Birthday News

Well, the girls had their family birthday party last night (Remember, no friend parties this year because we are on the 30-year repayment plan for the Hannah Montana tix!).

The girls and I decorated the dining room yesterday in Hannah purple and puppy blue. Half the dining room table was Hannah Montana and half was puppies. Hannah banners were strewn across the opening to the dining room and puppy mobiles were hanging from the chandelier. Everything equal. We blew up balloons, laid out color-coordinated candles, picked up the cake and the cookie, straightened the house and got everything all ready for our guests. At 7:00, the girls were standing at the front door, noses pressed into the glass, waiting for someone -- anyone -- to arrive. Every set of headlights that turned toward the cul-de-sac caused squeals throughout the house!

Finally, after 10 minutes of waiting, the family started arriving, pretty packages all in hand. Bags, bags and more bags stuffed with tissue paper. The girls didn't give anybody time for a hello or a "Do you want a drink?" before the loot was divvied up and the festivities began. As they were both throwing tissue at their dad (The party garbage man) after tearing into their gifts one-by-one, I was thinking how far we had come from where we were nine and seven years ago. What we were doing that night versus what we were doing right then.

Nine years ago, I was in a nice, big suite at St. Mary's, family all around, everybody oohing and aahing over Kelsey and her pink chubby cheeks, big blue eyes and blonde, blonde hair. All was right with my world that day.

Seven years ago, I was alone at St. Mary's, no baby in the room, family gone home. Sydney was sleeping in the NICU one floor beneath me. I was crying, calling Joe at home because I was so filled with worry for Sydney. I hadn't seen her since they had taken her right after she was born. All was wrong with my world that day.

Last night, as they sat in the living room floor opening presents, I was thinking how different things are today. We live in a different place, have different pets, different cars, different jobs. Some of the guests at the party were there so many years ago the nights they were born. And some of the people who were part of our lives then aren't anymore, either by God's design or by their own choice.

I know sometimes coming to these little birthday parties is an irritation, an obligation that is inconvenient sometimes. Another present to buy. Plus, if it's not your kids, it's boring. I totally get that.

But last night it was my kids and I just kept thinking how I hope and pray I am here long enough to see every boring kiddie party they have. I hope I'm here until they're so old they don't want a party anymore -- "Just give me the cash." I hope I'm here until I'm going to kiddie parties again for my grandbabies.

For every day they have caused frustration, irritation, extreme patience-testing, worry, fear and outright anger, they have blessed me 100 times over. They've blessed me with kisses and hugs and love every day of their lives, even when I didn't deserve it. They have made me a better person than I ever was (at least in my own mind!).

I'm going to add some pictures to the top of this post. One is Kelsey with her prized Reindeer Webkinz and one is Sydney opening her video camera, the "best gift she EVER got." Their faces say it all!

Halloween, Etc

Has it really been two weeks since I've blogged? Geez, time flies and flies. Well, the kids have just returned to school after a week and a half fall break. Okay, *Home Study Week*, as it's referred to at school. We took a trip to Ohio to visit Joe's parents over the first weekend of break. It was a short trip, but a nice one. The girls spent a lot of time with their grandparents, asking questions for their school projects and just hanging out with them. It was a happy time.

Joe's mom has COPD and isn't in the best health, but she looked better than the last time we had seen her (December of '06) and she was thrilled to see her granddaughters. She wore the gold and red and blue necklace Sydney had made her (okay, so she hasn't completely gotten the concept of consistency yet!) the whole time we were there and she cried and hugged them until they couldn't breathe the day we left.

So after spending the next week recovering from the drive and getting school projects together, we are now all back on our routine. Sometimes I think it's better when we're just doing the day-to-day stuff. I love vacation, and I crave that time without structure, but life just seems to run a little more smoothly when we're all going where we need to go, school, work, etc.

Okay, our first day back was Halloween. The girls were stoked for days before. After school let out, they both ran in the door and started asking, "When can we get dressed?" about 100 times. Finally, about 4:30, I started getting them ready. I always underestimate how long it's going to take. We had planned to head over to my grandmother's around 5:30, visit a while and then come back to our neighborhood and hit the ground running. Well, we didn't get out the door until 5:45, but we were back to the subdivision by 6:45, ready to loot.

It was weird this year because the time change hadn't occurred yet and a lot of people were out while it was still daylight. When we got back to the subdivision, the goblins were already crawling through the yards, bags open, elbowing for position on the front porches. I love Halloween.

When I was a little girl, my dad and my uncle used to take me, my brother and my cousins trick-or-treating every year. My aunt and uncle lived in a subdivision and we didn't, so we loved to go to their neighborhood on Halloween. I remember Dad would always load us up on all kinds of scary Headless Horseman stories and Goblins-In-The-Leaves stories before we'd head out, so I'd be paranoid all night long. He and my uncle would creep in the car house to house while we walked in the yards. They would occasionally yell directions from the vehicle and even gave us a ride on the hood of the car when we got tired (Yeah, real safe, I know!).

I remember hearing my dad say so often how much he loved and hated Halloween at the same time. His little brother was killed on Halloween, so I think somewhere in his mind he always felt guilty for enjoying it. But he never let it stop him from taking us out until our pillowcases full of candy were so heavy we had to drag them. Good times.

A lot of people at the girls' school are anti-Halloween, anti-Santa, etc. It's all evil and *against God*. I don't buy it. Something is only evil if you make it evil. How can my little Sydney dressed as Dorothy in her red ruby slippers be evil? Even Kelsey, dressed as Hermione from Harry Potter, never thought her costume was representative of witchcraft, only that Hermione was the smartest girl in her class and Kelsey identified with that part of her.

And how can Halloween be a bad thing now when the memory of that holiday brings such comfort and joy to my heart? Denying me those Halloween memories and denying my kids the opportunity to have those memories for themselves, to me, that's much more *against God* than letting them be someone else for one night and collecting a bag full of candy!

So I guess that's it, people. I'm going to put a couple of pictures of Halloween night up at the top of this blog. The scary creature with the girls is my cousin, Tami. She went as a naughty angel this Halloween and her costume was fantabulous! Tami is a good egg. She's a grown-up now, but she'll always be a kid at heart. That's what makes her so special!

Be sure to check back next week sometime. The girls have a birthday on November 6 and I'm sure I'll have some good pics to share!

Thoughts

Today would have been my dad's 60th birthday. 60. It's hard to imagine what he would have been like at 60 because he will forever be 38 in my mind -- the exact age I am today. I will not spend a lot of time trying to explain all that today means in my heart. I will simply add a quotation here that explains it probably better than I ever could. It is by novelist Thornton Wilder.

"We ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

Happy Birthday, Daddy.

Today

Well, it's been forever since I've visited here or had the time to visit my blog and do an update. I guess since the last couple of weeks have just been about routine, family, school, kids b.s. I didn't feel like anybody would think THAT was very interesting. Not to mention, finding time to do anything not scheduled on my fridge calendar is about as easy as hitting the lottery. The world is spinning, my friends.

So what is new? Well, the girls both hit First Honor Roll at the Co-Op. That's Sydney's first experience with REAL grades, not just an E or an S+, so she's feeling pretty puffed up about it all. Really she's doing much, much better than I anticipated. Being the social butterfly, creative eccentric she is, I just knew that any sort of structured environment was not going to work. Up to now, she has not shown a great strength in math, so I just knew the twice-weekly speed drills in that subject were going to be cause for great heartache this year. I was wrong -- Yep, write it on your calendars, I'm admitting an error in judgment on my part. She's soaring. Her speed drills, tests and pretty much all of her papers are consistently error-free and I'm thrilled.

She and Kelsey are so different in personality. Kelsey is a very Type A student, frustrated with a 98, always pushing, pushing for extra credit, higher, higher until there is no higher to obtain. Sydney is the opposite. If an 80 came home on a test, she would shrug her shoulders and say, "Oh, well, Mom. I'll do better next time," and be off to ride her bike or draw pictures or dance in her room, never giving it a second thought. So in my traditional way of thinking, Kelsey was going to be the stronger student of the two. Not so. Guess there is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak.

So what else? Umm, Fall Break next week. We are travelling to Ohio to spend a short visit with my in-laws. I emphasize short. They won't be able to make it in for Christmas this year and my mother-in-law is in poor health. So Joe wants to make sure to give her as much opportunity as he can to spend time with the kiddos. Understandable. But they live in a pre-fab home in the middle of nowhere, so we are staying in a hotel 30 minutes away -- because they're both lifelong smokers and the option of staying with them is just not available. Not to mention my brother-in-law is living there *at the moment*. That, my friends, is another issue all together...

I hope everybody checking in is doing well. Today is a strange day for me. Both of my grandmothers are ill, but not in the traditional sense. One is spending this day in a *geriatric unit* for not unexpected mental/health issues. One is completing a chemical EKG for shortness of breath, etc. My heart is heavy because I know the years are passing so quickly and all that will be left one day soon are the memories I have with them, so many memories, and the few photographs I have saved in my big messy box of keepsakes. So I am teary and worried and regretful for being too busy with my ever-active life. I am thankful that my children know them, actually are old enough that when it ends they will REMEMBER them, not just from pictures, but from growing up around them. And I am wishing, wishing for 25 more years to be the granddaughter I always want to be in my heart.

But time is flying and in 25 years I will be the grandmother -- hopefully. Like I said, friends, the world is spinning.

He Did It!

Well, J. turned 15 yesterday. His dad picked him up early from school and took him to the driving center at Straw Plains so he could take the written test for his permit. Not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination.

In this day and age, you've got to have everything except a DNA sample to get the permit. He had to have Social Security cards, birth certificate, truancy forms, a bill with an address on it, etc. Remember the days when you showed up, filled out the form, took the eye test and off you went?

So J., who has done nothing but yak on and on and on for months about getting his permit, gets called up, takes his eye test and in he goes for the computer part of the exam. J. has taken the online tests about a zillion times in the last few months, so I felt pretty confident he would be okay.

J. called me about 45 minutes after his dad picked him up and told me he had missed 6, one more than the allotted amount, and would have to come back next week and take it again. He said he was disappointed, but it would be okay. So I said, "Okay, let me talk to Dad." So Joe gets on the phone and says, "He's lying. He got it!" Woohoo, I said -- Not for me, because the thought of being anywhere in the same city while J. is in control of a vehicle causes heart palpitations -- for J., because he was marking a HUGE milestone in his life.

So when he got home, he did this stupid little grin (and spastic dance) and held his permit up beside his face and I just had to snap the picture. He looked like such a dufus, but he was 100% content with the world at that moment and that's why it's one for the books.

Later we had a family party with a big chocolate chip cookie, ice cream and lots of *teenage appropriate* gifts. Everyone left around 9:00 and we began the clean-up process. J. picked up all of his presents, straightened the living room, never letting the smile leave his lips. He told his dad it was a "good day". And it was...for all of us!

Happy Birthday, Little J.!

Thoughts

I had an interesting weekend this weekend -- the usual flurry of activity, but also a reflective one. My 20th high school reunion was this weekend. I, for a myriad of reasons, chose not to go. As one would expect, there are a flurry of e-mails flying around today about the reunion, pictures being sent, general pleasantries being exchanged amongst the participants. I thought I might feel sad afterwards when everyone was talking about what went on, feeling like I missed something.

But strangely, seeing the pictures and reading the e-mails only makes me feel better about my decision. 20 years down the road I'm actually exactly where I had hoped to be when I was graduating from KCHS. I had hoped I would have a husband and a family to call my own, a pretty little house, a LIFE of my own. And I do. To some people, I'm sure those things aren't high on the wish list, but for me, they always were.

So looking back at where I was and where I am helps me see how much of the mountain I've climbed -- and also how far I've got to go. So I didn't slam back too much alcohol with my old high school buddies this weekend, I didn't trot all my kids out to the *family picnic*, I didn't Botox my face, highlight my hair, go to the tanning bed and put on my obligatory little black dress (Okay, in my case, maybe not so little, but still black!) for the dinner/dance either.

What did I do? I took my precious 6 year old daughter to the emergency room when she couldn't get her breath. I taught my third-grader about simple subjects and simple predicates. I laughed with my friend as she told me how excited she was about moving into her new house and about all the crazy stuff she had bought to go in it. I went shoe shopping with Sydney and went to church Saturday night with my family. I helped Kelsey push cloves into an apple until my fingers ached, covering it with cinnamon and wrapping it in a pretty bow -- a special project for school. I spent an entire hour talking with my husband about our life, our beliefs, our children -- probably one of only a handful of times we've ever found a full uninterrupted hour since the kids arrived.

Sound boring? Maybe. But I'll take it. I'll take it and I'll hold it as tightly as I can until the day I'm gone. I used to think if I didn't follow the crowd I would miss something, be left behind, and I guess I feared I would feel that way again if I didn't jump on the reunion bandwagon. But after spending the weekend pondering it, I realize that's not my crowd anymore.

So to the Class of '87, the old crowd, I hope it was a blast. To the new crowd, a million thanks for helping me see I'm not missing a thing!

High School Musical On Ice

Well, we went to the High School Musical on Ice show last night at the Coliseum. Originally we were supposed to be on the front row for the Friday morning show. However, last week I got a call from a very nice lady at the ticket office letting me know that Disney had chosen to cancel that show and I would need to pick another night. I said, "But we had front row seats!" She was very patient and said, "I am aware of that, but there are no front row seats for any of the shows left." Can you feel my frustration?

Anyway, the good news was that they had second row seats in a better section for last night's show, the first performance of about a million this weekend. Mom, the girls and I left early and had dinner at Aubrey's before the show. (This was my grand plan to keep them from being hungry at the show and spending a week's salary on snacks while we were there!) We got to the show 35 minutes early and browsed around, checking out all the glittery souvenirs that were being hawked in the lobby.

The girls picked out a couple of trinkets and then headed over to the photo station to have their pictures made with Troy and Gabriella. I have about a million of these pictures with various cardboard or plastic people they have set up at these shows. But it's kinda neat because it helps me mark time and see how much my munchkins have grown over the years. This year was especially telling because Kelsey is almost as tall as the cutout!

So after getting to our seats, the show finally began and it was an hour-and-a-half-long rock concert on ice! The girls loved it. They sang and clapped and giggled through the whole thing. The place was packed and there were little girls squealing all over the joint. Even the moms and dads were clapping and singing along to the songs -- because if their house is anything like mine, they're for sure gonna know all the songs before they get there!

Sydney and Kelsey were still babbling about it on the way to school this morning. Syd said it was the best ice show we'd ever been to. Kelsey said the lead skater was *hot*. (Okay, I know he's an ice skater, but she's 8, so cut her some slack!)

So I guess the night was a success. For me, it was a ton of fun. The kids were happy. Their Nana got to have a night out with her girls. I got one more photo to add to my sofa table. And we all got to add one more memory to our internal hard drives. What else could I ask for?

UT Football

I love to watch UT football with Joe. He's a lot like my Papaw used to be, which used to drive my brother and my dad crazy. He gripes and rants and screams. This year, of course, he's doing it a lot more frequently because the Big Orange is, well, not looking so big -- or fast -- or good, for that matter!

We're watching the Florida game now and we're down by like 408 points and there he sits in his chair, orange hat on, orange golf shirt on, still cheering them on (well, alternating that with the screams of frustration). It's just a matter of time now before he says something like, "Well, we're young," or "Hopefully we'll play better next week," finally letting the reality of the situation seep in and relaxing a little bit. I mean, really, it could be worse. We could be NOTRE DAME, for Pete's sake!

I wonder if we'll have a new coach next year. I think we will. I'm usually one of the ones who feels like you should give a guy a break if he has a bad year, but I'm starting to have a change of heart on this one. It's just hard to watch it week after week and watch Joe get so red-faced and irritated. And it's especially hard when one of my old high school buddies is a Florida alumnus and will almost certainly be leaving me something supremely hateful in my in-box tomorrow morning! What else would I expect from a Gator fan?!? :)

We're only 3 games in and it feels like it needs to be almost over. It's going to be a looong season. Guess it's time to find a new bandwagon to jump on. How long 'till basketball season?

Grandparents Day

We had Grandparents Day at school yesterday. What a zoo! Mom and Mamaw O. came in support of the girls and we had muffins, fruit and juice. Since I am the room parent, it is my job to set up, serve, photograph and break down after all these celebrations. And I'm supposed to do it all with a smile and look as pleased as punch just to be there!

I don't have a lot of comments about the festivities for the day, but I just wanted to share the photos above. They're more special than we realize right now. Looking back, I wish I had a folder full of these with my grandmothers/great-grandmothers/grandfathers/great-grandfathers.

You never know what will transpire down the line that will make you wish you had proof of the way life once was. For Kel and Syd, I plan on making sure they have all the proof they need.

New Job

Well, I started my new part-time gig today and I think it's gonna be a good one. I am working a couple of days a week with a photographer in town. Her name is Christy Bonifacio -- That's Bon-I-FOTCH-E-O -- and she says it with just the right Italian inflection in her voice. That's her picture up above with one of her munchkins -- Leo.

Anyway, I was a little apprehensive about my first day, and when I showed up at her pretty new house in Sequoyah Hills I was greeted by a million construction guys and her very gracious husband, who let me hang out in the bare living room until Christy got back from taking the kids to pre-school. But all my apprehension just disappeared when she came running in the door, arms spread open to give me a big, welcoming hug.

I had never met her before, only corresponded through e-mails and had only come to know her after I scheduled her to come and take our family portrait in November. After reading her blog one night and seeing how late into the night she was working, I e-mailed her and asked her if she needed an assistant. Don't know why. I did it almost without even thinking about it. She e-mailed me back and said ABSOLUTELY! And so that's how I got to the little office in Sequoyah Hills today.

She's a runner, going to Chicago tomorrow for a half marathon. She's funny, laid-back and has the most beautiful red hair in the world. And she has entrusted me to edit her photos, handle her website and pretty much manage every piece of communication coming into her office. For some reason, she feels I can keep her organized -- Funny, I know.

So today's a good day. I only hope I can balance this extra responsibility with school and softball and baseball and home. It sounds like a lot and it feels like a lot, but I think it will be a good thing, giving me something just for me.

If you want to check out her stuff, click here
Bonifacio Photography