Monday, May 28, 2018

Memorial Day



Holy cow, you guys. Today was HOT. Especially for May! This month went from cold to scorching with almost no in-between! The temperature was around 95 degrees, and super sunny. I love this kind of weather, but even for me, it was maybe a bit too warm.

Juanito and Zane went for a bike ride downtown at around noon, which Zane was super excited to do. Except then, in Zane's words, "Dad got a flat tire and we had to walk all the way home and then i got a pebble in one eye and a leaf in the other. So it was terrible."

This afternoon we all went to the park with the boardwalk. The great thing about it being so hot is that we had the place entirely to ourselves. Nobody else was insane enough to want to be outside walking around for any length of time. But it was beautiful and fun to get outside, and everyone had fun even though there were a lot of "It's SO HOT" comments. Afterwards we went to Meijer for Icees, so i'm pretty sure that made up for it.

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Beach!


Usually my family all gets together at my parents' house every other Sunday, but since it's Memorial Day weekend, we decided to head out to my grandparents' house for one last Memorial Day. 

We could not have asked for a more perfect day. It was sunny and warm and just absolutely gorgeous. The water was chilly, but once you got used to it, it was bearable. Some of us might have gotten a bit sunburned, but not too horribly, so i'll call it a win.

The house has been sold, and they will be moving in at the end of July, so we have about 2 months to enjoy our own private beach before it goes away. 

I will really miss having that place to go. I mean, having a private beach is awesome, but i love the memories and the smells and just everything that goes along with it. We've watched the beach get huge and tiny and back again. When we were little, we'd spend a week there in the summer, watching Channel 8 Clubhouse and Captain Kangaroo in the mornings, eating Cream Of Wheat for breakfast, and then spending the rest of the day down in the water with our cousins. We'd be down there totally unsupervised - every once in a while, my grandma would come out to the edge of her yard, look down, and make sure we were all still alive. My sister commented today that that's really the last constant place we have in our lives, and that's totally true. This is the last place i can still go where i can remember spending a lot of time when i was little. So it's sad to lose that.

Chicago! U2!


Beth and i went to Chicago. The ultimate purpose for going was a U2 concert on Tuesday night, but we left on Monday morning and spent a couple of days hanging out in Chicago and just having fun until the concert.

On Monday we drove to the border of Illinois (where Beth's friend lives), left our car, and took the train downtown, and checked into our hotel, which was right by the corn cob buildings. Seriously, this was the view from our window:

We then walked (in the rain) down to Water Tower Place, ate lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (yum!), walked around for a while until it had mostly stopped raining, and then headed back to our hotel. We enjoyed the complimentary wine and snacks, and then both of us were asleep by about 8:30 because we are party animals.

Tuesday morning we woke up, packed, and left the hotel just after 8:00. We walked a little over a mile and a half, dragging our suitcases, to the Field Museum, where we then spent the next six and a half hours looking at everything. Mummies and dinosaurs and giant bugs and stuff from Ancient China and Ancient Aztecs and more mummies and a million animals (real but stuffed). The animal section seemed to go on forever and was organized like a maze - we went there at the end of the day, totally got lost, and eventually were just hopelessly searching for a exit. (Seriously, if you were ever in the animal section when a fire broke out, you might as well give up, because you'd never find an exit in time.) The museum was amazing and overwhelming and incredibly fascinating and also exhausting. 

Eventually we dragged ourselves to the train station, got our car, and headed back to the city for the concert!

U2 is just my favorite. Band. Ever. I love them. I've been to several of their concerts now, and they never fail to make me really, really happy. I love their music. I love that they're so completely fighting for the underdog and for justice. And i just think that all of the band members are adorable. 

This was the "Experience" part of the "Innocence and Experience" tour. The "Innocence" part was a couple of years ago, and when Beth and i went to that concert, we were sitting so that we could totally not see the giant screen at all. This time we had perfect seats to see everything, and i kept thinking, "I feel so sorry for the people sitting in those sections, because the screen is SO COOL." 


On the down side, they were experiencing technical difficulties at the beginning, so they started the concert an hour late, which meant that our very late drive home was even later, and we finally got home at about 4:00 in the morning. Waking up at 7:00 was brutal, and i was fairly exhausted all day, but it was totally worth it.

Saturday, May 19, 2018

Zane! SOTM!


Yesterday Zane got the Student of the Month award for the moral focus virtue of compassion for the month of April. Each month of the school year has a different moral focus (perseverance, honesty, etc.). The teachers choose one student from each homeroom (there are 3 per grade) to receive the award. One of Zane's best friends, Finn, got the award for a different homeroom, and Zane says that the girl who got the third award is ALSO one of his friends. So they're a compassionate bunch! That makes me happy!

Also yesterday, we finally watched Psych the movie after months and months and months of working our way through the series. Beth made cute cupcakes and cake balls that look like Pluto and brought cute napkins and other adorableness. Everything was very pineapple-y in honor of Psych. Fun!


Thursday, May 17, 2018

Painting and whatnot

The past few days have been filled with painting and organizing and painting and cleaning and generally trying to get the bathroom clean (along with all of the surrounding areas where the bathroom stuff had been during the painting) (and all of the other rooms that fell into complete disarray while i was busy concentrating on the bathroom), and it is now as finished as it can be until Juanito builds a shelf. So! Yay!

Today Juanito set the middle of our backyard on fire so that he could burn piles and piles of junk wood that he somehow accumulates in our yard. And he mowed the lawn! Our house/yard is starting to look almost presentable again!

Yesterday Zane came home from school sick, and i was worried that the rest of us would just start dropping like flies as well, but so far the rest of us are healthy, so.... Fingers crossed! 

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Mothers and Painting


Yesterday was Mother's Day. We went over to my sister Jackie's house for lunch, along with my parents and my sister Chellie and all of our kids. It was really, really fun. I love coming from a large family, but sometimes, when we have just a smaller portion of the family there, it's really great to be able to all have one conversation together (rather than several conversations going on at once because there are so many of us there that we can't possibly all stay on one topic). We laughed a lot.

Today is a Monday - my day off. And so today i conquered the bathroom.

We re-did it when we moved in - it originally had some kind of horrible vinyl-ish wainscoting on the bottom half, and under that was just ....nothing? Whatever it was, we had to drywall the bottom half of all of the walls. And we painted it yellow, and i loved it. But that was 19 years ago, and i am very ready for a change!

So i emptied the bathroom and washed all of the walls and Juanito and i went shopping and got paint and paint-related stuff, and Katrina and i painted the bathroom. (When they heard that we were going to be painting, both boys disappeared - Houston to do "homework," which is at least a reasonable excuse. Zane just flitted away without a word.) Katrina saw the project happening and immediately and happily threw herself into it with me, doing about half of the work. The two of us painted and painted. At one point Zane came over to ask if he could help, and i was all, "SURE! But you need to change into different clothes first." He declined.


So now the paint is drying, and then we can paint the trim (it was getting late and we decided to wait until tomorrow), and hopefully it'll look cute! Yay! Katrina and i both agreed that we love remodeling, but we don't love painting. So the worst of it is behind us!

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Tulip time and Rela





In our church's youth group, all of the kids are divided up into small groups (life groups), and once every month or two, there's a "Rela" day (Rela=relationship building). For the Rela, each group is in charge of coming up with their own activity, which they can then do whenever they choose. (The best part of this is that we can plan it so that we get our Sunday night free!) SO. This week is a Rela week. 

Yesterday Katrina's group went to Craig's Cruisers to play laser tag and do go-carts. (Afterwards, i asked Katrina how she liked laser tag, and she was all, "Well...i don't want to be rude or make anyone else feel bad. But i really didn't like it. It was super stressful." Happily there were the go-carts and also ice cream, so she had fun.)

Today, Beth and i took our girls to the park with the boardwalk and then to Dairy Queen for blizzards. Beforehand, i was all, "I mean...we probably won't walk the whole loop, because it's pretty long and some of our girls are not big on exercise." And then we got there, and the girls all practically sprinted the entire way. So they had fun! Which is good! And there were blizzards!

I worked until 2 today, so we had our Rela in the afternoon, finishing at 5, and then we planned to go to Holland for Tulip Time because it's been a couple of years at least since we all went, and the tulips are quite beautiful. So we got to Holland at about 6:00, parked, and started walking down the main street. And the tulips were gorgeous! And it was chilly but not freezing. And everyone was enjoying themselves. And then we got to the park with lots of tulips, and just as we entered it started drizzling. There were crowds of people, and they all sprinted for cover. We were all, "Haha! Look at all of the people being all wimpy! We can totally walk around in this drizzle!" And then it started raining a bit harder, and we were all, "No no it's okay. We can totally handle this!" And then it started pouring. Pouring. And, because i'm an idiot, i was all, "Okay. So. We can either stay here or walk over to the giant tulip field that is supposed to be amazing or just head back to the car." (Eye roll.) 

We headed back to the car. Before we even left the park, we were all halfway soaked. By the time we got to the car, we were all utterly drenched. Like, through-the-winter-coat-and-sweatshirt-and-long-sleeved-shirt wet. And cold. 

So. Fun? Sort of. Memorable? Definitely.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Band concert for Zane!


The 6th grade concert was tonight. Zane was super excited about it and was really happy that we could all come to see him. He's so cute when he's playing, because he is obviously really happy about it and gleeful that he gets to be playing! With us watching him! Because he's special! And the band was...fine. I mean, it's 6th graders, and they're not great, but they're also not terrible, and that's saying something. It was fun to watch - i always love watching random kids to see who's totally just fake playing and who's super annoyed to be there and what styles they're wearing and .... So it was fun.

On an unrelated note: A story about how i'm a dork.

So this morning when i got to work, the guy who delivers our books was standing next to the library van, looking intently into the mirror. I jokingly said, "You look very nice." Because he was studying himself in the mirror. Except that as i then walked past him, i realized that he was actually talking on the phone. And also the mirror? Was totally broken and there was no glass in it. So i just randomly told a guy i only vaguely know that he looked very nice. Sigh.

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Boardwalk



A few years ago, the city closed the boardwalk at a park nearby. To be fair, it was sort of falling apart and was probably unsafe, but it had been a favorite place of ours for years, so we were all very sad. But it is now in the process of being rebuilt and part of it is open, so today Katrina, Zane, and i went to see it.

It's going to be awesome when it's finished, but it's weird to see it right now, because everything has been cut back or cut down so that they're able to do the building. There were areas where there were loads of trees that had been chopped down. Also, it seems less...marshy than it used to. I don't know if it's just not the right time of year for the swampiness to be in full swing or if they somehow made it less marshy, or if i'm just remembering it wrong, but it seemed like there was more dry land. So that's weird. And yet! It was really pretty and we took way longer to walk it that we really needed to because we kept stopping to see if there were frogs or turtles or other life in the puddles, or to look at the footprints to figure out if they'd been made by a dog or a raccoon or a deer or what. At one point, three deer were grazing in a field near us, utterly unconcerned by our proximity, so we had to stand still and watch them for several minutes.

It helped that it was a perfect, amazing, beautiful day today. The sun was shining and it was in the high seventies, and i would be completely content if the weather stayed exactly like this for another month.

Monday, May 7, 2018

Gorgeous Monday



It was a gorgeous spring day today. Katrina and Zane had early release from school this afternoon, so we even got to enjoy being outside in it. Zane LOVES riding his bike, so he was in his element.

For the past few months, I've been reading Fablehaven with the kids. We're just about to finish book 4 (of 5), and i love how much they all still love reading together. I had expected them to be "too old" for it by now, and if they were like, "Meh," then i'd quit and that would be fine, but all three of them still totally get into the books i read to them, and even though they're desperate to find out what happens, none of them read ahead. (I would totally read ahead if it were me.)

Sunday, May 6, 2018

Sunday, busy Sunday


This week is Teacher Appreciation week. Katrina, in typical Katrina fashion, decided that she wanted to make these bowls for her teachers. She made a mug like this for me for my birthday, and she had planned to make mugs for the teachers too, but there were bowls at the dollar store, and i was all, "Y'know...everyone has a million mugs, and cute bowls are always useful for candy or whatever...." And so we went with bowls, and they are super cute.

This afternoon we had a leaders' meeting before youth group at our church, which meant that we got home from church at about 1:00, cooked and ate and made the bowls super fast, and then left at 3:00 to head back to church for the night stuff. And i love my girls, and my kids have awesome leaders, so i wouldn't want to not go to the night stuff, but DUDE. This schedule does not make for a particularly restful Sunday. On the bright side, there are only two weeks left, and then we're finished until September! WOO! I am SO looking forward to getting our Sunday afternoons free again!


Friday, May 4, 2018

February. And March. And April. And also the first tiny bit of May.

Oh hi. It's been...three months since last i posted. So that's awesome. Jumping right in? Okay. In no real order, things that we've done the past three months:

We've had four birthdays. Yep. Everyone in our family except Zane celebrated birthdays. 


 




Katrina and Houston and Juanito all deserve to have lovely, wonderful things said about them, because they are all completely awesome, but if i try to do that right now, i will never ever post this. Maybe someday i will come back to each of them and write about them. (I wouldn't hold my breath, though, honestly.)

Katrina got into City, which is extremely exciting. 


City is a really, really good school, but ALSO she'll get to go there with Houston and with at least 3 of her other best friends. And that is extra awesome. 

She also got the Be Nice award at her school in March. (She really is just SO nice!!!)


This is what her teacher wrote about her:  
"The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greandest intention." - Oscar Wilde 
This month's Be Nice recipient fully lives this quote. This girl breaks the mold. After multiple years of writing the Be Nice awards, I truly do not have the words to describe her. She is unique, she embraces her unique-ness and lives out her values. She is the queen of remembering likes and dislikes of her friends, peers, and teachers. She is a kind friend and a compassionate classmate.
She does the little things, whether it is recommend her favorite books to her teachers or get excited about the new Fantastic Beasts trailer with her friends (and me!). She truly embodies the Be Nice characteristics that we try to teach and instill in the students at our school. As teachers we can only do so much. It takes leadership from students like you, Katrina, to show these values and to display them for your peers to see as well.
Continue to be you! Do not change. Continue living your best version of yourself, because it is one you can be proud of. And to end, in the words of J.K. Rowling: "You start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve."
The sophomore class at City has a year-long personal project. Houston chose to make a computer using only parts that he got free from people who had broken or otherwise unused computers. In March they got to show them off to anyone who wanted to come see.


Houston's was super cool. There was a huge variety of projects, and some of them were amazing while others were...decidedly unimpressive. There was a girl who built a violin (that worked!) and another girl who made a tiny little cross-stitch dog that she was still working on. So yes. Variety!

Easter happened.

We spent the day at my parents' house. The day was sunny enough to hunt for Easter eggs outside, but it was also pretty chilly, so it was a pretty quick hunt.

We stayed home for Spring Break this year, but we did do some fun things in town. We went and saw the butterflies at Meijer Gardens one day, and then went to see dragons and unicorns at the Public Museum another day. We spent a night at my parents' house. And spent a day watching all of the Pitch Perfect movies.



We finally watched "The Greatest Showman" after it came out on video. Beth made all kinds of fun little things - top hats and cotton candy and masks and other stuff - so we had a whole party for pizza-movie night. I knew almost nothing going into the movie - i'd never even seen a preview for it, so i had no expectations whatsoever. Nor did my kids. But we all loved it, and the soundtrack has been on a pretty continuous loop in the car and at home. Katrina especially loves it and turns it on every chance she has.


And those are maybe the highlights. (Also, i do not ACTUALLY ignore Zane. He is usually crab walking around somewhere or off expending his boundless energy, and just does not get himself into pictures very often.)