Six People in December.

This picture was taken on December 4, 2011. It was Sunday morning after mass, we spent over an hour at CSU Stanislaus taking pictures and goofing off. I took the tripod and we just played with the camera until we were sick of it and afterwards we went to lunch. It was a pretty great morning. I was so excited to have the family pictures done and I was planning my Christmas card and then reeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrh. [That was supposed to be the sound of a record being scratched, like when something is bumping along nicely and then is abruptly stopped, except that I have no idea how that would be spelled]. I didn't actually get anything in the mail until the day before Christmas. Can you say lame? Or is loser more accurate? Bah!

I love these pictures. I love these pictures. I wish I could share all of them but I don't have that kind of time and you would stop pretending you like them after the first 50.

Here are some of my favorites.

















Since someday I really am going to print all my blog posts up and make a book for each year I can't decide if I am going to pretend that this post was done in 2011 or if I should let it fall into mid-January 2012. Hmmm, I think 2011 wins.

Reindeer Games.

Tony took three of his nephews, three of his ahijados (godchildren) as well as Emily, Sarah and Wyatt to play laser tag in Modesto yesterday. It was the first time for Sarah and Wyatt. Let me tell you that my kids had a blast! They came home with their game sheets and told stories about all the fun they had. One of the stories in particular, I find so funny [we are laughing hysterically each time it is repeated] that I wanted to make sure I preserved it here on the old blog.

I've never played, but how it works is that you pick your nickname from a predetermined list of names and the laser tag people scan your nickname into the little computer that attaches to your weapon.

My son Wyatt told them he wanted the name "Ranger" and so they gave him his little computer and when he attached it to his laser gun. When he attached his LED screen, it lit up and said to him, "WELCOME REINDEER!" To that my son said "what the heck?" They played the game, which lasted 15-20 minutes. After the first round, they presented the scorecards to all the players by announcing their nicknames and their placement in the game to the group. When they called up "Reindeer," Emily looked puzzled and said loudly, "who the heck is Reindeer?" Wyatt popped out of the group and said, "that's me!" To that, the group laughed out loud at the bold little Reindeer who proudly accepted his game card! 21st place, woop woop! Go Reindeer boy!

At the start of the second round [they ended up playing three altogether], Wyatt was first in line to ask for his new nickname But this time he told the man behind the counter "Ranger." The man said, "Reindeer?" and Wyatt told him..."NO, NOT REINDEER, RAAAANNNNNGGGEEEERRRRR!"

After the second round, it was clear that Ranger kicked Reindeer's butt. Wyatt placed 17th! Go Ranger!

Off to play Blokus with the family, happy New Year's Eve! I want to get my December and holiday posts up before the day is over [that's mighty ambitious I know].

Dear 2011.

i read 17 books
i went back to work
i ran a mile, don't laugh, it was a big deal for me
i visited my homeland of Tennessee
I became the parent of a teenager

I went from this phone to this one

Thanksgiving 2011.

Better late than never, right? Ahem.

Thanksgiving 2011 was memorable because we were all together. For a refresher, my mother married Jim when I was around five and my sister Renee was four.  Jim had two children, Brad and Alicia, who were just a little bit older than Renee and I Then a bit later my brother Jimmy came along, I was almost seven when he was born. So that's how my mom and Jim came to have five of us.

When we were all young, we were always together for Thanksgiving. Brad and Alicia lived with their mother, Kathy, but they always spent Thanksgiving with us. Even as we got older, before most of the kids came along, we still always got together for this holiday. Then later, as more kids came, and more distance came between us all, we fragmented and these days it is rare that we all come together.

So that is why this year was so special for me.  Even if only for part of a day, a few hours really, we were all together again.  And it felt really good.

And here we are, when everyone had arrived, in our sweet first moments of complete reunion.



It was really a happy day. And because I cannot pick favorites, I am sharing seventy bajillion pictures with some nice collaging.



Oh look, there's more:



Geez man, more pictures!



Other things I loved about the day:

Sarah's thanksgiving prayer that she was too embarrassed to read

The wine Alicia brought from her winery, Niner Wine Estates

How much the kids loved being with their cousins

Mom's dressing and the way we all work to put everything together

The kids playing football in the street

Mom & Jim's happiness at having the family together

The one big table that we made that stretched from my dining room through the entire living room

The placeholders Emily made that looked like little Mayflower boats

The love that bubbled out of everyone that day

And mostly, just being with my people

Six People in November.

This installment is a little boring but that's not stopping me now when I almost have all twelve months done! I look super stressed but my family looks happy so I'm rolling with this one. We just got our tree up and decorations out and about when we took a few minutes on the couch together.  We never do this unless we are watching a movie so it was totally posed.  It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I am so thankful for this crazy little family of mine!

All the kids helped Tony put the lights up outside and we had instant Christmas before December 1st, though we saved the tree decorating until December. I was not quite ready to put away the Thanksgiving stuff (and truly it made me a bit sad to do so) but we magically had some extra time those three days we had off together after Thanksgiving, and I know better than to wait. Now that I'm thinking about Thanksgiving I realized that I took some awfully good pictures of my family that day and I need to share and make a whole post for that. It was remarkable because all my immediate family was here with all their spouses and small and small-big (you know what I mean by that don't you?) people.





Four days into it and I still can't believe it is already December of this year 2011!

Six People in October.

Thank you for keeping up with me, though I rarely give this shabby little place any attention anymore. Here is another family picture in this here series that seems to have become my only blog offering, posted on 11/11/11 just as promised!



It was my birthday! I worked that day, which was actually kind of fun. The office does cake when it's someones birthday. So sometime mid-morning I got an instant message that said "time for cake!" For the first time in 11 years, I had co-workers wishing me happy birthday and I sort of liked it. I got to choose the cake. Chocolate is usually my predictable pick, but I surprised everyone with carrot! All those years of having my mother give me carrot cake for my birthday cake came back to me. I wasn't always thrilled about it when I was a kid, it didn't seem right. Carrot.  It must be one of those nostalgic things that you romanticize years later. Like liver and onions, mmm mmm.

After work I took the kids to a quick little thing downtown for Eva's Girl Scout troop and then home for the chaos of getting ready to go beg for candy. We took this picture right before setting out for the night. Yes, I said for the night. The kids trick or treated for candy and Tony and I? We trick or treated our favourite neighbors for wine! Yes, we really did that! It was the most fun I had trick or treating in many years! We even stayed out late and kept our kids up way past their bedtime for a school night. Way past. More past than I'd care to admit now on 11/11/11! We ended up at one of our neighbors who also have four kids like we do. We shamelessly chatted, and drank more wine, well into the night. We pretty much said hello to November in person, on a school night. Whoops, I guess I let myself and my good judgement go, and I'm blaming it on my birthday.

Six People in September.

OK fine! It's cheating I know! I dropped the ball and didn't get a photo so I asked the kids to draw a picture of our family in September. This one is brought to you courtesy of Wyatt.

Thanks to the glorious month of September which gave me two daughters six and ten years ago, my kids' ages are super easy to rattle off to anyone who asks. 13, 10, 8, and 6. Wyatt has the physical proportions correct here, he and Sarah are once more, exactly the same height. Tony, Emily and myself are also approximately the same height and the three of us actually do each have one fat leg and one skinny one. We all also love our new matching fat round shoes, they're so stinkin' comfortable!

I really like that he gave us all happy eyes.

September is always a month of crazy busy around here, when all the things that everyone is involved in suddenly ramp up and take over our lives. By October we sort of have a momentum going and are dealing with the schedule better, but I find myself longing for those carefree, nothing on the calendar summer days we had just a few months ago.

By the end of October, there is a lot of anticipation. Of changing weather, of the coming holidays, and especially the slowing down of things.  Soccer is almost over now, that's when I let out an enormous sigh of relief and gratitude for the busy season that will begin to wind down.  There will still be a full calendar, but soccer seems to be the thing that pushes me to the edge, with three kids playing we have six practices to get them to on weekdays and Saturdays that are mostly blocked out for the morning and much of the afternoon.

Today is a rare Saturday, it's the bye weekend.  So we are home.  Doing nothing. 

It's October 29 and I don't have an October family picture yet. I have three days, if I can pull one out I'll post it on November 1 November 11.

Happy fall. Happy halloween!

Six People in August.

I am surprised that I'm still at this monthly family photo project! It hasn't been easy even with a great family like mine that puts up with my picture taking hi jinks. They really are patient. Here are the other backyard locations we tried during this ten minute session.





I do like that Wyatt sometimes wears his rosary around his neck and he was doing it on that afternoon. And that Emily has the camera in her hand, and that my kids try so hard to come up with their best smiles. The best one of me is definitely the garden pic! They're all starting to look the same though, especially since we have been to so few places this year. Oh well, four months left. At least we have some themed months coming up which should make it a little less boring easier.

September 11.

My Uncle Dayrel and Aunt Ruth are in California for a few days, staying with my mother. My mom is the youngest of six and Uncle Dayrel is the oldest of the six. We went to mass Saturday evening so we could get up early and drive to Sacramento to meet my family and visit with everybody. The getting up early part didn't work out so well and we got out of town later than expected, which for us is normal. We have never been early. We have never been the first to arrive.



We had a great day. We picnicked at Land park in Sacramento. My kids had a blast with their cousins. We hadn't been all together since last Thanksgiving so it was long overdue playtime. We suffered through some awful weather on Saturday, with three games we were at the soccer fields most of the day and it was too hot to breathe. Yesterday however, was absolutely beautiful and perfect.

I am in love with this photo I took yesterday of my brother Jimmy.

On the way home we listened to the coverage of the 9-11 commemoration events and had some good conversations with the kids about it. At one point between Stockton and Modesto, about a dozen people waved flags on top of the over crossing at the passing traffic.

Back at home, Tony made pasta soup [fideos] and mowed the yard. I shuffled around getting things in order for the week to come and tried to ignore all the parts of my house that have been neglected, like dirty floors and other dusty things. Blocking it out helps sometimes, but I know eventually I will have to face it. For now, I don't yet know when that will be. I wish I was the kind of person that could have someone come and clean my house. But even if I thought I could afford it, I can't imagine how I could be comfortable with a stranger cleaning all our dirty stuff and places. I don't know.

So that was our 9/11/11.

Now I will tell you my story of 9/11/01. It's not at all newsworthy but It's where I was and what I was doing.

My last day of full-time paid work was 8/31/2001. I was nine months pregnant, and I knew I would not go back to work after the maternity leave. Emily was three years and two months old and had been in daycare since she was 12 weeks old. I was overwhelmed with comfort and joy that I would now be a stay home mom to her and our new baby girl. Overwhelmed with joy and relief. The relief, was like none I had ever felt before.

So I plugged along three more days and on the evening of Labor Day, Monday September 3, Tony and I sat outside in our lawn chairs and thought about how funny it would be if we had the baby on "Labor" Day. We didn't. But we did go into labor a few hours later that night, and had a baby before one o'clock in the morning, which gave the "S" in my SWEET life, Sarah Grace, a September 4 birthday.

So on September 11, 2001, I woke up with a one week old baby in my bed and a three year old sleeping nearby. Tony had already gone to work when we got up. I turned on the TV and there it all was. I was home, horrified, with two little girls. The weeks and months that followed I just remember always having the TV on, nursing in the middle of the night while watching replays on C-SPAN because we didn't have all the cable news channels that go round the clock, worrying and grieving in disbelief like everybody else.

I guess I kind of remember it all through the fog of new motherhood. With all that love in my arms and by my side I tried, and then I failed, to understand it all. And so it is still.

Six People in July.

With Sunday evening tickets to a Giants game, we made a weekend of it. Saturday we went to Half Moon Bay where we found the beach and later a mass. Sunday morning we explored the city a little bit and then got in line for the game. The line was a couple miles long because it was Buster Posey bobblehead day for the first 25,000 people. We ended up with six bobbleheads. A guy was trying to buy them off of us as soon as we walked in the gate but the genius in me turned him down, to Tony's dismay. The kids really wanted them and the excitement of the day and all. We carried those things around all afternoon, and they're not small!

Our seats were in the back country, pretty much as far back as it gets, uber upper deck. Section 335. We didn't care in the least, we were there. So our fun seat neighbors from San Diego took this one for the record. We had a blast.









We got hot chocolate from this funny vendor who had loads of style. The way he said "hot chaaaaaacalaaaaaaaate" was so memorable we were imitating him on the way home. On a whim I searched for him and found him on youtube the next day. I didn't think of taking his picture until he was kind of far away.



I even got all emotional near the end of the game when they blared When the lights go down in the city by Journey. And I'm not all that fond of the city. I was loudly proclaiming "my cit-aaaaay oh oh oh oh wo wo wo wo wo." So I'm officially a lunatic, but you can truly get away with that when your sharing space with 40 thousand strangers.

And while I'm on the subject of those 40 thousand strangers, I will tell you, with great pain, what happened when the game ended. Miss Eva was in a hurry apparently, because while we were accounting for all our Buster Posey's and packing up, she vanished. YES SHE VANISHED ALONG WITH THOSE 40 THOUSAND! We were in section 335! We could not find her among the fast moving masses of one way strangers. We panicked in a big way. Tony went one way, I went another and the other kids held on for their lives as I shouted her name over and over for what seemed like ten minutes but was actually about one. I called 911 and fighting tears and what felt like a baseball in my throat, I told the operator I LOST MY FIVE YEAR OLD AT AT&T PARK! SHE SAID WHAT SECTION? I SAID THE 330'S! I'M USING ALL CAPS SO I CAN CONVEY TO YOU HOW SCARY IT WAS! Just after I told the operator what section, I saw her, a few section entrances away, holding Emily's hand. Emily found her. The 911 operator told me to hold on to her tightly. Emily discovered her very near the place we lost her, "waiting for us." THANK. GOD.

Somehow we were able to compose ourselves and the relief pushed us out to the lower level and then back towards the field for the "kids run the bases" thing. We were the last ones in line and Wyatt and Eva ran without shoes because they had been wearing flip-flops. Emily didn't want to run but Tony talked her into it by telling her that next time she would be too old because of the age limit. She caved and I could tell by their huge grins that it was fun for all of them. That's Wyatt proudly in front of his three sisters.



The game? It was good, the Giants won. We had an awesome day. All except for the 911 part. My sweet crazy life.

Adieu Petite Poule.

I don't speak french but didn't want to see it in English.

Tony took the kids to the fair to see the animals a few days after I wrote my story about Pascal. While they were gone I received this news along with a photo of a chicken she found at the fair from Emily via Tony's phone:

Doesn't this hen look exactly like pascal?? Pascal's a female!!!!!!!!! From: emily

We rejoiced!

Then the heartbreak came.

The very next day was Monday and after my morning walk/run thing that I have been doing I checked on Pascalita. As she started to walk through the yard I saw that she was limping badly. Tony wrapped her leg with a bandage and secured it with tape because we thought it was an injury. We were leaving for beach camp that very morning and had to leave her with Tony's mom. It was upsetting but I had hopes that she could rest and recuperate there; Tony's mom is good with birds.

We had a great week at the beach and honestly I didn't think a lot about Pascal. When we returned home and picked her up on Thursday night we were devastated with what we found. She wasn't walking at all. She was very hunched over and not distributing her weight well. Worst of all she was not drinking water and barely trying to eat. We didn't think she would live through the night. She did live though and we were beginning to have hope as she was drinking water through a dropper and appeared to have perked up a bit.

That afternoon my friend Kim came by and helped me find a vet who would see a chicken and we made an appointment for later in the day. We put Pascal in a big shoe box and all four of my kids plus our neighbor Kennedy came along for the trip to the vet. The office was full of people with their dogs and cats and one giant talking red bird. All of the other animal owners wanted to know what we had in the box. When we told them, they wanted to see. I didn't want to be rude but I didn't want to show them my chicken in such a sad state. It was very upsetting.

When it was our turn to go back I took Sarah with me and left the rest in the waiting room. The vet examined Pascal gently and compassionately. Then he explained that it wasn't an injury but a disease that affects the nervous system. That Pascal wouldn't get better. That we could try steroid shots but that it probably wouldn't help. That Pascal probably had only a few days left, possibly less. Sarah cried and I struggled hard not to as I wrote the check and walked out of there with five kids and no chicken.

So that's the end of my once happy little chicken story. Not so sure when or even if we'll have another one at this point. Still have doubts about whether I even gave her a good home and doubts about whether it was something I did and the sudden disease thing. I feel guilty for wanting her eggs so badly now that I know that she never had the chance to make any.

Pascal.

On May 21st, I picked up Eva and her buddy Logan from school on one of their last kindergarten days and Logan's teacher asked us if we could take a chick home with us. I don’t know why that appealed to me but I didn’t even give it a second thought. I just looked at Eva’s beaming little face and said yes. In the car on the way home Eva named the chick Pascal. If you have seen Tangled as many times as she has you totally get that. Rapunzel’s pet chameleon was called Pascal and perfectly fresh on Eva’s brain. So we get Pascal home and this little chick immediately casts its spell on us; charmed us all into loving it!

My other three kids were in shock at first. They had lots of questions like: “Ma, you let us have a chick?” and “we really get to keep this chick?” It came home with us in a shoe box and a baggie with a small amount of feed and because I could think of nothing else, I emptied out a plastic Rubbermaid tub and that became Pascal’s new home. I swiped some of Emily’s hamster bedding and Pascal even had a nest! The next day Sarah and I went to Tractor Supply and picked up a 25 pound bag of chick feed and a bag of pine shavings that was bigger than Sarah. He sleeps and rests during the day a little bit in the tub but mostly ranges free around one corner of our backyard.

None of us knows much about chickens but we’re learning. The kids love this animal, it’s a good natured, incredibly low maintenance creature and it bravely puts up with their need to handle it every once in a while. It still peeps like it did when we first brought it home, though now not as often. At first, Pascal would walk right over to me and sit on my feet. Yes, occasionally pooping on my feet but what do you expect, it's a chicken. Once when we were fussing about the droppings Eva said “we could potty train that chicken!” It’s not so bad though because now he stays in the corner of our yard that is like a jungle most of the day, he hunts lots of bugs over there. Oh, and the bugs! When the kids noticed that Pascal would eat any bug or spider they started bringing him snacks! He doesn’t really need their help though; Pascal is a good little forager and gets the rest from the dog bowls we use for his feed and water. The day I bought the dog bowls at Target I saw a bag of dog food that advertised its “real chicken flavor” and I was appalled for a few seconds until I remembered that we eat chicken too!

At night we bring his tub over by the back door for the night and cover it with this wooden frame/chicken wire thing that Tony made a few years ago to sift and clean rocks and gravel. Every night at dusk Pascal comes over to the back door and sits on that thing and waits for us to bring the tub back over from the jungle. Then he gets in his tub/nest and settles in for the night. It’s really a wonderful bird and an awesome pet. We’d like to build Pascal a real chicken house but we are waiting to see if it turns out to be a hen or a rooster, at this point we still can’t tell. I’m hoping for the hen because I want eggs and because I think a cock-a-doodle do every morning may not work for our neighbors. So if Pascal is a rooster I’m not sure what we’ll do. It’ll be hard to part with him and we wouldn’t even consider eating him because he’s our pet and it wouldn’t be right to eat your pet. I keep trying to say "it" instead of him, but it’s hard to do that when I want sweet Pascalita to be a girl.

In either case, I think we're hooked. There will definitely be many more chicks in our future.

Six People in June.

Look! We finally got out of out house! We spent four days camping in Pinecrest last month and we took Emily's friend Ashley along with us. The first thing we did was have her take a photo of us, you know, before the many days without a shower took their toll.



July's six people will likely be another out of towner. It may be the beach, a Giants game, or somewhere else in San Francisco.

6.21.11

Happy official first day of summer. Happy longest day of the year. Happy first one hundred degree [or more] day of the year in my part of California.

Phewwww it's hot.

Me and my awesome foursome celebrated all these great annual milestones at our favorite ice cream parlor this afternoon. Lulu's is the greatest thing ever to happen here if you are among the very few that haven't already noticed. We love the place, the ice cream and the people that make it so wonderful too. It was the perfect way to kick off Summer 2011.

Over the weekend, we had a few cousins over and I got some cool jumping in the pool pics.





HELLO HOT! It's nice to have you back, you're welcome to stay for the whole summer!

Six People in May.

We didn't exactly make it away from the house, but I like it anyway. It was a busy last day of May and we had just returned home from a Boy Scout meeting. We were all too tired for it but once again we pulled it off at the very last minute. My face looks a little strained but the kids all look so happy, they must have been laughing at me something as we stared the camera snapping away.



I jumped over to Picnik from Picasa and used a blemish tool to try to edit out the red broom handle behind me, it didn't work so well. Maybe one day I'll get around to more advanced photo editing but for now I sort of like the smeared broom handle. Adds a little mystery to the photo, don't you think?

We're standing proudly in our garden on the side of the house. We just completed the garden a week ago by putting down gravel and the whole package is nothing short of spectacular to me. We aren't great gardeners by any means but we're learning a lot and already enjoying the vegetables of our labor. Radish, squash, peppers, lettuce are all plentiful at the moment and I'm definitely salivating over the dozens and dozens of tomatoes that are just on the verge of ripe.

You can bet I'll be sharing more chicken/garden stuff soon!

June!

Hey June, you're weird! Our sometimes feirce, rainy, stormy weather finally ended about a week ago. Along with the cool temps we've had, it's been a wacky spring here. [Spring 2011, you're kinda freaky but I like you anyway!] So this week we have our first hot weather of the season and I am wondering what all the fuss was about! It would be kind of nice to stay cool after all. But you can't beat the weather for swimming, and that's where we've been all week, in the water!

So much happened around here in May. We had baseball, softball, talent shows, reunions, field trips, Eva graduated kindergarten, Emily received her Confirmation, and of course the end of the school year/catechism/scouts. May kept us frantically running around and freaky June let's us rest...a bit.



What's also weird is going to work when the kids are on vacation. I'm getting used to it though, as much as it's possible for me to do so, and have cut back my hours to minimize the disorder of things. With some camping and a long weekend getaway or two in the works, I'm hoping that will shake things up and give us a decent assortment of summer diversions.

One more thing that is definitely wacky around here, we have a chick[en] who is turning out to be something like a pet. More later on him/her and how he/she got here and how we're all doing. Personally, I hope he/she is a she, I want eggs!

Happy summering!

Me & Him.

We celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary last week. I'm married to the best man on the planet and I'm thankful for every minute.

Mother's Day 2011.

We made it to the 9 a.m. mass a few minutes late as usual. Fortunately for us, our priest is never on time either and we usually slip in seconds before the mass begins, as if he was waiting for us. We thought about going to breakfast afterward but I don't do crowds and waiting so good so I invited my family to our house for breakfast at home. They obliged me, it being my day and all. Tony made us a delicious breakfast, better than a restaurant if you ask me.

The kids gave me the sweet gifts they made and we spent most of the day at home.





Later in the afternoon we went over to my in-laws for a BBQ.

My girls and some of their sweet cousins:



My boy and some of his crazy cousins:



It was a good May day.

Six People in April.

Here it is, on the last day of April (really, I haven't cheated yet!) I set up the timer an the tripod in the backyard for the second month in a row.



I am so ready to take some photos of us not at home! Obviously we have not gone anywhere this year! For May I'll definitely try to get one of us doing something somewhere away from home!

The Onion.

Last night I cooked potatoes so that I could make potato salad. I needed to use up some potatoes that were starting to grow horns and I was craving it. I took out some fish that Tony had bought the day before and started to fry it up in the pan with some olive oil and spices. At some point I realized that I didn't have an onion for the potato salad and knowing that I wouldn't be able to make good potato salad without onion, I just put the potatoes aside. We ate fish tacos with avocado and it was good enough. It was better than good enough, it was delicious!

So later in the evening around 7:30 Tony asked me about the potatoes that were sitting there and we decided that we should go buy an onion and make it for later. We further decided to make it an adventure by walking to the food store, which is probably three quarters of a mile away. We thought we'd get out and get in a fast walk while the kids stayed home and got ready for bed. Unfortunately they all wanted to go.

So we headed out at 7:45 on this walk. Eva on her bicycle, Wyatt on his ripstik, and the rest of us on foot. We walked quickly and it was fun. Emily was goofing off making funny hand signals to passing cars and Tony was giving us walking lessons. He says to walk properly you have to put your stomach back and your butt forward, something to do with the alignment of your hips or what not. We all tried it and it's not easy. Emily accused us of embarrassing her and I reminded her that she was the one pointing both index fingers at cars with her thumbs up.

It was a good walk and we were going at a really good pace for exercise with the added bonus that Eva has some newly acquired stamina that prevented her from getting stuck on the upturn of the sidewalk and kept the whine away too. We were happily almost to the store when it happened.

Wyatt went down. Dramatically. Darn that ripstik. It caught on an uneven piece of sidewalk and threw him down with a thud. I picked him up, his arm was crumpled under him. Thank goodness it was just a scrape, a big ugly elbow one, but only a scrape. So that was it, we turned back toward home. No onion for me.

He didn't cry, just a few whimpers here and there. I kept my arm around him all the way home, mostly to keep him moving at a decent pace, but I think it comforted him too. He's a pretty brave kid.

Today, still no onion. I have a boat load of cooked potatoes and no onion to help turn it into some yummy potato salad. Tonight we are going to a BBQ and so I don't have to worry about what to make for dinner. I am thankful beyond measure for that. Dinner planning is not my best talent.

Perfect Weekend.

My firm gave everyone Thursday and Friday off, an accountant's holiday after a busy tax season. It was nice having the extra day off. Yesterday I bribed the kids into picking weeds with the reward of lunch at our favorite new ice cream parlor. They didn't do a very good job on the weeds honestly but I wanted to go to lunch and have ice cream so bad that I let it slide. We had a great Good Friday yesterday and that was a yummy part of it. My friend Kim works at the ice cream parlor and she made me the most wonderful sundae with extra hot fudge just the way I like it, I was in ice cream heaven!

After I don't even want to tell you how many times he asked, I finally got over to the tennis courts this morning with Wyatt. It's been the last thing he says before bed every night for like I said I will not tell you how long. "Ma? When are we gonna go play tennis?" Well lookie here, I finally dragged my lazy buttons off to the court this morning with my poor little tennis starved boy. I totally forgot how much I love that game. Wyatt was the happiest kid on the planet, he kept telling me that this was the best day of his life! The kid has talent too, I'm totally putting him in lessons! It may have been the best morning of my life too.

After tennis with Wyatt, I took my three most recent born to an egg coloring party at a friend's house. That is another thing that I often neglect. It'll be the day after Easter, or many days after, and my kid's will say to me, "we didn't color our eggs yet!" So we will do it many days after, or not at all. Funny, that happens in the fall with our pumpkins sometimes too! Bad mama--not this year!











This is the first year that we are celebrating, with our presence all three days at church anyway, the Tridium. Sarah was an altar server at the Holy Thursday mass and yesterday, Emily was Mary in a live reenactment of the stations of the cross, despite the drizzly rain it was beautiful. The young people do such an amazing job of the portrayal of Jesus' passion. Emily was extremely nervous when she was getting ready to go to the church and was getting very cold feet, but she pulled it off. I was super proud of her!





Tonight Sarah is serving again at the Easter vigil and this will be the first time we attend this mass since before we had children, I think. To me this is the most beautiful time of year.

I walk around the house nowadays and laugh/cry to myself, I am not even trying to pretend that my house is clean anymore. And worse, I'm trying to blame it on my job. I think I have reached the peak of housekeeping chaos/ridiculousness, with having four little pigs mess-loving kids (and a husband) and trying to teach them to clean up after themselves and do their part of making our home a nice, clean place to live. So far it's not working out so good, so very very not so good. Eva is especially hard to convince and she tries to use her evil sweet five year old charms to wriggle her way out of everything! She's a menace I tell you! I don't need a Dennis when I have an Eva! Here is a perfect example: she recently had a friend over and her room was as if a super-natural disaster had occurred. I asked her to clean it, and to that she proclaimed that it was obviously her friend's fault and made a sign to put on her door that says, in her cute little bubble letters, "NO PEOPLE ALLOWED or FRIENDS," and to her this solved the problem completely!



Happy Easter. I hope it's beautiful for you too, with all your people and your friends, even if they tear up your house. Let it be, enjoy the moment, and clean up sometime afterwards.