An evil mastermind in the making

Sebastian: Tristan I want you call me stupid.

Tristan: No.

Sebastian: Tristan, pleeeeeease call me stupid.

Tristan:  No.

Sebastian:  Triiiiiistan! I said, I want to you to call me stupid!

Tristan: Sebastian! NO! No, no, no.  I won't.

Sebastian: Awwwwwwwww!  But I want you to call me stupid so you will get in trouble.

Why I'm so glad summer holidays start soon

Last week.  Ready?  Go!

SUNDAY

Wake up at 4:45am jittery with nervous anticipation.  Drink first cup of tea at 5:20am.  Do make-up for a very special bride and two of her bridesmaids.  Wedding.  Buy gift (classy right?). Reception.  Fall into bed.

MONDAY

Wake up at 5:15am to catch a 7:00am flight out of Kelowna back to Calgary.  Drive home.  Reunion with our sweet babies.  Make school lunches and dinner (scrambled eggs.  Did I mention I was up at 5:15am?), get ready for a crazy week.  Fall into bed.

TUESDAY
AM: Staff meeting at the Dream Centre Church while all my peeps are in school.  Sebastian naps in the afternoon. Wrap teacher gifts.  Make list of supplies to get for Ava’s tea party on Saturday.  

PM: Sebastian’s Preschool Grad-Which-Is-Not-A-Grad as he’s returning next year.

Also the return of the hellish event I call “let’s take a family picture!”.  Here's a tip: If you spend less time whining and more time looking at the camera it will go SO MUCH FASTER!  









Don't do a photo shoot for Sebastian like we did for Tristan and Ava's preschool "grad".  Be the stereotypical parent of a third child.  Take a post-event-everyone's-miserable self-portrait with Mom instead and tell yourself at least it's documented.  Put cranky kids to bed.  Put cranky self to bed.







WEDNESDAY
AM: Big kids go to school for the morning.  Take Sebastian to his Penny Carnival Preschool Wind-up.  Quickly drive across town to get lollipop sticks and melting wafers for cake pops for Ava’s tea party.  Hit the dollar store to get tea party craft supplies.  The problem with planning something in January that won't happen until June is it starts to get a bit out of control. The original "tea and scones" tea party became, over many conversations during our cold, grey winter and our wet, grey spring, cake pops and crafts and tea dresses and a treasure hunt. 

AFTERNOON: Bake mini lemon tea cakes and the cake for the cake pops. Make the sugar cookie dough and refrigerate it.  Make another dessert (orange marsala frozen cheesecake with gingerbread crumbs) for my Thursday night small group which is my turn to host. 

PM: Make and eat dinner in record time.  Run out the door to Tristan and Ava’s last soccer game of the regular season.  Come home.  Wipe the kids down with facecloths because bathing takes too long and too much parental energy.  Fall into bed.

THURSDAY

Make a cup of tea.  Watch it get cold on the counter.  Eat breakfast standing up.  Reheat tea.  Make little cake balls and freeze them. Reheat untouched tea.  Roll out sugar cookie dough and cut out little hearts, tea pots and tea cups which go on a never-ending rotation through the oven.  Dump out cold, still-untouched tea.  Melt chocolate wafers, take cake balls out of the freezer, stick lollipop sticks in them and spoon chocolate over them until covered.  Pass them off to the kids for sprinkles.  Make pink icing and set the kids up at the table to smear the heart cookies with icing and dust with white sugar sprinkles.  Make dinner.  Leave the teapots and teacups to cool. 



 



PM: Do a quick clean and tidy.  Throw a bottle of wine into the fridge to chill before my twisted sisters small group arrives.  With their help, ice, outline and decorate the teacups and teapots while talking about our personal declarations and areas we want to grow in.  Watch the storm roll in.  Take a quick moment to dance in the warm rain.  Say goodnight.  Fall into bed.

FRIDAY

Tristan and Ava’s class “family welcome” water park day (which is why I needed to get all the tea party things made by the end of Thursday).  Drop Tristan off at school.  Take Ava to the doctor to check out the sores in her mouth she's been complaining about for two days.  Turns out it's Hand Foot and Mouth.  Doctor assures me she’s not contagious and prescribes tylenol and slurpees as she can barely swallow it hurts so much.  Stop at Macs for slurpees, meet class at water park at her insistence that she feels “fine, Mom!  I feel fine!  I promise!”.  Play with friends for a bit until I see her sitting listlessly by herself in sweatpants and a hoody shivering in the hot sun and take her home to sleep. 

PM: Soccer wind-up barbeque.  Ava insists on coming to see her soccer friends.  Stay just long enough for the rest of us to eat a hamburger while she lays limply against my arm.  Tell ourselves we're still sane.  Take a picture to prove it.  Bath the kids.  Make a stiff martini.  Make up the tea party treasure hunt clues.  Watch a movie with Hugh.  Stay up way too late for how tired I am.  Fall into bed.




SATURDAY
Tea Party

The tea party Ava has been looking forward to since January, the tea party that we have been collecting tea cups for months for, the tea party that all week has had Ava exclaiming “I can’t believe it’s finally here!  I can’t believe it’s finally happening!”.... is cancelled.  Her poor little mouth in so much pain she can't even try to pretend she feels okay enough to have the party. 

Call all the moms and let them know we have to reschedule.  One mom drops off a slurpee for Ava.  Grieve for my girl.  Grieve that she’s sad and hurting and I can’t fix it with a kiss.  Or even a slurpee for breakfast. 







On the plus side Hugh's "boys only" fishing trip gets put on hold until the tea party is rescheduled and he finishes the playhouse instead.








How was your week?  Come for tea and tell me all about it.  I have cake pops and lemon tea cakes and sugar cookies....

Blog Material

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but I haven’t been blogging very much lately.  Yes, I’ve been busy.  Yes, I’ve been tired.  Yes, it seems like the minute I sit down to put my fingers to keyboard I’m jumping right back up again.  But mostly?  Mostly I just feel too boring to post anything.  I’ve been approaching everything in my life as potential blog material and nothing seems interesting enough to say.  It’s just same old, same old.  This is not to say that I’m bored with my life.  I find my own life quite enjoyable and interesting.  I just haven’t had anything to say I think anyone else would be interested in.    The last blog I posted felt dry and dull and I was bored and thinking who cares? (except me) even as I was posting it!

Shortly after posting that last post an old friend I haven’t talked to in eons called.  “I read your blog this morning,” she said.  “I could so relate.”  She was in the middle of a situation where she desperately needed groceries but her youngest had just gone through a few days of diarrhea and she didn’t trust that he was really over it and was sure that at the most inconvenient moment possible (and don’t we know moms, it’s always at the most inconvenient moment possible) he’d have a relapse.  While we were discussing how glamorous it is to be a mom, two of her kids were decorating the peanut butter jar with Canuck logos in anticipation of Game 7.  Fifteen or so minutes later Jaime interrupted me with a gasp.  Unbeknownst to her, those two darling little boys had wandered away and managed to cover themselves and their entire bathroom in Canuck peanut butter.  Jaime walked in to a peanut butter-crusted sink one inch from overflow.  “Uh..... can I call you back later?” she asked.

As we hung up the phone I thought, oh wow.  Poor Jaime.  That would really suck.  Jesus please give her strength and grace to get through this.  My next thought was, that would be a seriously good blog. And I’m not kidding, for a moment, I wished my kids would do something like that so I’d finally have something good to write about.  And then I remembered that when it’s your own kids you don’t just get to write about it you actually have to clean it up.  And do you know how hard it is to get peanut butter out of hair?  Or out of sink drains?  The only reason it would be a good story to write about is because it absolutely SUCKED to live! 

I talked to another friend today whose husband is breeding his German Shepherd.  Oh.my.word.  I told Heidi that she needs to write a book or a blog or something.  You would not BELIEVE how expensive it is and all the crazy things that have gone down in this process.  One of the least crazy things was having to pay to get the dogs sperm counted... which... umm.... you have to get the sperm before it can be counted.  So many times through this process Heidi or I have said, “Seriously!  This is real life. You couldn’t write stuff like this!”  It would be great blog material but again, it’s stuff that SUCKS to live through.

So instead of feeling like I have nothing interesting to say because I don’t have a lot of crazy drama in my life right now, I’m taking a moment to say a heartfelt thank you to God that I don’t have any crazy drama in my life right now.  There is nothing going on that is SUCKING to live through.  Do I think we will never have crazy drama in our house again?  No.  But I’m not living in fear wondering when it will come.   Instead, I’m doing laundry, going grocery shopping, refereeing kid arguments, washing dishes, making meals, cuddling my babies, cheering at soccer games, laughing with friends, and catching up on all the So You Think You Can Dances I missed because they got trumped by basketball and hockey play-offs, and you know what?  I’m LOVING my life.

A list of random things

1.  It is 8:44am.  I haven't had breakfast yet but I have stripped the beds and thrown in my first load of sheets and put away a load of laundry that has been sitting on the floor for two days.  I haven't had my first cup of tea yet but I've written my to-do list for today.

2.  As the school year is winding down we're in the middle of a last gasp of busyness.  It's like they just want you to be really, super-duper, extra-glad it's finally summer holidays.  I'm glad! I'm glad! 

3.  My vow to watch every Canucks game of the finals has been a bust.  Life has just been too busy.  So far I've only sat down and watched one game start to finish.  Tonight will make it two.  I'm nervous already.  They have to win.  They just have to.  And it can't go into overtime or I will lose my sanity.

4.  Watching the kids play soccer this year has been so much fun.  This is their second year and I can't get over how much better they are this year than last.  Last year Ava was totally the girl who sat in the goal picking flowers until the ball came her way.  She was the girl who twirled and sang on the field until the combined shouting of her team and parents broke through her consciousness and she'd realize the ball was pretty much at her feet and she'd run it toward the goal and kick and score.... on her own team.  This year she is a fireball!  She is right in the middle of all the action and consistently gets the break-away.  She hasn't quite figured out her timing once she's within striking distance but has still managed to score 4 goals this season.  Tristan last year was just average.  This year he is unbelievable.  He is ridiculously fast, can outrun anyone on the field, has incredible ball control for a six year old and is a goal-scoring machine (also a ball hog which we're working on).  A few games ago our team won 7-1.  Tristan scored 4 goals, Ava 2.  On Monday night they won 5-1.  Tristan scored all our goals.  It is so much fun to watch your kids excel at something you didn't know they were good at.  They're both playing soccer in the Southern Alberta Summer Games in July. 

5.  A friend gave me an Amish Friendship Bread Starter.  It's a 10-day process!  I'm on Day 8 today.  After looking at this bag of mush sitting on my counter for a week Hugh thought I had forgotten about it and was about to throw it out until I very vocally rescued it. 

6. Hugh and I are flying into Kelowna on Saturday at 5:00pm, going to a wedding on Sunday where I'm doing the make-up for the bride and bridesmaids and flying home at 7:00am Monday morning.  So much to do/arrange for 38 hours of being away but I'm so looking forward to this wedding.  It's going to be a great chance to catch up with a lot people I haven't seen in about 5 years.

7.  I need to make my kids breakfast.  I need to eat breakfast. My washing machine just beeped so I need to throw another load in.  And then I can tackle the rest of my to-do list.  At least the sun isn't shining and calling for me to come out to play.  I always believe her when she says there will be time "tomorrow, tomorrow".  She lies.

Heal the Past. Live the Present. Dream the Future.

I head up an incredible team of women at the Dream Centre Church and together we plan events and dream for and pray for the women of our church.  Last Saturday we had a ladies breakfast where one of the girls on my leadership team spoke about freedom.  I wrote a blog about the event and my own personal revelations about spiritual/emotional freedom on the Dream Centre website.

If you're interested you can check it out here.

Happy Friday everyone! It's a glorious sunny day, my big kids are in school, my not-such-a-baby baby boy is asking for a cuddle and there is a deck chair calling my name.

A picture may be worth a thousand words but I still had to write a few

I finally got my vacation pictures off my camera.  In the process I got distracted looking through the folder of photos taken in the month before our holidays.  Want know how to make your baby grow up overnight and make yourself wonder if that vasectomy your husband got three years ago was such a good idea after all?

Give him a haircut.

And then go cry yourself to sleep because your baby's babyhood is gone forever and the baby era in your family is gone forever and then torture yourself wondering why-oh-why you didn't have another baby when babies are so delicious and wonderful and perfect in every way...

And then after a good nights sleep, when peace of mind and perspective has returned, remind yourself how awesome it is that you get to have a good nights sleep because you don't have any babies anymore, that you don't miss diapers or strollers or diaper bags, and then have your little man wrap his arms around your neck and say, "Oh mom, you're my best friend."

The end.