I Made It!

Yee Haw.  Hopefully you faithful readers of mine (Hello Mom, Ashley, Kris and Mary! And maybe Dad, Barb...I think that's probably it...Haha.) will be hearing from me on a more regular basis because...Ben and Tessa are back to school! And so are all their buddies who tempt them into the park and make their way into my basement and bathroom!  Ben started last week and Tessa started yesterday.  Before we get into the back to school pictures, here is a quick update from the last few weeks of summer.

Allan has shown a lot of interest in getting outside this summer.  He's been indoors his whole life except for a few forays on a leash where he laid on the ground and rolled around the whole time.  I fear losing him so I never liked letting him outside.  But a two weekends ago on a Saturday morning he snuck outside when a visting kid was standing in the doorway with the door wide open so I closed our gates and let him roam around the yard with me supervising closely.  I think he's too wide to fit through the spaces in the rickety old fence (you can see one in the picture below) but I know he could clear it if he wanted to and I also think he might like to climb a tree and maybe couldn't get himself down.

He really enjoyed himself and went on the prowl like a tiger.  Now I don't worry so much if he gets out back there as long as the gates are closed.  You can see from the picture that we've spend the whole summer here without trying to get our yard in shape.  This was before it rained later that week and it was on about a month without any water which makes it look even worse. 

What else...during the last week of the pool being opened I brought the GoPro and we took some fun underwater pictures.  

It was a fun summer of swimming but I can't say I was sad to finally put this pile of beach towels in the closet for awhile instead of having them constantly in the laundry, hanging on the deck rail and piled up by the door with the beach bag.

See you next year towels!  I will take you off the shelf and inhale your chlorine/sunscreen scent soon enough!  I wish could make some wax melts or air fresheners to replicate the smell of my beach towels.  

There is also very big news.  I will spare you the photos but Milo is now potty trained!  This isn't a bragging announcement.  He is, after all, going to be 3 in about 1.5 months.  It is more a celebration.  He has even been dry at night since the first day.  It will be really nice to have only one kid in diapers and changing a large toddler's size 6 full of poop as he uses his rapidly expanding vocabulary to describe the condition of the diaper is not something any parent is nostalgic about.  

Now, the fun part.  The first day of school!  Oh, was I a happy lady.  Unlike last year, I had no anxiety at all.  Ben did start at a new school but, as I mentioned before, it is the school where I attended starting in 2nd grade and ending when I graduated.  There is a group of new young teachers, construction is underway for a new addition and the mood is upbeat. Ben was excited to hear that his teacher is a military veteran and he already knew most of his classmates from summer activities.  And, the best part for me and for him-he can ride his bike to school!  

It's a two block ride and I can stand at the corner and see him arrive safely and it takes about 30 seconds.  It is a great arrangement for now.  Once snow falls we will have to come up with a new routine so hopefully it doesn't fall for a few months. 

Ready to go in!  Back in the archives of my mom's photo drawer there is a picture of me pretty close to this very spot but I'm standing in front of a big old tree.  There were many trees lining the street in front of the school and they all died of elm disease in the 90's.  They have been replanted but it's hard to overcome those losses.  

This was a very quick photo where he sat down for about ten seconds before racing out to the playground.  Well, OK then.  See you after school I guess...I didn't mind because I had my own fun planned.  I had a friend in Bismarck who hosted a back to school get together complete with mimosas for the moms to celebrate the return of routine.  I always thought it would be fun so after inviting a friend over and being met with an enthusiastic yes, I decided to make it a party and invited about 20 more people.  I wasn't sure how it would turn out since I knew people had varying schedules for work but many had taken the morning off already or have flexible schedules and I ended up with ten guests and we partied the morning away until lunchtime while the toddler crowd ransacked the basement and the kids' bedrooms and Calvin pulverized a muffin and spread crumbs all over the floor but it was totally worth it!

Time for the moms to get it poppin'!

Success!

Yesterday Tessa started preschool!  We went shopping a few weeks ago and she chose a tunic with a sequined dinosaur on it.  Okayyyyy.  Then she had a bow in her hair and I hoped she would forget but she remembered also add her sequined headband!  

And, lucky for her it was a cool first morning of school and not a standard August sauna morning so she got to wear her kitten boots!  

It was fun to have her start at this preschool.  My great aunt used to run this place until she retired in the 90's but I was already in elementary school when we moved here so only my brother attended.  It used to only be in the basement of the building which was a Masonic Lodge upstairs but now the Masons in town have mostly, ahem, moved on to their reward so the preschool has a nicely renovated upstairs as well.  It's a well regarded program with real educated teachers with advanced degrees and people from other towns bring their kids here and there is a waiting list and everything (Milo didn't get in this year waaaaaah) and I'm really glad we have something like this in this small town. 

What else has happened in August?  I am pretty sad about John McCain dying.  Usually politicians come and go and you can't get too worked up about it but I am going to miss the stability he brought to the government.  Like whenever everything was going to h3ll and he would be interviewed on TV I always thought, "well at least that guy is there." I am confident he knew what he was doing and I think it made everyone feel grounded.  Now...who knows anymore.  It's a lot of pressure for one guy in his 80's to keep America calm. John Kerry is still there at least.  

VBS to the Rescue!

Well, here I am and it's only been four days since my last post!  The reason is...Ben and Tessa are at full day Vacation Bible School this morning! It's a preview of the school year!  I dropped them (and the six dozen cookies I volunteered to make like a clown) and then went grocery shopping with only two kids!  I loved me some VBS when I was a kid.  It used to be in the evening for five days in a row and was taught by moms and other involved adults who were assisted by teenagers.  Now they have a travelling Bible camp staff that makes the round every year and they run it with their snazzy and appealing programming. I'm not even sure what the theme is this year.  Usually it has something to do with the ocean, treasure hunting or fishing. 

Just for the heck of it, I just looked up some themes on the Internet and found these themes for 2018...I see boats, water and rivers.  I was pretty close.  

The only annoying thing about full day bible school is we have to send a packed lunch.  I'm guessing they will eat the chips and nothing else.  

We are heading into a heat wave where the color coded heat map showed us having white hot heat (the next level after red) over the next week.  It's already heating up out there.  I am so over sunscreen and wet towels and swimwear being strewn all over the place but I must endure for a few more weeks.  We've been swimming a lot this summer.  Calvin has even started enjoying the pool.  

This was from a few weeks ago but we took him last night and he loved it.  The water has really heated up from the sun and it felt like a bath tub.  

More swimming pics:

I took this picture to remember Tessa's crazy swimsuit mix-n-matching but I am putting it hear because of the bag.  That bag has gone everywhere with me this summer and when we were watching the kids' swimming lessons a few days ago it became infested with ants because I left a half eaten box of raisins in there for two weeks. That's an indication of my patience with summer.  

Swimming lessons is done.  Neither kid passed.  But they still got a certificate! And Swedish fish!  Which I had to restrain myself from eating!

Well, I'm off to enjoy my 1/2 as crazy morning with 1/2 of my kids.

August Check In

Sigh, it's August.  I knew I had been away from the blog for awhile but I didn't realize my last post was in June.  Summer has taken it's toll on my quiet computer time.  Milo doesn't nap anymore and there are no peaceful school hours.  Between 9 or 10 each morning the neighborhood kid takeover begins unless we are going somewhere like swimming lessons.  Soon it is lunch time and then it is pool time in the afternoon.  Then comes more chaos of kids running in and out, the torturous task of throwing together some kind of evening meal ( I would rather do almost ANYTHING else during summer) and the rest of the nights have been spent unpacking, sorting and churning more junk than anyone would believe between storage units, our garage and different floors of the house while the kids undo our progress.  I've had many moments where I have looked longingly at my laptop, folded, quiet and unopened for days at a time as it sits wedged various places.  I don't have a designated safe spot to leave it out in this house like I did before so I find myself defaulting to using my phone for the Internet more often than ever before.

There have been many occasions that would have made amusing blog posts.  A few weeks ago I ordered a rug for the master bedroom.  I knew I needed a big one so I just ordered the biggest one they had (from Wayfair, the flash sale site) and it turned out to be more like wall to wall carpet (because I didn't measure the room).  So it had to be returned. That was embarrassing. Who doesn't measure the room? Or there was the incident where Justin hung a tiny rack of hooks for keys at the back of a cute little built in grotto (formerly for the land line phone with a little shelf protruding from the wall) and the screws popped out of the living room wall and no one noticed until the next day.  More patching, more painting.  We had a final trip to Bismarck to clear out our storage unit and we had an impromptu block party with our neighbors on the old cul de sac.  It wasn't easy to drive away after that.  It was especially sad when Milo got excited and said "We go home Mama?" as we were driving on our old familiar route.

The new house is slowly coming together but moving has been so much work this time around.  I have been tossing cardboard boxes out the back door for months now and we have unloaded endless trailer loads. The neighbors probably think we have some sort of deep underground storage area buried beneath the house.

Calvin has been progressing as expected.  He's very close to crawling and he has five teeth.  He's a popular baby with the elementary school aged girls in town.  I reached a big milestone also.  I wrapped up nursing and pumping!  We had many bags of milk in the freezer and when the last one was gone I had the strangest feeling...and it was not a longing for another baby I can tell you that.

Here are a few pictures or Mr. 7 Month Old himself.

Notice the nice new rug behind him...which fits nicely in the room.  

Calvin has more hair that any of the other babies.  Tessa didn't have this much hair when she was two years old.  

Allan is established in the new house.  He used to like to lay in the sink at our first house right after we adopted him and he's started doing it again.  

He does this on  a daily basis.  It's so weird.  

School will be starting in 19 days (not that I'm counting) and the sports field across the park from my house has already been prepared for football with the lines mowed into the grass.  Soon the clink of baseball bats will be replaced by football sounds and hopefully I will be able to write a blog post more than once a month.