Weekend

Jack woke up extremely cranky from his nap yesterday, screaming for Jim. He was just sobbing "Mama Jim, mama Jim, mama Jim!!!"  I think he needed some special bonding time with his mama Jim...

Yesterday we were all set to travel to DC as a family for the weekend.  No bags had been packed, no laundry folded, no dishes done, and the 3:00PM departure time was looming over me.  As my exhaustion from the week caught up with me I thought about the nightmare it would be to clean, pack, and cram my family into my 1998 civic with 201,000 miles on it and drive the 3-4 hours to my mom's house.  Then I had a brilliant idea.  Why don't I go by myself to my mom's house and leave all the cleaning and childcare to Jim?  Then I could have a lovely time for sleeping and watching conference, all by myself, AND more importantly Jack could spend some quality time with his mama Jim.

I called Jim at work with my great idea and he said "Uh....okay?"

"Great! It's been decided then."  So I packed my own bag with my stuff only and went on my way.  I didn't pack a single sippy cup, diaper, car, doll, car seat, pack n play, stroller, or small article of clothing.

Several people seemed alarmed at this decision and thought something was seriously wrong or that I was really angry. None of that was true. I was just so tired and thought it sounded lovely to have a weekend with my mom, and to sleep, a lot.  I don't think I have done that since I married Jim in 2003.

I will admit that the car ride down was rather boring and a bit odd.  I still drive the same car I did in college and I still have the same CD's I had in college, so for a second I felt like I was a 21 year old driving home from Penn State.  Luckily I had a toy car in my purse to remind me that my real life was lovely and consisted of 2 beautiful children and 1 lovely husband.  I put on NPR just to drive home the fact that I am 32.

The children are having a wonderful time with mama Jim. Jim let them play outside, jumping on the trampoline until bedtime last night, and this morning he took them to McDonald's for breakfast.  Then they were off for an adventure with his mother and grandmother.  See what a fun weekend I provided for my children?? Jim is way more fun than I am, it's good to leave them in his care sometimes.

I have a lovely husband who agreed to a spontaneous, completely self absorbed, weekend to myself.

Jack's new puppy.

Lilly found a puppy at the cracker barrel. It is super annoying and barks non-stop, because SOMEBODY (not me) put batteries in the puppy.

Jack loves this puppy.

Hunter's

Lilly went with some friends to see the Harlem Globetrotter's tonight.   Jack was SO sad he couldn't go.  He had no idea where the kids were going, he just knew he was being left behind. To make matters worse  a 4 year old borrowed his sweatshirt.  That set Jack over the edge. Not only did he not get to go out in his own sweatshirt, another child took his sweatshirt to go have fun without him.  He just sobbed, and threw things, and screamed "Bye Lilly! Bye Lilly!" It was a pretty pitiful show. Huge tears streamed down his face and he sobbed and begged to go with the big kids.

I guess he is old enough to know when he is being left out. So of course we had to take him for ice cream, which pretty much cheered him up.  Jim and Jack and I tend to do fun things when Lilly is having fun on her own.  It makes us feel less lonely for Lilly.

Hunter's is the dairy freeze in town that opens in March and closes early fall.  The kids love it and the ice cream is pretty good.

Jack dumped his ice cream all over Jim's nice dress shirt.  Jim didn't care at all and just asked where the napkins were so we could clean Jack's face.  Someone else might have had a complete fit (me), but Jim has always been the mature one when it comes to fits...in that he never throws them.

Hunter's has playground equipment and a tether ball.  Jim loves to play tether ball because he is naturally athletic and can hit the ball way over my head and I never have a chance of actually making contact with the ball.  That's okay, I would rather have a husband who can destroy me in tether ball than not.  That's exactly why I married him, because he doesn't throw fits and he can beat me in tether ball.

This is the picture Jim took of me when he thought I didn't know he was taking a picture of me, but I did know. That's my "I know you're taking a picture of me" face.  One might think I should smile for that face, but I just do what comes naturally.

Lilly is still afraid of Hunter's.  Last fall before they shut down Jim took her there for a daddy/daughter date and she knocked her teeth off the see-saw and then consequently lost all three of those teeth.  She then told everyone she spoke to that her Daddy knocked her teeth out.  I think she is ready to go there for ice cream, but no fun or playing.

This is what happens to children who come and don't buy ice cream.

Just kidding, it's their decoration.  Although, that was my first thought.

Jack had a great time and forgot all about being left behind!

May in March

We have had glorious May weather in our central Pennsylvania March, but it was back to reality this morning.  I pulled out the winter coats and heard rumors of the temperature dropping into the 20's tonight.  Oh well. We enjoyed it while it was here.

My favorite editing website is going down in April so I realized I had to make the move to a real photo editing software.  I bought lightroom by adobe, because my sister told me to.  It is very confusing and not as dummy-friendly as picnik is.  So all these photos are experimenting with lightroom editing. I was going to show you before and after, but then I fear you will judge my editing and I will be sad.

I wonder what grown-up Lilly will think of the hundreds upon thousands of pictures of her making a peace sign. I love that the peace sign seems to transcend generations.

Date

I had a lunch date with Jim and Jack on Friday.  It was pretty fun and delicious.

Jack brought his mini-mimi-cup, aka Lilly's American Girl doll cup.

He refers to his sippy cup as "mimi-cup," you might spell it as "me-me cup."  He now refers to all drinking vessels as "mimi-cup." (I spell it mimi because I really liked the character "Mimi" from the musical Rent, and I took Italian in college and one of their main pronouns is mi, I think.)

The server told us that the soup of the day was a butternut squash, cabbage soup.  He told us that even though it sounded disgusting and he personally disliked butternut squash OR cabbage, the soup somehow tasted amazing.

I can't tell you how much I doubted his statement, so I ordered the soup just to prove him wrong.  However, I was wrong.  This was some of the most amazing soup I have EVER had. I also dislike butternut squash and cabbage and I started to doubt that those two ingredients were even in the soup.

I challenged the server and begged for a recipe.  He asked the chef and the chef refused, he wouldn't even tell me the ingredients.  The chef comes into the restaurant at 11PM and makes soup until 3AM in secret so no one knows what goes into them.

I called the next day to order more soup and it was gone, no more soup.  The magic chef cooks on whims and doesn't write down recipes.  Now I will spend the rest of my life in search of a butternut squash cabbage soup that tastes amazing.

Bedtime for Jack

Jack was dressed by three different members of our family tonight after bath time.

Then he escaped outside.

Warning: Hippy-natural blog post

I decided on Saturday that I was going to eat "real food." Actually I started thinking about it a few weeks ago, and a few years ago (before Jack) I did eat that way.  I have slowly been moving back to a less processed diet. However, even I am annoyed at my new hippy ways.  I really dislike people who preach about their healthy lifestyle being better than my sugar recipes.

I spent ALL day Saturday cooking, baking, juicing, and making a HUGE mess. Jim helped tackle the project and the mess.  We ran the dishwasher 3 times on Saturday, it needed a 4th go around, but we were too exhausted to empty any more dishes. Sweet Lilly took pictures to document my mess (the rest were deleted).

The kitchen finally arrived at clean status Monday morning.  A lot of the food I made ended up in the trash because it was disgusting.

Last week I made whole wheat pancakes, crackers, and whole wheat tortillas, all a HUGE success.  Even Jack ate them all.  I will continue to make those regularly, only because there were delicious, not because they are super healthy.  If you are like me and despise whole wheat and crave delicious nutritionally void white flour, I found that a white 100% whole wheat flour exists.

Anyway, that is my new focus now, I am pretty annoyed with myself and my hippy ways. Here are some cute pictures of Jack on the trampoline to soften the hippy ways. (Clothes from the gap washed in Tide detergent which has lots of chemicals. See, I am really not a whole lot of hippy.)

The Philadelphia Flower Show, 2012

The Philadelphia Flower Show.  Where do I begin?
The annual Philadelphia Flower Show usually falls on the week of my birthday, it is 2-3 hours away from our house, and it is insanely over priced for a flower show.  As a result we have never gone.  However, the stars aligned for Jim this year and we were all able to attend the big event.

(As I was taking this picture, a lady rushed up to me and said "You do NOT want your picture in front of that sign! Don't you know what it means??"  I assured her that I did know what it meant and that is what made the picture, and consequently me, so funny.)

You may or may not know that Jim is a pretty serious gardener.  He thinks about his garden year round, composts year round, and spends hours and hours in his garden.  I can't tell you how much I admire his desire to garden and how much I enjoy reaping the benefits.  It is quite similar to the little red hen, I am never willing to help with any of the steps of gardening other than eating the final product and nagging about the hose being left out.  Jim has a lot more sympathy and compassion than the red hen and lets me eat his produce.


I digress...


This year Jim was going to attend the show with his mother, who is also an avid gardener, and they were going to have a lovely mother/son outing.  However, the morning of the show I was feeling spontaneous and decided that I would come along, with the children, and we would all have a wonderful day looking at flowers together.

(Lilly was as overwhelmed as I was by the insanity of it all.  Jim's mom is on the left, not the angry lady to the right who was bitter that I was blocking the bonsai tree that was 30 years old.)


Here is a quote that aptly described the flower show from the Huffington Post:  "Remember that intense episode during Downton Abbey Season One when Lady Violet and Cousin Isobel faced off at the local flower show? Well this is like that on steroids...The nation's largest and oldest indoor flower show (dating from 1829) is a huge extravaganza for the horticulture community, annually attracting over 250,000 visitors to the Pennsylvania Convention Center. It's like the Westminster Dog Show meets the Tournament of Roses Parade crossed with a huge trade show and shopping spree for flower people."

Each year there is a theme, and this year the theme was Hawaii.

(This was to simulate walking under water with hundreds of real orchids above you.)

(Main exhibit, this is about as close as I got.)

The flower show sells tickets as general admission, so they don't control the number of people that come in a day.  To say the place was crowded would be an understatement.  We were never actually able to get close enough to the main Hawaiian exhibits. 

I could never actually get a picture without a stranger stepping into the show.  It was so crowded that when Jack was having a fit he leaned out of his stroller and slapped a man on the leg out of anger.  When Jack is angry he looks for things to hit, that man was the closest thing to hit.

I took the children down a long hall away from the crowds, and we spent a few hours there throughout the day to get a break from the flower crowds. Lilly and I decided to call the small space our apartment, and when asked what was her favorite part of the day, she responded "our apartment."  See, I am a fun mom!

Poor Jim. He is a dedicated gardener and I have a feeling I put quite the damper on his day.  I did not complain out loud...too much, and the children and I kept happy faces despite the crowds.  I promise to let Jim go alone next year, and have a fantastic day all to himself.

32

Last week was my 32nd birthday. It is ridiculous that I am 32.  I still feel like I am 27, maybe 26. I am in complete denial that I am 32, have two children, one in school, and that I just had my hair colored to hide some of the gray.

I realized that time marches on, which is much better than the alternative.

I always make high demands around my birthday and Jim is always great at fulfilling them.  He made me a delicious breakfast and had presents waiting, with one hidden in the piano.

We went out to dinner at a hibachi grill with the children.  They were terrified of the fire, they spent the entire meal in one of our laps.

 I was horrified at the inappropriate comments from the "chef."  Let's just say that a hibachi grill at night in a college town is not an appropriate venue for children.  Too much liquor and innuendo for my taste.

My neighbor baked me a Texas sheet cake for my birthday. It was so sweet of her, and equally delicious!

For whatever reason, when I went to blow out my candles, I didn't take enough air and I only blew out one. Everyone was ashamed and Lilly had to help blow out the rest.

I hope the birthdays keep coming for a long time, and I hope that I will look back on this post and think about how ridiculous it was that I thought 32 was old.

Visit

My mom came to visit last weekend and watched the children while Jim and I ran our race.  We had a great time.  We ate lots of food and my mom bought beautiful clothes for my children.

You can see Jack sporting the medals we received after our race.  He wore them all day, both of them.  We all love when my mom comes to visit!!  We watched movies, ate treats, shopped, and just had a great time.

Humdinger.

I am a tad behind on my blogging, it takes so much more time to upload my pictures and edit them now that I have a decent camera.  The files are huge!  What used to take a short amount of time now takes me hours and hours.

I will update working backwards.

We told Lilly it was time for Family Home Evening.  This is how the conversation went:

Lilly:  Oh! Can we play a game??
Jim: Yeah, the game is called clean up the entire house.
Lilly: Mom, really?
Me: Umm.....does that sound like a fun game for you?
Lilly: Yes!
Me: Then yes! That is our game tonight.
Lilly: Okay! We can clean every room as a team, we all work together in each room until it's clean.

How sweet!  It didn't exactly work out like that, but I sure did appreciate her enthusiasm to clean AND work as a team.

On Saturday I ran the half Humdinger race here in Danville.  This is the first year that they offered a half-dinger, which was 4.2 miles as opposed to the 7.1 miles through the mud and mountains.  I was pretty annoyed that they called it a half, when it was NOT a half. A half would have been 3.55 miles, I really would like more credit than "half."  Jim was hard core and ran the entire race for the third year in a row. He would not be shamed by competing in a half-dinger.

The race started out running through uneven corn fields. It's as painful as it sounds. (Photo from race site, I have permission to use it.)

The race was horrible as expected.  People kept losing shoes in the mud, the terrain was uneven and physically painful to run on, lots of obstacles, creeks to cross, logs to balance on, and a pig barn to scale. Some people find this "fun" I find it horrible.  Yet it is my second year competing.

You start running through this cornfield and work your way up into the hill you see in the background.

Not very many people raced in the half-dinger, only 25 women of the 450 racers ran the half-dinger.  I came in with the top runners who ran 7.1 miles, it was so much fun to have a crowd and be cheered on!  At the end  of the race you have to scale a pig barn then jump out the window and slide into the finish line.

I chose the easiest way to scale the pig barn by climbing the hay stacks.  Although you have to scale three cement walls to get to the hay stacks.  They really discourage wimps in this race.  The options were a rock climbing wall, a rope, a rope ladder, and hay stacks.

Yes, I paused to smile for the camera because I was so thrilled that there was a camera to witness me finishing!

This race is not for amateur runners, which I am.  The slowest runners pace 10 minute miles or less in this race. Last year the only reason I didn't come in dead last was because the two women ahead of me got lost in the woods so I crossed the finish line right before them.  To say it was humiliating would be an understatement.  When I crossed the finish line they were already taking down the race, there was no food left, and my husband and friend had circled back to find me.  I am sure they thought I was lying dead in the woods.  Suffice it to say I was overjoyed to finish the race when people were still around to cheer me into the finish line and to eat the food provided!

My friends keep talking about how they want to finish the full race next year.  From the girl who was always picked last in gym class, I LOVED finishing at a decent time.  Even though everyone figured out very quickly that I was a half finisher, I couldn't care less! It was a great few minutes!

My little piano student was there with her mom and they didn't know I was running, she was so excited to see me.  Although today during lessons she did ask me if I had run the half, when I told her I had she said "Oh, that's why you finished so fast."  See, I fooled nobody, but I did get a really good meatball sandwich!

I am totally a poser pretending to be a top finisher, but it was great! So now that I have no more dignity and have sold myself out for a few minutes of fake glory, it's back to training for me.