March 2013–Part 2

One morning at the end of March, Chris called me up and said, “Go outside.” Instead of his boring beige Camry (the “potato car”), he was driving this fun, sporty red Jeep! Of course, this meant a bi-annual car wash was called for, (That’s every two years, not twice a year!) a party my poor, tired old minivan was at least invited to join. Chris actually had the idea that he would wash his Jeep and I would wash the minivan – fair, right? NOT! By the time I finished half the minivan, he was done with his, including waxing and re-blacking. So of course he helped me finish washing and then waxing mine. I’m glad I didn’t have to do the top of my car! (see below) How do other people manage, I wonder? Katherine even waxed the top for me. My philosophy was that I didn’t want to, and even if she did a crappy job, nobody would be able to tell!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Luna brought us our first “gift,” a little dead brown snake. Yay! We told her what a good kitty she was, and threw the snake over the fence, which I don’t think she much liked. She’s since killed several more little snakes in our backyard - in fact one poor little garter snake is slowly dying in the monkey grass out back as I type this! I’m not really appreciative since I kind of like those little, harmless (well, almost) snakes. We came across a BIG ole’ snake about a week ago and that worthless cat was FREAKED. She had NO plans whatsoever to tackle that sucker, so he got away. Chris says he’s holding out for a squirrel – when Luna brings him a baby squirrel, then he’ll praise her! She’s also taken to bringing Katherine smaller presents – one night Katherine went to bed and about 3 minutes later we heard her yell. Luna had brought her a dead moth and put it on her face. Katherine claims Luna has brought her dead mosquitoes as well, something I still need to see to believe! We’re all dreading the day she brings us a baby bird, something that gets more and more likely every day as the fledglings leave their nests.

The much-used trampoline that was a gift from Uncle Scott when we first moved in nearly 8 years ago had just fallen apart over the past few months, and we bought the kids a new one for Christmas. Considering that we’d just hit the end of March, we decided it was probably about time to put it together. Chris got it up (with lots of short-people help), and even went to the trouble to level it. We got the spring mats and all up later, but some people just couldn’t wait to start bouncing! Still waiting to get that enclosure net put up though… Maybe by the end of summer. ;-)

 

 

 

 

 

Even though the pictures are only of the girls, the happiest kid to have a good trampoline again is undoubtedly Daniel – he goes around in circles on that thing more than all the others combined! And yes, I do mean in circles. Round and round like a caged zoo animal…

 

I owe a big thank you to my sister-in-law Susan – or at least the girls do. She and her daughters donated two boxes filled with their old Barbies and Barbie stuff to my kiddos. This sounds really awesome until you see it spread out across the living room floor, or at least where the living room floor USED to be – we can’t see it anymore to be sure it’s still there! (The extra girl in the picture is our little friend Greta.) However, this turned out to be a pretty timely gift when combined with Elizabeth’s birthday gift this year (next post!)… I took these pictures too soon – you can see that one box is still mostly full. I should’ve taken pictures once they emptied out BOTH boxes onto the floor (which is, of course, the only to properly see everything). There were a few things in these boxes that needed explaining – like the Barbie headphones attached to a miniature cassette player. “What generation iPod is that?”

Caroline finished up her last soccer game (finally!) at the end of March. I can’t say it was a really great year for her or anything. She didn’t have many practices, and had fun chasing the ball, but was a little bored. She also didn’t get to know anybody on her team very well, which meant games weren’t nearly as much fun for her!

 

 

 

 

 

Our weekly playgroup had its annual Easter egg hunt at Noelani Capel’s house with its enormous backyard. We found LOTS of great hiding spots in all the bushes and trees. They may still be finding eggs over the summer!

 

 

 

Everyone brought something to snack on and share, making the morning especially yummy! (As if a dozen eggs filled with candy weren’t yummy enough!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katherine has a new climbing buddy… She sure didn’t carry that cat up there! Nor will she get her down. Luna isn’t going to be making us drag a ladder out to get her down. Can you see that they match? (Both black and white!)

Gymnastics–a great year for Rachel

On March 17th Rachel finished her first competitive year of gymnastics, and it has been a great experience, though certainly not a smooth one for her. Rachel was thrilled to be invited to join the team last May as a level 2 (Level 1 being easiest and 10 the hardest). However, not long after they began twice a week, 2 and 3 hour practices I started getting reports from her coach that Rachel was being a problem during class – acting out, disobeying, and generally having an attitude problem. The first time she told me about it, I was so puzzled I asked Coach Amy if she was sure she meant Rachel and not another girl. Oh yeah, she was sure. Chris and I talked to Rachel about how lucky she was to be on the team, ect (you know, the old “Do you know how much this is costing us and how lucky your are?!? spiel) and told her we didn’t want to hear about this again. We thought that would be the end of what must’ve just been a bad day at the gym. NOT! We quickly realized that Rachel was having to push herself and deal with not being perfect and adorable for the first time in her charmed little life, and she was taking it out on Coach Amy. Amy wasn’t gushing over her and telling her what a good job she was doing, and I don’t think Rachel has ever had a coach or teacher who didn’t. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough just to get through the skills she was required to do, she was expected to repeat them over and over, without praise, just correction. Not that Coach Amy was in any way mean, or harsh – she and Rachel just had very different ideas about how these classes would go! It’s embarrassing, but it took me longer than it should have to realize the extent of Rachel’s attitude problem – not that I think my little princess is so perfect, but I just haven’t seen this side of Rachel before, especially out in public! I already knew Rachel is a little perfectionist. If she messed up during the day, it would just eat at her for a long time. Many days she would spill or break something in the morning (because, let’s face it, if anyone in the house was going to drop, spill, trip, or break ANYTHING, chances are good it would be Rachel!), and then apologize AGAIN about it at bedtime. She just HATES to make a mistake, so I guess with gym classes she was really struggling with the problem that she couldn’t just be PERFECT, or even the best on her team. What I did realize quickly is that this struggle was going to be GOOD for Rachel! The sweet little charmer was having to grow, yay! This was going to be a lesson I couldn’t teach her, but hopefully Coach Amy could. More on this subject as we go here…

Her first meet was in October, and for the first several meets I tried to make her feel more special by fixing up her hair in special braids. Pretty cool, huh? I’m kinda proud of them. By the time we got to the last few meets, I was quickly grabbing it up in a side ponytail as we hurried out the door! Not as proud of that… but she was happy, so it didn’t matter! Her first meet was held at our local gym, so we decided that the whole family should go support Rachel, who has sat through many, many soccer games and ballet recitals for the other kids. We dragged all the kids, even those who did NOT wish to attend, and headed for the gym early on a Saturday morning. It took Chris a good long time to get over the disgust at discovering that the admission price was nearly $30 for the family! (And not a one of the kids watched a single routine Rachel performed, but she didn’t know that!) Gymnastics is apparently one of those sports where they nickel-and-dime you constantly, adding little fees to everything. After paying the $60 fee to enter Rachel into the meet, a $15 charge to feed the judges and coaches, and then me putting in about 3 hours of my time helping out, somehow the $30 admission fee for the family just felt like a lot! Blah. Anyway, Rachel loved the meet. She loved being part of the team, and getting her chance to be in the spotlight. We noticed years ago that Rachel, for all that she’s so quiet and subtle, really REALLY wants attention. I used to laugh at the difference between her and Caroline when they were both babies – Caroline would give up anything for food (she was the world’s biggest mooch!), and Rachel would give up food for attention. So obviously performing by herself up on a balance beam would be perfect for Rachel!

She didn’t rank very high in her first couple of meets, but didn’t really notice or care – she just had fun going to the meet and doing her routines. I could’ve helped her polish her routines, but she never seemed very interested when I’d bring it up, so I just let it be. After her third meet she remarked that she wished she were good enough to get flowers after a meet. She thought flowers were earned, and I didn’t correct her by informing her that flowers were bought by parents, not won by routines, and her parents had just been too cheap to sign her up for some. Sigh. It was kind of heartbreaking, but I just asked her if she’d worked as hard as the girls who won had on their routines, if she’d listened to Coach Amy and done everything she’d been told. Rachel supposed not, but asked me to help her at home so she could get better scores. And I resolved that she WOULD get flowers at her next meet!

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the meet in February (she basically had one a month from October through March), Elizabeth begged to be allowed to go with us, since I hadn’t wanted to take anybody else since the first meet, when everybody was bored. Rachel and I agreed Elizabeth could come with us to Vicksburg for the meet. And so Rachel’s biggest fan was acquired. If you look below her in the picture to the left, you can see that not only is Elizabeth watching, but both of her American Girl dolls are also watching!

Rachel didn’t do particularly well at that meet, but something clicked in her brain before the next one. The next meet was awesome! Mind you, Rachel hadn’t scored higher than maybe sixth or seventh place on any event (or the all-around) in any of the meets so far. But at this meet, she won bars, and came in 4th on beam! If she hadn’t wobbled on an easy part of her beam routine, she might have won that too. Below are videos of both events. If they won’t play on the blog, click on the YouTube link and you can watch them on YouTube directly. (Let me know if you can’t watch them, and I’ll use a different service to put them on here.)

Rachel’s winning bars routine

Rachel’s beam

The gym organizers dimmed the lights for the awards ceremony, apparently for ambiance, so I couldn’t get very good pictures, but I love this one of Rachel looking on down the line. She’d never been at the top before, or even anywhere near it! She liked the view…a lot.

The GOLD medal:

 

Letting Elizabeth check out her GOLD medal—>

 

 

 

 

 

There was only one meet left after this fantastic meet, and it was state meet – guaranteed to be much harder to get medals or win anything, but Rachel had caught the competitive bug now, so she was hopeful and taking her workouts seriously. It was also in Hattiesburg at 8am on a Sunday morning, so we would have to spend the night. Caroline and our friend Kate were dying to go as well, so we left Chris, Daniel, and Katherine at home and headed to Hattiesburg en masse. The hotel had a heated pool, and they had a blast, but couldn’t stay very long because it was already late and Rachel needed a good night’s sleep! It was great – the room unexpectedly came with a pull-out sofa bed, so nobody had to sleep on the floor. I wasn’t looking forward to “picking” who got the extra bed (since it goes without saying that one was mine!), and who got the floor!

State meet was great! Before the meet, Coach Amy gave them each a little “happy.”

 

And Caroline got her first ever push-up pop!

 

 

 

Rachel’s awesome teammate Emily brought cheering signs for us to hold up – these were SO cute! Other parents were jealous –

“Where’s mine?!?” but they didn’t have anyone as awesome as Emily and her mom on THEIR teams, so too bad.

Rachel had her best meet of the year – she scored over a 9.00 on every event! She was a little disappointed on bars – even though her routine looked identical to the one she did at the last meet (when she won), she scored .5 lower and placed 6th. Still, for state meet, that’s fantastic! There were just SO many more girls at this meet. Several girls even scored 9.80’s on bars, so she never had a chance. Really exciting though was her 4th place finish on beam, and 6th all-around! She left VERY happy with herself and the 3rd place finish for her team!

 

 

 

 

 

And look- The girl finally “earned” some flowers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a blast cheering for her, and after a celebratory lunch at Cracker Barrel, we headed home, with everybody declaring it had been a super-fun trip!

More videos:

Vault

Bars

Beam

Floor–sorry the beginning is so choppy! I couldn’t find her, but I got it sorted before she started.

So gymnastics definitely has been a great experience for Rachel this year. Not that she’s gotten so much better at gymnastics itself, but she learned a lot nonetheless. Sometime around February (!) she resolved her attitude issues, and told me that, “You know Mommy, now that I have a good attitude, gymnastics is really fun.” No kidding, kiddo! Nowadays, she randomly blurts out that gymnastics is SO much fun and that she loves it. Coach Amy has told me that she is a pleasure to have in the gym – no more sulky days.

Now comes the hard part – Katherine and Elizabeth were both invited to try out for the team next year as well, and they went to tryouts last Saturday. Decisions will have to be made. This was a ridiculously expensive year for Rachel, at least from my perspective, and now we’re looking at tripling it! Aaaaah! But this experience was SOO good for Rachel this year, and it was such a positive experience… and on a purely selfish level, I’ve liked that gymnastics has been “her” thing. Actually, Katherine doesn’t like the idea of having to “give up” her summer, so she’s not sure that she wants to be on the team. (Really? Two days a week for a couple hours is “giving up” her summer?!? Oh well, I’m not exactly trying to convince her otherwise…)

March 2013–Part 1

Well, you could say the cat’s still working out wonderfully. Our only problem with her is that she’s overcomed her fear of the outdoors and realized how intoxicatingly INTERESTING it is. And of course, being a cat, she doesn’t respect the fence around the backyard, so every time we turn around she’s up on the roof, in the neighbor’s yard, or hiding up a tree. She’s also really good at finding napping places inside the house where the kids will have to hunt to find her. (And hunt they will! She never disappears for more than 5 minutes without someone saying, “Where’s Luna?” It helps that she’s such a deep black – she looks like a shadow when all curled up.) I found her one day on the bookcase (yes, I know how disgustingly messy it is), just checking things out. ------> She has truly checked out EVERY corner of our house – from the tip-top of my closet shelves to the back of the washing machine.

“Spring” soccer has still been cancelled as often as it’s been played due to the weather. On one “exciting” Saturday (the 2nd), Caroline even got to play a game while it snowed! (No accumulation though) When I had to sit through Katherine’s game later in the day, I brought a super-warm “mummy” style sleeping bag to zip myself into, and was actually warmer than I’ve been during some games played in warmer weather!

After the game, Elizabeth really wanted to walk around the neighborhood selling Girl Scout cookies for her troop, so I sat in the car (with the heat up!) and drove the van around for her while she went door-to-door. Elizabeth had plenty of help too – her sisters all wanted to go with her, as well as our friends Kate and Greta! They made a pretty cute bunch knocking on doors. They even developed some simple choreography to ask people if they wanted to buy some cookies. They had a blast, if you can’t tell from the pictures! Every 15 minutes or so, they’d come sit in the hot car and warm up, then go back out, dragging the bag of cookie boxes. They did pretty well too – sold almost 4 cases (12 each) of cookies and could’ve sold a lot more Thin Mints! This was the only day she could do it since we’d be busy every afternoon the next week and had plans for the weekend. She did get to sell cookies again at another booth sale in front of Kroger – wouldn’t you want to buy something from these cuties?

That Saturday, the 9th, the kids and I drove to Ferriday for a visit and a family reunion Dolly was hosting. We had a great time, got to see a lot of family (some of which I hadn’t seen in a very long time), and got lots of tree-time. Yes, that’s the kids’ main occupation when we go to Ferriday these days. They practically live up in the oak trees between my parents’ and Dolly’s houses. They even “carpeted” their favorite one with clover and assigned all sorts of “rooms” (aka limbs) to each other. Best of all, my niece Grace was also there to play with! And on Sunday, their second cousin Tucker also showed up to play. When Scott and Allison showed up with their other “cousins” Gus and Wilkes, they really had a blast! Daniel let the girls bury him in clover and then got annoyed when the girls told him Wilkes peed on him while he was buried (Wilkes didn’t, but it was funny for about a minute).

 

 

 

And here’s the video of him rising from the clover, apparently as a mummy/zombie:

This family reunion was the first time my whole family has gotten together for a long time, so of course we had the obligatory photo session!

The girls found Lori’s and my old Maypole dresses (yes, I realize that sentence requires an explanation and no, I’m not giving it now!) and enjoyed dressing up. Elizabeth is exactly the age I was when I wore the green dress, although I was probably closer to Rachel’s height. If we lived in Natchez, Elizabeth would be dancing it this year. Sigh.

And here’s a teaser for my next post… There’s something new and cool in our driveway!