June begins

One of the best parts of being a parent is enjoying the funny things your children say.  One of the best parts of having a blog is writing them down so you can remember them!  Here's some funnies from the past few weeks.

Some background is in order before this makes sense.  Dode does not wear suits.  In fact, he hasn't worn one since he returned from his mission twenty years ago.  When we got engaged, one of the first things he wanted to know was, "Are you going to make me wear a suit to the wedding?"  Nope!  So, the going to church outfit our boys are used to their dad modeling is slacks, white shirt, an tie.  Isaac had to get a suit to wear when he went to Olympia for his Youth and Government class.  A few weeks later, Isaac was getting ready for church.  He came to me and asked, "Is a suit coat appropriate for Sunday dress?"

I had to take Miriam to the doctor for her yearly well child check.  It's about a 40 minute drive to the doctor so I brought her MP3 player along.  This is what I heard, "mumble, mumble, mumble" delivered in a monotone.  Miriam, "Can you guess this song?"  me, "Sing a little more".  Miriam, "Blah-blah-blah" still in monotone.  me, "Why don't you just tell me?"  Repeat every 3-4 minutes.

Part way down the headphones come off her head and she says, "What's that smell?"  (something stinky from outside)  She continued, "Well, I hope our engine didn't just blow up!"  me, "If our engine blew up, we wouldn't still be driving."  Miriam, "Well, we're going pretty much fast so it would take a while for our car to stop moving."  You can tell we drive nice cars when Miriam smells a bad smell and immediately thinks our engine blew up!

A little later "Under the Sea" came on her MP3 player.  Miriam, "Mom, why don't you and dad like Little Mermaid?" me, "We don't like it because she isn't nice to her dad.  She doesn't listen to him but she still gets everything she wants.  That's a lie.  Life does not work like that."  Miriam, "Mom, she's just following her heart."  How wonderful that she's already bought that lie!

So for the 40 minutes down to the doctor, she kept up a pretty good conversation with me.  Challenging me to guess the songs on her MP3 player and discussing deep thoughts with me.  We get to the doctor, she gets shy, and she refused to say one word the entire time the doctor was in with us.  This is a pediatric doctor that is used to working with kids.  The doctor pull out all her tricks to engage Miriam, but she would not respond.  The doctor was pretty worried about her silence and even offered counseling.  I told her we aren't concerned.  The doctor walks out and Miss Chatty is back in business.  Silly girl!

It's been pretty grey around here outside.  It's June and it still feels like March.  We are still wearing jackets and the sun just refuses to show.  I was outside with Dode when the sun came out!  It was just peaking through a small hole in the clouds, but our bodies were actually creating shadows.  I looked at the sky and said, "Wow!  Look at that!"  Not 30 seconds later, Miriam and William came bursting out of the house, arms outstretched, faces raised to the sun exclaiming, "The sun!  The sun!"  It lasted less than a minute and we were back to the grey.  Us Western Washington people have to know to enjoy it while it lasts!

Field Trip
Tuesday Miriam and William had a school field trip to Camano Island State Park.  As noted above, we aren't having much of a summer yet, in fact the weather man reported that if you want to find worse weather than the Pacific Northwest is experiencing this week, you need to go to Aniak, Alaska.  Here's the proof!  So, I was dreading a day at the beach.  We bundled up in our winter boots and coats for our visit.  When you're in your own car and decide you're cold and have had enough, you just pack up and go home.  I knew that wouldn't be an option and tried to think of everything we'd need to help make the day a success.

So many parents volunteered to attend the field trip that I was only responsible for my own children.  We got to the beach and met my dad and his wife Cheryl.  They live just down the road from the State Park.  We got off the bus and were told, "You can just wander the beach and look for critters.  Be back to the bus at 1:30 (4 hours)."  The tide was pretty low so we were able to see a lot of sea life like: sea stars, crabs, sea urchin, small fish.  I'm sure the people going by in boats had to be wondering why on such a miserable day there were hundreds of people on the beach.

Miriam and William at a "fort" they discovered.  Miriam is holding a shell my dad wrote "Miriam and William" on, William is holding their "flag" of kelp and driftwood.  Miriam was pretty concerned because they'd been told they couldn't take anything from the beach (300 children can really clean a beach!).  She wondered if she should leave her shell or take it since it had writing on it.  I told her grandpa didn't have the same rules because he wasn't part of the field trip and it would be OK for  her to take it.

This is my dad posing for a photo.  He hates getting his picture taken.

(Does this look like a nice warm summer day?)

This guy was perched in a tree watching us.  

They aren't very rare in Western Washington.

Miriam with her teacher, Mrs. Janez-Bishop

There were 9 school busses there as well as parents who'd driven out to meet the busses.  That's a lot of people.  How many bathrooms were there? Two Port-A-Potties!  They have real bathrooms but the rangers had them all locked up.  We waited in line for 30 minutes to use the bathroom.  Considering that kids already wait until it's an emergency to go, it was a pretty tense line.  Then, just as we were getting to the front, a teacher came and said their district was leaving and they had three children who needed to use the bathroom before they left.  Could they cut in line?  How do you say no to that?  Well, that 3 children ended up being closer to 30 as more and more kids showed up needing to use the bathroom.  How do you explain to a seven year old who is dancing around trying not to wet their pants that it's ok for these kids to cut?

Day Camp
I've got just one month to go until day camp.  Thursday I had a training meeting for the volunteer staff.  The camp director is out of state on work business so I had to go it alone.  The two days leading up to the meeting were all about day camp.  At one point Elizabeth said to me, "I like it when you're not so busy."  Getting ready for the meeting was a big undertaking because I was handing out binders for each class to the person teaching the class.  I had to take all the plans I had for the day camp program from my head and assemble them into something where a person walking in with no knowledge could understand what I wanted to happen and have all the information they needed to teach the class.

I was wishing that life would just stop so I could focus on day camp.  It was a futile wish.  I still had to be a mom: helping get children ready for school, preparing meals, driving children around, refereeing fights, helping with homeschool.  We have three computers at home which means I had brainstorming documents scattered on all three computers.  The kids were doing their school work so we were sharing computers.  It was "fun".

The binder doesn't just say, "Teach this..." it also contains all the instructions, background information, photos, etc they need.  There are 24 classes this year.  That's a lot of information to drag out of my head and put on paper.  I'd bought an all-in-one printer at Costco on Monday and Dode set it up for me on Tuesday.  I gave that thing quite a work out on Wednesday and Thursday, scanning, copying, printing.   I spent two days going back and forth with computers and using all of our three printers (laser for black and white because it's the cheapest, our old color computer because I've got to use up the ink, and the new one for scanning and copying.)  By the time I spread out all the class and den leader binders, the island was pretty full.  Add in food the children and I were snacking on and it was quite a sight.  In fact, the entire house was a pretty big wreck.  In the middle of all the chaos, my Relief Society President (the leader of the women's organization at church) showed up unexpectedly to have a meeting with me.  Welcome to real life!

What a mess!

My "work station"

Computer, printer, laminator and lots and lots of paperwork!

It was a lot of work and at times I didn't know if I'd get it done in time.  I fantasized about a day when all my children would be gone to public school, or just gone somewhere so that I could work without interruption.    In the end, I made it to the meeting on time, prepared, and ready for the training.  Dode had to go somewhere after work so I ended up hauling five of the children with me.  We met at a library about 30 minutes from home.  Between my five and the children of some of the volunteers, we pretty much had every library computer monopolized during our 1 1/2 hour meeting.