Mama On The Move

We didn't have thunder or lightning in Hawaii.  Despite the fact that it rains every day, it does so gently, with no fuss or noise.  We have only once in the past three and a half years seen lightning.  It was such an unusual phenomenon that we had local friends who drove out closer to the storm to sit in the back of their truck and watch the lightning like it was a fireworks show. Now we are back in the land of thunder, lightning, hail and tornadoes. Yay. There was a thunderstorm last night that started around dinner time and kept booming until 2:00 this morning.  Ringo spent all evening huddled in the laundry room.  Rigger, who is usually mellow to the point of being a liquid, was lying on the rug when the thunder boomed the first time.  He jumped up and tried to run through the house, but it was like watching a cartoon character run in place.  He just couldn't get his legs up under him and frankly, there was nowhere to go. The thunder kept b...

It's football season and Kerry is happy.  That man does love football.  He knows every little factoid and piece of useless trivia about football.  I used to like to look up odd football facts and try to stump him but I don't think I ever once came up with something he didn't already know. Kerry played football in high school and always hoped that Ben would follow in his footsteps.  Ben however, never had any interest in football.  He played soccer as a child.  I, as a concerned mother, was fine with that.  I am after all, married to a man who had major knee surgery as a teen thanks to football. I remember one day when Ben was about ten, we were going somewhere and discussing football.  Kerry was mentioning how he hoped Ben would someday learn to love football as much as he does. "Well, he likes soccer and that's fine.  I don't really mind if he never wants to play football," I replied. Kerry whipped the car into a parking lot, looked ...

Sometimes as Kerry is heading out the door for work, we are remembering last minute info to impart to one another and our sentences cross each other and our thoughts move on to the next topic before the other person is on board. As Kerry was heading out the door this morning, he said out of the blue and connected to nothing we had been saying, "Go ahead and buy tickets today." "For what?" Having already moved on from the subject and trying to get to work on time, Kerry said, "Kiss me." I grinned.  "I don't need tickets to kiss you." He looked at me loftily and retorted, "Well you'll just have to wait in line then!"

I love my kids. I really, really do. They are a blessing, they are a blessing, they are a blessing.  But sometimes they do things that really aggravate me.  Like putting ink pens in their pockets.  I never put a pen in my clothing.  It goes in my purse and my purse only.  I've tried to teach my children this simple rule:  the pen can go in your purse or backpack, you can clip it onto the front of a notebook, you can tuck it behind your ear, but you never, never, never insert it into your clothing.  Invariably, it gets forgotten and goes through the washer and dryer, where it explodes. And when your mother opens the dryer, she explodes. This is the inside door of the dryer. This is the inside drum of the dryer. Amazingly, there was not a ton of ink on the clothing.  It was largely a load of blue jeans so it wasn't showing up on the material.  There were a few spots on some tee shirts, but again nothing major. But t...

When you are moving, you imagine where everything will go in your new house.  Kerry and I walked around our new house while it was empty and decided, "The sofa will go there, let's put the TV here.  Let's put the headboard on this wall, and the dresser over there.  No.....over there.  No....over here." You think everything through and you imagine you will unpack each box and not open a new box until the first box is finished.  Everything will go in its place, the place it was assigned, the place where it will live forever. How unpacking an entire house really works: "Let's go ahead and put all these books on the shelves in the bedroom." "Well, all the sheets and curtains are on those shelves right now." "Why?" "Well, I need to iron the curtains before I hang them, but we haven't unpacked the iron yet." "Well, why didn't you just leave the curtains in a box?" "I was looking for sheets to p...

Ten years ago we were living in Virginia. Each year at Christmas we would fill shoeboxes with small toys for Operation Christmas Child. Shopping to fill the boxes was one of our favorite activities throughout the year. One day, Kerry found this soft, squashy doll that really tickled him. I can remember him saying, "I can just see some little girl's face lighting up when she sees this doll." Unfortunately, when we set out to fill our shoeboxes, the yellow doll took up almost her entire shoe box. There just wasn't room for anything else and we thought we'd rather send lots of little items in a box rather than just one toy. We set the yellow doll aside and decided that we would hang on to her until the next year, and then we would try to suction her into a plastic bag so she would take up less room. I tucked her into my closet to wait. Then one day in the middle of summer, Emily, aged four or five, descended the stairs with the yellow doll clutched in her h...

We have now been to the City Museum in St Louis two times.  We will go again.  I think pretty much everyone who ever comes to visit us will now be taken there to visit.  It is the most amazing museum I have ever entered.  Part museum, part playland, part circus, part haunted house, part maze, it's the most entertaining space I've ever found which would truly appeal to a wide age group.  (Except for mothers of young children.  When I was looking for info on the City Museum I found numerous complaints that this place is a "nightmare" because little children can get away from you in a blink and you may never find them again.)  Mothers of older children however (including me) just make a plan and go forward into the maze.   City Museum is housed in what used to be a shoe factory. It was taken over sometime way back when and gradually morphed into what it is now and hopefully is expanding in even more outrageous ways.   On the firs...

I wrote this two years ago.  I've updated it slightly: When you are growing up you study all the wars in school. Even the more recent ones - the Korean War, the Vietnam War - I learned all about them, but I know now, I never really understood what it was like for the people living through those times. Things are different now. On September 11th, 2001, I was at a homeschool co-op with the kids. We were living in Virginia at the time, about an hour away from the Pentagon. We had just celebrated Katie's first birthday a few days before. During the first session of co-op classes, one of the moms came hurrying through the building and said, "All the military families need to get back to post! There's been some sort of emergency and they are closing the post! You won't be able to get back on if you don't hurry!" I gathered up the kids and headed out for the base, having no idea what was happening. I instructed the kids to be quiet and tu...

Katie was really unhappy about her birthday this year. Having just moved from Hawaii, she hasn't yet had time to make new friends here. The end result being that she doesn't know anyone to invite to a birthday party. The enormity of this started hitting her about a week ago. She often looked as though she was trying not to cry and she mentioned a number of times that she wished she could see her Hawaii friends. Luckily, one of her BFF's was able to come up and surprise her on Wednesday. I also posted a status on Facebook asking anyone and everyone to send her a birthday card.  I thought that might make the mail more interesting for the week.    The final count is still not in, but she was thrilled to go check the mail every day.  Of course, her favorite cards were the ones that had some money or a little gift in them which was another unexpected surprise!     We also went to the City Museum in St Louis with our visiting friends ...

Katie has really been sad because her birthday is this weekend and she doesn't really know anyone to have a party with. One of her best friends moved off the island last year, and lives six hours from us now. Her BFF's mom very nicely (wonderfully) agreed to make the six hour drive to surprise her and cheer her up. Best. Surprise. Ever. We had been planning it for about a week, and there were many emails and texts back and forth as to the best plan to pull this off without spoiling the surprise.  I warned my friend not to text me because Katie is often playing on my phone and if a text came through she might see it.  So she came up with these texts in order to let me know where they were at various points through the trip: "We're going to stop in Topeka so I'll text you: " It's hot in Topeka ".  When we get to Kansas City I''ll text you something about the KC Chiefs. Columbia, MO: "The Shuttle Columbia has landed". ST...

This is a totally random video by Ben and friends while we were still in Hawaii. I had never seen it, but at our farewell party someone handed me a DVD that said "Dentist Video" on it. I had no idea what it was, and only just got around to watching it!