Friday

Well, I had to make the trip to camp and back four times this week (once to take the girls, once to pick up Baylee for her doctor's appointment, once to take her back, and once to pick the girls up after camp ended), and, I'm not gonna lie, THAT WAS TERRIBLE.  I swear, Seattle has the worst traffic...maybe on earth.  Next week is going to feel like a breeze after this.

Someone got a picture of the girls in their "costumes" for the Super Heroes theme dinner.  lol

I think the only other news around here is that Zach's been getting boxes and boxes of electronics delivered here, because he's going to build his own computer.  He's been wanting to do this for years, and he finally decided to go for it.

Oh, I thought of one more thing!  I lost 6.8 pounds this week (today marks one week on this diet) doing something that I'm not quite ready to talk about yet.  I don't want to jinx it. 

Purple

She saw the orthopedic surgeon today and got a purple cast.  She has to wear it for 4 weeks and then she'll get an "air cast" for 2 weeks.  Then she'll be done!

Real Quick...

I wasn't able to get Baylee in for an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon until tomorrow, so in the meantime she's been at camp.  Something tells me she's doing just fine, though...

(One of my friends sent me this picture today.)

Tomorrow I'll pick her up from camp, take her to the doctor where she'll probably get a cast, then I'll drop her back off again.

Crazy

Well, we've had quite a day.  The main thing that happened was that I got a phone call from the camp nurse a little after lunchtime, and the first thing she said (after saying who she was) was "Everything is fine, but..."  Long story short, Baylee got hurt.  She was playing a big, outdoor game, and she ran into another camper and fell on her wrist.  The nurse decided to have one of the staff take her to the ER just to be on the safe side, because Baylee was in pain, and that's where it was discovered that her wrist was/is broken.  After several emails and phone calls with the camp nurse and the camp director, it's been decided that Baylee can stay at camp for the week.  I'm going to have to drive over there and pick her up, probably tomorrow, to take her to an orthopedic doctor for a cast, but then I'll drop her back off.  It's what she wants and the camp is totally willing, so...okay, I guess!

In other news, Drew carpooled to work with a guy, another construction worker, veeeeery early this morning.  In fact, he was out the door by 3:45am.  Later, after Drew got home for the day, he mentioned that the guy has only had his license "back" for 3 months.  It turns out he lost it because of time spent in prison for car theft.  [blink]   So, yeah, my kid spent the entire day with an ex-con.  Drew said he seemed like a nice guy and a hard worker, though, and he complimented Drew on being precise with his furniture building.

Finally, I thought Zach was working at the shop all day, only to discover that his boss and his boss' family invited him to go crabbing on the Puget Sound instead.  So unbeknownst to me he spent the day out on a boat, and now he's spending the evening eating fresh crab. 

They sent me these pics...

Camp

Today was a really good day, but it was long and I'm tired, so this post will be short.

Let's see...Baylee and I taught the 4s and 5s at church.  They have tons of toys and costumes and arts-and-crafts supplies and stuff in there, and Baylee found this hat.  What's kooky is that it's a real hat that's meant to be worn in public. 

When we got home Baylee and Rachel finished packing for camp.  Part of that included putting the finishing touches (and by "finishing touches" I mean making them from scratch) on their costumes.  Every year the camp has a theme night, and this year's theme is "Super Heroes."  There are different prizes for the best costumes, but something tells me the girls won't be winning anything this year.

They made matching...umm...these:

When it was time I drove them to camp, waited in line for an hour to register them, took a cute picture...

...got them settled in their bunk with hugs and goodbyes, and then I ended up standing in the parking lot and talking for quite awhile to my old friends Todd and Kellie, who were dropping off their own kids.  Finally I drove home in terrible traffic.

In the end I walked in the door of our home to pot roast, peas, and mashed potatoes.  I'm very lucky to have Mike.

A Scared Little Kid and Pranks

Well, today has been eventful, not in a big way, but in a couple small ways.  First, this morning I heard a siren go by our house and stop.  I remember thinking that whatever was going on was close by.  Then there was a knock at the door.  To be honest, part of me was expecting to open the door to paramedics who had the wrong address, but actually it was Chudier, one of Rachel's littlest sisters.  She's about 5 years old.  She was crying really hard and wanting to know if she could come in.

"Of course!" I said.  "What's wrong?"

She couldn't talk right away because she was crying so much, so I hugged her and asked again, "What's going on, Chudier?"

"My brother had a seizure and an ambulance is at my house.  I'm scared.  Can I be over here for awhile?"

"Is your brother alone?"

"No, my mom is there."

"Does she know where you are?"

"Yes."

I had her come in, wiped her face with a cool washcloth, and then set her up in front of the TV with cartoons, cookies, and milk.  I figured if her mom was dealing with all that, then it would be helpful to get little Chudier out from underfoot.  She soon calmed down, watched TV, played with Gibbs a bit (and fed him her cookies), and then chatted with me.  Eventually she went back home.  I think her brother is okay.  This isn't his first seizure; he has them every so often.

The other thing that happened today is that I wanted to throttle Drew.  He has the day off of work today, and he thought it would be a good idea to spend part of his free time pulling a prank...on me.  He put water in a bunch of mugs, turned them over without spilling them somehow, and set them up all over the house.  The point being that I would come by and say, "What's this overturned mug doing here?"  And then I'd pick it up, only to have water splash everywhere.

I was annoyed.  I made him dismantle and clean everything, all the while letting him know exactly what I thought.  I also took his phone away, because he wouldn't quit laughing.  I guess that's how you know you've truly crossed over from kid to adult:  You stop seeing stuff like that as a practical joke and start seeing it as an irritating mess instead.  Sigh.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm really the last person on earth who should be so mad about something like that, because when I was Drew's age and on into college I was known for pranks.  I even won a "Best Prankster" mock election for it one time.  In fact, it got to the point where I got blamed for stuff even when I didn't do it.

One time I was working as a counselor at summer camp...this was between my sophomore and junior years of college...and someone pulled a huge prank on a director of the camp.  Uncle John, the director, drove around the grounds in a golf cart, you see, and one night someone took all the tires off the cart and hid them all over the place.  They did leave clues, though.  I don't remember all the hiding spots, but one was on an island in the middle of the lake and another was strung up in the rafters of the horse barn.  Poor Uncle John basically went on a wild goose chase at the crack of dawn trying to track down all those tires.  He was especially grouchy about it because, in the process of stepping into a canoe to get the one out on the island, he tipped over and fell into the lake.

At breakfast that day another director of the camp, Charlie, came up behind me as I was eating.  "We know you did it," he whispered in my ear.  I truly had no earthly idea what he was talking about.  I hadn't heard anything about it yet and wasn't involved myself.  I tried to convince him of my innocence, but he wasn't buying it.  Long story short,  he gave me some tools and let me know that I had until noon to get all the tires reattached to the cart.  I remember saying, "But I have no idea how to do that."   Charlie was unmoved.

On my walk out to the field where the cart and all the tires were, another counselor, my friend Todd, came loping up next to me.  He admitted to being the one who actually pulled the prank.  He went along with me and did all the work of putting the tires back on...luckily!  That cart would've been a death trap otherwise.

Wednesday

This morning I had to take Drew to the orthodontist, so of course I spent most of my time with a magazine in the waiting room.  There were a handful of other parents in there as well, and one of them was a completely normal looking dad.   In fact, he was somewhat handsome.  That's why it was so weird when he started up with his VERY VERY bad habit.  Every 15 to 20 seconds he would suck in his snot in a grinding, horrible way, and then immediately afterward he would clear his throat several times.  It wasn't a normal throat clearing sound, either.  It was like he was clearing both his throat and his nose at the same time.  It was a noisy, hacking, nasally bark.  So it would be, "Snot suck, bark! bark! bark!..............Snot suck, bark! bark!.....................Snot suck, bark! bark! bark! bark!"

Several things went through my mind:

1. How does this man function in society?  Obviously he has a family, since he was there with his teenaged son.  He probably has a job.  How is it that nobody in his life has ever forced him to quit doing this terrible thing?
2. It occurred to me that I might be in the middle of a hidden camera situation.  "What would happen if we had one of our undercover actors sit in a waiting room while making the world's most obnoxious noise?!  Let's find out!"
3. It also occurred to me that somebody, perhaps his son, triple-dog dared the guy.

I've been having to get up so early lately, because I have to drive Drew to work at the crack of dawn.  Did you know that the sun is actually up at 5:30am???  Crazy.  It's like that Monty Python skit where a bunch of men are sitting around, reminiscing about how bad they had it when they were young, each one trying to outdo the other.   One of things one of them said was, "We had to get up a half an hour before we went to bed!"  That's how I feel right now.

You should watch the skit.  It's my favorite.

Tuesday

I've been a bit MIA lately, but I have a reason:  I've had the worst lower back pain for the past few days, and sitting in this chair at the computer makes it worse.  So does driving.  Oh my goodness.  Right now driving turns me into a 117 year old woman who's not aging well. 

Recent conversation about my back...

Mike:  You really need to go to the acupuncturist.  Remember how quickly that worked for you before?

Sue:  Yeah, but that was when I had sciatica.  This is just a sore back.

Mike:  You should still go.

Sue:  Nah.

Mike:  Go.

Sue: ...  [Considers it.  Thinks of how last time the doctor...is he a doctor?...wanted me to wear pajamas with an elastic waistband, so he could pull them down a few inches and stick pins in my...err...hip area.  Decides I'm not that desperate.]

Mike:  Well???

Sue:  You know what?  I feel better already!

(That said, I really am a big fan of acupuncture as a last resort.)

In other news, Baylee and Rachel are working at the VBS at our own church this week.  They're having quite a busy July.  They spent a week on that mission trip, then this week at our VBS, then next week they'll be at camp.  They're having a great time, though.

I just finished listening to a book called Dorothy Must Die.  It's young adult fiction, so it's not classic literature by any means, but it's a fun story.  It's a sinister twist on The Wizard of Oz.  In this version Dorothy ends up going back to Oz to take it over as a cruel dictator, and forces have to come together to put an end to her evil reign.

That reminds me:  Have I ever mentioned here that one of my biggest pet peeves is when people use the wrong rain/rein/reign?  I once knew a woman WHO HAD HORSES, and she still mixed up "rein" with "reign."  I mean, come on!

 

Saturday

Drew worked a full week (and a day) at full-time hours, in a very physical job, and he liked it!  He was sent out to different construction sites, but most of his week was spent at a nuclear physics building.  He didn't get to do anything science-y, though, unless you count assembling cubicles.  Drew did say that there's a lot more to a cubicle than he ever imagined.

Baylee's back from her VBS missions trip in the mountains.  She had a great time and missed it immediately upon arriving at home.

We celebrated Baylee's 14th birthday last night by taking her to Macaroni Grill.  Unfortunately, while we were there she accidentally spilled an entire glass of Dr. Pepper all over my side of the table, my plate, and my lap.   And the thing was, it looked like I had done it!  Like I'm one of those kinds of people you just can't take anywhere.  Good thing she's cute.

 

Earlier today I did the food shopping for the week, then went back home.  When Drew saw me pull in the driveway he came out and helped me carry in groceries, and then, of course, he started rooting through the bags to see what I got.  He pulled this out...

...and stared at it for a minute.  "Cookies and cream???" he finally asked.  "But that's exactly what Oreos already are!"  He's got a point.  They're Oreo-flavored Oreos.  This is the cookie equivalent of falling down the rabbit hole.

Wednesday

I'm starting to miss Baylee.  I bet she's not even thinking about me, though, especially since I know that her itinerary for today includes a river rafting trip.

Drew is doing well with his new job.  So far he worked 12 hours his first day, and then 8 hours every day after that (week day, that is).  If this keeps up he's going to have a nice lump of cash by the end of the summer, which he plans to spend on driver's ed and a used car.

The nice thing about Drew is that, even though he's working hard doing manual labor, he's still in a good mood when I pick him up.  He never complains, but always says that his day was, "Really good!"  I, on the other hand, am usually a bit grouchy by the time I get to him, because of the drive. He's been working in Bellevue, and I always have to get him during rush hour.  I'm telling you, it takes FOREVER.  In some spots highway traffic is completely stopped, and in others it crawls along at about 5 to 10 miles an hour.  It makes me feel like a pioneer from Little House on the Prairie days, going on a long, dusty journey.  I don't know when I'll ever see home again.

A Memory

Yesterday I got into a conversation with my mom about how my Aunt Karen used to babysit my brother and me just about every day when we were really little kids.  My aunt was (and is!) a wonderful, Godly woman... probably my favorite of all my aunts...and she treated Eric and me exactly like her own children.  She loved us, disciplined us, and kept us safe and clean.   In fact, she was just fine in every way except one as far as my 4-year-old self was concerned, and that was that she was a member of the Clean Plate Club.  She would dish up our food, and we were expected to eat ALL of it.  Whether or not we liked it or were even hungry for it was entirely beside the point.

I wasn't a picky kid at all, but there was one thing I couldn't handle, and that was rice covered in butter and brown sugar.  Ack.  To this day I would never voluntarily choose to eat that.  Unfortunately, the dish seemed to make regular appearances on my aunt's table.  I remember one time everybody was finished eating and was happily watching TV in the living room, and I was left in the kitchen on the other side of the house with the lights off (!) until I finished that heaping plate of rice.  I don't remember what happened, but I guess I must've finally choked it down, seeing as there was no option.

In my aunt's defense, I think every adult in America at that time were Clean Plate Clubbers.  That's just the way it was back then.  My own parents were very much that way, and because of that my brother, sister, and I became good at getting rid of food in sneaky ways.  (Sorry, Mom and Dad!)  One of the things I would do was spread my napkin on my lap, then when nobody was looking I'd fill it with the food I just couldn't bring myself to finish.  Then I'd carefully wrap it up and pocket it, and later I'd flush it down the toilet.  My brother's trick was much less subtle.  He's throw things under the table.  One time he hit me in the leg with a green bean.

Honestly, all of that is why my approach to food with our kids has always been to not make it any sort of battle.  I mentioned before that our rule was:  "If you don't want what's on the table at a meal, then feel free to not eat it, but there are no substitutions and you won't eat again until the next meal."  (PS:  We got that idea from a James Dobson book.)  (PPS:  This was our home rule, by the way.  If the kids were at someone else's house they were expected to eat whatever was served and to say "thank you" for it.)   It seems that this has worked well, as all of our kids have a healthy relationship with food and none of them are overweight.

Really, though, who knows the exact right way to raise children?  As far as this issue goes, I can see benefits to both ways of thinking.

Saturday

Yesterday was a bit crazy and I was running really behind.  That's why when Mike got home from work I asked him if he would make supper.  He readily agreed, which made me very thankful.  I said, "I'm so glad you're not one of those guys who's helpless in the kitchen, because if you were that might've been a deal breaker for me.   I mean, we can't both be that way!"

Today is Baylee's birthday!  She turned 14.  We can't celebrate until next weekend, though, because this morning she left for a missions trip up into the mountains.  She (and lots of other kids from our church, plus several adults) are going to be putting on a VBS for a little church up there. 

I took this picture of Rachel, Molly, Baylee, and Lily before they loaded onto the bus...

Drew's first day went well yesterday.  He ended up putting in 12 hours. (!!!)  He said it's hard work, but that he doesn't mind it and is happy about the money he'll be making.

Drew's New Job

Drew started his new job today.  He had to be on the construction site early this morning for training.  The plan was that he would get the training, go home for several hours, then go out to a different site this evening to work.  Around mid-morning, though, I heard from him.   He said that things were going really well, and that they wanted him to just stay and work the whole day.  So!  That sounds like good news.  I'll know more tonight when he gets home.

I couldn't help but take his picture this morning.  I thought he looked cute...sort of like a hippy only pretending to have a real job.  lol  The thing about Drew, though, is that, despite his looks, he's actually a hard-working guy.

Here are all the tools that he had to take with him.

Thursday

Let me put the amount of sleep I got last night this way:  When Mike got up at 3-something in the morning to get ready for work, I was reading.  I hadn't slept yet.  The reason, I think, is a combination of coffee too late in the day and Baylee's sleepover last night.  She had 3 other girls over, and they were...not loud exactly...but up and around A LOT.  All that to say, I'm tired.

They did take this picture of themselves.  Rachel hadn't gotten to our house yet, as she was running really late, so they edited her in.  lol

Drew ended up getting a job for the summer.  He's going to be installing office furniture, which I think means putting cubicle-type stuff together and getting it into place in office buildings.  He has to have a bunch of tools and a hard hat, and he's starting tomorrow.  Actually, I'm a little nervous about it all.

Quick

I don't have much time, but in quick news...

Zach got to go to the Mariners vs. Tigers game last night.

It's possible that Drew has a job.  We'll know more in the next day or so.

And Baylee is having 3 girls over for a sleepover tonight.

Monday

Today Baylee and I went to a different lake called Lake Stevens with my friend Bethany and her two daughters, Abby and Lilly.  Baylee is right between them in age, so all three get along well and have fun together.  And as far as my friendship with Bethany...you know those rare people in life that you can be 100% yourself with, and they still love you?  She's one of those people for me.

Last night I finished the last of the Anne of Green Gables books, and now I'm starting another series, called Emily of New Moon, by the same author.  I read it when I was a kid (I read the Anne books as a kid, too), but it'll be fun to go through them again.  One thing I'm surprised about though, and it comes through in both series (serieses?  What's the plural of "series"?) is the slight tang of...well...the occult.  Characters are always having visions of the future that come true.  Isn't that a strange thing to find in otherwise old-fashioned children's stories?

Sunday

By the way, yesterday Seattle had the hottest 4th of July on record.  I hesitate saying that, because as soon as I mention the high temperature here people come out of the woodwork to let me know that it's way hotter where they live.  lol  I don't care who you are,  though, 92 degrees isn't exactly comfortable.

Here's a picture from a few weeks ago, when Mike, Zach, and Baylee visited our friends the James' up in the mountains.

I got the first piece of next year's curriculum in the mail the other day.  It's a British lit course from a program called Learning Language Arts through Literature.  After looking it over, I decided that in order for Drew to get the most out of it, I'll go ahead and read all the books, too.  We'll be going through Emma, A Tale of Two Cities, The Time Machine, Frankenstein, and Animal Farm.  (Embarrassingly, of those I've only read Animal Farm.)  We'll also read lots of poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Eliot, and Owen.  Besides having lots of discussions with me, Drew will be writing several essays.  I think it'll be great.

Happy 4th of July!

Man, we had such a nice day!  We went to the peninsula to celebrate the 4th with Danny, Reyna, and Reyna's daughter Marissa's family.  Even though it was my first time meeting several of them, I thought they were a lot of fun and really easy to be with.  Oh, and Marissa used to be a roller derby girl!  You know how sometimes you hear something about someone before you actually meet them, and you think, "Okay, this person is going to be really cool."  This was like that.  And she is.

Several of us played a big game of croquet with brackets and everything, and Danny and I (we were on a team together) won!  That's the first time I've ever won at that game.  I admit, it was 99% because of Danny, although I scored the winning shot.

All in all, it was a lovely time.

When we got home there was a small panic, because nobody had seen Cooper since Baylee let him outside around 3am.  We called and he didn't come, and Baylee started crying and searching the neighborhood.  Then out of the blue Cooper came casually strolling up to the front door.  Shrug.   

Quick Check-In

Baylee and I went to the lake for a couple hours today, and, holy cow, was it crowded.  Once in awhile we have to park a couple blocks away and walk, and this was one of those times.  Oh, and there were a ton of people who were set up to spend the entire day there.  Some even had tents. 

Yesterday Drew was invited to spend the day at Wild Waves, a water park, because his friend Gavin's family had a season pass or something.  He was there for hours and hours, had a great time, and when he got home he was sunburned and exhausted.  (That's my bed he's on, not his own.)

Mike has time off starting today, and Zach does starting tomorrow, so we'll have some nice family time over the next couple days.  Happy holiday weekend!

Pictures

I have a few misc. pics to share today.  This first one is of Zach, taken the other day when he got home from work.  He sat down on the couch, set his stuff down and took his shoes off, and then crashed.  He works really hard.

And this is a prank Drew pulled on Instagram yesterday.  He convinced a lot of people that he got a haircut.  Most of his friends were aghast.  lol

Then later he posted this with, "Just kidding."

That's about all I've got.  I've been running errands all morning, and now I'm going to stick around the house and putter.  (Actually, I've been deep cleaning.)  I have to admit, I've REALLY been enjoying my summer so far.  Both Baylee and Drew are still busy, but it's nothing compared to the insanity of last semester, so it feels like such a relief for all of us.  

Wednesday

This afternoon Baylee and I decided to take a couple hours to go to the lake.  We bought a new raft, and she was excited to try it out.  It has a headrest, armrests, and a cup holder!  lol

Can I just say that in some ways it's really nice to be in the "older kids" stage of parenting?  I let Baylee float way out of the lifeguarded area and out of sight around the bend of the lake...basically wherever the wind blew her.  I knew she'd stay close to shore and come back eventually, and she did.

 
That reminds me...I was thinking recently about how, when I first started this blog, the "About Me" section over in the sidebar said something like, "We have three children:  Zach (10), Drew (7), and Baylee (4)."  Now it says that they're 20, 17, and 13.  It's crazy how time flies.