It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

School Is About to Start

My kids have been milking every last minute of summer. They have been staying up so late, and enjoying no restrictions on tv and wii. That all comes to a stop on Monday morning. We got a little glimpse of school on Friday. Bright and early, we were at the middle school for 6th grade orientation. Nicolaas looked so grown up and completely ready for it all. He was not overwhelmed at all. I guess it is part of his personality, but it takes a lot to rile him. He pretty much goes with the flow. He is not worried about the lockers, or the switching classes or the hordes of people. He is going to one of the largest middle school in our county. There are over 750 kids going there this year. We will have a child in every grade there also, with Kelsie in 7th and Kerrie in 8th. Should be a fun year for them. Then in the afternoon Nathan and I went to his school to meet his teacher. When we saw the lists for 4th grade, his name was not on it. They had forgotten to put him in a class. So, After a little visit with the powers that be, he has a teacher. It was kind of sad, because he did not have a desk with his name on it. Oh well, it will all be fixed by Monday.

I have mixed feelings about the start of school. I enjoy summer because of the free time. There is no set schedule for things, and I like that. I like sleeping in, and not worrying about lunches. I am going to miss the freedom from homework. I am going to miss my kids during the day. I am going to miss my free Saturdays as well. Maryland Youth Symphony will start consuming my Saturdays in a few weeks. On the flip side, it will be nice to not have a million dishes to wash during the day. It will also be nice to have things stay clean for a few hours. It will be good to have the kids back learning and associating with friends.

Goodbye to the lovely summer of 2009 and hello to the new 2009-2010 school year.

A Death In The Family

I must take a moment to pause and mourn the death of a beloved family member. His name is "Mr. Hattie." Mr. Hattie has been a part of our family and memories for seven years. He has accompanied us on many history making events. If you look through our family photos, he is in every casual photo I have. He is the special friend and companion of my darling daughter Amanda. Rarely has he left her head. Only on Sunday's and at school. Mr. Hattie even slept on her head at night. He rode the bus in her backpack and was returned to his proper place as soon as possible. He had even become Amanda's identifying feature. Many kids she has babysat have asked their parents to have the girl with the blue hat babysit again. Mr. Hattie has finally disintegrated into ribbons of fabric. It has left a pall of sadness at this time. Mr. Hattie even endured into his utter illness to please Amanda. Finally, his time had come, and he has been put in a place of honor in Amanda's bedroom.

For the good news, let me introduce you to "Mr. Hattie Junior." That's right, we have a replacement. Junior is blue as well, but more of a denim color. He is now the constant companion of Amanda, and she has happily accepted him as a replacement. I am sure he will be with us for many years to come. We look forward to the many photos of him covering Amanda's hair, and eyes in family photos.

Side Effects

Modern medicine is amazing. It can do so many wonderful things, all the way from life saving, to life enhancing. It is the life enhancing one that is making things a little tricky at our house. With all the amazing things drugs can do, they come with their price. One of my daughters (I will not say who, for fear of my life) is taking acutane to be forever rid of acne. She has been on topical creams for months, which have improved the situation, but not to the satisfaction of the dermatologist. He suggested this nifty little pill, that she has to take once a day, and in six months time, poof, the acne will be gone. She has been on this medication for a little over one month. We are already seeing a difference on her face. More than that, we are seeing a difference in her mood. I am finally experiencing a real live teenager, with real live teenage attitude. It has given me a new perspective on what all the other moms go through. Wow, is it not fun. It is equally not fun for her. She does not like feeling the way she is feeling. I just keep telling her and myself, that in five months, she will go back to her normal happy self. I also keep reminding her that it is her medicine making her feel this way, and as long as she can recognize that, it will help her deal with it.

Even though she is struggling with this, I just cannot change who I am. I try to tease her out of her moods. I am getting a lot of eye rolls, and frustration from her. When we went in for her one month check up, the doc asked about any side effects. When I told him about her grumpy mood, he said, "now she has a teenage attitude to match her teenage acne." Man I laughed, but my daughter was not amused. Part of this whole process is a blood test every month as well. When the doc asked if he could take her blood, she said no, and he just stuck her, which made me laugh too. As you can imagine, I got the death stare. It will be worth it when this is over, and she will be happy with the results, and some day we will laugh together about this whole thing. For now, James and I will just laugh.

A Weird Mom

I find humor in very silly things. I love to do random things that have my kids looking at me like I have lost my mind. If they really knew the truth, they would know that these very random things keep me from losing my mind. Here are a few examples of my random behavior. Sometimes I will decide that I am only going to sing conversations. This particular one drives the kids crazy because if they want to talk to me, they have to sing the conversation. I pretend that I can not hear anything that is not sung to me. Other times I decide that no one is allowed to speak over a whisper. Today, I came up with a new one that got very funny responses from my kids. I just started yelling at them for no reason. They kept looking at me to see if I was serious, but the smile on my face was an absolute contradiction to the yelling. They actually started laughing with this one. The looks on their faces were pretty funny. I figure I can handle the stresses of everyday life one of two ways. I can cry a lot or laugh. I choose to laugh most days.

School Preparations

Caution: I am not in a good mood, so read at your own risk.

A few weeks ago I was in Target, and decided to take a look through the school supplies. There was a bunch of stuff on sale, so I bought what I thought would be on the school supply list. Yesterday, we got down to business with organizing school supplies. It is always a huge undertaking. I pulled out my label maker, and started organizing. Of course this can never happen without every child in the house "helping." It ended with me telling everyone to stop touching things and wait their turn. Then came the whining about when their turn would come, and inevitably the comment of "I'm last, that's not fair. Why am I always last?" This had an added element of fun when Nathan discovered that his 3 ring binder is not on the list of supplies. He was so mad, because he wants to use his cool new binder. I told him he could use it next year, but that was not comforting to him and he continued to complain. I'd finally had it, and told him it was not my fault his teacher did not have a binder on his list, and if he wanted to complain about it, he needed to talk to his teacher and not me. Then we discovered that Kerrie was not going to be using one big 3 ring binder (which I have already purchased), but she would need 7 one inch binders. What? Are you kidding me? What a pain for her to have to worry about 7 binders. I just want to know who's bright idea this was. She does not even have 7 classes. Where is the extra one going for? Can you tell this whole school supply thing puts me in a bad mood? After getting through everyone, we of course discovered there were many things I still need to buy. More paper, folders, marble notebooks, 5 subject notebooks, highlighters, rulers, protractors, compasses (which I refuse to buy three of, so until their actual teacher tells me they need it, I am not buying even one) red pens, more pencils (who would have thought that 50 pencils was not going to be enough), and get this, Nathan has to have two wide ruled notebooks with pockets (which I can guarantee will not be in the $.60 for four bin). I have only gotten basics for my high school kids because we do not actually get their list until the first day of school. So, I am sure I will be heading out more than once to the store to buy more stuff. Enough of this rant. I get in a grumpy mood every year around this time. I will get over it, and my kids will go merrily off to school with all their supplies, and I will forget about all of this until next August.

George Washington Rabbit

My nephew Mike has started a project to record stories of my mom and dad. He took video of one of my favorite childhood stories.



Here is another video of my dad telling a story from his youth.

Long Time Coming

Today was a long time coming, but well worth it. Maybe this picture will give you a clue.

Can you read what it says? It says "removal" That's right folks, Ashley had her braces removed today, and she looks so good. Here are her last moments with braces.



Then came this:


Ashley was real happy that I had my camera documenting all of this, especially the last picture of her getting the mold.

Finally they were off. She was so funny because before the doc polished her teeth, they had her brush them. When she got back I asked her what she thought, and she told me she did not want to look until her teeth were polished. What can I say, I love this girl. She sure paid with six years of treatment. We are both glad to see it end with a beautiful perfect smile. Enjoy the fun after pictures.



Do you see the water bottle in that last picture? When she opened it in the car, it was full of all the sticky and chewy candy she could not eat for the last six years. Wasn't that a pretty cool thing for the orthodontist to do for her? She was very happy to eat the junk on her way home.

Not Too Shabby

Yesterday was a pretty jam packed day. My day started with a facial, which I could fast get used to. Until yesterday, I had never had one. Wow, was that great. If you have never had a facial, try it, you'll like it.

Next stop was the grocery store. We were out of milk, and I needed some other things, so off I went.

Then I took care of addressing all the invitations for my very first tupperware party. I am more than a little nervous, but hopefully I will be able to pull it off. Luckily for me it will be among friends. After a stop at the post office to mail the invitations, I went with James to the University that he has been teaching at for several years. I had not been on campus before, and he showed me around the math building, his office and classroom.

On Sunday I volunteered to make dinner for a friend and her family. She has been having health issues, and I haven't seen her for a while and I thought it would be fun to see her. They have several allergies, so it was a challenge to find something they could all eat. It was actually really fun, because I got to experiment with food and I enjoy doing that. I also really wanted to make some bread. My family was really happy, because they got some yummy food too. As I was making the bread, I was kind of in a hurry. As I was kneading the bread, it just felt a little off. I put the dough in the pans, then turned around and saw I had forgotten to put in the yeast mixture. Urgh! Nathan thought it was really cool that I just handed over all this bread dough and I did not tell him once not to poke it. He played with the dough for hours. Anyway, I started all over again, and did it right the second time. Another fun part of this, is the upcoming sales specials in tupperware, are products you use in the microwave. I made veggie stew in the microwave. I also made a cake in the microwave. Both turned out so good. There was even a container big enough to make stew for my entire family. Sweet! It was also fun because after being without for 7 months, I now have a microwave. I do not know how I lived without it.

It was a very full day, but one where I accomplished everything I set out to do. That is pretty rare for me.

Honey Bees

While we were sitting around the table at dinner tonight, James asked the kids about their classes at church today. When he got to Kerrie, she started to make a comment about me, and Nicolaas interrupted and said, "oh thats right, mom taught the honey bees." We laughed and laughed. So apparently I am the leader over the honey bees. I guess it is close to the beehives. I will think of my girls as the honey bees from now on.

New Website & Camping Birthday

Okay, so I have not blogged a lot lately, because life has been a little crazy. I have also been working to get my tupperware business up and running, so please excuse the shameless plug. My new website is up and running, so come check it out. http://my2.tupperware.com/Janngartside.

A lot has been happening with my family. We went on a camping trip for Nicolaas' birthday. He loved it, the other kids loved and James loved it. Notice who is missing from the list? Well it wasn't completely horrible, and it did have its fun moments. We went to Point Lookout. We picked this spot because it was the only place that had the dates available, could hold eight people, allowed pets and had electricity at the site. We are difficult campers to please. We did not want to leave the dog behind. We have to have electricity because of James' CPAP machine. Breathing is more than a luxury. The added benefit of that is we can plug other stuff in, like a Forman's grill. Really funny about that is the fact that it totally slipped my mind that this was a possibility. The day before we left I was telling Corinne all about my cooking plans, and she said why don't you just bring appliances you can plug in so you don't have to cook over a fire. Duh! I felt really dumb after that, but also grateful for my smart friend who pointed out what I was to embroiled in preparations to see. Nicolaas decided he wanted hamburgers and hotdogs for his birthday dinner, and that was easy to do. It took us about three hours to get to the camp site, and the dog did not even have any trouble with the traveling which was a good start. We set up the tents and got down to the business of cooking foil dinners (my favorite).

Another benefit to the electricity was the electric fan that blew on me all night. That made the heat a little more tolerable. We also discovered that our dog LOVES to camp. He was so well behaved it was unbelievable. I was worried about this, but he did great.




The next day, we packed up and went to the beach. They had a special beach for people with pets, that we pretty much had to ourselves. We learned that Bongo LOVES to swim. This was his first shot at it, and he did great. What was sweet was he wanted to be with me and no one else in the water. He would spend a little time with the others, then it was back to me. He is usually not this way, and wants to be with Amanda and Ashley all the time. I guess he knew who he could trust in the water. I left my camera in the van, and we had quite a hike to the beach, so it is lame but I do not have any pictures. That night we celebrated Nic's birthday. I forgot his cake, so he had to make due with s'mores as his birthday cake. He did not seem to mind, and it meant more cake when we got home. I got seriously sunburned at the beach, so the last night there was miserable for me. I am pretty sure I vowed never to voluntarily go camping again. James just told the kids that they had a year to wear me down. I don't know. It is a lot of work for a few days of vacation, and I don't like being dirty, using community bathrooms and showers, and sweating at night. I did like watching my kids have a blast and enjoy spending time with each other. By the way, James and Nicolaas brought home a little gift of poison ivy. Here are a few pictures of Nic's party. The first picture is James' idea of appropriate wrapping paper for camping. It was easy, so I did not complain, and he was in charge of that and it was good enough for me.