Pink Sheets

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

This is a Story Of...

... a tree. But first, an update on my weekend. We did most of the things on my list. There are a couple of exceptions. I was going to have the kids play in the kiddie pool and run through the sprinklers, however, Brian put down fertilizer so that was cancelled. Instead they ran through the fountain downtown. Just as fun, except for baby who doesn't like water showering on her.
Then on Sunday, Brian and I made the executive decision to take a day trip up to the cabin to have dinner with his parents and brother. We didn't tell the kids what we were doing. Instead, we made them believe we were going on a bike ride. None of them seemed to notice we didn't pack the bikes. Hello! Anyway, once we hit the hills, which is a huge indication of where we are going, they got all excited and asked if we were going to the cabin. They're dorks.
When we arrived we were greeted with the great, great news that the water was working. This, after I insisted Brian stop at the little cafe at the bottom of the mountain to use their disgusting facilities. I should have waited and used the outhouse it would have been more sanitary. Ugh. Anyway, we ate a yummy turkey dinner, which I had planned to make on Monday and headed home. On Monday, I made our turkey, but we had sandwiches instead of the whole entire meal. It was still delicious And now we are still eating the delicious, cajun-injected turkey leftovers. I added the "cajun-injected" part, because it sounds funny to me. I don't know why.
Now for my story about our tree. Once upon a time, just a few weeks ago actually, we had a little maple tree.












(It wasn't this exact maple tree, but it looked like this.) We cared for the tree and looked at the tree when we were outside. We even contemplated getting rid of the tree or moving the tree whenever we decided to get a fence. That was all shattered one Saturday afternoon when we came home to this.












Do you see how awful that looks? It was completely stripped. Our little tree was murdered. There was nothing that could be done to fix him. He was gone. We asked our neighbors, not the ones with the minivan there in the picture, but the other neighbors, if they saw anyone around our house. Indeed they did. They saw a child. The thought it was just one of our kids, but they said it was weird he was by himself because our kids are always together. Which they are and it's a little weird. See?

Except for the baby. She's a loner.


Regardless. Our poor little tree was ruined and we had to plant a new one, which was also smaller. It's alright. I know we'll move on, but you have no idea how disturbing it was to come home and see that tree like that. I even phoned the police on the non-emergency line, of course, and they didn't seem too concerned about our vandalized tree. They sent me some paper work to fill out. Whatever. Someone ruined our tree! It's not like they're easy to replace. It took Brian all afternoon to dig out the old one and put in the new maple. Geez!

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Have A Great Holiday Weekend

Memorial Day weekend is coming up. This means we have all the kids three weekends in a row. Which at this very moment, before the start of the weekend, which will run into next week, which will go into the next weekend, the entire time having four kids in the house, I'm excited. Once I hit the next weekend, I will be exhausted. But, that's next weekend. This weekend I have plans.

-Friday: Hanging out, eating pizza, watching a movie of MY choice. Not the kids. I don't want to watch something lame. :)

-Saturday: Go to the local Farmer's Market, have lunch, play in the water, MAYBE go hang out at Brian's parents house and have a big party while they're out of town. Just kidding. We might go use they're fire pit and roast marshmallows and make s'mores.

-Sunday: Take a bike ride on the Greenbelt in the big city, stop and have a snack and a play break in one of the parks. Come home and do nothing.

-Monday: I have nothing planned except to make a turkey dinner, which will be served closer to lunch time.

Our original plans were to go to the cabin and spend the weekend up there doing nothing at all. However, since there is no running water up there at the moment the three princesses of the family decided to stay home. Baby, Brian and I are not going to stay some where with out running water. Seriously.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007



I love this picture of Jillian. It's so silly. She looks like she knows what she's doing.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Jordan's Crush

Jordan's crush is spending the night tonight. Darby's very best friend in the entire world, Tayler. She is very cute. And it's very obvious Jordan thinks so as well. Jordan and Darby go to different schools, but they both had field trips to the zoo yesterday. When I picked Jordan up he was talking about the zoo and how it was so much fun and I asked if he saw Darby. He said he did and then stated that, "I got to see Tayler too." Not in an excited sort of way, but it was as if it was an obligation of some sort. Just the wording was suspicious. And it's not the only hints he's dropped. He mentions her often and how much he "dislikes" her. Uh-huh. Sure you do.

Anyway, she's spending the night because Tuesday was Darby's 7th birthday. And I'm not liking the way her birthday turned out. I'm a little stressed and upset by the whole mess. On her actual birthday day, Tuesday, I took a half day off of work. I went to her class and brought cookies, which is what she requested. She actually requested homemade cookies the night before at 6:00 pm. Um, no. I bought cookies. Anyway, that was a huge success because I don't believe there is a 1st grader out there that doesn't like a chocolate chip cookie. After school was when the birthday turned for the worse. We had a baseball game at 5:30 for Riley, a T-ball game for Jordan at 7, and Darby had softball practice at 7 as well. So we didn't do anything for her that night. She was able to open one present that morning. The present contained clothes.

The next day she opened another present. Again, clothes. She is now upset she didn't receive any toys. Because when she told everyone what she wanted for her birthday, she said clothes. I bought her clothes. And shoes. And the one toy she did receive from her best friend Tayler was stolen at daycare. It's like everything was going wrong.

I felt a little bit better about the no toys issue when I looked in her closet and found several unopened toys from Christmas. She can open those toys if she really wants to have toys. Seriously, girl. And tonight Tayler is coming over right after school (I'm taking another half day), we're going to turn on the sprinklers and then we're going for pizza. And she can buy herself a new toy with the money she pretty much stole from her dad. So, life is all good. But to keep in the spirit of Darby not having the greatest birthday ever I posted pics of Riley's birthday here.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Growing Up

I don't know if I can handle the kids getting older. It might just be more than I can take. For example, every night I go through the kids' back packs and take out all the old papers and make sure there aren't any notes I need to read. Simple enough, right? Wrong!!! Every time I go through Riley's bag I remove exactly the wrong papers. Here is a conversation we had the Friday before Spring Break.

Riley: Did you go through my bag last night?

Me: Yes.

Riley: Did you see my homework?

Me: I don't think so.

Riley: My homework was in my bag and I haven't finished it yet. I need to turn it in when we go back to school.

Me: Well, I saw some blank pages but I thought they were just practice stuff so I threw them away.

Riley: You threw them away? You threw my homework away!?

Me: I guess so.

Riley: Great! You need to write a note to my teacher and explain to her that you just went crazy and threw away my homework!!!

Me: Okay.

I didn't write the note because it was Spring Break. No one is going to remember and in fact, it was never mentioned again.

This morning was a similar conversation.

Riley: Did you go through my bag?

Me: Not yesterday, but I did Sunday I think.

Riley: Did you see my practice am.

Me: I don't even know what that is.

Riley: It's a worksheet and it says practice at the top. I need it.

Me: The only papers I took out were graded ones.

He looks at me, exasperated. "It would have had a grade on it. I need it so I can scan it!"

"When do you need it?"

"Right now!"

"Right now you need it?"

"Well, by tomorrow at the latest."

"Okay."

I just don't think I'm very good at this.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Love Letter Update

I forgot to mention below that after reading the note I asked Riley if he still liked Heather. (He told me a few days before that he had a girlfriend.) He got a huge grin on his face and said he did. I then asked if they had been in a fight. (Remember in the note he apologized for looking in her book?) He then had a horrified expression on his, "did you read my note?"

"What note?" I respond, innocently.

"You did. You went through my bag and read my note," he says shaking his head.

"I did no such thing," I lied.

He checked to make sure the note was still there. Looked at me and continued to watch Gladiator, which he watches while fast forwarding to the fight scenes.

Anyway, I have new pics!

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Love Notes

Every night I go through the kids' back packs to make sure they don't have unfinished homework or notes they've forgotten to give me. One evening last week I was rummaging through Riley's bag. He has a ton of stuff in his bag. Drawings, score cards for made up games, things I usually just toss aside. This evening, however, was different. This evening I found something interesting. Much more interesting than drawings (which I usually love, by the way, and sometimes I do steal them). More interesting than score cards,which are actually pretty boring and I don't even get what they are anyway.

Nope, this little tidbit I paid attention to. It was a love note. To a girl. A girl named Heather. He wrote that he was sorry for looking in her book and that he really did like her. At the bottom was a poem about her sparkling eyes and teeth. And I would have been a little worried and uncomfortable about the whole love note thing, but right in the middle of the note was a Seattle Seahawks logo he drew for an added touch, I suppose. So, he's still my little innocent boy who loves sports. And hopefully he loves them more than girls.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

I Caught The Fall With My Head

That's what Brian would be saying if he could remember the fall at all. Friday he went on a mountain bike ride with his friend on a lunch hour. He's been doing this Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a couple of weeks now. He bought all this biking gear which, lucky for him, included a helmet. Because Friday, after my 2:00 meeting I received a voice mail stating that Brian wrecked on his bike and he probably needs to go home. Possibly even the doctor's. He would be waiting down stairs in the locker room. Crap!!! This did not sound good.

I go to the locker rooms in hopes that possibly this was some kind of cruel joke. It wasn't. He comes out and his face is scratched and his ear is bleeding pretty badly. He looks a little dazed. I asked if he had the keys. "Should I have the keys," he responds. I gave him the keys to get his biking stuff out of the car. He tells me he'll look in the locker room for them.

As I wait his friend gives me a few details. They weren't helpful. He told me where he was scratched and that he hit his head. He didn't know how because he was ahead of him and didn't see the actual wreck. Brian comes back out. "Did you find the keys?" I ask, hopefully. His response? "Was I suppose to be looking for them?"

Okay, I might puke at this point. We are so getting out of here. We finally leave and drive to the nearest "Doc in the Box" I can think of. The entire way there Brian is asking what day it is and what time it is. Here's a little example. Brian: "What time is it?"

Me: "It's 3:15"

Brian: "Where are we going?"

Me: "To the doctor."

Brian: "What time is it?"

Me: "Around 3:15."

Silence.

Brian: "What time is it?"

Me: "A little after 3:15."

And so on and so forth until we reach the doctor's office. Where we didn't even stay because they told us to go to the emergency room immediately. Puke.

We get to the emergency room and he's still acting very, very loopy. They did a CAT scan and his skull was not fractured, so that was a huge relief. He did fracture a bone under his eye which will heal by itself and is only a bit bruised. He has some nasty road rash that I won't even describe to you. And he has this memory issue. It concerned the doctors and so I finally convinced him to stay the night at the hospital. It was the right choice.

I think the doctors had little faith in my ability to convince Brian to stay. He was pretty adamant that he wanted to go home. Hello! He's a concussion patient. He doesn't remember anything that was said two minutes before. I'm pretty sure I could argue my case for staying at the hospital and win. And I did thank you very much. Sheesh!

Anyway, he still has a few memory issues, but he's much better. He did silly things all Friday night. Like ordering a ton of food from the hospital cafeteria and calling me four times that evening after he insisted I go home and take care of the dog and not remembering one phone call. He asked me probably 100 times what his parents said and where was Jillian. And he slept a lot. Which probably wouldn't be the case had he come home.

And now he's back at work. I told him to stay home, but he's here and he seems much better. He did say that today is fuzzier than yesterday which I don't like, but I'm glad he's doing well. The doctors said he'll probably never get his memory of Friday back. Maybe that's best.