May Letters

Dear family (in my home and otherwise),

Sometimes happiness comes in a box...

...or a basket.

Thanks for the birthday gifts.

Love--Me

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Dear weather gods,

Snow boots and swimming suits in the same week is bizarre.

Yours Truly--Confused mama who is bidding winter farewell, no matter what

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Dear National Do Not Call Registry,

Despite having filed my home number with you three(-ish...seems like 20) times , I still receive telephone solicitations on a regular basis. I am tempted to block all solicitors' calls and blast back that message I've seen on some front doors. It goes something like, "We've found Jesus, we like our vacuum, and our roof is fine, thankyouverymuch." Do you know it?  I think it ends with "...unless you're selling girl scout cookies..."

I'd ditch our home phone except that my children would have no way to call me when I'm gone. Hmm....there's an idea.

Impatiently--Current Resident

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Dear Wells Fargo,

Thanks for being good to us. Garry sure has been good to you for ten years! Thanks for the extra five days of paid time off, for the steak lunch Garry's boss paid for, and for his early release last Friday.

With appreciation--The employee's wife

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Dear Colorado Springs Utilities,

Our electricity usage has inexplicably decreased by half over the last year. I have no idea what's happening, but thank you for the credit on our bill.

Thankfully--Equal-pay customer

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Dear daughters,

The fact that both of you soiled your underwear in a 20-minute period while we were away from home reinforces my belief that storing multiple pairs of back-up clothing in the van is a must. Kate would probably agree, as she's the one who ended up in a diaper. I am glad that one of you refused to eat breakfast before school, and so had a zip baggie of cereal that we could use for...um...waste. Ew. That was gross.

Resignedly--Still a diaper-changing mama

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Dear Subway,

I am sorry that one of the afore-mentioned incidents happened on your premises.

Sincerely--Your customer

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Dear Coats & Clark,

You make transparent thread. I sew scout patches to olive drab shirts. It seems that we would be a match made in heaven (or Troop 512). However, my sewing machine hates you. Patient as I was about starting over and over and over, I simply couldn't tolerate the mess you made in my bobbin compartment, not to mention the fact that you wouldn't complete an actual seam. And so I return to matching threads to patches. *sigh*

Yours (or maybe not) in sewing--A wannabe seamstress

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Dear Hobby Lobby,

Why don't you carry Guterman thread? Let's hope Lexi doesn't noticed the slight shade differential in the seams of her bed curtains, since I RAN OUT OF THREAD during the final phase of the eternal sewing project I am attempting for her birthday, and I didn't want to drive to another store when I had already driven to you. Bah.

Secretly--President, Overly-Ambitious Anonymous

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Dear May,

You are just as harrowing as December, minus the snow and ice. Wait...

Yours in scheduling--Mother of four school children and a toddler who naps

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Dear friend with a husband and father in the hospital,

Your stress is palpable. Man, I wish I could help. I sure love your family.

Love to you--Your mom's former-but-always visiting teacher

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Dear Landsharks,

I am sad that you changed your policy and no longer allow kindergartners to run in the one-mile race. Gavin was totally planning on it, telling everyone about his "big race." He was so disappointed. However, after processing the disappointment for a while, he said, "Mom, can I do Landsharks next year so I can run the mile?" I guess he's resilient.

Speedily (or not)--A mom raising a runner

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Dear LG,

Our dishwasher--or rather, your dishwasher in my kitchen--is broken. Do know how lame this is for a family that generates so many dirty dishes? Garry has ordered one of your fancy heating elements and will attempt to make the repair himself. We'll see. Until then I am remembering the days of washing dishes by hand when I was a kid, and feeling guilty for the lack of character-building parenting in my current home every time I pass out paper bowls and plates at meal time. I am trying to believe that, as a friend pointed out, we might be conserving water while killing trees.

Sadly--A lazy mom

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Dear Not Me,

Thank you (but not) for sitting in the stroller and breaking the seat, and for taking off the front wheel simply because it is removable. Seriously, I don't know how the idea of LEAVE IT ALONE never enters your head!

Crying with frustration--Fed up

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Dear Kate,

Stop being so ridiculously cute. It's really hard to discipline a cherub, except when said cherub is acting decidedly un-heavenly. Then it's easy.

Lovingly--Yo mama

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Dear AEES teachers,

We love you, which hopefully is obvious by the tedious process required I created for myself to make these posters. I don't know when I'll learn to pass on projects like this. Maybe you can teach me.

With gratitude--The Bartle boys' mom

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Dear Anthony E. Wolf,

Your book is especially resonant in my life right now, but I think you could have emphasized your points about ornery teenagers without all the swearing. Doesn't that mean you're as immature and un-creative as they are? 

Harshly--A desperate but picky reader

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Dear self,

It has taken a year, but I am glad you f.i.n.a.l.l.y figured out that relocating Kate's clothes to the lower drawers would nearly eliminate her incessant need to invert the laundry baskets and use them as ladders.

With relief and gratitude--A slow learner

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Dear Saturday evening,

You were just perfect for a walk. Ahhhh....

Appreciatively--A fresh air lover

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Dear child with a pink obsession,

Your outfits are always creative, but the nightgown-boots-jacket-helmet combo especially amused me.

Mama

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Dear Not Me,

Whatever possessed you to put a marker inside of a jar of burning wax is beyond me, but I am sure you enjoyed seeing the results of the experiment. Bursting glass and dripping wax are always funny, right?!

With suspicion and annoyance--Your exhausted mother

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Dear Lynn the attendance lady,

You always laugh at my children when we stop by the middle school to drop off a child or an item. It is true: they are crazy. That day I brought in four children between the ages of two and four (one is hiding behind the bench) was especially chaotic, but only because we had to wait 20 minutes for you to locate my son.

With a smirk--Zach's mom

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Dear band director,

We've got another percussionist in the family. He will probably practice.

Excitedly--Tyler's mom

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Dear Pinterest,

I found this wreath and LOVE it, but I think I am not up to such a project. Maybe next summer? (Because surely I'll have more free time then...hahahahahaha...)

Yours in pinning--A recovering ambitious crafter

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Dear friends and family,

Thank you for supporting Tyler in his required-for-school business. He is too young to appreciate that soliciting money from loved ones is uncomfortable for his parents. Nevertheless, he loves to cook and is excited to sell his made-from-scratch crescent rolls, which, I promise you, will be delicious. A dozen rolls are $4.50 and will be available on Saturday, just in time for Mother's Day. It's not too late to order!

Thankfully--A Tyler's Tongue-Tingling Tasties marketing strategist

The latest Landshark

It is FINALLY Gavin's turn to participate in the school's running club, the Landsharks. Oh, man. He has waited years!

From Zach and Tyler's first season in 2009, when he was just a wee lad....

...to our most recent in 2012...

...Gavin just could.not.wait for his turn to officially run with the Landsharks. Yesterday was the first race day, and he was pumped!  He ran a quick 50-meter dash with his fellow kindergartners, followed by a 400-meter race later on. He ran toward the front of the pack in both races, grinning and waving at spectators the whole way. Gavin had a great time!

Hopefully in the coming weeks I will have the presence of mind to take a nicer camera and really capture his running experience. Go Gavin!

Some days I just need to blog

It's 10:28 p.m. and I haven't finished folding the seven loads of laundry on my bed.  Garry is out with friends tonight (the party usually ends at two or three in the a.m.), and the boys had their friends over tonight until 10:00.  All is now quiet for the first time today.

I'm going to take a moment of silence.

<moment>

Know what happened when I sat still in my brain for minute?  I cried, and not just in my brain.  I was not expecting that.  Why am I crying?

Maybe it's because my brain is just so full.  This month is so full--full of good things and fun things and celebratory things for many children at my house and in my heart--and at the same time completely overwhelming.  When I list them all I want you to know I am not complaining.  But I suppose this will capture a moment in my life when I was crying.

Dearest Lexi turns four next week, on May 16.  FOUR!  She's in the typical almost-four stage: whiny and clingy and bossy and smart-mouthed.  She's putting her female stamp on Bartle stubbornness and intensity.  She can roar like the best of them, and she frequently exasperates me to tears.  She makes me so, so tired and tries my patience many, many, many times a day.  I'm brushing up on Love and Logic, taking lots of deep breaths and time-outs myself, and trying to soak up the moments of goodness in her. So we'll have a little birthday girl next Thursday, and a birthday party on Saturday afternoon (the 18th).  The theme is rainbows and it's going to be lots of fun.  The party will be simple (I like simple) but the rainbowy decorations won't be as simple, but that's just what I want to do, and I don't get to choose what I do very often anymore.  Anyway.  We're having a party next Saturday afternoon.  

Next Saturday morning, probably from about 5:00 a.m. to noon, I will be helping at the Youth Garage Sale that I not-so-subtly announced in a recent letter.  Other people have made Herculean efforts to pull this off.  My job is to sit at the money table for four hours and thank the kind and generous citizens of Colorado Springs for helping our youth get to camp.  But first I need to make about 10 more signs to point the way to the sale.  That is really going to be time-consuming, and deciding how to position them all in the community might break my brain.  Please note that the garage sale ends at 11:00 a.m. (in theory) and the birthday party begins at 3:00 p.m.

Also next week: Mother's Day tea, Field Day, Computer Share Day, visiting teaching (seeing three friends with a friend, so it's fun).  Physical therapy (more on that later). Teacher Appreciation gifts (I have the stuff; just need to put on bows and nice notes). And I'd really, really like to plant some pretty flowers and spread some mulch to liven up my dead yard.

The next big event (May 21) is a graduation party of sorts for the youth in our ward who are graduating high school very soon.  We have four seniors to celebrate, and all the youth are going to enjoy the party!  It really is going to be cool.  We've got a fun theme and great games and yummy food lined up.  I have delegated a lot, but tonight, right this minute, I'm overwhelmed with what's left up to me: a huge banner with a cute quote from a famous person (no spoilers!) that I need to create and paint; make super cute and simple little signs; create a Mad Libs game for group use; and various other computer generated things, all with an amazing generous budget of $30, including food.  Yeah.

That shindig is partway into the last week of school.  There are two picnics in the park for my preschoolers and a continuation ceremony for Zach, since he is graduating elementary school! I need to figure out a special something to do for him.  Then on the 24th, Garry's mom and sister are coming to town for Memorial Day weekend.  When they leave, summer will have officially arrived (on the school calendar, at least--Mother Nature thinks it's February).  We'll RELAX the schedule for a couple of days, and then I'll go to youth conference.  That is from 4:30 on Thursday the 30th through sometime in the afternoon of Saturday the 1st.  I do not yet know my specific assignments beyond driving the youth hither and yon.  But assignments I will surely have!  I am crying about that because I kind of moved heaven and earth to go to youth conference, and I'm the only leader with little kids that did that. Maybe it wasn't super important to go, but now I'm committed.  I have two more PT appointments in there somewhere.  Lots of checks to babysitters in May. Are you crying yet?

And then summer. I cry just thinking about real summer when the kids are all home and I'm the one in charge and we can only run through the sprinklers twice a week before 10:00 a.m.  I have a love/hate relationship with TV.  I don't want my kids' brains turning to mush, but even though I have some cool ideas about learning and structure floating in my head, I'm not sure how or if I can implement them.  I have pretty low expectations of myself, and I can't decide what capacity I (might) really have.  I am so tentative about trying new things.  I want to swim laps at the Y.  I know it will be good for my broken and ever-fattening body, but I can't quite make myself just do it.  What if I get there, mustered courage and all, and no lanes are open?  What if I drown?  (This is a legitimate concern.)  How on earth can I reverse the terrible trend of gaining the weight I worked SO DANG HARD to lose?  I know it's my fault.  Eating ice cream is a poor choice.  Eating tons and tons of ice cream is an extremely poor choice.  I picked up that stick and don't like what I knew was on the other end.  I'm definitely crying now.

I'm new on the scene of physical therapy.  I have a lower left back thing, which turned into a right inner knee thing, which radiated into ankle, hip, and hamstring things.  My whole body rotates to the right and I run like I'm on a balance beam.  My stride is all messed up and my hips are out of whack.  It's not especially serious, but running, which is vital for my stable mental health, has not been possible for about 2 1/2 months.  Also demoralizing.  I think between seeing the therapist, who seems brilliant, and getting therapeutic massages (from an amazing girl), I could be on the road to recovery.  The PT clinic and its people are terrific.  I just want them to fix me.  I need to be fixed so I can get on with my life and get out of this ugly rut.

Not being able to run makes me cry, at least when I talk about it.  Today, when I almost talked about it to my good friend and PT, I closed the door to my room and really cried.  And then, pretending I hadn't cried, I set up three more appointments and went home.  And now I hurt in about 17 new places.  It's normal for that to happen, but right now I'm crying about my stupid old body that has limits.  I pretty much hate that.

Also at PT, I had a talk with a friend who's in college.  I reminisced on my collegiate regrets: graduating early, not taking a single fun class, not majoring in nursing (I enjoyed health science but for me it was a huge cop-out).  I worked in an office for two years after graduation when I could have been getting a graduate degree.  My young friend is lucky to have a mentor to teach her all of these things when she is 20 and these decisions are still ahead of her.  She won't have regrets.  And she won't have to figure out who she is and what she likes when she has a house full of kids.

The dumbest thing to cry about is not being able to learn piano music fast enough or well enough.  I realized the other day that I have come to terms with the fact that I'll never run an 8-minute mile again (not with this body, anyway).  I just don't go that fast, even though at 17 I ran a sub-6 fairly regularly.  But that's just reality.  I think I have to accept my piano performance limits as well.  I need to stop comparing, and stop beating my head against the wall when I mess up that part AGAIN or just can't play that section up to speed.  The guy who wrote it is brilliant, and the renditions I've heard are amazing, and I'm just not those people.  That doesn't mean I don't have a talent I'd like to continue to develop.  It just is what it is, and what it always will be.

Today I mopped my floor more thoroughly than usual.  I shouldn't have picked today to be thorough, since I had five or six more pressing tasks (none of them are done, as I sit here and whine to you), but I did.  I really cleaned a section of floor in front of the baseboard underneath the cabinet.  It doesn't get clean when I simply mop.  Today I got on my knees and worked on that spot.  Guess what happened?  Having a really clean, bright section of floor made the rest of the floor look that much dirtier.  *Sigh*  I hope this is not a metaphor for my life.

Tonight after the boys' "late night" party (we don't do sleepovers), Zach flipped out about his Saturday chores, which were listed on the job board.  Zach's part of our discussion was loud and emotional and involved throwing paper and tacks, while mine was calm and measured.  That was a tough way to end the night.  I sent Garry a text warning him that Zach refuses to attend tomorrow's merit badge clinic, which begins at 8:00 a.m.  Garry's gonna have to handle that one.

Dear readers, if you have read this far, I thank you kindly for listening.  Now that it is 11:38, I'm going to get some tissues and go to sleep under a mountain of laundry that didn't quite get folded tonight.  Heaven knows that laundry waits. I can cry about that tomorrow.

A happy Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.  It was mostly quiet and low-key, with sunshine and play time and friends and good food.  We missed our families but felt embraced by those we love here.

Food preparation (stuffing and mint brownies) happened Wednesday.

Zach and I ran the YMCA Turkey Trot 5K.

His time: 29:04

My time: 31:24

(four minutes faster than my August 5K)

Zach played basketball on his Ripstik.

Kate was so tired she couldn't stand up.

Garry took the Littles on a bike ride.

He also took them to the park and found two of our coats that had been missing for a few days.  I worked our Christmas card.

We ate our Thanksgiving feast with a bunch of friends at the church.  We had a perfectly lovely evening together.  Garry and I learned a fun new word game: Bananagrams.

 

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My first thoughts on Thanksgiving morning were about the tremendous blessings in my life.  Below is my Facebook status for the day, but also an expression of the gratitude written on my heart.

I'm feeling thankful for the man snoring in bed beside me, the girl laying cross-wise on my pillow, the baby who woke me at 5:00 a.m., the towhead on the couch, and the two boys in bunk beds downstairs.  My house is full, my heart is full, and today I give thanks for my abundance.

Cell phone stories

It's time for another installment of cell phone stories, in which I elaborate on random pictures taken with my cell phone camera.  You know the drill.

Zach had a school project that required making a Native American artifact of some kind. He couldn't use modern tools or materials.  He decided to make a wickiup.  With Garry's help, Zach did a great job binding bunches of pine needles with long grass and affixing them to a tent of sticks.  He filled a cookie sheet with dirt to form the base of the dwelling. I had to pick him up from school when he brought the project home (usually he rides his scooter), and during the drive home, the cookie sheet somehow spilled.  Lovely.

Gavin and Lexi both had Thanksgiving celebrations at preschool.  I was in bed with the flu that day and didn't get to attend either one, but Garry reported that Lexi's feast was fun. Gavin's class made "stone soup," apparently with real rocks.  Gavin contributed an onion to the pot.  He said the soup was yummy.  I liked both of the kids' hats.  They make a nice pair!

Last week Lexi decided to cut a banana with a steak knife.  She sliced her thumb, which bled a lot.  After I patched up her wounds, I noticed her curious outfit and had to take a couple of pictures.

This is what we look like at Target.  Not pictured: a mommy that was just minutes away from a parking lot meltdown.

The young women in our ward just had Evening of Excellence, an annual meeting that celebrates the girls' efforts in the Personal Progress program.  I was in charge of invitations and other printed items.  We had a fun theme, which was Personal Progress: A Pattern for Life.

I snapped this photo while on a morning run last Saturday.  I loved watching the sun rise. I can't believe I can run outdoors in mid-November!  These days I can run four or five miles pretty comfortably and have enjoyed the occasional early-morning run with my friend April.  She is patient with my slow pace and I love her company.

Gavin really loves his books.  It's so fun to hear him read.

And finally, we are gearing up for family pictures on Friday.  We have some stylish clothes for the boys and adults and darling hair accessories for the girls that should give us a fun look.  I hope.  Today I'll scope out possible locations.  This is a sneak peek of the color scheme...although, at his request, I did not buy Garry an argyle sweater.  Here's hoping for a successful photo shoot!  It's time to replace the photos from last year.  Kate and I have changed a lot!