How to Get Crayon Out of Washed and Dried Clothes

...Because I'm helpful like that.

We're still on vacation, but fortunately we're staying at a fabulous 5-star location (my in-laws' house) that has full laundry services at no extra cost.  After being here over a week, I finally gathered up all the girls' clothes yesterday, separated them into two loads (though I didn't bother to sort - I just put half in the first load and half in the second) and threw them into the wash.  And when I pulled the first load out of the dryer, I was horrified to discover that everything was covered in brilliant purple crayon splotches.

You'd think after the iPod incident (which, now that I mention it, I don't think I ever blogged about - rice is the key there.  Rice and not turning it on right away) I'd have learned to check pockets before washing the girls' things, but, alas.

I may or may not have said a few choice words.  After all, this is the second major screw-up of this trip, and there were a lot of brand new clothes in that load.  Really cute brand new clothes.  But then I turned to my best friend, Google.  Seriously, what did people in these situations do before the internet?  There were several helpful results, but the one I was most interested in trying was the one that required the least amount of work.  I figured before I started dousing things in WD-40 or scraping every single stain (and there were a LOT) with a toothbrush, I'd try the easy solution.  This blog post was very encouraging, especially with the number of comments after it that all claimed success.  And, bonus, I only had to buy vinegar (and only because my mother-in-law had just run out), as opposed to some other options that had you adding all kinds of crazy stuff to the wash.

So, here's what you do:

1. Put the clothes in the washer, and set the water to hot.
2. Add your laundry detergent, 1/2 cup of vinegar, and 4-6 Tbsp of dishwasher liquid.
3. Let the clothes soak for 10-15 minutes.
4. Let the wash run normal.

My mother-in-law has a front-loading washing machine, so I wasn't entirely sure how to go about the soaking part, and she uses powdered detergent, so figuring out how to add that and the liquids was a little challenging, but I managed to figure it out.  Here are my variations (some on purpose and some on accident, but it all worked out):  I used a full scoop of the powdered detergent, 1 cup of vinegar - but only because I'd read so many different "recipes" that I'd gotten confused as to what the actual measurement was supposed to be - and 5 Tbsp of liquid dishwasher detergent.  I mixed it all together in a measuring cup, thinking that the powder would dissolve in the vinegar and then I could just pour it into the liquid portion of the detergent drawer, but apparently detergents react with vinegar, so that was kind of a volcanic experience.  I got it all in there eventually, though I don't know how much vinegar actually made it into the washer and how much I had to clean up off the counter.  I set the washer on hot and used the autosoak setting along with the heavy duty cycle, so the whole thing took about 2 hours.

It was quite the production when I opened up the washer - my mother-in-law and Vicki were both there, curious to see if it worked (I'll be honest, we all had our doubts - it sounded way too good to be true, especially considering the plethora of other solutions).  I pulled out the bright green sweatshirt that had originally held the crayon in its pocket and was relieved to see that ALL the purple stains and clumps of wax were gone.  In fact, all but two items were completely purple free!

So there you have it.  Should you ever find yourself in this same situation, have no fear!  The clothes can be saved.

Now, too bad I don't have a whole host of household stress relievers to post about.  I could start a series.  Of course, all I need to do is a few more loads of laundry and I'm sure I'll have some other disaster to share. That's just how I operate.

The Christmas that Almost Wasn't

A bit of a warning: this is a really long post.  I tried to make it shorter, but it's just not as much fun if you don't get all the details.  Bear with me, and hopefully it will be worth it once you've made it all the way through!  

When we left all of our family behind in Utah seven and a half years ago, it was with the unspoken understanding that we would bring the grandchildren home every year for Christmas.  So every year we pack our bags full of winter gear and Christmas presents, load up the car, and drive for 12 hours to spend a few weeks with the people we love.

This year was no different.  We loaded up Friday evening and got up early Saturday morning to begin our drive.  We usually leave around 3:00 in the morning so the girls will sleep for the first part of the drive, but this year the alarm malfunctioned and we didn't take off until just after 5:00.

We warned the girls that this would be a different drive than they were used to, because they were going to be awake for a lot more of it than they were used to.  Changes in plans do not go over well for people with Ebert genes, so we wanted to give them enough of a heads up that we didn't have to deal with drama when it took forever to get to Grandma's house.

Well.  It was certainly a different drive.  Just not for the reasons we anticipated.

About 3 hours into the drive, we were passing Pendelton, and I turned around to take a picture of the girls, who had snoozed a little and were now all happily occupied with movies and various other activities.

Little do they know...

Chris and I began talking about how efficiently we must have packed, because it didn't seem like the car was quite as full as usual.

And that's when it hit me, like the proverbial ton of bricks, that there was a very good reason why it didn't seem so full: because it wasn't.  There were three bags of Christmas presents at home in our closet.

All of the girls' Christmas presents.  ALL of them.

While packing Friday, I had gone through all the presents we were bringing with us and organized them into bags and boxes.  All the wrapped gifts for our families and from the girls to each other were in a pile on my bed, next to a giant - closed - box of unwrapped gifts for Chris and myself and the couple of things that were for the whole family.  Everything the girls were getting was sorted into three big grocery bags and put out of sight in my closet, where they had been hiding for the last several weeks anyway.  And, due to some miscommunication about what, exactly, was in the giant box, where they still were.

Once I had finished repeating variations of "Oh my gosh" and "Oh, no, no, no, no, no" and was able to explain to Chris why I had launched into complete and utter freak-out mode, he pulled the car off at the next exit, and we got out so we could discuss the situation without three extra pairs of ears.

Our first thought was, of course, that we would have to turn around and go back.  Another three hours in the car, except this time moving further away from our goal.  Our second, happier, thought was that maybe we could continue on to Utah, and somehow manage to book a plane ticket for either Chris or myself from Salt Lake to Portland and back again.  Because he travels for work, Chris has MVP gold status with Alaska Airlines, so he called them to see if there was anything they could do for us.  And there was, to the tune of $700.  The day before Christmas Eve is not a good time to book a last-minute plane ticket, FYI.

Back to square one.

So while I freaked out some more, Chris called his dad, hoping for another, less freaked out brain to help think things through.  After determining that the only keys to our house were with us, meaning no one could get in and overnight everything to us, and that no, we couldn't just rush out and replace everything once we got to Salt Lake and then return the stuff in our closet once we got home (which was also my dad's suggestion - he even went so far as to offer to start searching right away and save us some time), his dad realized that not only had Chris's brother and his girlfriend stayed overnight in La Grande, 45 minutes down the road, but that they were still there.

After much frantic phone calling back and forth between the three parties, it was determined that we would head to La Grande and meet up with Blaine and Mel, who would then take our car and continue on with the girls as far as Ogden, where Grandma & Grandpa would then meet them, give them a car, and take the girls on to Sandy.  Chris and I, meanwhile, would take Blaine & Mel's car and head back to Portland.  It is important to note that these two are saints, because not everybody would willingly agree to lock themselves in a car for seven hours with someone else's children.  Not even parents willingly do that.

All the way to La Grande we discussed with the girls what was happening.  The hard part was being as clear as we could about why it needed to happen while still being vague enough to keep from destroying certain beliefs.  We told the girls we forgot the presents and needed to go back and get them.  Ellie, who was sitting in the way back, immediately piped up, "No we didn't!  I can see them!  They're right here!"  And Vicki said, "Yeah, I carried them to the car."  And we said, again, "Nope, we forgot the presents."  Vicki caught on then, and started telling Ellie, "No, just trust them, they forgot stuff.", all the while with a look of horror on her face as it dawned on her just what had been forgotten.  Lexi didn't say much, but I think she's trying hard to hold on to certain beliefs, despite her brain telling her otherwise, and she didn't want to think about it any more than she really had to.  Once they understood that a return to Portland by some of the people in our car was inevitable, they immediately promised to be good for Blaine & Mel.  With the alternative being more time in the car, it was an easy promise to make.

So we got to La Grande around 9:30 in the morning, and, after a gas and potty break, Blaine, Mel, and the girls took off in one direction while Chris & I took off in another.  Four hours later, we were back home in Portland, where we headed straight upstairs to the master bedroom closet, pulled out my three very organized bags of presents, and put them in the car before grabbing a quick lunch and getting back on the road.

At one point, I called Mel to see how things were going, and she answered with, "We just had the best experience at a gas station.  With llamas!"

Llamas make any trip worthwhile

So things went great for them.  Fears were unfounded: the girls behaved, no one threw up, I was the only one who freaked out the entire trip.  It's not surprising, really, considering they've made this drive twice a year for the last seven years, but it's good to know they can do it.

And it's a good thing Chris and I like each other.  We talked, we listened to podcasts, we enjoyed music that we wanted to listen to... it was like a very long date, in a car.  And we decided to enjoy every minute of it.  What else could we do?

As much as we just wanted to get to our final destination, we knew that it would be too much to try and drive straight to Salt Lake, so we stopped around 10:30 at the Super 8 motel in Boise and had an impromptu overnight date.  After breakfast at Denny's we set off again at 8:45 the next morning, stopping in Ogden to trade cars with Blaine before finally arriving at Chris's parents' house just after 2:00 Sunday afternoon.

The total driving time for us came to 20 hours.  Yikes.

But, guess what?  It was totally worth it.  Because on Christmas morning, we got to see this:

Roller skates!

Perfect for the budding artist

Google Nexus tablet - she's been dying for this for a year now

Robotics 101

She didn't take the skates off or put down the
bunny all day long

I will be the first to admit that this was truly a first world problem.  There are so many people in this world who didn't even have presents to leave behind.  And, of course, we know that Christmas isn't about the presents, but the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ.  Still, we were blessed this year to be able to provide some things for our girls that they really wanted, and it would have been sad for all of us if they'd had to wait for two weeks to receive them.

It turned out to be the best Christmas we've ever had.  I don't know whether everything was better because we had to work so hard to have it here, or if it's just that we really scored this year as far as knowing what the girls wanted, but whatever the reason, it was an excellent Christmas.  Well worth 20 hours in a car.

And, besides, now we have an awesome story to tell.

Tuesday Morning at My House

Lately my children have been going to sleep later and later.  It seems that no amount of threatening or removal of privileges serves to encourage them to stop talking to each other and go to sleep already.

I guess I should be thankful that they're all getting along, but why does it only seem to happen between 9:00 and 10:00 at night, when at least two of them should already be asleep?

Last night, at about 9:45, I informed them that I didn't care anymore what time they went to sleep.  I was simply going to expect them to get up right when I woke them in the morning, no complaining.  Since I did this in my "Mom's disappointed in you" voice, I think they realized I meant business.

As a general rule, waking them up consists of me shaking them vigorously by whatever body part I can reach at the time (the setup of their beds - all three in one small room - is such that, if they're creative, at times they're not actually accessible to anyone less than a contortionist) and singing really obnoxious wake-up songs in a very chirpy voice, until they get out of bed just to make me stop.

This morning, I smoked them out instead.

 Oh, sourdough toast, how tasty you would have been.
Also, a new toaster is now at the top of my Christmas list.

It was the fastest I've seen them move before 9:00 in the morning.  Ever.  But they were all consequently ready to go on time today.  Possibly emotionally scarred for life, but ready to go on time.

In related news, I can take comfort in the fact that Ellie knows what to do if she ever catches on fire.  The first thing she did when the smoke alarms went off, before any smoke was even visible upstairs, was drop to the floor and start rolling around.

Mother of the Year

It was Vicki's 11th birthday a few weeks ago, and her grandparents sent her clothes.

The problem with buying clothes for a kid who lives 800 miles away is that they aren't always the same size they were the last time you saw them.

Thankfully, Grandma included a gift receipt, so Vicki and I headed off to the nearest JC Penney (which, unfortunately, is still about 20 mins. away from our house.)  We immediately found the same clothes in a bigger size, and made the exchange.  Vicki stopped off in the bathroom while I waited on a bench outside, and then we stopped in Claire's to look at jewelry before heading home.

It took a good 15 minutes to get out of the parking lot and back on the freeway (FYI, local people, 6pm on a Saturday is not a good time to leave Clackamas Town Center.)  About halfway home, a thought occurred to me, and I turned to Vicki and said, "Do you have the JC Penney bag?"

And she said, "No, you had it."

And she was right.

I had had it.  But I didn't anymore.

So we turned around, drove back to the mall, went back to the bathroom bench where I'd set the bag next to me while I waited, and where I'm 100% sure I left it when we went to Claire's.  It had been nearly an hour and it wasn't there anymore.

We checked with the nearest cashier, who called the lost & found.  Nothing.

We retraced our steps through the mall, on the off chance that I'd set it down in Claire's.  Nothing.

We check the lost & found ourselves.  Yep, nothing.

Long story short: two days and a 45-minute drive from Clackamas to Vancouver (because the missing shirt was the last one in her size) later, I replaced the missing birthday present.

Definitely not one of my finer moments.  The upside is that my daughter is an eternal optimist and not yet a teenager, so she didn't hate me, even though it was my fault.  But, you know, disappointing someone like that is almost worse.

Tell me I'm not the only one who's ever done anything like this.  Please?

Just Because

Yesterday was an up-and-down day on Lexi's roller coaster ride of life, but she's still my sunshine on a cloudy day.  I love my Lexi-Lou.

If I Call it an "Adventure", Maybe I Won't Cry

If I believed in karma, I'd be wondering what I'd done wrong.

This past week was the girls' Spring Break, and we left Chris behind and headed down to St. George for some Grandma & Grandpa time.  The plan was to fill our days with hiking, exploring, swimming, playing, and all kinds of craft projects, and my sister-in-law Emily was coming down with her girls Abbie and Savannah.

Our flight left late Friday night, so we spent the morning packing and the afternoon running errands.  Our neighbors, meanwhile, spent the afternoon in a gang-related shooting incident which caused our entire street to be closed off and filled with policemen.

For a while, it looked like we weren't going to be allowed to go home.  And not going home meant not packing and leaving again for the airport.

We eventually made it home, and in a crazy mad rush finished the packing, ate dinner, and left the house significantly less clean than I had intended to.  But we made it, and the trip began.

Among the items we forgot to pack in our mad rush: the girls' toothbrushes and my swimsuit.

Saturday we slept in and then went hiking at Red Cliffs Recreation Area.  Uncle Blaine and his girlfriend Mel were with us for the day.  This was BY FAR my favorite day of the trip.

Queen of the world!

This was a lot scarier than it looks - I'm so proud of her!

Sunday was spent playing with cousins, baking cookies with Grandma, and challenging Grandpa to a putting contest in the backyard "golf course".

This was also the day my camera broke.  Thankfully Vicki brought hers along, so I didn't have to worry about missing a day.

Monday was a rainy day, but we planned accordingly.  All the girls sewed matching pajama pants with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Emily while I ran around buying craft supplies and a new swimsuit (FYI: Walmart's choices in this department are rather unfortunate.)  We made flower fairies and went to Del Sol, where Grandpa bought us each a t-shirt.

And this is where my vacation ended.

Tuesday morning I awakened to the sound of Vicki throwing up.  Everyone else went hiking at Zion National Park while the two of us stayed home and watched movies.  Then they got back from hiking, with a vomit-covered Ellie, who didn't make the last 10 minutes of the drive.

Wednesday was another day of doing nothing at home.  I finished one book and started another, while Ellie watched movies and threw up a lot.  Everyone else went to the sand dunes in Snow Canyon, and Vicki came home with a fever.  Goody.

Ellie continued into the evening, so by 8pm I was on the phone with our insurance company's ask-a-nurse and the on-call physician at our pediatrician's office.  Both recommended having her looked at, so it was off to the ER, where it didn't take long to conclude that she was dehydrated and in need of an IV.  The poor kid was so miserably sick that she didn't even move when the stuck the needle in.  After another bout of vomiting, they gave her some Zofran, which I have nicknamed The Wonder Drug, and within 10 minutes she was sitting up, chatting animatedly about all kinds of things, and eating a popsicle, which stayed down.  If you ask her what the worst part about the hospital visit was, she'll tell you it was when they removed the tape that was holding the IV on.  It was the only time she cried.

After the Zofran


We returned home around 11pm to learn that Lexi had a fever.  Joy.

So on Thursday, Lexi lay on the same couch previously occupied by her sisters, watching movies while Emily and I cleaned and packed and Grandma and Grandpa took the rest of the girls to a park.  They came back to pick us up for lunch at IHOP, but Lexi elected to stay home.  Knowing I hadn't been out of the house in two days, Grandma offered to stay with her, but I only got out of the house long enough to make it to the IHOP parking lot, where Vicki threw up.  Again.  And where the energy was quickly fleeing from Ellie.

So I had one kid with a fever, for which Tylenol was doing nothing, one kid who was vomiting, and one who had absolutely no energy and complained of a tummy ache (mine would ache too if I'd spent 24 hours vomiting).  Two of them were also having issues with the other end, if you get my drift.  And I wasn't feeling so hot myself anymore.

Did I mention we had a plane to catch that night?

God is good.  I know this because after begging and pleading with Him for pretty much the whole day, we managed to make it home almost without incident.  The girls were in fairly good spirits during the two-hour drive from St. George to Las Vegas, and they managed to make it through security (bless forever the sweet security lady who must have seen the exhaustion in all of us and sent us through the "special" line - the one set aside for airport personnel and wheelchairs) and into the packed waiting area before crashing.  We found a corner and they all lay down and fell asleep.  Once we got on the plane, Ellie was asleep again before takeoff and Lexi about five minutes after.  We made it through the first hour of the flight before Vicki threw up again.  Thank goodness for barf bags and a kid who's old enough to know what to do.

The plane landed at midnight, and when Chris picked us up I sat down in the car and burst into tears.

We made it.

I don't believe in karma, but if I did, I'd have an awful lot of questions for the universe.  I'm pretty sure I haven't done anything to deserve all that.  I do believe in God, though, and I know there's no way I would have made it through the day yesterday without His help.  I did not do that on my own - He was holding me up until I could do it on my own again.

And now, I need a vacation.

How Not to Enjoy a Birthday Party

Friday started like any other day, with 5 little girls in my house by 8am.

Friday ended like no other day, with a visit to the Radiology lab of the local hospital.

Vicki went to a birthday party at her friend's house.  They were instructed to bring their swimsuits and were playing water games in the backyard.  Apparently while playing some sort of a relay race, she put her wet feet on a wet slide.  You can imagine what happened next.

The end result was a lot of pain and a goose egg-like lump just above her wrist.  I was made aware of this as soon as it happened, but the friend's parents and I agreed that some Ibuprofen and ice would probably solve the problem.  When I got there to pick her up towards the end of the party, it didn't look too bad to me - no screaming, no weird colors, no odd angles - and I would probably have just told her to hang in there and we'd see how it felt in the morning.  You know, the standard I-know-it's-not-as-bad-as-you're-trying-to-make-me-believe-it-is response.

But the friend's dad happens to be a chiropractor, and he said after looking at it that he was 80% sure something was fractured, and that I should probably take her in for an X-ray.  So I called the pediatrician, and they said if we could be there in the next 15-20 minutes, they'd hang around and wait for us (it was 5:30 on a Friday.)  I left the other two girls at the friends' house and Vicki and I took off.

Two and a half hours, several X-rays, and two Magic Tree House books later, we were back home with Vicki sporting a bright red cast/splint-type thing.

There's a little bit of bone sticking out where it shouldn't be.

You can see it better in this one.  Those bones are supposed to line up.

She's a major trooper, this kid.  Her right arm is broken in two places, but she stayed cheerful the whole time we were at the doctor's office and the hospital, and she insisted that we stick with our plans to spend Saturday on Mt. Hood.  She's pretty frustrated at this point by all the things she can't do one-handed, though.  And of course she's right-handed, so school is going to be interesting for a few weeks.  But with a cast on her arm on the first day, she'll probably be the most popular kid there.

"Mom!  Stop taking my picture!"

And she's earned herself a whole slew of new nicknames: "Bones", "One-armed Wilma", and the family favorite, "Slip-n-Slide".

The Ballad of Dizzy Bear

We have an extra member of our family that you may not know about.

Her name is Dizzy Bear. She’s small and she’s blue and she’s not as fluffy as she used to be.

Dizzy has been Vicki’s stuffed friend of choice for a loooong time. I bought it for her in Washington, D.C. when she was 19 months old. We’re not sure where the name Dizzy came from (D.C., maybe? Who knows how the mind of a not-quite-two-year-old works.) When she was younger, Dizzy went everywhere she did. To the store, to church, to Grandma’s house. She went hiking...

See her?  It's like Where's Waldo.  She's "helping" her climb the rocks.

...and camping...

When your 4-year-old daughter allows you the privilege and honor of posing for a photograph with The Bear, how can you possibly say no?

...and she even made it into our family picture one year.  She hung on the wall with us for a very long time.

Once she got lost in Wal-Mart. It was pretty traumatic. We got her back the next day (apparently she made some friends in the toy department and decided to hang out for a while until an employee realized she didn’t actually belong there and sent her to wait for us in the lost & found. After that, Dizzy had to stay in the car when we went into stores.

One day, not long after Vicki’s third birthday, I took the girls to McDonald’s while Chris was working late at school, and Dizzy sneaked in. And was kidnapped by some strange man. I kid you not. When we ran back in from the car to search for her, other parents in the play area told us they had seen a man in the regular dining area with a bear that fit Dizzy’s description to a T. But by then the man was gone and so was our beloved Dizzy Bear.

We lived without her for three weeks. Vicki cried. I cried. It was devastating for all of us. The people at McDonald’s got really sick of me calling them to ask if a little blue Beanie Baby-like bear had turned up. They just didn’t understand. We needed our Dizzy.

Looking back I can’t believe we actually did what we did next, but that little bear had personality. We searched the internet for a new Dizzy. I must have Googled every possibility: “Washington DC stuffed bear”, “souvenirs Washington DC bear”, “Washington DC teddy bear”, “50 states bears Washington DC”, “please, dear Lord, just let me find this bear”. We were beginning to give up hope, and to this day I cannot remember the words or the website where we finally hit the jackpot, but the search result I clicked on right after Chris said, “One last website and we’re done” was the one. We found her! And paid a ridiculous amount (probably three times what I originally paid) to get her back.

And what a joyous day that was.

Of course Vicki knew it wasn’t the same bear, but she was happy to have a replacement all the same. Those three weeks were long. She’s been just as well loved as the original, but this one has thankfully stuck with us {although she did have to be rescued from a Barnes & Noble about two months after we got her. You’d think we’d have learned, but no...)

She spent a week at Girl Scout camp last summer.

She still has a place of honor among all of Vicki’s stuffed animals.

And she sleeps on her neck every night.

She may be getting shabby, but, just like the rest of us, she’ll always be a part of the family.

R.I.P., fishies

We came home from vacation to find that two of our fish had gone on to a better place.

Alas, SarahBellaLinaRiffSammyYoungbergEbert and Nemo (aka Memo) have gone to meet their Maker. (Ellie wants to know when Heavenly Father is going to send them back.) We lay no blame on the friends who were feeding them for us, although they feel terrible.

We had a nice little funeral for them last night, around the toilet bowl. We all said goodbye, and Ellie told Nemo, "I love you." Heartbreaking. Then we flushed them away and moved on. They were fish, life goes on. We will probably replace them in the next few weeks.

The trip to Grandma's

Well, we're in Utah. Very, very happily in Utah. The actual drive down here is never something we look forward to. 12 hours in a car with three little girls...yeah, not my idea of a good time. But it's generally not too bad. We usually leave around 3am and the girls sleep for the first few hours, making it seem like a shorter trip for them. This year, with the snowstorms in Portland, we decided to wait and leave around 6am, thinking that it would be a little safer then. It was a great plan.


At 4:30 Saturday morning Lexi threw up. Lovely. So I cleaned up while Chris went to check the weather to see if we could postpone. And he discovered that the storm that had just ended was being closely followed by another one, and if we were going to spend Christmas in Utah, we had to go NOW. Fifteen minutes ago. And then Lexi threw up again.

So we prayed hard, gave some blessings, prayed some more, and piled into the car. We pulled out around 6:45. We had driven 15 minutes when we saw a sign indicating that chains were required for the next 70 miles. So we pulled off, put on the chains, and drove 40mph for the next two hours. With all three girls awake (and fortunately not throwing up.) After we passed The Dalles the snow let up and we took off the chains. We made approximately 400 pit stops for people (Lexi) who HAD TO GO POTTY THIS VERY SECOND! and who apparently just really wanted to be out of the car. Although I can't blame her for wanting to be out of the car, I can't wait until she grasps the fact that the time it takes to get to Grandma's is disproportionate to the time we spend out of the car going potty.

We finally pulled in to Grandma E.'s just after 10:00pm, Utah time. That's 15 hours. Not fun. But we were watched over and greatly blessed. We made it safely and nobody threw up. The Lord hears and answers prayers. The girls have already found the pickle hidden on the tree, given a Christmas present to the fairies in Grandma's fairy garden, built a snow cave with Uncle Blaine (I forgot the cable to the camera, so I'll have to post pictures after we get home), and completely trashed Grandma's living room with toys the haven't seen in 6 months. And we get to trash Grandma Y.'s house tomorrow! We are so happy to be here!

This, too, shall pass

Yesterday while I was on the phone with a friend, Ellie suddenly made a slight gagging noise, coughed once, and then looked up at me with a truly shocked expression and said, "Mommy, my penny went down to my mouth!"

So now I'm like the audience at a magic show, waiting in awed anticipation for the magician to make the penny reappear.

Drama with the Brownies

You like that? I designed it for a bunch of t-shirts. I'm so cool!

Last night was our annual Brownie backyard campout. Since we have no backyard to speak of, we held it at my co-leader's house. We did this last year, when we just had one troop of 8 girls, and we had a blast. This year we have one troop of 10 girls (Vicki's) and another troop of 6 (Lexi's). Since they've done a lot together over the past year, we decided to just combine them. Although we had one girl that didn't come and one who didn't spend the night, we still had 14 girls between the ages of 5 and 8 packed into tents in a quiet residential area. Plus 2 future Girl Scouts: Ellie and my co-leader's daughter Katie, who are the same age. And 4 adults, one of whom didn't stay the night. Yeah, I know, I'm crazy.

Well, we had fun. We earned our Making Music Try-it (the patches Brownies earn for the front of their uniforms). We danced to different styles of music, everything from Hannah Montana (oh, the screaming) to Skip to My Lou. Yes, they skipped. We sang in a round. We played "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on water glasses. And we learned the most awesome action song a group of Girl Scouts ever learned, and we hope to perform it at our neighborhood campout in the Spring. We also ate hot dogs and cooked the obligatory s'mores over a campfire provided by a wonderful contraption known as a portable fire pit. Then, at 10:00, after a quiet chorus of "Taps", we sent the girls off to bed.

At midnight we finally got the last two girls to stop giggling after threatening - in the I Am So Not Joking This Time and Just You Try Me voice - to call their moms to come pick them up.

At 3:00 in the morning us three adults were awakened by what has nicely been termed a "domestic dispute" erupting in my friend's backdoor neighbors' house. It was a doozy - screaming, shouting, banging, swearing, you name it. The three of us leapt out of bed and called the police. The 911 operator lazily noted our complaint until we mentioned that we had 16 little girls sleeping in tents in the backyard, at which point they leapt into action and summoned not one, but three patrol cars. Apparently the couple had just returned from a "night out" (read: the bar), and the man was, as the officer put it, wasted. The girl apparently claimed she wasn't frightened, just angry. Well, she may not have beenfrightened, but we sure as heck were. Fortunately the police broke up the altercation, the girl left for her friend's house, and the guy went to bed to sleep it off. All I can say is I hope he had a lovely time at 7am when the Brownies woke up. Serves him right. Mercifully, only one of the Brownies claimed to have heard anything, and she apparently has enough trust in us leaders that when she heard our voices she figured we had the situation under control and went right back to sleep. Not so for us, of course. We finally went back to bed at 5:00 and dozed off and on until the girls woke up, cheerfully, at 7:00.

Good times.

So now I'm attempting to function on roughly two hours of sleep (turning on a movie for the girls and staring at the computer screen for two hours is functioning, right?), and of course the girls are already talking about what we should do at next year's campout.

My daughter, the heartbreaker

I has begun already. Lexi and boys. We are so not ready for this.

Apparently the other day at school Lexi made a boy cry. Not just any boy, either. Her good friend, Daniel. They've been friends since the beginning of last school year, when Daniel's brother Johnny was in Vicki's 1st grade class and his mother and I became good friends, forcing our children to be friends. Their oldest three kids are all around the same age as our three kids, give or take 10 months. So Lexi and Daniel have played together for a year and a half, and we specifically requested that they be in the same kindergarten class. At the beginning of last summer, Lexi informed me that she was trying to decide who she would marry, Daniel or his friend Aiden (who is now also in the same class, although apparently not a marriage prospect anymore).

I guess what happened is that at carpet time Lexi sat down with a group of girls - giggly, I'm sure. Daniel walked over and sat down by Lexi, at which point the entire group of girls, Lexi included, got up and moved. Coincidence? Most likely not, as much as I'd like to believe it. Daniel's feelings were incredibly hurt, and he told his mom (who was helping out in the class at the time and witnessed the whole thing) through his tears, "I love Lexi more than she loves me!"

Lexi says she didn't mean to hurt Daniel's feelings and just wanted to sit with the girls that time.

Oh, the drama. I am not ready for this. What on earth will we do when they're ALL teenagers at once?

Oh, the drama

I had this page open just now, forgetting who was in the room with me, and suddenly a little voice behind me said, "Hey, that's my Grandpapa! And my other Grandpapa! ...With...sharp...teeth." Whoops. So I said, "Yeah, isn't that silly?"

She said, "NO."

"I don't like my Grandpapas with sharp teeth. They don't have sharp teeth."

So I asked her what she thought her Grandpas would do with the sharp teeth.

"Take them out!"

That kind of night...

Chris is in Anaheim again tonight, which means I was on my own to fend off the scaries at bedtime. Lexi is still worried about vampires. I told her they weren’t real, and she responded with, “Sonja says they are.” (On an unrelated note, Sonja has a pony.) So we had to go through the whole Sonja’s-five-and-Mom-is-30 routine, which of course didn’t help at all. And now Lexi claims that last night she saw shadows in the hall. Never mind that the laundry room light was on and Chris and I were up much later than the girls and moving all around the house. It had to have been vampires. I don’t think Lexi actually has any clue what vampires really are, just that they’re something to be afraid of. And then Ellie, getting in the spirit of things, decided that she’s afraid of “flaming beetles”. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what she said. That was when I declared our house a vampire and flaming beetle-free zone, kissed them all goodnight, told them I didn’t want to hear another sound unless someone was sick and/or dying, and went downstairs for a bowl of ice cream. If I was a drinking person I would have poured myself a glass (bottle?) of wine. Or maybe had a beer. Not being a drinking person, I don’t actually know what people who do drink would have had, but it was that kind of night.

...and things that go bump in the night

For a couple of nights now Lexi has been afraid to go to sleep. She's worried about vampires. I don't know where she heard about vampires, but they are now at the top of her worry list. Last night she wanted to sleep with us. While I was in the hall hugging her and trying to convince her that there's no such thing as vampires, and Vicki was standing nearby offering the advice that she doesn't need to be worried about them coming into our house because they don't like little girls (thanks, Vicki), Ellie climbed out of bed and announced that she was scared, too, of "grampires". Which of course made us all laugh because then we were picturing Grandpa wearing a long black cape and sporting fangs. Not scary at all. The last time Lexi was worried about vampires at bedtime, Ellie claimed to be scared of "airplanes and ants".

All of this reminds me of my favorite irrational fear story, and I'm sharing it here with Vicki's permission. Not too long after we moved here, Vicki, who was about 4 1/2 at the time, came into my room early one morning and said she'd had a scary dream and was too afraid to be alone. I could tell that this was pretty serious because she was practically shaking. So, expecing to hear all about monsters or spiders or something like that, I asked her what she was worried about. Her answer? "I'm afraid that an elephant will get into our house!" It was so hard not to laugh, because she was genuninely terrified of this, and over the course of the next week or so was afraid of all kinds of zoo animals getting into our house - giraffes, tigers, and monkeys, mostly, besides the elephants, of course. It took a lot to convince her that they'd never, ever, be able to get into our house (except maybe the monkeys, but that would just be silly!)

So I told the girls this story last night, hoping that a little comic relief would perk Lexi up. As we were all (Vicki included) laughing about being afraid of elephants in the house, I said to Ellie, "Could elephants get in our house?" and she answered, "No, they wouldn't fit!" She thought for a second, and then she said, "But piggies could!"

So now we're afraid of vampires and piggies.