Carefree Childhood

I'm really tired of a couple of things....it was so hard keeping the house spotless for two months while the house was for sale. I constantly was screaming, "DON'T MAKE A MESS! STOP GATHERING STUFF AND BRINGING IT INTO ANOTHER ROOM! STAY OUT OF THE WATER! DON'T BRING SNACKS OUT OF THE KITCHEN! WIPE YOUR FEET! DON'T COME IN AND OUT AND IN AND OUT. SHUT THE DOOR!!!!!" It was really nice to have a clean house, but I really need to reevaluate things. I want my kids to have fun, fun like I had when I was a kid. Fun like when you leave the house after breakfast and go exploring, rock hunting, creek splashing, muddy, dirty, carefree fun and don't come home until lunch.

My girls are computer illiterate. They watch very little TV. The only movies they watch are in the car on long drives. I used to wish my kids would sit and watch a show so I could have a break, but they just wouldn't. I had to adjust and now I'm grateful for it.

They track in dirt and grass. At any moment in my house you will find at least one sink full of mud and rocks, usually with Dave's hairbrush that they use to scrub them. They bring their toys outside and I find legos in the bushes and in cups sitting on the grass (don't ask me why). Yesterday they discovered a bird nest with tiny baby birds in there. They watched from a distance as the mom brought her babies dinner. They run from yard to yard and gather friends and PLAY.
I get caught up in dance lessons, gymnastics, cheerleading, spending a small fortune at Limited Too, etc., etc. but that is not what makes either one of them happy. I just want them to be kids. With this move, I am going to limit structured activity in their lives. Since they wear uniforms to school, I am going to let them wear whatever they want after school and on weekends and not say a word about it...even if it's stained and doesn't match and is worn four days in a row.

I am rambling, but when the Girl Scout leaders sent these photos and I saw them come home dirty, exhausted and HAPPY, it reminded me of what is most important.

When we were in Disney World, my kids were so happy. I even had to call my dad and just thank him for all the fun times we had in Disney Land when I was young. It's a huge sacrifice. It's expensive. It's hot. It's crowded, but it's magical. Watching your kids' eyes light up after they've ridden Thunder Mountain Railroad or after they've run into their favorite character is one of the most beautiful experiences I've had as a mom. I think that magic can be brought into our every day lives...because it wasn't so much the roller coaster or seeing Stitch...it was having a mom who was relaxed. It's easy to be relaxed when you don't worry about meals or cleaning the house or paying bills...and realistically these things have to be done, but just not the focus.

The happier I am, the happier my kids are. We still have a few weeks of summer left. I know moving is crazy, but I am going to focus my energy on my kids and on myself and slow down and enjoy a little more, and love a little more.

And when that grass and mud gets tracked in on my new beautiful floors, I'm going to brush it aside and make room for whatever discovery they just made outside....I promise.

On another note...my eye is okay. My cornea is scratched but there was no ulcer. I have to wear glasses and have steroids and antibiotic drops, but it already feels so much better. I'm grateful that in all the craziness that I did stop and go to the doctor. They told me that if I would have waited, I would have lost my eye...and that's scary. Maybe that's another reason why I have reevaluated the craziness in my life. I have to wear glasses and because of my extreme light sensitivity right now, I have to wear the most hideous wrap-around sunglasses that fit over my glasses (kind of like a grandma) and trying to be cute while wearing them is impossible, so I can at least be fun...and happy!

Bad Things Come in...THREES???

So, I have to interrupt my happy Disney posts and vent a little: They say bad things come in threes, but I'm looking at a few more than that, so was that in multiples of threes? Or, will it stop now?

The day before we left for Disney, the garbage disposal broke. Our friend came over to fix it, but unfortunately, it can't be fixed, so it needs to be replaced...a couple of weeks before we move.

The night I got home from Disney, I had to hurry and get all the laundry done because I had to drive to Charlotte the next day for our walk through and also pack the kids to stay at my friends'. WELL...in the middle of a load, the dryer BROKE. I mean, could it not just hold on for one more week until the movers come and then I could still do laundry and just get a new one when we are there? I had to run over to my friends' house until midnight getting that %#$%^ laundry dry.

You can't see the damage from this angle, but I couldn't go outside because of my eye issue....

Then I get a phone call from my friend this morning asking me if I saw my tree. Well, I'm having a hard time seeing anything right now (more on that later) but I had noticed some leaves on the grass this morning when I was taking out the mail. It turns out that it was hit by lightning...the tree that is just a few yards from the front door.

And the third incident to round out this "bad things come in threes but apparently multiples of threes" is:

We had a major catastrophe with closing and not all the paperwork got in on time and it was pretty much a disaster. We are supposed to close tomorrow, and now it turns out that we will, but it was a MESS yesterday...and to top it off, I was trying to get home from Charlotte so I couldn't even access the documents that they wanted faxed. Thank goodness for a friend and her fax machine...

I have no idea why I'm smiling...seriously my eye hurts so bad that I've been crying a lot. You can't even tell how bad it is from the photo, but it's the color of the curtains in the background. Oh, and these are the $270 glasses that got me home.

Okay, so that should be the end, right? But now there is the horrible fact that there is a possibility I might lose my eye. Yep, that's right, my EYE. I knew it was bad, just not this bad. It's too long of a story for this, but it just became noticeable on Tuesday. I was at the doctor today because of the pain. They wouldn't let me leave the office with contacts in, but I am legally blind in one eye and had LEFT MY GLASSES ON THE BEDSIDE TABLE AT DISNEYWORLD. Seriously, are you kidding me? So, I had to go to a place at the hospital where she made me glasses (at the small cost of $270) so I could get home. They aren't even the right prescription, but are as strong as they could get in an hour. So, I have to see a corneal specialist in the morning and then drive up to Charlotte to close by 4:00. Are you kidding me?

And there was so much more than that...the eye doctor was yelling at me, really, yelling. He was yelling, "IF YOU PUT YOUR CONTACT IN YOUR EYE, EVEN FOR FIVE MINUTES TO GET HOME, YOU WILL LOSE YOUR EYE. YOU HAVE SERIOUS DAMAGE"...and on and on. I'm just sitting there calmly replying, "Doctor, I understand that and you don't have to scare me anymore....I am scared, but I am legally blind and have no glasses and to top it off, do you see the two sweet little darlings that have been ramsacking your office during all this time? Well, they are precious cargo, and I would like them to get home safely." So, that's when he wrote up a prescription for emergency glasses.

So, let's home this bad wave in the last few days is over. I'll leave on a positive note...

At least we had fun at Disney! This is the picture of when we just happened to run into Stitch at Animal Kingdom. This is the only character that we saw outside of character dining...and it couldln't have been a better one. Notice who Mikayla is holding in the photo and has carried around every day since our first day there!

Disney Part Uno: Downtown Disney

Oh, so much to write...and too much craziness around here to do this fabulous-five-day getaway justice. We had the greatest family vacation ever...every trip to Disney is just better and better. I thought along with the fun, I would share some tips of things that we have learned the hard way... Tip One: Go to Downtown Disney the FIRST night you arrive. Mainly because it's pretty lame for kids after being at one of the parks, but also because it's the best place to go to get names on their ears. I had ears with my name when I was a kid, so I wanted my girls to too, but sometimes the turn-around is a couple of days (they will send it to your hotel). If you go to Downtown Disney to the Christmas store, it's much shorter time (we only waited 45 minutes) but if you had to wait overnight, at least you ordered them on the first day!


Tip Two: Absolutely get the Dining Plan, but maybe not the Deluxe one. (We had 8 left over meals, but had fun buying people breakfast on our last day there.) Book your character meals 4-6 months in advance if you really care... This year we had to match up the night that Magic Kingdom had the light parade to our lunch at Cinderella's castle and dinner with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and friends. Also, we had to match up our breakfast with Little Einsteins and Jo Jo to our dinner at the Italian Place that got us preferred seating (no wait) to Fantasmic at Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM). Make reservations at Cap'n Jacks at Downtown Disney the first night you are there...so yummy.

Tip Three: Put all the change you collect in a piggy bank starting now. Then whenever you go, cash it all in and that is how much your kids can spend on whatever they want while you're there. This year they had $60 each, but that was the least amount they've had on our trips there.

By the way, it was hilarious to me that Mik loved Goofy, Stitch and Donald Duck...all the trouble makers! She was kind of over the whole princess thing, which actually made me a little sad.

Tip Four: If your kids are into Legos, they have every color and size at the Lego store at Downtown Disney. My girls LOVE Legos!!! And now they have pink and purple ones!!!!

Tip Five: Don't worry about staying at a deluxe hotel on property. We do stay on property, but at Pop Century or All Star Sports. We don't spend any time in our room anyway. We did pay a little more to get a "preferred room" but only so we didn't have to walk so far to the bus and to the pool. Don't forget to ask for AAA discounts...I actually book through AAA travel...it's free and they do it all for you. If you want my agent, she can book for anyone (not just Georgia friends), and she's awesome.

Tip Six: Don't let your kids run through fountains, ride Splash Mountain or whatever the river ride is at Animal Kingdom until the END of the day, because it's no fun to walk around wet.

I just realized I might sound like a know-it-all, but we just had such an amazing time, and I want to share the love.... so much more to come!

Happy Birthday Amelia!

Amelia had her 7th Birthday Party on Friday night. She told me exactly what she wanted to do about three months ago. This is a little girl who knows exactly what she wants, even if it's totally different from her mom! :)

After I learned of her plans, I told her she could only invite a couple of girls. She invited her two best friends, Bailey and Kaitlyn and her babysitter (who is like another daughter to me), Hillary and she also included Mikayla in the list, so I didn't tell her that she could have invited a couple more! Hillary did their nails and I did their hair. After getting beautiful, we went to Ninja (like Benihana) for dinner. The chef was so fun and so sweet to Amelia. The girls ate so much I thought they were going to explode!

I have no idea why this picture is so small, but oh well.

We came home and our best neighbor friends came over to open gifts and have cake and ice cream. Amelia made out her birthday list months ago and was so excited with all of her gifts.She told me later that she was really shy when everyone sang "Happy Birthday." I forget how awkward that can be, but she was so cute!

We played games like "Pin the Purse on Hannah Montana" and of course had a sing and dance party!

Finally at 11:00 the kids got all organized upstairs and watched "Cheaper by the Dozen."

At 1:00 AM I came upstairs and Hillary was sound asleep and the little girls were staring blankly at the credits of the movie, so I layed them down and they were sound asleep in about thirty seconds.

Their dolls had a sleepover too.




I love Amelia so much. She is such a good girl. She is a wonderful big sister and a friend to everyone. Her teachers tell me that she has an old soul...and she does. She is kind, thoughtful and such a good helper. We have some trouble when she tries to organize things. She will take everything off the shelves at her friends' houses, and I'm not sure her help is always appreciated! ;) She also packs things around like you would not believe. She even carried her new pajamas from Dave's mom to run errands the next day. Nana bought her the backpack that she has wanted since Christmas, so it does make carrying things around even more fun!

Anyway, we are off to Disney World on Thursday. The girls are at Girl Scout Camp for the next three days for eight hours. We just got an offer on the house (thank you for your prayers). We close on the 25th on our new house. I will post pictures eventually, but I'm excited and I know things will work out!

Snaggle Tooth

Amelia lost two teeth in one day yesterday! She had one on the bottom that was so loose, she called it a "snaggletooth." However, when we went to the pool, her friend Cooper knocked it out with a water shooter on accident. Later that day the snaggletooth fell out. Here was Amelia's letter to the toothfairy in her words:

Go Toothfere!!! Tooftferee rooks!!! Wao oow!!!

Deer Tooferee,

I lost 2 teef in 1 day Love Amelia PS 5 toofs all togethr I hav a queshin wat is yor ril name?

The toothfairy wrote back and left her double the money and informed her that her real name is "Bibbity Matilda." It sounded magical. However, if your kids ask the same thing, can you go with me on this one?

Why?

LC always gives me ideas for posts...and so, I'm not copying, I'm mimicking...the best form of flattery.

Why do the kids sleep in on the mornings that I want to get up and go to the gym or when we have something going on, but are up at 7 on the mornings that we could all sleep until 9?

Why has not one person been to look at my house when it's priced 38K less than any other house for sale in the neighborhood?

Why does it never matter how much money we make, we always have the same amount?

Why is it that people here can so freely say that moms that stay home don't work or that they would go crazy if they stayed home, but if I said I work harder than anyone who goes to a job and I'd go crazy leaving my kids somewhere all day, it's considered rude and offensive?

Why do my kids insist on filling up bags, purses and backpacks and then taking them all out into the hall to play and just carry around?

Why do some moms think that all they need to talk about are the perfect things their kids do, when we all know that no kid is perfect and sometimes we need to talk about that too...or go crazy?

Why is self esteem more important in school now than competition? Doesn't self esteem come from competition and succeeding at something we've worked so hard on?

Why did the Church offer Dave a calling knowing that we are leaving in exactly one month, that he is already working in Charlotte during the week and we will be in Disney for one of those weeks?

Why does my weight fluxuate almost ten pounds in a day?

Why are parents expected to come to kids' birthday parties and just sit and hang out and end up stressing the birthday kids' parents out and taking their time away from their birthday kid?

Why does the grass look better after Dave cuts it, but I swear I do the same thing?

Why does moving take so much paperwork?

Current Ambitions

Yesterday the girls informed me of what they wanted to be when they grow up. This is what they said:
Amelia: teacher, astronaut, bus driver and a "yard girl"
Mikayla: Hannah Montana

Sisters

LC just posted about what brothers are good for and it made me think about big sisters. This is what they are good for: Explaining all those hard things to little sisters from their point of view. For example, this is a conversation I heard last night in their bed.

M: Amelia, it's really dark outside.
A: Ya, but you don't need to be afraid. It's dark outside, but there are stars and a moon.
M: But it's black outside. It's really black.
A: Yes it's black, but not totally black.
M: So it's not pitch black?
A: No, it's not pitch black. There's no such thing as pitch black. It's called peach black.

Another Update....

I've been a little behind because of our Charlotte trip, but I wanted to post these photos because I finally got them uploaded!

This is of Amelia getting her kindergarten award for "MOST STYLISH."

Amelia had the best teachers in the world. I love them so much.

And...the Dance Recital was great! Amelia danced to "Fabulous" and they were!

Mik's Ballet dance was great...this was during the dress rehearsal. During the real show, they forgot most of it!

Shake It Baby!

And now...let's bring summer on!!!!This is a great week. My kids have VBS every day for three hours, plus the neighbor is taking them and picking up, so I really will have FOUR HOURS!

And on a last note, will ALL of you please, please, please say a prayer that our house will sell. I know it's a crazy market, but we have our house for soooo cheap, and no one has even been through it...and only two people have called on it (probably nosy neighbors). Eventually GE will buy it (120 days), but for a BAD price and we need to be in our house August 2, so it would be nice to sell before then. I don't think we can do it without some prayers going on.

Charlotte Update

I have a minute to update our week get-away. It has been so nice to not have to worry about keeping the house clean for people walking through (even though no one has). It is so hard to constantly be telling the kids to keep things nice when it's summer and we are home and they should be able to make messes! So, I've had no cooking, cleaning and laundry all week long.



After the cab experience, I drove Dave to work yesterday and had a plan to check out the elementary school of where I thought we would move and then check out neighborhoods if I liked the school. So we drove to the school (it is actually in SOUTH Carolina, but right across the border). The school is good...a little too structured, and my kids will HATE uniforms (remember all the fashion posts???), but it will probably be good for them. So, we went ahead and drove to my first neighborhood and fell immediately in love with it. I mean...immediately. It makes all of this a lot easier. It is also a small town. I would compare it to Logan, Utah. I could be wrong, because I haven't even seen the downtown part of it yet. This is actually quite a distance from the downtown, so I never even saw it, but I would say downtown Fort Mill is probably comparable to Logan. We would live in the Indian Land part of Fort Mill.

Anyway, I just feel better. AND to top it all off, I talked to Miki this morning and she made an "appointment" to talk to the girls about their room colors, using paint cards and her brilliant ideas, and that's all it took. The girls are so excited to have new bedrooms any color they want (with Miki's help of course) and it reminds me that it is just not that big of a deal to them. They just want hot-pink and purple Hannah Montana bedrooms with guitars on the walls. (Don't worry, Aunt Miki will steer them in another direction!)

Crazy People

So this week the girls and I tagged along with Dave as he started his first day in Charlotte. We had nothing going on this week...no camps, no parties, and it was a great week to come. However, we don't have a car during the day. Yesterday the hotel called a cab for me to pick us up from the mall. We walked there (about one mile tops, but it is on a VERY busy road so I felt better NOT walking back). The cab was disgusting; and the cab driver was gross. I asked him how he was doing and he grunted, and about a minute later he mumbled something about us riding in the trunk next time.

Um, there won't be a next time. We were in the cab for approximately four minutes and I was never happier to hand someone a $5 bill and get the heck out of there. Needless to say, we won't be taking any more cab rides. Today we hung at the pool and in the room and now at the business center. Tomorrow we are driving Dave to work so we can have the car to check out neighborhoods again.

Lefty

Remember that really scary show called "Watcher in the Woods" or something like that back in the 80's? Ya know, the one where the girl keeps writing "Karen" on the window and backwards it spelled the name of something scary, but I can't even remember who "Nerak" was or what it was. Anyway...that brings me to my hypothesis.

Mikayla is smart; I mean, she's not a genius, but she's smart. So, when she kept insisting on writing her name perfectly "alyakiM" I tried to not be concerned, but really I was. She started on the right and moved perfectly to the left. When she was little, she picked up a book and turned the pages backwards. When she pretends to read, she moves her finger from right to left. I knew it wasn't dyslexia because she doesn't mix up letters in the middle of the word, she just does it all backwards.

I started thinking about the little girl I have tutored for almost five years now. When she started with me, she was only in third grade and was learning cursive. I had to exercise true patience, because she is so smart, but she seriously could not move from left to right and make the curls and everything that cursive requires. Then I realized that she's left-handed and as she was writing, she was covering up what she had written and would have to pick up her hand to continue, which kind of defeats the purpose of cursive.

Fast forward four years: We have worked on some tough stuff, as a matter of fact, it came to a point with functions and probability that I really thought it might need to be my last year tutoring because her algebra was getting too hard. However, she is smart and I can always look back in her text to figure out how to do it before I teach her. THEN, we were solving inequalities with squared numbers. Ya know, the ones where you have to take the square root of both sides, flip the sign and do both the positive and negative on the other side? Well, she was so stuck on negative numbers, and that was the easiest part of the equation. So, I went back and drew a number line and had her practice adding super easy stuff like, -4 + 7. She would come up with 11, -11 or even -3. It was like her brain did not see that starting on the left of the zero and adding is still moving right up the line..and subtracting is still moving left.

There's a lot more to it than that, but I realized that it is A LEFTY THING. I really believe it. Her brain doesn't see numbers and letters in a left to right fashion like the rest of us righties do. To her, moving left is natural, so to throw negative numbers in there and tell her to move right is just a whole "brain=retrain" thing.

Does this make sense to anyone? Has anyone read anything professionally about this? Are any of you lefties that can understand any of this. Meanwhile, I have a lefty and I want to be prepared for all of this. I've already got the name straightened out, but I swear it was retraining her brain, and I think it's going to take her longer to read and do cursive and all the things that we righties take for granted. Do you agree or am I looking into this too much?

Consumer Report

I have messy, dirty kids. Amelia is the kindergarten kid who actually uses that change of clothes that you send in at the beginning of the year. Monday I pulled her shirt out of her bag that she had to change, only to find it COVERED in purple frosting. I mean seriously, how did she get it on the hood in the back? And not just a little bit, it was the whole darn shirt!!!

So, the cheap laundry detergent doesn't end up being so cheap when I have to use two or three times as much to get the stains out. My answer? GAIN. It's better than Tide and anything else I've tried. It's so good that I usually don't even use Spray and Wash on the stains before I wash!

The Bad, the Good, and the Oh So Cute

The Bad,
The Good

and the Oh, So Cute!

Reasons to be Grateful

Okay, so I won't lie: Life sucks right now. When I say "right now" I mean literally at this minute because in a couple hours I'll be okay with the move, and then something happens and I'll be sad again. However, RIGHT NOW, I'm sad. When we got back from Preschool Graduation, the sign was in the yard, and I guess it just became too real. So here's some stuff to be grateful for:

1. My baby graduated from preschool. "Mom, now I just get to go to BIG SCHOOL!" And she didn't cry on stage, as a matter of fact, she loved it! I was so proud of her that I cried! My shy little girl did great!

She even added dance moves!

I'm grateful that the day before graduation, a box shows up on my doorstep with two of the cutest dresses I've ever seen. In all the craziness, I actually forgot about buying Mik a new dress for graduation, but my sister randomly sent two just for fun...and right on time!
Oh, and I'm grateful for new Hannah Montana outfits too (thanks Chell) because when your kids go to school looking and feeling this "fashion," it's hard to not smile.

And I'm oh, so grateful for frilly tutus and ballet recitals.