Our Marine on leave

Matt got 2 weeks of leave during the holidays before reporting for duty at Miramar near San Diego, CA. He spent the first week with us, and will spend the second week with his mom in Idaho. We were so glad to have him, though we didn't do much around here. Bill was sort of, kind of, but not really laid off from work so we felt we couldn't go do anything that cost money. That meant a lot of time at home playing games as a family. I enjoyed it because time at home is relaxing for me. Matt, being a young, adventurous Marine, was very gentlemanly about being bored stiff.
Matt is currently a Private-First Class, but should rank up to a Lance Corporal in January. Also, the scuttlebutt on base is that they will be deployed to Afghanistan in August!

I think he has grown quite handsome. He certainly draws plenty of attention in his uniform! All of the young people stare. Many of the older generations come up to him to shake his hand and thank him for his service. That makes me feel very proud of having such a son.

Will's room is ready

Here is Will's room all ready to move in. He has one dark navy wall and the rest are Ralph Lauren's Coastal Sand, all from the River Rock collection. It makes a really cool texture on the walls. The trim is high gloss to create a nice variation on textures in the room. The floor is bamboo. Sometime after the holidays the finish carpenter will come back and install doors on the closet. That will mean another big mess, but, oh well.

Pepper the drowned rat-kitty

We bathe all of the animals once a week (and the dogs frequently when it snows and/or rains) whether they like it or not. That is one of the ways I am able to live with cats in the house...I am allergic, after all! Here is a priceless photo of Pepper right after his bath in the laundry room sink.

Christmas, the rest of the story...

Okay, so, here is the rest of our Christmas. Bill very thoughtfully gave the puppies candy cane shaped doggy treats to keep them occupied so they wouldn't bother us during the present opening. Helena got a digital camera, as you already know from a previous post. Will got a street hockey set and Matt got a gift card to Game Stop so he could stock up on whatever games he didn't have yet. The kids had a good time and so did we. We went visiting after that. That pretty much sums up our Christmas day!

Family Photos!

We decided to ask my brother-in-law to come over and take some photos for us while Matt is in town. I downloaded them to my computer and played around a bit in Picasa to create a collage of our family. So, here we are! The outside photo is our yard today, and the inside photos are in front of our fireplace.

Helena's room finished!

This is a photo of Helena moved into her room. Bill is going to build a low platform for her mattress since she decided she no longer wants her traditional bed frame.

Painting Helena's room

Here is a photo gallery of the painting process for Helena's bedroom wall. She wanted 3 white walls and one red one. I then suggested that I paint white graphic flowers onto the red wall that would reverse to red flowers on the white wall adjacent. Hard to put in words, but easy to understand in photo!

Here is the layout of the flowers in painter's tape...

...and me in the middle of the whole process...

...and the finished red wall!

Surprise photos of Helena

Sometimes I sync my camera to the computer and find fun photos of Helena. She will steal my camera and have an impromptu photo shoot. This one is taken in our back yard in late November, early December.

This will probably be one of the last gems I find on my camera, however,...she got a digital camera of her own for Christmas.

Christmas!

On Christmas Eve we spent most of the day working hard on getting the basement ready for the following day. We finished the trim painting in the bathroom, the painting of Will's room, and moved Will and Helena down to their new rooms. Then I cleaned up Will's old room and readied it for Matt, who was struggling to travel across the country to reach us and spend the holidays with us! He left North Carolina at 5:30 am and didn't arrive in SLC until 10:00 pm! We are so glad he made it, though!





On the topic of Matt, he finished his training in North Carolina! After his 14 day leave, he has to report to Miramar, CA (the "Top Gun" base in San Diego) as his permanent duty station. Rough life!!! I am glad, though. It means we can plan trips to go see him without shelling out a ton of $.

Will was very excited to have his brother come for Christmas. He was counting days until Matt came, not until Christmas day.

Here is a photo of Matt torturing Will. Isn't brotherly love wonderful?

And a video if still images are not enough to enjoy!

Christmas has been wonderfully snowy this year!!! Christmas is the only time I love snow. After New Year it can all melt for all I care.

I have to go take the troops on a shopping spree now...more to come later!

the kids' school photos

I have to confess now, that I am rather hot/cold with this technology thing. I go for stretches of plugged in modern me, followed by stretches of old fashioned, don't look at a computer for weeks at a time, me. I get particularly unplugged when I am on break from school. Sorry!

So, here are Helena's and Will's school mug shots!

Cats and dogs, and Dogs and cats

Everyone is friends now! The kitten, Pepper, absolutely rules the roost. When food is put down for the cats, Tigger will wait while Pepper eats. I have come across the cats sleeping and grooming together. I have also come across the kitten sitting in the dogs' bed with them and wrestling with them. He loves to attack their tails.

Bill will feed the kitten anything off his plate! When the kitten got sick and puked, Bill grumbled about having to clean it up. I just smiled at him and thanked him for doing it. I didn't really feel the need to point out that the kitten was probably puking up whatever funky people food he ate off of Bill's plate.

Yesterday, Bill was finishing off a plate of beans, cheese, and salsa. I should note that Bill likes his salsa ON FIRE! as it were. That hot salsa was a bit too much for the kitty, but Pepper was VERY interested in Bill's egg nog. So...Bill poured some egg nog onto the left over salsa on his empty plate and put it down for Pepper. After a moment's hesitation, Pepper licked the plate clean!

Then, I sat down to eat with my plate of food.

(I should note that we don't currently have a dining room table due to the remodel, so we eat on the couches in the living room.)

Pepper came over eagerly to find out what I was having and to share it with me. Now, I DO NOT share my food with animals! I hissed at Pepper and he backed off at once. Will thought that was the most funny thing. It seemed to work, though. Terrible that I have to remind a little snip of a thing who's boss in this house. He thinks we are all there to entertain him.

Getting a Christmas tree

We bought our Christmas tree yesterday. We decided that since the whole house is in disarray; we would get a little tree and put it in the basement family room. Little is right! This is the smallest tree we have ever had! It is only 5' tall. Helena spent the evening decorating the empty room, then the kids decorated the tree this morning. I think it is beautiful even if it is small!

The torture of parent/teacher conference!

Last night was parent/teacher conference at the Junior High. They used to have all the teachers take up seats in the cafeteria and commons area so that parents could see which lines were shorter and make informed decisions about which line to stand in for the most productive use of their time. I liked it that way. Apparently, someone didn't. Now, all the teachers are in their classrooms and parents have to slog around the whole building, standing in long lines, wondering if there is some teacher they need to see just sitting there with no line! You don't dare leave the line you are in to find out, though.
With 2 students at the school, I had 18 teachers to see. I didn't see about 5 of them. I did spend 3 hours and 45 min. trying to see the others, though.
I have to say, my kids do have some wonderful teachers! Helena's orchestra teacher understands that ballet is Helena's first priority and excuses her from orchestra performances that conflict with ballet performances (this happens shockingly frequently). Mrs. Smith (the teacher) is just glad Helena is such a hard worker and loves to have her in the class. I think between the 2 of us we can convince Helena to continue with the orchestra for another year.
Will's English teacher is fantastic! She is the most plugged in teacher I have ever known. The level of communication coming out of that classroom is phenomenal! She even has Will writing! He showed me the start of a story he is making up; and if you know Will at all, you will know what a miracle that is!

A really bad day!

Yesterday my son, Will, called me at school to tell me that he burned his finger on hot glue in the art classroom at the Jr. High. He wanted me to tell the secretary that he could have Tylenol. That was first period. The burn left the entire pad of his right index finger white and blistered. Fourth period for him is PE. He didn't want to play basketball with the class because of the burnt finger and asked the teacher if he could write a report instead of participate. The teacher said 'no, just use your left hand'. So he did. He managed to jam the middle finger on his left hand when someone passed him the ball. When I picked him up, he was in tears with an icepack on his left hand. He was sure the finger was broken. I wasn't sure, neither was the doctor when I took Will to see him. So we spent the evening at the hospital waiting for x-rays to reveal the truth.
The truth? No breaks. Still, it was a pretty rotten day for Will. Now he has bandages on both hands and rehearsals for his band concert next Thursday.

A Driving Permit!

Helena got her driver's permit last week! She is actually doing great. She is a much better driver than I was even at 18 years! She is only 15. She drives every opportunity I give her. I won't let her drive to or from school, however, because it is too crazy, busy with pedestrians and impatient parents driving. I also don't want to play Chinese fire drill every morning in the midst of the chaos.

Thanksgiving holiday?

You know, Thanksgiving is not a very restful holiday. The whole time food is being prepared, family is visited or else you are frantically cleaning your own house in preparation for company.
And, of course, there is Black Friday! Helena and I got up at midnight in order to stand in line at Best Buy for the opportunity to buy a laptop at a screaming sale price.
Most of the break I woke up early because I couldn't sleep. Isn't that always the way of it? You struggle to get up and get the kids to school on time on normal days and look forward to sleeping in on holiday. Nope, some demented internal clock snaps you awake at an ungodly hour! You lay awake thinking of all the things that need to happen in the upcoming day and decide it would be for the best if you just got up and got started on all of it.
I ended up coming down with a cold just in time to go back to work. Probably a combination of lack of sleep, too much work, and standing out in the cold November air for 5 hours on Friday.

The extra work pays off!

The directors of The Nutcracker have evaluated all of the girls dancing the Chinese part. Helena's extra practices paid off; she's in! Some of the girls will not be performing it, however. I hope they don't get too discouraged. Helena plans to put in more extra practices just to make sure she is very ready to perform. It is a big deal to her because Chinese is a triplet dance of only 3 girls on the stage. She has always been one of the background dancers before. This is the first time she will be receiving applause meant for her specifically.
For those of you in town who would like to see the performances, she dances with Utah Regional Ballet. Their production of The Nutcracker is performed annually at the Covey Center for the Arts on Center Street in Provo. There is a link to both the ballet company and the Covey Center on the right side of my blog.

The life of a hardened criminal.

On Nov. 19th, a county sheriff pulled me over and gave me a ticket for failure to signal! GOOD GRIEF! Failure to SIGNAL?! I am so glad he is out there protecting all the rest of you poor, innocent, helpless citizens from hardened criminals like myself! I probably would have gone on recklessly failing to signal for the rest of my born days if he had not intervened on your behalf. I am a chastened and reformed former criminal who has seen the error of my ways now that I have relieved myself of the burden of $82.00; payable to the county justice court.

Twilight Mania!

My daughter's birthday is tomorrow. She wanted to have a party, but our house is not ready to host anything, so we came up with a great solution. The new Twilight movie came out today and is a huge deal with the teen-aged set. For her birthday party/present we let her invite 7 friends to come to the movie with us on Saturday, followed by a pizza party at Cobblestone Cafe. Done! She is so excited she can hardly stand it.

power outage

The local power company sent a notice to the school and all the households in this neighborhood at the beginning of the week informing us of a planned power outage today starting at 1:00. The school decided to make it a common day (that means all students come at 8:00 instead of spliting the school population like we do usually). The concern is for the bell system, the fire alarms, the lack of lighting in the bathrooms, etc. However, we will still be in session for 1 1/2 hours without power. The kids think this is a great adventure and they all squealed and giggled when the power actually did shut off. They thought for sure I would not have them paint, because how can you paint without power? Well, they found out you can paint just fine with the light from the windows. :)

ballet trauma

Most days Helena comes home from ballet on a natural high. She thinks it is the best thing in the world and can't imagine doing anything else. When she was cast in the Chinese dance in the Nutcracker, she was on cloud nine!
Yesterday she came home from ballet totally dejected. Apparently, the 3 girls in her cast doing Chinese are not getting the dance down as fast the the directors want. Unless they can pull it off by Saturday, they will be pulled from the part. Helena desperately wants this part! She spent the evening in a lethargic depression from which I could not pull her out.
She plans to stay after at ballet today and tomorrow to put in extra practice and I hope it will be enough. She is still cast in the Arabian corps de ballet and the Waltz corp de ballet, but Chinese was the first part with high visibility she has ever received.
It is so hard to watch your child struggle! I want to comfort her and give her everything her heart desires! I hope that she can achieve this goal, but I also hope that if it is not to be, that she can rise above it and continue to do well in ballet.

Pepper!

Our new kitten's informal name is Pepper, but we are playing with Red Hot Chili Pepper or some such as a full name. He is a little firebrand! He climbs EVERYTHING! He eats EVERYTHING, including Bill's salsa! And best of all, he totally cowed Tigger! It was the most funny thing to see Tigger running away from a kitten 1/4th his size! Tigger kept hissing and growling at Pepper, but Pepper ignored the rude comments and persevered. Pepper would sneak up on Tigger and sit as close as possible until Tigger noticed. When Tigger hissed, Pepper yawned and laid down with his back to Tigger every time! By this morning, Tigger and Pepper were playing and wrestling together like brothers.

My son Will

Will played football again this year. This time, his team was really good! They only lost one game in the season, but lost in the playoffs. He was #14 this year.

He was a devil for Halloween.

He plays the trumpet with the Jr. High beginning jazz band.

He also plays the baritone (bass euphonium) with the concert band.

Our basement

We are finishing the basement of our 1927 Craftsman style bungalow house. Believe it or not, the basement remained unfinished for over 80 years before this! We are not completely finished, but we are close. The finish details are the most frustrating parts because you are so close, but they take so long to complete! The caulking is taking forever because I can only work on it in my free time (free time? Ha ha!).

Here is a preview before and after...

The new kitten!

While Bill and I were shopping last night, we noticed 3 children loitering at the entrance of WalMart. They had a cute little kitten with them. It was the last of a litter of 6 that their parents told them they had to get rid of. Mom and Dad were apparently shopping in the store and the kids were hoping some sap would come along and take the kitten. Yes, I agree it was horribly irresponsible on the parents' part to leave their kids unattended like that, but the oldest was a Jr. high student, so I presume they figured he'd look out for the younger ones.

Anyway...I was the sap who fell in love with the kitten and took it home!

This is him! He is 2 months old and doesn't have a name yet. Helena wants to call him Kiwi but we haven't decided yet.

Oh, and Tigger (our other cat) hates him! The dogs, Demi and Bella, both want desperately to love the new kitten, but the kitten hates them, too! I told the kids not to expect much more than an uneasy truce.

My beautiful daughter

This is my cute girl, Helena. If I can find other pictures of her, I'll post them. Right now my favorite picture is missing! At Disneyland, she went around kissing every character she could find.

She plays the violin, but it is not her first passion. I am hoping she will continue to take lessons, but I will not force it.

Her passion is ballet. She dances with Utah Regional Ballet!

So, it wasn't so bad...

The dinner turned out to be pretty fun. My step mother-in-law and I spent the evening steering the conversation into safe channels. She cooked a great meal almost entirely out of her garden and the evening passed pleasantly. I am even considering letting them come to my house for dinner... once I have a dining room again, that is.

A duty visit

Tonight we are going to go visit my father-in-law and his wife for dinner. Just Bill and I. No kids. We do not have a relationship with him by our choice. He was verbally and mentally abusive to his first wife (my mother-in-law) for about 50 years before she finally found the backbone to leave him. Never since I have know him has he been truly interested in our lives outside of trying to sell us on some new crackpot viewpoint of his about politics and/or religion. A perfect example would be the year we had Christmas Dinner with him and he brought 'presents' for Bill and me, but none for the kids. The card attached the the 'present' said... "To Bill and Christina"!!!! I had been married to his son for 13 years at that point and he still didn't know my name?! Oh, and the 'present'? A bag full of anti-Mormon literature. Yeah. Merry Christmas to you, too.
So, 'why in the world are you going', you ask? Because since he has married this second wife, he has actually made an attempt at mending bridges. I think this has more to do with the moderating influence of his wife than anything else. We had a dinner with him last year in neutral territory (a restaurant) that, if embarrassing due to his appalling table manners, was not a complete disaster. So tonight I humor my husband and his yearning for a normal relationship with his father by going to dinner. Not with the kids, of course! There is too much history to expose my children to him.

Seriously?!

So, last night my husband asked me where I had put the door handle hardware. I thought it an odd question since we are not currently installing the hardware. I should mention now that our doors are old and have the old mortise style locks complete with skeleton keys.
I went downstairs to help him locate the box that the parts are stored in, only to discover that our 12 year old son managed to lock himself in the new bathroom because the mortise was in the door without a handle installed! He was just messing around, the bathroom is not functional yet. Bill wanted the parts so he could rescue our son. LOL!

Life as I know it

Here is a summary of life as I know it...
I slowly wake up every morning to the obnoxious sound of Bob Lonsberry on am radio. My brain takes at least 1/2 an hour to fully swim to the surface of consciousness. I rouse the kids out of bed and eat my traditional breakfast of organic flax seed/pumpkin seed granola cereal with fat free milk. On A days, I throw on some clothes and drive Will and his trumpet to AF Junior High at 7:00 am for Jazz Band. After finishing my morning preparations, I drive Helena and her violin to the same school at 8:00 am and head for work. On B days both kids leave the house at 8:00 am, but this time we are lugging an euphonium (big brass instrument) for Will and the Concert Band.
I arrive at school at 8:30 every morning. That is 15 minutes early. I like to be early every day so I don't feel guilty if I ever have to leave early for an emergency.
I teach visual art to elementary school students. I have nine 30 min. classes each day with no breaks in between and one 30 min. lunch break. I teach first through 6th grades, a total of approx. 1000 students, but only have 1/4th of the students each term. Right now I have 4 2nd grade classes before lunch and five 1st grade classes after.
At 2:30 pm I leave work and head straight to the Junior High to pick up my kids. They get out at 2:45, but I usually don't reach the school until nearly 3:00 pm. That is okay with me, because it gives the kids time to gather their stuff, visit with teachers, and even fix grade problems. It also gives the parking lot time to empty out. The road and parking lot at the Junior High are the most stressful and dangerous places to be right before and right after school!
We hurry home so Helena can gather her ballet gear. I drive her to ballet every day at 3:30 pm. On the way back home I try to run any errands needed. When I get home I have to 'crack the whip' over Will to get him to work on his homework. During football season, this is also when I drive him to and from his practices.
I pick Helena back up from ballet at either 6:00 or 6:30, depending on the day. It is a 30 min. round trip to the ballet studio and back each time I drive it. When we get home it is time to help Helena with any studying she needs to do. At that point I need to go to the basement and work on the remodel of the house. Right now I am doing the Spackle on all the finish carpentry nail holes and the caulking of all seams.
Dinner is a sorry affair at our house. Most days it is fend for yourself. I know I could do better in this area, but dinner prep takes time that I usually just don't have. Bill gets home at such sporadic times that I can't predict when to have a traditional meal ready. And, of course, we don't have a dining room because it has been converted to my bedroom during the remodel.
Bill goes to bed around 9:30 and leaves me the dubious pleasure of sending the kids to bed. If I am lucky, I can get the kids to go to bed by 9:30 pm. Usually, however, the kids make it to bed around 10:30 with me following suit at 11:00 pm.

Do I really have time for this?

So, really, do I have time to blog? I think it is a really cool way to communicate, but I have a really hard time getting time on my own computer. With two teenagers in the house with an unbelieveable amount of online computer homework it can be difficult to get on my own computer! The computer is also currently sitting in my 'bedroom' (which is really our dining room doing standby bedroom duty during a house remodel), which means that by the time I get hold of the computer, Bill is ready to go to bed!

I'll give it a try, though.