we are going to go see it tomorrow and she's terribly excited. Last weekend, at Wal-Mart, we saw that they have stuffed animal dragons from the movie. That whole concept is akin to the holy Mecca for L - "stuffed animal" and "dragon" squashed together - life just doesn't get any better than that. Has she read the books? No. She professes to not realizing that the books existed...although I've brought them home to her before and she chose not to read them. At any rate, the movie has spiked her interest, which I guess is the best possible outcome. She is also supposed to be reading the Little House on the Prairie books as research for her gifted project, so I guess we'll see how that shakes out...
At any rate - back to the original story. We ate fast food, making 2 stops because I am anti-McDonald's for no apparent reason, but I do adore a specific chicken sandwich at Burger King, and lucky for me, a Burger King was next door the the Micky D's. So we ate our junky food and then L asked what else we could do. Our trip to Tanganyika was significantly shorter than we had originally anticipated - 2 hours, rather than the 3 or 4 we thought we might spend there - because it was stinkin' WINDY! The sun was out, it was sparkly-springy, probably would have been an outstanding day, if it weren't for that darn wind. The whip-your-hair-into-tornadic-tangles sort of wind. Unpleasant. So we visited the animals and split, with promises to return on a day with less offensive weather.
After searching the GPS for interesting things to do in the area - ("Cowtown? Nope - it's outside, and we just escaped that wind." "Art museum? Nope - not open today.") we decided to go to Old Navy. L has recently become significantly more interested in fashion, and in her own fashion in particular. So off to Old Navy we trotted, with visions of trying on clothes floating through our heads. I grabbed a couple pairs of jeans and then was tugged to the girls' section. L found about 100 things that she wanted to try on, which we narrowed down to about 20. Thank goodness there was no employee at the dressing rooms, or we would have had to make who-knows-how-many trips to the cart to try on our 6-items-at-a-time. Anyhow, to keep events in line with pretty much every shopping trip I've had since becoming a mother, nothing I tried on made me fall in love, and pretty much everything L tried on was super cute on her. I'm going to generalize and say that everything looks cute when you're her age, perhaps. Anyhow, she had chosen 2 specific types of jeans that she wanted to try on - flares and skinny-legs. I have been the "buy-the-jeans-at-Target" type of mom, where I get what looks reasonably cute and has an adjustable waist. My sins of omission are being pointed out to me now, by my child who has now discovered that Old Navy sells flares and skinny leg jeans. Which are "SO CUTE". And they are. She tried them on, and the expression on her face was priceless to me - so awed, so mature - "Mom, look at these! I've never tried on anything like this before and look how cute they are!" It immediately brought back that desire I remember feeling to fit in with what the other kids had, which sometimes was feasible and sometimes not. It's hard for me to have perspective about what's important here - is it important to have what the other kids have (within reason) to feel like part of the group? Is it important to learn about being an individual? Is this the way to teach that lesson? I can't imagine that she likes the jeans just for the sake of cuteness, but rather that she likes what they stand for. Ugh - I don't want to hyper-analyze my 3rd grader's every move, either. At any rate, we now own the jeans - one pair of flares and one pair of skinny-legs. And my thoughtful kiddo pointed out that they are both a little on the long side, and she'll be able to wear them all summer AND to school in the fall. :)
So after the shopping expedition, we went to Cold Stone Creamery for decadent ice cream. Ahhh, indulgence. I had amazing berry sorbet and L had - get this - blueberry muffin flavored ice cream with white chocolate chips. She ate about 1/8 of it. Then she asked me to remind her not to get it again. So, note to L in the future - no more blueberry muffin ice cream!
L and I made cake tonight - this would be after Stuart fell asleep on the couch - homemade applesauce spice cake. Actually, L started helping and then decided that she wanted some applesauce to eat, and absconded to the other room with a plate and the leftover applesauce. Anyhow, it turned out to be an amazing, easy cake - we'll be making it again. A dense cake with raisins in it, with a little powdered sugar sprinkled over the top instead of frosting. Yum...it's what L and I had before bed. As you can see, we have thrown nutritional monitoring out the window during spring break. We're living like indulgent, live-in-the-moment sorts this week.

My dog appears to be having some sort of mini-meltdown outside - I can hear her maniacally scratching in her doghouse, and my hubby has been asleep on the couch for 3 hours, so I suppose I'll go calm the dog.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Today is the last weekday of spring break. I was going to call it a bittersweet day, but I can't actually find the sweet in it - just bitter. I could happily partake of another week or two of time home with my family, taking life at a slower pace. So far this week, L and I have cleaned house, cleaned out closets, gone to the Hutchinson Zoo, the Wichita Zoo, and today we went to Tanganyika Wildlife Park in Goddard. We have taken the cousins to see "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" movie, and played at Grandpa & Grandma's house. I feel like the week has flown by, and I'm sad that I don't feel more refreshed from the time off. However, we had an amazing time at Tanganyika today. I was upset because my camera's batteries ran out not long after we got there. I had brought along some new, freshly charged batteries, and for some reason they didn't work. And the gift shop was out of AA batteries. So no photos. However, I realized how much more "in the moment" I was during our day when I wasn't photographing - much more invested in the activities. Life lesson. We got to hand-feed lemurs, feed the giraffes little pellets (although they wouldn't let us pet them!), feed the lorikeets little containers of juice (L got nipped by one!) and L fed the rabbits, too. We saw mama gibbons with tiny babies, baby penguins, red pandas, and, my personal favorite, the clouded leopard. If spring break has to end, this was a good note to go out on.

Spring approaches

Yesterday was kind of a crazy day at my house. It was a Friday and we didn't have school, since we had just completed parent/teacher conferences the day before. Typically, this would be a day of much jubilation for L and I - we try to have "girl days" on days off, and go to the pottery-making shop, or the art museum, or some other museum, or picnicking at the nature center, etc. However, when I got home from conferences at 9:15 on Thursday, my hubby was laying on the couch, and the house was quiet - the flu had struck. I went to pick L up from my in-laws', took her to my mom's house, and went home to get our things...our little house simply does not have enough space for a person with the flu AND two other people. So I gathered our stuff, plus all of the ingredients for 2 batches of muffins and the supplies to make a diaper cake, since I was helping hostess a baby shower for my partner teacher yesterday morning. Bless L's little heart, she helped my mom and me make a batch of spiced pear molasses muffins AND roll 72 diapers AND create the diaper cake. She mentioned at one point that she had been running a little fever at Grandpa & Grandma's house, but nothing seemed wrong, until the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. By the morning, she had a 101.4 fever, a serious cough, and not much sleep. So I made a batch of chocolate muffins with coconut almond filling for the shower, called the doctor's office, stopped by my house to check on my husband, took all of the muffins & the diaper cake to the shower, and took L to the doctor. She has strep.

That brings out grand total for this winter to:
*h1n1
*bronchitis
*pneumonia
*numerous respiratory bouts of crud
*strep

I will be SO HAPPY when spring officially arrives, and we can spend some time outside in fresh air.

So after going to the doctor's office, picking up her prescription, and giving her a dose, we got some Subway for lunch and went to a park. It was about 45 degrees, and I was wearing a long-underwear shirt and a sweatshirt. We stopped at Target to buy a short sleeved shirt for me (L had one on under her sweatshirt) and sunglasses for L, and then luxuriated in the sunshine for the next couple of hours. It's amazing how a little sunshine can improve my mood and attitude, even though the ditches and sides of the street and anyplace in the shade is still covered in snow.

Conference Week Reading

This week is school conference week - also known as teacher torture. It's the seemingly never-ending week of late nights that are added on top of my already full as-we-prepare-for-state-testing days. Anyhow, in a random twist of fate, three books that I've been waiting for have all become available at the library in the past couple of days, so they are all sitting beside me. Actually, I've already finished one, so it is on the return-to-the-library pile. So, while I KNOW in my rational mind that I should be doing additional conference prep work, the books are calling my name. I've begun the second book - "U is for Undertow" by Sue Grafton - and now I don't want to put it down. I meant to be asleep by 9:30 tonight, so that I would be perky and well-rested for conferences, but instead I am blogging and reading. Shows my true priorities, eh?
I realize that none of these books are deep by any means, and sometimes I feel guilty about how much fluff I read, rather than trying to expand my horizons or increase my understanding of undoubtedly crucial issues. Instead I choose to immerse myself in fictional escapism - novels by James Patterson ("Witch & Wizard", his newest teen novel, is on my pile), Sue Grafton, and Ted Dekker. I'm sure I could be a much more organized and productive person if I could wean myself a bit from this habit, but I don't have the willpower to do it.

Rock Star

Today L had a friend over after school. I love when this happens, because my life is always so productive when L is occupied for hours with putting on makeup, or creating miniature zoos or Lego cities, or writing plays about dragons and goddesses of the seasons. So today, I made lasagna and biscuits while she played, and I was washing dishes when L and her friend started calling for me from her room - "Mom! Come watch this!" For the past 15 minutes or so, they had closed the bedroom door and I could hear Taylor Swift music blaring. As it turns out, they had put on "rock star" dress up clothes, inflated a pink plastic blow-up guitar, unearthed a (non-functioning) microphone, and they had practiced a karaoke version of a Taylor Swift song, including dance moves at certain points. I, of course, felt that this necessitated getting out the video camera, so I am now the proud owner of footage of 1/2 of a Taylor Swift song, as performed by 2 third grade girls. It was so fun to watch them laugh and dance around and giggle so hard they couldn't sing - I have clear memories of times like that with my friend Melissa when I was little, and I know that L will keep these memories for her whole life. Especially since I have them on tape.

Valentines Day

L is snuggled in bed, cuddled up with Kit, her newest Skelanimals stuffed animals, which we gave her today for Valentines Day. Skelanimals are her latest obsession, following on the heels of dinosaurs, Webkinz, Build-a-Bears, and mythological creatures, particularly dragons,unicorns, pegasi and gargoyles. She is now slowly building up a collection of these skeleton-adorned small stuffed animals - Jack the purple jackrabbit, Dax the black puppy, and now Kit the pink fox kit. Their bones glow in the dark for a while, which is an even bigger incentive to sleep with them, of course. At least they don't make noise.
Stuart and L got me a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers for Valentines Day - my kiddo is picking up on cultural expectations for what is romantic - and an electronic picture frame for me to keep on my desk at school with pictures of them, which is one of the most incredibly thoughtful gifts ever.
L and I got Stuart a KU shirt and a Chiefs shirt - we were looking for a Royals shirt, but couldn't find one. We also got him some gadgetry for his shelving units for our future car trailer, and I made a Raspberry Swirl for him. It's one of those concoctions that his mother made for him growing up and he adores it, but it is a huge pain in the neck to make, so he gets it about once every three years. It's what he had for dinner tonight - yep, just that.

Cheapskate?

This morning L and I were headed over to the high school to watch my brother play in a state Special Olympics basketball tournament. We went out our back door, near the dog pen, and proceeded to the car, at which point I realized that our female Weimaraner was being visited by a large brown male dog. So I shut my kid in the car and told her to stay and went out to scare the dog away. Apparently, I am not scary enough (although my class might not agree with that sentiment after this last week), since the dog decided to come and hang out beside me. I called Stuart, who came home and then called our local police department. Anyhow, long story short, our police chief came to pick up the dog and we were talking about what type of dog it was. L had long since escaped from the car, since the dog was friendly and relatively slow-moving. L had guessed it was a fat chocolate lab, but the police chief was guessing a Chesapeake Bay retriever.

So later in the day, we were home and L was telling me a story with a large cast of imaginary characters. She was telling me that one of them was a dog, and it was a cheap-sape dog. I couldn't figure out what in the world she was talking about? A figment of her imagination? A cheapskate? Finally, it hit me - while my kiddo is a fluent reader, she had never made the connection between "chesapeake" and it's pronunciation, but she HAD heard the word "cheapskate" and thought they were the same thing. I love language connections like that.

Also, tonight L was telling me about a joke she had read in Readers' Digest today. It was about a woman who somehow acquired a bottle with a genie in it, polished it, the genie came out, and the woman was granted one wish. So she wished that her cat would be turned into a handsome man. L explained that the woman "threw herself on him" and then the man said to her "I bet you wish that you hadn't neutered me last week!" As she laughed, I was trying to decide exactly how much of that joke she really understood. "Don't you get it, Mom? His brain is still a cat brain, but it is stuck inside a human body! Isn't that funny?" Yep, I'm willing to go with that for an explanation, and yes, I'll happily act like that is funny, if I don't have to explain to you why she would be upset that he was neutered.

Oklahoma City, 2/10

Last weekend we went to Oklahoma City to sell a car part. L and I went along so that we could explore fun bigger-city things for the day. We went to the A.P. Murrah Building bombing memorial in OKC. Stuart and I went there not too long after it happened, and so it was interesting to go and see how it has changed and read the signs and have the experience. L, on the other hand, was just cold. Too cold to really care about the history or story behind it. She just wanted to be back in the truck with the heater on, and I just wanted to read the story of the "survivor tree". Needless to say, my photos of the memorial do not include a smiling child. It was stinkin' cold.

We then went to the Omniplex Science Museum, which was SO MUCH fun. We have gone to Exploration Place in Wichita fairly often, but this place in OKC was amazing. We spent three hours there and could easily have spent another 3, if we weren't so hungry by that time. We got to explore a giant tree house that focused on simple machines, solve a crime using forensic science, browse through optical illusion art, use a periscope, navigate through a house of mirrors, walk through several enormous body systems (think teeth bigger than my kid) and many other things. L wanted to buy a gift for one of her cousins, J#3, so we went to the gift shop, where she found an obsidian arrowhead for him, and a small overpriced bag of shiny rocks for herself.

It was a fun day - we left around 6 in the morning and got home around 6 at night, and spent 7 hours of that time in the truck. Before Stuart and I were married, this was the kind of weekend work/fun jaunt we sometimes ventured on during a weekend day - I was surprised at how well L handled it.