Tuesday, October 10, 2000

It's Fall!

I haven't entered a blog since last June. Oh, well, times flies when you're having fun.

Sunday we ventured into lovely Newark NJ for a visit to a truly beautiful cathedral and to listen to The US Naval Academy's Men's Glee Club. It was a terrific performance made better by the fact one of our very own home boys was in the crew! Congratulations, Rob! You did a great job! And I have to say that was one good looking bunch of young men!
posted by Lynnie 12:51:10 PM

Thursday, June 22, 2000

Summer

No Car.

It's summer and the weather feels like it. So far, this first week of summer, the kids have not gotten out of bed before 10 AM. This doesn't bother me at all, since it gives me time in the morning when I an not besieged with requests for food and activities. It does bother dear old dad, because he has to get to bed by 10 PM in order to get up and out to work in the morning (when everyone else is sleeping in), and when children and teenagers alike don't go to sleep before midnight it gets very annoying for the breadwinner. He works hard! He gets tired! So that's just one dynamic going on in summer.

Another one is the "four siblings with nothing to do" syndrome. Bicker, bicker, bicker. That kind of winds down after a week when they all get used to eachother again after being separated all day in school.

As for the "no car" aspect of summer, that has been a bummer. We are down to one car and one Gina-mobile. John is driving my car to work while his is in the shop waiting for a verdict on a transmission, which leaves Gina's car for emergency use. It will have to be a cold day in July before I would drive her car for anything other than the worst emergency. She leaves her windows open when it rains and the garbage is piled so high, it is hard to see out the back. She even calls it her rolling trash can. Add to this the fact that the driver's seat is pemanently broken into a Gina position (as close to the wheel as possible) and the outside of the car is covered with stickers. I don't like driving with my knees under my chin and don't particularly care for the stares I get driving the car. The police in town pull her over just to read the bumper stickers. Hopefully our other car will be not too expensive to fix and I'll be back on the road again.
posted by Lynnie 10:22:21 AM

Monday, June 19, 2000

June

June is the month that everything happens. In our house we have birthdays, anniversaries, and of course, loads of end of the school year events. It tends to get overwhelming at times, and a mother has the special guilt of not being a supermom and having the ability to bilocate. Each child and one husband has need of the royal presence, often at the same moment in history.

Example: Olympic Day. That's the elementary school's field day theme. It's cute and each classroon has a country to represent. They study the country and make a hat to wear on Olympic Day. "Greece" wore the Olympic Torch on their heads. "Italy " had a cardboard plate of string and styrofoam balls on their heads to look like spaghetti and meatballs! That was funny! So here are all these "cool" kids running around with funny hats and really getting into it.

Okay, enter the royal presence. The second grader is near the school doing his events and the fifth grader is across the street, across a field doing her events. It is 98 degrees and hazy sun. The queen's feet are miserably swollen. I signed up to "help" with the fifth grade, but there are lots of people helping and my name wasn't even on the list. So after watching first the fifth grader, and then the second grader, I trudged back across the street to the car and split. Totally guilt-ridden. I felt bad the rest of the day for pooping out. Finally, I had to tell myself..."get over it!"

Next day was the fantastic 12 year old Birthday party and power-out, as mentioned in the last post. It was great!

John and I were married on June 11. Our anniversary was a busy Sunday, mowing grass and travelling to the lake house, and just missing a thunder storm on the way home. That was another whopper of a storm. I would have liked to go out with my husband, but somehow it just didn't happen. It was an anniversary that passed without fanfare.

Later the same week was my mother's birthday. I was reminded of how long it is now that she is gone, eight months. On this date last year, she celebrated her 70th birthday, in the bedroom, smiling as she blew out the candles. (We had to turn off the oxygen to light the candles.) When my mother was a child, she thought that everyone hung the flag out because they knew it was her birthday; actually, her birthday was on Flag Day. So this year, as I went to the school again for another parent participation event, the stars and stripes were everywhere. Even the principal's tie was a flag. I was sad and missed my mother.

Now we are up to OOK OOK's birthday tomorrow. Can't believe he's going to be 18. Wow! Have you seen his new page design? He and his sister Robotgirl have been having a hoot by posting photos of OOK OOK that look like Ben Brown. Have to admit, looks just like him. They are having a blast with this.

Still, tomorrow is a big birthday and I am just not prepared for it. The last week was spent driving people everywhere, and today was no exception. John's car (my car really, the transmission blew on his car in February. It's still in the driveway)John's car broke down on the way to work, and we had to deal with that and get OOkie to his last exam, and send the two younger kids to swim lessons...which we found out later don't start til next week! Now I have no car and nothing for a Happy Birthday tomorrow...Boo-hoo! It never helps that OOkie never knows what to ask for his birthday. But you know, one of my favorite mottos is
"Things could always be worse." No matter what goes on I believe Life is Beautiful.
posted by Lynnie 11:19:43 AM

Sunday, June 4, 2000

Birthday by Candlelight

Our third child had her 12th birthday yesterday. This year is this first time we had the opportunity to have a "real" birthday party for her. After the big wedding the previous week, I had to question my sanity as we dragged along to prepare for this latest celebration. But after a wedding with 60 guests, how much trouble could a party for twelve pre-teen girls be? Gee, it's tough to say...

Friday night before the birthday, a huge thunderstorm with high winds ripped through our area. The lights flickered and then... they went out. No power. Woo-hoo! Break out the candles! This is an adventure.

The party preparations continued the next day, which was an absolutely beautiful "rare day in June". Couldn't vacuum, no power. No Saturday morning cartoons, no power. The refrigerator was dead. Stuff was melting. Still we pushed ahead. We had great plans for a twelve year old birthday party, and nothing would stop us. Not even blocking off our road, since the guilty tree that was leaning on the wires was two houses away.

We had ordered a 6 FOOT sub from Blimpie's, we had the famous teenage band "cette" booked to play and bought tee shirts to tie-dye. We also worked all day to set up the basement like a coffeehouse, and it looked great.

The girls started arriving at 6:00 PM and we started outside in the lovely sunshine doing colorful Hair twists in the girls hair. Then we moved inside as the band began to play. It was actually God's good providence that the power was out... the Band had to play acoustic. Without their usual amplifiers and distortion peddles, they were plenty loud enough. The girls ate their sandwiches while listening to the band and had a great time screaming and dancing at their candlelit tables. (Great atmoshpere!)

Then we moved upstairs and they twisted rubberbands onto tee-shirts to be dyed the next day when the POWER came back on. By now it was twilight and the candles were burning, it was time to sing the birthday song. How nice! Our birthday girl was so happy! Then it was time to open presents.

As parents arrived to claim their daughters, luminaras lit the walkway in an otherwise pitch black street. It was cool and clear and the stars were shining, it was like magic.
posted by Lynnie 11:13:33 PM

Tuesday, May 30, 2000

A Happy Wedding

The big day was last Saturday, and it was a very happy wedding. The weather held, the bride was beautiful and composed, the groom was smiling, the ceremony was lovely. It was a rather small wedding, but it was in my opinion perfect.

As we were spending the last week taking care of last minute details, all I could think was, "This is payback."

When John and I got married twenty-three years ago, we also had our reception at my grandparents house. Now I know what they went through to get ready, and we just showed up on our wedding day with about 100 guests. So this was payback.

The place looked great. There were flowers on the tables under a white tent; the food and the cake were inside on the porch. Gina did the music on a CD player...it was an eclectic mix due to the variety of guests present. the last guests didn't leave until about 8:00 PM.

We continued the party the next day, and the bride and groom came back to open presents and recieve more love and attention...from all the people we couldn't invite to the wedding. So that was fun too.

It was a good weekend, all in all. A weekend that made us remember the important things in life.
posted by Lynnie 9:44:34 AM

Wednesday, May 24, 2000

Friends and Family

Last night we had some fiends over for dinner. It is such a pleasure to go out of the normal course of the busy week to spend some time with friends and family.

When we invite friends over, John and I are still lucky enough to have to our children join us. That in itself is amazing since they range in age from 20 to 8 years old. All have their own idea of a good time and a "life" of their own. So I appreciate that they still feel a night with the family, eating a "company dinner", and singing songs afterward is worth losing sleep and putting phone calls, band practice and dates off for a time.

We had a family from Ireland over last night, and there was some fun. The meal turned out very well, the menu was plain in keeping with the tastes of our company. A huge pot roast with onion gravy, mashed potatoes, carrots and string beans. The company brought a homemade strawberry and rhubarb pie, topped off with a hot cup of Barry's Tea.
Then the entertainment began.

There's nothing like homemade music. Sometimes it was great and sometimes we really messed up...then we would say, "Well, no one is paying us!!"

So Thanks to Robotgirl and OOK OOK for joining us, and thanks to the great Provider, Who gives us friends and food and family...and music too.
posted by Lynnie 8:31:01 AM