'Tis the Season,...

Flu season, that is. Whadda week. Tuesday began with my 8 year old complaining he didn't want to eat and his stomach hurt. First, I'm miffed that the $4.87 box of junky sugared cereal has been infiltrated and a bowl poured into milk. No saving it. After more whining I release him from the table and give him some of my 'mommy wisdom.'

"When I was your age my tummy hurt when I was upset, too." I say. He had been complaining the day before about injustices wreaked by a couple of friends. He's also upset that we are moving soon. I know how it is, I'm an army brat. I developed weird stomach anomolies in second grade too. Maybe it's hereditary.

As I take a breath and am about to launch into the whole saga, he subsequently pukes. So much for mommy wisdom; the kid is sick.

He doesn't eat much for the rest of the week, which is always worrying because as slim as my kids are (why is youth, beauty, skinniness and the desire not to eat wasted on youth??), he is skeleton boy. I just want to hook an IV up to a stick of butter and stab his arm some days.

Thursday we go up to Puyallup to celebrate SIL's birthday. My kindergartner doesn't want a snack. 'Odd' I think. Duh. When will I not be a dense mother? We go and have a great time with family. The skinny 8 year old eats a peice of bread, and the kindergarner eats only noodles.

We get home late, around 9:30pm. As I turn off the car, kindergartner throws up all over the floor of the Suburban. I enlist my 10 year old to carry the B upstairs and stick her in her crib as I calm down the wailing kindergartner while he continues to throw up in the car and all over me. We get in the house, strip down and get him in bed finally. About 10:30 I find my 9 1/2 month preggo self out in the cold dark night shopvaccing and scrubbing the back of the Suburban. Silver lining: at least he didn't eat the sauce! Get to bed around 11pm.

At about 2am I'm not feeling too great, but I think it's the residual result of cleaning up vomit. At 3am the B wakes up puking. Her bed is a loss, I clean her up and bring her into bed with me. She continues to vomit until 5 am. We've gone through a pillow case, five towels and two changes of clothes for me.

I beg my poor mother to stay late (she leaves for work at 5am) and take the only surviving healthy child to school. She does so and I tackle about 50 loads of laundry.

The only light at the end of the tunnel was logging on and seeing my So Cal neighbor Janice ALSO had the same kinda week I had. Misery loves company!

This week, so far everyone is healthy. Slowly introducing real food back to the kids. They've had a grand time surviving off of toast, sprite and jello for the last five days.

On top of this, the dog decided not to eat for the past five days, as well. He too, seems to be regaining his appetite. I think he was fasting until I took pity on him and moved him into the house. He's doing better now that he lives in the basement next to the GameCube so he gets plenty of attention. He must just be too good for that kennel in the garage.

What made us all forget this crazy flu season was on Saturday, the first day of December, it snowed! Simply perfect for four kids who spent the last year in Indonesia. Who cares it was a centimeter of snow stuck on the ground. They went out in all their mitties and scarves and scraped up enough of it to make a couple of pathetic little snowballs and had a great time.

Unfortunately, now we are back to the usual NW weather, which as you may have seen on the news, is horrible and many people are fighting flood waters. A few people have died. We are hoping for relief tomorrow.

Gee, flooding or mud slides? So tough to decide between California and Washington some days.

Random Thoughts for Today

Anyone who thinks German Shephard Dogs are smart hasn't met mine. Granted, the breed smartness is a generalization and we did get our doggie from a rescue. You get what you pay for, I suppose,...

He is outside at the moment, for fear of eating my mother's cat. So, he is bored. I'm doing the best I can, but I can't do the walks anymore, too painful with 13 days to go until baby is out in the world. It's been raining and I am a California girl at heart, can't handle dampness or anything under 60 degrees. So, I've been inside most of the time.

The dog has started having what we call 'yard sales.' He was taking the boys shoes that were on the porch outside in the basement and, I swear this is true, meticulously lining them up in a straight row on the grass. We took the shoes inside. Then it was B's outside toys. Then, he wrestled a big plastic garbage can we were using to save plastic bags to recycle at the grocery store. I picked up all the plastic shards and plastic bags and threw them out. I guess this is the grown up's version of 'the dog ate my homework.' If my carbon footprint is larger than it should be, it's becaause my dog ate my recycling bin.

And for all my attempts to save my mother's kitty while we shack up with her embarrassingly for six months, the cat HATES MY GUTS. How do I know this? Because she finds absolutely every opportunity possible to pee and poop on my things. I get the point, Isabell. I'm leaving soon. : ) I can't win. For a girl who wanted to raise horses when I grew up, I sure don't enjoy the furry wildlife at the moment.

Not that I'm complaining, but I woke up today after the dog howled me awake for the second night in a row to my 10 year old finishing his book report and my kindergartner doing his homework. At 6:30 in the morning. How can I have kids who are more disciplined than I am?

This means that I missed my 5am wake up alarm. No work was accomplished this morning, and while I have quite a few documents open right now to work on, I needed to get some blogging done to ease my brain. Maybe my version of a cigarette break.

So yes, I have turned on the boob tube for B. I don't usually have the TV on at all. I used to catch up on DVR'd version of Gray's and House, but I think she's beginning to get too conscious of the screaming, kissing and bleeding. So, we found Teletubbies, that horrible show. She wasn't very impressed, thank goodness, because after the 500th time they repeated the word GREEN, I was about to throw my shoe at the TV. What we did find that she likes is 'Animal Jam' on Discovery Kids, for anyone who cares. Except now she is dancing on the oversized ottoman along with a big creepy elephant who is singing and dancing on TV. Is this how Paris and Brittney got started? Better than the Goosebumps she watches with her brothers, I suppose.

Speaking of too yucky to go outside, did anyone else see the article about kids today getting RICKETS because they didn't drink enough milk or get enough Vitamin D because they were inside couch potatoing instead of exercising in the sunshine? Two things necessary for proper bone growth? Frightening. Especially as I keep my little one sequestered inside because I'm old and fat and tired and ready to get this baby out.

Baby is due in 13 days and everything is good. While I am certain the baby is at least 20 pounds and has a head of a steel ball bearing, my doctor assures me she's normal at around 7 pounds and only has human parts. I'm dilated to 3 centimeters, which prompted her to ask 'Now, where is your husband?' I'm banking on the fact that my uterus is as stupid as my dog and won't clue in until we have hubby home, colonscopy completed for him (two days before the due date, should I be gambling in Vegas, OR WHAT?) and the baby car seat I just ordered arrived and set up in the car. The other one is in a shipping container somewhere in Long Beach.

As much as I love, love, love moving and being incredibly random and hoboish so I don't have to really grow up, setting up households is always an expensive endeavor and I end up owning more things than I'd like. Think about it, all those spices you acummulate in your kitchen? They must be thrown out or given away for every continent hopped and new ones bought. Baby items get lost, toys are left behind and new things must be had. I think we could be early retirees if we would just stay put.

So, I hope the baby stays put until she's expected to come out. Then we smoke her out, because we are on a schedule, you know? Gotta get to California by the new year. Ridiculous, I know.

So, as waddly as I have become with the big baby sitting on all those nerves and chewing away at my ligaments so I can't lift my legs after I've been shuffling around all day, and so bloated that I've actually developed carpal tunnel, they are easier to deal with inside than out.

I have so many things to do before she comes. One includes getting my kids, especially the 8 year old, up to Seattle to the Science Center. We got a year membership because it was only a couple bucks more than the 'old woman in the shoe' price I paid to get me and my brood in for one visit. Stupidly I told him about a sea monster IMAX show that has been running since October. He LOVES dragons and dinosaurs and is freaking out wanting to see this movie. But we haven't been able to make it up yet with parties, baseball, football, basketball, and other stuff getting in the way. I'm thinking the only day I have left to get him there is next Friday, five days before the due date. Then, I think there is nothing worse than being alone with my brood an hour and half away from my doctor in Seattle and my water breaks. Except maybe being in the middle of an Indonesian mall alone with my brood and hemorraging. You only live once, right?

Ode to Thanksgiving

It’s not like I don’t know when Thanksgiving will be each year. They don’t exactly move the holiday – it’s always basically on the same date. I have no excuse not to be prepared; in fact, I have 364 days to get ready for it each and every time it comes around. But where do I find myself each Thanksgiving Eve, but at the local grocery with the other slackers pushing a cart up and down isles looking for food products I would not otherwise buy.

Most of the year I’m pretty healthy about my eating, even if the three small boys I try and sustain are not. How they exist on yogurt enhanced with flavors that don’t exist in nature, every kind of sugary coated cereal imaginable, and a wide array of alarmingly nasty snack chips, I’ll never know. Real fruits and vegetables do manage to find themselves into my cart, and once and a while, even something as wild as tofu or a whole grain low carb cracker or two.

But let’s get back to Thanksgiving. The one thing I notice about each of the other cart pushing slackers is, we all have the same food products in our carts. Maybe the others aren’t as lame as me. Perhaps that nice lady over there thought she had one can of left over sweet potatoes in the far reaching cob webbed back corner of her cupboard. Maybe that kindly looking gentleman thought Great Aunt June was going to bring the cranberry sauce, but that fell through. Not me. No, I just don’t think about all the necessary but odd foods I’ll need in order to recreate the warm and fuzzy Thanksgivings of my and my husband’s childhoods.

So, here I am at the store as the clock strikes nine p.m on Thanksgiving Eve, along with the other twenty or so cart wielding slackers as we race like a pack of frenzied lemmings to each Thanksgiving food station in search of those last few cans of necessary items required to make the holiday a success. It’s like a marshmallow topped yam induced treasure hunt as we all try and figure out where in the world French fried onions, whole cranberries and cornbread stuffing reside in the local supermarket. I always wonder if these goodies are actually on the shelves during the other eleven months at all, or if the store manager whips them out of some storage shed in a back lot somewhere just in time. Think about it a moment. Do you find green and red candied cherries any other time than at Christmas? Does anyone actually eat those anymore, or have they gone out of fashion like marshmallow jello and pasta salad? If they do stock these things, I don’t think they put them in the same place each day. In fact I think they move them every morning in the store. This keeps us shoppers on our toes, and for those of us suffering from stress induced short term memory loss or early Altzheimer’s, a.k.a. parents, we are guaranteed to purchase more cans of odd Thanksgiving foods than if they were in the same spot in the store during that whole honorary turkey month. It isn’t by happenstance that I now have four jars of marshmallow fluff in the pantry. It’s because they keep moving the holiday food endcap, like a camouflaged hunter in a duck blind, trying to trick me every time I have to run in to the store because I forgot butter again. Racing past that pyramid display of cooking delights, each time I stop and try to remember seeing it the day previous. I look around at my surroundings, confused and disoriented, reaching yet again for the powdered sugar and chocolate chips, walking slowly to the check out. It isn’t until I reach the safety of my own home I realize I have once again forgotten the butter.

But I digress. Here I am again. Thanksgiving Eve, eyeballing the cart next to me to see if that person has figured out where the pearl onions are hidden. Crawling close the floor boards stalking that necessary box of cornbread stuffing, I pause. Where is it? In the bread aisle? Or is it with dressings? Oh, they don’t mean that kind of dressings, they mean the salad dressings, right? Oh whatever, I’m so confused. I tackle the cute stock boy on leave from college for the holidays to ask where the black olives are located. I mean, what is an olive anyway, a vegetable or a fruit? Doesn’t matter as they are located with the condiments. No wonder I can’t find anything.

Time to check out. Now my next decision is whether to hide the wedding ring or not as I hand items to the checkout clerk. They are already passing judgement against me; do I really want them to think that someone as irresponsible as me could possibly think I can cook a Thanksgiving dinner for another consenting adult, or heaven forbid, children who have no say in the matter?

Once home I feel half the battle is complete, but there are more dragons to slay. You see, our family seems to make a habit of moving right during the holiday season. This time I feel relieved to say our move only entailed swapping houses a few doors down, but usually it takes several airplanes, a truck load of baggage and a change of language before we are safely ensconced in our new home.

Not wanting this move to be any easier than the others for fear I will be out of condition for the next one, I have put off calling to turn on services until the very last minute. This means that my lovely family of five is without basic services we Americans think is our constitutional right including water, electricity, gas and satellite tv for the entire Thanksgiving weekend. Never fear, as I still hold the key to the rental house. I imagine it will be fun to pretend we are at the local campground dashing in our unmentionables down the street to use a running toilet and take a warm shower.

The Thanksgiving dinner won’t be a problem this year, as I have already impolitely invited myself to a dear friend’s house for the holiday. So what if it is their first Thanksgiving together? So what if they were married less than one month ago? Why wouldn’t they want to share this family holiday with me and my brood? Nothing says family planning like hosting three rambunctious boys at a formal sit down four course meal. My heart rate increases when they unveil the newly purchased 61 inch HDTV and sweat starts pouring down my forehead. The visions I have are not of my wonderful friend Wendy basking in the glow of the cooked turkey as she carries the platter from the kitchen to the dining table, or of that first toast to a wonderful meal, but of me intercepting nerf footballs as they are launched at the largest piece of electronics I have ever laid eyes on. I say a silent prayer as I catch the floor lamp in its arc towards meeting that shining, incredibly flat screen after a match of small boys wrestling and chug the rest of my mulled wine.

Now, maybe you are wondering what I was doing at that grocery in the middle of the night, if I have shamelessly invited myself to someone else’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. It all goes back to recreating those wonderful meals from childhood. My husband is partial to a particular stuffing. I have to wonder though, what ever possessed his mother to brown bacon in butter? Isn’t that redundant? And what possesses me to do the same? I am a college educated adult, and I recognize that bacon doesn’t really need to be browned in butter to elevate the grease factor of the stuffing to ‘saturated’. Could it be I am still reeling from the fact that his favorite comfort food comes from his ex-girlfriend’s mother, even though we’ve been married for eleven years, and I’ve given birth to all three of his children?

Well, I didn’t do his stuffing. I’ve decided to not be so neurotic, and chose instead to make my mom’s fruit salad. It is a wonderfully sweet concoction made with (full fat!) cream cheese and marshmallows. She discovered it when I was just a babe in Alaska, out of necessity because they didn’t get many fresh fruits at the time. You’d have thought I was born during the ice age. My thought is, if the cans of fruit cocktail were so bad, they had to be smothered by cream cheese and marshmallows, I question the intelligence of eating them in the first place. Anyway, I had to dash to the local supermarket to get marshmallows because the boys had used them for their marshmallow guns (another story) and of course, the (full fat!) cream cheese.

I’m sure our neighbors were wondering as I ran back and forth from the new house to the old house carrying a sauce pan and some hot pads. But nothing was going to come between me and a groovy fruit salad from my past.

Even living oversea, the pull of comfort foods was strong. Whether I was boiling down enormous squash to make ‘pumpkin’ pie, or sneaking ham underneath my underwear in luggage traveling back to Cairo, we’d do anything to recreate that special meal. Friends and I would look for hours in store after store in the Philippines to find the right ingredients for chili. We thought nothing of going over our weight limit on the airplane if it meant bringing back a few extra jars of peanut butter. I’d travel four hours in a hot van to secure a can of speghettios for my deserving children. I’ve been known to pay the equivalent of $15 US for pop tarts while outside of the United States. This is the true test of honesty in a relationship. Do you confess to your spouse that you were idiotic enough to pay that amount of money for some pop tarts? You’ve got to really love them if you let them eat a pop tart when they are three dollars a piece. It was a challenge acquiring all these foods, but the sense of accomplishment and experiencing those familiar smells and tastes were worth it.

So, if you see me this next Thanksgiving eve, pushing a cart close to midnight, know that it’s a mission of love. And I forgot the cranberry sauce again.

A Random Look Back At Early November

Ha Ha! I remember dressing up MY dog when I was little. I have to find that picture of Shoni with my nightgown, a hat and pink sunglasses,... I do think Max looks especially tough with a pink feather boa! Like mother like daughter!



Home Depot ROCKS! The first Saturday of every month they have a free workshop for kids. You sign up, show up and they hand you a little kit, safety glasses, a hammer and an apron you get to keep. I would not give this little girl a hammer if I were you,...



This past month it was especially grand, since it was pirate ships. Aaaargh!!!! Poor Jared nailed in his 'cannons' so they were shooting inside the ship instead of out. Like mother, like son!



Here is the FANTASTIC cake that I found on the Internet and said to my mom: "Here is the cake that I,.. well, I mean us,.. okay, well, actually, YOU are going to make for Zach's eighth birthday. It looks really easy!"


Uhm,... Ben, you are supposed to throw the balls on the skeeball alley, not Brendan!

Maybe There Is Such A Thing As Too Pregnant

Okay, so after the comments I got emailed to my personal email, perhaps I should stop posting until the pregnancy has passed. I am riding the emotional roller coaster, which is always there lurking in the background for us girls, but very exemplified when preggo. Last week I had three days of 'every one is out to get me, no one cares I'm having a baby.' My husband tried to call. I emailed him and told him I didn't want to talk. When he did call I was nothing but a blubbery mess. Then, magically, I felt fine! He was just happy to be 2000 miles away not dealing with the whole loop-de-loop, I'm sure.

Only three and a half weeks to go. At my last appointment the nurse sat down to go through my chart, getting everything in order to send over to the birthing center. That's when it hit me, I'm having a baby,... SOON. Dealing with four other kids non stop one tends to forget the bun in the oven, accept when trying to bend over and tie my shoes, pick something off the floor, or attempt to look cute for the day in some sort of clothing. Ha. Then she said, "You are the picture of a perfect pregnancy." To which I replied, "Uhm,.. except for the blood clot and 50 pound weight gain,.." What chart was she looking at? But, honestly, besides those two little things, yes, absolutely. I could do this whole pregnancy thing myself.

After all, what DO you ask your OB when you are pregnant with your fifth kid? "Any questions?" asks my doctor.

"Nope," I say.

"Well, we'll see you in two weeks," she replies.

So I started to think of every possible stupid thing I could ask.

"I'm sooooo tired," I whine.

"You are pregnant," she says, closing my chart and smiling, ushering me out the door.

"I think I'm getting hairier. Here, look at my cheeks, they are fuzzier than normal. It's a good thing I'm blond. Is it my thyroid?"

She smiles. "Your thyroid is fine."

So, yes, small babies, Terri, but not a small mommy. : )

Gotta go buy some little diapers and maybe pack a bag, I guess.

Happy Scary Shopping

Okay, when I only had boys to shop for, I did run into the 'OMG, I am NOT buying that toy and WHAT PARENT WOULD?' mindset from time to time. No scary bleeding plastic figurines; no demonic action figures and nothing that promoted some movie they were too young to even see. (Same goes for Haloween. You can dress up as a Zombie, but you may not dress up as Jason. How do you know who Jason even is??)

I'm not some crazed zealot shielding my kids from the evils of the world. I am, however, their mother, as as that person, I will guide them away from things that are not appropriate and tell them why, so when they are older they can make their own decisions. It is all we as parents can do. I allow toy guns. They read Goosebumps and Harry Potter and even the Vampire Chronicles, because my oldest can handle it.

And don't get me wrong; I can't WAIT until they are old enough to bring the pillow and blankies out to the living room and watch scary movies with their mother until the crack of dawn. But not yet. I, for one, treat horror movies and books as a rollercoaster ride for my brain. I don't think reading or seeing them makes me an evil person. But, again, I'm an adult and I can handle it.

Having a girl, however, has opened my eyes to a whole WORLD of ridiculous, inappropriate toys. Wow. Barbie, maybe not so darned bad when you place her next to Bratz. Not just the creepy eye surgery and botox lips they sport, but the mindset of these dolls. Shop and shop and shop. Yes, I know lots of little girls who play with them and they are completely fine. But I have my mom as a role model, and where she allowed the 'Sunshine Family' she allowed only one Barbie doll. Did I think my friends who had 20 barbies had a better life than me? Of course. Did it scar me for life? Of course not. Did it teach me something good as an adult? I think it did.

Toy cash registers with pretend money? Great for learning. Toy credit cards and the plastic jewelry to pretend to buy? No way.

Play food? Great! Play McDonald's food? Not so great.

Then I found this great little aisle in Target that had what I'd call snooty toys. Why they had to have their own aisle, I can't imagine except for that impression they want to give their shoppers. They have these cute 'barbie' type dolls that don't have gazonga boobies and dress not so quite inappropriately. I grabbed one and a little baby with supermodel hair for my daughter. Now for the daddy doll,... no daddy doll. No boy baby dolls, no male nothin'. What's up with that? I know that the nuclear family is in the minority, but come on! It's okay to play with boy dolls! It's okay for boys to play with dolls! My boys had baby dolls when they were younger. Are these lesbian dolls who propogate with IVF? Nothing wrong with that for those who want it, but I don't. Make a boy doll for me. Are we teaching little girls that boys are not important? Living in a household with four boys (five if you include the dog), I kind of LIKE boys and think it would be cute if my daughter could pretend with her play family just like her real life family.

That doesn't mean I want to BE a boy. I am extremely happy being a girl and would like to teach my girl that being a girl is cool. But liking boys is also cool.

Which leads me to the whole controversy of the Dangerous Book for Boys and now we have a Dangerous Book for Girls. Don't even get me started down this path. I bought the first for my boy. I will NOT buy the second for my girl. I think it is ASANINE. I don't want my boys and girls to be the same. I want them to be different and cherish their differentness; respect each other for their differences and learn from them.

As a kid, one of my favorite toys was a blue metal pick up truck. But I'm a girl.

As a teenager I wore makeup. But I also trained bird dogs, got a couple of first places in field trialing competitions and my grandfather, who is a gunsmith, gave me a shotgun for my 13th birthday. But I am a girl.

As an adult, at one of the many after conference shin digs I'd go to with my co-workers, smoking a cigar and snarfing beer out of the pitcher (sorry mom), my good buddy told me, "Karen, you are a man trapped in a woman's body". Maybe true, but I am a girl.

Stuff Worth Reading

I love blogs. I love to see what people are up to, and have them lead me on other pathways that I may find interesting because they do. Blogs are kind of like Amazon.com's "People Who Bought XYZ Book Also Bought This,"

Here are a couple interesting things I found on the Internet that I think are worth reading (thanks for the links, Magan!)

Don't knock bibilical home ec from the Oped section of the LA Times. She is what I would say is a conservative baptist (maybe there are no other kinds?), a great writer and interesting blogger.

And something to chew about Mitt Romney, even if you don't lean that conservatively and think you don't care, it is an interesting reflection and for my generation, a bit of history revealed.

All I Needed to Know I Learned From Kindergartners

So I’m helping with the Kindergarten Memory Book, which is no easy task when you are nine months pregnant, have an almost two year old and a part time job. But I said I’d do it and I need to log ‘Family Commitment Hours’ as part of my contract to enrolling my kids in this school. Why don’t they just go ahead and admit that they are ‘Overworked Mother Commitment Hours’? I can’t remember hubby doing anything to help besides get chastised for using a non-digital camera at the pumpkin patch. (serves him right.)

It is cracking me up to see what kids write. There are the usual answers to ‘what is your favorite hobby?’ like ‘riding my pony’ that you would expect from a private school. So, I guess the girl who answered ‘crab’ to her favorite food question also shouldn’t be a surprise. Neither should the ‘ravioli with white sauce’ (these are five year olds for heaven’s sake and I think they eat better than I do.)

Then there are the brown nose questions like the answer ‘vegetables’ to the ‘what’s your favorite food’ question. Yeah, right. Someone tell her she isn’t getting graded.

Then there are those completely made up questions like from my son. His favorite food? Japanese. I don’t remember ever feeding the kid Japanese food. And spending the night at his friend Ren’s house, who does happen to be Japanese, and exclaiming that tofu is gross, doesn’t count as eating Japanese food, much less claiming it as his favorite.

My kid’s favorite color? Black. What does that say about me, oh friend with the child pysch doctorate? It can’t be good.

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For those who have asked, my due date is December 12. All my kids have been around 8 lbs, with Sabrina, the only girl so far, being under 8 even though she was number four. Let the betting begin!

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And CONGRATULATIONS to Paul and Sarah who are expecting their first in July! Yay! Paul says they are now in competition to have even more kids than us. I say, more power to you!

No Turning Back Now

Okay, okay, I'm posting. If I had time to post every day, I would have nothing to post about. :)

Thanks to all the neighbors and friends, Church acquaintances, and school friends who are excited to have us back down in Cali. Rob appreciates the kind words as he sees everbody and the references for housepainters. And let me tell you, I'll take an eight year old's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese over the mess he moved back to any day. And that's saying a lot.

On my end, everything is hunky dory. The baby is locked and loaded, head down. No small feat since two out of four pregnancies have been breach. It's such a relief to not have to worry about that. While a version (when the dr. turns the baby around using external manipulation) isn't anywhere nearly as wonderful as full assault labor, it is extremely uncomfortable and,.. weird. Plus it leaves bruises. The last baby didn't turn with that, which led me to asking everyone available for ideas on how to get her head first. I had a lot of interesting ideas from standing on my head (can't do that when I'm NOT pregnant) to sitting on an exercise ball (good to have a use for it, because as I have learned, exercise equipment doesn't give you any of its good advantages unless you actually use it. Having the receipt in your wallet for those 10 lbs. dumbbells doesn't actually help you gain muscle. Such a bummer.) Also, from my Phd friend, as she explained in layman's terms for me, the BA holding one, "shine a flashlight up your hoo-ha." Considering she doesn't know what continent Eqypt is on, I decided not to do this one. Too 'Poltergiest' - ish if you know what I mean. "Carrie Ann, go towards the light,.."

I did finally ask my doctor and he suggested (now, remember this IS southern California, the land of crystals, flax seed and 'finding yourself') to get in a hot tub, with the water not so boiling hot. So, I did this for the whole weekend. Not as relaxing as you might think, with three boys and their friends cannon balling their preggo mother in the hot tub.

Whether this actually worked, or the doctor pushing her half way did, or she did it on her own, she turned!

I'm also dilated to 1 cm, which means absolutely nothing really, except that things are working. They seem to stall, however, when the actual delivery times comes along, making me at least, very thankful I don't like in the old days, as I would have died with the first birth. Here's to pitocin!

Have a Happy Life

If you haven't seen it yet, I strongly recommend Evan Almighty with Steve Carel. It is HILARIOUS, has a good message and absolutely NO SWEARING. It has a better family rating than riding with me in my car any day of the week.






And for another happy moment, check out Edward Beck's book Soul Provider. I've just begun to read it, but his easy writing style and interesting correlations to everyday opportunities to grow in your own spiritual faith make this a book that you'll grab to read over and over again. A Catholic priest, Beck discusses spirituality that transcends our human need to typify religion; he brings in tenants from many different faiths to dscuss a 5th Century 'step to being a good person'. It is very timely today in a society where we try and fill our emptiness with things ( I like Nordstrom more than I should, I'll admit it), and we seem to be hit more and more often with tragedies such as the recent fires in California, flood and famine in the world, and human atrocities we inflict on each other every day. (Just this week investigators unearthed a UPS pilot living in a nice suburban lakeside community who has been beating and raping little boys for the past decade. He has video of these awful things in his house. We are talking more than 20 victims who have been identified already. Unbelievable.)

Soul Provider and his other books God Underneath Me and Unlikely Ways Home remind us that we as human beings are fallible and that's okay. Life is a learning event. Dust yourself off and try again, don't beat yourself over the head because you aren't perfect. But don't give up either.

Thurston County Football 2007

A couple of pictures for daddy who is down in So Cal sewing our lives back together; assessing damage of the house from uncaring tenants, moving household goods back in after we spent our moving allowance on shipping heavy, but beautiful teak furniture back from Bali, and setting up utilities. Fun fun fun.

Anyway, here is Jared in all his glory. He had a great football season; six touchdowns, lots of tackles and many other things that I as a football illiterate fail to understand. It was nice having him play in a smaller league. That and the other kidney I had to sell to pay for his overnight football camp this past summer.

I feel like we won the parenting Olympics since his coach told us at least three different times what a great kid he is. And that he is. We are very fortunate and I at least hope I don't screw him up in the next eight years. Here's praying for help with parenting,.. ugh.

Here are a few pics from my buddy at work who's boy also plays football (on another team) sent over. His wife has a killer camera. Maybe Santa will visit us this year and take Rob out of the analog age. : )

Happy Halloween!`

Look what my mom did: me and my brother and most of our broods. I'm supposed to say, "Is there a gun show in town?"



Oi vey, can't believe I have five kids with this,.. man,...



The loveliest witch of them all, Michelle and her boys.



Samantha in her poodle skirt! Kermit and Shawna, next year you have to dress up so I can let all the world see!



Michelle and Thad! Yay!

Partaaay!

Okay, everyone who knows me realizes that I loooove a party. So, halloween makes the perfect time to be a kid again and act completely ridiculous, which I find easy to do. It has to be my favorite holiday. I get all revved up for the entire holiday season, which now spans from October to January 17 for me. Here is what we did for Halloween:

Decorations: of course can not be store bought, you must use your imagination.



The infamous monster in the closet.



Guest parking.



Baby monster!



Creepy pipe cleaner/styrofoam spiders!



And games! This was 'we found a guy and tore him to pieces, can you guess what part of him I'm holding in the paper bag?' You know, good Christian family fun. So, peeled grapes for eyeballs, cold cooked speghetti noodles for veins, soft flour tortillas for skin, sponge for the brain, peeled hotdogs for fingers. Then, we had a monster toss and fish in the creepy critter creek.

Boy, can't wait for Thanksgiving!!! Pumpkin seed spitting contest, pumpkin roll relay, corn husking competition,.. sigh, .. I'm giddy,...

Halloween Party Food!

The best thing about a party is the food. Do you remember that movie with Cher in it where she could only cook appetizers? I feel like that character - I am known for my food-posing-as-something-else. It's almost an illness and it's being fed by Grandma Nonnie, who keeps finding all these excellent recipe books with more and more food concoctions that I must try!

Okay, these sammies were hand carved (crazy woman) by my sis-in-law Michelle:



Of course, every spiced cider needs shrunken apple heads as an adornment:



Candy eyeballs for dessert:



And caterpillar cake (Jared did this one! - yay! I can pass the illness along to the next generation!):



And of course, drum roll please,... witches' brew!:

Pumpkin Carving

Kyle and Zach's classes went to Shilter Family Farm to hunt for pumpkins, pet farm animals, and go through the hay maze. Jared had to stay in his actual classroom, so he got to 'pumpkin hunt' on the front porch with the pumpkins mommy purchased from Walmart. Then, we did the usual, everyone got to design their pumpkins and daddy carved them with that extreme engineering precision that he is known for.




Sabrina's first pumpkin!!



Hard at work on our creations.



Jared got the biggest pumpkin.



Viola! From left: Jared, Zach, Mommy, Sabrina/Daddy, Kyle.

ANOTHER Milestone?

I'm back to being single again. Hubby left this morning at two to start the drive down to Southern Californai. He's stopping in San Fran to see his college buddy and old crewmate. And to climb the Golden Gate bridge. He's already climbed the Bay Bridge, so he has to put this notch on his construction engineer's belt. What am I doing? Working a craft table at second grader's halloween party. Walking the dog. Doing laundry. A mother's life is just not as exciting.

Something that men will never understand:

1. You need to pack 50 pounds of food and toys to keep a 21 month old occupied for one and a half hours.

2. The mystery of creating pig tails out of a small girl's hair. Quickly. Without tears.

3. What shoes go with pink leopard print pants.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

My three boys had a conversation with hubby and me last night about what they want to be when they grow up:

Kindergartner: Rocketship guy

2nd grader: Pain-in-the-ol-ogist (He likes dinosaurs,.. A LOT)

5th grader: A priest so he doesn't have to get married.

Then my mom brought up what I wanted to be when I was around 1st grade. I remember finding a peice of paper stating I wanted to drive a red convertible and be a librarian. She remembers the the car, but says I wanted to be a babysitter.

Well, it seems like I've pretty much achieved my goals, mother of five and a writer for a software company, not bad. Still working on the convertible, even if hubby says the 4 Runner we purchased right before we first got married qualifies. (NOT). Be careful what you wish for!

What did you want to be when you grow up?

Friday Ramblings

Well, California is tough and it's still there. A call to my work headquarters found ALL of the county's schools closed and many, many staff at home dealing with kids who usually are not there during the day. Freeway exits were closed, half of Highland (which is on the foot of the mountains) had been evacuated.

Hubby called our insurance company down in Yucaipa, Cali to change our insurance from renters back to home owners since he'll be opening the door once again to our old home and lives this coming Wednesday. Yay! The agent told him there was a moritorium on all changes to policies in the area at the moment. Yikes. Even though we are in no imminent danger because of our location, it gives you chills thinking about how close you are.

When we were house hunting a few years back, we looked at a housing development in Highland. It had been built on one of the hills burned in the last fire. Those houses have been evacuated now. I thank God those houses were out of our price range and wish I could pat myself on the back for not purchasing them due to their location. Not sure I'm that smart though. Hubby is, however, he would have saved me from my greed.

Remember people, flood zones, fire zones, earthquake zones, they all count! It may look pretty at the beach, but is that homestead site really fit for construction? Will that bulkhead hold? We seem to blow raspberries at Mother Nature. Studying physical geography in college and its impact on humans was fascinating, especially the impact flooding has on third world countries like India.

Granted, you have to weigh the benefits with the risks. My mom's office, for example, is right in the lava flow if Mount Ranier were to blow. Good to know if that giant wakes up, but for the moment, I think she's safe. But gives you chills to think of all the things that can possibly go wrong in life, one of my favorite hobbies.

On a lighter note, I did it. I bit the chew toy and went to the hairdresser. I don't usually have time to go, I think it's crazy expensive how much it costs to have your hair done, so I only end up going about every four or five months when I absolutely hate to look at myself in the mirror and am totally desperate. I am now back to skanky California blond color and feel oh, so much better. Stupid, isn't it? But I think with the pregnancy thing happening again (FOR THE FIFTH TIME!) I'm allowed to indulge. I have even been doing my nails on a regular basis. I think it's funny that I'm concentrating on the peripheries of my body since everything in the middle seems to be out of my control.

Freaky realization: my hairdresser was born in 1982. I graduated from high school in '87. Am I really that old?

Hubby has been forcing me with a hot cattle prod to do our walks every day, too. Which is great. I need motivation. For that when he's gone he'll be leaving my hairy, smelly personal trainer, Max the jungle dog. Maybe I can find excuses for me not exercising every day (have to feed the kids, do the laundry, clean something, stare into space) but I can't handle sad doggie eyes.

It's humorous in a horrifying way how these two mile walks are starting to get really loooong. In pre preggo days, streak up there and back in 20 minutes if I didn't feel like the doing the whole suburb circuit. Coming home this summer, after my little uterine clot cleared, I was walking in 25, 30 minutes when I could bother to do it. Yesterday? 45 minutes. By nine months, I'll have to bring a snack to sustain me for the length of time I make that circuit. Gads.

And thank goodness it's Friday since packing lunches and doing homework is really taxing. Well, not doing homework, but organizing all those papers three little boys like to flick out of their backpacks the minute they get home like some sort of ticker tape parade on New Year's Day.

My middle son talked me into buying him a lunchable. He used the historic mommy guilt trip of "I wish my lunches were as good as everyone ELSE in my class." What do those other mothers pack, I ask son. The answer comes out that it's anything already prepackaged, in colors not found in nature, with so many preservatives that the teacher has put some of them in their class's time capsule. No, veggies and fruit do NOT constitute a cool lunch.

Not wanting to limit my son's popularity, I negotiated one lunchable a week. Of course, after my usual soap box about how they aren't very nutritious, but everything in moderation. I feel so schizophrenic when I'm reading my OB's latest copied article on the benefits of organic foods for children since we are poisoning them on a daily basis ((Yes, this is the kid who exists on Chocolate Peanut Butter pops for breakfast,... every day) knowing full well that gross lunchable will be packed with love into his lunchbox in the morning.

Don't get me wrong, I have a fun size bag of snickers hidden in my cupboard and Tostitoes Queso in the fridge. But I eat that with baked chips. Maybe that's why I like that Mika song, "Big Girls Are Beautiful;" pizza and a diet coke indeed.

Hang In There Southern California

I'm thinking why did I go to Indonesia when there are all sorts of natural disasters to contend with here in the United States? Four years ago, friends from my company, ESRI, based in San Bernardino County, sent pictures of the fires near Lake Arrowhead; many people were evacuated and some lost their properties. Here we are again, but across seven counties. It's almost unbelievable.





I logged on to a neighbor's blog and found out that the local school (right behind our house in California) is shut down today and tomorrow because of poor air quality.

Rob's uncle down in San Diego has not been evacuated YET, but everyone else within a two mile radius has. His wife's family has had houses on both sides of them burn down.


Check out this blog, run by ESRI staff who care, on how these fires and those of four years ago, compare.

We're praying for you, So Cal.

One of the things I love, love, love about the company that has kept me gainfully, if not creatively, employed for the last fourteen or so years is the remarkable charitable attitude the owner and founder, Jack Dangermond, has towards organizations that can benefit from his technology (geographic information systems - basically maps smarter than you'll ever be!). Thanks to the incredibly intelligent people (I do not include myself in this category) who are attracted to ESRI, they are able to support emergencies every year, including this year's fires.

While in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, I worked with the local government to fix their GIS licenses and get them up and running on our new technology. This required me to fanagle my buddy and senior sales dude to fly over and wheel and deal. After it was all said and done, my incredible company donated around $250,000 for emergency response software licensing. That perhaps is why I'm in marketing and not sales, I'm way too much overhead, eh? I think my hubby would concur.

Yet Another New Era, Can I Get Off the RollerCoaster Now?

Well, we've bit the bullet. We are trading in my beautiful 7 series beemer for a,... mini van. So the beemer was gotten used and is ten years old, it's still a nice little car and I see my car as an extension of myself. A quality person, worth the extra maintenance, serious but with a fun side, okay, maybe not german. Sigh. Nothing against mini vans or the people who drive them. I just see them like I do dolman sleeves or espadrilles; cute on somebody else.

We took yesterday afternoon with the cranky B and went to the local automall. Nothing like car shopping in Olympia, Washington; where we were terrified we'd be attacked upon stepping foot onto a lot, we actually found the places quite deserted. I helped myself to a few cars, realizing that the driver's door on most vehicles was open and I could gain access that way. Is that breaking and entering? I hope not.

We checked out the Kia whatever, the Hyundai whatitscalled, the Toyota thingy and the Honda Odyssey. Also the Saturn Outlook and the Buick Rendezvous. These hybrid vehicles are so very cute, but honestly, with five children who have parents 6' and 6'6", we will not fit in them for very long. It would be the car version of me buying school uniform pants for my kids right now; they fit for a couple of weeks, then in a blink of an eye, they are highwaters and the zippers are too tight. And I've been warned; friends who are the same height as us have grown children where the girl is 6'4" and the boys are both over seven feet tall. I'm not making this up.

The Rendezvous was kind of cool and a good price, after I got over my snotty image of the whole 'Buick' brand. All I can think of driving a Buick is my grandpa in his golf pants. But it will only fit six if I get the captains' chairs in the middle. Explaining why I want the captains chairs to my hsuband was like speaking a foreign language underwater with no tongue.

"Honey,",I said. "I need to have two carseats in the middle. Then, I have a booster seat in the way back that houses a child who can't seem to put on a seatbelt without making it into some sort of origami ribbon."

He tells me to just slide the seat forward, it won't go all the way forward anymore, but with the top tilted up, the boys can squeeze in the back.

Okay, I'm envisioning myself in rain (or 130 degree So Cal weather, doesn't matter, the point is, I want out of nature quickly), with a baby in a baby seat over one forearm, the toddler trapped between my thighs, a huge purse/diaper bag/garbage can/toy holder slung over a shoulder, yelling at my kids to 'stay right here, DO NOT MOVE' (yes, the OTHER three) as I find a free appendage to feel blindly for the little lever that will spring that second seat forward. Only 1/2 of the way. Then, hanging my childbearing backside out of the car door as I try and unknot child's seatbelt in the way back.

No go baby.

When I find the Rendezvous with the captains' chairs and the leather interior (big whiff o' leather; I haven't owned a cloth seated vehicle since I was in college.) and explain to hubby that I like it, but we can't fit him in the car with us, he says to me, "Like that matters, there's no way in *#&$(& I'm getting in that thing."

Very funny. Spoken like a man with a brand spankin' new F150 company car waiting for him in Orange County.

So, on to the mini vans. To make a long story short, the Odyssey honestly had more third seat space than the Kia, which was also a nice vehicle. And it had a stowable middle second row seat, so I can have my aisleway with the captains' chairs when hubby isn't looking.

Since leather is a bit out of our price range at the moment; we refuse to carry a car payment, and after a year overseas with an NGO, the coffers are a bit dry, I can deal with foamy fabric. I'm sure I can find some sort of cute car seat cover, they make them for babyseats, why not mom seats? If not, maybe I can design some in pink chenille, or leopard print. That and a non alcoholic beer that actually tastes good, and I can retire in comfort.

And the 'entertainment system'? Entertaining for WHO? I am not going down the slippery slope of in-car DVD systems. At the dinner table, the big 10 year old was selling us on buying a car with one. All I can see is wasting precious time getting ANYWHERE as five children fist fight over what one video will play on the screen. "I'll even watch whatever the others want to watch," he says.

To which my 8 year old piped up, "Digimon! And Pokemon!"

And 10 year old promptly replied, "Except that."

So, here we are arguing over what to watch on the in car DVD system we don't even own yet. And then, when I mentioned, we now have girls to deal with and so the viewing options have just opened up to include titles like 'Barbie's Swan Lake' and 'Strawberry Shortcake' and 'Bratz Go to Mars' (or is that just my silent wish?) the DVD system doesn't seem so cool anymore.