Visit to the (old) homeland

Last week the kids and I flew back to DC (well, Virginia really) for the week. I had a big meeting to run and needed to go in the office and the kids came with me to see family. It was just awesome, even though it was 99 and 90 percent humidity most of the time. The kids loved seeing their grandmother, sister, uncle and cousins. I had really good work stuff and it was fun to see old friends.

Andy, Margaret, Fafa and Jennifer playing Old Maid.Fafa wouldn't let them watch TV or play on the iPad (sacrilege according to them!), but they played other games and had a grand time.

The kids with our old neighbors Ernie and Doris. Meg looks like a demon zombie here. I think it's the candy coma she was in. The kids didn't remember our old house or neighbors, but they remembered that Ernie and Doris had candy and that recollection was rewarded with, well, lots of candy.

Our old house in Fairfax, which looks exactly the same. We talked to the new owners (who didn't invite us in, which was just as well) who said they love the house. Yay!

Our house before that in Alexandria. The whole Del Ray/Arlandria area looked good overall - lots of new construction and additional retail, etc., but the Warwick Village area looked like it had seen better days. Our old house in particular looked a little rough.

I just had to take a picture of the Wafle Shop, which clearly has a new sign since we moved in 2003, I think. I am amazed the new sign is still misspelled which makes it even funnier.

Cousin Camp

This week Andy and his cousin Megan have been in day camp together so my sister and nieces have been staying with us. It has been so fun to see all the kids together. I think we have all stayed up too late and gotten up too early but we can sleep later. Tonight Bjorn read to all the little ones who were so tired but so interested in his storytelling of Swedish fairy tales.

I have a whole trip to Ireland to blog about but it's so big I haven't been able to tackle it yet.

Of beautiful clothes and things

My cousin got married a few weeks ago. They are a beautiful young couple and graciously offered to let all four little cousins be in the wedding. Thus began a Bataan Death March trying to figure out what they would wear. It was stressful, y'all. Partly because I thought my sister who has way more fashion sense and attention to detail about this stuff than me had ordered the dresses back in February when we first talked about it. As such, we all realized about two weeks out that we didn't have anything planned. Fortunately, she came through and found something perfect. Dressing for weddings is always a challenge, and dressing for the Unitarian wedding of an atheist religion professor to a minister made it that much more interesting.

Seriously, folks should get married every weekend just to make little kids look this damn cute.

The wedding party. The wedding was in the morning, the most formal time of the day. I suspect it was actually to cut down on the drinking and swearing the comes with weddings though. A few still managed to knock back a dozen drinks at a formal luncheon, but imagine how much worse it would have been at 7 p.m.?

Let the record reflect even the adults dressed for the occasion. I like that dress - I just got it. An added bonus was that it looks like Julia Roberts' dress in Pretty Woman when she goes to the polo match and Jason Alexander calls her out for being a hooker. Fortunately, no one called me a hooker this time. Unfortunately, no one accused me of looking like Julia Roberts either.

The whole family. Bjorn is standing on a step lower than everyone else and he still looks taller than everyone.

All four grandchildren. I loved how the outfits turned out. Andy is wearing a hand-me-down suit. There was some debate as to whether he needed something black but I think this worked out. I did call around everywhere (naturally on the Thursday before a Saturday morning wedding in another state) trying to find a bow tie. I finally found a Christmas tie on sale at Janie and Jack. It's too big so my dad stole a paper clip from some flowers in the church to fix it. He's MacGyver for wedding outfits.

Andy's job was to hand out programs and he was quite proud of himself for having such an important job. All sixty guests needed those programs. Bjorn was there to make sure he did it because while he recognized the importance, he was a little shy to just shove them into people's hands.

He knew how cute he was and was posing. That kid ain't always shy.

So Nashville (randomly if you ask me) has the world's only life-size replica of the Parthenon in Greece. Despite our mocking, it was actually kind of cool and impressive. Loads of people were there taking wedding pictures that day. There were also a lot of men wandering around with their shirts off and jean shorts.  Bjorn and I agreed that straight men, even in the south, don't wear jorts and no shirt.

Andy was dancing for us. That kid has white guy moves, but he can really move it.

That's right

We are the Sunday coed champions. In addition to a "free" T-shirt that I have paid for 100 times over, we also got our picture taken with the longhorn. We have a great team of some former college players. It's great fun. Next season we move up a division. Should be interesting to see how we do. Either way, champs today! Meg and Andy both thought we should have gold medals though. Next time.

I leave for a week on Tuesday on VACATION. Without the family. For a week. I am so excited and also nervous. I have not left the kids except for a few work trips. I hope I remember how to relax and travel without a change of clothing and snacks for everyone. Then again, that might make me most popular. Only with this group, Instead of capri suns, I will pack a bag Of wine.

Also Meg is sleeping around. Again.

Wedding

My cousin got married today and was nice enough to include my kids in the wedding. There was all sorts of angst about what they would ultimately wear and I think they turned out great. Course with kids in dressy clothes, you can almost never go wrong.

Also my dad was so wiped out last night that he napped while the party went on. So I repaid him by putting random objects on him and taking his picture.

And last chronically is Bjorn on his birthday. He's really even more super handsome these days.

Dance, dance revolution

Last day, new beginnings

Here is Margaret on her last day of school last week. We are officially of for summer break.

Now it is on to our dance recital and Juijitsu. I might even figure out how to spell Juijitsu by the end of the summer.

Today was the last day of first grade. Hard to believe how much he's grown since August. I also can't believe how much he needs a haircut. Big changes this year - two new front teeth and two loose ones at the moment, longer hair, taller. He now reads incredibly fluently, can do basic square roots (don't ask, it certainly didn't come from me) and is an excellent swimmer. Along the way, he has tried skiing, completed two seasons of soccer and did some gymnastics. Phew! It was so long as fast all at the same time.

To mark the occasion, they had an ice cream party. When I arrived he was finished a bowl of vanilla with marshmallows and gummy bears. We he announced his stomach hurt, no one was surprised.

This summer, we'll have two babysitters trading off. One who worked for us last summer is back (yay!) and one who had been working for us after school during the year is staying on for longer (yay!). He's doing swim team again and he's going to be doing some martial arts in the evenings twice a week. Later on, he's got some camps sprinkled throughout and a visit to California in August. I am hoping we can get to Austin for a weekend again this summer, too.

Strep

Someone in my house is a carrier for strep. My leading suspect is someone under the age of eight, a male, weighs 50 pounds and likes to play the guitar no matter how out of tune it may be.

I don't recall ever having strep as a kid. This was disappointing, too. All my friends had it and I just had plain old sore throats. What fun is that? A real sore throat has a name and comes with antibiotics and not Luden's cough drops. But since I've had kids, I've had strep three times. The first time I was pregnant with Meg. Andy didn't get it, but I did. It was a rough few days being 6 months pregnant and achy and miserable. Last spring I got it and now this week.

I need to ask my doctor about if I need to get my tonsils taken out or something because this really sucks to be down for the count with high fever, chills and sore throat for two solid days.

Wanderer

My very restless sleeper is back! We have made a little progress on the going to bed thing and then there are night's like these. They all look like crime scene photos.

Trophy season

It's the end of the school year and lots of things are wrapping up, meaning lots of end of the season events and lots of celebrating.

Andy is getting his Tiger Badge, which I don't quite understand, but I think this means he can move up to being a Wolf scout next year.

He's pretty excited. I wish I could I have talked him into wearing pants that matched even slightly.

This was the Three Piggy Opera, the first grand spring musical. Beyond adorable. He's on the front right in a white shirt. I was able to negotiate better clothes for this one. The teachers told the kids specifically to have their parents pick out the outfits.  

Andy got up the nerve to invite his babysitter, Avery, to come with us. He's got a bit of a crush. Margaret had pajama day that day (and every day she's not wearing a gown practically).

End of season wrap up for soccer. I used to think participation trophies were lame until I had kids and realized just how important they are to the kids.

Here's the whole team. We actually have one more game.

Dance

I have been on the fence about dance class as they seem to take themselves a little too seriously. One thing is for sure though, this is going to be one damn cute recital.

Glad pask

Don't these kids clean up nice?

The little camper that shouldn't have been

I can hear the a collective groan from the counselors at camp when they saw my registration for my second summer. I was a terrible camper my first year. Camp was somehow not what I expected. I thought I was going to ride horses every day. I thought it would be different. I thought I wouldn't be scared to be gone for 19 days. But I was terrified. I spent the first 10 days crying to go home, I believe. My parents were called. Daily. Schedule adjustments were made. And somehow, by the middle of my second week, I began to really like camp. I gave up worrying and started having fun and learning. By the time my parents arrived, I stunned everyone by talking about next year.

The next summer, I was thrilled to be back. And then the loneliness of the first night set in and I cried. Then by the next night, I had switched to a new cabin and was having fun again. There were so many things to love about camp. It was outdoors, which I enjoyed. We got to ride horses and learn about animals, practice shooting guns and do obstacles courses. We played silly card games and cooked by the campfire.

Most of all, I had a chance to be someone I wasn't at home. I was cool. The skills I had at camp were valued in a way that weren't at middle school. Plus, I didn't have the baggage of kids who had known me since I was born. I had a chance to start new and I liked that.I went as a camper for the next six years, eventually becoming a counselor in training and then a counselor. I loved it. I learned a lot of leadership skills out there and that boosted my confidence immensely.

Last weekend, we organized a bit of a camp reunion down at the Y.O. Ranch. It was a multigenerational thing as the 35 or so of us overlapped at the same place but didn't necessarily all go to camp at the same time. We even had a fair number of counselors show - including two from Connecticut and one from Georgia. It was amazing to me to realize that so many of us had the same reaction to camp, especially this camp, that 20 years later we would travel hundreds and, for a few, thousands of miles to see it again. To see the place that meant so much to us and contributed so much to our formidable years, was really something.

It was also sad to see the camp has deteriorated over the years and has changed its focus. It's become more of a hunting camp than an outdoor adventure camp. Plus, insurance regulations have changed and a lot of what we did back then wouldn't fly today (which, frankly, I'm fine with.) As such, I'm not sure it would be a good place for my kids. That's both sad and liberating. They should get to find their own place and not necessarily go to where I went and have to live with my memories.

I have talked to my friends about sending our kids to summer camp though. Things seem different though. When? Where? How long? And how much? I look at Andy now at age 7 and wonder when he'll be ready. Not this year, certainly, but 9? 12? Same sex? Coed? I so much enjoyed the whole experience that I'd love my kids to get to experience something like it.


Here I am at age 10 learning to lasso. I think I look pretty good, actually.



My third year. I think I had a fe-mullet. It wasn't pretty. These are the austere cabins. They look exactly the same today.



Here I am on the climbing and rappel tower circa 1987.



Here I am on the ropes course in 2012. I look just as good, right? I was sure a lot more scared, that's for certain.

The case of the lucky penny

So Meg swallowed a penny last week. It was the middle of our vacation and I was getting the kids into bed when I noticed her trying to put her fingers down her throat so she could throw up the penny she had just swallowed. I immediately sat her up and started patting her back, she vomited a little and I sent Andy down to get help (one of the beauties of 11 people staying in the same house).

We all figured it would be fine, but Mary pointed out that some coins have lead in them so I called poison control just to be safe. Conveniently, I had it saved in my iPhone since the last time Meg made me call poison control. They said so long as she seemed to be feeling fine and was breathing normally (she was), that she should be fine but to check her stools for the next week to make sure it passed.

And now here we are, 6 days later, and I have yet to recover her "lucky" penny. This leads me to believe several things:
1) She pooped in this time and didn't tell me (most likely)
2) Her stomach acid ate the penny (possible, or possibly that it was eaten beyond recognition during my, uh, searches for it).
3) Gremlins ate it (Andy's thought)
4) It's still in there.

We see a new pediatrician on Friday. I'm going to ask her then if we need to do anything else. In the meantime, if it happens to come out naturally and I happen to see it, I'll post a picture. Just what you always wanted!

Skiing

We successfully skied this week although some were more successful than others. I believe I may be sore sore weeks.