A Visit From The Folks

Recently my parents came for a visit from their home town in California. They came at a very busy time. The beginning of the school year. Which is even more hectic than the rest of the school year and that's saying something. My dad is retired and my mom is semi-retired. Their home setting is quite peaceful and relaxed so I felt bad that they had so much chaos circulating about their heads during their 2 week visit. To illustrate, let me give you an example of a typical morning in our household while school is in session:

Wake up Bryton and Sydney. Pack lunches for 3 kids. Oh darn, we're out of Oreos. No dessert today. Sorry kids, you get boring lunches. Awww mom. Make sure they've got snacks, water bottles, lunches and homework. Feed Captain who is staring at me like I'm the most negligent owner in the world. Beg Sydney to let me help her with her hair. When she refuses, go to wake up Brooklyn and Whitney. Pick out clothes for them (on a good day). Search frantically for my car keys and run out the door bare footed. Wait as Bryton and Sydney run to the car carrying their shoes and socks because they didn't have time to put them on in the house. Did you get your lunches? Wait as they run back inside to get their forgotten lunches. Bring Bryton and Sydney to their school 3.5 miles away. Barely make it to school before the bell rings. Get yelled at by the school traffic directors because I'm "doing it wrong." Fight traffic. Arrive back home. Do Brooklyn and Whitney's hair. Rummage through the shoe bin trying to find two shoes that match. Remind self that I need to clean out shoe bins to get rid of some of these shoes. (Whitney is the youngest of 3 girls so she gets ALL the hand-me-downs.) After dumping all of the shoes from Whitney's bin out on the floor, realize that of the 27 pairs, not one of them is the one we were looking for. Look in basement, upstairs bathrooms/bedrooms, trampoline and deck. Find them on the front porch. Oh, is this P.E. week? Then I need to find a pair of matching tennis shoes and a pair of matching, holeless socks as well. Let Captain outside who is standing at the door staring at me like "Come on woman! Get it together!" Make sure they've got their snacks, water bottles lunches and homework. Find a homework worksheet that someone forgot all about the night before and quickly have them fill it in as I tell them all the answers. At 8:23 (two minutes before the bell rings) send them away with John who drops them off on his way to work. Take a deep breath. After that, the house seems eerily quiet like the calm after a storm and for a brief moment I have no idea what to do with myself. Whatever I'm going to do, I'd better do it fast because I've got to go back to the school to get my kindergartner at 11:15. At least today I got a little break. Two days a week I've got to take Brooklyn to school an hour early for choir.

While my parents were here I was always surprised how each day, my dad would come casually strolling down the stairs at 6:30 A.M. just when the chaos was about to begin. He would make his coffee and sit at the kitchen table and just watch. After the door closed every morning at 8:23, he would linger for a while as if trying to process what he'd just witnessed, and then he'd slowly get up and head back upstairs to his room just as casually as he'd come down.

Around 3:00, when the kids come home again, the madness starts all over as they enter the house like a tornado and head straight for the kitchen, undoing the majority of what I've done during the day in a matter of minutes. After they've had snacks and a little bit of down time, it's time to start homework. Depending on the day of the week and the child, extracurricular activities also begin around this time so it's time to start finding binders, soccer cleats, batons etc. and piling into the car. Again, as all this was going on each day, my dad, joined by my mother now, just sat and watched. Taking it all in.

Tuesdays and Fridays are my favorite day. There is nothing for anyone to do after school on those days. In order to make up for leaving my parents to fend for themselves while going about our craziness on the other days of the week, and in light of the good weather that will soon be fading, we planned outings on these days so that we could have a little "fun" and they could see that we weren't always like this. This plan actually backfired on us, for two reasons:
Reason #1: Everywhere we go, we go with 4 kids and a giant, horse sized dog in tow.
Reason #2: When grandma and grandpa come with us, the four kids have to sit in the very back seat and two of them have to double buckle. That means that Captain has to sit in the storage section and all 5 of them strongly disagree with this arrangement.

It was bad enough that the kids were constantly elbowing, pinching each other or singing too loud for the other's taste. They had to go through all of this while a golden retriever tried his darndest to climb up and over their heads to escape the humiliation of having to sit in the storage section like some kind of animal. When the whole back seat started screaming at once, John and I, experienced parents that we are, sat quietly and waited for the mayhem to take its natural course. After all, the only thing that we could really do was join in the screaming which seemed counter-productive. We sat there quietly and hoped that the kids would learn from example. (Jah, right.) Meanwhile, my parents were seated in the middle section of the car with wide eyes looking like they'd like nothing more than to jump out of the moving vehicle.

On the morning of their departure, as we were saying our goodbyes after the kids had gone to school, one of the last things my dad said to me was, "We enjoy watching all the commotion." That's when it struck me that he must have been purposely getting out of bed in the mornings just so he wouldn't miss out on the free show. I thought that it was pure coincidence that he woke up when he did and that after watching everything, we made him so tired that he had to go back to bed. Really, he was just taking an intermission from sleeping to catch the next act. Between 8:23 and 3:15 was their downtime while they prepared to attend the next vaudeville production. Well, mom and dad, I'm glad we could entertain you. But be warned...next time we might just charge admission. My kids need to start saving up for clown college.

Top 10 of '10

I just looked back at my most recent post and saw that it was dated November of 2009. That means I have been very negligent to the year 2010 given that it is almost the end of July and the year is more than half over. As I've mulled over some of the things that have happened this year, I've realized that the year 2010 has done nothing to merit this abuse and deserves some recognition. In fact, 2010 may very well have been one of my best years ever. If I were going to give it a name I would call it...well, something good. If I weren't worried about offending the Chinese by stealing their idea, I might call it "The year of __________ (insert animal name here.)" And it would need to be a good animal. An animal that you might look at and say, "that's an animal I would put in my top 10 list of animals I would like to be." In light of the fact that 2010 has remained silent and refused to stoop to my level by backlashing at my offensive behavior, I wish to repent and pay tribute to it by recording a list of the top 10 events that have taken place in this the year of (insert animal of choice here). Please note that these events will be listed in order from least recent to most recent. A timeline of sorts. Also take note that they all fit into the category of "my first time ever" and so while they might not seem so special to some, they are all special to me because here I am almost 40 and still finding new stuff to do. I like that.

1. Snowmobiling. I know what you're thinking. "Big deal." But to me, it was the AWESOMEST! I loved being up in the mountains and taking in the beautiful scenery. I usually like to visit the mountains for the fresh air and peace and quiet but I found that filling them with smog and noise pollution is just as much fun! I also just liked the power of driving them around. I've always been a fan of bullet bikes but am afraid of them now that I'm a mom. Snowmobiles are fast and loud like bullet bikes but not nearly as dangerous. In fact, I didn't even mind taking my girls around on the back of mine. They minded at first. They all wanted to be on John's snowmobile. Why is it that they automatically think that John is a better snowmobiler than me?

2. Attended Sundance Film Festival. No, I didn't actually attend any of the films. But I did have tickets for one if that counts. Winter conditions prevented us from attending but that's okay because that's not why I went. I went for a weekend getaway with my two homegirls from Bako (we don't really refer to each other as "homegirls). It was so fun to hang out with them in the airport playing paparazzi. We were every bit annoying as real paparazzi at first because we thought that's what we were supposed to do. Then we realized that if you ask celebrities for pictures they are much nicer and the pictures turn out much better. (Stick it TMZ) Although we needed to work on our celebrity recall because the real paparazzi made fun of us after Kareem Abdul Jabar walked by and rather than snapping photos we made the mere comment, "That's a tall black man." Thank goodness for baggage claim, because we had time to chase him down. Next time we try to play paparazzi we'd better do some studying up. See if you can recognize any of these people. If not, don't worry, neither did we at first.





3. Became A Lifeguard. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to do this. A midlife crisis perhaps? A good boredom buster during the long winter we had? A change of scenery for a while? Or maybe just a love of water? Did I think that it would help me look more like Pamela Anderson?? Whatever the reason, I enjoyed getting certified despite the fact that all of my class mates were teenagers...including the instructors. (Okay, they were in their 20's but I'm old enough that I can count that as teenager) While I'm not sure why I volunteered to do this, the main thing that prompted me was the fact that they needed one for our church girl's camp. So I went and made up rules just so I would look like I knew what I was doing, put a whistle around my neck for extra authority and blew it a few times for good measure. It was a good experience and I had fun watching the girls play around in the water.

4. Ocean Rescue.
This may very well have been my favorite on the list. While vacationing in California we were in Montana de Oro walking along some tall cliffs overlooking the ocean. We saw myriad sea life on our expedition and were contentedly heading back to the car when John stopped and said he thought he'd heard someone yell for help. Much to my discredit I simply rolled my eyes thinking he was being overly dramatic. He walked past the barrier rope to the edge of the cliff and saw a little boat out at sea. It was so far away he couldn't see it very well but thankfully we had brought my parents' binoculars. Sure enough there was a man yelling for help very faintly and clinging to his little sea kayak. A wave had knocked him into the ocean and he wasn't able to get back into his boat. We were not getting cell service so John ran back toward the parking lot to get help. I stood on the edge of the cliff screaming words of encouragement to him (they teach you to do that in lifeguard school, you know :)). Bryton snapped about a billion photos of the event. We were amazed at how fast the harbor patrol showed up. They were very impressive. They pulled him and his kayak onto their bigger boat and brought him into Spooner's Bay where there were several emergency vehicles waiting for him. Later, while we were in Morro Bay, we stumbled across the Harbor Patrol office and asked how the man was doing. They said that he was a 67 year old man from New Mexico and that he was doing fine. They had already released him. They did say that it was good that they came when they did because it wouldn't have been too much longer before hypothermia kicked in. We loved the whole trip to California. A family BBQ, river rafting with the Maughans, Nilssons and Harts, another BBQ with the Nilssons, Harts, Maughans and Jetts, hanging out with my parents at Pismo Beach, spending a day with Tami and her kids at Avila, and renting a goofy bicycle built for eight. But this was by far the most memorable part for all of us.




5. Attended Grand Gala. Usually, around the time prom rolls around I start complaining about how we never get to wear formal attire. I guess it's just a girl thing but I've been waiting for a chance to slip into a Cinderella style dress and drive off in a "stagecoach". This year, Pat Striker, Fort Collins' wealthiest citizen decided to throw a ball in her private airplane hangar in Loveland. Everyone in the "kingdom" was invited as long as they had donated a specified amount to United Way the year before. I got to go out and buy a formal dress and John got to wear a tux. And thanks to some very generous friends, poof, our 1998 minivan was turned into a shiny black BMW. Bibbity, bobbity, boo.


Notice the fancy invitation we received in the mail. It actually came in a little silver box. I'm holding the lid.

6. Road Electric Bull. Is there a person out there who hasn't always wanted to ride an electric bull? If so, they've never seen the movie Urban Cowboy. Check.

7. Painted, And Painted, And Painted. No, not fun. But remember, this is a list of firsts. Not a list of funnests. I've painted before but never in such large quantity. This is mainly how I contributed to the finishing of our basement. I've never calculated the square footage but I'm going to guess that we finished about 1200 sf. That would have been okay if painting the walls was all I needed to do. But, no, I had to first prime all the walls and ceilings. Then I had to paint the ceilings and then I put the first coat on the walls. Can you say, "Bloody fingers!" How about, "Stiff neck!" Sadly, I'm still not done but am putting off that second coat for as long as possible. I don't want to go back to the dungeon! I feel I've paid my debt to society! Thankfully, I wasn't completely in solitary confinement. I did have some helpers along the way.



8. Took My Girls Tent Camping Sans Machismo. A friend of mine asked if we wanted to go camping with her and her daughter. John and Bryton had decided to go on a backpacking trip and I decided they shouldn't be having all the fun. We had a great time camping and playing in the river up Poudre Canyon. We may not have been stalked by a hungry bear like John and Bryton were, but we felt pretty adventurous none the less. I decided the only comical part of our trip was the fire. That night, my friend went to start the camp fire by holding a lighter up to a log. Don't laugh. It worked! We roasted hot dogs over it and had s'mores for dessert. I wondered why Boy Scouts had been building meticulous teepee fires all these years like suckers. The next morning I decided I was going to build the fire. I must not have had the magic touch like my friend. Every time I got it going, it would go out. I ended up having to chop a log into little bits with a hatchet in order to keep it fed and burning long enough to heat our water. By the time I was done building my fire, I was sweaty, shaky and exhausted. I hope my kids appreciated that hot chocolate.

9. Participated In Pie Eating Contest. Again, who's never wanted to be in a pie eating contest? I'll admit that when the guy on the microphone said they needed female volunteers and I went running over there, I thought it was going to be an all female event. I didn't realize that it was going to be me and a bunch of brutish, pie hungry men. But I think I handled my own out there. I walked away fat, happy and with another check on my list.

10. Sang A Duet. In a microphone. With a guy. Accompanied by a guitar. In front of lots of people. Are you done laughing yet? Again, not a big deal to some of my rockstar singer friends. But for me, it was a first and a last. Unless, of course, I've been discovered. In which case you might see me on the road in a town near you. Keep your eyes peeled.

There you have it. The year of the...gazelle??? Has been good to me. And it's only a little more than half over. The "Top 10 of '10 list might just turn into a top 15. But I sort of hope not because that doesn't sound as good. 2010, you're off the hook.