Mark today on the calendar!

Macy has a really snotty attitude towards me and her sister most of the time. I thought it wasn't supposed to start until later. But nope. We are in the thick of pre-teen snottiness at age 7.

Tonight, she was really snotty to Kaylin and I called her on it and spanked her little bottom. About an 1/2 hour later, she came up to me and said, "Mom, I'm sorry I talked to Kaylin like that. I won't do it again."

Wow. If I only I believe her...

Weekend Recap

Friday I went to Macy's class to see the movie "Earth" (or, since she can't say her "th" sound very well, "Earf"). I had no idea what the movie was about, and holy moly macaroni it was spectacular!! It followed different animals around the globe-polar bears in Antarctica, elephants in Africa, among others--and the cinematography was absolutely stunning. I can't imagine how long and how intense the filming was. Some of the kids got bored, but not our future vet Miss Macy. She didn't even bat an eye when the lions attacked a baby elephant. I would highly recommend this movie! Definitely not just a kids movie. We then went to a park to eat lunch, then I went back to school for about an hour. Ah, the joys of a student teacher are quickly coming to an end.

Kaylin's kindergarten screening was Friday afternoon, and she did fine. Her gross motor skills--standing on one foot, jumping, etc.--are below where they should be, but I am not concerned about that. Just lingering effects from her hip dysplasia still. They asked her to write her last name, and she said, "I don't want to." Ah, There's my independent Kaylin. We are now officially all set for kindergarten!

Then I had to get both girls ready for The Big Dance Recital. Hair perfect--Macy in a bun, Kaylin in curls--Makeup perfect, costumes on and out the door by 6. The show went off without a hitch, and the girls did fantastic. It was a late night, though; I think we got home after 10. No pictures or video of these performances, since it was the actual performance. Of course, we'll buy the DVD for $30. :(

Two men sitting behind us were completely annoying--talked through the entire thing, and not in a whisper. You would think from teaching high school that I would be able to tune them out, but no. They felt the need to make comments on every dance, every song, every costume, in addition to discussing the benefits and disadvantages of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, computers, emails, and anything technological. I learned all kinds of things about these two men, and never even knew what they looked like. I went back and forth wanting to say, "Do you mind keeping it down?" to "SHUT UP!" and never did say anything to them.

Yesterday and today were spent relaxing.


Conversation with Kaylin in the car tonight:

K: Did you know that Jesus died on the cross and then came alive again and is in heaven?
Me:Yes, I did know that.
K: If I'm tall enough for the Fury of the Nile next time we go to Worlds of Fun, I want to ride it. I won't be scared.
Me: Ok.
K: You can have any kid of pet you want, you know. Dogs, cats, fish, monkeys, you really can have any kind of pet you want. What about a puma? Can you have a puma for a pet?
Me: No, I really don't think you can have a puma for a pet.
K: Ok, no puma. When I get home I am going to eat a hot dog and some Cheetos.
Me: Sounds good.

Pics from Dress Rehearsal

In no particular order, and with no commentary from me, are some pictures from dress rehearsal. For Macy's Hop and Kaylin's, they performed twice. So the first time I video taped, and the second time I took pictures. For some reason they only did Macy's Eiffel Tower one once, so I only got video. Too bad too, because we can't take pictures or video during the actual performance.

Dance Videos

All right, let's try these video links. They are to my PhotoBucket account. This is from the dress rehearsal, so they don't have makeup on, and you can see people moving around and talking. And Yes, i am horrible at taking video! The real performance is Friday night.

Macy's Eiffel Tower one is here This is her Tap and Ballet class. I love this one! Especially the dress!She's been practicing around the kitchen for weeks.

Macy's At the Hop one This is her Jazz class. I love the little trays they are carrying! I don't like how many kids are in that class, but she loves taking Jazz. Her teacher is awesome! And she has been doing this one aroudn the kitchen for weeks too.

Kaylin's Sea Cruise I wasn't a big fan of her outfit, but it looks cute up on stage with all of them. She refuses to practice at home, so I was worried she wouldn't know the routine at all. She did better than I was expecting! :)

Another timeline of my busy dance night

Dress rehearsal tonight for dance. I'll post pictures and the video as soon as I can get them downloaded. I know you love timelines of how busy my nights are, so here you go while you wait for the video and pictures.

3:00--go for a walk outside after school
3:45--get Kaylin from preschool and get her ready in the bathroom at school. Her fellow preschoolers called her "one hot mama" and constantly touch her velvet outfit
4:20--arrive at dress rehearsal and wait for Kaylin's turn
5:20--Kaylin's done and leave for home
5:40--Arrive home and get Macy ready in her outfit
6:00--scarf down hamburger Bobby grilled tonight
6:10--leave with Macy for her performances
6:30--Arrive at dress rehearsal; get Macy's flower pinned on her hat and wait for her turn
6:45--Macy's Eiffel Tower dance; take her upstairs and change her costume
7:35--Macy's At the Hop dance
8:15--After watching a couple friend's dances, leave the theatre
8:30--Drop off a friend at her house
8:45--Run by gas station to get Macy a snack and drink for school tomorrow--as a reward, her teacher lets them bring in special things sometimes.
9:00--Macy in bed without reading to me (gasp!) but it's a while before she and Kaylin are asleep.

Whew. That made me tired just reading about all my running. Thank goodness Bobby was off tonight. It was so nice with him having dinner ready, and only having one child with me at a time.

Bedtime Stories

I was so tired last night and put the girls to bed right after Girl Scouts so I could go to bed. Macy, as usual, fell asleep quickly and Kaylin, as usual, didn't. She ended up in bed with me. We had the following conversation:

Kaylin: Daddy's clock says "9 dot dot 15" {told you I went to bed early}
Me: Mommy's clock says Go to sleep.
Kaylin: Kaylin's clock says Don't go to sleep and stay up all night!

Kaylin always struggles going to sleep. She does this weird thing: she lays there and whispers to herself while tossing and turning, and then just falls asleep in an instant. It cracks me up. I used to think she was trying to avoid going to sleep, but I know now it is her way of putting herself to sleep.

It is why Macy and Kaylin are not good at falling asleep together. The whispering and tossing keeps Macy up, and annoys her. About once a month they want to "have a sleepover" in Macy's room, and that lasts until Macy kicks Kaylin out.

It's back to home...

Getting ready to leave the Valley of the Sun. It's been a fun trip. Not the best I've been on--Denver was probably the best, followed by San Fransisco and Philadelphia--but a great trip nonetheless. The girls were great, the sun was wonderful, and it was a fun time. But, as always, I am so ready to come home!

There was chocolate cake at our fancy dinner last night, and chocolate covered strawberries! Yeah!

It'll be a long day today; we lose two hours, and we have a three hour layover in the Denver airport. We're going to watch Twilight on DVD!

Washington, D.C. is the trip this fall, and I absolutely can not wait for that one.

Oh, and I timed it: as soon as one plane lands, it is excatly two minutes when another one lands.

Phoenix Day Three

It was beautiful today in Phoenix! The sun was so bright I got a bad headache and had to lay down in the dark hotel room, but it was a great day.

We had a delicious dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory; anyone remember when there was one in downtown KC? We ate there in St. Louis too, and it is G-O-O-D!! This group has been really quiet, and they finally opened up at dinner and we laughed until we cried.

We went to a free museum tonight. Got there at 8:30--thought they closed at 10, but they closed at 9. Oops. So we speed-walked through the museum and came home.

In Phoenix!

Arrived in Phoenix this afternoon. Had two really bumpy flights, and some mechanical issue where they had to disconnect something (I really didn't want to listen to the problem) but we arrived safe and sound.

We did our obligatory trip to the Hard Rock Cafe, accidently rode the light rail in the wrong direction for about 25 minutes, and visited Tempe, home of Arizona State University.

A couple students and I hiked up a small mountain, Hayden Butte (link here) We were in flip flops, which was probably not the smartest thing. It was steep! I cut my hand on a rock and didn't realize it until later. It was fun, though. I'm going to be sore tomorrow.

We have five girls with us on this trip. They are really good kids, too. Tonight on the light rail we talked for about 20 minutes about BOOKS. It was so neat to have a conversation like that, instead of boys, clothes, make-up, etc. To read accounts of my trips with students to Philadelphia and St. Louis, click here and here and ! here

Tomorrow is the zoo, the botanical gardens, and an art museum. Another full day! It's about 20 degrees cooler than normal, so that's disappointing.

Hair Emergency!

Tonight I witnessed the funniest thing at Dollar General. While I was checking out, two women in their early twenties came flying in, and headed straight to the hair coloring section. One of them still had hair dye on her hair! You could see the platinum blond solution still on her hair. I heard her say, "I got this one last time, and that one this time! What do I do?"

I chuckled to myself and headed outside. Their car was parked crooked, and I think it was still running.

I wondered what she was going to do. Put on more solution? How did she know something was wrong with the one on her hair?

Back to packing for me...

'For I know the plans that I have for you...

" 'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope" Jeremiah 29:11

The other night, I drove by a house that I really wanted when we were house-hunting. It was perfect--huge yard, huge bedrooms, I loved it. I can't remember the details of why we didn't get it, but I think it was because it was For Sale By Owner, and the seller didn't want to work with our buyers agent.

I was sad, but we moved on.

As I sat on my deck today, surrounded by ten children and their moms, I smiled thinking of that house. We ended up in a wonderful neighborhood, with all kinds of friends the girls' age within walking distance. They have a great dance studio within two minutes, where the same friends dance. They play soccer and basketball and t-ball with the same friends, and have a very secure childhood because of where we live. If we had bought that other house, the girls would have missed out on so much. While we didn't know it, God had other plans for us and that first house wasn't it.

When you lose a child, born or unborn, it's hard to see any silver lining. I've lost three, and while it was hard to understand at the time, God knew the plans he had for us.

The first child we lost, we were young, living away from our family, married only a year. We weren't settled. I had to be on bed rest for my two girls, and God knew being on bed rest an hour from my doctor, my hospital, and my family was not a good thing. We needed to grow up, and to have time alone before we threw kids into the mix.

When we lost the second child, we had two beautiful girls. As I look back now, I see that the timing wasn't right. Bobby had started his fire classes, and was gone two or three nights a week. There was still a chance Kaylin needing more surgery or another cast. Taking care of two girls, teaching full-time, and taking master's classes was enough for me, and God knew it, even if I didn't.

And for the third, I was due in March. Just last month. Anyone notice how completely stressed out I was last month? It was a rough time. Once again, God had different plans for us, even if I thought I knew better.

" 'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope" Jeremiah 29:11

Twitter!!

For those of you who don't know, Twitter is the newest, hip fad in terms of social networking. Tons of celebs do it, and other normal people. It's become huge in college campuses as a way to get info out, and it's big in the world of journalism as well. In case you hadn't heard, Demi Moore saved the life of a suicidal person through Twitter last week.

What is Twitter, you ask, besides a weird name? Basically, you have 140 characters to "tweet", or say, what you are doing: exciting, meaningless, pointless pieces of info that everyone is dying to learn about you.

Your "tweets" can be followed by others on a blog, on Facebook or MySpace, or through a text on your cell phone.

Several blogs that I follow use Twitter, so in my infinite amount of time now that I'm on spring break and don't have a master's capstone paper hanging over my head, I joined Twitter as well. You can see my Twitter updates on the right side of my blog at the top.

You can follow my updates on the blog, or sign up to receive a text of my "tweets" when I send one. I may end up with no followers, and that's okay. It's just something new I want to try. At the very least, check my blog often to see what I have updated on Twitter!

Kaylin's special day

As we're spring break this week, Kaylin had a "special kindergarten day" today. Her screening is coming up soon, so needed to get her shots taken care of.

First, I let her pick where we ate lunch. She picked McDonald's. One of these days our kids are going to realize there are nicer places to pick, but we'll take it for now. She had her usual: nuggets, fries, but had white milk instead of her usual chocolate. She was excited about sitting at one of tall swivel chairs, but her shoes kept falling off.

Then, off to the doctor. Here is she with her new Build a Bear monkey, Gabriella. Gabriella needed to be safe also.

While waiting for the doctor, she read to her monkey.

Next she decided to spin around on the doctor's chair enough to make her dizzy.

Of course, Gabriella needed to spin around also.

And then we were ready to go...


Only the nurse wouldn't let her hold the monkey for some reason. I had to hold Kaylin, and hold down her arms and legs. Not sure how she expected Kaylin to react, but she was surprised Kaylin was so calm. She didn't cry, or flinch, or bat an eye that she received FIVE shots.

I had planned on getting her birth certificate today too, but forgot until I was almost home.

My baby is now ready for kindergarten. I don't want to talk about it anymore.

It's done!

My capstone paper is done and sent UPS to my professor. 41 pages, 10,532 words.

Wow, it feels good to be done. I still have 1 more final in my other class, but that's an easy peesy one. The big one is done, and that's what matters.

Dodgeball and other things...

I notice it has been a few days since I've posted; better get on that before certain people point it out to me.

DodgeBall tournament was Wednesday and Thursday--when all was said and done, we made about about $2300 for newspaper. I was very pleased with the results! We had 44 teams, and about 250 high school students, along with other community teams. Our superintendent was even on a team, and Bobby had a team of firefighters. I was very proud of all the students--no trash talking, no arguing with the refs, no bad sports...everyone was respectful, and the community members noticed. On Friday, all you could hear in the hall was kids talking about the tournament! Apparently everyone wants another tournament next year. If we earn that same amount every year, that's awesome! I am glad it's over, though.

Today was busy--At 9:15, Kaylin had dance pictures. At 12:00, Macy had a soccer game a half hour away, and at 3:45 Macy had dance pictures. Of course, Bobby was working, so I have shuttled kids, changed clothes, put on make-up, bobby pinned hair, adjusted costumes, and sat out in wind all day today.

My thesis awaits...I have a date with Office Max to get it bound, and the post office to get it mailed on Monday.