Best note home from school ever

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Aww, I really wanted to go to the moon!

Seriously, this is just another reason why I love our kids school.

Lunar rover mentioned above

Oh and the weather mentioned above- was a forecast of snow and sleet. Which it did for a bit, no accumulation (actually, I laughed when I read the weather statement on the weather station that mentioned record snow was recorded at BDL as a trace amount).

Soccer Days are coming to an end....

I love that my girls play soccer. I love that they seem to enjoy it. I love that we were lucky and Einey and Meenie were on the same team this year. I love that we only have practice twice a week (as opposed to four times this time last year).

But there are many things I don't like this year. Most of them due to the older girls game times.

U8 games at 2:00 pm. Every other age group plays in the morning. Except u8. I've had a girl on u-8 for 3 seasons now and will have at least one child in this age group for the next 7 season - GAH! Since the games are so late in the day, during the spring, they are just so darn hot. And right now, my kids are a bit upset and hating soccer. not the sport, but because they've missed so many things this year. Due to our afternoon games, we have (or will when the games end in 3 weeks) miss(ed) 4 birthday parties, 2 Halloween Parties, the Great Pumpkin Festival in the neighboring town, 2 Letterboxing events we really wanted to attend and the towns annual Trick or Treat on Main Street. I am squeezing in one child selling GS cookies but only because I took the late slot 4:00 to 5:00 pm. They're upset about it.

Games being on Halloween. They skipped Columbus Day weekend for the holiday but are playing on Halloween. Who the hell cares about Columbus Day? For Halloween, my kids have to miss a party AND the town's Trick or Treat on Main Street. Not that I car about the candy, but my kids like these events. And, since Husband is working, I need to get to two different fields (a game from 11-12 at our home field) hurry home, feed them lunch to make it to the away field at 1:30 for our 2:00 pm game. If we are lucky, we'll leave the field by 3:30 pm and make it home by 4:00 pm. Where I will attempt to feed them dinner, get them dressed and figure out where we are trick or treating. Did I mention I'm alone?

Our soccer league. Not getting into it here, but GAH! Lots and Lots of stuff can fall under this category.

Okay, need to balance this out, it's sounding too negative.

I LOVE coaching. I love all of our little "mini's". I love watching them play and seeing how much they've improved over the season. I love their enthusiasm. I love their theatrics. I love the smiles on their faces when they score a goal.

I love watching the older kids play. To see them work as a team as opposed to an amoeba. I love listening to them communicate.

I love playing in the rain (although not the snow, and not when it's freezing).

I love my kids coaches. They all have great coaches and great teams.

I love the crisp autumn mornings on the soccer field. Sitting with my camera and hot chocolate.

Better sleep with one eye open...

Ever have that feeling that someone is out to get you?

Yesterday was a rare morning where Husband had the day off. Even rarer was the fact that he helped make lunches while I was combing hair, helping with belts, ties, shoes and packing snacks. I made Meenie's sandwich while Husband made Einey and Moe chicken ceasar salad as per their request. He added the pasta, the chopped celery, the chopped carrots, the chopped turkey (shhh!) and the dressing. Just like mom makes. But apparently he went a step further and added something else.

So.........

When we picked the girls up from school, Moe looked at me and said "I only ate one bit of my salad, it had some red stuff in it". Looking at Husband, I said "what did you add to the salad". "Dried Cranberries he replied". He looked at her and said "but you like dried cranberries". She said "but I didn't know what it was".

Obviously he didn't learn from the time Einey was in kindergarten and accused us of putting poison in her salad for lunch one day (we added bean sprouts, which she likes but had never had in salad).

Obviously, I'll be making lunches from now on.

Sell-outs

Yesterday we were joking around and the kids asked why we were being mean to each other. I came out with yeah, your dad is soooo mean, he even hit me earlier. No way the girls replied. Yeah he did, and he left a bruise. Oh, can we see they asked? I showed them the two inch round bruise that is purpling on my thigh. Ouch,they remarked. Then Husband was like you shouldn't have told them that, now they're going to go into school and tell someone that.

All joking aside, I said, you know daddy would never hit any of us, right? Yeah. So, where did I get that bruise then? Einey quickly replied, daddy hit you. Thankfully Meenie and Moe said, no, remember when the boxes of games fell off the shelf the other night and hit moms leg? That's when it happened, right. Yes it was.

Which leads us to our realization, Einey would sell us out for nothing. Add in an incentive and she'd totally bail!

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Last night I was mashing potatoes, stirring gravy and rolling biscuits. I had an almost eight year old child in the kitchen complaining about how hungry she was. As I was doing the above mentioned items, the timer went off indicating the turkey should be finished cooking. She quickly announced that the turkey was done, as if I couldn't hear the timer. I told her it should be but I needed to check it and could she please go ask her father to come check the turkey for me. As she walked out the room, she shot back "why, don't you know how to use the oven mitts?"

I know she's going through another phase and it's normal for some back talk and wise cracks, but man oh man. It makes me wonder if I'll survive the teen years! What were we thinking?

Morning Queen Update

Now I am officially irked. I have spent the whole day washing, drying, folding, sorting, purging and putting away my children's clothes. With the exception of the clothes on their backs and what they wore yesterday, they are all accounted for and put away. Items still missing? FIVE long sleeve dress shirts for school. WTF!!!!

Note to Husband, I may wash, dry and fold, but your clothes are not going to put themselves away. Get to it.

I am the queen of the morning

alternately titled: I need to buy a freakin' alarm clock because my kids are broken.

I have never needed an alarm clock because I can always count on my kids waking up at the ass crack of dawn, otherwise known as 6:15. For the last week and a half, they've been broken. First it was 6:45, then 7:15 until this week, it's reached 8:00 am that we've been rousing from slumber. School, for the record, starts at 8:30 am.

Here is synopsis of our morning today:

8:00 am - Me, rolls over, looks bleary eyed at the alarm clock. Crap! Yells- girls, time to wake up.

8:01 am - Hears the bus stop across the street (totally irrelevant information, BTW)

8:02 am - Walks into Einey's room and pulls to covers off her

8:02:45 am -Walks into Meenie and Moe's room, pulls to covers off Moe. Start to hand Meenie a long sleeve polo from the closet and pants I grabbed from the top of the hamper as I walked by. She announces she wants to wear a jumper. Puts shirt back in closet and attempts to grab a long sleeve dress shirt, only to find none.

8:04 am - Tosses pants back into hamper, tells Moe to grab pants and a long sleeve shirt and walks to the laundry basket in my room. Asks Einey what she's wearing on the way by. She wants the same as Meenie.

8:04 am - Pull out two jumpers. Search for long sleeve shirt. None, nada, zilch.

8:05 am - Checks Einey closet - none

8:06 am - Runs down to the basement and looks in washer (not that it would help) and finds no long sleeve shirts, mostly polos and short sleeve dress shirts. Quick check of the dryer - adult dark clothes. Basket on he floor? Adult dark clothes. Runs back up(2 sets of)stairs carrying basket because she can see it's a laundry day.

8:07 am - Finds one long sleeve shirt in basket of laundry.

8:09 am - Tells Einey she has to wear a short sleeve dress shirt with a sweater. Looks into closet- only school sweat shirts. CRAP!

8:10 am - Miraculously finds a blue cardigan AND matching knee socks (yes, I know, how hard can that be? But, for some reason, they have THREE different types of blue knee socks). Makes mental note to find out where the other FIVE long sleeve shirts have dissappeared to. I can account for all of their laundry and they're not there.

8:11 am - See's Moe still standing around undressed with no clothes in sight. Moe says her belly hurts. I tell her she probably has to poop and to get dressed. She says "no it hurts right here _ pointing to her mid right side). I feel it, feels find tells her she probably has to poop and to get dressed. She shoots me the stink eye and stomps out the room.

8:12 am - Sees Moe trying to put on size 2-3 tights. I throw those away and hands her a new pair. She puts on her magenta skirt. As I'm looking for a shirt, she asks for her purple owl Halloween shirt. I toss it to her and attempt to herd the cats kids downstairs. Stopping only to help Meenie with her tie. * Start wondering if 8:12 am is too late to transfer them to public school?

8:15 am - Grab signed progress reports AND fundraiser form with money. Walk to kitchen and start shoving them in backpacks (hope I got the right one's!). Fill three water bottles.

8:16 am - Pull down snack box with one hand and grab winter-ish coats with another. Drop snack box on floor, instruction them to only take TWO snacks from the bucket today and some fruit/yogurt/cheese sticks. Also grab plastic spoons in anticipation of them grabbing applesauce. And pull out three earmuffs and deposit on the floor.

8:18 am - Instruct kids to put on shoes while getting snacks and putting them in their lunchboxes while I make their sandwiches. Einey asks for egg salad. I tell her fat chance, takes way to long to boil the eggs. Promise to boil eggs today while I make three bologna and cheese sandwiches.

8:20 am - Zip up lunchboxes and tell the kids to start putting them in their bags. I start combing their hair, finish and see two lunch boxes still on the table. Put those in bags, see kids with coats, shoes (AMAZINGLY because for some reason, this ALWAYS takes Moe 10 minutes, not because she can't do it, but because she's the queen of procrastination and indecision!). Also see kids grabbed BTG** (A nutrigrain bar, a Granola bar and a Rice Crispie treat - ignoring the fact that the last doesn't really fall under a breakfast category)

8:23 am - Walk of the door. Looks at the van and declares the universe hates me. Einey laughs at this declaration. Turn on the van, tell the kids to buckle up or I shut the van off taking away their only source of heat. Start scrapping windows.

8:24 am - Get in, and backs out of driveway. Can't see to well, but the windows will clear soon. I hope.

8:29 am - Pulls into school parking lot. Even remarking how we hit all three red lights between our house and the school. Walk up to school and catch the end of the line. Notice that we can count on others to be running later then us.

8:31 am - Realizes when I see another child in Moe's class walk in, that I sent Moe into school in a skirt and dress shoes. Today is Wednesday. Wednesday is gym day. Shrug it off and say either a) the gym teacher won't come in today or b) it's not like they actually do anything in gym anyway.

8: 52 am *** - Walk back in the door and grab a bowl of cookie crisp not available for public consumption and pour myself a bowl. Vow to start folding laundry once I'm finished checking email and playing around on FaceBook.

* Notice that somehow, I have managed, not only to get dressed, with all clean clothes, but also comb my hair and brush my teeth

** Breakfast To Go - something we've excelled at the past few years....

*** Yes, I realize that's a big time difference, but I was catching up with friends...

~~~Note, normally, we take out uniforms, pack bags and make lunches the night before. We've I've been lazy since returning home from Maine.

School Picture Day

Today is school picture day.

Last night I was at book club and we were talking about school pictures. One mom mentioned taking her boys for haircuts. Baths were mentioned. New clothes. Putting the kids to bed early.

I sat back, listened and thought "SHIT".

My girls haven't had a fresh haircut (done by someone other then them self) in awhile. Baths were doe the night before, so didn't even think about doing them again. No outfits were layed out. No new clothes purchased. We'll probably be scrambling in the morning. What was I thinking? Ahhhhhhhh!

But I'm happy to say, the girls picked out some nice outfits, didn't spill food on themselves (maybe I should have had them wait to get dressed?) and their hair looked cute. As long as they don't make any funny faces, we should be all set!

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of school pictures anyway. We dutifully buy a package when offered and send them to relatives as requested. But to me, those aren't my kids. I'd rather take my own shots and print them to go out.

These, these are my girls...


I was outvoted and told that I cannot use this as our Christmas card photo this year.

It's not cheating when there is ice cream involved....

We took the girls to a local corn maze on a sunny, autumn afternoon. We arrived, paid our fee and was given a map (to use if lost) and a list of blank spaces in which to answer questions relating to, of course, turkeys and Thanksgiving. Thinking we were pretty smart, we headed into the maze, map in pocket. Before long we, came to the first question. Okay, not to bad, we can do this. A little more wandering and question number two. Yup, got that. A bit more and question number five. WTF? How did we miss three and four? Pull out the map and figure out where we are and how we missed them (they're not listed on the maps, but we could see we skipped a big section of it). Start heading back. At this point, we encountered two lost souls on cell phones talking to other lost sols and trying to reconnect with their group. A little further back and we meet another family - they looking for five, and found three and four. We point one direction and they indicate to us to "follow the trail of corn ala Hansal and Gretal style on the ground". Heading back, we encounter the rest of the lost souls and indicate they follow the corn the opposite direction to find their friends.

We get those and head back. Throughout the maze - we kept bumping into 2-3 groups of the same people. At one point, we were two of us were standing at a question and someone whipped out an IPhone to look it up. Heh. We laugh and go on our separate ways. We kept bumping into the same groups - often someone asking if they found a specific sign. At one point you heard shouted over the corn - "x question is wrong, it's B". At one point, one of the girls asked, "isn't this cheating?". It's not cheating if you want the ice cream was the reply :)

So we made it through the maze and were taking pictures of the kids when one of the IPhone groupies came over and told us "X question" was wrong*. So we were able to change it and the kids got their free ice cream.

All in all, it was a great day - corn maze, free ice cream, hay rides and free face painting (which were AMAZING).

* We did figure out most of the questions on our own - we had our answers written down when the other group looked theirs up. The girls were able to figure some of them out by remembering things they learned on our trip to Plymouth last spring.