A Great Wolf Thanksgiving

Alan's parents came up with a great, non-traditional idea this year for Thanksgiving. We all met in Williamsburg at the Great Wolf Lodge for two days. I think I am the last person on the planet (at least in my circle of friends and colleagues) who had NOT heard of the Great Wolf Lodge, and I admit I could not wrap my head around the phrase "indoor water park." How do you fit a water park inside a hotel??

Turns out, the water park is only ONE of the things there that makes kids' eyes pop. There's an arcade, a pint-sized spa, lots of places to eat, AND there's this magical treasure hunt played all over the 3rd and 4th floors using cool wands that make pictures talk, and all sorts of things light up. I know, right??

In Evelyn's perfect phraseology, "Mommy, I think this hotel has a great mind for kids." Indeed. And, a great mind for parents who love water park rides, too! I've never felt MORE like I earned the Thanksgiving feast. We'd originally hoped to eat our picnic-style feast IN the water park, but turns out the hotel doesn't allow you to bring "outside food" in, so we just waited. We were good and hungry by the time we were enjoying our spread in my sister-in-law's hotel room.

Thank you, Mom and Dad Blackman, for the suggestion! (And how grateful we were that you were only a few doors down the hall, and Evelyn the Early Riser had someone to visit first thing in the morning!)

Pictures, as usual, are still on my camera. :)

Clouds

So many songs and hymns talk about "blue skies" and "cloudless skies." Those skies are nice.

 But I have to say it's these kinds of skies that take my breath away. Skies with clouds.

 If it weren't for storms and threats of storms, these skies wouldn't exist. It's the storms that make the most dramatic, breathtaking skies.

Same with life. It's the stormy stuff that paints the dramatic and breathtaking pictures. But sometimes you have to be willing to stand outside in the wind and look up to see it.

Take today, for instance. We drove home from Williamsburg, where we spent a really enjoyable, delightfully non-traditional Thanksgiving w/Alan's family in the Great Wolf Lodge. The drive COULD be 3 1/2 hours. Today it took about six. But when do Alan and I get that much time together for conversation? When do our kids get that many consecutive hours to practice their creativity? And how nice to still have hours in which to finish reading "Little Town on the Prairie"aloud even after all that other stuff. Unwanted storm. Beautiful sky.

(NOTE: these thoughts represent only the opinion of their author, and not necessarily those of the driver of the car in which she had them. He would definitely have found WAY more beauty in only 3 1/2 hours of conversation, creativity, and reading aloud, even though he has a great deal of genuine appreciation for dramatic, stormy skies. :)

Alan Quotes

"If it were up to me, Christmas shopping would be done in an hour."

This was said as we--I mean I--deliberated over what gifts to order for the family names we drew, along with a few things we still wanted to get our girls. I admit both of us think it is fun to shop online, but Alan thinks its fun only if he can do it FAST.

I think we were done in under an hour. Without me, Alan probably would have finished our Christmas shopping in about 15 minutes. All of this made possible by that most wonderful gift-before-the-gifts: the list! How I like to shop from a list! I tend to be a disappointment to those hoping I know their minds and moods well enough to surprise them with the perfect thing (I much prefer to do that on a random, inspired-by-the-moment basis), but this Santa is more likely to shine (a.k.a. give people what they really want) with a list.

And I'm so excited--Alan and I are giving each other the gift of going out to the movies together! Looking forward to seeing The Hobbit and Lincoln...any other suggestions?

So it was a month ago...

...but today I was telling my friend Lisa about Evelyn's reactions to opening presents. These pics are from Evelyn's birthday morning last month. These are her fancy beaded, Native-American pen/pencil sleeves.

 Aunt Betty gave her two so she could be like a Hobbit and GIVE presents on her birthday.

 So Amelia got one of them. I think that was pretty well received. Good idea, Aunt Betty! (And I just re-read "The Hobbit" in preparation for the upcoming movie--date night in December for sure.)

 A watch in a fancy pink box from Aunt Lisa.

 Her card from Grandma & Grandpa Blackman--hopefully soon we'll have pictures of the ice skating included in this gift!! :)

 Of course every birthday morning should start with a candle in a cupcake, right? The more chocolate before sun-up, the better! (Thank you, Aunt Lisa, for the cupcakes!)

 And the dress--oh the DRESS. SO glad I actually captured the feeling Evelyn had opening the fancy dress from Aunt Lisa.

Yup. It's fun opening presents, isn't it? 

And just tonight I looked at  Alan and said, "We're only two weeks out from Christmas tree season!" The girls have already decided that we're going to stick with our tradition of getting the tree December 1st. We've not done that every year, but we've been pretty consistent. I admit I'm pretty excited. :)

Oops

This week I did a first--I asked a woman when her baby was due and she replied, "three days ago!" Yup. She'd HAD the baby. Three days ago. In my defense, the woman was a notary public who'd come to our house with a giant stack of re-fi papers for us to sign. I mean, who DOES that after having a baby three days ago? And she looked really cute and seemed completely sane--like, more sane than I feel right now. Certainly more sane than I felt while signing a million documenst as I processed my faux pas and tried not to think, "Can a person who had a baby THREE DAYS AGO possibly keep all these papers straight??"

The only thing I wanted to do three days after having a baby was curl up in a fetal position and SLEEP for 23 hours. But maybe that's because I'm not a notary public. Maybe if I were a notary public, I'd have wanted to jump up, put on my cute outfit, run to the office, photocopy a million documents, find some strangers' house and sit at their dining room table explaining all the documents breezily while they sign them.

Obviously I'm still processing this.

Christmas List

(Picture from last January. Wow they were smaller. Our tree was pretty small, too. Small = manageable. Manageable = more sanity. More sanity is very, very good.)

With a nod to this Momastery post, I had the girls make their Christmas lists yesterday. Amelia came up with hers pretty quickly: Plastic Hello Kitty locket necklace, a "real" watch, a box with a lock (for keeping treasures), a new journal (with NO lock), and a new school backpack. All in all, pretty straightforward and simple.

Evelyn was silent for a long time while considering this. Then she said enthusiastically, "I know what I want: MY OWN ROOM! You can move the stuff out of the library--except my desk--and you can put my bed in there and that can be my room!"

"That's a cool idea," I said. "But I thought you didn't like sleeping by yourself."

"Oh yeah, right," she replied, suddenly deflated. "I forgot. Never mind."

Scratch the room off the list, Santa.

The Case Against Collecting Acorns

Who knew there was such a thing as an "Acorn Weevil??" Certainly not us. Weeks ago the girls stuffed their pockets and shirts with acorns. We took them home. Amelia dumped hers in the back yard. Evelyn used every pretty container, music box, and jewelry box in her bedroom and filled them with acorns. I did not know this.

 I have no idea how the weevils get IN there, but at some point they come OUT. And they came out by the HUNDREDS. We did not know where they were coming from, only that the floor of the girls' bedroom was covered with what looked like hundreds of squirming (I shudder even THINKING this!!)...maggots. 

 The little buggers had drilled out of their acorns, pushed up out of all the boxes, and fallen to the floor of the bedroom. We kind of freaked out. Then we vacuumed, cleaned, took the beds apart, and even ripped up a corner of the carpet to figure out where they were coming from. As we were doing this, the girls were hopping around excitedly, saying things like, "Wow! LOOK at them all! I'm going to tell everyone about this at Morning Meeting tomorrow in school!" To which Alan and I calmly responded, "NO NO NO NO NO NO!!! Don't tell ANYONE that we have BUGS in our HOUSE!!! Do you hear me?!? Don't tell this to ANYONE!"

Then Alan got on the internet. And found acorn weevils. Then our question was, "Girls, do either of you have acorns in the bedroom??" Bingo. Out came the boxes, and out came hundreds more weevils.

Shudder!!!

Technological Boast

Today I made myself proud. Since the instrumental music teacher and I teach on totally different days, we rely pretty much on e-mail and phone to coordinate our lessons. Rehearsals start this week for our winter show, and I was trying to write out for her choreography for "The Russian Dance" from The Nutcracker. As I wrote it I couldn't believe how long, dull, and confusing my instructions for this one-minute's worth of music was.

So I did something totally 21st century (and totally NOT me.) I had a colleague use my phone to video tape me DOING the choreography. Then I SENT the video to the other teacher's phone. (It helps that she's 25.)

Wow I feel so cool. The only thing that dulls this feeling of cool-ness is the video itself. Which is precisely why it is not included here. :)

Funny the things you want to remember...

Amelia has a really quirky side. I admit I love this. Quirky has a lot of appeal to me. Alan tells me I have a few quirks of my own, but I have no idea what he's talking about.

I also have no idea where this next thing started or how, but all last winter Amelia would randomly say the phrase, "The people to touch the toes" in a funny little voice. Often she would say it while, of course, touching her toes. Like I said, quirky. But I got a kick out of it--it was just so random--and as so many phases do, it passed. Last April I talked her into saying it on camera:

I was reminded of this tonight when, in the car on the way home from a nice visit with Uncle Steve and Aunt Joan, Amelia started randomly saying, in another funny voice, the phrase, "Bonus Features." This I CAN trace. She'd watched a DVD at their house, and at the end, after the credits rolled, the menu page came up. She went and got her notebook and a pen and began copying all the words on the menu page over and over.

Her favorite must have been "Bonus Features." I'd say she and her older sister are OUR favorite Bonus Features.

Thank you, Sandy.

It took a hurricane to get me to carve pumpkins with my kids. It sounds lame, but October's usually so full of things to do that I've never prioritized the pumpkin thing, as much as it appeals to me. But this year was different.

 This year we'd spent a few days cozied up in our house making crafts, playing ponies, and trying to get some work done. (Working from home can sometimes be a BAD thing!) It was great of Aunt Jenny to come over Monday evening and play Boggle while the wind blew! Otherwise we had no company except one another. Which doesn't seem to affect us at all. Ahem.

 I get pumpkins every year. That's never the issue. It's making the time to DO something with them. So when school was out for the second day in a row and AWANA was cancelled, that left the evening open for playing with knives.

 Just kidding. I did all the carving. They did all the hard part--the prep work. It's amazing how fun a messy job is when you talk it up. "Wait until you SEE what's INSIDE these! And wait until you FEEL this awesome SLIMY-NESS on your hands!" And it crossed my mind to save the seeds to meticulously wash, dry, salt, and roast them. But that's as far as it got.

 Evelyn wanted her pumpkin to have eyelashes.

 Amelia wanted hers to have eyebrows. They'd drawn pictures of their pumpkins for me to copy. I admit I felt a little proud of how well they turned out. I mean, they're no great works of art, but after eight Halloweens' worth of parenting, these were the FIRST jack-o-lanterns. Brings tears to your eyes, doesn't it?

Here's hoping it won't take a hurricane to get me to do this again next year.

p.s. The girls are growing their bangs out. My apologies for the lack of barrettes. Everything goes to pot around here when I don't have to get dressed, go out, pack lunches, supervise homework, etc.