Rainbow Flower Katherine

I bring to you, today, a great loss. Rainbow Flower Katherine (named by a hodgepodge compilation of children) passed through this world and on to the next one today. She (he?) was hit by an ice cube (read: hailstone) on Saturday night. The girls and I discovered her on our sidewalk on our way to church Sunday morning. We arrived home, found her still alive (ish), and made a bed for her. Reese raped the azalea bushes to give her flowers for her new home and we gave her water in a little leaf-cup.Rainbow Kate held on through another few days and nighst. She gladly drank water but wouldn't eat anything (neither would I if my offerings had been canker worms and really wet and mushy Special K). Poor thing essentially starved to death, but I do think the broken wing, broken leg and visible head injury had something to do with it, too.
This morning, we found she had left us (and our front porch). We gave her a fond farewell and lovely ceremony this evening.Reese even included her flowers with her.In case you can't read Brett's lovely epitaph..."Here lies Rainbow [drawing of flower] Katherine"

What can YOU do with an office chair, yoga mat...

...and a stuffed monkey?
Reese can sail a ship. Her destination or route was never disclosed to me, but she sang a song on her way! Obviously, it's a party boat- note the balloons. The first mate looks like he's falling down on the job...

The Triplets

Way back in my former life, I was gainfully employed. When I was pregnant with Reese, two of my friends and co-workers were also pregnant and we were all due within two weeks of each other. We don't get the chance to get together often, but we did this weekend. Here's a now and then of Reese, Brodie and Nash.
And Brodie, Reese and Nash in November 2006.It really goes so fast!

It was a dark and stormy night....

no, seriously, it's dark and there's a crazy thunderstorm out there. Complete with hail!
So Brett is out of town this weekend and I am putting the kids to bed with hail banging on the roof and into the windows. I'm distracted wondering if our cars are both getting dented beyond repair. The request of "read five books" has been bargained down to three. There is a lot going on. We've finished reading, Makena has left Reese's room to go get into her bed while I tuck Reese in. Enter: Maggie.Both dogs are always on the bed with us when I'm reading to either or both girls. But when I'm done and the lights turn out, Maggie goes to her sneaky spot under Reese's bed while she waits for me to walk out the door. With the new super-long bedding, you forget she's under there.
So imagine the creepy-crawly factor when you lean in to give Reese a hug and need to shift your feet just a bit closer to the bed. When one inadvertently steps on a dog's foot and the dog (understandably) yanks her foot out from under yours...in that long second it takes your brain to process that it's just the dog, you've already gone places you don't want to go. Considering the vast majority of the residents under Reese's bed are dolls, Chucky came to mind. Or the clown from Poltergeist. Sweet dreams!

Bike riding

A few shots from a recent bike riding outing. Makena literally begs me to bring her bike to the bus stop every day or, at the very least, to go into the cul-de-sac behind our house and ride around. This particular day went like this:
Makena rode and rode and rode her two-wheeler. Reese rode (still on training wheels) until she discovered a green bead lying in the street.The bead discovery led to a treasure hunt- no self respecting treasure hunter goes down the (concrete) trail without a set of walking sticks pilfered from the neighbor's yard. The treasure hunt concluded with two beads, a length of weed-eater wire and a corncob (??). Oh the fun you can have and the things you can find if you just look with the eyes of a 4-year-old!

Reese

Reese...well...she is still a funny little bear. Santa brought her a doll house for Christmas and she will spend hours producing very detailed plays with every little creature and character she can dig up. Noah's Ark animals are frequently at a dinner party with Barbie; Snow White can often be found hanging out with Gumby and Pokey; and she has an army of Squishies (Squinkies) that I swear are plotting to take over the world back there. Then, there's this creature. She spent well over 15 minutes standing in front of the Michael's $1 crap-made-in-China bins one day trying to decide what little gem to get for a friend's birthday. The friend got a bizarro octopus and Reese got...Reese's September birthday just misses the age cutoff for Kindergarten. It used to upset me that she wouldn't be starting school with many of the friends she has grown up with but now I am learning to enjoy the idea that she has one more year to be a kid. I'm not pushing her reading, not worrying about her letters...I really am trying to chill out and let her be who she wants to be before the school system gets hold of her. She'll have enough years ahead of her where she will have to be somewhat conformist. Right now, she's just a free-spirited, imaginative redhead with crazy hair.

Makena

Makena is now well on her way to being six...teen. Since December, she has lost two teeth, learned to ride a two-wheeler and developed a love of Taylor Swift (she will sit with her CD player and listen to the same two TS songs over.and.over.and.over). She is reading like a champ- she literally burried her nose in a chapter book yesterday when she got home from school, read it the entire way to and from gymnastics and did not put it down until our friends arrived for dinner. We have switched her soccer league to an all-girls' league. She's having fun, but the jury's still out on how long-term a sport it will be for her. She is MOST excited about mastering her two-wheeler. The cul-de-sac behind our house has become the meeting place for neighborhood bike rallies. She goes and goes and goes...
At the beginning of this month, she had her first Father-Daughter dance at school. We went shopping to pick out a dress- I'm in trouble because she wanted to try on almost every dress we saw- I think we took 11 to the dressing room and actually tried on 8.
A few pictures...I don't have any bike-riding pictures- that would have required entirely too much effort.
The evening of the first lost toothBefore the big danceA few soccer pictures

Soooo....

I'm lazy. No beating around the bush here. I have to open my computer to blog (and my fun new iPad is much more fun to play on); I have to open a cabinet to get to my camera; really?? the effort is clearly just too huge!
I'm going to give each girl her own catch-up post in a few minutes but, right now I want to take a minute to put to words some of the things I have been feeling lately so I can look back on these words and remember. I am thankful for what God has given our family. The daily trials and tribulations of my days are minor in light of some of the struggles happening just outside our door. We are not rich (by America's warped standards), we do not live in a lavish house, our marriage is far from perfect, our children are people and people are flawed but, none the less, Brett has a job that he enjoys, we are surrounded by a supportive community of church and neighborhood friends, our families are nearby (and sane!), and our kids are thriving.

You know Mary thinks about this every year...

It would have been soooo much easier...

(we have a very interactive Nativity set...all the characters interact with all the rest of our toys)

Honey's 87th birthday

We celebrated 87 years of Honey this past Sunday. Can you imagine? 1923. There's a lot of history between now and 1923. My 35 years seem incredibly insignificant when I think of the wars, Depression, civil rights improvements, etc that he, my grandmother(s) and their generation have seen and been involved in.
We had lunch at their new, swanky retirement digs. He even got a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday from a staff who seem to think he may be the funniest not-old person in the place!

Wii time

The rule around here is no TV or Wii on school nights. I'm finding that to be easier to enforce when it is warm and light outside in the evenings. As usual, with the onset of winter comes the onset of more gaming at our house. Now the kids are old enough to play some of the games. This is Makena doing an obstacle course and Reese...well...eating cake, I think.

Linville Caverns

Everybody had Veterans' Day off last week (a foreign concept to people living in towns not heavily populated with bankers). We took the day and drove up to the Blue Ridge Parkway and toured Linville Caverns. I hadn't been into caverns in 30 years and my memory (as a 5-ish year old) of Longhorn Caverns near Austin had always been this massive and expansive space. These are downright claustrophobic..and slimy with all the water running down the walls. But so cool! We spied two bats ("about the size of a chicken nugget" was the description the guide gave us. gross.) and some blind fish. Poor fish.

We started the day with a good old fashioned, Southern, fattening breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Everybody needs to learn how to play that confounded game.

Then we did a little bouldering while we waited for our turn in the caverns.

Didn't really get many good shots in the cavern- I spent more time trying to ensure that my lens didn't get whacked into a 30 zillion year old stalactite.

After the caverns, we tooled down the parkway and found a good picnic spot. Reese's movie star diva came out in full force (that's string cheese in her mouth).

Halloween

Par for the course, I guess. Or, I could look at it as only being two weeks behind instead of two months. You choose.

At the end of the pumkin carving, a character named "Balance Girl" appeared. We'd never met her before. Apparently, her preferred attire includes nightgowns and headbands a la Roller Derby girls and she walks along the uncoiled water hose (her balance beam). She has made a few spontaneous appearances since...but you never know when to expect her.

The girls were both flappers this year. Strangely, Reese's flapper-headgear was very similar to Balance Girl's...

Hiatus

Ok, so 2 months and a few "OK...Kindergarten...we get it...move on" comments later, I'm finally finding time to blog. Sort of. Our lives feel really different now. Makena gets up at 6:30 and she and Brett leave by 7:10. She doesn't get home until 2. Reese and I have lots of time to ourselves in the morning....during which we still seem to get very little done. I've found myself volunteering at Makena's school at least once a week. Her teacher welcomes parent volunteers into the classroom while the kids are in there so it has been a fun experience for me to sit in there like a little fly on the wall just spying away on everybody.

Reese had a birthday last month. We've been soccer-ing. We've chosen pumpkins. Pictures...

Seriously- I've spent half an hour trying to upload three more pictures and Blogger is apparently on strike this morning. Grrrrr. This would be a large part of my laziness when it comes to posting- Blogger takes forever to upload photos! More later.

First Day of Kindergarten

Well...I guess this happens to all parents of 5 year olds...today is Makena's first day of Kindergarten! She's been excited about if for...oh...about a year now. We went through the ritual yesterday of deciding which outfit to wear. That only took an hour. This morning we got up as planned, got ready, had a last minute change of heart about which outfit to wear, then drove to school!

Calling it the "first" day of school is a bit of a misnomer, though. Our school staggers the rising kindgergarteners over four days (so each kindergartener only goes for one full day on either yesterday, today, tomorrow or Monday). They don't determine the classes until after those four days so on Tuesday, we go for an hour and a half to meet her actual teacher, THEN next Wednesday she goes for a full day to her real classroom. It's kind of like having three "first" days. A little anticlimactic, but it certainly works when you can't decide between three outfits for what to wear on your "first" day.

Of course, the next week she's off Monday for Labor Day then she's off again Thursday and Friday for teacher workdays. So sometime in November we'll be into a real 5-day-a-week schedule.

As an aside...in some odd twist of...something...on the first day of school I found myself putting on khaki shorts and a white shirt and I woke up with a big zit smack in the middle of my forehead. Clearly some things never change.