32 posts tagged “kids”

It's been a busy weekend! Completely consumed by running & marathons. It all revolved around the Med-City Marathon - which, in case you didn't know, is so named because Rochester has given itself "The Med City" as somewhat of a nickname. (I like it.)

So Saturday morning was the Med-City Kids' Marathon. They run 25 miles in 1/2-mile increments, and then run the final 1.2 on race day. Honestly, I'm not sure how hard my kids trained. They both swore up & down that they ran all of the 1/2 miles - and I don't think they lied. They did both have to walk during part of their mile, but that's ok - they both still finished. Maybe we should've carbed them up on Friday night. :)

 

 

 

 

 

Brian was planning to run the marathon on Sunday with his friend Erik, so Saturday night we had Erik and his family over to our house for the big carb feed. Spaghetti, mac & cheese, garlic cheese bread, and a salad for good measure. I was pretty carbed up myself, although I had no good reason to be (other than the fact that I'm going to have to temporarily give them up soon). Brian slept surprisingly well last night - I'm not sure I would have been able to. At 5:30 this morning I took Brian & Erik out to the start line in a neighboring town.

By the time I'd gotten home & showered, it was time to go out to cheer them on at the first designated marker, Mile 9. For some reason I forgot the camera at this stop. Then it was on to Mile 14:

 

Erik's wife Erin was also helping to cheer them on with their kids. We staggered the stops so that they'd have plenty of support & sustenance when they needed it. She saw them at Mile 17, and then Bailey, Joey, & I caught them again at Mile 20.

The nice thing about the later part of the race was that the runners were spread out enough that I could get out on the trail to get a good picture.

We next stopped at Mile 24. Eventually they started to approach the finish line.

As they turned that last corner to the finish line, I actually got choked up. Just because he'd worked so hard for this, and I was (and am) so proud of him for sticking to it and doing something that was stinkin' HARD. There's no way I'd ever even attempt it.

Their two goals were to finish without having to walk any of the race, and to do it in under 5 hours. As you can see, they made the time goal, and they also didn't have to walk. They said it helped a lot to have all the support that they did. What was really cool was the random support that all the runners get as they're running along. You don't have to know the people running, you just cheer for them as they run by because they're undertaking such a huge thing. It's like a giant support system.

So after we had a bit to eat, the guys headed off to the massage they'd booked. Before the massage they could barely walk, and afterward, Brian was feeling pretty good. I suppose now he thinks he's going to need a massage after every marathon. :) I think they're out in the hot tub now with margaritas - a well-deserved treat, I'd say.

Someone tell me why I decided to have both of my kids in the same month? Oh yeah, I didn't plan that.

The good part about having their birthdays ten days apart is that you get the parties done with in a couple weeks' time and then you're done for the year. The bad part, in our case anyway, is that February comes shortly after Christmas so while we're just getting the tree put away, it's time to start thinking about planning parties.

This year they both wanted slumber parties. And the only way it would work out is that we would have them two Fridays in a row. Eight eleven-year-old girls singing karaoke ala American Idol, followed by nine nne-year-old boys wrestling and roughousing ala Indiana Jones.

Just because I thought it turned out so cool, I'm putting up a picture of the dessert I made for Joey's party. Given the theme, I decided to forego regular old cake and do that dirt dessert that was so popular a few years back.

The good thing about them getting older is that they can entertain themselves for the most part, and in my experience don't seem to want as much structured activity. The part that doesn't get any easier is that you still have to make sure that no one's being mean and no one's getting left out. So even though we're not on constant duty like we used to have to be, it's still exhausting to have a slumber party, let alone having them two weeks in a row. So I'm glad that birthday season is over for another year. We do have one quasi-birthday left, I guess. My parents try to come up in February every year for a weekend, and while we'll probably have some sort of birthday cake, it won't be a party per se, and I won't have to plan anything because my parents don't expect much (God bless 'em). They don't even expect that my house will be clean, which is good because it probably won't be. And my mom never makes snide comments about the state of my house or offers to "help" me clean it up. She's awesome that way. (And in other ways too.)

Your kids do find ways of embarrassing you, have you ever noticed that? This morning during breakfast the boys were talking about how drinking even one drop of alcohol when you're a kid will kill you.  Joey went and said that his parents drink wine and that sometimes they ask him & Bailey if they want a sip. Of course all the boys were just dying and I'm thinking, do NOT go home and tell your parents that Joey's mom & dad give them wine to drink!! Imagine how that could be misconstrued. Very rarely, we give them a taste of our wine. I wouldn't even qualify what they get as a sip. (BTW, I wrote a post a while back on why I allow my kids to have an occasional taste of wine - and a great discussion ensued...and thinking back on it now I wonder if their idea that alcohol will kill you hinges off of what Amy Sue said in her comment to that post.)

Anyway, so now everyone's gone home and we're cleaning up (thank goodness for paper plates & cups, and a dishwasher for things we can't throw away! And a good vacuum cleaner) and I'm thinking about getting some homework done. Joey's playing with all his new toys (he got 4 Nerf guns!!). Today is Joey's actual birthday so he gets to choose what we have for supper. He chose Pizza Hut - works for me!!

We now return me to my regularly scheduled life.

Today I took the bus to work because Brian was planning to donate blood after he got done with work. Turned out he didn't get to because a piece of donation equipment malfunctioned before he'd even really started to give, but nonetheless he was in my neighborhood so I went to the front desk of the donor center and picked him up. We went to Caribou for a mocha, like a real date! (LOL, I wonder how often blood bank employees hook up with donors?)  After that we ran a few errands. Gosh, it's kind of sad what constitutes a date after you've been married almost 14 years. :) But we had fun. We're pretty easy to please.

First we went to SuperTarget, the mother of all excellent stores. We have two ST's in town, and a few days ago I had been at the north one. I'd seen that they were supposed to have Champion track pants in a size large, relaxed fit, long length. At the time, they were out of stock. (How is it that I'm like 6 times bigger than everyone around me, yet I can never find my size and length?) So today we went to the south store to see if they had what I was looking for. No such luck, but I did find a couple of nice deals on their sale rack. So that was my frustration: I'm not extremely tall, but my legs are just long enough that regular length looks weird. And apparently track pants in long lengths are extremely difficult to find without spending a fortune. Dick's Sporting Goods didn't have any either. I don't even want them for running. I want them because Brian has decided that when we drive to Florida in a couple of months we're going to drive all the way through on the way down. I'm not spending 26 hours in the car without making sure I'm extremely comfortable!

The cool thing we got at Target was this cheap little karaoke machine for Bailey's birthday party. She wants to have an American Idol theme, so we'd talked about renting one. But then we found this thing that's about the size of a regular CD player (or "boombox" for you 80's children) that will display lyrics on your TV screen. We also picked up a CD-G of High School Musical 2 music - perfect for a bunch of tweens, no? It came with one microphone, but the surprise is that after getting it home and setting it up, we decided that we're going to need to get a second mic - because Joey loves it too! We popped in a regular Tobymac CD and he was just wailing on that thing! Too cute. I think that even beyond the birthday party, buying this machine was a good thing. :) It makes me so happy to hear my kids sing and enjoy it. They're both pretty decent little singers.

Moving on, we went to a couple of sporting goods stores because Brian was looking to try on something called a Fuel Belt. This is an elastic belt that runners wear, that comes with spots to store 4 little water bottles and also has a pouch to store gel packs, etc. He's training for a marathon on Memorial Day weekend. I'm so proud of him. He's done two half marathons (both last summer) and has decided that now is the time to go for the whole twenty-six-point-two. He's committed and is training. (Aside: I've heard of some spouses who get upset about the amount of time that a person spends training for a marathon. I truly don't get it. My husband is doing something that's good for his health, something that's going to push him to his outer limits and show him what he can really do. How and why would I not be supportive of that?)

The next good find was that while driving in town we saw a guy holding signs that World Market was liquidating everything. (Hmm, even the wine??) As it turned out, yes, even the wine. Evidently they're closing all their Minnesota stores and everything was on sale. This is a bit sad because I love World Market, but good in that we got a few deals. The wine was only 5% off, but we picked up a few bottles (including a zinfandel port, yum). In the regular store we got some candy for Joey's Indiana Jones birthday party (chocolate coins and gummy centipedes - geez, even the gummy versions of those things gross me out), some purple stemless wine goblets, a set of 4 wine glasses plus a decanter, and lots of dark chocolate which went into the freezer. They had lots of beautiful furniture still in the store, and I wished (as I have many times) that my house had the right style of decor for the kind of stuff you can get at World Market. It's so eclectic and fun.

You know, I always kind of feel sorry for stores that are going out of business. Even when they're part of a chain. It just makes me think that someone's dream is being shattered. It makes me sad.

We came home and decided to try out our new decanter. I've never used one before, but I think it really did make a difference in the wine we had. It brought out the aroma and flavor of this cab. Fun.

Alright, I'm supposed to be studying for a test. Obviously I'm not that into it. Good thing it's multiple choice. :)

As mentioned previously (I think), we're having a Super Bowl party tomorrow. We have the potential to have a LOT of people here! Which is going to be fun. We spent a good part of today beginning the prep work, you know, the kind of things that can be done ahead of time like making snack mix and picking up some of the clutter around here (some of it won't get picked up....I'm not going for a housekeeping award here, I just don't want anyone to be completely repulsed). The rest (bathrooms, floors, the remainder of the food prep) will have to wait for tomorrow. Fortunately, I have awesome friends who are bringing food as well, so I don't have too many things I have to make.

The kids are getting into it, too. Joey was thinking this morning that since there are going to be a lot of people here, it might be nice to have some signs to help them out, "you know, like when you're in a store and they have signs that tell you where things are."  So today he did his part to get ready for the party by making what turned out to be a lot of signs around the house. Bailey decided to help out too.

The floor plan of my house is such that when you first come in the door you can go straight ahead to the kitchen, upstairs, right to the dining room, or left to the living room. Joey remembered that I'd said that some people who aren't interested in the game might want to sit in the living room and chat, and that maybe we should bring up the tub of baby toys that we keep around for visitors. Thus, when you first enter the house, you will see this:

About halfway down the hallway, taped to the door jamb that leads into the dining room (and on your way back to the kitchen), you see this:

At the end of the hallway, a sign hangs in the doorway to the kitchen, to help you find the things you came for: FOOD and FOOTBALL:

A note of explanation about the above sign: The down arrow refers to the fact that you have to go downstairs if you want to watch the Super Bowl in HD. The right arrow indicates where the refreshments (his word) are, and also that we will probably have the TV in the kitchen on, but not in HD (or, as Joey put it, "the regular Super Bowl").

Once in the kitchen, you see these signs:

 

A big concern for Joey is how to let people know where to put their shoes and coats, since we may have to put them in more than one spot in order to accommodate everyone. On the doorway to the mud room:

And at a 90-degree left to that doorway is another important sign, a last-minute epiphany for my little signmaker:

And more direction to get the football watchers to the right place (the basement family room):

(We're giving out prizes at the end of each quarter.) At the bottom of the stairs, just before you make a right into the family room:

I told Bailey that it probably wouldn't be a big deal if someone's phone rang. She said she knew that, but apparently she just thought it would be a cool sign. I hope no one actually thinks they have to turn off their phone. 

The kids thought it might be important to designate the upstairs as the kids' play area:

Bailey thought that the kids needed a prize drawing as well. (I don't think she has a prize figured out yet, though.) She decided to ask the kids a tricky question and then out of those who answered correctly, draw a winner. This is upstairs, taped to our bedroom door (which will be shut) at the top of the steps:

...I don't think any of our guests will get lost in our house, do you?  Especially given that they've all been here before and our house isn't that big........

Today I received the application information for the private school we're hoping to transfer Bailey into next fall. The app, a certified copy of her birth certificate, and the $175 application fee are already tucked neatly into an envelope, ready to go back into the mail tomorrow. (That's provided we don't lose it on my cluttered mess of a kitchen counter.)

I wrote a blog post about a year ago just after I'd visited the school. I remember that night - I was almost in tears because I wanted this for my kids so much and I didn't think we'd be able to afford it. My heart was breaking with the hurt that a mother feels when she feels her kids are being wronged. Well, I'm happy to report that prayer works and we were able to move some things around. And, providing she's accepted, Bailey will be headed there in the fall! (Joey will go in two years, after he finishes public elementary school.)

I'm actually not worried about her being accepted. We'll have to get a bunch of paperwork together (immunization records, report cards, Stanford scores, etc.) but provided I can be on the ball with that, we're probably good. Unless we totally blow the interview. But I don't think that'll happen. Bailey's pretty personable, and we're not too weird. She gets good grades, and according to Bailey's friend Elizabeth who goes to Schaeffer, her future class is not at capacity.

Ay-yi-yi. Life is about to change.

In other school news, report cards came home today. My kids are brilliant. :)  Alright, maybe not brilliant, but they do well. It makes me so proud of them.

I love this meme that's going around, and I needed something to write today.  Bailey's answers are in red and Joey's are in blue. They collaborated on part of one answer so that's in purple.

Two things: 1) "Huggies" and "Kissies" are actually what they're called in our house.  2) They do still call me Mommy.

What is something Mommy always says to you?
I need hugs
I love you

What makes Mommy happy?
Us obeying her
Huggies & kissies
 
What makes Mommy sad?
Not obeying her
Not obeying God
 
How does Mommy make you laugh?
(sily giggles) Tickles!
Tickles
 
What was Mommy like as a child?
Bad.  (giggling) I don't know!
Boring.  I don't know.  You've never told us about when you were a kid. Loving.
 
How old is Mommy?
35, I think it is?
68!  Just kidding.  Um, 36? How old is Daddy? [37] 37??!! I'll go with 36.
 
How tall is Mommy?
Let me guess....6 feet?
I'll say....um....um....I'm thinking.  Four feet eight inches.
 
What is Mommy's favourite thing to do?
Not study.  No!  Spending time with us.
Spending time with us and watching TV.
And watching TV.
 
What does Mommy do when you're not around?
Work or study
Work or study
Together: Most of the time! [What about the rest of the time?] Sitting around, doing laundry, doing chores. watching TV
 
If Mommy becomes famous, what will it be for?
Being an awesome mom.  Or for being an awesome singer! :)
This is a hard one! Getting a good job!
 
What is Mommy really good at doing?
Working. Also, doing chores and making desserts
Studying, also watching TV. also, loving us
 
What is Mommy not very good at doing?
Ice skating
Playing baseball
 
What is Mommy's job?
Working at Mayo Clinic
Teaching at Mayo Clinic - I can't remember what you teach
 
What's Mommy's favourite food?
Dessert and cheese sticks
Cheese sticks and buffalo chicken
 
What makes you proud of Mommy?
She makes us money and buys us cool stuff like doughnuts
Loving and getting a good job
 
If Mommy were a cartoon character, who would she be?
Charlie Brown [Why?] Because he never really gets things that he wants, but sometimes he gets what he wants. 
Surely not Patrick, you might be Squidward.  Actually, I'll go with Squidward.  [Why?] Because sometimes you're grumpy and Squidward's grumpy, and you always want quiet so you can do stuff. [Bailey: Not always.] No, not always.
 
What do you and Mommy do together?
Spend time
Spend time doing huggies & kissies
 
How are you and Mommy the same?
We're both girls.  And.... um....we both like watching TV sometimes.
I'm not saying this is any better than Bailey, but we're both smart.  We look the same.  We like TV or electronics.
 
How are you and Mommy different?
We don't really look alike.
Mommy's a girl and I'm a boy.
 
How do you know Mommy loves you?
She gives us lots of huggies & kissies and she says it every night.
Same thing as Bailey.

Real quick, since I have stuff to do:

I do not like:

• Green eggs and ham.  (Just kidding.  I've actually never had them.)
• Homework that never ends.
• Being cold!
• Having to watch my weight.
• Being bored at work.
• This nasty cold that everyone around here seems to have.

I do like:

• People who take the time to be encouraging.  Too many people don't give a crap about others.
• Getting 2 shirts & a skirt for me, and a shirt for Bailey, all for $21 at Kohl's.  Yay for new clothes!
• Cheese.  Mmmmmmm.......
• Have I mentioned that Joey gets to skip ahead a grade in math?  I have?  :) 
• Thinking about future job possibilities and realizing that maybe this dog isn't too old for some new tricks.
• Glenn Beck moving to FOXNews!  Sounds like in addition to having his own show he'll be a regular on O'Reilly.  Good times!

Short & to the point.  I have to go read about competency testing now. 

 What part of your personality do you wish not to pass on to your child?

Well, like many parents, I have several personality characteristics that I'd just as soon my kids never exhibit.  It seems like I'm more likely to see the things that my kids get from me that are bad, although I'm sure there are also a few good characteristics that they've gotten from me.

I've mentioned here & there that I'm a fairly moody person.  I don't know why I am, and being aware of it is only moderately helpful in controlling it.  The hard part is, I'm not predictably moody.  The same thing will not bother me a bit one day, but then will make me want to scream the next.  They say you should discover your triggers and learn to spot them before you get worked up.  It seems like my triggers are different every day.  It's got to make me very difficult to live with.

That is what I hope my kids don't inherit from me.

I was getting ready for bed (yes, at 8:30, shut up) when it dawned on me that I hadn't posted yet today!  Well, since I don't really have anything to say, here's a quick rundown of my day.  (If you stop reading here I won't be hurt.)

• Woke up at 4:00 with my alarm and promptly hit the snooze button....again, and again, and again.  Eventually it dawned on me that I should probably see what time it actually was...it was 5:17.  Oops.  And I had to be at work by about 6:40 to catch a shuttle bus to be at a meeting by 7.  And I had to wash my hair too, since I hadn't yesterday.  But by not exercising, eating breakfast, or packing a lunch I managed to make it on time.  After the meeting was over I convinced a friend to go over to the cafeteria with me for some powdered eggs & super-salty bacon.  I think the last time I bought breakfast at the cafeteria was when I was pregnant with Joey and craving bacon.
• Perish that thought before you think it.  I just really like bacon.
• One of the first things I did after I got back to my desk was check to see if Steph had had her baby.  Congrats to her and Jim!
• I sat in meetings/classes from 8:30 until about noon.  All were interesting, but it did get to be a lot of time sitting down. I've heard that someone at Mayo has developed a treadmill-desk.  You actually walk on it all day, at a very slow pace so you can still do stuff, but you're moving instead of sitting.  I would really like to get my hands on one of those for days like today when I can feel my butt spreading as the day goes on.
• The afternoon was boring, really boring.  I didn't have much to do, although I did get from the library The Ultimate Guide to Competency for Health Care Workers.  I bet THAT'S not on Kelly's list.
• Had eggs again for supper because we don't have much for food in the house at the moment, and I'm also trying to really cut back on carbs for a few days because I've been so bad lately.  No matter to me, though; I love eggs.  And these were real ones (the ones I had for breakfast didn't really count.)
• Dropped the kids off at their school for Fiesta Fun Night.  They do a fun night every year where they get to go hang out at school & do fun stuff.  No parents allowed (except for chaperones, of course, which we were not because we're bad parents like that).  I had a meeting at church at 5:30 and after that there was volleyball at church.  I was able to convince Brian to come so that we could both play volleyball.  It was so fun!  I don't think we'd played for at least a year, and my forearms feel it.  But I found that I moved better on the court - due to being in much better shape than I was a year ago.  I love affirmation!
• Left volleyball early to pick up the kids   Got home and put them to bed.  And here I am.

And here I go.  It's bedtime.  Night. 

Buy stock in SC Johnson & Company.  I predict that over the next three months, I - and hundreds of thousands of other moms - will be purchasing hundreds of thousands of bottles of Shout.

Whoever decided that white football pants were a good idea?

(PS - I know that my 'hoodsters know that I'm saying this off-the-cuff, but to whomever else might read this, just know that I really don't know anything about investments.  So don't sue me if you buy it and their stock tanks.)