Cruisin' along

The summer is cruisin' along with only one week to go and I'm having trouble keeping up - partly because so much of my time is now spent entertaining kids and partly because I have been doing so much for others. I've finally got this one cruise photo posted. Oliver and Lael had a blast on the Disney Cruise. Although there were definitely fun parts for the rest of us and we are glad we went and grateful the rest of Erik's family (with the exception of one niece who was working) came with us, we are definitely ready to take a trip without the kids! We're considering a 10-day Alaska cruise in 2010 with some friends. We'll see ... I will try and get more pictures posted this weekend. Sorry it takes me so long to get to everything! We snuck off to the beach in Santa Cruz with the Englishes Wednesday afternoon and it turned out to be a beautiful day so I was really glad we went. We got there just in time to see the Chinese Acrobats, which was amusing but after watching so much Olympics coverage, I'm a little hard to impress. We're looking forward to Wente next weekend and then summer's over! I'm hoping to get the house under control while the kids are at school. Wish me luck!

The defiant one

Today when we got to the movie theater for the weekly kids summer $1 movie - today was Bee Movie - Lael got out of the car without shoes on. This happens regularly and I am sick of it. If we hadn't had an extra child along (I was helping his mom out), then I would have just sent Oliver in to the movie and I would have sat out in the car with her for the entire movie. As it was, I saw about 15 minutes of the movie because Henry was much more interested in running up and down the aisles and in front of the screen. But I made Lael pay Oliver one point per sock (that's 50 cents), so she wore his socks and he went in with just his shoes and with no socks on. But I'm obviously going to have to make her pay a price soon or this showing up places without shoes on will never end. Honestly, it's this kind of crap that makes me glad to have school coming up so I won't have to spend all day every day with her. It's hard to deal with her without a break.

I've already had to modify so many of my dreams, both because of her choices and because that's how life has worked out. I took these pictures a couple weeks ago on the day I could tell she was going to pull her front tooth out. It made me sad because I really wanted kindergarten pictures before she lost her front teeth. Erik and I have such cute kindergarten pictures and I was hoping the kids would have them too. After our front teeth came in, we both looked a little gangly for awhile. Oliver's kindergarten picture turned out OK, except that someone wetted and combed his hair right before they took the picture so it looks kind of funky. Anyway, so much for that dream.

My current plan for the kids for college is to ship them off to BYU in Provo, UT to be near my family for college. It's really hard to get in now but I think the kids are smart enough. I'm sure I've got quite a few battles to fight with Lael but hopefully she won't choose college as one of them. So far she is quite the defiant child. But darn if she isn't cute!

Heatwave!

I know I've once again neglected my blog, but as always, I have good excuses. We are still recovering from tent camping in an RV camp for the July Fourth weekend. This week brought oral surgery for me, babysitting for ward members who were in need of help, soccer, dance, the beginning of Jr. Giants baseball and scout camp for Oliver, all in the midst of a heatwave. Somehow that sentence doesn't even remotely cover how much stress this week was to get through.

Last night Erik and I went to The Police in concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. I have definitely had my share of second-hand pot smoke for the year between white trash camping and the concert, but the music was good. We have tickets to the Journey concert in September (Heart and Cheap Trick are opening) and I have tickets to go see New Kids On The Block (two sets actually - in San Jose and Salt Lake but I haven't made up my mind which one I'm going to). Calm down - it was the first concert I ever went to with my friend Tamra and I think it will be fun, although I know their new stuff is not that great. We're thinking of coming out in November for two weeks (driving out and flying Erik back and forth to work) so I can go to the Nov. 17 concert and we can spend Thanksgiving with the Olsons. We haven't worked out the details yet and we've been so good for the past three years since Oliver has been in school about not taking the kids out of school that I won't feel bad about doing it. But it does make things hard when they're in bilingual Spanish and we're not fluent.

This weekend we have a Giant's baseball game after the kids' games and Erik has to change the transmission fluid on the car before we drive to LA for the Disney Cruise. Fun, fun!

Two strikes against breastfeeding

Some of you may not yet know about my botched attempt at eye surgery. In December, just after Erik got hired on at Adobe, I decided to look into getting Lasik done. I figure if I'm ever going to do it, I might as well get to enjoy a decade without glasses. So I did my research online and chose Scott Hyver Visioncare. He is the 49ers eye doctor and has several offices in the area. So I went to see him and got the sad news that I would only qualify for PRK, which is like Lasik, but instead of cutting a flap and molding your eye, they mold the top layer, which means you have to regrow the top layer. This takes several days - at least one very painful one. Because I have a thinner than average cornea, I risked having my prescription slip after a year or 18 months with Lasik. The only option if that happens is to wear rigid contact lenses. The reason I don't wear contacts much right now is because my eyes are so dry so this would be horrible for me and wasn't worth the risk. But I was definitely bummed that I wasn't a Lasik candidate. I went ahead and scheduled the surgery for Memorial Day weekend, thinking that would be far enough away to handle things with Henry better, and I arranged for my Mom to come out and help since I wouldn't be able to drive for a few days. I asked about breastfeeding and they told me that wasn't a problem. We put aside the $4,000 in the flex spending account and I was locked in. So the date finally arrived, my mom was out here and I psyched myself up (which was actually really hard) and Erik drove me to the office. I paid my money and had my eye tests and asked the eye doctor if they could prescribe a different medication for after since the one I had didn't look like I should breastfeed with it. She said she would go check with Dr. Hyver and when she came back, she said I would have to reschedule because they had just changed procedures during the surgery a couple weeks ago and several of the drops they used would not be conducive to breastfeeding and they couldn't change back right then, so that was that. They refunded my money and I went home and actually had a fun Memorial Day weekend with my parents in San Francisco. Strike One.

Our latest saga is that Henry has eight teeth and half of them have cavities. The tops are just a rotting away every time I breastfeed him apparently. I took him in because he has a very obvious cavity in the front of one of his top teeth and they told me there are cavities all behind the front top teeth. I am supposed to brush his teeth in the middle of the night or whenever I feed him, which is pretty impossible to do, since one of the reasons we are in this predicament in the first place is because he resists the toothbrush. According to the dentist, since he is under 3 years old, he is "precooperative," a term which Erik apparently finds hilarious and has now used at least a dozen times since he heard it. So they are going to have to sedate him and are recommending four caps on his top four teeth. It is very sad. I am not sure whether to fight to have the cavities filled or not because at his age the chances are they will have to be capped anyway before they fall out. Poor kid has Oliver's teeth, I guess (Oliver got 5 caps at age 3) but in our defense, Lael has yet to have a cavitiy. At any rate, that is Strike Two.

Sadly, the root canal I got last year is failing and I am pretty sure I am going to have to have work done on it again. Between paying for Henry's dental bills, which will be extensive, getting me new glasses (since mine are four years old and I can hardly wait another minute), and another root canal, I'm thinking maybe we'll just put $2,000 into braces for Oliver (since he has an overbite and they are recommending early orthodontic care) and that will pretty much take care of the $4,000. If we do that I'm not sure I'm up for getting my eyes done next year. It was a lot harder to psych myself up for than I thought it would be and I don't know if I want to go through it again and I would have to have help come out again. It's only June and what a year we've already had!

Summer update

So summer has finally begun. The end of the school year was a doozy. Last Thursday night I got myself voted Booster Club (PTA) president but I am essentially the queen of nothing unless I get it organized because we don't even have anybody to be treasurer. So that should be fun. On Friday I put on a movie matinee of Ratatouille, which the whole school was invited to and I was sweating bullets because I didn't know if we would have 40 kids or 400 and I had to arrange popcorn and do everything for it and I was afraid it would be just me and the principal with a bazillion kids, but it turned out OK. We had 60 kids and some parents stayed to help. I really have to get this school web site done so we can communicate! I learned to not give the kids too much water because the spills and potty breaks got crazy! Anyway, on Saturday we had Henry's 1st birthday party and the kids spent all day fighting like banshees so it was hard to get anything done. We just joined a swim club and had the party up at the pool. It was a cowboy pool party so we had a BBQ. But I wasn't as organized as I would have liked because of the aforementioned fighting and we forgot the meat, so Erik had to run home. Then I realized I had forgotten the Henry Trivia game that I had spent all morning on, but I didn't realize it until almost the end of the party. I spent another 20 minutes retrieving that from home and when I got back we were out of time, so we grabbed everything and headed to the parking lot where we served cupcakes and I posted the Henry Trivia game to the car. It was crazy but fun. Sunday was Father's Day so we went to Erik's parents. Monday we had a visit from a friend from Oregon, Mike Christenson. It was fun to see him and catch up, although my house was in quite a state by this time and I as mortified, but he was kind about it. This left me with one night to get Oliver's yearbook done that I had committed to do for his class because the next day was the last day of school, so it meant an all-nighter for me. I finally gave up wrestling with the printer and went to bed from 4:30 - 6:00 am and then got up to get them done and showed up at his classroom with one hour to spare and had the moms finish assembling them. It wasn't my finest work, but they got done. I actually felt OK that day and started getting the house back under control, but I paid the rest of the week and didn't feel good. I tried to nap this afternoon but just ended up getting mauled by Henry. We told Oliver and Lael we would pay them if they played with Henry while we took a nap but it didn't work. He kept coming in and bugging us and then he bit me and dropped a remote on my head so I am going to go to bed now instead of taking the time to make this blog grammatically perfect. Anyway, this week we're onto swim lessons, trips to the library, etc. My kids are both so manic. Within half an hour of getting up Thursday, Oliver declared "summer stinks!" because I informed him he could not turn on the TV until he had done a job, gotten dressed and eaten breakfast. But Friday afternoon after we went swimming, he declared this was "the second day of the best summer ever!" Anyway, here's hoping!

Which child will be the last straw poll

If you chose Oliver, this week you are correct! It started on Thursday when I got the call from Blacow Elementary saying he was out of lunch money and couldn't borrow any more this close to the end of the school year so I either had to bring money now or he would have to eat a cheese sandwich they would give him. This would have been fine with him - he hates that the principal makes them eat their veggies in the school lunch so he usually chooses to bring a sandwich, so I ran the money over.

That afternoon I took my parents to the airport. On Friday morning, he announced his final project, a report on snakes which he hadn't started, was due the day before. I recall seeing a paper about this about the time of my botched surgery (more on that in another blog) but there was so much going on I had forgotten about it. So we knew what we would be doing last weekend.

Sunday night we were at Erik's parents for dinner and he did his report. When we got home, we worked on the diorama that had to accompany the report and presentation. We painted on some trees but I didn't take the time to plastitak the plants and snakes in like we usually do. I got him up early Monday morning to finish the diorama so of course he was running late for school.

Around noon, I got a call from Blacow asking to come pick him up for personal reasons. (I dread getting calls from the school in the middle of the day.) As I was taking him home to get a change of pants, he says to me, "The stuff disappeared out of my diorama." I asked what he was talking about and he said it must have fallen out of the box when he ran into the school. There had been lots of recesses by this time and I thought the chances of him getting his stuff back were slim. The only option I could think of was to make an announcement over the PA system telling any kids who picked up plastic snakes or plants off the ground today to turn them into their teacher. But I said a prayer and took him back for the last hour of school and parked about where Erik usually drops him off. Sure enough, on the grass near a driveway outside the school was where everything dumped out. Then we had to get someone to let him into his classroom because he didn't want to get in trouble for having a handful of toys at recess. Anyway, the kid is going to do me in. Seriously. The only real question up for debate is whether Lael or Henry will beat him to it.

Sam Duzett sighting!

Our very talented and busy nephew Sam Duzett came to San Francisco on choir tour, so we popped up in San Francisco to see him. The choir was very good and I think our kids enjoyed the concert (thank goodness it wasn't too long for them!). I wish we could expose them to more cultural events like this. It was my first time in St. Anthony's church, and I really like going to old churches. It makes me wish we valued architecture more in the LDS church. I sure do miss the Berkeley Ward chapel. Anyway, afterward, we took him next door to Beard Papa's Cream Puffs. It's my new favorite place to visit when going to Yerba Buena Gardens. Then we raced back to Oliver's baseball game so it was a crazy day but worth going!

Baby at the wheel!

Henry is happiest when waiting for the kids in the car while they play sports or Oliver is at piano, etc. He has spent so much time at the wheel that he has chewed on it and I had to get a wheel cover because it started falling apart.



Isn't being a third child tragic? These are some of the looks I get from Henry when I put him in his seat. He hates the carseat but he is generally good natured, so that means he fights it until he is in and then he is resigned to his fate. It helps when the kids are in the car to entertain him. I'm hoping when we get to turn his seat around in a few short weeks (because he will be a year!) that will help. He's got such a cute guppy face. I sometimes get told he looks like a Cabbage Patch baby because of the cheeks but my favorite is when they tell me he's a Precious Moments baby. I wish I had the time to take more pictures to capture the moments because he really is cute (although this is a few months ago and he's gotten so much more blonde).

How it went

So Oliver read Duck for President at Reading in the Park. As he was getting ready, he couldn't decide whether to wear his old falling-apart Heelies or his new Skechers shoes, so he asked me, "Think I should wear one of each?" I told him no, but I didn't realize until I saw the picture that he had actually done it. That's Oliver for ya!



Erik and I snuck out of the Booster Club event for an hour and left the kids at a friends' house to go out to Salang Pass. It's our favorite Afghan restaurant in Fremont and we hadn't been for a year (Ashley, I thought of you!). If you come visit, we'll take you there! I had to cancel our reservations at La Fondue in Los Gatos, but we'll make it there someday ...



It was a crazy week - as usual I guess but slightly crazier. We had two friends staying with us while their parents were out of town, added to the usual baseball chaos and other random events. Rob Duzett was in town for 24 hours, so we dragged the entire crew to have ice cream with him in San Jose. It was fun to see him for a few minutes. Lael said, "I like that uncle!" Thanks for the treat (and for being such a good sport)!


Other recent insanity includes me going to National Scrapbook Day with friends while Erik took our kids and two nonmember friends to a Primary friends activity and then to a baseball game on Saturday. That night we tried to go to San Francisco to see the KFOG Kaboom fireworks but BART was closed (Weird! I guess it was some kind of electrical problem.), so we drove up and then decided to try to see the fireworks from Treasure Island. This has worked for us before, although parking is always stressful because we're never the only ones with this idea. But I won't be trying it again because the fireworks were too far away and we did not have a good view from the places we could park on the island. Anyway, sorry Oscar and Caroline - we'll plan better next year! I've also sold more furniture on Craigslist and if I can just sell the PS2 and games, I'll have the trampoline paid for. Maybe next month ... Now if I could only get to the long-overdue laundry so we didn't have to dig through a mountain of clean clothes for socks every morning ...

Happy 11th Anniversary

It's been



Hi Erik,

I'm sorry I didn't have time or energy to come up with a present this year, but I love you! I am still glad I married you! Thank you for hanging in there with me through the constant craziness that is our life. I've been thinking of all the things we've been able to do together:

Spend Thanksgiving in Hawaii
Experience July Fourth at Mt. Rushmore
Party hard at Spring Break in Las Vegas
Shop the Christmas markets in Prague
Hang out at the Winter Olympics
Visit Yosemite in Winter
Cruise to Mexico

and I thought, what should we do next? Let's do it all again! Love you!

Emily

The big game

Of course there are a million things I should be doing right now besides blogging, but I have taken pity on you, dear loyal readers, and I am giving you an update. If you ever see lots of posts from me, I guess that means I am finally caught up with life, so don't hold your breath. We went to an A's game with some friends last week and it was a lot of fun. We wanted the kids to have a clue what game it was they were trying to play. Erik bought Oliver a flag and when he was waving it, we got put up on the jumbotron. We just bought the seats when we got there (for $10) each so we were in the outfield in the Plaza Reserved section with literally no one around us so it was ironic that that was the day we got up on the monitor, but it was fun. The A's won - yay! Personally, I'm hoping the move to Fremont goes through. Anyway, my favorite moment of the game was when Lael asked me, "Who do you think is going to get the game ball?" The Angels and Rockies coaches give out the game ball to whoever they feel did the best job each game and Lael and Oliver have both been coveting the game ball all season. They both finally were the ones to get their game balls this week. Yay! I was afraid Lael's coach would let her disdain for me get in the way of giving Lael the ball but Lael worked hard for it and got it Saturday. Oliver has had a hard time hitting the ball lately. The last couple games the only time he's made it on base is when he's taken one for the team and gotten hit with the ball by the kid pitcher. Kid pitch is rough at this age and I wish they wouldn't do it. Anyway, he got on first base this last game and got the game ball so we're happy for him too.

I'm sorry I haven't been good at keeping current on my blogging. I've started whiny blogs that you should be glad I didn't post about how my children are lazy and uncooperative and how Henry is teething so we aren't getting enough sleep but I never finished them, so you have been spared. But it's been stressful lately. I know I've had enough when I start fantasizing about getting an apartment that I go to live at during the day because it's nice and clean and then I come back to live with these slovenly folk at night or when I want to. I'm not saying I don't make messes. What I'm say is that when five people are messing and only one is cleaning up after them while trying to drag everyone to heaven with her, well, it doesn't go well. Enough of that. But if you want a laugh, go visit my friend Tamra's blog. She has an awesome article titled, "Spaghetti squash can be hazerdous to women" that'll make you laugh til your ribs hurt.

I'm getting the kids signed up for summer activities. There's a lot to choose from around here. We're going to buy a swim club pass from some friends who are moving, so that will be fun. I'm also signing the kiddos up for soccer and Giants Baseball (since it's free!). I've got to keep them busy but I have turned down summer school because I want to have entire free days where I can go to the beach or just stay home once in a while and not do anything! Imagine that! I haven't been bored in 7 years. I mean that literally, people. Well, off to my mountain of tasks ...

Lael's nail fettish

These photos were taken Sunday while we hung out at Erik's parents house for dinner. You can see Lael showing off her nails in several of them. Lael has been slightly obsessed with polishing her nails lately, which has led to no end to troubles, the latest of which was when she left her new blue nail polish on the toilet and Henry used it to paint the toilet and his face (although I don't think he ate any - he's still alive at any rate). He's a fast little bugger and that was no fun to clean up. And of course it happened Saturday right before our friends came over. Lael transports it with her, like lip gloss. We've been at a friend's house and I'll be thinking, "What's that smell? That smells familiar. Lael!" because she's decided to pull fingernail polish out of her pocket and paint her nails in the middle of someone else's kitchen. Obviously I should have waited til she had a little more sense to introduce her to nail polish. But I knew she would love it and I pulled it out as a reward one day. You can be I've lived to regret that day already. I haven't even told you the kicker yet. Remember Ryan, of the hair-cutting fame? Well, while Oliver and Lael were spending the weekend there a few weeks ago. Ryan's mom was taking a bath and looked down at her feet and was dismayed to see her nails had turned shiny and slightly yellow. So she did a google search to find out what could possibly be wrong with her. She was commenting on it when she noticed Ryan was snickering. Turns out Ryan and Lael snuck into her room while she was sleeping and painted her toenails. Lael assures me they massaged Ryan's mom's feet to keep her asleep. Also, Lael claims she really had no part. She just watched, which might be true, but still! We introduced Ryan to nail polish at Lael's birthday party in February and it was Lael's nail polish they were using. I apologize if I got any of the details of that story incorrect but as you can see, introducing Lael to nail polish has had far-reaching consequences, and I'm sure we haven't seen the last of them.

blogging in 90 seconds

Got no time. Giving myself 90 seconds to write this blog. At home while Henry naps and the rest of em are at Oliver's baseball game. Hoping he doesn't strike out all game again. It's kid pitch now and the last game was pretty sad for him, though he takes it well and still wants to go back. Got posters for Spirit Day next week to design, fliers for signups for Relief Society tomorrow morning to make, phone calls to set up meals for babies and funerals, chapel to clean. This all has to get done now before A's game to go to this afternoon. Friends coming for dinner. Forgot it was Passover and we shouldn't serve bread until they reminded us. Kind of a fun challenge but one I haven't thought of for awhile. Glad they practice Reform Judaism so we don't have to remove all leavened products from the house, though! As usual, way too much stuff planned for one day but I guess that's the fun of it. OK, so it's actually taken me 3 minutes to write this because I'm a copy editor and can't leave things alone. Maybe I should go jump on the tramp for 90 seconds while no one's home before I dive in to all this work. See ya!

Jump! Jump! Jump!

We finally did it! We bought a jumping hazard. It looks more like a large spaceship has landed in our backyard and it took us all weekend to set it up, but we finally have a trampoline. There are plenty available on Craiglist, but of course those weren't good enough. When I started looking into them, I couldn't stand the thought of the kids jumping without a net. Plus, we will have it for a long time so I wanted it to be a good one and to last. And when I saw the spring-free trampoline at Costco, I knew it was THE ONE. So I've been selling stuff via Craigslist and I've earned half of it but they were $150 off last week so I went ahead and bought it. I have to keep selling stuff, which is a pain, but it is so nice to have it gone. And the kids love it and it will be great for this summer, even if it does take up a large part of the yard.

So I listened to Elder Ballard's talk, really I did. I just haven't figured out how to apply it to my life yet apparently. I admit to being a bit confused as to how I am supposed to not do too many fun activities like book club and scrapbooking (which I would like to do more of) and then how I am supposed to pick one or two things I enjoy and do those (cause really that's more than I do right now anyway). I guess for me just having a baby is very overwhelming so I have hardly scrapbooked at all for a year. Heck, I didn't even get Christmas cards out. I end up dropping everything but what is most important, which I guess would be taking care of the kids and I do like to travel. But if I could drop one thing, it would definitely be the insane amounts of homework, and since that really isn't an option, I end up living an insane life. Anyway, I heard the talk and yet somehow I found myself waltzing into the Booster Club (PTA) meeting Thursday night (OK, so maybe it was more of a hobble because it involved getting out of Lael's T-ball game and meeting Erik at a Pump It Up birthday party to drop off the kids while fending off a cough and sore throat) and volunteering to single-handedly do the school's web site. Oh, and throwing my hat into the ring for president next year. It's a small ring. Only the principal, president, one board member and one teacher were at the meeting. There are a handful of moms who have been running everything and most of their kids are moving up to middle school next year and the ones left are burned out. I guess I just couldn't resist the power void. I would like to see big changes, which I will have to blog about at a future time. But it needs to start with parent involvement. And that can only happen if there is communication, which isn't happening right now - hence the web site. I would like to get parents to commit to being involved in one activity a year and to volunteer to donate 5 hours a year to it. And it would be great if they could sign up online. And if the summaries of the meetings and reminders of upcoming events were sent out by email. I plan to set up a google group. There is a yahoo group currently, but there are only 17 members, which just isn't doing it. So, I've obviously got my work cut out for me. But it isn't lost on me that Erik is employed at Adobe, because I'm using the Adobe Dreamweaver software to get the job done. So right now I'm knee-deep in the user guide, since I really have no idea what I'm doing but since there's no one else to do it, I'm going to have to. I did do one html web page in college when the Internet was becoming mainstream but sadly that is the extent of my experience. So I'll be burning the midnight oil to get this project done.

When it rains it pours, I guess. I haven't had to do much for my compassionate service calling the past couple months and this week I get to arrange meals for a surgery, a funeral and a baby all at once. Woohoo. Also today, I have been trying to get the info to get our property value reassessed since we are paying taxes on about $50,000 more than we could get for the house if we did sell it (and our taxes are $6,000 a year, so it will make a significant difference). Tonight after Family Home Evnening Erik has to finish our income taxes. He's got a release coming up so he had to work Saturday and he will be working a lot for the next month. The only reason I'm even blogging right now is because Lael's T-ball practice just got cancelled (Thank you! But it's because her coach, who is a college student, has a paper due. Hmmm. Doubt she'd accept that excuse from me but whatever! I'm not complaining). Well, I'd better get back to Dreamweaver: The Lost Guide. Oh ya, and the kids. And then there's dinner ...

Adios Aloha and ATA

Well, my dreams of going to Hawaii on a lark with Erik next year have been dashed. With the demise of Aloha and ATA airlines this week, airfare to Hawaii is expected to rise. And I highly doubt we'll be able to do what a couple friends did a few weeks ago and fly roundtrip for 3 nights with hotel for $450. I used to watch the super low fares every spring and dream of hopping off the mainland for a few days. It's a 5 hour flight from here. I'm sure we'll still make it to Kauai sometime but probably not as soon or as inexpensively as I'd planned. Oh well. I am very glad right now that we did go over Thanksgiving for our 10-year anniversary, even if we did take the family. I was able to fly all of us including Sky, for just under $2,000. I guess that won't be happening again so I'm very glad we did it when we did.

Now onto my soapbox. I watched the TV news coverage of the event last night and I was reminded why I despise TV news. I wasted 3.5 minutes of my life on the segment where all they covered were the disappointed ATA would-be passengers that showed up for flights yesterday morning and found out they held tickets for nothing. They talked about which airlines would theoretically honor the tickets (Why should they? They still need to make money so they don't go out of business. And I say theoretically because of course there aren't any seats left). I feel bad for these stranded people, but the effects are much more far-reaching. They did say those who purchased tickets more than 60 days ago are SOL. Those who used their credit cards within the past 60 days can probably get a refund. But what about all the employees? I haven't heard anything about them. Will this have an effect on our local economy? What about general prices for Hawaiian fares? Today's newspaper picked up on this story and said they would be going up, but none of this was covered in last night's newscast. You get my point. When I worked for the newspaper, I had access to AP and other news wires and I would see the differences between the stories the newspapers chose to run and what was covered on the TV news. I found it disgusting that the TV news would only give good coverage to those items they could get interesting footage of. If there wasn't video or at least a picture attached, it got relegated to a brief clip. Newspapers do this a little, giving prominent play to items with photos attached, but not as badly. But what I dislike the most is that anytime I actually know something about a subject that is covered on a TV newscast, I find they are full of crap. Just like how in last night's broadcast they mentioned each of the airline's ticket honoring policies and had worked up a graphic for it when in reality, every airline that is running flights to Hawaii is now overbooked and the other airlines don't matter to the affected passengers, so the information was essentially irrelevant. And yet someone watches this stuff or they wouldn't keep spewing it out, but I can hardly stand to watch it anymore. Sometimes I feel like a traitor to my journalism degree that I rarely read newspapers either, but I get my news from online and I occasionally watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I'm sure I'll watch it more in the near future because their election coverage is highly entertaining. So that's it. There's my 10 cents. You can take it for what it's worth.

Spring has sprung

March is my favorite month of the year. It helps that it's my birthday month, but mostly I love the shocking green color that springs up on the hills of the San Francisco Bay Area this time of year. And when I was in Israel, Spring only lasted a couple weeks, but it was beautiful. I like hiking, and we haven't done much of it with the kids, but I couldn't let the season go by without going up in the hills. We ended up hiking in the regional park near our house. Sometimes when I'm up in the hills in spring, it feels like what I imagine Ireland is like. Anyway, I think the Mission Peak hike is a few years down the road but it's fun going on short hikes for now.













We took Henry on his first bike ride. I love our Kettrike bike we bought Oliver when he was little. Henry loves going around the block. He is quite the adventurer already.









I loved Lael in this Easter outfit - she added the boots, which made it very her. It's a little large on her because that's the only way I can justify buying her more clothes is to buy big. Her favorite dresses are the nicer (usually Gymboree) ones I have bought her that are made of silk. But then she'll try to wear her tennis shoes or add some other random feature, which I usually don't let her get away with, so it leads to another battle. One week I fought her all week to wear her tennis shoes and she refused (she even played soccer in her cowgirl boots, probably just to spite me - who knows?) and then she tried to wear her tennis shoes on Sunday. She can be difficult like that. Anyway, she goes to church a lot looking half dressed for the opera but with wild bush hair and cowgirl boots. That's Lael for ya!







Oliver did a great job at his Grand Author's Night at school. He got to read the book he wrote about a dog and a mantaray.

Sorry I haven't posted in so long - I got locked out of my account and we've been beyond busy, as usual. I'm really frustrated with the publishing options I have with this blog layout, but I'd rather get some sleep than have the perfect blog, so I'm just going to post it and go to bed. Sorry the layout is so bad!

Viva Las Vegas!

We killed it - as my brothers and I used to say when we would finally complete a video game (which was only Super Mario Bros for me during one Christmas break). Spring break in Vegas was awesome! We did everything we set out to do. We saw shows, ate great food, went swimming in fabulous pools every day, hiked on red rock and played with cousins. Of course, we trekked through lots of casinos, but our kids are troopers when it comes to walking around. I will admit we exceeded our yearly dose of cigarette smoke (the older casinos like Circus Circus are the worst) but there were definitely less people smoking this time and ventilation technology in the newer casinos is vastly improved. We couldn't have survived without our humidifier that we run at night but my feet still dried out and my heels got cracks so I was grateful for the hot tip I got about using superglue to glue my heels together (no, not to each other, silly). It worked great! (If you do this, just remember to get some fingernail polish remover to take the superglue off in a few weeks.) Anyway, this first picture is what I love about Vegas - it's posh and overdone on such a grand scale that you have to see it to believe it. And some of the best parts of Vegas are free! The Bellagio fountains are my favorite feature, so we caught several shows. These photos were taken outside Paris, and as Jordan put it, "Lael, everything in this town is fake!" But Vegas does it even better than Disney. We went to see Monty Python's Spamalot and it was hilarious. Even Joni was only slightly offended. John O'Hurley's comedic timing can't be beat. We also took the kiddies to the Mac King Comedy Show and saw Terry Fator (the America's Got Talent winner). We did the Shark Reef experience at Mandalay Bay and had breakfast at Le Village buffet in Paris and we even had enough time to drag the kids out to Red Rock Canyon to hike around. We went to the Fremont Street experience and even made it to see the Las Vegas Temple on Sunday. But my favorite part (besides Spamalot) was swimming in the lazy river at our timeshare with my family. I didn't have a camera handy to capture two priceless moments - one with Henry and Oliver playing in the zero entry pool at dusk (a beautiful time of day in the desert when the lights are coming on) and Erik and Lael waltzing in the lazy river. I guess I just have to keep those memories as photos in my mind. But those are the moments that make all the planning and packing and stress and traveling and unpacking worth it. We are probably going to take a break and come back to do Las Vegas for spring break in 2010, so let us know if you want to join us. They are building like crazy so there are always new fabulous casinos and places to see, and we still haven't been to a Cirque du Soliel show and Erik wants to see Penn and Teller. So if you don't think Las Vegas is family friendly, come do it with us!

It's hard to describe the level of insanity my life routinely operates on, but just for your amusement, I'll attempt to summarize the past 24 hours. Yesterday at 4:30 pm, while I was missing our dentist appointments and was instead trying to finish unpacking the car, I got a call that said Lael was missing T-ball practice (more on that topic later). So I took her to baseball practice, ran to the grocery store with all the kids (something I try hard never to do, but we just got back into town) and got a call at 6:30 from Erik saying he had lost his wallet on BART, so I had to immediately cancel all the credit cards. Then Erik came home and finished making dinner and worked on the toilet (since Lael accidentally flushed a cleaning head down it the other day it hasn't worked so well) and called Comcast to figure out the password for our message service, which we haven't been able to access for two weeks. After we got the kids fed and to bed, I had to pay the bills since lots were due because it was the first of the month. This morning I took Oliver to the chiropractor's since his neck was hurting and he has been complaining about his leg and I've been meaning to go anyway- he checked out fine. My neck was so kinked from the drive to and from Las Vegas I needed to go anyway. Then we went late to Henry's Little Gym class and after that I checked Oliver into school and came home and had lunch and wrote Sarah her email and then went to yoga with friends and picked Oliver up from school. Whew! That was a crazy 24 hours. Things don't always go at quite that speed, but I'd say it's like that at least once a month and it definitely takes days to recover. And I have at least one crazy, nonstop day a week.

So, on to T-ball: Lael's coach is the aunt of two of the boys on her team and let's just say our philosophies of what T-ball should be don't match. She is taking it so seriously that she wants them to practice twice a week in addition to their two games. I'm going to have to tell her we will only be making it to one practice a week. And since we're already so popular with this coach, I might just tell her that we don't have anything scheduled, I just feel it is an unnecessary use of our family time. I've left out lots of details of the interactions that have gone badly with this team. At this point, I have been labeled an absent, slacker parent. One day when I was talking to the other moms, I noticed none of them were making eye contact with me and I realized they had been talking about me when I wasn't there. It's been an interesting experience to be the hated mom. I've never been there before. But I just keep acting cheery and everyone but the coach now talks to me like nothing bad has happened. Anyway, the saga continues ...

Our little nonconformist

Last week in the car on the way home from preschool, Lael announced, "You should have named me Hermione." I used to have a twinge of guilt that people have had such a hard time pronouncing her name and I constantly have to repeat it, but at this point, I realize we do not have an average child on our hands and she definitely needed an unusual name, so Lael fits and I am very glad we chose it for her. (For those of you who don't know, it's Hebrew and literally means "of God" - "la" is "of" and "El" means "God," as in Elohim.) Anyway, I just bought towels for my bathroom - I figure after being married 10 years, it's time to have a put-together, matching bathroom. I chose Restoration Hardware towels and bought them on sale and with a coupon and they were still outrageously expensive but they were available in a range of aquas, so now we each have our own coordinating, monogrammed towel in a different color. This has cut down on laundry significantly because now when a towel is on the ground, I know who's it is and I only end up washing them once a week. Erik and I have the same initials, so I ordered Erik one white towel so he couldn't forget which one was his because it really stands out and has his initials. Well, Lael's initals are LDS, which is kinda cute. The only problem is that when you do the traditional form of monogramming with the last name as the big letter and the initials of the other names on either side, it turns her initials into LSD. All I can say is: I didn't see that one coming and having Lael has been a trip.

Take T-ball for instance. Saturday was Opening Day, complete with a pancake breakfast, a parade and ballgames. Our little nonconformist did not want to wear her uniform. Lael thought she would be able to play in whatever shirt she wanted. We finally convinced her she would have to wear her team T-shirt with her No. 5 on the back, and then the coach said she would have to wear her hair in a ponytail because "it says so in the rules." I'm not so sure this is true. Although it was a battle, Lael finally let me do it. But her hair was so short (since she and her friend Ryan cut it a few weeks ago) that most of it fell out of the ponytail by the end of the games anyway. I am going to have to choose whether to fight the coach or my daughter and I'm interested in what the actual rules are but I think her hair is short enough that it is not a reasonable request. I'll keep you posted. There are five T-ball teams in the league this year and they wanted everyone to play on Opening Day, so it was a double header for her. Everyone on her team needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the second game, so we ended up having a 10-minute potty break between innings. Then Lael made the classic T-ball play of throwing the ball home and beaning the runner in the back of the helmet. Another little girl ran all the way to first base with her bat while everyone yelled at her, "Drop the bat!" There are always plenty of moments worth watching in a T-ball game.

Both Oliver and Lael were playing at the same time. It was a little tough to watch both games at once but we could stand between the fields because they are close together and turn back and forth, and I'd rather have that than be there ALL the time (they each have two games and a practice a week). Oliver had a double play (two runners scored off one of his hits) in his game. It lasted more than two hours and the final score was 15-15. We went to the sporting goods store between events to complete the kids' uniforms and that night we went to a birthday party at Pump It Up and had Book Club, so Saturday was a full, crazy day. Thankfully, not every day is this crazy, but by the end of dealing with unreasonable kids, random disagreeable members of the community and a crazy schedule like this, it's a wonder I don't have a migraine every day and am sane at all! Here's hoping for a nice, calm birthday week for me.

Play Ball!

Apparently it now practically takes an act of Congress to register your child for kindergarten in California. The list of things I had to bring to register Lael included our escrow papers, no less than 3 utility bills, 12 assorted completed and signed documents (including several applying for or denying financial aid for school lunches, etc.), proof of a doctor's appointment for a physical, and of course the only item that should reasonably be required: her birth certificate or passport. The secretary taking the registration obviously enjoyed her position of power and took her job very seriously. Unfortunately for me, I had no choice but to try and play the game as efficiently as possible because I didn't want to take a chance on Lael not getting into the Spanish immersion program (enrollment varies from year to year and sometimes they end up having a lottery) and I was juggling 3 kids while getting this done. To keep down on the clutter, we don't have our bills sent to the house, so I had printed out most of the bills from online. But I did provide them with our original insurance bill, so it was ironic when this was the bill the secretary chose to question. She pointed to the line that says "Please pay this amount" because next to that it says "This is not a bill." She said she could only accept bills. I told her that this was our bill and it says that there because we are set up on autopay. She finally chose to accept the document since she said was tired and feeling generous. This was my second appointment because she didn't accept some of the documents from the first time around, until I brought in the printed-out list of instructions from the district web site and she finally believed me that the documents in question were admissible. Geez Louise. You would think we lived in a sought-after school boundry, but we don't. People have lied to get in to some of the other schools in the district so they make everyone go through this to register. Anyway, after two appointments, loads of paperwork and one power-tripping secretary, Lael is finally registered for kindergarten!




The kids have started T-ball and baseball. The games start Saturday but the craziness has already begun with several practices a week and I am being bled for money. Lael has her pink bat, mit and helmet and is very excited to be playing her first (and possibly only) year of T-ball. I will probably never be team mom or PTA president because I am too cheap. I think a $150 team banner is a moronic waste of money and I would rather see the banner made by someone (if there has to be one). I just didn't have the energy to volunteer to do it myself this year so I forked out the $20 each for them. At the end of the season, the names will be placed in a hat and the "winner" gets the banner. If my kids are the "lucky" ones, they will be giving it to the coach. We don't have space for crap like that.

One of the reasons we chose to play with this league is because they don't schedule games on Sunday. So of course they scheduled the pictures for this Sunday (because obviously there isn't a game scheduled). We had a family powow tonight and decided we won't be participating because we would have to miss church. So we won't be in the team pictures, but that's how it goes. I was proud of them for making this decision because we did leave it up to them. We have friends that schedule their birthday parties around our kids (they have them on Saturdays when they would prefer to have them on Sundays, just so our kids can come). And I have friends that registered on National Scrapbook Day in May for a Saturday session instead of the Sunday session, just so I can come. I really appreciate this and I feel like if we are inconsistent, people won't continue to help us respect Sundays. And I think it's how we show God we really do get it and we respect him.

Despite the inauspicious start to the season, I really do hope the kids enjoy playing. I have to give up enough of my time for them to be able to do it and it means I will be hanging out with Henry, keeping him from eating rocks and grass, a lot for the next few months. I caught the little rascal splashing in the toilet for the first time tonight. It has begun ... but that is an issue for another post!