Holiday Cheer!

Baby, it's COLD outside! School is out for the rest of the year, and we have been housebound for two days now, after a well-intended but quickly aborted attempt to remain outside for the 10 minutes it would have taken to add on a few candy cane lights to the driveway. The kids stood outside for about 3 minutes and then marched their triple layered, hat-wearing, glove-toting little bodies into the laundry room, from which they announced they were not coming back out again.
Hence, we played school with every single stuffed animal they own:
(btw, those that were "fighting" are lined up near the couch... Um..guys? How often does this happen in real school??)

Then we did an awesome craft:
(btw, you may think of it as an inconsistency, but I see it as sheer artistic genius: note that all four seasons happily coexist in this friendly village-on-the-lake)

And all this, in the happiest holiday-est mood. Merry Christmas to all!

Angels we have heard on high...

Vasco's enthusiasm is... well.. divine :)

'Tis the season to be.. tipsy?

While no doubt it is the season to be the kind of tipsy one associated with bucketfulls of spiked cider, gallons of mulled wine and various warm merry beverages that leave you.. well.. tipsy, it is a different kind of tipsy that we are talking about here.

Sat. Dec 6: 10am. We set out on a mission to purchase the first live christmas tree since the kids were born. Ready for the fabulous smell of real pine trees, we head out: the kids are entirely not sure whether we have finally lost our minds when we assure them that we will bring back the christmas tree strapped to the top of our car. Convinced that the whole world has indeed gone mad, they sipped hot chocolate while the helpful people at the tree lot did exactly as we promised: strapped the tree to the roof of the car.
Once home, millions of pine needles sloughing off as we dragged the tree in, we dusted out the old tree stand and plopped the tree in. Vacuumed 4 pounds of needles. A frenzy of decorating later and half a vacuum bag more of tree needles, and we had a presentable tree.
It even snowed briefly at dinnertime, to finish creating the perfect "I'm dreaming of a white christmas" atmosphere. Books were read under the tree, a christmas carol thrown in for good measure, and happy kids were sent to bed. Happier adults stirred up something called a Hot Russian Christmas with an extra shot of vodka for good measure and settled down downstairs in front of a lovely roaring first fire of the season to watch a silly movie. Spirits flowed and spirits were high, and as Mike was trying to poke at the fire to put it out, I climb happily upstairs to find this:
Atwinkling still, it was indeed a sight to see.. I took a picture and brought it for Mike to see, handing him the camera as I said I hoped he had a sense of humor.

A few sawed branches later.....

.. and a concoction of weights, props, and counterweights, the tree is up again, 7 extra pounds of needles have been vacuumed up, crushed ornaments replaced, water mopped up, and merriment restored!

Happy Holidays!

Ahoy, Pilgrims!

Work, work, work, work... mostly the reason for the lack of updates. But biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression aside, on Friday evening, Nov 21, I updated projection #321 and shut down the computer, turned on the out-of-office reply, and packed 6 days of clothes for 4 people into a suitcase in a half (thank you very much!). Sunny Caribbean here we come! And it was sunny! And it was warm!! And everyone loved the "big boat"! This is a Thanksgiving tradition we can definitely get used to.
We were thankful for being there together (all 17 of us), for the sun, for the outstanding service on the ship, for bunk beds, for the mint chocolates on the pillow every night, for the children's program, for the endless refills of ice cream (as Justine set a personal if not world record on dropping her ice cream every single time within 2 minutes of getting it), for the dolphin we got to play with in Cozumel, for the immense jacuzzis, for the spectacular afternoon on a beach in Costa Maya where the water glistened, the seven kids constructed some sort of aqueduct on the beach, and the adults drank beer. Did I mention the warm sun?

Exhausted Parents' Rant Against Standard Time (EPRAST)

Let's take a trip back in history, shall we? Circa 5 years before kids. End of daylight savings time? No prob. In fact, an event not unanticipated with some degree of hope: the magical extra hour of sleep, combined (at least for some time) with not waking up to such complete darkness every morning.

Let's now shake off those memories and come back to today: the official end of daylight savings time. It goes something like this:
5:23 am. Vasco cheerily walks into our bedroom. I sob (my turn to get up with the kids today), and try to convince Vasco it is still the middle of the night (it feels like it!!! it looks like it!!), and Mike bravely walks him back to his bed. Mike returns in a few minutes, sanz Vasco, and a delicous quietness settles in, which makes me drool from excitement as I fall -- no, plummet! --back to sleep.
6:33 am. "Mommy?" I fall out of bed, decide against the extra effort of grabbing my glasses, and stumble-run-Elaine-dance over to the kids' room and flop myself on Vasco's bed. "Honey, 10 more minutes and you can get up." The stealthy surprise attack must have confused him for a few minutes (which I gratefully use to happily sleep-drool on his stuffed animals I am cleverly using as a pillow!), but then he recovers: "Mommy, can I get up?" I ask, desperation and hope intricately mixed in my voice: "You are not sleepy? There is no way you are falling back asleep?"... 2 minutes later we are in the kitchen, pouring cereal. As I set the clocks back on various timers in the kitchen, back to 6:59 am, I quietly weep.
What follows is a list of what transpired next: baking a cake layer (tomorrow is Mike's birthday), cartoons, Sunday school, a long run (me), hardware store trip, lunch, random tree/bush climbing, a long run (Mike), my pure genius potato stamp crafts (which would have been much more successful had we not run out of paint to dip them in 3 weeks ago!), run to the store for eggs, second cake layer baked. Club houses constructed from dining room chairs and blankets, the destruction of the couch, and an apparent relocation of every single book from the bookcase.

I look at the clock: it winks and it mocks me: 3:15???!!! ARE YOU KIDDING????!!!

At 5:10pm, as we are already enveloped in midnight-quality darkness, I am making dinner as Mike prepares our "comfort juice" (aka Mike's homemade ROCKING margaritas).

So here I am at 6:15, said dinner and margarita consumed, sharing a rant, and half-laughing, half-sobbing at Mike's attempt at humor: "Okay, kids, only 69 minutes till bath time".

Happy Halloween!

The kids have been going full force since 7:14am...and I am not kidding.. fell asleep as soon as I turned the lights off in their room. 14 hours of Halloween! :)

Financial Markets, High School, and Pumpkins

Yipes! It's been too long to even try to catch up... Financial crises have been keeping me busy at work, as our division is shrinking even as work is tripling..Today I witnessed the following conversation:

Boss 1: "I need her to work on my project for today and tomorrow full time!"
Boss 2: "But... (to me) how much more time do you need to finish my project?"
Me: "Ummm.... 40 minutes?"
Boss 2: "Can I have 40 minutes between today and tomorrow?"
Boss 1: "I guess.... but only 40 minutes!"
Boss 1 and Boss 2: "Maybe we can split her in two! Ha ha ha!"
Boss 2: "But I want the right hand! Ha ha ha!"
Me: "Help!"

And its not that I am so irreplaceable, it's just that 1) we are so crazy short-staffed, and 2) the world has gone so completely crazy. Our projections seem to have a shelf-life of exactly 243 minutes lately.

But back to the conversation that made me log on today.
We have since graduated to separate baths (which is a separate story), so while I was giving Justine her bath, the following conversation transpired:
J: "I'm going to be in Kindergarten next?"
Me: "Yes, but next year: now it's winter, then it will be spring, then summer, and only then it will be time for Kindergarten"
J: "Why?"
Me: "Because you need to be 5 to go to Kindergarten."
J: "Oh. I'm going to be 5 in Kindergarten, and 6 in first grade?"
Me: (totally impressed at her sequential ordering skills) "Yes!"
J: "And then high school?"
Me: (fainting at the concept of Justine in high school): "Um... let's not rush that yet!!"
J: "But where is high school? Long drive?"

It seems like yesterday that they were learning to walk! Today they say goodbye to me by the car at the curb as they run into school all by themselves, with their friends, and their school lunches, and their grown up language and goofy jokes (Vasco's favorite is "Why did the cookie go to the hospital?" you should ask him some time). Luckily I still get a giant juicy smack-on-the-lips kiss before they run off, but I suspect that by the time they make it to high school that will no longer be cool...

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