On Schedules and Movies

Magnus Bane.
He's, hands down, our favorite character.

This week was really just settling into a routine. Get up, go to the gym, get Megan off and the other kids up, breakfast, send Caitlyn off, go to work (me), send Alison and Kristen off, go to work (Russell). Then in the evenings: come home from work (Megan) and decompress, come home from work (Melissa) and decompress, come home from school (Caitlyn) and tell mom about her day, come home from school (Alison and Kristen) and turn on the computer, make dinner, come home from work (Russell), dinner, homework, scriptures, reading, and bed.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

(It's so very, very nice to have a routine again.)

In other news, it was Movie Weekend. I took Megan and Caitlyn (and Caitlyn's friend Meagan and we met my coworker Kris there) to see City of Bones. Oh. My. Gosh. We had a blast. Partially because we were ALL fans (though Megan and I came late to the series, and Caitlyn really isn't fan because she hated the book), but we had a Grand Time. Seriously. It was so much fun. And the movie is really quite good. Think a smarter, funnier, hipper Twilight with a LOT less angst, more snark, and WAY better female characters. We had issues with the end (because it wasn't like the book), but I hope the movie does well so they'll make the other two books into movies.

And then we all (well... all those old enough, anyway) went to see Iron Man 3. The verdict? A fun movie, but the ending is GREAT. Seriously. And we all loved how they gave Tony PTSD from the Avengers, and worked in several panic attacks. It was just a lot of fun.

Oh. Russell was disappointed last week that I forgot to mention our anniversary. We, um, had one. And Russell gave me a very lovely book of memories, and I gave him a very lame card I picked up at the store. 20 years is a long time when you stop and think about it, but it sure doesn't feel that way.

And on to another week.

Green Thumb

Dad: "Kristen is the best helper in the garden."
Mom: "Kristen, you have a green thumb."
Kristen: "No I don't! My thumb is NOT green."
Mom: "It means you're good at gardening."
Kristen: "How do you know?"

Mom: "Because I just do."

Back to School

Back to school nights
in which we meet teachers
and drop off supplies
and hope for the best.

Back to school days
in which we complain about
getting up first thing in the morning
and doing homework
and not watching so much TV.

Back to school weeks
in which we're back
into a schedule
(except for Megan,
who's had a schedule for a while)
and mom enjoys
the silence in the house.

Back to school hours
in which we stress
about getting the
passport/student visa back
from the consul
and our laptop crashes
AGAIN,
and we learn the lesson of
backing up data.

Back to school days
in which it rains and rains
and rains
and the tomatoes won't ripen.
But Caitlyn gets to wear
the outfit she had picked out
on the first day of school.

Back to school weekends
in which we enjoy being lazy
after a few crazy days.
And Russell and Caitlyn
go to OKC temple
and I make PLANS
and take kids shopping
for back to school shoes.

It's good to be
back to school.

GISHWES Hugs the World

What is GISHWES? The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen.

Why are we hugging for it? Because they wanted to break the world record for biggest online hug album (or something like that) (hope the link works) and Megan is a devotee and wanted to participate. She dragged us all into it.

That said, we had lots of fun, and they really turned out great. In fact, we got one we think should be our Christmas photo:

The First Day

They're off to second and fourth grade, walking by themselves this year. They look a little angry, but they were mostly excited.

An Infestation

Of flies. (No, not of minions. We wouldn't mind that.) We don’t know where they’ve come from, but our house inside is literally crawling with them. Well, not so much that we can’t move, and they do tend to congregate by the windows and back door. But enough that we brought the vacuum upstairs and Kristen wields it yelling, ”DIE FLIES DIE!” while sucking up unsuspecting flies. Hopefully they will do that soon.

The girls spent the week enjoying doing nothing. Caitlyn spent every day in her PJs, and it wasn’t until Friday when she started going stir-crazy. Which prompted her to make crayon art and convince me to go get her a cell phone. Alison spent the week alternating reading and playing computer games. And Kristen... well, Kristen got to go to Art Camp. Every day this week, at 9 a.m. sharp. She’d get up early with Russell and me, and they’d drive me to work and she got to sit there in the café eating a cupcake while Russell read to her. She was a bit hit with the early morning regulars. And then she went to draw for an hour. I think she liked the alone time with Dad better than the drawing, but I took her on Wednesday and Friday, and she seemed to enjoy it in her own way. You can see some of her art here.

It rained a lot -- so much that we’re now out of a drought. Which makes me say, “GREAT. Now stop raining so my tomatoes will ripen.” It’s been sunny all weekend (I should have mowed), but the rain is supposed to come back tonight. I’m tired of it. I shouldn’t complain, but I’m tired of it.

We actually celebrated Megan’s birthday ON her birthday and only once (which is, unfortunately, rare). She went to work, and then I took her shopping (oh the joys of having a teenager with a paycheck: she’ll walk around wearing something new, and I say, “Where did you get that?” and she says, “I bought it. At Target.” RIGHT. You have your own money now.) and we tried to work out some tech issues with her tablet. (A digital camera to go with her to India instead of an iPod Touch). We waited until the evening to open presents and eat cake (mostly because I had to make it first), and then we watched Labyrinth. Some birthday, huh? It’s hard to believe she’s 17 though!

We did go see Sea of Monsters this week. Alison took Megan on Wednesday as her birthday present. They both came home INSCENSED. Seriously. For the die-hard fan, it’s an abomination. They were yelling about it and saying it’s not worth the money. They scared the poor missionaries we had over for dinner. But, Kristen had worked so hard to be able to go to the movie (she’s had Russell read her all the books -- they’re on Battle of the Labyrinth) this summer, so we decided to take her. It wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t great -- they really missed the whole point of the books, and Percy is too earnest and Annabeth didn’t DO anything -- but it wasn’t awful. (And Nathan was adorable. You knew it was coming.)

That’s about it for us. We’re starting school this week. And there was much rejoicing.

Art Camp

We had decided, this summer, to let everyone interested choose one or two classes that they'd like to do. Alison chose rock climbing (which she loved). Caitlyn chose boxing (which she didn't). Kristen chose volleyball, which was canceled because not enough people signed up. She was quite disappointed.

Fast forward a month or so, and she's been complaining about never getting to do ANYTHING. I notice a flyer on the wall at work for an art camp at WSU with this Mark Kistler guy and I thought to myself, "Kristen likes to draw. Maybe she'd like to take this."

We asked, and she was game. What it was: going for an hour every day to WSU, sitting in a classroom, and listening to Mr. Mark go through his drawings step by step. They went pretty quickly, and sometimes she had a hard time keeping up. She was often frustrated, too, because her drawings didn't look as good as his drawings. But, as you can see, she is quite the talented cartoonist.

Her favorites are the marshmallows.

So, was it worth it? Perhaps. She may never draw like this again, but at least she did something. 

And that was worth the money. 

Young and Sweet, Only Seventeen

The camera wasn't working exactly right, and there are some in-jokes up there that I'm not going to bother explaining (the Loki'd sign). But, for the most part, Megan had a lovely day. She bought herself some things with money she's been earning, we've made some headway on tech issues for her trip to India, and she's got some presents still coming in the mail (because Mom ordered them from Etsy, and they're taking their time getting here). It's hard to believe, sometimes, that 17 whole years have gone by.

Turner Falls

Four years ago we discovered this lovely quaint Oklahoma state park.

We said we'd be back, and it only took us four years to do it, too. We picked a free Saturday (there was only one in August), and in spite of a 4 1/2 hour trip down (it was only supposed to be three), we had a grand time.

We played in the big lake for a long time -- until Kristen got scared going off the big slide and we were hungry...

And then we found a place to do burgers. And listen to Tejano music.

Then we headed up to the upper falls and went swimming there until it was very late and time to head home.

We stopped at Pops on the way home; I'd never seen it at night, and I had to snap a picture of the cool colors.

It was a fun day!

Mini Golfing

Kristen said, about a month ago, "We haven't gone golfing where you hit the ball through fun things. We should do that." So, I hunted up our RecycleBank points, redeemed them for a round of mini golf, and off we went.

We being me, Russell, Alison, and (of course), Kristen.

Of course there was bickering. But there was also a bit of learning: Russell taught both of them how to line up a shot and take the time to actually make it in. No one did spectacularly great, but we didn't do badly either. And even though the girls wanted to do other things -- like ride the rides or play at the arcade -- and whined because we said no, it was a lovely evening to be out. I'm glad Kristen suggested it.

Fence Building, Part 2

One of Russell's students came back on Monday to fix the last section of fence. I didn't know about this until I saw the pictures, but I guess Kristen and Alison helped them out. 

Pretty cool.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Add caption

Exhibit A: We headed off to Turner Falls, down in Oklahoma. We stopped there once, about four years ago, on our way to Dallas and we all had fond memories of going and have been meaning to go back ever since. Well, since Megan’s leaving, we finally decided to make the time and go. We didn’t get started until 12: 30 (chores and waiting for Megan to get off of work), and the drive down took a lot longer than we expected (we hit traffic), so we didn’t really get down and get swimming until 5. But since it was 100 degrees down there (and NO rain; we are very grateful for the rain, but enough already), it didn’t really matter. We had a blast sliding down falls, jumping into lakes, swimming in the river, and going places we weren’t supposed to (like behind the “Danger, no swimming” sign so we could get under the big waterfall. We took dinner down and ate next to a Hispanic family blasting Tejano music from their car. And we didn’t leave until 8:30. We had a frantic stop at Pops at 9:55 p.m. (“GO! GO! GET IN THERE BEFORE THEY LOCK THE DOORS!”) and made it home at 12:30 a.m. Totally worth it.

Exhibit B: After much stressing on the part of Russell about getting everything in order, we finally got Megan’s student visa application sent off. That makes it sound easy. It wasn’t really. Friday was running to the DMV (Megan needed a document that had her name and address on it, and a bank statement didn’t count, and she had lost her previous permit; note to self: replace these things IMMEDIATLY when they get lost. Sheesh.); running to the bank to get the form notarized; withdrawing a money order (and switching Megan’s account to a checking account so she can get a debit card. Eeep), and then putting it in the mail. And we also bought round-trip tickets to Kolkata. She leaves September 23rd. Now, to get her college application done before she goes.

Exhibit C: Tuesday, Alison and Kristen had the Chavez girls over. As soon as I got home, they asked if they could go play in the runoff ditch. I said sure, and off they went. I didn’t think any more of it until they came back in about 4:45. (I got home at 2:30). About 5 minutes after they got in, a cop knocked at the door. It seems someone called the cops because some kids were playing unattended down there. I was livid. Seriously. Mostly because I KNEW where they were, they never went too far from the house, and THEY NEED THE CHANCE NOT TO BE HOVERED OVER BY ME ALL THE TIME IN ORDER TO BECOME DECENT HUMAN BEINGS. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the words to say this when the cop was at my door, mostly because I was furious. Furious at being judged as a “bad mom” by some unknown person and furious that this cop felt he needed to follow up on it. (Side note: I do recognize that there are bad people in the world. And I do recognize that there are neglectful parents in the world, and I do recognize that the stranger thought they were doing a good thing. And I should be grateful -- kind of like all the rain we’ve been having -- for it.) So I said stupid things like: “If I wanted to keep them where I knew where they were at all times, they’d never leave the basement.” And: “My life isn’t my own?” (Duh, no it’s not, I know that’s not what I meant, but the cop was entirely justified in saying: “No, it’s not. That’s part of being a parent, ma’am.” Yeah, yeah. I know that.) And: “I just want them to be able to explore and have a childhood.” (WAIT: that’s not stupid. His response, though? “Well, take them to a park and they can explore while you have eyes on them.”) It took me forever to calm down (and some shouting at Russell and some assuring the kids that I wasn’t mad AT THEM). And I really appreciated kind words from friends after I vented on Facebook (and phone calls from wonderful people the next day, too). I HATE that this country is so paranoid about safety and so paranoid about bad things. I know they could be kidnapped. But there were FOUR of them together. They know to stick together, not to wander too far, and not to talk to strange people. And if a car went over the bridge and smashed them, how is me being there going to stop that?? If I gave into ALL my fears, NO ONE WOULD EVER LEAVE THE HOUSE. So, I buck up, hope and pray for the best, and let my kids experience life. I wonder what this cop would say about me letting Megan go all the way to India? It’s kind of the same thing: if I wanted 100% assurance that she was safe, I’d never let her leave. And we’d all be miserable.

Enough of a soapbox. I guess I’m still a little angry over it all.

That’s about it for us. We've got one more week of summer before it’s back to school. Caitlyn’s already protesting an earlier wake up time....