Ile de Pomme

And the lesson is....never try

2011-11-26T03:00:00.001-08:00

I'm tempted to walk through here singing, a la Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

I know, I know...I fail as a casual blogger. I think I've gone over this before. When you spend a huge chunk of your day writing and editing, the last thing you want to do at the end of it is write some more. The ideal end of my day would be rocking in a dark corner somewhere, but that's not working out for me either.

Look! I ripped off all the wallpaper. It still looks gross, though.

And besides, I pretty much so fail as a parent these days, too. Halloween came and went. We saw costumes here, and they had Halloween candy. Why, I'm not sure....because we got a grand total of TWO (yes, that's whopping TWO) trick-or-treating families. Next year, we're having a party. I do have to laugh at the people here who say, "Well, Halloween is such an English thing." No, no, it's not. Halloween was invented by people whose idea of fun involves more than staring at mounted animal heads and discussing William Deerborne-Buckminster's latest fox hunt tally, thankyouverymuch. The English wish they were cool enough to come up with the fantastic fun that is Halloween.

Alex as a zombie. He's really into zombies right now, so he was happy.

I failed so thoroughly at Halloween that I slapped together costumes at about 5pm. Then, we wandered the streets of Confolens for a bit, decided it was completely dead, and then piled up in the car to go for....Chinese food. We brought the kids back to the house and let them knock on the doors of our house, which, to be fair, could easily provide the backdrop to 28 Days Later. My kids have low expectations in life. This makes them easy to please.

Ava as Tiana. Most unoriginal costume ever. I suck.

Ah, but we still had Thanksgiving. I was determined to get a working stove/oven before the 24th. So it was providence that we walked into Carrefour and found this little guy for €150 off (missing timer button). It's not white. Check. It looks retro. Check. I can carry it out of the store and into my kitchen. Check.

I haz oven!

Getting it up our stairs was an adventure. Halfway through, M (who had lost his shoes in the process of moving said oven up the stairs) said to me, "I'm sorry. I think you've actually got the hard end." I think I grunted more than actually formed a coherent response, because I had a large metal appliance pinning my neck against the wall at a not-normal angle.

Alex found a tail-less lizard. It was cause for much excitement.

But we got it up, and I was so happy. Five days before Thanksgiving. We'd have it up and working before then, no problem. M even said our oven was electric (the stovetop is gas), so we just needed to get a plug (they don't sell things with plugs here -- it's very, very strange), and we'd be in business. Turkey, get in mah belly!

The As on Armistice Day.

Our electrician put a plug on it the following Tuesday. He also made vague indications that he was going to hook the gas up to it. I was ready to commit bigamy with this 70-year-old Frenchman with absolutely no sense of humor whatsoever. He didn't connect the gas, and I reconsidered my illegal thoughts. Well, at least we had the oven.

The As even made the Charente Libre blog. :)

M turned the oven on. The house smelled like it was going to burn down. He turned it off. "Oh, by the way," he said casually, "the oven isn't electric. Just the broiler is." The broiler? The broiler?! I don't even know what a broiler's function in life is. "It's no big deal," he continued. "We can just boil a pot of water on the camping stove and put either a chicken or a turkey in there." Or we could not do that, because that sounds absolutely disgusting.

Mini-Minion, her sweet little grubby hands, and her new "friend."

I was still cheerful, though, because we have a microwave/convection oven. Sure, it wasn't going to be great, but it would be ok. One of the apartments we had in Paris only had an oven like that, and I made Thanksgiving dinner on it. It was okay.

All made in a convection microwave oven. Except the drinks. And the plates. And the utensils. Everyone looks happy enough.

The day came, and Mr. A was freaking out over pumpkin pie. So that was the first thing I made. I was so excited to use the gigantic squash I found at the market. I made my own pie crust. It fell on the ground. I should have quit then. I'm stubborn. That's an irritating trait to have. So I kept on my fool's errand.

Meet Stinkytoes. We cannot dissuade her from that name. We call the cat Belle.

The pie was in the oven, and I was sitting downstairs with M, feeling quite full of myself. I am awesome, I thought. The electricity went out and came back on. I walked to the bakery to get a baguette. When I came back, I thought, Gee, that's funny. Why can't I smell pie? That sucks. That's most of the fun of baking a pie anyway. I climbed the stairs, and noticed the oven said 0:00. It's done already? The electrician jumped in front of the doorway, exclaiming, "I'm very sorry. I hope it wasn't ruined." The electricity. It went off. I had a pie in an electric box. That electric box went off when the electricity went off, and it did not come back on. The pie was mostly cooked. Mostly.

Because I am a wicked person, this sign makes my life. I imagine people infested with plague crawling out of their houses.

When I've decided I'm going to be in a good mood, it takes a lot to get me down. (Conversely, if I'm going to be in a bad mood, nothing will change that until I've decided I'm not going to be in a bad mood.) So this pie thing only made a minor dent in my optimism. I had other things to make!

But the kids had to be picked up from school. They were so excited about dinner. We walked inside, and the first words out of the electrician's mouth were: "We have a very serious problem. Very serious. Your wiring is faulty, and it's EDF's responsibility. This is very dangerous and is probably going to start a fire tonight if it's not taken care of immediately. You must call them and have them come NOW."

Out in front of our house. I like it.

I'll spare you the boring 4-hour wait for EDF. We gave the As their mostly cooked pie early. And we ended up at....the Chinese restaurant. It was a fairly quiet dinner. At least our wiring isn't going to kill us in our sleep now. Think positive.

Besides, there's always Christmas.

Are You Really Moving?

2011-09-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

1. Yes.

2. No, really. Yes. In 7 days, actually.

In a nutshell, M and I were talking a few months ago, and he said he'd really like to go back to France. We mulled over the idea of moving back to Paris, and I even contacted a few agencies in the city about places in the 11th and 19th. Then I happened to look at rentals in Normandy, and I realized it was possible to get a house (a HOUSE) for €500 a month. It was only a short leap to looking at fixer uppers.

We bought this car. Yes, it's hideous, but it runs well, and until you find a car for £600, mouth = shut.

"Too bad we can't just buy a house," I told M.

Too bad, indeed.

Enter an interesting conversation over a drive back from Scotland with someone who is in the same boat.

Oddly enough, crying children don't make for fun camping trips.

I came home from Scotland and said to M, "Let's try to do this." I think he has just given up on rationality where I'm concerned, so he just sort of shrugged and nodded. I started researching furiously, and came across the Poitou-Charentes region, and a highly recommended estate agency with all sorts of decaying houses. I was sold.

So we planned a trip to the village, Confolens, to look at a few properties. We really didn't know what we were walking into. As it happened, THIS is what we were walking into:

Well. That certainly needs a bit of work. So we kept looking. The third house we viewed needed work. I'm not going to lie. . .it does need a lot of work. But it was fun, and the village was cute, and it's cheap, so why not?

Why not, indeed.

So we put an offer on it. That offer was accepted, we put down our deposit, and the rest will work itself out.

I know you're probably at least mildly curious what we got ourselves into. So, without further ado, the Great Townhouse Wreck of Confolens:

Hint: It's the one with the green "Le Rasoir" shop. That's ours, too!

Not so bad from the outside. . .And the shop is in pretty decent condition. We're going to convert it into a living room/guest room.

The shop area even has its own toilet, which we're going to convert into a bathroom. It, erm, needs a little work. Because right now, it sort of looks like a toilet for dead people.

But that's ok, because there is a fully functioning bathroom upstairs. Isn't it lovely? Just look at that wallpaper!

But the bones are pretty good, and there is a lot of potential.

Alex gets his own room, which is huge. . .

And Ava gets her own room, which is not so huge. . .

They even get their own bathroom, which isn't really much of anything yet.

Best of all. . .we have a gigantic attic! It's going to be a playroom! When it doesn't look like a breeding ground for tetanus, of course.

That's only half of it.

Are we crazy? No, that's silly.

That would be the other half.

For all of this grand luxury, we're paying a total of €200/month, or about $275, including property taxes.

I'm told this is a kitchen. I have my doubts.

Yes, it's a bit random, I guess. I'm sure it seems unexpected. But if you think we're going into this blindly. . .well, then you don't know me very well. ;)

So the third evolution of the never-updated blog is taking place. Now you get to come along as we fix up our house in France and I commute back and forth to London pretty much so once a month (for less than a monthly tube pass). Questions? :)

The One Where M Broke Mr. A's New Bike

2011-05-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

For Mr. A's birthday last month, he got a new bike. After continuous comments for the better part of six months about how great a new bike would be, he was beyond excited to have finally gotten what he wanted.

After a few weeks, being able to ride the bike around the courtyard wasn't good enough. He started begging to be able to ride it to school. "How are you going to do that?" I asked. "I can think of a hundred things I'd rather do than run behind your bike, trying to keep up."

"You can get a bike, too," he said. Point taken. And I probably will, but who knows when that will be. Probably late one night in December, when I'm overtaken by some sort of manic urges to buy something. Or next month, when my travel card expires. But we'll see if I feel like riding a bike around then. In any case, I told him I'd think about getting one next month with the money I saved by not buying a travel card.

One morning, M decided to be nice to me by letting me sleep in and taking Mr. A to school. Mini-Minion wasn't having any of that, and she woke up as soon as they walked out the door. So I was curled up on the couch working when M came rushing into the sitting room.

"You're never going to believe what happened," he said. "I was riding Alex's bike back from his school, and--"

"What?" I asked.

He sort of waved me off, as if I had just asked the dumbest question. Of course it's perfectly normal to be riding a child's bike. :/

"I let him ride it to school, and I had to get it home somehow," he said. Or he could have just chained it up and let Alex ride it home later.

"Whatever," he said. "So I was riding by Mortlake Road and Lower Richmond, and I had to get back up on the sidewalk. I lifted up on the handlebars, and I got the bike up, but the handlebars kept coming and lifted completely out of the tube. But I kept going and had nothing to steer with, so it looked like one of those cartoons when they rip the steering wheel out of the car. I almost crashed into the brick wall, but I got my feet down in time. The worst part is, there were two workmen and a long line of cars down Lower Richmond who saw everything."

"I sat back down, but the bike seat was twisted 90 degrees, and I don't even know how that happened," he continued. "When I readjusted the bike and turned it around on the path, the tube inside the tire completely popped, so I had to carry the bike home. I turned to the workers and said, 'Wow, that could have been really bad.' One of them said, 'Yeah, it could have. Mate, I think that's a child's bike, and you're too big for it.'"

Blank stare.

"You broke his bike?" I asked.

"Well, I'll fix it," he said, throwing up his hands and rolling his eyes in response to the terribly offensive suggestion I didn't make.

"Yeah, but you broke his bike because you were popping wheelies on it when you probably shouldn't have been sitting on it at all," I said. "Just a hunch, but I don't think he's going to be thrilled about that."

"It was kind of funny," he said, "because my knees were practically to my chest while I peddled, so I'm sure I looked really stupid anyway."

I scrunched up my nose and turned my head to the side. "Maybe that should have been your first indication that you shouldn't have been riding it, yeah? The handlebars came out? Weren't you the one who put it together? Did you not tighten something?"

"Oh, I'm sure the problem is just that one of their parts sucks," he said. Of course. Totally logical conclusion to draw.

The afternoon came, and I was the one who had to pick up Alex from school. "Where's my bike?" he asked almost immediately. "Why didn't you bring it with you?"

"Ok, Alex," I said, "I'll be honest. Daddy broke your bike, but it's actually a really funny story, and when you hear it, I'm sure you'll think it's hilarious and you won't be mad anymore!" I sort of pumped my fists horizontally in the air to get him superwayjazzed about this fun and exciting story. Yeah! Your bike's broken, but your dad did it in such a stupid way, how can you not laugh?

The fact that in the end he actually did laugh about it should make his father eternally grateful that he has such a chill child.

Superwoman Syndrome

2011-05-08T02:42:00.001-07:00

People who deal with me day in and day out can tell you one of the easiest ways to annoy me is to ask, "Why are you so tired?" Here's the rundown:

1. I work. Yes, from home, but I work just like anyone else. In fact, my job might be harder than a "regular" job, because I'm constantly interrupted. Imagine if you were working in an office and your coworker insisted on sitting on your computer or crawling all over you or talking to you constantly. Or crying. Or making messes EVERYWHERE. You've also got to make that coworker breakfast and lunch. It's not like you can ignore that. (Psst. . .at the end of the day, you have to like that coworker, too. Sucks.)

2. I'm doing a full-time, one-year master's program. In the States, our MAs are two years. Here, they're one. So two years of work crammed into one. It's intense enough as it is, I think, without all the other stuff added to it. I know some people who have a hard time juggling school and work.

3. I have two kids. Two young kids. In between doing the first two things, M and and I have potty-trained Mini-Minion, which has not gone as easy as I would have hoped, and certainly not as easy as it was with Mr. A. We also have to make sure Mr. A is taken care of. His current roster is:
Monday - swimming
Tuesday - free!
Wednesday - guitar
Thursday - combination dance & cub scouts
Friday - drumming & power station

I also try to go on field trips with him when I can. And on the weekends, my silly kids actually want to do stuff. With us.

4. Somewhere in there, I have to squeeze in time for M, friends, seminars, conferences, and calling family. They're all really, really important for different reasons. I need to add professional organizations to that list eventually, but right now, I just can't see where to fit it in.

This isn't for people to say, "Oh my gosh, how do you do all of this?!" It's so people understand why, at the end of the day, what I really want most in life is to sleep for a week. I'm really not complaining about my workload, and I don't think I complain about it much in person (maybe I'm wrong). My wants and interests are bigger than my time capabilities. This can cause problems sometimes when I have to make a decision between doing two things I really want to do.

We didn't make gingerbread ornaments for Christmas. We did nothing for Valentine's Day. I didn't even get valentines for Alex's class. We didn't make Easter eggs this year. The kids didn't have baskets. I keep pushing Alex's birthday party back. It's next weekend. I still haven't given the kids their invitations. I have no supplies. I'll probably throw it together at the last minute on Friday, and I'll be sad that nothing is the way I wanted it to be.

Are the kids upset? No, not really. Well, not at all actually. But there's a nagging sensation in the back of my head that never forgets to remind me that they'll only be little once and only for a short amount of time. I only get one shot at raising them. I don't want regrets.

As I said before, I haven't joined any professional organizations. They freak me out. I'm not networking like I should be. My seminar and conference choices are very limited in scope, and between the two, they're limited to about two or three per month, because I don't want to be away from the house more than I need to be right now. I have no job prospects in archaeology after graduation.

Is it a huge deal right now? Probably not. I've got time. But I'm not getting any younger, and if I want to be serious about this, then I've got to put myself out there. Opportunities are not going to show up on my doorstep. And I'm very aware that the more time that goes on, the less I'm actually getting accomplished professionally, and that's not going to be good for me five years down the road.

But the bottom line is: I can't do it all. I would love to be able to work, take care of the kids full time, keep the house spotless, do all the school activities, go to several conferences a week, make contacts with people from other universities, do research, travel with the kids, spend time with my friends, call everyone in my family once a week, find time to write, keep up with the blog, do personal development stuff like learn new languages or new crafts, read books, watch all the latest movies so I can at least carry on conversations with people, and do all those holiday activities you're "supposed" to do. And these are the things that weigh me down every day. I hate having limitations.

Deep down, I feel like a failure for not being able to swing it all. And when people ask, "Why are you so tired all the time?", it feels like they're saying the same thing. Like it should be easy.

But it's not, and rationally, logically, I know that.

I just can't seem to break the cycle of feeling like I need to do it all.

Paris vs. London

2011-04-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

I really do think about this blog quite often. It's just that by the end of the day, when everything else is taken care of, this gets pushed to the backburner pretty much so every day. Along with about 20 other projects.

I'm still working on FAQs Part II. But here's another one that gets its own. Do I prefer London or Paris? I get asked this a lot. A LOT. This is probably the third most frequently asked question aside from "Why did you move?" and "How's London?"

This is kind of a funny question to me. I don't know how to compare two totally different cities. But here we go. We're going to stack them against one another. Warning: this post contains lots of stereotypes (both real ones and the word).

Area #1: Well. . .AREA

Here's the deal. Our first apartment in Paris was freaking awesome. The location, the size. . .everything. But we didn't appreciate it, mostly because we suck like that. I'd love to transplant that apartment to London in a comparable location, and life would be SO good. Even our second apartment in France rocked, even though it was the size of my dad's walk-in closet.

Now we live in London. And our flat is nice. Mortlake is Nice. Richmond-upon-Thames is NICE. But it's so white bread. Someone used the term "yummy mummy" to describe the women here, and while that sounds totally gross, it makes me laugh, and now I can't help but think it every time I pass the women pushing their Maclarens in their black spandex pants, puffer coats and booties. Even so, laughing at your neighbors doesn't make an area worth living in.

WINNER: Paris, by a longshot

Area #2: General People

Don't hate on the lack of accents.

Oh, this is a fun one. Would I rather deal with the French or the English? It really depends on my mood. The French. . .are really not as bad as everyone makes them out to be. I don't really find them rude as much as almost apathetic about 80% of the time, which I guess can come off as rude. They're very into following rules, though, even if it's rules they've just made up.

On the other hand, 20% of the time, they're very alive and animated, which is great fun. That's the stereotypical passionate side, which I find very engaging, because I think I may be part psychic vampire. I like watching the French fight.

Besides, I can tune them out if it gets to be too much.

Then we have the English. What can you say when you really can't say anything bad? It's not bad. They're not bad. They're very lovely people. They're just so. . .proper. I've been told I'm rather infuriating at times because I'm an expert on talking without really saying anything. I've got nothing on the English. I remember someone saying once something like, "I would hate to be German. Could you imagine calling your wife 'Sie' while in bed? *shudder*" Hilarious! (For the semi-dense: yes, it was a joke.) But the English are like one step below that. Do they ever get mad? No, really. Do they ever show real emotion? No, really.

The best example of what I'm talking about is when someone dies, especially after being kidnapped or something. The newspaper reports, "The family is understandably distressed and requests privacy during this time." Distressed? Seriously, distressed? Distressed is like, I have a £50 voucher for Gap, and I don't know what I did with it (this is true). I think about it on occasion, and it stresses me out that a) I'm still fairly irresponsible with things and b) I'm cold and I want a real sweatshirt. So you could say I'm distressed. If someone I know dies, I'm devastated.

Add to this that I'm naturally fairly loud and I'm extremely animated when I really get going. I think this is a problem. I've never really felt stereotypically American when I'm out of the country, but I do here. I should buy a pair of white trainers, some sweat pants, and a bum bag. And surgically attach a McDonald's bag to my hand. I don't really see having an extra appendage as being a problem with writing my dissertation, because I'm probably too stupid to understand what I'm supposed to be doing anyway, and it won't get done. Or I'll end up writing it in crayon and turn it in with french fry (sorry, chips) grease all over the paper.

Yet for some odd reason (read: I'm stupid), I like the English anyway, and often stick up for them when many (read: all) of the other immigrants I've met have told me how distant and awful "the British" (American code word for something that probably is English) are.

WINNER: I don't know. It's between people who make me feel bad for talking to them and people who make me feel like I'm offending them for talking at all. Fine line. Let's call this one a tie.

Area #3: Scenery

There's an area of Paris by Ile de la Cite where heaven and earth collide to produce the most breathtaking pop-up of gargoyle-topped marble-chiseled (not really) buildings parted by the emerald serpentine Seine. That's really all I have to say about that. I have an amazing picture of Alex with it as the background, but I can't find it right now.

At first, I thought this would be an easy point to Paris. But then spring hit England, and like the Grinch, my cold, black heart grew three times that day (March 21, which ironically, I think was a rainy day). Besides, the English always give things fun names which increases the chances I'm going to find it somewhat endearing. Like Dorking. And Yorkey's Knob. Or they call their food spotted dick or clapshot. I'm obsessed.

Even within London, we've got Canary Wharf (yellow water birds), Elephant and Castle (the circus), Canada Water (Niagara Falls), Kentish Town (a Renaissance Faire), Chalk Farm (petting zoo). . .Those sound like fun places. Some of them aren't, but that's not the point. (For those who are lost, my incredibly awesome and somewhat childish associations are in parentheses.)

I can't think if many areas that compare to Soho and Camden Town.

WINNER: Overall. . .I don't know. I want to say London, especially because it's spring, but then I think of Pere Lachaise, and it all sort of goes out the window again. I'll tentatively say London.

CONCLUSION: There are so many other areas I could get into (language, for example, and accents), but I'll stop, because this might be incredibly boring. If there's any interest, we'll revisit in the future. So, we have Paris-tie-London. That doesn't solve anything.

How's London?

2011-03-11T14:52:00.000-08:00

Aww, this was going to be FAQs part II (so exciting, I know!!!), but I just kept writing. It's sort of a thing lately with me. That's covered later, too. Ugh. I suck.

1. How's London?
How is London? That is an excellent question. You see, my fine friends, I had a brief lapse in sanity while selecting my courses for UCL. I know what you're thinking. . .ME, have a lapse in sanity and/or judgment? But I assure you good people that it does occasionally (often) happen. And it went like this:

Me: Umm. . .they're not offering Medieval Archaeology at the graduate level next year. Or any of the maritime classes. Of course not. Freaking of course not. Now what am I going to do? No, really. What am I going to do? (I then proceeded to get angry and make evil eyes at the computer, which is actually less common than you would think. . .it's all about how often you pull something out of your bag o' tricks. The more often you do it, the less effective it is.)
M (TOTALLY uninterested): I don't know.
Me: Ugh. Now I'm going to have to be interested in prehistory. I can be interested in prehistory, right? I can. Sure. (Side note: No, I can't.) I'll just take this British and European Prehistory course. (sweeping arm gesture) I'm going to be a prehistorian. And this Applied Archaeology in the UK could be useful. Oh! Experimental Archaeology. I can deal with that. What do I take for my last course?

M: What are your options?
Me: Reads list of options. . .most are boring and have to do with the Middle East or the Mediterranean, which I'm sure are insanely awesome to study, and I'm too stupid to realize it. Archaeology of Modern Conflicts? Maybe? (cue: YES!!! Tell me to take it!) No, I don't think that will be useful. (Future Me: Who CARES? You'll actually be interested, I promise!) How about archaeometallurgy?
M: What's that?
Me: Metallic artifacts. Yeah, I think I'll put that down. I like artifacts. I like metal things. They had lots of metal in the Medieval period. Maybe I can use it if they let me do a PhD in Medieval Archaeology. We've got a winner! (Future Me: Oh my god, I cannot even begin. Run. Run far away, Past Me. It's not what you think it is.)

I'm annoyed because I look like a 12-year-old. No, not really. I was going to say the standard "Get pissed!" but that's sort of weird to say here, and no one gets it. That's sad.

I had the most awesome supervisor ever in California. I took a really intensive lab class with her. We learned about lithics, I can name the parts of a flake, I can pretend to flint knap, and I can differentiate broadly between rocks. We did ceramics, and now I know about processing and decorative techniques, dating methods, tempur, and all that fun, fantastic stuff. We did historic artifacts, brief ossteology, faunal remains, archaeobotany. . .and I learned (in Jill's wise words) enough to be dangerous. (If you need help, that's because I'm not an expert. Got it?) I was expecting archaeometallurgy to be fun, Fun, FUN like that, but just with metallic objects.

So the first day of class, I get in, and homeboy in the front starts talking about Chemistry and all sorts of strange things. . .iron slag and smelting and metal grains (Wwwwwwtf are metal grains?), and he's pulling out all these insane science-y graphs. I had that fake "aha ha ha" smile on my face, and I could feel my eyes were sort of that abnormal shape they get when I'm totally not into a situation.

Oh, but then, my friends, THEN, he pulls out the big guns. We are expected to DRAW 4 artifacts and photograph them. The photography. . .that's ok. But the drawing? Drawing and I aren't really on speaking terms. It's kind of sad, and I keep making advances, hoping the relationship can be patched up, but drawing is kind of a jerk (you know, the kind who only hangs out with "special" people), and it's just not working out.

Why did I stay in it? Well, I've gotten increasingly neurotic since I've been here, and I'm convinced that everyone I encounter thinks I'm stupid. But really, it's because I say stupid things. As in, REALLY stupid things. Things that later cause me to think, "I really should never open my mouth again. Or I could just die. Either or." I'll cover this in a different blog post, because I've really let some nice ones come out. Anyway, instead of admitting that I suck at life, I stayed in, which really probably says more about this whole sucking at life thing than actually staying in did.

All this to explain why I haven't been existing for the better part of two months. I don't know how London is. It's getting warmer. Although that might just be my brain overheating with concepts that are better suited to someone with a degree in chemistry. If this happens again, my brain and I are not going to be on speaking terms, and that could get way awkward. (I really don't want to have to divide up friends. I have a feeling they'll all go with the brain.)

Last note: This picture annoys me. It looks so staged. But I'm keeping it in for the families. It has an associated awkward story about this guy at the Natural History museum who kept following me around, trying to talk to me, and then out of nowhere, he's like, "Here, let me take a picture of you guys." Um, no. Go away. But M thinks that's ALWAYS a good idea. Me, not so much. But if you know me, you already know I have an aversion to photographs of myself.

Navigating Christmas After a Death

2010-12-23T14:05:00.000-08:00

I was just telling some friends of mine about what our Christmas was like immediately after my mom died, and thinking about it made me laugh, so I thought it would be a decent blog post. Yes, the pictures are unrelated. :) Hope you can deal. Of course you can, because my pictures are often unrelated. Also, I'm not totally convinced I can do this story justice with such a short blog post. Each one part should really have its own post, and I wish I had related pictures.

A quick note about these pictures, though. We took the kids to Hyde Park on Monday. They're having this really cool Winter Wonderland area with a Christmas market, Santa's village, a carniVUL, not a carniVAL, and a circus (to Mr. A: "Would you like to go to the circus?" Mr. A: "No, that's ok." Of course he doesn't want to do something FUN. He'd rather run around yelling with excitement over common squirrels.). Mr. A got to go on a really weird carnival ride, Mini-Minion sat in a faux-Cinderella carriage, and both kids got to meet Santa. It was a great day, although we learned the hard way for a second time that Converse are NOT the shoes for snow. Ahh. . .will I never learn? Never.

Ok, so back to the blog topic. Picture this. . .My mom died the day after Thanksgiving in 2004. We won't get into all the details, because it doesn't matter for this story. My brother (R) was 12 (almost 13) at the time, and I was just determined that he was coming back to Paris with us for Christmas. In my typical bull-headed fashion, we got his dad to say yes, I spent a ridiculous amount of money getting his passport in two days, and then we just booked his return ticket for when *I* felt like it. There was no discussion with anyone. I felt he should go home on January 2nd or 3rd (whichever it was), so that's when he was going. It's a wonder people like me at all. I think I'm definitely one of those people you either really love or really hate.

Anyway! This was not going to be a ruined Christmas. Sure, we didn't have our other family members with us, but the four of us were together (remember, this pre-dates Mini-Minion), and that's all that mattered. We threw together a Christmas dinner with our wonderful friends Darci and Marla, both of whom were also teaching English in France. Darci had a friend, Amanda, who was flying in from Atlanta, and who was "crashing" our dinner party. The more the merrier!

I had gained another kid overnight. A greedy, materialistic tween kid who I now had to Christmas shop for. I scrambled around trying to find something to get him in Paris (not exactly the coolest place for a young lad -- "Oh, but I'm telling you, EVERY fashionable boy of 13 is wearing pink Lacoste polos this season!"). I think we expedited The Chapelle Show 1 & 2, The Simpsons 1 & 2, and I got him one of those crystal photo things with the Eiffel Tower or something.

Our house was full, the boys were taken care of present-wise, and I was convinced of my own awesomeness, which I assure you is ALWAYS the first indicator that things are about to go wrong. I made cinnamon gingerbread ornaments as gifts, because I was obviously the second coming of Martha Stewart. They started cracking as soon as they dried. No big deal. I gave one to Darci. When she opened it up, Gingey had been quartered. ("Here's a gift that comes from the heart! Merry Christmas!") Sigh.

Christmas Eve, we went strolling around Paris. The boys ice skated at City Hall. We walked by Notre Dame, and the evening mass bells were ringing. I don't possess the writing ability to tell you what it was like. Perfection.

For some reason, I was still on my "Yeah, I'm so totally awesome" delusional kick, so I decided it would be a great idea to make cinnamon rolls from scratch. So I send M to the store to get what I needed. I started making them at 10 or 11pm on Christmas Eve. I made my dough and set it out to rise. By 3am (yes, 3am), I finally accepted defeat and realized my dough was defective. Either that or it had something to do with my dear, sweet, wonderful husband accidentally picking up baking soda instead of baking powder. <--- (the least amusing of M's French adventures)

We had nothing to eat for breakfast, but the boys didn't care. They were excited about their gifts. M had a special one for me. "You remember that disposable camera we found in your mom's room when we were cleaning it out? I had the pictures developed for you." Isn't that sweet? R and I climbed up on the couch together and opened the first packet, excited to see what our mom was taking pictures of. These could have been the last pictures of a family gathering, my baby shower, her with friends. . .who knew? Well, we knew then. They were pictures of some teenage girls we had never seen on a trip to Disneyland. What on earth? Somehow either the cameras or the pictures got switched. Enthusiasm deflated.

Darci and Amanda arrived later that afternoon. Darci pulled M and I aside and said, "I want to pull a prank on Amanda. At dinner, let's tell her it's a Mormon tradition that everyone has to sing a full Christmas carole at the table before anyone can eat." Me: "Umm. . .ok. That sounds pretty ridiculous." D: "I know! It's going to be awesome!"

I tried to make egg nog (my confidence in my own abilities was pretty low at this point, but it obviously wasn't completely depleted) from scratch. . .without any kind of electrical equipment. Yeah. . .just don't. Seriously. Don't ever do that. But the rest of the dinner came out ok, until Darci decided she was the world's greatest gravy maker. I was talking to her, watching her scoop her flour out, put it in the sauce pan, stir a little, and then put another scoop of flour in. Over and over. Finally, I said, "Darci, how much flour are you putting in there?" She looked down and yelled, "Oh my God, it's like paste! I'm so sorry! I ruined Christmas." She spent the rest of the night making comments like, "Wow, look at me, I totally ruined Christmas." and "I bet you don't want to invite me to any holiday dinners again."

We (M, Darci, Amanda, Marla, Alex, Ryan and I) sat down to our gravy-less dinner (I'm not a massive gravy fan, so it made no difference to me), and Darci is giving me the eye. We had discussed our "plan" for Amanda in the kitchen, and we (M and I) were told repeatedly "Ok, but you can't laugh when you tell her." So M cleared his throat and said, "We have a tradition in the Mormon church that no one can eat until everyone around the table has contributed a full Christmas Carole. Darci, will you start?" Oh, plan hitch. No one had told Marla, who was sitting on the opposite side of the table, about our joke. She looked like a deer caught in headlights. Darci starts singing "O Little Town of Bethlehem," but it's coming out that kind of crackly high-pitched sound of someone who's trying really hard not to laugh at her own cleverness. She got through the first verse before turning to Amanda and saying, "I'm just kidding! It's a joke I came up with!" M and I were shaking our heads, Marla was visibly relieved, Amanda seemed confused, and Darci was still laughing at her own joke.

After dinner, we put Alex to bed and we all played Scattergories, which is the worst game ever to play with Darci and Amanda. They came up with the worst answers (Slogan that starts with 'A': "Athletes make for great fitness"). But it was really great to laugh. So in the end, Darci most definitely didn't ruin Christmas, and in spite of everything, that year remains in the top 5 Christmases I've ever had.

They Act Like it Never Snows

2010-12-22T06:35:00.000-08:00

Here's the thing. . .I like living in London. No, that's not true. I LOVE living in London. There are so many great things about living here, and I think we got over culture shock here marginally faster than we did in France, probably because there is very little in the way of language barriers (I should really do a whole post on that).

That said, there are some things about living in the UK that really leave me scratching my head. Like most Europeans, they don't like ice. They have some sort of ice aversion. It annoyed me when we first got to France in 2004, but now it just makes me laugh. I got a diet coke at McDonald's the other day. . .not a single piece of ice. It's not like ice isn't a renewable resource. You take water, and you freeze it. It's really quite simple. But the Ice Hoarders here, they act like ice is a finite resource. Once it's gone, man, I guess it's gone, and there will be no more ice in the whole of Europe.

Another thing that. . .confuses. . .me about living in the UK is this whole snow situation. I've been to London three times in the winter. It snowed once (while we were on the top of an open-air boat on the Thames -- so totally NOT delightful), so I didn't really figure London saw a lot of snow. Then we moved out here to good ol' Mortlake, and I discovered that not only was I wrong, but that it SNOWED here. Mr. A has been bouncing off the walls with excitement since we moved in, waiting for the snow to arrive.

Ah, but here's where it gets interesting. So it snows. And really not that much. Yet we're treated to the airports closing, the trains freaking out and refusing to run, buses (oh, how I hate them) running even MORE behind, and giant headlines proclaiming: BRITAIN IN DEEP FREEZE. Now my scalp is practically raw from the scratching, because when I think "deep freeze," I think of, well, the frozen tundras of Russia or the northern parts of Scandinavia or Canada.

The pictures above really show how much snow we're talking about in London. Half the schools were closed. I'm serious, the trains were not running out of East London. The (London-area) airports were closed for days, and now I hear the Eurostar has angered people by pulling a quarter of its services. They act like this never happens. Except it happened last year. And the year before. This area has thousands and thousands of years of history. I'm pretty sure it has snowed lots of times. It's a little like eating candy before dinner, and then saying, "Wow, I never thought it would ruin my appetite. This is a huge shock. What am I going to do now?"

This also means shipping is extremely slow, with everything backlogged in warehouses. That means nothing is getting delivered and few things are going off to other countries. Once everything gets going again, there will still be serious delays. And on top of this, I just got an email from my other arch-nemesis, Transport for London, saying there will be major works on the tube/overground during the holidays, and there is apparently going to be ANOTHER freaking strike on the 26th. While people are trying to do Boxing Day shopping. Nice, guys. Nice.

All this aside, though, London is amazing. This is just one of those things that you have to shake your head and roll your eyes at. It is what it is. Tisk, tisk. :) Also, I think I figured out what's wrong with my camera. Judging by the massive difference in pictures depending on who is handling it, I think it's safe to say my camera is suffering from a disorder that starts with an M and ends with a c.

Mr. A Has a Christmas Program

2010-12-21T16:21:00.000-08:00

About two weeks ago (on a Tuesday), Mr. A came home with a piece of paper that said: "Your child will be an innkeeper in the school's Christmas program. Please gather a costume together. It would be helpful if you could have this by the dress rehearsal on Thursday." Come again? You want me to throw together a costume in one day? With my schedule?

He didn't make it for the dress rehearsal. I had to stop by Asda (UK equivalent of WalMart) on my way home from class to pick up a dressing gown for him. I grabbed a small all-white one from the women's section, figuring I could use it afterward. They didn't have any plain ones in the little sections.

The day of his first performance, he came home and said, "The kids laughed at me when I put on my costume." It was more stated, and I could tell he wasn't REALLY upset by it. I kind of fluffed his hair and said they were probably laughing because he looked silly wearing a robe at school, but it probably wasn't malicious, and sometimes we can't help but laugh at things.

The night of his performance (the following day), M set off with Mr. A early, because he had to be there 30 minutes before the show started. I stayed with Mini-Minion, intending to catch the bus and get there about 10 minutes early. Stupid, stupid 419. Freaking stupid 419. I wasn't joking when I said it was the bane of my existence. I HATE that bus. It didn't show up. It finally arrived AFTER Mr. A's performance started. There was another 419 directly behind it (the one that was on time). I wanted to scream.

I honestly can't tell you what the performance was about. It was obviously supposed to be the story of Jesus' birth, but. . .yeah. I don't even know what was going on. The kids were cute, though! But they were doing all these things. . .and I can't even tell you what these "things" were. It was just the most inventive retelling ever.

Oh, Mr. A. . .right at the end of the program, I got a good look at Mr. A standing up. And then I realized that not only was the women's small WAAAAY to big for him (hilariously big), but it had HEARTS all over it. I wanted to fall through the floorboards for him. As it was, I laughed. And he caught me laughing. He knew. Not only did I fail to get him his costume in time for the dress rehearsal and come way late to his show, but I also dressed him in a woman's dressing gown with hearts all over it. Parenting fail.

I talked to M later, and said, "Oh my God. You do realize his robe has hearts all over it?" M said, "Yeeah. I saw that. It's probably why the other kids were laughing at him."

Probably. And this is just another thing to add to the list for his eventual therapist to deal with, I'm sure.

The moment I was caught laughing.

But then again, maybe not. Because I don't know if I've mentioned this yet or not, but I have one of the coolest kids ever born. What I did to deserve him, I don't know. But he is insanely awesome, and I'm so lucky he's mine.

But Mr. A is SO cool, he loves me anyway.

The Day Mini-Minion Earned A Belly Badge

2010-12-19T05:50:00.000-08:00

This is what I woke up to after a nap one day. I guess working from home isn't too bad for M. . .he gets to spend his afternoons drawing Care Bear belly badges on his grateful daughter, who somehow got orange marker on her face in the process. Seriously, how excited was she? She spent the rest of the afternoon giving us Care Bear Stares.

So. . .England is cold. When it's windy, it's downright AWFUL. But still, I wouldn't trade it for anyplace in the world. :) I really love living in London. Well, maybe I'd trade it for Paris. Maybe. Maaaaybe.

The kids like it. Well, I guess Mini-Minion doesn't know any better. But Mr. A says if our family and his friends were here, he'd rather live here than where we were living. They've got access to so much more here, though.

I'm starting to realize the thing that really sucks about playing catch up with a blog is I forget all the witty things I've been planning in my head. And oh, believe me. They were witty.

I Think Something Is Wrong With My Camera

2010-12-19T05:27:00.000-08:00

For reals. It's not focusing the way it should. But that's not what's wrong with these pictures. No, M likes to mess around with the camera. He fancies himself David Lachapelle or something. So whenever I start taking pictures, the settings are really jacked up. REALLY messed up. And it often takes me about 10 minutes to realize it. <--- Now that's my fault.

I wish I had some cool story to go with these, but it's really boring. Mr. A had a school program where they got to show off the hats they all made for Maths Weeks. MathS. I don't get the extraneous "s." But when in Rome. . .

Oh! I guess I could talk about Mr. A's school. . .He's enjoying it a lot. His teacher is really nice. The school does seem to beg for money a lot, which is tough, but I guess that's just the way it is these days. They do have a lot of fun activities. I think, though, that this is the undesirable school of the district. Their events don't seem to be quite as big as the neighboring schools.

The student body is pretty diverse, which is nice. They also offer a lot of cool clubs, like Arabic, French, net ball, knitting, gardening, and drumming. Mini-Minion thinks Mr. A's school is really cool. She's always staring longingly at the nursery section, waiting for her turn to go in. She so badly wants to start school. Soon enough.

The only thing I can even really complain about Mr. A's school is how we get there. Oh, that 419 bus is the bane of my existence right now, especially with it being so cold outside. Sometimes we wait for 25 minutes or more for it to come. It would take less time to walk. The 25 minutes wouldn't be so bad, except it's supposed to come about every 10-15 minutes, and I usually get there a few minutes before it's supposed to arrive. Sometimes it just doesn't show at all, and we've got to wait until the next bus is scheduled. That bus is also usually late.

Back to the MathS show-off. There were a lot of awesome hats on display. I was impressed with what some of the kids came up with. Mr. A was a little embarrassed by his Fibonacci hat, but I thought it was adorable. He made and illustrated it all by himself, and that's really what counts.

Mini-Minion ran out of steam about 3/4 of the way through the assembly.

And she narrowly missed getting stepped on because she wouldn't move.

Check it out!

2010-12-19T05:18:00.000-08:00

Halloween in December! Heck yeah! Ok, so I've been really bad about updating. I've been getting Facebook messages and posts (and emails) for a few weeks now, so I guess it's time to update from Halloween. . .just before Christmas! Go, me!

Well, at the last minute, we decided basically to use what we already had at the house for the most part. We bought Ava a new dress (it's reversible!), and used my clothes for Alex. Ta-da! It's-a Mario. . .and Princess Peach. They did actually get recognized in the street, and people were really open to their costumes. Fun.

It took us a bit to get used to the way trick-or-treating is done here. Houses that are participating have jack-o-lanterns lit on their front porches. Which totally made us feel like tools for lighting ours on our balcony and then taking off. But our building is coded, so I doubt anyone was able to get in anyway. We spent about an hour trick-or-treating, which was enough for us!

(One of the few surviving photos of the blue hair.)

The kids got homebaked goods. Seriously. At least three or four houses handed out cookies, cakes and other things. They didn't get poisoned. I don't think that's even a consideration here. It was a novelty, and it even warmed my cynical little heart. :)

It's Almost Halloween. . .

2010-10-29T04:52:00.000-07:00

And believe it or not, I don't even have costumes ready. They were going to be Alice and the (new) Mad Hatter, but I had a feeling this would happen (I would run out of time), and I didn't want to waste such awesomeness on lousy costumes. So they'll be those next year. And it will be AMAZING! Feel the power of my awesome costume-making abilities. Muahahaha!

The weather here has been nice for the last few days, as nice as weather in 50s, windy and overcast can be. Ha. At least it isn't in the 30s or 40s and overcast, windy and freezing. Especially because that means more park time for the kids.

Mr. A is due to start school on Monday, which is exciting! The way it works in this borough is we have to send an application to the council, which will then contact the schools and find an opening. They recommend you contact the council before filling out the application to find out which schools actually have openings. Which, if you know me, you know we did. They gave us the names of three schools. Two were secular, one was either Catholic or Church of England (CoE).

I put two of the schools down on our application, dropped it off IN PERSON on the 16th of September, and very stupidly expected a reply within two weeks. After about two weeks, I hadn't heard anything, so I called. I was told the woman handling Mr. A's case wasn't in, but that they had so many applications, it was going to take three weeks to get to his. Aaaand she just had to mention, "I don't think they have any openings at [school #1]." Uh, ok. You're the ones who told me they did.

M was getting really frustrated by this point, because Mr. A had already missed almost a month of school. Not to worry, M, I said. They'll get back to us in about another week.

TWO more weeks go by, and I call again. This time, I spoke to the woman in charge of Mr. A's application. She said, "We're just waiting to hear back about the two openings at [school #1]. Once we hear back from those at the top of the list, your son will be. . . .oh, wait. He's #30 on the list." The end. Seriously, it was silent. Sometimes I think I fail at interactions here. Finally, I said, "Well, that's not going to do. I've already told you, he's not in school at all. This is a problem. I don't care at this point WHERE you put him, but he needs to start school."

She said, "I see you also have down [school #2]. Oh! There's no waiting list there, and they've got an open spot for Year 4." If it were possible to strangle someone through the phone, this might have been a prime opportunity. They were going to leave him on a 30-person-long waiting list when the other school on our application had places the whole time?

(Mr. A took this one -- not bad for a little guy!)

I'll cover his actual new school on Monday, on his first day. It's fun.

FAQs and More Pictures

2010-10-27T03:35:00.000-07:00

I have extra pictures, so I thought I'd throw them up with a FAQ. I get a lot of the same questions over and over (not just from people who read the blog), which isn't really annoying, but I thought it would be fun to put them up.

1. Why did you move to Paris (in 2004)?
A: Because I felt like it. I wish there was a more exciting reason than that. I get bored easily. Other places on my list were Australia, the British Virgin Islands, Germany, and Italy. I found a program teaching English that we could do in France, so that's where we went. It seemed like a fun idea at the time. I don't regret it.

2. Why did you leave Paris?
A: My mom died in 2004, and there were issues with my brother. Without getting into too much detail, we moved back to the States in 2006 take care of him and eventually became his legal guardians. We always intended for it to be a temporary move until he graduated from high school.

3. Why did you move to London
A: See #s 1&2. Essentially. I get bored easily and we knew we wanted to move back to Europe. Most of the big stuff fell on me last time because M, while he can speak and understand French, wasn't quite as helpful with bureaucratic things. I thought it would be easier on all of us if we moved to an English-speaking country. That left Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales. We chose London.

4. Are you even going to work in archaeology?
A: Maybe. I don't really like having to work for other people, although I realize it's necessary. It kills all the fun in the job, though, thanks to the whole office politics nonsense. Why would I want to kill my love of archaeology? If I'm volunteering, I don't have to deal with that as much. But I won't discount working for pay. We'll see. :)

5. Why do you act so weird?
A: I don't know, but it's Mini-Minion's favorite question right now. Thank you, Lilo and Stitch.

6. Do you regret moving to London?
A: Nope. I like London. I don't know if I like it as much as Paris, but I like living here. I like public transportation SO much better than driving, with a few exceptions (Costco & Ikea runs, for example).

7. Why do you put up unrelated pictures on blog posts?
A: Ah, the picture thing is mostly for mine and M's (blood and extended) families, who don't get to see the kids very often. Maybe they're boring to everyone else? At least they break up the blog posts.

Driving in London Is So Much Fun!

2010-10-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

I'm lying. It's not. Especially when you're driving a van and it's raining. But even less fun than driving a van in the rain in London? Sitting in the passenger seat while someone else who is nervous by nature drives a van in the rain in London.

(That's a lot of bubbles.)

I felt quite bad for M, because it was a terrible day to drive. We made it to the warehouse to pick up our boxes just fine, but we had to sit out in the rain for 20 minutes until they were ready for us. This caused a bit of a problem, because we only booked the van for 4 hours, and it took us 90 minutes to get to the warehouse. 90+90+20+we still have to pick up Mr. A's bed with this van = Not Good.

(This is our neighborhood park. It's small, but nice!)

Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Why didn't you map this out first?" Well, we did. But maps don't take into account horrendous London traffic, compounded by road work, and of course, the lovely English rain.

We made it out with all of our stuff intact, thankfully. I had it palletized before we left, so I was pretty sure it would all be safe anyway. We frantically pulled all the boxes out of the shrink wrap and threw them in the back of the van, with M saying, "How are we going to fit that bed in here?"

Then we drove off to pick up Mr. A's new loft bed. With absolutely no time to spare. . .we got lost. Oh yes, we got REALLY lost. The guy ended up meeting us at the edge of his town and drove us back to his house so we could pick it up. M kept saying, "He's got a van. Why didn't he just bring the bed here?" I dunno.

When we got there, though, the guy was like, "Uh, I don't think it's going to fit in the back of that van." Doubt not, Mr. Englishman. I was raised on Tetris. So while the men fretted and M managed to drop a box on my foot AND accidentally slam my head into the side of the van, I repositioned the boxes and we slid the bed in on the top. It took less than 10 minutes total. Nice.

It didn't rain on the way home, so we actually got to appreciate the Essex countryside. UH-mazing. Seriously gorgeous. We were pretty pleased with ourselves until we hit traffic and ended up 90 minutes late dropping off the van. Fail.

By the time we unloaded everything and carted it upstairs (including a box of solid books -- haha, WHAT was I thinking?), we were pretty over the whole moving thing and vowing never to do it again (until next year, right?).

What's Wrong With This Picture?

2010-10-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

Look at it for a few seconds. Notice anything? (Other than the blurriness! Our lens got a pebble in it and wouldn't turn correctly for a few weeks.) Do you see them?

Yes, this is a playground. With headstones in the background. It is essentially a cemetery/playground. Ahhh. . .and how could anyone NOT love Europe?

We live next to a cemetery. Well, we live next to a church. And if you climb the wall in our garden, you can see the tombstones, because they're literally next door. But it could be worse. There's a little cottage for sale down the way, and the windows in the kitchen face the cemetery. I asked M, "Do you think that affects resale? I mean, seriously. How badly would you freak out if you were doing dishes at night and saw someone walking through there?" No thank you, ma'am. It's an old cemetery, too, which I think just makes things even creepier.

Back to THIS cemetery, though. Mr. A was playing in it, happy as a lark, for about 15 minutes. The first pictures is when he was completely unaware of his surroundings.

Hey, Mr. A. What's behind you?

At 8, though, it's not enough to want to leave. The playing in a cemetery (and living next to one) adds to his 'street cred.' It's creepy enough to pretend shiver over when he's on the phone with his cousins, but overall, he doesn't bring it up.

It's Not Me, It's You & the Summary

2010-10-26T11:21:00.000-07:00

(York House Gardens, Twickenham)

Haven't you ever wanted to say that to someone? I want to say it to people all the time. "Yeah, really, it's not me, it's you." Well, I got to say that to the property management company we were working with, and it was actually a lot of fun after the two weeks of hell they put us through trying to get into the place in Soho.

Obviously it didn't work out. Obviously we spent more than we should have on hotels. But obviously we're still alive, and we're still in London, so we did find a place to live.

We're in Mortlake. Where's Mortlake? Exactly. It's a few miles away from London city center, in the southwest part of Greater London. We're wedged between Barnes, East Sheen, Kew and Richmond. Hammersmith is pretty close on the bus. It's definitely not Soho out here, but really, it's probably better for the kids that way.

(Twickenham)

Trying to get utilities transferred and set up turned out to be hilariously and irritatingly complicated. We went about a month without internet, which, when you work online, doesn't work so well. We ended up spending a lot of money on pay-as-you-go internet that restricted our time and data usage.

Another thing that ended up being irritatingly complicated was signing up Mr. A for school. As I type this, he still hasn't gone. He's going to be pretty far behind.

In the meantime, my grad program started, and I love it, but it is hard to balance grad school, work, the kids, the house, and time with M. Who wants to hear more complaining, though? I'm throwing up some posts tonight with pictures from our "missing" time.

Life Without Poodle

2010-09-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Pomme. When Pomme was very small, she got a pretty pink poodle as a gift from a very special person. Pomme treasured her poodle. He helped her get to sleep, comforted her when she was sick or hurt, and played the perfect companion on long trips. Everyone knew that wherever Pomme went, Poodle would not be far behind.

Over the years, Poodle grew worn with love. His soft fluffy pink fur became grey and matted. His eyes were scratched up and dull. His nose came undone and bits of his stuffing started to fall out a little. But the biggest damage was done to his tail, which was worn down to a small nub and a few strings.

Whenever Pomme would take Poodle out, people would remark, "That certainly is a mangy animal, isn't it?" Others mistook Poodle for trash, thinking he was so well-worn he was practically worn out. In fact, Pomme's mother had to fish poor Poodle out of the rubbish bin one time when he accidentally got left behind at the store. But in spite of his appearance, to Pomme, Poodle was the most beautiful thing in the world. Every day, she would squeeze him tight and plant little girl kisses on his damaged nose. And every night, she still cradled him lovingly as she fell asleep, rubbing his nubby tail over her nose.

Pomme and Poodle had many great adventures. They went up and down California, on a long drive to Utah, and all the way to Florida twice. They swam together (much to Poodle's chagrin), ate together (Pomme shared best with Poodle), and played games together.

One day, it was time for Pomme's family to make a big move. Pomme was a little sad and scared, because she didn't understand what was going on. But as long as she had her Poodle, she felt safe and secure.

They got on the plane, made it through the 12-hour trip, and slept together in the airport during the layover. When they finally got to their new home, Pomme was tired and cranky, and she clung to her best friend.

For the first few weeks in her new city, Pomme had fun exploring everything with Poodle. They hung out at parks, splashed in fountains, and went for really long walks with Pomme's family. Pomme loved showing Poodle all the pretty lights and sights of her new home.

Then one day, Pomme fell asleep while her family was getting on the underground. She woke up as they were switching trains, and got so excited, she jumped out of her stroller, taking Poodle with her.

She pressed her Poodle up to the window to show him the sights, and then, so enthralled with them herself, she let Poodle fall to the ground.

When it was their turn to get off, Pomme jumped up from her seat and followed her parents out. She sat down in her stroller as her mother asked, "Do you have Poodle?" Oh, no! Pomme had left Poodle on the train! Pomme's brother leaped toward the closed train doors and tried to push the "open" button frantically, but it was no use. The train took off toward the next station, and Pomme began her life without Poodle.

As soon as Pomme realized her Poodle was gone, she began to cry. It was the deep sobbing cry of a heart being truly broken for the first time. Pomme cried off and on all night, asking over and over again for her Poodle. Not only had she never been away from him, but she had also never had to fall asleep without him by her side.

The sky grew dark, and Pomme's mother knew it was time for her baby to face her first night without her best friend. She picked Pomme up in her arms, and rocked her as she cried for her Poodle. "Where is he?" Pomme asked over and over. "I want my Poodle."

Pomme's mother knew Poodle wouldn't be coming back. She held Pomme close and said, "Poodle is on the train for Poodleville. His mommy misses him so, and now Poodle must go back to her."

Pomme's heart was heavy all night long. She finally fell asleep in her mother's arms, but she woke up throughout the night. She didn't ask for Poodle, and her small whimpers told her mother that Pomme remembered he was gone.

In the morning, Pomme's mother had a present for her. It was a new Poodle, exactly like the old one, but with pink fluffy fur and a cotton candy puff of a tail. His eyes were bright and shiny, and his nose was like brand new.

Pomme threw the new Poodle across the room. "That's not MY Poodle!" she yelled. Both Pomme and the new Poodle sat in heaps on opposite sides of the room, one silent and smiling and the other sobbing and heartbroken.

Pomme's mother picked her and the new Poodle up and sat down on the bed with them. "Pomme, I know this isn't your Poodle. But even though he didn't want to, your Poodle had to go. But he loves you so that he has sent this lovely new Poodle to help comfort you when you need it. And this Poodle would like to be your friend."

It didn't happen right away, but over time, Pomme began to share her world with her new Poodle. She started by bringing him out on walks and shaping his tail at night while she fell asleep. She tried pulling out some of his fluff to make his tail just the right kind of stringy.

Her mother knew Pomme would never forget about or stop loving her first Poodle, but she hoped that Pomme's new friend would help give her some comfort as she settled into her new life.

Back to Square One

2010-09-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

You know what's really fun? Feeling like you've just wasted a ton of money and two weeks. Oh, wait. That's the opposite of fun. Haha. Silly me. My confusion can be the only reason why I managed to do both since we got here.

So we're back to square one. No apartment. They want over $10K from us. Not gonna happen. So we're going private. I contacted a bunch of landlords, and we set up some viewings. We finally put down an offer on a flat in Mortlake, which is in southwest London.

We're now on the fifth (I think) hotel, and we're moving again tomorrow. But oddly enough, things have turned around a bit this weekend. Mini-Minion lost her beloved Poodle on the DLR, which really put a damper on our time here, but overall, I think we're in pretty good spirits. We're currently in Canary Wharf, and I kind of like this area. We've got a gorgeous view over the water at our hotel. I'd definitely move here.

Tomorrow we head to Twickenham, which is also in the southwest. I was hoping this would be the last move, but we'll see. We just learned that the hotel will hold our luggage "no longer than one month." Wait, seriously? Because that is what has sucked the most about our moving around. What can we do but laugh?

Paying Our Dues

2010-09-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

See, it was really just too easy to get my German passport and for us to be able to move here. Now, I know what you're thinking. . .if that was the easy part, this part must be downright awful. And it is.

We had to move hotels again. Just a one-minute walk down the road. Still across the street from Hyde Park. I figured we could buy ourselves another two days so that the estate agents and the referencers could get their acts together.

What is most infuriating about working with estate agents is they're lazy. Very, very lazy. They want YOUR results pronto, but when you appeal to them for help with a company THEY hired (the referencing company), it's, "Oh, why don't you ring them yourself?" Really? For this, I'm paying you almost 300GPB?

Every day, the referencing company wants something new. We've now given them 6 months' worth of bank statements, copies of our contracts, a landlord reference, and two references from our managers (against my better judgment, because independent contracting is such a slippery slope, and M's manager was NOT happy to be contacted). Now they want another reference from M's manager and another reference from our landlord. This has to be a joke.

But I'm looking at it like we are strong enough to handle this, so that's why it's given to us. It can't be easy all the time. That would be nice, though.

On a rather humorous note, this idiot at the referencing company claimed to have done tons of international references, including people from the US. But then in the next breath, she says she can't get in touch with our last UK landlord at the telephone number we provided. Except had she read our paperwork AT ALL, she would have seen she was dialing a US phone number. Facepalm!

Staying in hotels is getting old. It would be great if we were just on vacation, and I wish I could pretend that we were just bumming around Jolly Old England, but our bank account tends to rip me back into reality pretty fast.

Life is so strange right now. It's like extreme pulls from opposing forces are keeping me fairly neutral about everything, which feels so strange. I love it here, but I hate that it's so difficult to get settled.

The kids are pretty happy with the junk food and the parks. But even they're at the point where they want to be settled. It's no fun to move hotels all the time. If I had known we would have been displaced for so long, I would NEVER have packed as much as I did. But then on the other side, we can't really do laundry right now, so the excess clothes come in handy.

I'm glad we came early, though. Can you even imagine what it would be like to deal with all this while starting grad school? Insanity. Everything happens at it does.

Notting Hill Has a CarniVAL for Bank Holiday, Not a CarniVUL

2010-09-04T12:10:00.000-07:00

We learned this the hard way. And the amusing way.

When I was looking up how to get to our hotel, I noticed on the Transportation for London website that they were announcing Tube interruptions because of the Notting Hill Carnival. "Wow, a carnival!" I thought. "That would be fun!"

"Hey, let's check out this carnival!" I said to M the Friday before. "Sunday is supposed to be Kids' Day. The parade starts at 9AM."

"Sounds good!" he said. We were pretty jazzed, because well, it apparently it doesn't take much for us.

Mr. A was pretty excited, too. "A carnival! Yay! Let's go to the carnival!"

And then we got there. . .and we kept walking. . .and walking. . .and more and more people were coming, but. . .to where? Then, M said, "Well, there's the gay pride float." Because, well, there was this fellow standing on top of a. . .truck?. . .open cattle cart? And he was wearing something like Speedo shorts. He was waving a flag from some African nation (sorry, I'm not totally up to date on the flags of the 54 African countries), and was dancing to some serious Afro-Caribbean beats. Hilarious. And not the gay pride float, which made it even more hilarious.

We had been looking forward to the smells of food from around the world. What we got were the smells of BO, dirt, Cannabis and decomposing garbage. Yum!

Mr. A was NOT happy. That's such an understatement, it's ridiculous. M and I had finally started to loosen up a little and realize our mistake (with humor), so I told Mr. A it was up to him to be miserable for the rest of the day, but at the end of it, we were all going to have fun, and if he decided not to, then it would be a double disappointment for him.

My favorite part of the day was the booty dancers. Extreme hilarity. They followed the parade "floats" (remember, these were just open trucks with sound systems blasting music and half-naked men waving flags on top). To have so much confidence would be amazing. The random street performers were a close second, though.

It was sort of hard not to be in a good mood, because the mojo was infectious. Even the police weren't jerks. Look at this guy. He's having a great time. He might have shaken his head as soon as these crazy girls walked away, but at least he wasn't a stuffed shirt for the picture.

The highlight of the parade was supposed to be some Drag Queen-looking things, but instead we got this. I was super excited for the Drag Queens, and instead I got a low-rent version of Tinkerbelle.

I'm still trying to figure out what exactly qualifies this as Kids' Day other than kids being there with their parents. Unless drinking, smoking pot and trashing streets are typical parent-child bonding activities here. Maybe.

We walked for about 3 hours in total. Notting Hill is supposed to be a nice area, but all the businesses were boarded up for the event, and the streets were just trashed. Finally, M said to me, "Um, these businesses are just boarded up because of the carnival, right? I mean, we're not in a really scary area, right?"

Sure. . .works for me.

Finally, we got too far away from our hotel for M's comfort, especially because I couldn't see where we were on my little book of London maps. So we turned around and retraced our steps, stopping to let the kids dance a little on the way.

Of course, by this time, Mr. A didn't want to leave. So then he pouted all the way back to the park about having to leave behind all his fun. Funny how kids work sometimes.

And of course, Mini-Minion was sad to leave because she generally has fun wherever we go. Like Mr. A, though, sometimes it takes a little coaxing.

On the way back, we saw the most amazing thing ever. The day before on our way to pick up food, Mr. A, Mini-Minion and I saw this older woman juggling just randomly in the street. She was in like a way-too-big business skirt suit with these crazy flats, and she was just a-jugglin' away. It was just awesome. So guess who we happened to see entertaining the crowds at the Notting Hill Carnival? Yep, Juggles. Amazing. I wish we would have taken video, because moving picture = 1,000,000 times more fantastic.

We finally made it back to Hyde Park, so we stopped by the Princess Diana Memorial Park before we headed back to the hotel. So worth the wait and the hype. The kids went positively nuts. It's like a real-life version of Neverland.

There are separate lands inside. . .a fort, a pirate ship, a Native American village. . .it is truly amazing.

And it has really tame squirrels, which I thought was cool at first, and then I thought, "Whoa. What if one of these guys has rabies? That would really suck."

Because these are really the things that run through my head. And that guy's a little sketch. He's giving too much side-eye for my liking. Like he's plotting the attack. Not cool, little guy.

Waiting Is the Hardest Part

2010-09-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

Day two across the street from Hyde Park saw M and I split the day so each of us could work in peace. He took the first shift since he has a set schedule and has to work at night here (daytime in CA). He took the kids to a different playground in Hyde Park that I was hoping wasn't the Princess Diana Memorial Playground, because I wanted to go with them to that. It wasn't. :)

Hotel #2 was the Grosvenor House. Me no likey. Well, not as much as the one on Grosvenor Square, which has better views and an ice machine. And this hotel is super stuffy. It's great for hanging out at Hyde, but not much else. Oddly enough, this is my dad's favorite hotel.

When M got back, I took the kids out. We went back to the same playground. The walk there was beautiful. I wish I could describe the gardens on the way, but there's just no way I could do them justice. They were so beautiful, there was a couple taking their wedding photos there.

We hung out at the park for about 30-45 minutes. It was pretty crowded. And it was a little cold. I told M we would get dinner on the way home, so we took the long way out of the park to hit the shops on Oxford Street. Boy, was it a loooong walk. We walked along the lake for part of it, which was really nice.

Then we came up on the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, so we popped inside to take a look. The last time we were here, it was out of commission because people don't understand that water = slick surfaces, so they kept falling all over the place.

The fountain is pretty cool now. People were walking in it, and the guards were conversing with them like normal, so I figured it was ok. Mr. A wanted to go in, so I made him roll up his pants. Mini Minion was right behind him, but the water was a little deep (it hit above her dress), so I made them move to shallower water. Mr. A said it was FREEZING. I bet it was, but those two are borderline impervious to weather, so they stomped around until I forced them to get out.

On our way back, we saw a rainbow. Mini-Minion was really excited, because she has never seen a real one. It was quite exciting stuff. But we should have realized although rainbows usually come AFTER rain, apparently they can come before, too. Because it started raining. All over us.

So started the Bank Holiday weekend. Bank Holiday as in, there was no work on Monday (the 30th), which meant of course, that we were definitely stuck in a hotel until at least Wednesday (Tuesday being the earliest we could sign a lease).

Different Park, Different Day

2010-08-31T19:17:00.000-07:00

This one is a short one, because there aren't really any pictures to go with it. The offer we put down on the flat in Soho was accepted, and we had to pay half an arm to get it pulled from the market. We also had to switch hotels, because our time had come at Chancery Court. So we switched to one that was literally across the street from Hyde Park.

It rained on us as we walked from High Holburn to Park Lane. We walked because we're probably the stupidest people ever.

The next day was cold and windy, but not raining, so we took the kids to one of the playgrounds at Hyde. Apparently there's a pet cemetery by that playground, which I didn't discover until afterward, or trust, I would have been poking around. I was too tired to take pictures, and M didn't do it until after I admitted defeat and hiked back to the hotel room to take a nap. But the ones he got came out pretty nice, I think. The first one looks like fake backdrop, no?

The Punks in Camden Town

2010-08-31T19:00:00.000-07:00

. . .Are not right on the border between Westminster and Camden. I was disappointed. I was also a little disappointed that the walk from High Holburn (where we were staying) to Regents Park was almost 40 minutes each way. I guess you get spoiled really quickly by almost a week of "just 5 minutes up the road by foot."

So yeah, 40 minutes. Why 40 minutes? Not to see the park. Hahaha. I laugh at such nonsense. No, it was because M wanted to go to Pizza Hut. Yes, you read that right. We walked 40 minutes for a fast-food restaurant that a) we have in the States and b) had another location about a. . .5 minute walk from the hotel. It was worth the walk to stop by Regents, though. We only got to see a tiny portion of the park, which was the south-east playground. It was amazing. Pretty big, lots of (dangerous) stuff to do. The kids had a blast. Mini-Minion begged to go in the sand pit. All the kids had their shoes off, so I made like a sheeple and took hers off as well. Of course 60 seconds (maybe) later, she was done with the sand. And then her shoes wouldn't go on right, so it took way longer to put them back on than she was even in the darn sand pit.

Mini-Minion has been very independent lately, and she refused the baby swings. She is ready to sit on the big swings. But swinging frightens her a bit, so she just sort of wants to sit there, or barely move. I guess if it's fun for her, that's all that really matters at the end of the day.

That's sort of par for the course with her, though, because she really wants to do most things that move, but when they actually start moving, she gets really mad at the person who caused them to move. It's amusing about 90% of the time, depending on how much sleep I got the night before and whether or not food was involved immediately beforehand.

And here comes the problem. See the picture below? This was the last picture taken before Mini-Minion decided to cross a rope bridge meant for older kids, lost her footing, slipped through the side of the rope, got her foot caught, and semi-hung upside down by her foot for a fraction of a second before falling all the way into my arms. It scared her enough for her to start crying. . .and then she wanted to get back up on the bridge. Sigh.

That little incident obviously meant it was time to go home. We walked by UCL on the way back, and. . .we'll see. I just walked down Gower Street, so I didn't get the full effect. I didn't see the archaeology department. I'm waiting, hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Mr. A's Wild Ride

2010-08-31T18:31:00.000-07:00

Before we left the States, I promised Mr. A that we would take one of the sightseeing bus tours around London the first Sunday after we landed. So that's what we did. M stayed with Mini-Minion while we went. He said they were planning to find a small square with hopefully a bit of playground equipment. More on that later.

How interested was Mr. A in this long-awaited tour? So interested that he spent probably 75% of it carefully poring over the pamphlet he got on the London Dungeon. He even spoke over our live guide several times until I had to tell him, "Would you PLEASE be quiet and just listen?" So. . .he basically got nothing out of the tour. But it was a fun day for him, and he finally got to ride on the top of a double-decker bus, so it wasn't a total loss.

We got off the bus at the Tower of London so we could take our river cruise. Mr. A begged to go to a playground across the street, so I gave him 30 minutes to play. I was taking pictures of him, and it wasn't until I really looked at them on the camera that I realized, this kid is playing on this playground, and the Tower of freaking London is in the background. Just there. No big deal, right?

Before we got on the boat, Mr. A wanted something to eat. So like an idiot, I took him to a hole-in-the-wall place by the Tower. Why? Why? Seriously, why? Then, to add insult to injurious price, I ordered an American hamburger. Made by Eastern Europeans. In London. It tasted startlingly similar to the old ground up hamburgers they used to serve in cafeterias back when parents didn't care what their kids ate. I gave it to Mr. A, because his hot dog wasn't enough for him. He didn't complain about the taste.

Our river guide was hilarious, and I wish Mr. A had actually paid any attention to him. But he did like the cruise, and he picked up a few tidbits on it that I'm sure he's forgotten. As a side note, I explained drawing and quartering to him the other day when we were talking about the Tower, and of course, the guide mentioned it on the cruise, and of course Mr. A didn't forget about that one. I thought his eyes were going to make like a pug's and pop out of his head when the words "drawn and quartered" came out of that guide's mouth.

After our cruise docked, we decided to walk home. It was sprinkling a little, so we made a few stops on the way, which was really nothing short of serendipitous, because as we were approaching a street where we would have turned left to go north-east, who did we see coming exactly toward us (heading west -- that's important)? M and Mini-Minion! No joke. All of London, and we're a good 15 minutes away from the hotel, and we run into those two. M told us his sad tale of getting mixed up in London, and how he headed north until he realized the river was south, and blah, blah, blah. He had been walking for about 2-3 hours at that point.

"But it's ok," he said. "Because now I've finally figured out which way is which."

"So where are you going?" I asked.

"We were on our way back to the hotel," he said.

"So, why are you headed west when our hotel is north-east of here?" I asked.

He turned around, looked at some of the buildings, and said: "D'oh!" Poor M.

We all set off toward the hotel, stopping on the way on the street I'm obsessed with: Drury Lane. I get the giggles every.single.time we walk down it. Why is there no Muffin Man shop on Drury Lane? Someone is not taking advantage. So that will be my first investment when I'm rich. Then M can be the Muffin Man.

Drury Lane has a small square with a playground, and it has pretty cool equipment. So we hung out there for awhile until we all got too hungry and wanted to go home. It was a really long day.

In case you're wondering (some people do. . .), yes, Mini-Minion wore the same clothes two days in a row. Before Mr. A and I left, I said, "Have fun picking out her clothes!" Well, he didn't. He just picked up dirty clothes and slapped those on her. So I give him a B- for effort. But at least he tried!

Out of Greyscale, Life in Technicolor

2010-08-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

London is amazing. I could gush on and on annoyingly about its amazingness, but I'll refrain. Mostly because I think you'll all see its amazingness in these blog posts. It sells itself.

The first night we were here, we walked over to Soho to take a look at the flat we're booked to view on Monday. LOVE it. Love the neighborhood, love the building, love EVERYTHING about it (except maybe the price, but what can you do?). Soho is ALIVE. Like Paris is alive.

The second day, M had to start work, so I took the kids to Russell Square to run off some energy. It was nice. Not really a kid park, but it was still nice.

Today we were going to go to Regent's Park, but I didn't think M would have enough time before starting work at 4PM, so we'll put that off until Monday. We went south to the river instead and walked across Millennium Bridge. The other side of the river usually has street performers when we're here, and it's fun to see what's going on. Today we stopped at a man with his dog doing. . .I'm not exactly sure what. The man had trained his dog to be obsessive in the "I want to marry you" way about balloons. The dog wouldn't give the balloon up. He didn't rip a hole in it surprisingly, but the gimmick was for kids to come up and try to take the balloon from the dog's mouth.

Mr. A went up first and was a little insane. I'm surprised he didn't scare the poor dog into jumping into the Thames. Yikes. M kept shouting, "Slow down! Don't lunge at the poor thing!" Mr. A just got caught up in the excitement.

Mini-Minion was up next. She mostly chased the dog and laughed, and I think the guy got a big kick out of her. It's hard not to laugh when a baby does.

A few feet down was this crazy area with a dance troupe and gigantic furniture made from astro turf. Obviously it was a huge hit with the kids. I won't lie. . .I kind of wanted to jump on it myself. I'd totally have that in the tacky house I live in inside my head.

The Trip Part 2

2010-08-21T13:53:00.001-07:00

We got into Dusseldorf right on time, but it really wouldn't have mattered, because our layover was about 4 hours. We went through border control, and I got to pull out my shiny new passport for the first time. They didn't stamp it. Boo.

We had no idea which gate to go to, because our flight was so far away it wasn't even up on the board yet. That's never a good sign. :)

When we got off the flight, our stroller, which we had checked at the gate, was not waiting for us. M asked about it, and the flight attendants sort of shrugged and said, "Maybe it'll go through to your final destination." Gee, that's comforting.

We finally figured out where we were supposed to be going, and we headed for the gate with about three hours to kill. There was absolutely nothing by the gate, but we figured Mini-Minion would fall asleep again soon. The funny thing was, just our little gate section was guarded by border control. We had to have our passports looked at again before going to our gate.

Now comes M's favorite part of the day. The border control agent came up to us after about 10 minutes and says, "What time does your flight leave?" in German. I stared blankly, because I'm pretty sure my mind was like those eggs in the drug-free commercials of the 80s at that point. M said, "Sorry, we don't speak German." Theeeen, homeboy in uniform said, "She's German, no?" and points to me. Yeah. Yeeeah. M started laughing, and I launched into my embarrassing spiel. Guardman laughed it off, and explained he's closing down the area and asked if we can come back in an hour or two. So we exited and sat down at a cafe right outside the area.

We were all pretty dead at that point, but Mini-Minion passed out within 10 minutes of me turning on a movie on my iPad for her. We were in a booth, so it was pretty comfortable for her. I told M to take a nap for the hour or so we had left after eating, and Mr. A and I just hung out for the rest of the time.

While we were eating, I thought about our luggage situation and how we were going to get everything to the hotel. I'm glad I did that, but I'll get to all that later.

Finally it was time to board the plane. Mini-Minion stayed asleep not only through boarding, but also through the whole flight. So I slept, too. It was the first hour of uninterrupted sleep I'd had in two days.

We landed at Stansted, and clearing border control was a breeze. There was no line, and our luggage was waiting for us as soon as we got the carousel. So was our stroller. With a bent wheel. Bummer. We filed a claim, and I've got to call them about it. Apparently we've got to buy a new stroller, and they'll reimburse us for it? It's still a pain. The stroller is workable, but it's definitely got a little wobble to it now.

When I came back from filing the initial claim, M was staring helplessly at our bags with a bungee cord in his hands. "This is physically impossible," he said.

"No, it's not," I said. I was actually excited to see the bungee cord, because it made my plans even easier. I tied two of the bags together with the bungee cord, and two of the other bags together with a strap from my swimsuit (whatever in a pinch, right?). Thankfully we bought suitcases with the four swivel wheels. Mini-Minion stayed in her stroller with her backpack underneath, and I slung my purse and two carryons over the handles of her stroller. I dragged a suitcase behind me while pushing her, M pushed the two connected bundles of suitcases, and Mr. A pulled the carryon that wasn't hanging from the stroller. M had his backpack and laptop bag. It was hard, but it worked.

I booked a trip on Terrevision into Central London, and it was pretty great. The buses were nice and clean, and the trip only took 50 minutes for pretty darn cheap. Besides, they didn't limit our luggage, unlike some of the other buses.

I was pretty stuck on what to do when we got to London, though. My idea worked great for the airport, but I knew it wouldn't be ok on the tube. M said he remembered hearing about minivan cabs in London, so we decided to go that route. After a few minutes of trying to find one, we finally got someone to take us. It only cost 10GBP or so to the hotel, so I'm not complaining.

We made it to the hotel in one piece with our 10 million bags. It was really nice to sleep in a comfortable bed and to finally be done with the traveling part.

The Trip Part 1

2010-08-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

Whoa, those last few days were intense. To be honest, I can barely remember them. They involved lots of selling and lots of cleaning. In the end, we sold absolutely everything that wasn't in our suitcases or in those 18 boxes, with the exception of a few stuffed animals and some DVDs that M forgot to pack.

Things were going great packing-wise until I looked up Air Berlin's luggage policy. Only one checked piece per person, up to 50lbs, and one carry-on piece that could weigh up to 13lbs. THIRTEEN. 17lbs if there was a laptop inside. Schnikeys. That really threw a wrench in the plans. It's my fault. I should have checked before I left all this stuff to pack. We had to buy an additional suitcase (for a total of 5 checked, because the additional bag fee was only $40). Even still, we weighed in at roughly 44lbs, 47lbs, 47lbs, 55lbs and 61lbs. Not terrible, but two of those would have been subjected to $25 per piece fees for being overweight. So we shifted things around a little bit, and everything was under except the 61lb. bag. Our carry-ons were 10lbs, 16lbs. and 24lbs. I was freaking out over those, but decided to cross that bridge when we came to it.

Our aunts drove us to the airport. I stayed up all night before repacking our suitcases, so I was DONE. I was sort of in and out of consciousness for most of the trip. The As behave well, and in fact, Mr. A was so quiet, we joked that we had forgotten him at home.

Our aunts had to leave as soon as our stuff was out of the car, so we made our way inside with 5 suitcases, a stroller, three carry-ons, a laptop bag, a huge purse (filled with books because of our weight restrictions), and two backpacks. M had the brilliant idea of checking our weights at an unused counter so we could sort ourselves out before checking in. We actually managed to redistribute the weight enough so that everything was right at the limit. We weren't charged extra at all, except for our additional bag.

We had to board our flight pretty quickly after getting to the gate. Mini-Minion was out before the plane even took off, and I had high hopes for her sleeping most of the flight. She slept for 3 hours, which isn't bad at all. . .except when you've got another 8 hours ahead of you. Air Berlin isn't the worst airline, I'm sure, but this plane was not designed for transatlantic flights. There are much better options out there. We sweated through most of the flight.

Mr. A was basically silent through most of the flight. He did sleep a little, but only for a few hours. Mini-Minion slept off and on, and generally did ok, but she did have a few brief freak outs. I've got to cut her some slack, though, because this all has to be so disorienting for her. At one point, though, I told her to sit down, and she told me, "I am NOT a child!" Thank you, The Little Mermaid!

Sorry

2010-08-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

I know I fail at blogging sometimes. It's not really that I don't have anything to say. Here's a wrap-up of what's been going on:

- On 7/28, I got a call from the German Consulate saying my passport was ready for pickup. I was SHOCKED, because I thought it would be at least another 2-4 weeks before I heard anything. We made our flight reservations for 8/18 after they called.

- I picked up my pretty new red Reisepass the following Monday in Los Angeles in a horrible round-trip day that lasted just about 12 hours. That night, I filled out the paperwork for M and the kids to get their EEA Family Permits from UK Border Control, but the soonest biometrics (fingerprinting and stuff) appointment was on Thursday, 8/5. Boo to that! Mr. A couldn't get an appointment until 8/6 (triple boo), but Mini-Minion doesn't need one at all (huzzah!).

- M went in for his biometrics appointment on 8/5 and took Mr. A with him on the off chance they would allow him to get his biometrics taken right then. They did! So we overnighted our application to the UK Consulate. They got the package at 10:30AM on 8/6.

- We had our going away party on 8/7. It was a little hard to get everything off the ground for the party, because we were packing up our 18 boxes as well. My house is still trashed from it. :( But we had a great time, and it was fun to hang out with everyone. M was the hit of the party with his version of Ballroom Blitz.

- 8/8 we had to pack the last 3 boxes that were being shipped, go to dinner with my grandparents, and load up all the boxes in the back of a pickup so they could go down to LA the following day.

- Yesterday, I made the trip down to LA AGAIN. I could really do without making that trip again, and most of my goodwill has temporarily gone. It was another 12-hour day. But all 18 boxes are in the hands of the shipping company.

- Another good thing from yesterday: M got his confirmation email from the LA British Consulate saying they received his application and were processing it. Phew!

Just for GeeGee and Why Do I Procrastinate

2010-07-25T11:41:00.001-07:00

GeeGee wanted pics of Mr. A, so here they are. Pics of Mr. A, who still won't smile quite right yet (we're getting closer!). It's such a shame, because his real smile is beautiful. These are from the other day as I followed him around the yard while he watered everything that typically doesn't need watering.

Onto the second part. Why do I procrastinate? I'm pretty much so hating myself for not really starting on the garage earlier. I don't know when exactly I would have done it, but boy oh, boy, do I wish I had started earlier. :( I got rid of 75% of the toys today, and it still looks like a mess. Part of it is M's fault, because he likes to stack up empty boxes in there, and so a good 30-40% of what I'm looking at are probably just empty boxes. I can't wait to be rid of all of this. It's just so hot in there, too. I started working about 8:30am, and I was dripping with sweat within 10-15 minutes. It's not even noon, and it's 90 degrees. The high is 102 today. Yuck!

Mini Minon hung out with me while I cleaned out part of the garage today, although she really wasn't much help. An old Christmas tree topper broke, and she "helped" me by sweeping it out of the pile I had it in and all over the garage instead. That was sweet. She looks quite funny today, because she has on a pair of angel wings that M got me about 10 years ago.

In good news, the master bedroom and both bathrooms are completely packed up and ready to go. Anything left goes to Goodwill when we leave or is being sold in the garage sale. The linen closet is also done, so all I have left are Mr. A's room, the playroom, the kitchen (hardly anything will go), and the living room.

In exactly one week is August, and things will start happening really fast then. It's kind of exciting.

The Rules of the Game

2010-07-22T22:34:00.001-07:00

So here we go. This will be fairly short. There's no new news about the move. I have, however, decided I'm not buying any clothes for the kids for 18 months. Yes, I said 18 months. It can be done. There are some exceptions:

1. Underwear
2. Undershirts
3. A Coat for Mini Minion for next fall/winter (won't be purchased until fall/winter 2011)
4. PJs
5. Jeans for Mr. A
6. Socks
7. Shoes as needed

And that's that. I've laid it out, so watch it happen. We should be able to get by with what they have. I'm a fan of layering for Mini Minion, so her stuff will definitely last. I'm not sure about Mr. A next year, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

We had a visitor today, as you can see from the pics. He was a friendly little guy. He usually comes around in the early morning, but he has never really stuck around for long. Today, he was here for over an hour. M was working, so Mini Minion and I hung out with our guest. I took pictures while she hit the water with a big stick. D'oh. And yet our friend stayed.

It has been kind of fun having M home working. I do feel bad for the guy, though. It's such a tough schedule. But may I remind everyone that it was HIS decision to keep both jobs. He can quit one any time. He chose to stay until we leave for London. I'm wondering if he isn't wishing he had chosen differently. Haha. Poor guy.

Tonight, M and Mr. A went outside for one of their favorite activities. I posted pics of this around Halloween time last year, when we made bats and pumpkins. Fun stuff.

No news is good news

2010-07-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

That's the way I'm looking at it. I haven't gotten a phone call yet from the German Consulate, but that's a good thing! If they're not calling yet, that means they're not calling me to tell me there's a problem. It means my passport is likely on its way to Germany for processing. And that's fun.

In a few weeks, though, the tables will be turned, and I'll be waiting for a phone call saying that it's waiting at the Consulate. And at that point, no news won't be good news. Funny how that works.

We're packing up, which is not really fun work. It's kind of nice to get rid of so much stuff, though. I dread going through the garage. It's about 75% organized in the way that things are piled up on different sides of it, but it's not ready to be tackled yet. I'd love to just get in there and do it in two or three days, but it was 103 here yesterday. That doesn't really make me want to go outside at all.

Here's what's left on the list:

- Finish packing (I'm up to 7 boxes fully packed and another 3 almost done. That's almost half!)
- Fill out EEU Family Permit applications for M and the kids (17 pages each. That's fun.)
- Sign my loan docs, which I'm still taking out just in case. Better to be safe than sorry, even though we don't need to show the money anymore.
- Buy tickets (as soon as I get the phone call from the Consulate)
- Load the boxes up and take them to LA for shipping (haven't totally figured the logistics of this yet, but I have an idea).
- Sell everything in our house, drop off the leftovers at Goodwill, and somehow manage to sell our car before we leave, but not so far in advance that we don't have a car to get around until we leave.

Maybe tomorrow I'll post what we have to do once we get there. Because getting out the door is the easy part. M is training at his new job right now (he's double-dipping, poor guy, working essentially from 6 am to 6 pm every day), which means I've got more free time on my hands since I've got to keep the kids quiet and away from him while he does it. (I wish someone would do that for me while I'm working!) But all that means I have more time for picture-taking. And I've been trying really hard to learn how to use this camera on manual. It's slow, but I'm learning.

As a side note, my grandma wants to know why I don't have more pics of Mr. A. Simple. He never wants to pose, and he's always out playing with his friends.

What Happened at the German Consulate

2010-07-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

This could change, but for now, I love the German Consulate in Los Angeles. And it got such bad reviews, too. (??) Weird. But I promise this wouldn't be the first time I loved someone or something everyone else hated. :)

Ok, so my appointment was REALLY early in the morning. I didn't want to battle LA traffic, and I didn't want to spend the night in LA, so I got up at 3AM and drove down. I sat in the car before my appointment and got dressed, did my makeup (so you KNOW it was important--haha!), and did my hair. I had about 20-30 minutes to kill, so I watched Spongebob on my iPod. I really wish I would have brought my iPad.

While I was watching Spongebob, I really thought I was going to throw up, which is just ridiculous for me. Things rarely faze me like that. I tried to close my eyes and concentrate on how stupid I was being, but when I closed my eyes, I got even more sick. I still had 20 minutes until my appointment, but at this point, I knew I wasn't doing myself any good sitting in the car, so I went up to the consulate.

Now, the German Consulate is a funny place. It's in an office building essentially, and you'd really never know it was there. I almost thought I had the wrong place, and I had to double-check the email the Vice-Consul sent. When I got up there, the security guard looked in my purse, checked my name, and told me to go right up to the window. She said they would speak to me as soon as the window opened for the day.

I had to take my passport photos first. They came out just ridiculous. I look like I'm getting ready to be sent to prison or something. I sort of wish I would have taken them over, but they were so funny, I just left them. Now I'll have something to laugh about every time I travel on that passport.

The window was open by the time I came out of the photo booth, so I sat down and waited. A heavy-set woman eventually sat down, smiled, and said, "Morgen."

"Morgen," I said. "Entschuldigen Sie. . .Sprechen Sie Englisch?"

Yes. I seriously wanted to dig a hole in the floor and crawl in, but there was NO way I could have gotten through it in German. Even French, which feels like treading water for me, would have been too hard. My head was just completely blank. It's a miracle I even got it all out in English. Even still. . .I forgot some things.

"Yes," she said. "Do you have an appointment?"

After she checked my appointment, she asked for my paperwork. I put it through the little two-way drawer, and she pulled it over to her side. She opened my envelope and started sifting through everything. She looked at all the documents, took them out of their carefully arranged order (at that point, I was panicking a little) and looked them over a second time. Finally she nodded.

"You're German because your dad was German when he was born," she said.

Now I'm excited. She GETS it. She actually GETS it. "Yes!" I said, probably a little too loud.

"And you've spoken to Vice-Consul Schwarz already?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"And she said it was ok?"

"She said she would need to verify the documents in person, but that there should be no problem."

"Did you scan and email them to her?"

"No," I said. "She didn't ask me to."

"Ok," she said. "I'm going to make photocopies." Then she stopped. She had my marriage certificate in her hands. "Ok," she said. "There is a small problem. I'm not saying you're not German--" at this point, my heart is in my stomach "--but this marriage is a problem. What I recommend to you is that you apply under your maiden name. You are still married, but you can't declare a married name unless your husband is with you and signs a declaration. He's not here, right?"

My heart moved back up to its proper place, I told her M wasn't there, and she left to make her photocopies. She was gone for about 3 minutes maybe, but it seemed like an eternity. I started at the "Please do not touch the microphone" sign nearly the whole time. I had a sneaking suspicion there were cameras pointed at the window, and my paranoia kicked in a little. I had visions of her watching me on some hidden camera, waiting for me to do something weird so they could deny me. So I tried to stay as still as possible.

She came back and sent my originals through the two-way drawer. "Just give me a few minutes, ok?" she said. "It takes some time to type everything in."

Finally she printed out the info sheet and attached my passport photo on it. I sort of felt like I needed to apologize for the horrible photo, but I didn't. She sent the info sheet through the drawer for me to sign.

"If you need help translating, let me know. It's all in German," she said. Un-freaking-believable. These people are bonafide saints. They have to be. Could you imagine someone applying for a US passport and the agents saying, "Here, let me help you translate. . ."

"Thank you," I said. "I can read German, but I'm afraid I would break your ears if we tried to speak in it today. I'm too nervous."

"Don't be nervous!" she said. "There's really nothing to be nervous about, and really, we're all nervous enough here because Germany is playing today in the World Cup!"

"Yes, my husband said I should get in and out before 11:30, because after that, you won't want to pay attention to me."

She laughed. "If we lose, we'll want to pay lots of attention to you!"

Then, just to further highlight my supreme stupidity, I signed the form. With my married name. Yep. "Oh my God!" I said. "I'm so sorry!"

"No, it's no big deal, really." I passed the paper back through the drawer. "We'll start again," she said.

"It's more work for you," I said.

"No, it's really not. I told you. There is no reason to be nervous." She already had another paper printed out, and she just took off my passport photo and affixed it to the new sheet. I signed correctly this time and handed over the $89 fee.

"Now you can pick it up when its ready, right?" she said.

"Right," I said.

"Actually, can I include the emails you brought in your file?"

"Absolutely," I said.

"The Vice-Consul will need to sign off on this, and she is out of the office until next week. Maybe the emails will jog her memory."

I'm all for that, so into the file all the emails went. In return, I got my receipt.

"How long will it take?" I asked.

"It's about 2 months right now," she said. "Maybe a little longer for you since this is your first passport. We'll call you when it's ready. Or we'll call you if there is a problem."

With that, I thanked her and left. It took maybe 20-30 minutes in total. Sadly, it took longer to get Mr. A and Mini-Minion their passport applications filed.

I figure if I can get through the next week without a phone call from them that there is a problem, we should be good. After that, it will go to Germany, and my passport will be printed. For my sake (and the sakes of those around me), there had better not be a phone call next week. :)

Happy Belated 4th

2010-07-11T17:08:00.001-07:00

That was a long break! I haven't been taking pictures much anyway lately, which is lame, because I just got this great photography book and have been promising myself I would get better at using the camera. In my defense, it is so dang hot here, all I want to do is sleep in the dark with a fan blowing directly on me. I can't stand being outside right now. As I type this it is 5PM and 98 degrees outside.

So anyway, the 4th! We went to Pismo with our aunts and cousins. It was nice to get out of the heat. Pismo is nice, but I don't understand all the hype about it, to be honest. The sand is heavenly, but there are nicer beach communities. It is cute, though, and we had fun. It's sort of odd to think this is our last 4th of July. When we moved to France, we sort of had it in the backs of our heads that we'd move back to the US eventually (back then, we thought we'd be on the East Coast for M's grad school). This time, not so much.

I didn't see Mr. A most of the 4th, because he was busy digging a trench in the sand on the beach, which kept him occupied all day. I need to take a pic of his tan line, because it is insane. He will look Ecuadorian by the end of the summer.

Mini-Minion was in her element with all the attention. Isn't this a cute picture? Or I guess it would have been had she not done whatever it is she did with her toes and made it look like I buy her sandals for a one year old.

This is why you have to just close your eyes and jump

2010-06-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I really start to question my own sanity (because I do think some weird things), nights like tonight are very reassuring. Because tonight, I'm actually a little nervous. So far, I've just sort of blazed through most of this stuff, contacting housing agents and shipping companies and consulates, without getting truly nervous. It's all just a part of the system.

But tonight, I went over my packing list and realized, I have almost nothing to pack. Everything else that's going will go into the boxes maybe 2 days before we ship them. I need to seal up the photos/documents box, the books and pack the Christmas ornaments. But that's it.

So what do I do with myself? I obsess. I try to control an uncontrollable situation. I assess how much we're going to pay in UK taxes (answer: more than we'll pay in the US). I get all my little ducks in a row for registering as self-employed. I create my landlord reference forms. I fret about all these stupid little things that really make no difference in the end.

I just realized while I was typing this that there are three major, major areas that I don't even give a second thought to: actually leaving (as in, the flight), getting the right visas/passports (still can't talk about that yet, although I will go into all the gory details soon), and school. Oh, right. School. The whole purpose of going. And ironically, the one thing I don't obsess over and stress out about. Maybe that will change a few weeks before registration.

And now I can go to sleep without stressing anymore, because if the big stuff will work out ok in the end, the small stuff will, too.

Excuse the pics. They're a few weeks old at this point. They're pre-naughty Mini Minion bob.

Two Steps Forward, No Steps Back

2010-06-24T11:26:00.000-07:00

Finally! I like it when things go without a hitch.

Both times we've moved out of the country (although I can't really say we've moved yet), one of the biggest concerns has been, "What will you do for work?!" This really isn't so much a concern as you would think. Mostly because it's pretty easy to survive. Trust me on this.

I have a job. It pays me fairly well. It doesn't pay me so well when the exchange rate is so high and we have to have $2600 for one-way tickets, $1000 for temp accommodation, $3,000 for our apartment deposit, $750 for shipping, potentially $1,200 for visas (we'll see). . .well, all those things add up fast, don't they? And that's not even considering food and all that great stuff. So my job has been a saving grace, but moving is expensive. Moving out of the country is REALLY expensive. Is it worth it? Yep. It is to me. It really doesn't matter WHY, either. Just like staying in this city is worth it to other people.

But people are obsessed with the job issue. It's a big one. At least, it must be, because SO MANY people are asking about it. "Can you work in London?" "What is M going to do?" "Has he applied for any jobs over there?" "Can he transfer with the company?" It goes on and on and on. So, I can now say that M (imagine with a sweeping arm gesture) officially has a job he can do in London. He's working for my company in a completely different department. I'm really interested to see how he's able to make positive changes there. I think he's got some great ideas and is exactly what a company like this needs. It should be fun.

Now he gets to work from home. He'll see what fun it is. And really, it's no fun at all. Why do it, then? Because at least I get to stay home with the kids IF they need me for something, and we save on childcare. But it's exhausting and much more difficult than most people think. In some ways, I kind of feel bad for him.

Groundhog Day

2010-06-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

Obviously it's not really Groundhog Day (or else my calendar is REALLY messed up). But it sure feels like the movie. Today has been a waste. A complete waste. Why? Because I have had to redo so many things today that I JUST did less than a month ago.

The biggest one is the student loans. Will I need them? I dunno. But I'd rather apply and get them, and then not use them if it comes down to it. I guess the ultimate peace of mind is worth the temporary annoyance. Anyway, UCL requires all applicants to submit this entire student loan package with your SAR, MPNs, cover letters, counseling clearance, blah, blah, blah. I did this last month, before the requirements had been set for loans this year.

Yeah, I'm sure you're thinking that wasn't a wise decision. But it's not my fault. THEY (meaning UCL) made US applicants do it this way. They said, "Please submit your application and SAR so that it can be ready to go when congress finalizes the requirements." Except, of course, they put "finalise" instead of "finalize." So off my paper application went.

Today, I got an email saying I needed to re-apply for MPNs, redo the counseling, re-submit the credit check. D'oh! Fortunately, everything is electronic this time around, except the cover letter, which I was able to email. So it's done.

Life will be in and out of limbo for the next two weeks until most everything will be pretty close to being finalised (haha--did you like that?). Then we'll just start sifting through everything in full force and start packing like mad. It should be fun.

On a side note, one of my favorite people randomly called me up to go to San Jose/Santa Clara/Palo Alto on Monday. I couldn't go, but I told her early yesterday that we could do it. So we loaded up all the kids (she brought one of her girls and her 2-month-old baby) and went to the big mall and to IKEA. We drove all the way to Santa Clara so she could buy a painting at IKEA and an outfit at Janie and Jack. I love that crazy woman. :)

Baby Steps

2010-06-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

This is life now. I was going to crop this photo, but in the end, I'm keeping it. This is the chaos. Fortunately, the bookshelf is clean and dusted, the excess books have been donated, and the small boxes we're not using have been recycled. It IS coming together. It's just a slow process. And it's a balancing act.

Today is 6/17. There is a near concrete plan. I can't get into it yet, mostly because I don't want to jinx anything. But yes, it's all taking shape. If it does actually work out, it will fall into place beautifully.

I can say that we should have everything shipped out by the end of July. I'm really hoping we can do it close to our 10-year informal reunion. There's a good chance (in the high 90s percentage-wise) that it will be that last weekend.

On another positive front, I got an email today that said the kids' passports are on their way. They're in San Jose now, so I bet I get them tomorrow. That's one less thing to stress about.

We still haven't heard anything about housing, but I read something online from someone who applied to one of the grad housing places we applied to, and he said he heard within a month. So I'm pretty confident we'll know one way or the other before we leave.

It really makes no difference. I booked our temporary accommodation at the Marriott already, so in the event that we have to house hunt, we will have a semi-cheap place to stay for up to 9 days.

Since I booked something, yes, we have dates now. I can't share them yet, because like I said, I don't want to jinx anything. But soon. I have a REALLY good feeling about our dates.

I Am Different Than You Are

2010-06-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

This is so very, very true. And believe it or not, I am really very comfortable with who I am. I recognize both my strengths and weaknesses. Yes, I'm sometimes rash, I'm strong-willed and very sharp tongued. I can be brutally honest, and I do have a temper. If I don't like people, I will tell them. I dislike weakness, and the biggest weakness to me is stupidity. I will exploit that. But on the other side of that coin, if you earn it, I am intensely loyal. I will bend over backward to accommodate the people I care about. If I don't like you, you will know. And I'm probably a helluva lot smarter than you think I am.

I've wrestled with the tone of this blog and the tone of my everyday conversations. I'm fluent in sarcasm. I'm a storyteller, so sometimes details are amplified. When I say something is "the worst" or "the most amazing thing ever," I naturally assume people will pick up on the hyperbole. The older I get, the more I realize this isn't the case. That sucks.

Who wants to feel like they're constantly explaining aspects of their personalities? Not me. So I thought maybe I shouldn't be so. . .me. . .when dealing with 99% of the population.

But where's the fun in that?

So no, I won't be changing the way I come across. If it bothers people, oh well. Because it's impossible to like everyone. There is no law that says we must have a relationship with any given person. And I'm not one for forcing relationships. It's not my style. :)

Sometimes Everything Just Has to Stop

2010-06-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

International moves, especially those done without the backing of a company, are stressful. Surprise, surprise. It always seems like I'm taking two steps forward and one step back. It's still progress, but sometimes it's frustrating and disheartening. Does that mean this isn't the way things should be? No. Because things are the way they are, and they couldn't be any other way.

We've had to change our plans completely. We won't be going to Southern California at all before we leave (at least not for more than a night), and after looking at airfare, we might just fly out of San Francisco. I'm very ok with this for a number of reasons. Sure, it'll make certain things more of a hassle, and it will involve lots of driving back and forth, but everything will work out in the end.

But enough about moving right now. Because there will be post after post about it. We needed a break from it, so we took it. One of M's coworkers offered us her seasonal pass to Yosemite. It's only $20 to get in, but it was still a very sweet gesture. We've been wanting to take the kids during the high waterfall season, and I'm so glad we did. They were NOT disappointed.

We didn't end up driving up to Mariposa Grove, but we can always go back in a few weeks. The important thing was to make sure the kids saw the falls before they dried up. It was a really nice day weather-wise, and I'm glad we went.

Up, up, up

2010-04-02T19:48:00.000-07:00

So I'm trying to stay positive and up, and it's not really working. But who wants to read a blog post from a Negative Nelly? This might be bland and dry, because I'm sticking to the facts of the day and not really going off on my usual tangents.

We went to a egg hunt that my dad's wife's old playgroup put on. It was just at a neighborhood park, not unlike the one that's by my house. But my neighborhood certainly doesn't have this in the middle of it:

We tried to get a pic of all the kids together, but that wasn't happening. So I had to take individual ones. By the time I got to Miss S, her face was covered in green frosting from her cupcake. So I threw the pic through Photoshop and got this:

No more frosting! Not bad. I'm learning.

Mini-Minion has a lot to learn about egg hunts. First of all, she's still completely uninterested in most other kids. She likes her cousins back at home, and that's pretty much so it. The cousin closest in age to her is basically the only child she has taken much of an interest in other than Mr. A obviously. So she mostly did her own thing.

Second of all, she doesn't get the concept of putting eggs in her basket. She kept throwing them BACK into the bushes. Mr. A had to keep giving her his eggs (well, not KEEP giving them, because she wasn't asking), and she would cart them around for a little bit. In the end, I think she ended up with one. I think.

(Mini-Minion and her discarded eggs)

Mr. A was very popular today, as usual. He's a pretty good sport about younger kids. He ended up pulling the little ones around in a wagon toward the end of the day.

On the way home, Mini-Minon threw a fit for a million different little reasons until her savior (Mr. A) came to the rescue. No, she's not really pulling his hair. It's a game they play.

And at the very end of the day, I didn't eat dinner until 10PM, Mini-Minion and Mr. A fought me on bedtime for two hours, I'm down 7 posts at work, I'm dead tired from getting up at six, working, dealing with the kids, going to sleep after midnight, and starting all over again, and I'm starting to just not care anymore. But as I was uploading my pictures, I saw this, and it made things a little better.

(During their 5-minute game of "I love yooooooou.")

So much for no tangents.

Passport Progress & Half-Eaten Cookies

2010-04-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

So my dad's wife made these adorable cookies for Easter. She really did a good job. Until this happened:

That does NOT say Mini-Minion on it, yet she got to it anyway. Little bite marks on the egg and bunny. The other bunny has. . .sharpie. . .on it. Because that is just logical. Mini-Minion is NEVER allowed to have crayons, pencils or pens. And this is why.

This afternoon, the kids pushed the various tricycles and cars up the little hill on the side yard and raced them down. It was all great fun, I'm sure. We were a little paranoid, because down the street is a nature preserve (kind of a sketchy thing in Florida if you think about the wildlife here). It practically runs up against the backyard. Anyway, early this afternoon, we had a little friend in the form of a black snake come to visit the backyard. It swam in the pool for a bit, annoyed the dog, and decided this wasn't the place.

Yesterday, I sent an email to the German Consulate in San Francisco, hoping to ease my passport application process by getting in writing that there were no other documents I need to apply for a passport. I did the same thing for my dad before he applied in Miami, and the vice-consul sent an email saying everything was in order, which was REALLY helpful when Dad applied.

I got an email back today saying:

"if you do have a chance, could you please scan the below mentioned documents and have them sent to this E-Mail-Address?
It seems very likely that you still hold German citizenship. Please also indicate if and when your father joined the US Army.
Sincerely,
Mr. XYZ
Vice Consul
German Consulate General"

Yes, I still hold German citizenship. My father currently has a German passport. He has never been in the military. But hey, this is positive. So I'll scan everything and send it over, and hopefully it will facilitate the entire thing. *Fingers crossed!* I'm hoping to get everything scanned tonight and sent tomorrow. Maybe they'll get back to me next week, and I can print these emails and take them with me for my appointment. If I have some sort of written confirmation from the vice-consul, I doubt it will take much time at the consulate.

I'm obsessing. But I've got a lot riding on this. Five years of my life boils down to two appointments. One is already done (Dad's) and now I've got mine in 19 days. Nineteen days. And because I'm already on a 19-day tour, I know how fast 19 days can go.

(That's marker on her face.)

Four days down, 15 more to go. . .One last picture of my self-proclaimed April Fool:

Welcome to Sunny Florida

2010-03-31T18:33:00.001-07:00

This is a fit, Mini-Minion style:

Life is so hard when you're two. :)

So we've been in Orlando for an entire day now (or almost an entire day). I've decided I don't like the time difference when M is still in California. Mostly because when he's there, I'm aware that I'm not on "normal" time. It's a mind thing.

Flying over by myself with the kids was miserable. Not because of them. They were great. But I thought it would be best for Mini-Minion to be in her car seat on the plane, but lugging the car seat, two carry-on suitcases, a backpack and the stroller all over three airports really wasn't all that much fun.

Still, we made it. The kids have adjusted fairly well to the time difference. Mini-Minion was alseep by 9PM Florida time, which is pretty darn good.

They're having fun with the kids who are technically their aunt and uncle. That's strange, but it is what it is. Mr. A and J have been running around screaming their fool heads off all day. They always play well together.

Mini-Minion is a bit more happy to play with Miss S, but she's waaaaay more interested in the dog, who I think she would willingly be tied to if given the opportunity.

So ends our first day in Orlando, and our third away from home. Three down, sixteen left to go. Sigh.

Trying to Normalize & Consolidate

2010-03-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, I think I'm starting to get back into the swing of things. It's not so much that my new job is hard as it is hard to balance working, the kids, moving, and all that fun stuff.

A few weeks ago, I started tackling the garage. It's a monster. The timeline is starting to freak me out, that's for sure. We are hoping to "move" down south in July so we can ship our stuff off and tie up any loose ends. That means we are done, packed, cleaned and out of here on June 30th. It's coming fast.

To make it come even faster, I'm leaving with the kids to spend 19 days in Florida so I can watch my dad's kids while he is in Paris. It will be fun, I'm sure, but I can't help but be a little sad and anxious. We've never been away from M for that long, and the thought of taking care of the kids/working by myself for so long is a little tiring. I'll have no time to myself at all.

So today, Mini-Minion and I bought our boxes. I need to get started. By the time I get back from Florida, we'll have 2 1/2 months left, and that will FLY by. Mr. A's birthday is at the end of April, and we're hoping to have a garage sale in May or June. As soon as we get back, I've got to go to the German Consulate to get my passport. There is so much to do.

Anyway, this is what it looks like when you're minimizing and moving abroad. My life will largely be contained in these 18 boxes.

This is what they look like unfolded. I'm actually fairly pleased with the size. I had forgotten what these boxes looked like. I already have a preliminary list of what needs to go in which size box. But still. . .it's sort of an overwhelming task. As you saw in the first pic, lots is getting left behind.

I spent most of the afternoon trying to go through things, tossing what I didn't want to take/sell/donate. While I worked, Mini-Minion played in the back of Daddy's truck and wreaked havoc on the inside of the house.

By almost 7pm, I had gotten far less done than I had wanted. I tossed all duplicate pictures we had, as well as any pictures that were out of focus, where people had their eyes closed, or that were just plain bad. This is the toss box.

And these are the keep piles. I still need to package them up so they don't get ruined in case the box comes in contact with water. Packing sucks.

Here is photographic evidence of one of my hoarding secrets. :) I like to keep newspapers. It's a miracle we haven't had mice or anything yet. And it's amazing those silverfish haven't invaded. I need to find plastic wrap for these, too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T00:44:00.000-08:00

I think these pictures are fairly self-explanatory. They let me in the kitchen again. I'm using these as proof that I do actually make my own pies. From scratch. And yes, *I* actually make them. I'm not sure how edible they are. No one dies after eating them, so I guess that's good.

But this is also proof of why I shouldn't be allowed to go in the kitchen. Seriously, look at this mess. Believe it or not, my toaster and microwave didn't press charges. The jury is out on the countertop. :/

I do want to know why my forehead looks like I've just gotten botox. What's up with that shine? Ick. Seriously. And yes, I will clean my counters. . .sometime between New Year's Day and When I Actually Care. :)

Besides, who can think about cleaning counters when there are novels to finish and music history articles to write? In other words, there are much more important things.

This is sort of all over the place because I've been waiting for potatoes to boil for like an hour and I'm ridiculously tired. I should have been put to bed HOURS ago.

But the lesson of the day, kids, is if life gives you lemons, go at them with your mouth wide open. I'm not quite sure what that means, but Miss A assures me it's good advice.

The power of positive thinking

2009-11-17T18:21:00.000-08:00

Today was an exceptionally frustrating day. It has been long. It started too early and it's still not even dinner time. That's sad. But, on the positive side, I will definitely be ASLEEP by 10PM tonight. For reals.

I had to work today. I spent what felt like forever. Off and on for 10 hours. Yes, TEN hours. It made me really tired. But, on the positive side, it's "decent" money, and money is money. I paid off half of what I spent on Mr. A at Gap.

The kids drove me nuts today. They barely let me work. Mr. A took 2 HOURS to finish 10 Latin sentences. He is the world's slowest writer. I've got to figure out how to speed him up. But, on the positive side, he dressed up as our "engineer" today. Check out the wrench in his pocket. It made me laugh.

I hate work. Specifically, my work. It just doesn't do it for me. But, on the positive side, that means a better life for my kids.

I wrote well over 2800 words today, researched 7 different topics, fed two kids, taught one, dealt with three and had a dog barking in my ear a good part of the day. It was terrible. But on the positive side, I caught R on film acting the fool. And that's always great.

So today has been long, and I'm a little sad and frustrated about lots of things today that I can't even get into yet. I hope the rest of the week gets better. But, at the end of the day, I'm going to watch Star Trek with Mr. A and M, we're eating tacos, and I'm going to bed early. :)

Shooting rockets off at the school

2009-11-15T21:43:00.000-08:00

Which probably doesn't sound like a normal activity, but I'm sure it is. Yesterday, M came home with some sort of rocket launcher, which he said he got at Michael's for 40% off. Today, he went for the rockets, which are apparently pretty expensive. :/ So M and Mr. A spent all day putting together this rocket launcher, gluing it and letting it dry. Then we went over to the school to shoot it off on the track field. The rockets went up 1,000 feet, so it was important to be in wide-open spaces.

Miss A ran around the field while the boys set up. It was a little chilly outside, but not too bad. I actually took my camera off auto today, so the pictures only came out so-so. I wasn't impressed as the sun went down, because the pictures came out with this fake lighting quality. It was weird.

M says he's pretty sure the rocket(s) really did go up at lest 1,000 feet. In any case, it went so high up, my camera couldn't even find anything to focus on (without the zoom lens, anyway). Then it exploded, and a little parachute came out. It was kind of fun to watch. Mr. A chased down the parachute and caught it before it hit the ground. Miss A stomped her feet, clapped her hands, and screamed because it was such exciting business. :)

See that little white speck above the trees? Yeah, that's our parachute coming down after several seconds. It was waaaaaaaay up there. :)

We had three rockets today. It was sort of sad when we were done, because it was like a mini Fourth of July. I guess the rockets cost about $20 for a pack of 3, so it's definitely not something we're going to do all the time. Besides, it's getting too cold to be hanging out outside for long periods of time.

After the rockets were done, we played a little improvised soccer with the kids. Poor Miss A was really frustrated with her little legs, because she couldn't keep up with the boys on the field. So she just sort of followed behind them, crying after awhile when they got too far ahead of her. It was sad and funny at the same time. So M and I took turns putting her on our shoulders and running up and down the field with her, which made her laugh. Too bad I can't run with a baby on my shoulders and snap crappy pictures at the same time. :)

I've decided to call this one "Man Down on the Field." It's ridiculous. And it makes me laugh Every.Single.Time I look at it. Every time. It's just nonsense. All afternoon he kept pretending to be hurt.

So it's getting cold

2009-11-15T13:36:00.000-08:00

And I'm reminded why I don't like the cold. But I much prefer it over the heat. If I had my choice, I think I'd rather live in a cold place than a warm place.

The sad thing is, it's not really that cold here. It's in the 50s and 60s right now, and I think it's supposed to drop down to the 40s. But nothing too cold. My Canadians would laugh at me right about now. Still, it feels ridiculously cold to me, especially after 105+ degree summers.

The reason I've been obsessing over coldness lately is because I know that we're going to head up to the mountains (read: the snow) soon. I don't think I like snow. Don't get me wrong--I like to look at it. I especially like to look at it through large picture windows in a mountain cabin while sitting by a fire and drinking hot chocolate. But I don't think I like being in it. As part of my attempted (literal) renaissance, though, the rules state I have to jump into life feet first and not just pansy around on the fringes. So into the snow I will go.

And no, these pictures have nothing to do with the snow. They're from park/shopping trips we've done over the last week. But I had nothing interesting to go along with them, so I thought I would talk about the snow.

On a funny note, Thanksgiving is in a week and a half, and I have to cook for it. Seriously. Well, this should be interesting. Let's hope whatever I do turns out edible, eh? Otherwise, that would be rather unfortunate.

Oh! One last thing. We're going to Disneyland with the grandparents (GeeGee and Papa of the cemetery fame--haha, wow, that sounds wrong) in December. It should be fun. I got a suite at a Marriott in Anaheim for $30/night. What could be better than that? We're staying down there after that to hang with M's family through Christmas. I don't know how I feel about being away from home during our last US Christmas. Sometimes it makes me sad and sometimes I don't care.

Visiting family. . .

2009-11-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

I've had these pictures up in Photobucket for over a week, but I haven't made a post about them. I'm trying really hard to get caught up on blogging, so there will probably be multiple posts today.

Last weekend, my dad came to town. Well, sort of. He came two hours south of us, anyway. His kids stayed with my aunt last week while my dad and his wife went to Hawaii. Nice vacation for them! :)

Anyway, we decided to head down there to see them, because it has been well over a year since I've seen my dad. Some people ask if that's weird. The frame of mind I'm in now after my mom died, well, nothing is weird anymore. So no, it's not really weird.

The family is fun. They're willing to risk looking uncool to have fun playing things like Rock Band, which makes them decidedly cool. The adults got into it, the kids were definitely into it, and I think (or hope) everyone had a good time.

I'm glad they chose to go to my aunt's house, because her house rocks. It really does. She's got all these sheep, pigs, horses, dogs and chickens. Oh, and the cats. Miss A is in heaven when we go because of all the cats, and if there's anything other than Poodle and Care Bears that Miss A obsesses over, it's the cats. Mr. A, on the other hand, likes playing City Boy Farmer. He likes collecting eggs and just generally looking at (not really doing much else to) the horses and sheep.

We did get some pictures of the kids with my dad before we left. It was a rather silly photoshoot. Mr. A really gets a kick out of J, who yes, is technically his uncle. But honestly, I don't really think about labels, not even with other members of my family. It's a byproduct of being weird, I guess. J is three years younger than Mr. A, but they get along pretty well.

The baby on my dad's lap isn't Miss A, who is obviously on his right. That's S, HIS baby. If you're thinking, "Wow, Miss A and S look very close in age!", you're right. Miss A is one month older than S. For some odd reason, though, Amazon Miss A is a bit taller than the petite S, who is really a very sweet baby. S also seems a bit more into socializing with people, unlike Miss A who acted like she was borderline autistic throughout our visit. Go figure.

So all the kids had a blast together, except Miss A, who had a blast by herself.

I hate laundry day

2009-11-09T12:30:00.000-08:00

And because I hate laundry day, I often choose to ignore it. Which makes laundry day turn into laundry week. It really sucks. I need to get it through my thick skull that laundry DAY is better than laundry WEEK.

Miss A and Mr. A have the worst laundry. I do theirs last, which is a mistake, because then it gets avoided for weeks at a time. And when I finally get around to doing it, this is what happens.

This is my favorite, because the tights are so little and cute.

So imagine this three times, sometimes per child, plus the stuff that is dried. Yes, it's ridiculous. I agree. But it could really be controlled if I would just do the darn laundry once a week.

This should explain why I wasn't updating last week. I was truly buried in dirty clothes.

I am not Julia Child

2009-10-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

Personally, I think there should be a law against me being in the kitchen for longer than it takes to grab food or unload the dishwasher. I am really not into anything kitchen related. It has always been this way. In fact, I was just talking to my grandparents today about how much I suck at life to the point where I can't even enjoy baking things. I never wanted an Easy Bake oven. I never liked decorating cookies or cupcakes.

So I fake it for my kids.

Last night, we made puzzle piece cookies. I don't know how much they enjoyed it. Miss A seems to take after me. She's done in about five minutes. Mr. A, on the other hand, does seem to like to decorate a little bit. It took him about an hour to decorate his cookie. he did it all by himself because Miss A pooped out on us at around 9:30. I don't know how much she would have liked the whole decorating thing anyway.

I ended up decorating the second one, which, if you've read the above stuff, you know was right up my alley. I literally spent five minutes on it, just slapping frosting down wherever so it would be covered.

After Mr. A went to sleep, I finished making the Halloween fudge for M to take to work, as well as these cheesecake fudge things that totally didn't come out right. They didn't bake long enough, even though I baked them for the maximum recommended time and the instructions were all crazy about NOT overbaking. Humph. But of course I didn't realize they were underbaked until this morning. Oh, well. Mr. A said they weren' that good anyway. At least the Halloween fudge came out ok.

You know what else isn't coming out? The darn Halloween costumes I've spent too much time on. They're just not what I envisioned. But they'll work for trick or treating. So I give you:

Unfinished Jack

Unfinished Sally (yes, the wig will look better tomorrow when it's actually attached)

Halloween hayrides, car accidents and costumes

2009-10-28T18:20:00.000-07:00

We'll get the gross stuff out of the way first. I like Wednesdays. That's not really gross. I like them because those are the days when I'm free from the kids for a few hours in the morning and I get to do grown up stuff like process archaeological collections and compile artifact lists. It's a lot of fun.

On my way to the lab today, I was getting off the freeway and there was a red light. Normally red means stop, so my car decided it would be best to stop. Good stuff, right? Well, the car behind me decided it wasn't having any of that red light stuff, and so it not-so-gently tapped my car to. . .encourage. . .it to go through the red light. And now I have a nice case of whiplash, which is the first one I have ever had. It's not enough for me to need to immobilize my neck or anything, and I can still do things around the house (darn!), but it is sore. And I do have a slight headache tonight that may or may not be related.

Fortunately, there wasn't much damage to the car. Sometimes I like my car.

Ok, now that the bummer stuff is out of the way, we can talk fun things. We made good on our promise to take the kids on the hayride last night. It was a lot of fun. It was a "haunted" hayride, and there were lots of semi-scary things that jumped out at us on our trip.

There were also other things to do there, like play in a corn kernel. . .pit(?). The kids really enjoyed that, but they couldn't wear shoes, and it was cold outside. I felt a little bad, but they didn't seem to be bothered by it at all.

M talked Mr. A into trying to make a corn kernel angel. It didn't come out well, but he tried. And he spent the next couple of minutes picking corn out of his clothes.

There were all these characters walking around the property, and one of them was this mutant rat. I can't remember what his name was, but it was something like Leroy. Anyway, Miss A was positively enthralled with him. It was actually kind of funny. She kept wanting to touch him and give him high fives.

When the rat had to leave, Miss A was very concerned about where he was going. After he left, she was ready to put her shoes back on and follow him all over the place.

And so that was our adventure last night. Tonight I get to keep going on the Halloween costumes, because I'm getting closer to finishing. Now comes the sewing part, which is the worst. Blah. Here is Miss A's stuff in its disassembled state. I made my own pattern from one of her other dresses. I'm not sure how it will come out. It makes me nervous.

And here is the next phase of Mr. A's costume. Now comes fitting the eye holes with the sunken-in "netting" and smoothing out the rough edges (like the nose holes). It should be completely finished tomorrow and I can start on his actual clothes. The head is lumpy, but in my defense, I've never done papier mache before, and I didn't have a round mold to help guide me. Hopefully my inability to craft properly won't cause Mr. A to need therapy. It'll be good enough for trick-or-treating at any rate.

Thoughts on London

2009-10-26T18:45:00.000-07:00

Last post for the day. I just had a lot to catch up on, and I didn't want to include this with everything else.

I've spent the past couple of days obsessing over things I can't control, which is what I do best. Anyway, I started looking at the schools in the area we'll probably be living, and I found myself increasingly stressed out over the lack of secular schools in England. The concept of state-run religious schools is completely foreign to me. It is just a bizarre concept. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it is very different for me. The closest schools to where we will be living are all run by either the Church of England (Anglican) or the Roman Catholic Church. The closest secular school is almost 30 minutes on foot. Even with the tube, it's 20-ish minutes away.

Anyway, this is all really frustrating to me, and if you know me, you can probably understand why.

Last night, we took the kids for a walk, and I told M that I was really having a down day and I was second-guessing my love for England. I was worried that my "romantic" view of England had largely overshadowed the reality of what it would be like to live there, and that's never good.

Depending on how well you know me, this might be a surprise: I HATED France the first time I visited. I'm being serious. Hate is a strong word, and I'm not being dramatic. We were locked into moving by the time we visited, and I was pretty sure we had made a mistake. Still, I went ahead with it. The first month we were in Paris, I knew we had made a mistake. It was so hard. It was frustrating. I couldn't understand anyone, I felt completely helpless, and we had no money (our house hadn't sold yet). Nothing had worked out the way it was supposed to, and life generally sucked.

Two months later, you couldn't pry me away from that city with a crowbar. Of course, I'm not there anymore, and circumstances change, but it's pretty safe to say that Paris is the best city in the world in my opinion.

Likewise, I didn't like London at all when we went. I thought it was a horrible city, and I couldn't understand why anyone would want to go there voluntarily. And that frustrated me, because you see, even then, I knew I would end up there. London is my calling, and it has been for at least 6-7 years. I don't know why. I don't know what I'm going to find there or why it's necessary that I'm there, but it is.

I try to hold onto these things when I'm feeling less than enthusiastic about moving. Today I woke up and realized that this situation somewhat mirrors the move to France, and that turned out really well for us.

The weird thing about this move is that EVERYTHING seems to be falling into place with it. I'm telling you, London is my calling. It HAS to happen, and I almost feel like I'm not in control of the situation anymore. It's a very bizarre feeling, especially for someone who likes to be in control of her life.

The graduate tutor with the Institute of Archaeology told me back in September that I was being recommended a place. Still, I have to wait for a letter from the admissions department for it to be "official." And today, when I was feeling the most exasperated and unsure of this move, this arrives.

These are the types of things that seem to happen. Kismet, destiny, fate, coincidence--it doesn't really matter. The good thing is, it reaffirms my belief that this is the right course of action.

It's-a me, Mario!

2009-10-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

M got this hat because we've officially become those losers who buy too many Wii games. They've mistaken us for Mario and now we get his dry cleaning. Wow, that was lame. Either way, Miss A has commandeered the Mario hat. In fact, she's wearing it as I'm typing this. No joke.

And what does Miss A/Mario do when she's not wearing the red hat? Make gigantic messes, of course. This one was created during Mr. A's lessons today. That is glitter you're seeing. M thought it might have been Oreos. Oh, no. It is most definitely glitter. You can see it better if you click on the picture. Yikes. And the cleanup in the playroom wasn't fun either.

She was seriously so proud of herself. She spent the rest of the early afternoon before her nap trying to dig back in the craft box.

In non mess-related news, we've been trying to make the most out of our last American Halloween. I know the Brits have been making more of an effort with Halloween, and I'm a little comforted by that, but we're really trying to enjoy what we can here while we can. We've been watching lots of "spooky" movies, mostly whatever is on ABC Family. So far, we've run through The Witches, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride, The Addams Family, and Beetlejuice (only the last half, because I didn't realize it was on). We have Edward Scissorhands (Mr. A really wants to see it) and Hocus Pocus on DVR.

The costumes are coming along. The hard part is coming up, and I've been putting it off. I need to just jump in and give it a go. They're coming together, though. They'll be good enough for trick-or-treating anyway. I don't think I have anything else to buy, so the running total so far is $9 for Miss A and $19.5 for Mr. A.

M says if for some reason they don't turn out, the kids can always go as Mario and Peach. The problem is, I don't know which one would go as Mario. I think we'd see a huge fight break out over the hat.

Being forced to go to the pumpkin patch is a drag

2009-10-26T17:54:00.000-07:00

Boy, it must suck when your parents try to take you somewhere fun. This picture is so pathetic. It just makes me giggle.

We started the night intending to go on a hayride, but then I reminded M that it was Saturday night (and the Saturday before Halloween at that), and the place we were supposed to go is REALLY popular. Thankfully our good friend (and former neighbor) stopped by and agreed that it would be Disneyland-in-summer crowded. So we'll try to go this week.

M thought it would be a good idea to take the kids to get ice cream since we had semi-flaked on them. I don't like going back on what I said I was going to do, so I thought that was a good substitute. On the way there, I remembered there was a pumpkin patch with tons of carnival-like rides that Mr. A had wanted to go to a few days ago. We surprised the kids by taking them there before getting ice cream.

I got no decent pictures at this pumpkin patch. None. My children were entirely uncooperative for artistic, beautiful pictures. I did, however, get genuine candids, and those are probably better than the pretty, serious shots anyway.

Miss A was like a crazy maniac. She was far too interested in anything that might possibly have been going on around her to sit still. It was frustrating for pictures, but fun to watch. The vast majority of the pictures I got were of her back. But it'll be a silly reminder of the age.

After the pumpkin patch, we made good on our promise to get ice cream. Mr. A and M got chocolate malted crunch, and Miss A and I split a double scoop of chocolate malted crunch and pecan praline. Yum!

More on the Halloween costumes

2009-10-22T15:33:00.001-07:00

Oh, 2009 Halloween costumes. I feel like I'll be looking at these things constantly for 10 solid days. I'm not really sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I'm hoping they come out awesome, and that makes me excited. On the other hand, I'm tired of spending what seems like forever making them.

I actually think I'm ahead of where I thought I would be on them, which is great. I didn't plan to start Miss A's until this weekend, but I've been working furiously in my "spare" time to get hers started. So last night, I began the hat. I worked on it this morning while Miss A ran around the backyard in a Izod dress that is probably too short for her and some legwarmers that probably really don't match the dress. Ehhh. . .She picked silver shoes to wear with it.

So this is what the hat looked like as of 10AM today. It's the same one I made for her last year, when she was a cat.

I spent the rest of the morning finishing it up and getting the hair ready. After Miss A laid down for her nap, I got Mr. A set up and started attaching the hair to the hat. This was the result by about 1:30PM.

And so, well, that's that, right? Yeah, right. Either our horse friend there or Mr. A stretched out the hat, and now it's too big for Miss A. Grrr. I think I might try sewing a piece of elastic around like a headband to see if that will help keep it in place. Miss A seemed to like it anyway, though. When she got up from her nap, I tried it on her, we laughed, and she said, "Pitty!" Yes, very pitty indeed. I'm hoping the yarn straightens out some before Halloween so it isn't wavy looking.

I've got to start her dress, but I'm a little overwhelmed by it, and what usually happens when I get overwhelmed by things is I either:

a. tackle them immediately to get them out of the way
or
b. ignore them and/or forget about them until it's almost too late

I'm really trying to do the whole "take it one step at a time" thing. But I'm already doing that with Mr. A's costume, and I don't know if I can be rational and levelheaded about two things at once. That might be asking too much.

Latin revisited and Halloween foolishness

2009-10-21T00:13:00.000-07:00

First of all, we had a fantastic weekend in Southern California. It was wonderful to hang out with some of our friends, and I hope that our next couple of visits are just as great as that one was.

Since we got home, I've been on Halloween costume overdrive. Mr. A and I finally agreed on a costume on Friday, and I spent the weekend trying to figure out the logistics of it. I still haven't figured everything out, but I'm on the right track. I hope.

Anyway, we still have to make time for school. Today marks week 3 of Mr. A's Latin lessons. He still likes it. I'm kind of surprised. But his course is perfect for him. So here's his three-week progress:

I've been loving the weather here lately. It's cool, but not cold. It has been pretty nice for fall. When we went to the pumpkin patch last year, it was in the 90s. I remember feeling like I was torturing the kids because they were in long sleeves. This year, I feel a little bad when I take them out in short sleeves.

Yesterday, R had court because he has been on informal probation for throwing a book at another student. We had to take his community service papers to the court so they would strike the whole thing like it had never happened. We had promised R we would take him to get Japanese food (he's obsessed), and it just happened to be last night. Unfortunate timing if you ask me, because I don't like the idea of "rewarding" him for this whole court thing. On the other hand, if I say we're doing something, I will make every effort to make it happen. So we went. And I'm glad we did for the restaurant's sake. It was dead. There were only two tables seated at 7pm. Not a good sign.

I started on Mr. A's Halloween costume last night, and it's going to take me basically until Halloween to finish it. I'm going to try to take pictures of it at every stage. So here's stage one:

Ah. . .but what is it? I'm not telling. I want to see if it'll be recognizable by the end of the weekend, which it should be. If not, it should be very, very close.

So I realized that I will have to do double duty right now and work on Miss A's costume as well. But I didn't get anything for it when I went to the craft store yesterday. Oops. So we had to go back again today. I bought rust-colored yarn and fabric quarters. Running total for Mr. A's costume: $5. Running total for Miss A's costume: $10.

After our trip to the craft store, we stopped by our aunt's house for a quick visit. The kids enjoyed playing with their cousins, and Miss A enjoyed terrorizing the neighbor's cat. She screamed "CAT! No, you stop it!" when the bigger kids tried to pull her away from it. It really is a good thing that she's so sweet, because she is a feisty thing.

After we got home, I tried to organize their room a little bit. Combining the As was hard because Miss A's room wasn't exactly set up originally for another person. I really need to get in there and deep clean/organize/purge, but I honestly don't have more than a few hours here and there to do it. And by the time I'm done with one area, it takes so darn long on the next area that the original area needs attention by the time I'm done. It's a frustrating cycle.

If you ever wonder why there is a disproportionate number of pics of Miss A on here, this is why:

Me: "Hey, Mr. A. Look at me and say 'cheese,' please."
Mr. A. : "Uhhh. . .hang on. I'm in a battle. I have to defeat this bad guy."
OR "Argh. Mommy! I'm playing with my friends."
Me: Sigh. "Nevermind."

Oh! And one last thing for the night. This was the exciting delivery of the day: black & white hi-top Chucks. I got both pairs for $25 from Sears (Buy One, Get One 50% off PLUS 20% coupon code). Yes, this is a lame thing to get excited about, but look at this! Miss A already had a pair, so now we can all match. Except for M. I don't buy him Converse because his feet are so big that the narrow, abnormally long Converse style makes his feet look like clown feet. On the flip side, he can carry off the fatter skate style, and those just look silly on me. But anyway, yeah. I'm lame enough to get excited about matching with my kids.

Spontaneity is fun

2009-10-15T18:19:00.000-07:00

After we picked R up from school and dropped him off at work, I decided we ought to do something. I was initially going to take the kids to the museum, because they've got this great hands-on art exhibit, as well as a brain teaser exhibit. But I knew Miss A was already a tiny bit cranky and would be due to eat fairly soon.

So we drove almost to Yosemite. It was fun. Our first stop was Coarsegold. I took the kids to a restaurant for grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshakes, which Mr. A declared were the best he'd ever tasted (I'm pretty sure it was handmade ice cream). I don't think I've ever taken the kids out to a real restaurant by myself, which is too bad.

I whipped out the Nikon at the restaurant, ready to document the entire trip and take beautiful pictures of the kids with the fall foliage and the pumpkins, but my battery was dead. And this thing doesn't run on double As. It takes a lithium ion. Blah! M & A's adventures last night killed the battery, and M forgot to charge it. Lesson learned. Now I'll check before I leave the house. Mr. A said, "Oh yeah. I forgot the battery was dead." Thanks, kiddo. So I was stuck taking pictures on my phone camera. That explains the lack of pictures and the poor quality of the ones I got.

Mr. A wanted SO badly to go gold panning, but it was shut down for the day. I think it's only open on the weekends. Bummer.

We walked around the historic village a little bit, but there wasn't a lot for the kids to do. I think Mr. A would have been ok with it, but Miss A was sleepy, so she wasn't on her best behavior. It was absolutely gorgeous up there. The temperature was in the low 70s, so it truly was the perfect day.

The kids beelined it for the little teepee that's at the entrance to the historic village. There are little pumpkins growing around it on the vine for the season. It was seriously too cute. The teepee was damaged (it was ripped on the other side), which is too bad, but it's still cute. It was definitely the coolest thing Mr. A has seen all week.

Since the gold panning wasn't open and I wasn't quite ready to go home yet, I loaded up the kids in the car and kept driving. I wanted to see Oakhurst. But I didn't see anything really special about it. Don't get me wrong--it was cute, but it wasn't fantastic or anything. Maybe it's cuter when you get off the main road, which I couldn't because Mr. A was freaking out about getting lost.

Oakhurst was a bust, but a sign came up that said Bass Lake was only 7 miles up the road. So we kept driving. . .into the Sierra Nevadas. . .a little past Bass Lake and back down again. The smell of the pine trees was fantastic. We rolled the windows down, and it wasn't overwhelming, but every couple of minutes, we would get a strong whiff of pine. Mmmmm. Nice.

Miss A was really excited to have her window rolled down, but we had to take Poodle away from her because Mr. A was irrationally freaking out that she was going to toss the poodle out the window.

It took about an hour to get home from Bass Lake. On the way home, I swerved at a police officer. Cute, huh? So obviously I'm a grandma driver, but I noticed my leg was getting tired because M moved my seat back and I thought it would be better for me to move it up a little. I tried to move it up, but the bar got stuck. Finally, it unlocked, causing the seat to go flying forward. It jolted (and scared) me, causing me to move the wheel. So I corrected quickly, but a police officer was the oncoming traffic. It literally looked like I was swerving at him. Nice. And to top it all off, I had Old Man Backseat Driver Mr. A in the back making sure I wouldn't forget that I had almost "hit" a police officer. :/

All in all, it was a good day for us. I got the last transcript for my Fulbright scholarship, which was a big relief for me. Now just comes the final editing and submission. On top of traveling to SoCal and going to a baby shower this weekend, I've also got to make time to do that.

Laundry, dinner and dishes are waiting!

Non-New Years Resolution: Unplugging My Brain

2009-10-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

I have a list of things going that I want to accomplish. They're non-academic goals, like learn how to play the guitar, knit things and finish my book. In any given day, we have a lot going on. Between playing chauffeur to R, Mr. A being homeschooled, Miss A trashing the house, sometimes work, sometimes the lab, I just shut down sometimes. It can be overwhelming. But I'm not writing to complain. If I wanted to drop something, then it would be done.

My point is, sometimes it can be really hard to make (not find) time to get around to the things I want to do to enrich my life instead of just living it. My biggest nemesis is the computer, for a variety of reasons, the most prominent being that I've used this stupid thing to work for four years, and that's a hard habit to break. And school was on the computer for two years before that.

No more. There's a story online that I'm wrapping up, and I don't mind accessing my lessons on YouTube, but I'm done. I'm unplugging my brain. I'm giving myself permission to do these things:

1. Check my email
2. Update my blog (that was one of my goals)
3. Read the two blogs I read
4. Watch my daily lessons
5. Play the original Oregon Trail online with Mr. A

I'm actually excited about it. In a few weeks, I'll probably go back to Facebook on occasion. I'm tired of my entire homepage being covered with political crap. That's not networking.

Another benefit of unplugging is I think my life will get a lot more interesting. I'll have the time and the energy to do things that aren't on my enrichment list. It'll be good.

Now that the weather has cooled down, I want to make good on my promise to take the kids to the park often. I can knit or study Latin while they play, or if I'm REALLY feeling like unplugging, I can revert back to being an oversized kid and play with them. It's a little harder when you're lugging around a giant camera all the time, but I think I can manage every once in awhile. ;)

Last night, M set up the camera to take long exposure shots, and he and Mr. A drew pictures with a light. I've never joined them before, but I did last night. It was fun. I think we should do it more often.

Rainy Days

2009-10-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

I really like rainy days. I usually get nothing done on them, and that's just fine with me. We had such a day on Tuesday. The original weather forecast said we would get 2 inches of rain on Tuesday and 4 (FOUR!!) on Wednesday. What did we end up with? We ended up with a decent rainfall (although not the storm they were promising) on Tuesday and really sunny skies on Wednesday. Because we don't have a traditional rainy season, I feel cheated. :) Besides, it usually rains at night here. But I keep telling myself that next year it will be different.

Mr. A was sad when the rain left, because he was so excited to get to wear his rain boots and splash in puddles. There's always next time.

Learning about fish and Latin

2009-10-05T20:06:00.002-07:00

How sad. My post was just deleted. Sigh.

It was really nice out today, so I let Mr. A do his science and reading outside. I'm not sure if that was a good idea or not. He was just very distracted by Miss A, who insisted on rolling golf balls on our table, trying to climb into the pond, and climbing over the mini fence to the No-Man Zone of the wood pile (aka Land of a Thousand Black Widows). The thing about Mr. A is, none of this was really any of his concern. I spent my time chasing after her. But he makes it his concern. I guess if I'm being honest, this would happen no matter where we were. He looks very studious here.

Finally, Miss A found a nice spot behind some plants to "veg" out for a bit. She's so strange sometimes. But her time behind the plants did her some good, because when she reemerged 5 or so minutes later, she was much calmer.

Today, Mr. A learned about fish. Most of the lesson went really well, but when I got to talking about the gills, I thought we could use something more visual. So I took him to the pet store where he could some fish up close because the goldfish in our pond was hiding at the moment. The cool thing about the pet store we went to is that it has a little shark.

Miss A also enjoyed the pet store, but she was more interested in the kitties they had for adoption. She also managed to squeeze her hand into a parrot cage. Sigh again. Although fish are usually boring unless you've got a reason for looking at them, she actually wasn't too disinterested.

The other great thing about the fish section in the pet store is you can almost always see the fish from Finding Nemo, which the kids always think is the coolest thing in the world. It's always one of the first things Mr. A points out. At any rate, the pet store trip opened up a discussion about why sharks are different from other fish, how not everything in the ocean is a fish, etc.

When we got home, it was time for his first Latin lesson. He did well, although I think he got really confused in the beginning. Learning a foreign language is awesome for gaining a better understanding of English, too, and I think all this talk of English parts of speech vs. Latin parts of speech made him a little goofy in the head for awhile. But he got the hang of it finally. I do like the book I got for him. I think it'll do exactly what we need it to do this year.

On the home front, P90X starts back up tonight (ugh!). M picked up the new Wii Fit game, and it doesn't seem like it's going to do much. But he seems to like it. So he can use it. As for me, I think I'll stick to P90X. I think it'll be a little more effective.

On lazy days and cleaning up after toddlers

2009-10-04T19:43:00.001-07:00

I love days like this, because we do almost nothing. It's really relaxing. And it's very rare. Of course, doing nothing doesn't count for much with Miss A. Mostly because we start the day with the playroom looking like this:

After awhile, she starts itching to make a mess. Then we start noticing. . .This happened over a period of maybe 5 minutes.

The final product, which we get to clean up at least twice a day:

There are many other areas she does this in, including her toy area in the living room. I can't tell you how many times a day we have to clean this up. I can't wait to get rid of all this stuff.

Miss A is very lucky she's so sweet. Whenever she gets feisty, she already knows she can make it better by patting us on the leg and saying, "I love you!"

Besides, she makes me laugh even when she's just standing there. I don't know what it is about her, but she's just funny. Even when she's making more messes.

Today is also a good day because I get a break from P90X. It's either a stretching night or a break night. So I'm choosing the break. We may take the kids over to the high school in a little bit to run laps on the track, but no high-intensity nonsense tonight.

That is, if we can tear Mr. A away from the Xbox, which I think he might try to marry. He is seriously in heaven, as if we had never had one of these things before. AND our Lips wireless microphones now work with Rock Band, so he's on a natural high.

The great thing about Mr. A is that he's still at that age where they say really funny things. In his case, he sings really funny things. Like "Enjoy the Science" instead of "Enjoy the Silence." I'll have to pin down some of his great Michael lyrics since he's on a massive MJ kick right now.

This was right before "I'm a little tea pot, short and spout," which Marc loaded onto the xbox for Miss A.

And now I'm off. We might even be able to watch a movie tonight. At the very least, I'd like to get caught up on The Daily Show, which I wasn't able to watch all week.

What we do for fun

2009-10-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

We're pretty hard up for entertainment in these parts, so after driving Ryan around to school and work on Thursday I did what I could and took the kids to the cemetery, where they could see real flowers and mylar balloons. Ok, it was really to change the flowers on my mom's and great-grandparents' headstones. GeeGee and Papa met us there, and poor GeeGee had a time of it with Miss A trying to get on her scooter. It ended with them flying down a row and Miss A's foot getting lodged under the scooter. It's a good thing I'm possibly THE most relaxed non-neglectful mother in the world, because I just laughed. Miss A was fine. Poor GeeGee.

I forgot my camera, so you get crappy phone camera pics. The cemetery was. . .nice? I don't know. How does one describe a cemetery. Oh! I know! It was not nice. Not nice at all. There were fire ants all over the headstones, and they kept biting us. Those suckers hurt!

Miss A was not impressed by the cemetery. Mr. A, on the other hand, usually is very impressed by it. He was confused by our visit to (his) great-great-grandparents, so he asked if the cemetery caretakers move the bodies at night. He thought they dug up my mom and moved her. Gross.

I'm pretty sure my grandparents aren't exactly excited about the prospect of going with us to the cemetery anytime soon. Between digging people up and feet getting run over, we're a good time, though.

Friday was a good day. We were busy. We had to go back to the doctor's office so I could get my TB test read. Then we tried to find a shirt for Mr. A at Gap, but it was a no-go. :( We stopped by the Disney Store to try on the Alice in Wonderland costume on Miss A, but it was ridiculously big in the chest. No way, Jose.

Miss A lived on Ritz crackers all day. She appropriately calls crackers "Craaaaaack." She acts like they're crack. My goodness.

Of course she really didn't live on Ritz crackers all day, because our aunt generously invited us over for barbeque hamburgers. We're getting rid of---I mean, we're being abandoned by---our grandparents for a month, so we all threw a party---I mean, said goodbye. It was fun. Miss A and Mr. A were in heaven with their cousins.

When we got home, our new Xbox (our old one red-ringed us) was waiting, along with. . .Beatles Rock Band! Woo hoo! It was very exciting for all of us. You might even be seeing some Rock Band videos up here soon. ;)

M and the kids tried to go garage saleing (is that even a verb?) today, but they had no luck. We're trying to find cheap weights for our P90X adventures. Maybe tomorrow.

Otherwise, we spent all day playing Rock Band. Well, not all day. Just most of the day. Miss A and I ventured out to WalMart today, and every time I go to that place, I swear I won't go back. But I always do. For shame on me.

In good news, I finished an entire P90X workout. It was the KempoX one. Almost an hour of hardcore kicking and punching. I have never sweat so much in my life. It was gross.

Also, our (mine and Mr. A's) Latin books arrived today. His looks easy. Mine. . .not so much. I opened it, and the entire dang thing is in Latin. The ENTIRE thing. There is not a single English word in the whole book. :/ Well. It starts out easy enough, but after two or three pages, I understand less and less. Sigh.

Wednesday, September 30th

2009-10-01T00:08:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to start using this for what it was intended as--an actual blog. Shocker, I know. Maybe I'll let REAL people start looking at it so no one can complain that we never send updates anymore. People can get a fun glimpse into our days. Muahahaha.

M and I started P90X a few days ago. That program was invented by a sadist. A horrible, horrible sadist. We can't even get through an entire workout. ONE HOUR of push ups and pull ups? No thank you. So we do what we can. Yet we still feel like we've been run over by large machinery.

My day started out with a bang! Not really. Mr. A had something stuck in his left ear that we suspected was a wood chip (he had a wood chip in his right ear as well, but I was able to remove that one). So M made an appointment at the ped's office for this morning. At 9:15. Which is so convenient. Sarcasm is hard online, so let me just clarify: No, it was NOT convenient. At all. We did make it on time, though. On time to sit in the waiting room for over an hour and sit in the exam room for another 30 minutes. :/ Not a great way to start the day. By the time they had irrigated his ear and given me a TB test (long story short, I need it to work in the arch lab at the community college), our entire visit had taken 2 hours and 15 minutes.

After we got home, ate, and Miss A went down for her nap, Mr. A learned about continents and worked on his multiplication tables. He also did a French lesson, but he decided he wants to learn Latin with me, so I'm only keeping him on the French to occupy his time until our Latin books come. Then we'll see which one he REALLY wants to do. My money is on the French, but we'll see.

I tried to take a short nap this afternoon, but Mr. A kept wanting to make very unfortunate, loud noises that made it impossible to sleep. Apparently this was the soundtrack to whatever strange game he created. Once he quieted down, though, my cell phone started buzzing. Seriously? Yes, seriously. I have the worst luck. Once the cell phone stopped, Miss A decided it was time to wake up. Nap time foiled.

We had a snack and Miss A showed off her rather impressive ability to sort of sing along with the Spongebob Squarepants theme. Now before anyone gets crazy, she has seen it twice. I guess it made that great of an impression. Spongebob is rather impressive. Wait until I bust out the dance moves Mr. A and I used to do when he was little. Spongebob will be imprinted on her mind forever.

She wanted to go outside, and I thought I'd pretend like I know how to use my camera. By setting it on "auto" of course. She looked really cute trying her hardest to make the toys roll across the lawn, like usual. Well, it's cute until she gets angry and looks at me like I forced her to try to push something across grass. Personally, I think we ought to try out her skills on the lawnmower. She seems to be the only one who is really interested in using it.

Then I noticed she had somehow gotten yogurt on her shirt, in spite of wearing a bib while eating. This is sort of a "thing" for her, and I don't quite know how she does it. You can see the faint spots of peach right above the "N" in "Dance". Fun. I just don't get it. It's like she contorts herself to reach up UNDER the bib and smear yogurt on her clothes.

Notice her attention is elsewhere. As I was checking the photo above, she made a beeline for the plastic green turtle, which apparently had gotten filled with water thanks to the sprinklers. It was a cool 77 degrees here today--the perfect temperature for a swim. Which she did. She sort of flopped over into the turtle. She didn't seem fazed at all by the fact that she was SOAKING WET. Or that the water was disgusting looking and filled with dead pine needles. Puppy had to investigate. Yep. It's gross.

In fact, she was pretty pleased with herself, because she kept smacking her wet hands together like she was putting on lotion. And she was rather annoyed with me for ruining the fun. Notice the wet line at the hem of her skirt and the "fun" way her shirt is sticking to her belly. Her lovely legwarmers were soaked as well. Nice. Although I'm not too sure about the leg warmers. I get the feeling that they look like pants that have been pulled down.

I rarely make the kids change during the day, but I couldn't let her run around soaking wet, especially because it's not that hot out anymore. So onto outfit #2, which was the perfect choice for ladylike moves like:

By this time, Mr. A and his friends decided to hang out in the backyard with us, so they kept Miss A's attention. She was done with me at any rate. I got no more attention until she needed food.

The poor boys were having some sort of sword fight or. . .foam bat fight. I'm not really sure what exactly they were doing. But my job was to keep Miss A out of it, which was tough because she really wanted to get in there with them. Mr. A was not amused.

Really not amused. And he's always convinced his pants are falling down when they're not. They fit him PERFECTLY in the waist. It's like some kind of OCD thing. Ridiculous. He's like, "Staaaaaaahhhhp. They're falling down." Then he yanks them up practically to his chest while I'm pulling in the other direction. "No, YOU stop. Now you just look silly. Your pants are now fake manpris." Which are worse than real manpris. Arrrgh. But I told him I bought Miss A some ruffled leggings that match the brown/blue print in the middle of his monster. I kindly suggested that since he was having such issues with his pants, he might want to use Miss A's size 2 leggings, and then he could still match his tee. I got a real guffaw out of that one, which he quickly covered up and claimed was because of the game he was playing. Yeah, right. I know why you were laughing, Peter Pan man.

After M came home, I managed to make it to Gap to try to get the brown tutu Dance line skirt for Miss A. No luck. They're sold out of brown. They had a 12-18 pink and a 4T pink. That store was wiped out. Oh well. She didn't really need it. I was tempted to pick up the Tinkerbelle costume from the Disney Store and go the lazy route for Halloween, but something seems off about that. On my way home, I dropped off Mr. A's prescription that Dr. J told us to use for his skin rash.

After we ate, Mr A and Miss A ran around the house screaming until my head hurt. I put her to bed, played piano to calm down some, and then M and I went for our warm-up walk. We don't have weights, so we skipped Shoulders and Arms on P90X and did Yoga instead. It was brutal, and I probably won't be able to walk in the morning.

April 30th, 2009

2009-04-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. A!

Today is Mr. A's seventh birthday. I'm not really too sure how I feel about that. He was excited. Both kids had multiple outfit changes today.

Miss A started the day off in the Janie and Jack Metallic Mist dress, which was SO cute, but before lunch was finished, she decided she shouldn't have to wear a bib while eating an oreo, so she pulled it off. We didn't see eye to eye on the whole not wearing a bib thing, and the dress was the unfortunate casualty.

Next up was the orange J&J Tropical Traveler dress. This is a 3-6 month dress. It runs VERY large. Super cute, though! The bowband was a gift from our aunt, and it matches perfectly. :)

It got a little too cold for this tonight, though, so I put her in a Gap Sunflower dress. Underneath is the Matilda Jane Elaina top. I don't love the Converse with the dress, but I didn't have many other options. In the first pic, the dress is nowhere near as long as it looks. It was just the angle I was shooting. It actually comes to just below her knees--a great length!

Mr. A's first choice was the Boden target t-shirt. It's his favorite shirt. I had it on here about a week ago. Anyway, there was an unfortunate mishap with his first outfit before I had a chance to take a picture of it, so we changed him into this Boden outfit. We need the other three pairs of baggies! Boden is just way too cute for boys his age.

My happy birthday boy. :)

April 29th, 2009

2009-04-30T22:41:00.000-07:00

It has been almost a week now, and Miss A is still being a crab. I think she's almost done, though.

I'm bummed I didn't get any pics of Mr. A in his outfit, because he looked c-u-t-e! :)

Here is Miss A in her Gymboree Savanna Sunset dress and hat. I loved this outfit, so I bought it last year for this year. Then, once I had it hanging up, I didn't like it anymore. But once I saw it on her, I loved it again. These pics absolutely don't do anything for the dress--it is really cute in person!

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

2009-04-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

Same old, same old: cranky baby. I brought out this Janie and Jack Sweet Coral Reef outfit today. I looked for this forever. I really wanted to fall in love with it the second I saw it, because I just knew the colors would be beautiful on Miss A. The outfit isn't as spectacular as I thought it would be, but it is cute. I liked it better on her today than I did when I first tried it on her. She has the matching crochet shoes, but I can't get the darn things to stay on her feet. They're cute, but I doubt she'll get any use out of them.

More Boden today for Mr. A, but I don't have a pic of him. I kept putting it off, and when he got into the shower, I realized I never took one.

Monday, April 27th, 2009

2009-04-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

Another cranky day. I hope it'll end soon. She doesn't have a fever, so that's good. It was probably a little too cold for this dress, but oh well. It's been unseasonably cool here, and the weather forecast says it might rain this weekend. Interesting.

Anyway, this Target dress is adorable. They've got great stuff there this year. I like all the things they've been doing to try to boost the company's image.

Mr. A was in his typical Boden and Gap jeans. I really wish the rest of my Boden order would come. I think I have another month before the last three pairs of baggies come. :(

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

2009-04-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Cranky babies are a blast. Until Miss A feels better, these will be really short. Besides, I've got Mr. A's party to plan, a house to clean and two sketch maps that need to be done.

It was cold today, so I put Miss A in this sweater dress. I was afraid she wouldn't get much use out of it because it gets hot so fast. It seems to have a tiny amount of room for growth, so I'm hoping she'll be able to wear it when it cools down a little in a few months. I think it'll be cuter without the hat, but I didn't have anything else on hand.

Mr. A spent the day outside again, so I didn't get a picture of him.

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

2009-04-25T18:48:00.001-07:00

No pics of Mr. A today. He took off early this morning to play with the new boy who moved in on the next street over.

Miss A, on the other hand, is still continuing her cranky streak. And she refused to take a nap this afternoon, so you can imagine how much fun it was. I put her in this layette dress from Janie and Jack's First Spring line. It's a really pretty dress, and it's just screams layette. :)

Friday, April 24th, 2009

2009-04-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

The trauma from Miss A's shots yesterday showed today, and she was cranky, cranky, cranky.

I was trying to organize the stuff I needed to pack away, and I came across this Gymboree Prep School jumper. It's an 18-24, but it looked really small to me. I put it on her, and. . .yeah, it's small. :( I thought it would be good for fall, but I think this will be the only time she'll be able to wear it. Sad, because it's cute! The shoes are from the Holland Days line, but they match perfectly. The knee-highs were a gift from Allie. :)

Mr. A is wearing the Janie and Jack Little Rome polo. I think his time in J&J is limited, though, because he says he likes Boden better. :(

Miss A kept trying to talk to Mr. A while I was taking the pics. It was hilarious.

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

2009-04-22T23:05:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day! We celebrated this blasting hot day (it was a balmy 98 degrees today--ugh) by wearing as little as possible and drinking copious amounts of water.

Mr. A and I went to the movies to see Planet Earth. I think he was a bit confused, because we already have the DVD set. This was a condensed version, though, AND it was narrated by James Earl Jones. Can't beat that! I taught Mr. A a little about animal classes. I'm no biologist, though, so it was probably perfect for a 6-year-old boy. At least he can tell me whether something is a mammal or not. He was so proud of his new knowledge that he asked to be quizzed over and over and over. . .and over.

Miss A stayed with her great-grandma and great-grandpa while we went. I put her in the Janie and Jack Citrus Breeze ensemble. Oh my! It was so cute. I love this outfit to bits, and I'm definitely going to make sure she wears it a few times more when the weather heats back up again (it's *supposed* to go down by the weekend). She has some M2M bows, but she woke up from her nap all sweaty and with a head full of baby curls, so I decided to let her go natural.

Mr. A was in Boden. He says the kids loved his shirt and kept trying to play with it. That's the problem with Boden shirts--they're just so darn fun. His jeans are from Gap.

He was hard to get on film today.

She was kind of hard, too.

She was still easier than he was, though.

The boys were playing goodness knows what in the backyard. But it was a loud, very physical sport.

Miss A's opinion on the "sport":

I *heart* this outfit!

Bonus Pic! This was my project last night. I miss seeing the plain panels underneath, so this won't be the permanent solution. However, I think it works for the time being. At least I can have access to everything now.

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

2009-04-21T21:53:00.001-07:00

It was so hot today. I just wanted to crawl in bed with a fan blasting on me. The thought of it getting 10-15 degrees hotter makes me want to cry.

On the positive side, I figured now was the best time to squeeze Miss A into this dress one last time. It's from Gymboree's Tropical Garden line. It's a 6-12 month dress, but it ran really big, especially in the chest. She won't fit into it much longer, and it's supposed to cool down by the weekend, but I'm glad she got to wear it at least twice (she wore it once last summer, but it was way too big then).

Fun story about these pics: I was finishing up dinner, and I realized I hadn't taken pics of Miss A yet. I asked her daddy to do it for me while I set the table and got the casserole out of the oven. I have no clue what setting he had it on. Every picture came out like this:

Actually, that was a good shot. He did manage to get one really clear shot. . .of her back. Baby curls!

I need to do laundry for Mr. A. He has lots of clean shirts, but not so many clean shorts. I'm also waiting on three pairs of Boden baggies that should be shipping soon. For now, he got to wear this Summer Boden shirt and Naartjie jeans. I love this shirt! I'm so glad I got it.

Monday, April 20th, 2009

2009-04-21T21:42:00.000-07:00

We went to our grandparents' house tonight for dinner. Mr. A had a blast with his cousins, and Miss A entertained us all during dinner.

I really wanted to use these gorgeous bows our friend Amanda made for Ava, so I put her in her Janie and Jack Fiesta Flair halter dress. It's such a pretty dress!

Alex was in Boden. A lot of people didn't like these, because they said the pockets stuck out too much in the back. I guess we got a good pair, because these are way too cute! I love the colors on him, and the shirt is so sweet. :) Please ignore the goofy smile.

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

2009-04-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

Today was the start of our heat wave, and boy was it not fun. It was in the upper 80s today, and it'll be in the upper 90s within the next two days. Yikes! I'm trying to keep the kids cool by putting them in light outfits.

First up is Miss A in the J&J Time for Tea ensemble. The pics aren't working on this one. It's much cuter in person. I guess it would help if I could actually get a good picture of her, but she pretty much so runs away all the time. Either that or she tries to grab the camera. Mr. A is in the second picture. He's in his board shorts again. When he saw this picture, he started laughing and said, "It looks like I'm kicking Miss A!" He wasn't, but the picture came out kind of funny that way. He was trying to kick a ball up that was behind her.

Trapped behind the glass. . .the story of her life.

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

2009-04-18T23:23:00.001-07:00

Oh, Gap Jet Set, how do I love thee? More than you can imagine. I would buy the whole line if I wouldn't get made fun of for overkill. Miss A has the dress and headscarf in both colors. I'll put her in the other set soon, and then we can decide which color looks best. :) Gosh, those Target shoes go with everything! I'm so glad I got them in two sizes.

Mr. A didn't wear anything other than PJs and these Gymbo Global Surf board shorts. I told Mr. A's daddy today that I wished I had bought a pair in every size until he grew out of them. To which Mr. A's daddy responded, "When do you grow out of board shorts?" *Sigh*

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

2009-04-14T22:51:00.000-07:00

Boy was it cold today! Poor Mr. A went to school in shorts and a t-shirt, because today was the first day the kids could wear shorts to school, and I was a little overeager.

I didn't want to break out Miss A's winter stuff that might possibly still fit, so I used layering. I actually think it came out pretty cute! I put her in a l/s onesie, followed by the yellow Gap Sunflower dress. Underneath, she wore lace leggings by Gigi Girl. The shoes are also from the Sunflower line, and they got lots of compliments when we went shopping tonight. I like them because I can take the ankle strap off later and use them as slip ons. Genius! I put a sunflower clip in her hair initially, but she decided the outfit looked better without it.

Poor Mr. A had a day. . .like I said, I got a little eager to put him in shorts, so the poor thing probably froze most of the day. He didn't complain, though. Both the shorts and shirt are from Gymboree. I thought the shorts would go great with a lot of his summer things. Baby blue is a hot color for boys this year, and so is brown. There are at least three Boden shirts he can easily wear with these, which means we'll get a lot more use out of them.

I like the shirt, but I think the original SKUs, which had "Board?" written underneath the figure were much better. The "Board?" was just ironic and great. But they omitted it on the final product. Oh, and if anyone cares, the windbreaker is from Gap. It's got an awesome hood that rolls up in the back, and it's uber lightweight.

Monday, April 13th, 2009

2009-04-13T20:53:00.001-07:00

Darn it! I just realized Mr. A is in the shower, and I didn't get a picture of him. :( I need to start catching him before he leaves the house. I'll post a picture from a few days ago. It's the same outfit.

Mr. A and Miss A's daddy surprised us all by taking a half day today. So we did. . .nothing. I'm not sure why he took a half day. I was supposed to go to a meeting today, and I thought the kids were going to go with me, so I made sure they were scrubbed up and put together.

Here is a quick pic of Miss A, who was comfortable in an ensemble from Janie and Jack's Vibrant Garden line. Her M2M bows are from our wonderful friend Amanda.

Mr. A was in Janie and Jack's Little Rome line. He really liked this line, so I bought lots of it for him. Hey, at this age, if they're into something, why not make it easier on yourself, right?

Here's a bonus pic of Miss A right before bed. You're probably thinking this is an odd choice for a girl. Maybe. It's one of Mr. A's old sleepers. The reason I posted it is because it's such a lovely piece, and it's Miss A's last night in it. :( It's from the French brand Clayeux, and it was worth every penny. It's soft and perfect--just right for sleeping in!

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

2009-04-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

Pic overload! Happy Easter!

We started the day by going out to breakfast with our family, followed by an egg hunt at our aunt's house. Miss A's Easter dress was from Jottum. I bought this before I even had her, because I so badly wanted her to have a Jottum dress. It worked out really well. I couldn't find the matching jacket, so I paired it with a soft pink trench coat from Janie and Jack's World's Fair line. Mr. A didn't care too much about what he wore, but he did ask for a green shirt. Thankfully, Gymboree had a checkered shirt and pink tie that matched the colors in Miss A's dress perfectly. The green shirt will also do double duty, because it matches Miss A's J&J Fresh Daisies dress.

After we got home and Miss A had a nap, we headed to the park. Miss A was decked out in an ensemble from Janie and Jack's A Dozen Roses line, and Mr. A changed into a shirt from the J&J Little Rome line.

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

2009-04-13T13:35:00.001-07:00

Today was the real start of our Easter fun. We went to our aunt's house to make cupcakes and color eggs. The kids had a blast! They love hanging out with their cousins. Mr. A was especially excited to go. Then, just like a boy, he hung out by himself most of the time pretending to fight bad guys and do other strange boy things. :)

Miss A wore piggies again today! We got bows from our wonderful friend, Amanda, and they were so cute, I just had to try them out. I love made to match bows! I put Miss A in a wrap dress from Janie and Jack's Set the Table line. The bows really do help make the outfit. Thankfully, Amanda matched the colors perfectly, so these bows will go with all four of the dresses Miss A has from the Set the Table line.

I let Mr. A wear a new spring outfit today. Both the top and the baggies, which you can't see in these pics, are from the Boden spring line. These pictures were from right before the egg dye decided to jump off the table and attack Mr. A, knocking him down to the floor in the process. In other words, Mr. A slipped and fell, taking a lot of dye with him and getting it all over his hair, face and clothes. A shower took care of the body paint, and soaking and scrubbing saved the clothes.

Friday, April 10th, 2008

2009-04-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

Today was yet another day that I didn't get a picture of Mr. A. He's just too fast for me! I also didn't get a very good pic of Miss A, but that's ok, because I'm sure there will be plenty of fun to come this weekend.

It rained today, but it wasn't cold. Miss A and I ran a few errands, so she needed a hat, but she was ok in short sleeves. I put her in this adorable set from Janie and Jack's Seashell Cove line. This is kind of sad to admit, but I bought the hat last year on sale, so I had to buy the outfit to match the hat. That's certainly one way of going about it!

Thursday, April 9, 2009

2009-04-10T01:45:00.000-07:00

It was supposed to rain today, but it didn't. I didn't know what to put Miss A in, but I wanted her to wear pants. I think I need to get a few more pairs of capris. But then again, they'll really only be useful for another month before the firepits of hell open up an engulf this wonderful city in 150-degree weather.

Anyway, I decided to put her in a plain onesie (which was delightfully on backwards), and a sweater vest and capris from Janie and Jack's Vibrant Garden line. This is the most awesome sweater vest ever, and it was really overlooked last year. Too bad--it's gorgeous, and it's so incredibly soft. Moving on. . .I put her gold sandals on, and she looked so cute! Except her hair was a horrible mess, and I figured I needed to do SOMETHING with it, so I put it in piggies. But I didn't like the rubber bands showing. Then, I remembered I bought these clips from Gymboree to match some of her Fresh Daisies stuff. They also match they Vibrant Garden greens! They're too cute!

Closeup of the flower clip--best $6 purchase ever! Please excuse the messy hair. She pulled the piggies and clips out at least three times, so I had to redo them quickly. She's not yet a fan of the whole hair thing.

Mr. A wore Boden and Gap. . .that's going to be like a broken record over the next few weeks. Well, maybe not since I didn't stock up on Gap jeans like I had intended to do. Oh! His summer Boden stuff already came! My goodness! That was fast. We only ordered a few days ago. It's all really cute, and I'm so glad I got it. :) My neighbors are going to be beyond irritated by the baggies because they thing they're weird.

I'm so off the subject. Here's the Gap/Boden combo. . .I don't love the Dino tee, but Alex does, and that's all that matters.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

2009-04-09T16:40:00.001-07:00

Wow! I almost typed "June." At least you know where my mind is.

Today was a nice day. We were really busy. We went to visit our grandparents. :) And we had McDonald's for lunch, which really messed with my faux diet. It's only a diet in the sense that I'm counting calories. And it's working! Hooray. Maybe I'll actually be able to get into all those clothes hanging in MY closet.

No J&J from Miss A today. I put her in a dress from Gap's Safari 2008 line. I like some of Gap's stuff this year, but I really prefer last year's lines. This dress is gorgeous! Miss A's great-grandma really liked it a lot. :) Too bad these were taken AFTER daddy let her eat dinner without a bib. The horror!

Mr. A wore J&J, though. He was in Forever Friends. I'm glad I got stuff from this line. At first, I sort of dismissed it as too young, but it's so cute on him! Poor Mr. A--I take so many pictures of him, but he has that horrible goofy smile in most of them, so they're not really that cute. We're trying to work on the smile thing with him. I love his natural smile. His fake one is. . .well. . .interesting.

Tuesday, April 7, 2008

2009-04-09T16:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry. . .I'm slacking. I know. On the bright side, I think two people are now reading this! LOL There will occasionally be three if I send the link to my grandma. So sad. But seriously, I'm doing it for the fun of it for Miss A and Mr. A.

Oookay. . .no pics of Mr. A again, because he's sneaky and changed into his PJs before I could snap a pic of him. Miss A was also not cooperative, so all you get is one semi-bad picture of one of the best Janie and Jack lines ever: Set the Table. I promise the reign of headscarf terror will end tomorrow. But this dress is one of my favorites EVER. It is sooo cute!

Monday, April 6, 2009

2009-04-06T22:11:00.000-07:00

No pics of Mr. A today. He did get dressed, but he promptly got undressed by 1PM in favor of spending the rest of the day in swim trunks. I literally did not see him all afternoon. By 5:30, I was starting to wonder if he was still alive. He was. . .and he was sunburned a little.

Miss A and I got so much done today! We had fun. I put her in this Gap Mediterranean dress and a headscarf I had made to match it. There is nothing cuter than little girls in headscarves. Seriously. Nothing beats a headscarf. They are my favorite accessory.

She wasn't sad when I was taking this picture--she was being naughty.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

2009-04-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay--I know the one person reading this was waiting impatiently. :P

We went to the park yesterday--it was a blast! Mr. A and Miss A fed the ducks (Miss A for the first time) and had their pictures taken in the Japanese gardens. The weather was perfect. We brought lunch with us, and both the kids did really well, except Miss A kept trying to eat pine cones, crawl off the blanket and cover her apples in dirt.

I put Miss A in her Janie and Jack A Perfect Picnic dress and matching headscarf. Ohmygoodness! This outfit is adorable. I love it!

Mr. A wore J&J's Dinosaur Days. He looks handsome in green. :)