1-24-07 POW

The long awaited day finally arrived: Sidney's Disney trip! I swear, she didn't sleep the three nights leading up to it and I'm guessing that she'll make up for it when she gets back. Tuesday was the big day and it REALLY started early. If you'll remember, the kids had to be there by 5:30am for a 5:45am departure. It sounded good on paper, huh? We got there at 5:15 because I couldn't stand to watch Sidney pace around the house with last minute packing and asking me every 2 minutes if she looked OK. Did you see her on the national news in the Style segment? I think not. The sweat pants and t-shirt were JUUUUUUST fine. Anyway, the 7 charter buses were lined up in the school's bus parking lot and it was all very organized. Sidney and her BFF (Neha) arrived at the same time so the squealing started early. It was cute to see them so excited. Brianna showed up later, too late for this picture. It was all I could do to take THIS one. "Mommy!!! You're embarrassing me!!!". She got my token scowl. "Deal with it. I'm capturing a moment in time that will never again be, OK?" She knew not to fight it. I was going to win. I usually do. Back to the "departure time". Neha's mom and I were talking next to the buses and sure enough -- a white car came tearing into the bus parking lot at exactly 5:45am and blocked in the first bus. We were impressed by her thinking: the buses can't go unless I move my car and I'm not moving my car until my son gets on his bus. She wasn't the only late one, but she was the only one with the nerve to use her care as a blockade. We stayed on the curb until the last bus left the lot. It was 5:50. Not too bad.

Alyssa was at Hayley's house for a sleepover Monday night and didn't come home until about 7:30 on Tuesday night (no school that day), so today was our first REAL day alone. Brent flew out this morning and Sid was gone, so Lys and I made our dinner plans. I asked her what she wanted since it was OUR special dinner and you'll never believe what she asked for: salmon, and she wanted to prepare it. I tried to hide my shock, mostly because I didn't want her to think she made a bad decision, but also because my junk food queen just asked for something incredibly GOOD for her! I did, however, ask her WHY she wanted salmon tonight and she said, "because Sidney doesn't like it so since she's gone we can eat it". Works for me. Off to the store I went.

I love Salmon, but feel I am not alone when I say that I don't want to stink up the whole house by cooking it in the oven. Gotta love the grill! I fired it up and went back inside to supervise the preparation. She got out all the ingredients (I kept it simple, my favorite way), all the while insisting that she was going to do it all by herself. Let's just say.....that lasted about 30 seconds. With a big confident smile she opened the outer bag that the meat counter had sealed the fish in and when she saw that she'd have to reach into yet another plastic bag to actually TOUCH the slimy filets AND rinse them off, she stopped in her tracks. The smile was gone. "Uhhh, Mommy?" I knew what she was going to ask. "You said you wanted to do all of this yourself." She poked the salmon with one cautious finger, quickly withdrawing it as if it had just snapped at her. "I will if you'll just get them out. I want to do it all, I just don't want to touch them". She moved on to "lemon slicing" instead. The lemon slices were pretty thick, but I didn't say anything. She seasoned the salmon, added the lemon and sealed it all in foil. I drew the line at her trying to grill it. She understood. She made the rice instead and portioned out the salad. Grapes were our edible centerpiece and country music played on the radio - a nice change from the horrible stuff she usually listens to. Yes, I'm an old person now. The salmon was fabulous, but took an extra few minutes to cook. Seems as if the extra thick lemon slices were preventing the heat from getting to the fish. It was almost raw under them! She did a great job and was very proud of herself.

Sidney called while I was typing this. She's having a great time, they've done a TON of things today, and as much as she'd deny it ---she sounds exhausted. Ha! I'm glad she's having fun. I pick her up Saturday morning at 9 so look for those pictures next week. Until then, take care and have a good day!

1-17-07 POW

Where has the time gone? It's already the middle of January and we haven't had any cold weather to speak of. Tomorrow, however, "they" are saying that we may get a "wintery mix". It won't be cold enough to stick, but it may be fun to watch. The girls are going nuts thinking that there will be a two hour delay for school. I'm not holding my breath. If it does snow, though, I'll take some pictures.

Sidney has been driving me crazy with her "countdown to Disney". She is so excited!!! "This time next week I'll be in Epcot!". Next Tuesday I have to have her at the school at 5:30am. Actually, ALL 275 of the 8th graders plus chaperones will be there at 5:30am. Let me quote the "parent" sheet: Please have all students at the school at 5:30am as we will be leaving promptly at 5:45am. I actually laughed out loud at the parents' meeting after THAT statement. You know, I board planes for a living and the likelihood of 300 people boarding 7 charter buses in 15 minutes is highly unlikely unless there are unclaimed $100 bills spread out on all the seats. Should be fun to watch though. I'll let you know how it goes.

Heather and Billy came down Sunday to do a belated Christmas. We had so much fun with them! Even though we talked about it, we didn't take any pictures. I'll have to take some next time and back-date them. Ha! They stayed overnight and drove home the next morning. Heather, Sid and I went shopping the day they got here (Billy and Brent watched football - big surprise). As you can imagine, a 5 day trip to Disney with your BFF's requires a certain amount of new purchases (as I'm told by Sidney) and she all but begged me to take her. Hey, it's HER Christmas money.....knock yourself out! She wanted to get a new purse (this from the one who HATES purses) and it couldn't be just ANY new purse....it had to be a Vera Bradley. "EVERYBODY has one!!!" For those of you who are unfamiliar with this purse (as I was), here's the link: http://www.verabradley.com/Site/Store/ViewCategory.aspx?dept=7 . Knock me over with a feather, I swear. Who'd think that kids would want quilted paisley purses?!?!? We hit the stores. As expected, only a one store in the mall was "allowed" to sell them so off we went. She couldn't decide between two of them so SHE BOUGHT BOTH! She's not mine. Even Heather was shocked. She was happy as a clam. When we got home we had a nice dinner and played Scattergories. That was a blast!

Tuesday afternoon, Hayley rode the bus home with Alyssa. They always hace so much fun. It took about 10 minutes before the giggling/squealing/laughing could be heard from OUTSIDE her bedroom door. They were planning Alyssa's birthday party and from the sounds of it, it's going to be a big one. I have no idea where/when/how/who or anything like that, but I do know this: I've been commissioned to sew two more dresses. I guess I should have seen it coming. I didn't have to make any Halloween costumes so I guess I got off easy. Her timing stinks, though. I've been off for two months and she springs this on me 3 days before I have to go back to work (Friday is my first day back). After a trip to Greensboro's token fabric store we now have material. They picked out some dresses from "Cosmo Teen - Prom issue" and have high hopes. I looked at the pictures in the magazine they picked out and raised my eyebrows. The girls in the photos are models who are all 5'8" tall. I looked at my "under 5 foot tall" clients and scrunched my eyebrows. I'm not sure if the dresses will look the same when I cut them down to size. Time will tell.

That's all for now. Have a great weekend!

1-9-07 POW

Alyssa has a new chore. Would you like to know what it is? Windows!!!! I tell you, it's a glorious day. My oldest does the dinner dishes and my youngest does the windows. All of this, may I remind you, is in addition to their usual Sunday chores (bathrooms, baseboards, mini blinds, dust the silk plants). You know, if I didn't want to strangle them so often I think I could have had more kids. I wouldn't have to do anything around here! Yeah, right!!!

Sidney informed me today that tryouts for Track start in mid-February. She has been running every day for the last week or so and is really excited about it. She said that you don't automatically make the team if you were on it in 7th grade, but they go easier on you while judging. I'm sure she'll make the team. She did really well last year and she's trained a lot harder this winter.

Have you all broken your New Year Resolutions yet??? I'm doing...OK. I was going to try to eat better this year. My inspiration was the night I was sitting on the couch with a handful of M&M's, channel surfing. The TV stopped on Fit TV ONLY because I had to go to the kitchen to restock my M's. On this show they were following 4 different people around, all trying different diet techniques. Long story short, this one guy had to eat healthier food and they gave him a grocery list. I was intrigued by the stuff he was forced to buy so I pulled up the recipe on their website and made up a list. The next day I hit the stores.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find Mung Beans in a city like Greensboro? Heck, I didn't know what in the world they were, only that they were sold in bulk. After striking out in 2 grocery stores I finally went to the health food store (duh!). They had the stupid beans. They look like dried capers and look like they'd be fun to shoot out of a pea-shooter.

They were. Ha!

I won't bore you with the details, but let me say this: I have renamed this dish "The $30 Dinner". That's because I didn't have most of the stuff needed to make it (big surprise) and had to buy it all. All I can say is that I'd better end up liking this stuff because I'll have to make a lot of it to use all of these weird things up!

"Healthy brown rice, mung beans, lots of water, boil for 45 minutes, being careful to stir often as the mung beans burn easily." Note to self: anytime a recipe requires you to "skim the scum off the top as needed"....run screaming. I skimmed, I prevailed. Add black pepper, cayenne, cumin, coriander, celery seed, crushed garlic, turmeric...turmeric?? What in the world is that? I figured it out quickly. Why don't they just rename it "dye everything yellow"? I'm not kidding, it even stained my dark blue plastic spoon a really disgusting shade of green! I think I'll cut back on that next time. Add frozen stir fry vegetables and grilled chicken strips. Keep cooking. "Season to taste with soy sauce and other spices." No kidding, that stuff was bland! I threw in some Texas Pete hot sauce and then all was well in the world. I don't think I'd want to eat it every day, but it was OK. I'll keep looking for something else to do with my Mung Beans. Or not.

That's it for this week. Have a great day!
Amy and the girls

1-1-07 POW

Gosh, that was weird writing '07 for the title of this blog. Happy New Year everyone! Sorry I didn't write last week. It was WAAAYYY too busy. Before I get going, I hope you all had a nice Christmas. Ours was great! I've talked to some of you since then, so some of this may be repetitious.

Christmas morning started promptly at 7am. That part wasn't surprising because I had told the girls that they couldn't wake us up before then or all gifts would be returned to Santa. I call that "pre-planning". Ha! Anyway, at exactly 7:00am we hear two excited voices yelling, "Merry Christmas!!!!" from their beds. It was cute. We dragged ourselves out of bed and relocated to the living room. They each took a corner of the room so "their stuff wouldn't get mixed up" and then it began. The stockings were emptied and opened first and then they moved on to the "big stuff" under the tree. They took turns opening presents and somehow made it last an hour. Sidney originally wanted to wait 3 minutes between each present, but we stopped clocking it after the first couple of gifts. Christmas carols played in the background, occasionally drowned out by squeals of joy, and shredded wrapping paper covered every available spot on the rug. It was so cool!

There wasn't a favorite gift this year, they tell me they love all of them! They were surprised that I was able to get passports for them (that was one of my big gifts to them) and spent about 30 minutes arguing about where they'd like to go first. The last place I heard was Paris, but London came in a close "second". I had to rule out Australia and Fiji because they're too far to go to for just a weekend. I think I'll surprise them one day by picking them up at school early on a Friday and scoot them out to the airport and not tell them where we're going. That will give them something to talk about at school Monday.

OK, Christmas was a Monday. That means I spent the next 4 days in the car driving to just about every potential shopping establishment within 45 minutes of my house. Good grief, you'd think the gift cards were expiring in 2 days and HAD TO be spent!!! It was crazy. AND, these purchases can't be made alone, heavens NO, so I usually had at least one additional child with me. They looked at every rack, on every shelf, in every corner and found the deals. Obviously, they weren't shy when trying things on. Have you ever gotten thrown out of Wal-Mart? It was close for us. I told them they would walk home if that happened. I think they thought I was kidding. Overall, they did well. The car was filled with shopping bags each day and the nights were spend trying to find places in their rooms to put the new stuff. They still have an impressive amount of cash left, probably because I finally declared that the Mom Shopping Taxi had gone out of business due to unfair work rules / long days. The girls were not amused.

That takes us to New Year's Eve. I guess because I had Saturday "off", so to speak, I got rested up again. That would be the only explanation I can come up with for agreeing to what I agreed to. The smiling little faces came to my room with chocolate in hand: "Mommmmmmy???? I don't even need to finish the rest of this, do I. I think to myself, "Tomorrow is New Year's Eve. Gee, I wonder what they want????". I smile back while grabbing the chocolate. I'm so easy! Long story short, (yeah, right!), Sidney couldn't decide between Neha and Brianna so can they both come but then Alyssa only has one friend coming so can Elise be her second friend because Alyssa already said it would be OK an we'll do all the decorating and clean up our messes and all get along and it will be really fun and we'll all sleep on the living room rug under the Christmas tree and you are the best mom in the whole world.

You know, I just read that last part again and I don't see during any of those words the part where I AGREED to do this. I guess it was in the fine print. Anyway, the party guests arrived around 7 and the next few hours seemed to FLY by. The new face is Shayna, but for whatever reason they all called her Sasha the whole time. I had never met her before, which is a shame. She's a neat kid! I know she'll be over again. On to the night: they wanted to play Charades so they put me in charge of making the idea cards. I hid in my room for about 30 minutes and came out with 60. The howling and screams of laughter let me know that I had come up with some good ones. Sidney's favorite was "a melting ice cube". It was fun to watch, too! After that they played board games, did karaoke and listened to very loud and very horrible music (sometime in the last few years....I got old), and I let them because it's New Year's Eve. Just before the ball dropped I popped the "champagne" (unscrewed the cap of the sparkling white grape juice) and poured it into my finest crystal wine glasses. They toasted the new year, chugged the "champagne", and that's the last I saw of them. After reminding them that "lights out" was 1:30am, Brent and I went back into hiding in our room. We climbed into bed and almost as if it were choreographed in advance, both put in our earplugs. It was a good sleep and long overdue.

The kids are back in school on Wednesday (yippee!!!) so life will return to normal at that time. I guess we'll have to take the Christmas decorations down this week. The house will look so boring.

That's all for now, I hope you all have a Happy New Year!!!