You're It!

Here's what I get for being away from the computer for 2 days... 2 surveys to fill out!

Tag! I'm it....and If you're reading this, YOU'RE IT!!

Two names you go by:
1. Mom
2. Bear

Two things you are wearing right now:
1. slippers
2. pink zip up hoodie/cardigan

Two of your favorite things to do:
1. read
2. garden

Two things you want very badly at the moment:
1. Mr 18 and Hubby to be home safe
2. to weigh 25 pounds less

Two favorite pets you have had or have now?
1. Nuzzle
2. Decker

Two people who will fill this out:
1. Ronica
2. I don't have a clue... Jenn B?

Two things you ate last night:
1. water (didn't eat anything after dinner really)
2. peanuts

Two things you ate today:
1. apple
2. yogurt

Two people you last talked to:
1. Hubby
2. Miss 9

Two things you're doing tomorrow:
1. go to mass
2. laundry

Two favorite holidays:
1. Christmas
2. Easter

Two favorite vacations:
1. Kavanaugh's Resort ~ every year except the year Miss 9 was born for about 10 years! Wonderful place to take kids, and very relaxing. I want to go back!
2. California~ twice

Two Favorite Drinks:
1. diet Cherry or Lime Coke
2. bacardi/diet caffeine free coke

Birthday:
September 17

Now copy, paste and blog it. I look forward to it!

Are you saying I'm weird?

I've been tagged by La Rêveuse

I'm not really that weird (HA!! Most family members will disagree here.) so it will take some doing to answer these, but I'll do my best!

Seven Weird Things About Me.


1. Before I can do the laundry the hangers must be lined up by size and type.

2. For the most part I don't like listening to women sing. Rarely does a woman have a voice that I would buy a cd for.

3. I can eat peanut butter for every meal, and I don't get sick of it.

4. I hate when people can't spell. It drives me crazy, and that's pretty sad because Miss 9 has a Written Expression learning disability, and she has a terrible time with spelling. Mostly it's adults though, students I can tolerate fine.

5. I actually really enjoy Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with Donny Osmond in it. In fact Miss 9 and I just finished watching it~ again.

6. I have a terrible time sitting still for an entire movie. I can sit and read a book for hours, but make me watch a movie and I'll be up a dozen times.

7. I can "gleek" from under my tongue at will and hit someone nearly 5 feet away. (what a pretty picture, huh? Thanks for remembering this talent of mine, Mrs. B)

I'm supposed to tag seven people, but I can't think of 7 people who read here... so I'll go with D AND N8 at Mia and You-a Travelin'.
And Jen at Allen Fieldhouse.
Your it guyz! (Those misspellings and grammatical errors were just for you La Rêveuse.

Spring Break(apart)

We are on Spring Break here in small town, middle America, USA. The kids are thrilled to have some time off. I enjoy having them around (most of the time) and it's good to be able to spend some time with the girls. I will hardly see Mr 18 though, and that makes me sad.

Unfortunately our Spring Break will not include any sort of family trip. This year instead we will spend our break in 3 different places, and none of it except home includes all of us being together. That says something about the busy lifestyles we all lead now, doesn't it?

Hubby and Mr 18 just returned from enrolling Mr 18 in his classes at the university for next year. They had parent orientation and some testing for the incoming freshman. The guys left at 1 p.m. on Sunday afternoon and traveled most of the day. They attended what was required of them on Monday at the university and headed for home, arriving just after 11 p.m. last night. Both of them complained of sore rear ends from all the sitting.

Tomorrow all the girls head to visit Grandparents in their hometown. While we are there we are planning to do some shopping, get haircuts, and hopefully have a little fun and down time. Hubby and Mr 18 are headed to work at the farm. Seeding season is fast approaching and the guys can't afford to take the time off to come with us.

The guys are however planning on leaving again as they head out on Friday and Saturday to go look at a vehicle that Mr 18 has been checking out. He is hoping it is "the one" as are we because then we would be done shopping for his graduation present. He gets one car from us in his lifetime, it better be a good one.

It makes me a little nostalgic for the days when Spring Break meant we would take the kids somewhere to stay at a hotel and play in the pool. Rarely do we go very far from home, but it was always good to get away together for a short time. I have come to realize over the last year that time like that is long past for us. The kids are all getting too old and involved in too many things for us to spend time just hanging out at a pool. I miss those days! I feel like Miss 9 was sort of cheated out of some of that togetherness time as well. But life goes on and she has the fortune of having older siblings who mostly take good care of her. So in some ways, she has things that they never had. So I guess it evens out.

Teenager Haiku

money requester
mess maker and risk taker
parent mood zapper

Not a Problem

Yesterday Hubby and I went to Parent Teacher conferences for Miss 14 and Mr 18. Conferences are set up as a block of time when parents can wander from room to room, wait in line, and meet with the teacher as they are free. Hubby and I decided to visit the teachers in order of how we felt the most problems might be. We decided to start with Mr 18's English teacher because his grade right now is SERIOUSLY lacking. Granted, I don't expect straight A's from my kids. I especially don't expect them from Mr 18 because he has serious problems with testing. His daily work can be perfect but it comes to a test, and invariably the grade is a C or lower, we realize this, but we still expect him to have a decent grade. Right now, English is far, far away from a decent grade.

We walked into the English teacher's classroom, and introduced ourselves. Mrs. Teacher said, 'Oh, yeah, Mr 18, no problems there, we don't have much to talk about." Smile, grin...
"Oh," says I, "but his current posted grade is not anywhere near what I expect from him. "
"Hmmm," says Mrs. Teacher, "let me pull it up and look at it."
Which she does, and we discuss, and I point out the problems. Well he's behind because he was gone for this and that. I'm not worried says Mrs. Teacher.
Well, I am!
Does it really not matter what his mother thinks? I ask why he is behind, how can he make up for it, does he participate in class, is he working hard, etc. You know, all the relevant parenting questions you ask when your child's grades are not where they should be. Her answers were not professional, were not helpful and were mostly just annoying. To me, it sounded like a burned out end of the school year teacher just waiting for summer. I was and am very annoyed. Mr 18 has never, ever had a grade this low in English, and yet Mrs. Teacher shows no concern. Argh! Instead she just tells me to make sure he turns in his assignments each day until the end of the year because they are worth 10 points apiece. Not much of a solution, is it?

In other teacher news we had awesome conferences for the rest of the afternoon. Miss 14's teachers are all thrilled with her grades and amazed at her progress. Many of them had questions regarding her heart, as apparently the 504 is still not in place with all of them. Another frustrating thing... it is April... perhaps having teachers aware of a heart problem would be a good thing to do at the beginning of the year. But we are lucky in the fact that it is a small enough school that teacher's are able to keep each other informed, without the beaurocratic rigamorole being handed over.

Mr 18's other teacher's all had good things to say as well. Most of them were anxious to discuss what a "neat" kid he is. I think they like that he is opinionated and willing to discuss things in class and that he will take a leadership role in projects and activities. We were able to visit most teachers, a few were not in their classrooms and I didn't feel like it was my job to go on a search for them. Instead I will email, tell them we were there when they weren't there, and hopefully they will realize we tried.

So I think the moral of the story is that not only do Seniors get Senioritis... but teachers get Senioritis, too.

Childhood

Happy Love Thursday! My first love today is that I was able to make it through my dental appointment with little whining and no cavities. I have an extreme phobia about the dentist, so this was a huge step.

What I have really been wanting to write about this Love Thursday is a place where I spent a lot of time growing up. I've had this post running around in my head for a while now, but haven't written it out. I'm sort of afraid that I won't get my point across, or it will sound incredibly sappy. So, with that in mind I feel like I might as well just write it and move on.

I love that when I was growing up I got to spend a lot of time at my Grandparent's farm. This post is a love letter to that time in my life.

Some of my favorite memories happened on a farmstead in a very rural area of North Dakota. It's the farmstead where my mother grew up and where my grandparents spent much of their married life. As I became a teen I fought about having to spend time there, I dreaded weekend trips and as our lives got busier we went less often. Now, looking back, I wish that I could still go there.

The farm itself wasn't fancy in any manner. The house, started in 1899 I believe, was added on to for the next half century or so. It was small and the basement scared the begeeberz out of me. But it was always spotless. Grandma was an immaculate housekeeper and as a child it never occurred to me to be worried about mice, or bugs, or anything else. (Except for the crickets, we couldn't keep them out of the place, and I'm still terrified of them!) The furnishing weren't fancy and weren't new. The kitchen still had an old yellow table that now would be quite collectible. The floor I remember most was the black and white tile blocks. There are pictures of me talking on an old rotary style phone sitting on that floor when I was a baby. The living room had an old black vinyl couch and a fun red circular style chair. The dining room had an old blond wood table and matching hutch; that furniture also matched the bedroom furniture in my grandparents room. There was an ancient stone screened in porch on one side of the house that we sometimes got to play in. Up a steep, steep set of stairs were the three bedrooms that family stayed in when we visited and where Papa made me take naps. They weren't furnished with much more than a bed, but there was room to play with toys when it rained and we couldn't be outside. In fact there was room for all of the grandkids to pair up and pick on each other between rooms. (Hello cousins who read here! Please comment on your favorite parts of the farm!) I remember playing playing upstairs and listening to the rain hit the roof. I remember waking up to thunderstorms with Grandma coming upstairs to bring me down to their bed, so I didn't have to be upstairs while it was thundering in the middle of the night.

We spent a lot of our time at the farm outside. Papa and Grandma used to plant a big garden where we could sample fresh peas and carrots whenever we wanted. Grandma used to make huge meals for all of us. She was a fantastic cook. The yard was encircled about half way with lilac bushes. When I was a girl I used to dream of getting married there in the spring while the lilacs were blooming. My cousin, J, who now lives in Vermont (Hello!!), was the closest in age to me, and we used to get to stay at the farm together, sometimes for nearly a week. We had such fun making "stews" in the playhouse with all the junk we would gather from the yard. I used to get in trouble from Grandma for making J laugh too hard. I'm not sure I know why, but I did. Grandma would hang the wash on the line and when it was dry we would help her haul it to the kitchen table to fold it. The smell of that laundry was the best. We would play anti-I-over the playhouse, and Papa and Grandma would play along. As we got older the game moved to being played over the quonsets. We had a 3 wheel bicycle to drive each other around in, and old, old baseball bats and balls to play softball with in the middle of the yard. Sometimes even our Dad's would get involved in the game, and when Papa played we knew it would be a fun night.

There was a large screenhouse that was set up in the summer months. Our parents would sit there in the evenings with the Grandparents while all of their children ran around like maniacs opening and shutting the screendoor and letting the mosquitoes in. There was no A/C in the house, so it was hot! The screenhouse was a respite from the heat, often there was a dog or two there as well. Grandma would make popcorn (on the stove, with real butter!) for us to snack, plus there were nearly always home made cookies of some kind. It's a wonder I wasn't a fat kid.

My writing can't come close to conveying the love I feel for the farm. It was a place where I was spoiled, where family was together, and where my fondest memories of childhood were made. My Grandfather (Papa) and my aunt (and Godmother) are both gone now, and the memories I have of them from the farm are still strong. When I think of either of them, I think of the farm. I can't come close to explaining the wonders it holds for me, or the incredible memories. The pictures in my mind are still as vivid as the days I spent there. I can't remember most of my children's childhood, but my memories of the farm are still bright and incredibly beautiful. Sentimental, yes, but I wish I could go back for just one day and show my children the wonder that I felt for this place.

Slow Down!

Beginning on Friday last week, Mr 18 started a whirlwind weekend/early week. He's got the senior year busy going on. Friday was a normal school day followed by a plethora of activities that had to get done. Saturday was a day filled with the well put off chores that the Captains of the swim team needed to do before the banquet, which was Saturday evening. The guys had to buy coaches gifts, vote on awards for each member. (The captains give the funny/weird/embarrassing awards like the "I'll Watch Out for Your Little Sister Award" and the "I Suck at Halo 1, 2 and 3 Award.") It took them half the afternoon to come up with an award for each member, but when they handed them out, it was hilarious, lots of blushing boys. The banquet lasted a few hours and was followed by the need to go out in a snowstorm and hang out with the guys. Sunday morning arrived bright and early with Mr 18 headed out to mass and finally packing for his 3 day trip. He also had the need to take his younger girlfriend out to lunch before he left at 1:00 p.m. because "we'll be apart for 3 days!" He made it to the bus with less than a minute to spare.
Mr 18 and the rest of the FBLA group headed out to the State Capital for 3 days of classes, testing and dancing. I think most of the time was spent horsing around with the dart guns they purchased, but overall I think a good time was had by all. They were close enough to walk to a few good restaurants and even to the mall: teen heaven apparently.
Yesterday as awards were being handed out Mr 18 shot a text off to me: "I just won a 500 dollar scholarship for my marketing test!" Then about 20 minutes later the next text arrived: "April Fool!" Fortunately I hadn't checked my texts in between the arrival times, so I was no one's April Fool!
The bus carrying the FBLA squad loaded up yesterday during the early afternoon and proceeded to drive a few hours to drop off the tracksters who needed to run at an indoor meet last evening. Mr 18 had also remembered to pack his uniform and his running flats, but had forgotten to inform his parents of this twist in the plan. Luckily at the last minute I got another text letting me know of that plan and the tracksters were dropped off at the meet, commenced with their running/throwing/jumping and hopped on yet another bus to come home at 10:45 p.m. last night.
What a whirlwind! I am frankly shocked that he remembered everything he would need and even more shocked that so far it looks like everything made it home with him along with a full size poster of an interestingly dressed NAS energy drink girl.