Accepting the Echo

Leonardo

2012-02-15T06:31:00.007-06:00

The big 3rd grade project is due today - it's a "Living Wax Museum", which means that each child was supposed to choose a famous person from history, read a book about him/her, write a book report about him/her, and then give a presentation about him/her in the first person.

There are all kinds of grading criteria for the presentation, too. It has to be between 1 and 2 minutes (you get points deducted for going over the time limit), you have to include 3 interesting facts about your person, if you dress up as the person, you get extra points, etc.

It turned out to be an extremely time-consuming and in-depth project and the husband and Fellan spent a lot of time together over the last week to get it all put together. But, I think the result was great. And Fellan learned a lot in the process.

So, the kids are giving their presentations this morning at school and the husband sent me a picture of Fellan as his historic person.

Meet Leonardo da Vinci:

My father was a notary and my mother was a peasant

I can't wait to hear how it goes!

Fun Friday, or Adventures with Bike Trails in Houston

2012-02-01T12:04:00.005-06:00

I am "lucky" to have a job at a company that works four 10-hour days per week. I put lucky in quotations because while it might sound great to have every Friday off, those 10-hour days are really long. I'm supposed to be to work between 6am and 7am and then if I get here at 6am, I can leave at 4:45pm (45 minute lunch), but if I get here at 7am (which is when I normally get here because I am NOT a morning person), I have to stay until 5:45pm. It makes for a late evening.

So I try to look on the bright side and think about all the bicycling I can get done every Friday! But that bicycling is usually non-existent...

However, last Friday, the husband and I finally got to take advantage of my day off from work to go for a bike ride together. We had been checking out Google maps and found a bike path that runs from The Heights (called Heights Bike Trail, oddly enough) all the way to U of H downtown, so we thought it would be fun to go exploring and see if we could find a way to get to it from the Buffalo Bayou Trail, which also ends at U of H downtown.

I know what you're thinking - it sounds like that's a complete no-brainer. They both end at the same location, so it should be easy to figure out how they connect. Well, you obviously haven't done any bicycling around Houston.

First of all, we had to ride on the Buffalo Bayou Trail to U of H Downtown. We've ridden this trail frequently enough to know that it dead-ends right before getting to U of H Downtown. But we haven't ridden it lately and once you get past all the homeless people living under the bridges, you come upon this:

The hazards of building a bike path along a bayou that regularly floods...

It had rained some in the last couple of weeks and after riding/walking through a considerable amount of mud, you reach this debris field.

But we didn't let it stop us, we grabbed some sticks out of the debris, scraped off our shoes and tires, and trudged through the worst of it.

And we finally got to the end of the path. That's when the fun started: trying to figure out how to get across the train tracks and the U of H Campus to get to the Heights Bike Trail. The people who "plan" the bike trails in Houston like to provide challenges to the bicyclists in town. It's kind of like taking part in one of those extreme adventure races - you never know what they're going to throw at you!

Luckily, the husband and I love a challenge. We hiked up the embankment towards the railroad tracks and got to a point where we could see what looks like a bike path on the other side of the fenced-off tracks and down another embankment.

The only way to get over there was to head back towards the trail, find the sidewalk that runs next to Travis street, follow that to the other side of U of H, and then ride through the loading dock area of the campus to eventually get to another street (1st Street?), which we could follow to the parking lot and then ride over to the start/end of the Heights Bike Trail. Piece of cake! :)

We did have a nice time, though, despite the adventures of our ride. We ended up riding through The Heights, which is a really pretty and very distinctive neighborhood, and then took Heights Boulevard (which has an actual bike path!) down south to get back to the Buffalo Bayou area and then rode back home. It turned out to be about an 18-mile ride.

It was a beautiful day and I got my first bike short tan-line sunburn of the year. :)

Does anyone have an Ark?

2012-01-26T12:16:00.013-06:00

By all estimates, yesterday was supposed to be the end of the world in Houston... but it just turned out to be a normal day. So boring. ;)

On Tuesday, there was apparently a storm brewing out in west/southwest Texas that the weather people were predicting would hit Houston in the next 24 hours.

I don't know why weather people get so overly-excited and melodramatic when they know that a big storm is coming. I guess it must be because there's so much uncertainty in what they usually know that they're ecstatic when they find something they can actually predict.

Anyway, they were predicting floods of biblical proportions. We got an e-mail here at work on Tuesday afternoon warning us that if our office site is prone to flooding that we were to "please pay particular attention to the road conditions in the areas you intend to travel and avoid streets that are flooded."

So yesterday morning when I woke up and it wasn't even raining, I was a little disappointed.

After checking the Weather Channel, though, I saw that the storm had just passed through San Antonio and that it would make it to Houston later in the morning. That was good news - I would have time to get to work before having to deal with idiot Houston drivers.

All morning, I kept looking outside, waiting for the carnage to begin.

At around 10:30 or so, the dark clouds made their way to our area. And it began to rain. But it was just normal rain - not the torrential downpour it was supposed to be. I must admit that I was disappointed.

It continued to rain for a couple of hours and by about 1:00, it was done in the area around my office. But at about that time, we got an e-mail and a voice message from the school system saying that they were cancelling all after-school activities for the day.

Puh-lease! Since when did the people of Houston get so scared of a little thunderstorm? Oh, right. I guess there IS a history of this happening...

But seriously, it was nothing like the sudden rain that took the city by surprise a couple of weeks ago. This is what our street looked like on January 9.

Row, row, row your boat...

Gently down the street...

The husband was at home during the storm and he kept sending me picture updates of the street. It was a good thing he didn't have to go anywhere!

Luckily, the rain only lasted a couple of hours and the flooding in the street was gone about 30 minutes later. He was able to make it to his afternoon meeting without any problems, but when he opened the garage door, he was met by a pile of leaves that the waves had washed up to our garage door!

Leaf dam

Now THAT'S what I call flooding.

X304

2012-01-24T11:12:00.001-06:00

As you all know, our household is led by two nerdy engineers. And we're doing our best to make our children nerdy, too.

We have thus far brainwashed the kids into thinking that Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate SG-1, and MacGuyver are some of the best television shows ever produced. But we've been trying to really step it up a notch over the last year or so.

To that end, we have successfully convinced the kids to name our new cats after characters from these shows. Spot is named after Data's cat from Star Trek: TNG, and Schrödinger is named after Samantha Carter's cat from Stargate SG-1.

We also try to quote these shows regularly to keep the geeky index elevated around our house. We regularly say "Make it so" like Captain Jean-Luc Picard and "Indeed" like Teal'c and when something needs to be fixed with a fantastically elaborate Rube Goldberg machine involving chemical reactions and duct tape, we make sure to refer to it as being "MacGuyvered".

Now, after such painstaking work, I can finally report that it seems our meticulous plan has worked on Fellan!

Every year each Boy Scout pack hosts a Pinewood Derby for their members and tonight is the deadline for Fellan's pack to submit their cars to be included in the upcoming race.

Fellan and my husband spent Sunday morning dreaming up the design of Fellan's car, which has turned out to be awesome, if I do say so myself!

The X304: sort of a cross between The Enterprise and the X303

It doesn't have the wheels on it yet, and I'm not sure it's the most aerodynamic car out there, but I can't wait to see it in action!!! It makes my nerdy heart swell with pride. :)

Awww... or Ewww?

2012-01-21T22:21:00.001-06:00

The cats have really made some progress in their relationship over the last week! I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this much PDA! :)
(Public Display of Affection)

Schrödinger

2012-01-17T11:57:00.004-06:00

As I mentioned in my last post, Santa brought a new cat to our house for Christmas. You may remember that we had to have Midas put to sleep at the end of November, so one of the things on Marxo's list to Santa was "a cat that looks like Midas".

Well, Santa delivered!

"A cat that looks like Midas"

Santa spent quite a bit of time searching on the internet for a suitable cat to satisfy this wish and he thought he was choosing a kitten, according to the picture. The kitten turned out to be more of a cat, but Santa couldn't resist - this cat was very affectionate.

So, on Christmas morning, the new cat made his entrance to the house and the kids immediately named him Schrödinger, based on Dr. Carter's cat in Stargate SG-1. (we had talked about using this name for our next cat...)

We were worried about how Spot was going to react to having another cat in the house. She never did like Midas and she actually gave him one last hiss as I was carrying him out to the vet that last time.

I had heard somewhere that when you introduce a new cat to the household, you should keep the two separate for a couple of days. The first day, you allow the new cat to "scent" whatever room you put him in and then the next day, you switch the two cats, so they can walk around and smell the other cat without seeing him. Hopefully then when you allow them to meet, they won't be such strangers to each other.

Well, we tried that. We kept Spot up in our room with the door closed for Christmas day and then the following day, we switched the two.

On the third day, we opened the bedroom door and let the cats find each other. Wow! Spot was PISSED!!! She couldn't believe that there was suddenly another cat around the house to contend with! She growled and hissed and screamed and yelled.

Meanwhile, Schrödinger just sort of looked at her. He had come from a house that had 32 other cats living in it, so he was completely used to being around other cats. But he took it in stride. He let her yell at him and after a couple of weeks, he eventually won her over.

After about a week of being together, they started getting closer without attacking each other. (but it was playful attacking - neither of them hurt the other)


Why are you here and what are you doing eating my food?!

And they got a little more relaxed around each other.

I may look relaxed, but I've still got my eye on you...

And now finally, they seem to be quite comfortable with each other. They both like to sleep on our bed with us every night and I end up waking up most mornings completely sandwiched between the two of them.

Don't mind us, we're just playing here.

We're very relieved that they're getting along so well now. They really seem to love playing together and they're about the same age, so they have the same energy level. We're hoping for many happy years of friendship between these two.

Something

2012-01-11T12:06:00.003-06:00

Must... post... something... I'm fighting against some serious momentum here. Apathetic momentum, apparently, if there is such a thing! I just haven't been able to get motivated to get anything posted here. But I have lots to talk about.

The first thing is that weigh-ins have started again in my weight-loss contest. There were six people who made it to their goal weight by December 19th (including me), so those six people had to begin reporting weight again to me this past Monday. The rules are that you can not have gained back more than 1% over the holiday break. Each one of us gained weight, but we were all still below our 9% weight loss numbers. Whew!

I'm finding it extremely difficult to work exercise back into my life now that I've moved to a different office, however. My only option is to go running at lunchtime and then not shower afterwards since there's no shower facility here. I've now done that three times in the six days since I've been here. Hey, when I say it that way, it sound pretty good! I've been kicking myself thinking that I've been such a slacker by not working out on Monday and Tuesday this week.

The first day I went running, I tried running about a 3 mile loop around the neighborhood here. That was dumb. This area is not really very nice and I felt like at any moment, I might get abducted by people in a Suburban or something. At one point, I was running through weeds that were 2 feet tall since there was no sidewalk next to the street. I haven't run that route since.

Today I think I've finally figured out what my exercise routine will be: run up and down the stairs inside the building for 10 minutes and then go out and run up and down the street in front of the building a couple of times. That gives me about 1.5 miles of running outside. And the street has a sidewalk. And it's a fairly high-traffic street, so that if I get accosted, at least someone will see it happen. You gotta take what you can get, right?

In other news, Santa brought us another cat, and this past Monday, there was a big storm and flooding around town. I have pictures of both. But that will have to wait for another post...

...and now to MAINTAIN!

2011-12-20T11:13:00.000-06:00

Yes! I made it to my weight-loss goal! 10% of my body weight gone in 10 weeks. Whew! Now I just need to try to maintain this weight loss for another month and a half. I'm hoping by that point, I will be used to knowing what to eat and what not to eat to be able to maintain. That's the idea, anyway.

The one problem with this plan is that I have to move offices, once again. And this time, the new office building doesn't have a workout facility at all! I'm really perplexed about what I'm going to do to continue exercising once I move. It works best for me to work out at lunchtime these days. Before work is no good because I'm just not a morning person in the slightest. After work is no good because I have to cook, clean up, and do laundry. And after that is no good because, seriously, who has the energy to do anything after that?!

I suppose I could break down and actually pay for a gym membership so that I could go to a gym and work out at lunchtime, but I don't really want to do that. So, this is going to require some serious brainstorming on my part. I'll let you know what I come up with.

In the meantime, though, I'm trying to enjoy being sort of skinny again. I went out with some friends on Friday afternoon and bought myself some new pants and I've worn a new pair to work for the last two days. Merry Christmas to me! :)

I'm going to have to really watch myself, though. Last night, to celebrate, we went to Chuy's and I had a margarita and about two basket-fulls of chips. And tonight is "date night" with the husband, so I'm sure there will be wine-drinking involved. And THEN the Christmas holidays will be upon us and much eating and drinking will be included in those activities! Weigh-ins start again on January 9th and if anyone gains back more than 1%, they're out of the contest. Sounds like it's going to be a week of gluttony followed by a week of starvation for me!

Ups and Downs and Changes

2011-12-15T11:07:00.001-06:00

This past week and a half has been a crazy week of ups and downs and changes.

It all started with my drive to work on Wednesday of last week when I realized that I hate my project so much that I was seriously considering changing companies to get off the project. I took that as a bad sign and decided to go talk to my department head about the possibility of changing projects or even departments!

He quickly said, "Let's get you off that project tomorrow!" Well, it didn't (and couldn't) happen that quickly, but I WILL be starting on a new project on Monday of next week and I'm extremely happy about that. I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders and I'm ready for the challenge of the new work.

I've also had some ups and downs in the weight-loss contest, though, too. This past Monday when I weighed in, I had gained almost two pounds instead of losing two pounds like I needed to. That meant I was going to have to lose 5 pounds in the coming week before our final weigh-in on December 19! I was a little worried.

But, it turns out that most of it was water-weight. The husband's Christmas party was this past weekend and that involved drinking wine with dinner, plus a friend had a Christmas party over the weekend that involved eating and drinking and I swear whenever I drink alcohol, I retain water for a couple of days afterwards. (plus, it was a bad time of the month...)

This morning when I stepped on the scale, I found that I only have to lose 0.6 pounds to get to my 10% weight loss goal. I'm so excited, I'm running around telling everyone who will listen.

Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go out shopping with some friends and I'm finally going to be able to buy some new pants for myself. With the job change and the weight change, I feel like a whole new person. I really have given myself a Christmas present this year. Yay, me! :)

Cone of Shame

2011-12-06T12:02:00.002-06:00

An integral part of the movie, UP, is a pack of talking dogs. They're able to talk because their master (who is "a good and smart master") made them special collars that interpret their thoughts and turn them into words.

Anyway, one of the funny parts of the movie includes one of those plastic cone things that they put around a dog's neck to prevent the dog from licking or chewing at a sore or surgery site or whatever. The dogs refer to this plastic cone as the "Cone of Shame".

Well, Spot got spayed last week and when I picked her up on Friday morning, she was sporting her own feline version of the "Cone of Shame".

I do not like the cone of shame.

Back on Track!

2011-12-05T11:27:00.003-06:00

Ok, I weighed myself this morning for our weekly weigh-in and I'm back on track! I'm down 7.3% from my original weight and I "only" have to lose 2 pounds per week the next couple of weeks in order to get down to 10% on the 10th week. I think I can, I think I can...

I am NOT on track with Christmas presents this year. I feel very un-motivated to get them ordered/bought this year. Last year by this point, I was on fire - I think I'd ordered everything and was almost done with my shopping!

I can't figure out what is not motivating me this year. It could be my project at work. I hate coming to work every day because our client can't figure out what they want to do and it's just dragging on and on and on.

Or, it could be that they've blocked "shopping" sites from our computers here at work and therefore, I can't spend my whole day perusing the internet and getting good ideas for presents.

I suppose it could be that I've been eating so much less for the past several weeks that I just don't have the energy to get into the spirit.

Maybe it's the fact that it's still been hot and humid here and I just can't bear to think about Christmas when it's very much not Christmas-like outside. (Although a cold front came through last night and dropped the temperature by about 30*, so maybe there's some hope for me?)

Whatever it is, I need a kick in the pants. Send me some fairy dust, hook me up to an electrical shock device, put me in a room with only Christmas songs playing - I'll take anything to get me into the spirit! Got any ideas?...

RIP Midas, April, 1993 - Nov. 30, 2011

2011-12-04T13:46:00.003-06:00

We had to say goodbye to our long-time friend this past Wednesday. Midas found his special place in our family after the kids came along - he was extremely tolerant of kids as they learned to use their 'gentle hands'. We'll all miss him.

Sometimes it's not good to be right

2011-11-30T11:53:00.007-06:00

Well, as it turns out, I was right to be worried about weight gain during Thanksgiving. In fact, I feel pretty stupid for even thinking that I might be able to NOT gain weight over the Thanksgiving holidays in NEW ORLEANS, of all places!

Turns out that I gained more than a pound over Thanksgiving, which means that in order to get to my 10% weight loss goal (which would pretty much put me at my "ideal" weight), I would have to lose nearly 8 pounds (!) in 3 weeks. That doesn't sound like a good idea, does it?

Actually, though, I weighed myself this morning and my weight is now slightly lower than my weigh-in the Monday before Thanksgiving, so I really only have around 6 pounds to lose in the next 2.6 weeks. To me, that sounds more do-able.

People around my office have been commenting that they can tell that I've lost weight - I have lost almost 10 pounds - so that makes me feel good and gives me some more motivation. And if nothing else, I've still achieved my goal of giving myself a good Christmas present this year: the right to go buy some new pants. :)

Studious

2011-11-28T12:03:00.001-06:00

Fellan got his new glasses on Tuesday afternoon and he absolutely loves them. Weird kid. ;)

But I'm loving them, too, because I think they actually are making a difference for him! I've tried looking through them and they really don't make anything look different. They're not corrective, but they seem to sort of "move" everything up from where they should be. Hard to explain.

Anyway, we drove over to New Orleans for Thanksgiving and Fellan read out loud for about an hour an a half while we were driving. I haven't heard him read out loud very much lately, but it seemed like he was much more fluent in his reading than he was before. He finished a whole Jack and Annie book during the drive over and read two more while we were there!

Today is his first day at school with his glasses. We told his teacher about them and she said she'll try to make sure he wears them when he's reading and writing, like he's supposed to. I can't wait to ask him about his day tonight!

Here he is, looking studious. (...and annoyed because I bothered him while he was reading!)

Mah...ahm, I'm trying to read here!

Sore and Worried...

2011-11-27T15:12:00.001-06:00

We're spending the bulk of today in the car, which means it's a day off from exercise. That also means it's good news for my knees who have not appreciated all the running I've done over the last three days.

We ran at Audubon Park in New Orleans while we were there. One lap around the park is about 1.7 miles and on Thursday and Friday I only did one lap, but since I was feeling guilty about eating so much, I did two laps yesterday morning.

Surprisingly, I started feeling 'ok' about halfway through the 2nd lap yesterday. And by 'ok', I mean that I wasn't in horrible pain!

I really dislike running. I don't think I'm a natural runner. I was a sprinter in high school and I only started running longer distances in the last 10 years or so, but I wouldn't say that I've enjoyed it. It's just a faster way to get a workout sometimes.

Anyway, today, my knees are just sore. My dad had to have knee replacement surgery several years ago, so I like to use that as an excuse not to run, too. I can come up with all kinds of excuses not to run. :)

I am worried, though, about weighing-in tomorrow morning, so I'm sort of kicking myself for not running two laps each day. Oh well, c'est la vie and we shall see...

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-25T17:14:00.002-06:00

I'm trying out the mobil-blogging function of Blogger. Let's see if this actually works!

This past Monday was the 6th week in my 10-week Weight Loss Challenge. And as of Monday, I was finally on track to lose 10% in 10 weeks - I was down by 6% this past Monday!

My goal for this week was to just not gain weight and I've been making a valiant effort. We got up early yesterday morning to go running and we also went running this morning. I discovered last week that Fellan makes a good running partner for me, so he's also been joining the family for these morning runs. It's turned out to be a nice way to start the day before all the eating begins.

And speaking of eating, we've been doing a lot of that, too. The problem with the family recipes that we all love is that everything is covered in cheese. Everything is delicious, but it basically means that I should probably give up hope for my goal of no weight gain...

Well, I guess I'd better get back to the family room to continue watching football. Nebraska won their game today and LSU pulled ahead just before halftime. And then after this game is over, it sounds like it'll be time for the next round of food!

Cross your fingers

2011-11-21T17:42:00.004-06:00

On Friday afternoon, I picked up Fellan from school and took him to an eye doctor appointment. He has always tested fine for vision using those highly non-scientific eye charts, but his occupational therapist thought we should really get his eyes tested by a pediatric developmental optometrist because she thought "there was something going on with his eyes".

It was a really interesting appointment. She first tested his eyes with the regular eye doctor contraption of a million lenses and determined that he has 20/20 vision. But then she had him sit at a desk and handed him a piece of paper with several different pictures on it. She asked him to draw a copy of the pictures below each one. He did Ok, but his handwriting is pretty bad, so they weren't exact duplicates.

But, one of the pictures was three ovals that overlapped each other in the middle. Sort of like that atomic energy symbol. When he got to that one, I expected him to just draw three ovals that intersected at the middle - I mean, that's exactly how I saw the picture. But instead, he drew the middle part of the symbol, trying to get all the angles just right and then he drew the rest of each of the ovals as if they were petals on a flower.

I think it was immediately after he drew that picture that the optometrist asked me when Fellan started walking. When I said he started walking at 8 months, she suddenly seemed to have all the answers she needed. She said, "Oh, he was an early walker? And he didn't spend much time crawling, then, did he?"

"Nope," I answered, "and he didn't just start walking, he started running!"

Apparently, it turns out that crawling is an important milestone in the development of the connections in your brain. It's the time when you learn depth perception and if you bypass the crawling stage, there are some that believe it can affect the way your brain interprets things and can cause problems with the way your eyes work together.

She said something about limited visual perception (or something like that) and then took us to another room where she put some goggles on him and had him read a paragraph from a book. The goggles had special sensors in them that tracked the movement of his eyes while he read the story.

Reading goggles in action

I got to look at the chart after he finished and it showed that at the beginning of the passage, his eyes tracked pretty well together, but as he kept reading, his eyes began to just do their own thing, until at the end of the paragraph, he was basically reading cross-eyed! She found it amazing that he could actually understand what he was reading at that point.

She told me this means that basically, Fellan's brain thinks that his school papers and his books are closer than they actually are and we need to re-train his brain to get it back on track. And the way to do this is to get him some prism glasses. They're effectively the opposite of reading glasses. Instead of magnifying things, they make things seem farther away. She put some on him and had him read another paragraph. The chart was much better than the first.

Fellan couldn't contain his excitement at the prospect of getting glasses. I think one of his friends at school has glasses, so he thinks it's cool or something. But he should only have to wear them for 6 months to a year and only for reading and writing. Hopefully after that point, the novelty will have worn off and he won't be upset to have to give them up. Also, hopefully, this will actually do something to help his handwriting, as well - she said it should definitely help it some. It probably won't fix it, but it could help. So, cross your fingers... and not your eyes. ;)

Bad Kitty!

2011-11-17T12:18:00.003-06:00

We haven't had a kitten in the house for 18 years and it's been a rude awakening. She is into everything, but surprisingly, has only broken one thing so far. (knock on wood...)

We're beginning to understand her preferences, though. The other day, the husband sent me this picture.

After drinking it, she refilled it with water - like we weren't going to notice!...

Rules to live by

2011-11-15T11:10:00.023-06:00

As I eluded to in my last post, we have been going to the Unitarian Universalist Church off and on for a few years now. We like the messages that they have during the sermons and the kids really love the Religious Education program they go to while we're in the service.

The UU church has 7 principles they teach and one of the songs the kids sing (to the tune of Do-Re-Mi) goes like this:

Each person is important
Be kind in all you do
We're free to learn together
And search for what is true
All people need a vote
Build a fair and peaceful world
We care for earth and sky

Don't get me started about how this doesn't rhyme - it really bugs me! - but every once in awhile I hear the kids singing it, so it must somehow get through to them and they seem to be able to remember the principles pretty well.

The kids have also been taking Tae Kwon Do now for a couple of years and every practice starts with the following pledge:

     I, as a Universal member pledge:
     To be loyal to my nation, my parents, and my family.
     To respect my seniors and be courteous to my juniors.
     To be righteous and show good conduct.
     To develop leadership with the tenets of Tae Kwon Do.

AND since Fellan has been going to Cub Scouts for the past couple of months, he now has the Boy Scout Oath to remember:

     On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God
     and my country, and to obey the Scout Law; to
     help other people at all times; to keep myself
     physically strong; mentally awake; and morally straight.

So, during the Boy Scout event last Saturday, one of the stations he visited was about "Manners". They apparently asked the boys to write down five examples of good manners. The husband took a picture of Fellan's paper and sent it to me.

It says:

Say please and thank you
Say excuse me
Listen to your scout master
Respect earth and sky
Respect your elders and be courteous to your juniors

I asked the husband if Fellan had received any prompting to come up with this list and he said Fellan came up with them all on his own. I love the mix of scouting, Tae Kwon Do, and UU principles. And the husband said that they used his as an example for the other kids. Score! This is one of those rare instances when it almost makes me feel like we've done something right. ;)

P.S. Fellan's handwriting is a really good example of what Dysgraphia looks like...

Super-full Weekend

2011-11-14T11:37:00.005-06:00

This past weekend was not only full, it was super-full of activities!

We started the activities on Friday night with a rock-climbing outing with Marxo's Girl Scout Daisy troop. Marxo and another little girl were the only ones who really seemed to love it. The event was planned to last from 7pm to 9pm, and by the time all the adults were "belay certified" it was almost 8pm. The girls spent their time "bouldering" until the adults were done but then I noticed that at around 8:30pm everyone else was getting ready to head home.

Not Marxo! She LOVES climbing. She and I stayed until 9:15pm when I had to put my foot down and tell her it was past bedtime and we really needed to leave. She fell asleep in the car.

"Take the picture fast! I can't hold on much longer!"

I was able to get a good picture of her bouldering before we left, though. I was really impressed with her determination to make it up this over-hang thing. Since she's pretty skinny, she's got a really good strength to weight ratio.

The next morning, there was a Boy Scout event that Fellan and the husband attended. Fellan got to do all kinds of activities at this thing. They had stations set up for geology, manners, soccer, water rockets, BB Guns (!), and flag football. The boys apparently spent time at each station and I think they get badges or something like that for each one. Anyway, Fellan had a great time. He has been asking us for the past couple of years if he could join Cub Scouts, but we didn't want to make the time-commitment. This year, we finally relented and he is 100% embracing everything about it. It's fun to see him so excited.

Saturday afternoon, we had a wedding to attend and then Saturday night, there was a big birthday party celebration for a friend's daughter. We excused ourselves early from that celebration at around 9:30pm!

On Sunday morning, we had to be to church early because we were asked to ring the Zen Bell and to be the "Chalice Lighters" at the church. Each week, a different family gets to do this for the service and the kids were very excited to have such a big responsibility.

After church, we were looking forward to being able to relax a little before our dance class, but forgot that we had planned with a friend to go see the last Rice University home volleyball game at 2pm. So, we ran off to the game and then went straight from there to dance classes.

You would think that after such an event-filled weekend, we wouldn't subject ourselves to anything else for Sunday night, but you would be wrong. The world premiere of Art Car: The Movie was being held at Hermann Park at the Miller Outdoor Theater and we just couldn't pass that up. The kids love going to the Art Car Parade each year and they really wanted to see the movie. Unfortunately, even though the tickets said that it would start at 7:00pm, they had a band set up for pre-movie entertainment, so the movie didn't start until almost 7:45pm. Which meant that the movie didn't finish until almost 9:45pm!

Marxo, once again, fell asleep in the car on the way home. We're all looking forward to going to bed early tonight!

Halloween 2011

2011-11-09T17:45:00.009-06:00

Well, I figure that since I was so late with my post about Labor Day this past year, this post about Halloween is actually early! ...or something like that.

Some friends of ours usually have us over to their house for a pre-Trick-or-Treating party which generally involves eating, drinking, and the kids running and playing in the yard before we all head out on the quest for sugar.

This year, however, the usual hostess wasn't sure she'd be able to have the kids to her house, and in a moment of weakness, we decided to host the party ourselves, instead. We don't have a yard for kids to run and play in, so this usually means that we try to avoid having large groups of children at our house. However, since we had been inundated with mosquitoes a week before Halloween, we thought it might be good to have the pre-party inside anyway.

To prepare for the party, we figured we'd better decorate the house. (Marxo had been begging to decorate the house for a couple of weeks, but there had been too many mosquitoes to do anything outside until about 2 days before Halloween!)

Anyway, we finally dug out the decorations and Halloween-ified our front "yard":

Marxo helped with the decorations

And then worked on her acting

The final product

We also carved a pumpkin just before everyone arrived. I suggested that we use Marxo's mouth as a template, but she didn't think that was so funny. ;) Instead, she came up with this design:

She added the eyebrows at the last minute to make it "angry"!

Unfortunately, we didn't get any good pictures of the kids in their costumes. Fellan wanted to be Indiana Jones (mostly, just so he could have a whip!) and for some reason, Marxo decided to be a butterfly.

Dude, check out my whip...

The party itself seemed to be a big success. At least, the husband and I and the adults had a good time while the kids all watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". And everyone seemed to get a good haul of candy by the end of the night, so everyone was happy!

Dancing and more...

2011-10-31T11:18:00.000-05:00

I have several things to talk about that don't go together, but I'm putting them all in one post anyway!

The first is about our dance class. We've been taking dancing lessons for the past couple of months. It's a "Round Dance" class - read the part about "cued round dances" in the link. That's what we're doing. The session we're taking right now is Waltz.

Mostly, we've just been interested in learning to dance (because we think it's a lost art in the United States!), we heard about this class, it's really inexpensive ($10/adult per session), and we can take the kids to it, too! The husband and I took Swing Dance classes many, many years ago, but haven't tried anything like this since. It's turning out to be pretty fun.

The classes are for an hour and 20 minutes every Sunday afternoon and the kids are learning right along with us. We tried to have them learn together, but Fellan has a hard time paying attention and keeping up with the cues for the whole time. Some of the other adults ("angels" who know all the dance steps already) at the classes paired up with them for a couple of the classes. But for the last two classes the husband and I have been dancing with them for the first hour of the class and then they go sit out for the rest of the time. That's actually been working out really well - they just don't have the attention span to put up with the entire class.

I was really impressed with Fellan for the first part of class yesterday - he knew all the steps, kept up with the cues, and did really well. (And he was very proud of himself.) It quickly devolved into him rolling around on the floor, but at least it was good for a little while! :)

Next on the list of topics is the weight loss contest - we're at the end of the 3rd week today and I'm down 2.7% so far. Almost on track to get to 10% in 10 weeks. Tonight is going to kill my progress temporarily since it's Halloween, though. We invited all our neighborhood friends to come over for pizza and drinks before trick-or-treating. I'm going to have to work out extra hard for the rest of the week.

And my last random topic for today is cat fights. Specifically, our cats! The new cat, Spot, continues to terrorize our old cat, Midas. Midas is 18.5 years old and has a hard time getting around anymore. He spends 99% of his time in our bedroom and only goes to the laundry room in the hallway outside our bedroom to eat (occasionally) and use the litter box.

However, Midas has increasingly been enticed out of the bedroom over the last few weeks. Spot will come upstairs, stalk down the hallway, come into our bedroom, and then growl and hiss at Midas until Midas decides he's had enough and chases Spot down the hallway and part-way down the stairs. We haven't seen Midas move that quickly in about 8 years!

It sounds horrible, too. Spot makes the absolute worst screaming noises. Every time I hear them, I'm convinced Midas must have her in a choke-hold out in the hallway. I'll run out there, bracing for a horrifying scene, and there's... nothing. Midas is usually laying in the hallway (completely worn out from the effort) and Spot is sitting at the top of the stairs looking at me like, "What?" I've only seen them trade punches once and neither seemed to interested in doing much damage to the other.

It's getting rather old, though. If Spot would just be nice to Midas, there wouldn't be any trouble at all. Midas would love a warm little body to cuddle up with now that the weather is finally getting cold. But at this point in time, I don't see that happening very soon. Too bad.

Mosquitoes!

2011-10-26T06:15:00.004-05:00

I grew up in Nebraska, so coming to Houston after college was a big culture and climate shock! It bothered me a lot the first few years that there were no seasons here. I would joke with people that it was like living in a sensory deprivation chamber and that there were only two seasons: Daylight Savings Time and Not.

It was especially strange to me to see all the plants and trees be green year-round. Flowers in January? Really?...

But for the past year, Houston has been in a drought. It's the first time I've ever seen Houston turn brown. People's yards are dead and driving around, you can see that about half the trees along the highways are brown. Pretty sad.

One thing I didn't notice until recently was that along with the rain, the mosquitoes had kind of gone away. That is, until this past week. It finally rained for almost a full day about 3 weeks ago. And that was the trigger for the mosquitoes to come out of hiding.

We walked the kids to school on Friday morning last week and got swarmed by mosquitoes the entire way there. They were biting us through our clothes and a couple of times, I had to start running to get away from them for a few seconds of peace.

It's crazy around here lately! The mosquitoes are EVERYWHERE. I kill at least two per night in our house and just in the last couple of days here at work, I've killed 4! (and my office is on the 7th floor of an office building - they seem to be hitching a ride up the elevators and then coming through the security doors on our floor.)

The guy who sits next to me likes to tell everyone that there are two kinds of mosquitoes in Texas: the small ones that can get through the screen door and the big ones that can open the screen door. Hardy, har, har...

(But I'm almost beginning to believe him.)

Toothless

2011-10-20T11:52:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Marxo had to get some teeth pulled. She is the product of two people who have/had crooked teeth and is therefore pretty much doomed to a childhood full of orthodonture.

Fellan already started the process last fall with a palate expander and then this past May, he got brackets put on his two front teeth to pull them together. (Can't believe I forgot to include this tidbit on my blog!)

Brace Face!

Even though it seemed that Fellan's teeth were going to be really bad considering the way they first started coming in, I'm afraid that Marxo's little mouth is going to doom her to even worse things than Fellan. Her first two permanent teeth (bottom front) came in over the last few months and one of them is almost completely sideways.

The last time we were at the orthodontist's office with Fellan, we asked him to take a look at her teeth and I think it took him about 2 seconds to look in her mouth and immediately start filling out "extraction orders" to our pediatric dentist.

Yesterday was the dreaded day. She had already lived through getting a pedunculated pyogenic granuloma removed about a year an a half ago (which involved a trip to the oral surgeon and IV sedation, and which, once again, I can't believe I didn't document on here!), so she expected the worst. We kept on telling her she would have an oral sedative and that they didn't have to stick anything in her arm, but it really didn't make a difference to her. She would cry about it every time we mentioned her impending "doom".

Amazingly, she didn't freak out too badly when we got to the dentist's office. There was a little crying, but she pulled herself together and bravely went back and drank the oral sedative. Then we had to wait for 45 minutes for it to kick-in. I was expecting her to become loopy and act drunk, but that didn't happen at all. She did seem to calm down a little, but she continued to work on her word-search puzzles while we waited.

When it was time to go back for the procedure, she calmly walked back and apparently had no trouble at all with it. They said she was just fine during the whole thing. And this morning she told me, "Next time I have to get any teeth pulled, I'm not going to be afraid at all." Poor thing. Unfortunately, there probably will be a few more "next times".

Here she is showing off her toothless grin! She lost her top tooth this past weekend while we were out of town in NYC. Luckily, the tooth fairy found her at Grammy's. And we found out this morning that the tooth fairy pays double for extracted teeth! :)

Toothless

NYC, Take 2

2011-10-18T11:28:00.000-05:00

We're becoming quite the jet-setters here lately. This past weekend we went to New York City again!

This time, it was for a friend's 40th birthday. She and her husband had planned a trip to NYC to celebrate her birthday and he decided it would be fun to invite some of her friends and surprise her by all showing up there.

It worked. We all met at a restaurant on Friday evening. We were a little late, so our friend was already there and when we walked up, she asked us, with a bewildered expression, "Why are you here?!" To which I responded, "Because it's your birthday!!!" She was really surprised.

First, though, the trip up there... We flew into Newark, but there was bad weather in Newark on Friday morning, so our flight was delayed by about an hour and a half. We finally made it to our hotel and got checked in at 4pm, but we still hadn't eaten lunch! No worries, though, when we checked in, they told us that there would be free wine and cheese in their lounge from 5pm to 8pm that night. It sounded like a good idea at the time.

We got to the wine and cheese room a little before 6pm, loaded up our plate with cheese and crackers, and accepted a couple of over-full glasses of red wine from the server. After finding a table to sit down at, we overheard part of the conversation from the tables next to us. The people were from Canada, in the mining industry, and talking about the Oil Sands. This was right up our alley!

So, we struck up a conversation with them. Eventually, a Swiss couple came into the room and sat down with us and then a British man came over to introduce himself. With this mini-United Nations, we attempted to solve all the world's problems. And after three more glasses of wine, we were certain we'd gotten everything back on track.

But it was time for us to head off to the surprise dinner by that point. We were supposed to be meeting at 9pm at an Italian restaurant in the middle of Chinatown. A likely location. (?) The food was really good, but the husband and I kept waiting for them to bring out the main course. They brought out several small plates of food and nobody else seemed to be eating. Since we didn't want to seem gluttonous, we nibbled along with the rest of the group, and when midnight rolled around and the food was all taken away, we finally figured out these were tapas plates and there wasn't going to be a main course. Oops.

Everyone chatted for a little while longer and at about 1:30am, the husband and I made our way out of the restaurant and to the subway station. The others apparently went in search of pizza! (that would have been a good thought) But after not sleeping much on Thursday night, I was really ready to head back to the hotel. We got on the subway and I promptly fell asleep on the woman sitting next to me. I woke up when my head apparently started drooping over onto her shoulder and she sort of pulled quickly away from me. "You haven't really lived until you've fallen asleep on someone in the subway in New York City," I always say! ;)

Saturday morning came early and we kinda missed it. We grabbed some croissants and cantaloupe (the "gourmet" free breakfast at the hotel), showered, and met the group for lunch at Stage Deli, where we opted to split a rather benign grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. After not eating most of the previous day and replacing that with drinking instead, neither the husband nor I could stomach much more.

Most of the rest of that group had gone for a run in Central Park that morning and needed to go shower before doing much else. We decided to meet for drinks mid-afternoon before the husband and I needed to head off to meet my pen-pal for dinner between shows.

While they were getting cleaned up, we thought it would be fun to go down to Greenwich Village and wander around for a little while. And it turned out to be a good decision because we got to see some of the protestors marching around. I took pictures. :)

Look! Real live protestors!

Such anger and violence! (not really)

It was sort of hard to figure out what they were protesting.

After our dose of anti-capitalism culture, we headed back uptown to get a dose of theater culture! First, we stopped in to say good-bye to our newly 40-year-old friend and then we went to meet my pen-pal friend. When we came over Labor Day Weekend, the two cast members who played the managers in the Phantom of the Opera were being replaced with new blood, so there's now a new picture of Carlotta out front. Sorry for the glare, but I kind of liked the way her face ended up framed by it.

Carlotta with new managers

We thought it would be fun to see the performance again while we were there so we could catch more of the details of the show. It didn't disappoint. It's amazing that they put on this show day after day after day, but the performances continue to be so good every time. My pen-pal said she learned a lot from working with George Lee Andrews about how to bring his best to every single performance during his 23 years there.

Each Saturday night after the show, one of the dressing rooms becomes an impromptu bar and the cast has a drink or two together since Sundays are their days off. So, after having a few drinks with the cast (sounds so "fabulous", huh?! [it was pretty cool!!!]), we walked out of the theater only to find that there were still people hanging out waiting for autographs. We quietly stood out of the way while Carlotta, Monsieur André, and Monsieur Firmin signed playbills for their adoring fans. Afterwards, we whisked Carlotta away to find a quiet place to hang out and while walking down the street, we happened to see John Larroquette getting into his limousine. (I heart New York!)

Our flight left early the next morning, but that didn't stop us from staying out late once again. So, after 3 hours of sleep, we somehow managed to get up and out of the hotel the next morning, and made our way back to the heat of Houston. The kids seemed to survive the weekend with Grammy and PaPa and I was asleep on the couch at 8pm that night. Whew. I'm getting too old for this.

Doing it again...

2011-10-13T06:51:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm doing it again. I've gotten sick of looking at the flab in the mirror and instead of waiting for another contest to come to me (because it seems I'm only motivated by competition!), I've started my own contest here at work. And I've got 26 other people signed up so far!!!

The contest works like this:

Pay $20 to enter the contest
Weigh-in every Monday (starting this past Monday)
Lose 10% of your body weight by Dec. 19 and win 1/3 of the pot (divided equally between winners)
Maintain the weight loss until Jan. 30 and win the remaining 2/3 of the pot (again divided equally)

10% is a pretty aggressive goal, but one that I'm hoping to be able to make in the 10 weeks I have until Dec. 19th. I did a pretty good job of "bulking up" over the weekend, too, so without trying too hard this week, I've lost about 3 pounds. :)

Anyway, I'm hoping this will, once again, get me healthy and back to regular exercise. One thing's for sure - it's forcing me to really keep track of everything that I'm eating. And I think that's a good thing.

Marxo is 7 today!

2011-10-11T06:11:00.002-05:00

Well, my baby girl turned seven today! Hard to believe. Today is also picture day at school, so she got to wear one of her new birthday outfits - she looked very stylish. :)

We had just about everyone in town this weekend for the birthday festivities. My parents came down, the husband's folks were here, the husband's brother, sister-in-law and kids came to town and we all celebrated in style. My brother wasn't able to make it down this trip, but he'll be here at Christmas, and that's not too far away.

We had Marxo's party at a place called Mad Science. There were lots of kids that ended up coming, so I was stressed out during the whole party, trying to count the number of kids that came, figuring out how many were in the same household, and then trying to decide which kids weren't going to get party bags since they were the siblings of kids that were invited. I always have so many leftover party bags, I tried to only buy what was necessary, but this time, that kinda bit me in the butt!

Anyway, the kids all still had fun and Marxo appreciated everyone coming. I only got a couple of pictures with my phone, though, so I'm going to have to get everyone else to send me theirs! Here's the birthday girl getting ready to blow out the candles...

Her Person

2011-09-29T05:44:00.003-05:00

Marxo can't keep her hands off our new little kitty. She is so happy to have a living thing to "mother"! As soon as she comes home from school, she's looking for Spot. She picks her up and cradles her and carries her around and generally smothers her with affection.

And apparently, Spot is perfectly fine with it! I was worried that she would become resentful of this person who just won't leave her alone, but it's exactly the opposite. Spot has determined that Marxo is her person. She follows Marxo around and wants to sleep with her every night. Marxo doesn't like that, though, because Spot keeps her awake by trying to play with her feet under the covers! So cute. :)

Marxo ended up being sick off and on over the last few weeks - she had a fever that kept coming and going. After going to the doctor a couple of different times, he finally figured out she had a urinary tract infection! Something so simple and easy to treat and it kept her out of school for 8 of the first 23 days of school. Ugh!

Anyway, while Marxo was at home being sick, she had some very good company.

Loyal Kitty

Labor Day 2011

2011-09-26T11:50:00.000-05:00

Yep, I'm a little late with this post, but if I don't do it now, I'll never get around to it.

We spent Labor Day weekend in New York City this year! My pen-pal from third grade (with whom I've kept in touch all these years) is playing one of the lead roles in the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway right now and we just HAD to go see her. (and I got a text from her the other day saying she's just been offered a 6-month extension! I'm so proud of her!!!) Labor Day seemed to be the perfect time to go see her and get to spend time with her. So, we sucked it up, bought 4 plane tickets, and vowed to have an excellent time.

And we did! We arrived on Friday evening and had tickets to see the matinee on Saturday afternoon. We traveled into the city (we were staying at my pen-pal and her husband's house in Newark), walked around a bit, left my pen-pal at the theater to get ready for the show, grabbed some lunch, and then went to the show.

I had never seen the Phantom of the Opera until that day and it was such a great experience. I feel so lucky to have gotten to see it for the first time when one of my dear friends was playing one of the lead roles! She was afraid that the kids were going to be freaked out by the Phantom's make-up during the show, so she talked to Hugh Panaro and he agreed to let us watch him put on his make-up. That was cool! (And, for the record, Hugh Panaro is a really, really nice guy.) The kids thought it was neat to see him put on his make-up, but they especially liked meeting his dog, Soot (whose name is also on the dressing room door). :)

Before the show

After the show - on stage with the chandelier

This is one of her dresses - some of her dresses weigh up to 50 pounds!

After the show, my pen-pal gave us a back-stage tour and we all grabbed a bite to eat. She needed to get back to the theater for the evening show, so we headed off on our own to go to the top of the Empire State Building.

There were some guys outside the building telling us it was a 2.5 hour wait and that we could pay them for the "Express Tour". We figured that was a scam, but it turned out to be pretty accurate! It was around 10pm by the time we made it up to the observation deck! :o

On Sunday, we all walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. My husband and I had to read the book, The Great Bridge, in college so it was particularly interesting to us because we learned a lot about the building of the bridge. It's amazing that this bridge is almost 130 years old!

The Great Bridge

It had gotten to be late in the day by the time we made it across the bridge, so we found a restaurant in Brooklyn to get some dinner. Marxo was ready for a rest.

And after dinner, we took the ferry across the river to the Financial District, where we were able to get a shot of the new World Trade Center building.

Our flight didn't leave until late Monday afternoon, so we decided to make the most of it and head to Central Park for a carousel ride!

Hard to take a picture of a moving horse while also sitting on a moving horse...

Fellan is the King of Central Park!

And, on the way to the subway/train/plane that afternoon, my pen-pal informed us that you can't go past the pig in front of Rudy's without giving it a high-five! :)

Interpretation

2011-09-02T06:18:00.001-05:00

The other day, Fellan and I were headed to our Fantasy Football Draft. Marxo was sick and the husband had to get some work done, so it was up to me to draft our team. (neither the husband nor I know anything about football, but we like to keep a team each year, otherwise we'd never see our friends!)

Anyway, it was Saturday morning and "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me" was on the radio while we were driving. Fellan is really good at listening to stories on the radio and remembering all kinds of facts about what their talking about, so he was enjoying the show.

After we'd been driving for about 15 minutes, the next show came on the radio. It was "This American Life." This past Saturday, the show was about gossiping and how it's different in different cultures. They didn't get too far into the show before they gave the warning: "This program contains descriptions of sex and birth control."

Upon hearing that, I looked in the rear view mirror to see if Fellan was paying attention. He had a HUGE grin on his face. So I asked him what he was laughing about.

F: "They're going to talk about sex and birth control!"
Me: "What does that mean? 'Sex and birth control'?"
F: "It means they're going to talk about sexy women and how they control their children!"

I didn't correct him. :)

Much news...

2011-08-29T12:50:00.002-05:00

Well, we did make it back from our trip to Colorado, the school year has already started, and we finally got the results of Fellan's Dysgraphia testing back last week (surprise - he's got it!)...

Anyway, we had a great trip to Colorado. I just wish it would have coincided with the ~~Tour of Colorado~~ "US Pro Cycling Challenge" which just finished up yesterday. But it could not be helped - we had to get back for school to start last week.

While we were in Colorado, though, we made the best of it. It never got above 75 deg F the whole time we were there. Quite the contrast to the 113 deg F temperatures we drove through in northwest Texas on the way up. The car actually had trouble starting a couple of times in that hot weather, so at potty-breaks, we started to take turns, leaving the car running the whole time in order to avoid getting stuck somewhere!

We started off the vacation with a visit to the family down in Denver. My parents and brother came out and stayed with my aunt and cousin and we celebrated my dad's 70th birthday and my aunt's 60th birthday. Boy, my dad is getting old! :)

Then during the rest of the week, we hiked a couple of days and rode bikes the other three days before we had to head back to the Houston heat. I was impressed with the kids and their riding while we were there. We rode to Copper Mountain one day and Fellan rode there on his own bike. We had Marxo ride the trailer bike with Daddy that day. But for the other two days of riding, both kids were on their own bikes. And one day, we ended up riding a total of 27 miles! They did a great job.

Top of Copper Mountain - good thing these rocks get completely covered during ski season!

Waterfalls at McCullough Gulch

Lunch at the McCullough Gulch waterfalls

The day before we left, we hiked to the McCullough Gulch waterfalls. We had never done that before, but we'll definitely include that every year from now on. It was really worth the climb - very beautiful!

Alas, it was time to head back to the heat and get ready for school to start. We had a week between vacation and the start of school to get re-acclimated to the heat. It didn't really work, but we did get ready for school.

First Day of 3rd and 1st grade!

Someday, I'm hoping they're going to out-grow their need to "pose-smile" for pictures...

Anyway. The kids seem to be really enjoying school this year. Fellan is even pro-actively sitting down and doing homework every evening after school. When he came home from school the first day and started doing homework, I commented to the husband that the hypnotist they hired for the first day of school must have REALLY been good. ;)

The fact that Fellan has been doing his homework with little to no prompting is especially amazing given the fact that we finally did get the results of his testing and he's now officially been diagnosed with Dysgraphia, which literally means "difficulty writing". This website talking about handwriting solutions gives a really good description of Fellan's problems. I still find myself wondering if this is a real disorder, or if he just has poor fine motor skills and that he could get better if we just made him practice writing more, but since practicing hasn't helped thus far, I'm more inclined to believe this paragraph from the handwriting solutions website:

It is often thought that continued handwriting practice will improve a Dysgraphic student’s ability to use paper and pencil alone as a useful tool to complete all their written schoolwork. This is rarely the case. While Occupational Therapy can sometimes help to improve a Dysgraphic student’s letter and number formation in isolation and/or in short writing samples, this improvement is, 99.9% of the time, not able to be sustained when kids are actually using their handwriting to complete their written schoolwork. The same thing is true of making kids re-do written assignments to make them more legible. In cases of Dysgraphia, “practice does not make perfect.”

The woman who did the testing gave us a lot of helpful ideas and recommended an occupational therapist who specializes in writing problems like Dysgraphia. We're going to see how that goes, but we're also going to check into keyboarding options for Fellan to use in the classroom and we're scheduled to meet with his teacher tomorrow to talk about the recommendations from the testing lady. One of the recommendations is actually, "Do not count spelling mistakes against his grade." *gasp* The horror! This is going kill me - I can't stand misspellings!

The good thing about the type of Dysgraphia that he has is that it's mostly motor and spatial problems and it's not related to grammar or speech. Thank goodness for that - my reinforcement of proper use of adverbs must have helped him throughout the years. :)

And I think that catches everyone up! Later gator...

It's a...

2011-08-01T12:52:00.004-05:00

GIRL!!! As of yesterday, we have a new member in our family:

We were definitely not thinking about adding a kitten to our house, but she needed a home and we decided to go ahead and take her.

She came from the girl the I used to tutor when she was in high school. She's now 25 with two kids of her own! Anyway, her girls convinced their daddy that they really, really needed this kitten. So he bought it for them. But then they decided that they didn't really want it (and the little one decided to see what would happen if she scratched the kitten's eye with her own claw) and they wanted to know if we would take it.

Like I said, I weren't intending to get another kitten for quite some time. We currently have an 18 1/2 year old cat named Midas who has kidney disease and requires sub-cutaneous fluids every other day or so. We figured that we would let him live out his sunset years in quiet peacefulness without the stress of adding any kittens to his life.

But I guess that plan is pretty much wrecked!

I think it will be OK, though. This little kitten is so friendly and sweet - I figure Midas will eventually get used to her. If she ever gets over her fear of him, that is...

Midas basically lives on the 3rd floor of our house - where the bedrooms are. He rarely makes it down the stairs anymore and so we set the new kitten up with a litter box, food, and water on our second floor - where our living room, dining room, and kitchen are. She hasn't ventured up the stairs on her own yet. After a tentative meeting yesterday morning when she first arrived and Midas yelled (he doesn't meow anymore!) and hissed at her, she doesn't seem to be in a hurry.

Since the new kitten hadn't been to a veterinarian before, and she had one scratched, squinty, goopy eye, I made an appointment for her today. The scratched eye should be fine with a little ointment and she's now gotten her first round of shots.

Such a sweet little thing!

Oh, and her name? Spot. In honor of Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Since she's a calico (and therefore somewhat spotted), we thought it was especially fitting. :)

Training

2011-07-25T11:52:00.003-05:00

So, Thursday evening's ride was more fun for Marxo than Sunday's super-hot ride was, but we did it to her again on Saturday morning - we made her ride through her whining, pain, and suffering. I still say it's character building, though! ;)

She really had done a great job on Thursday evening's ride. She was powering up hills that I thought she would stop and walk up and she was generally in a good mood. But Saturday was different. We (once again) didn't leave from the house early enough and we were riding in nearly the peak heat of the day (11:30am-1:30pm). AND, we decided to go to Double Lake Recreation Area (which the kids had voted for the previous night) and it's quite a bit more challenging than the trails at Stephen F. Austin State Park. But, we figured that we really need to get in some training for both us and the kids before heading to Colorado in only a couple of weeks.

The trail we ride is about 9 miles of total length, but it usually takes us around 3 hours to ride the whole thing. It's rather technical for a 6-year-old little girl with spindly little bird-legs, so we only average maybe 4 to 5 miles per hour and we stop fairly frequently. In order to keep the kids happy, we usually stop for a short snack-break at about 2.5 miles and then again for a longer snack break at around the 6-mile mark. On Saturday, we didn't stop for any snack breaks, so we finished a little faster - in a little over 2 hours - but it was still unbearably hot.

And to make matters even worse, Marxo fell - right into a bush - and scraped up her arm. We keep telling her it makes her look like a tough biker-chick, but she doesn't seem to buy it. ;)

Tonight we're going to go riding up along the bayou again at Buffalo Bayou Park. It's another two-a-day day for me. I need about 100 more of these to get in shape before our Colorado trip, but I have less than two weeks to fit that in. I may have to adjust my goals for this upcoming vacation...

Two-a-days

2011-07-21T12:05:00.017-05:00

When I was in high school, volleyball season started a couple of weeks before school started. I remember the years when the gym floor was refinished during the summer - the finish wasn't nicely worn and dusty and when we would dive for balls, our knee pads would stick to the floor instead of sliding on the floor and we would all end up with knee pad burn on our knees from the insides of our knee pads!

The other thing I remember about that time was that we would have two-a-day practices in the un-airconditioned gym. I would be so tired at the end of the day from working out and sweating. And I still remember the taste of the watered-down Gatorade that my mom used to send with me. I don't think they make that flavor anymore, but I don't remember the name...

But, anyway, the reason I'm traveling down memory-lane here is because I think today is going to turn out to be a two-a-day workout for me. Which is good, I could definitely use it! I worked out at lunchtime today and tonight we're planning to load up the bikes and take the kids riding at the Buffalo Bayou Park again. Gotta get some more miles in all our legs!

And Fellan finished with the dysgraphia testing yesterday, but it will be 3 weeks until we hear back from the woman with the test results. Wow.

Getting fat

2011-07-20T11:05:00.007-05:00

So, I seem to have lost all motivation for continuing to exercise. What a difference it makes when you lose your favorite lunchtime exercise bicycle! My project moved to the office closest to my house back in April - which is good, but the exercise facility isn't really as nice. I didn't think it would be so bad, but after taking a look at my flabby middle, I have to admit that something must be done. I just don't know how to find the motivation again. I feel like I've lost a close friend...

But, our yearly summer bicycling vacation in Colorado is quickly approaching and I need to drop some weight to get to my climbing weight for the mountains! I've sort of been in the Jan Ullrich training mode for the last few weeks. We even had Bratwurst for lunch on Saturday. :o (Ullrich used to take all kinds of flack when he was racing because he would put on weight during the winters and he then had to lose it all before racing season each year. Ahhh, I miss Ullrich!)

Anyway, the kids also need to get used to doing some trail riding, so on Sunday, we rode up to the Buffalo Bayou Park and rode around the park. It's a great trail for Fellan. Marxo's little chicken-legs have a hard time with the climbs, but we're hoping with a few more trips down there in the coming weeks, she'll build up a little strength.

I felt bad for Marxo afterwards on Sunday afternoon, though. She had told me before the ride that she wanted to take the trailer bike because she was really tired. I figured she was just being whiney, so I told her that daddy already got her bike and my bike ready and if we were to take the trailer bike, he would have to get two MORE bikes ready, so she should just ride her own bike.

Well, when we got home after stopping along the way for lunch, she laid down on the floor and went to sleep. She had soldiered through the HOT ride (with only minimal crying!) and made it home and then just cratered. Poor baby. But it builds character, right?! Why, I remember my parents forcing me to do things I didn't want to do all the time when I was growing up and I turned out just fine! Umm... actually no, I don't think they did. But that's the story I'll be telling the kids and I'm sticking to it! :)

In other news, Fellan is doing his dysgraphia testing today. I'm wondering how it's going...

It's summer! Crap, summer is almost half-way done...

2011-07-14T12:34:00.002-05:00

Yikes. This happened last summer, too. Summer is almost half-way done and all our plans to develop our childen's minds have most definitely NOT come to fruition. Luckily, I wasn't planning too much development this year, since we failed so miserably last year. But still...

We got pretty busy towards the end of the school year because Fellan's teacher suddenly decided to tell us that "public school is not the place for him."

Now, on the one hand, I'm pretty sure she could get fired for telling us that, but on the other hand, why did she wait until the end of the school year when there was NO WAY we would be able to find a different school for him?

Anyway, after checking out alternative schools and having all kinds of testing done, we've come to the conclusion that... well, we've just been blessed with a unique individual. Which we already knew. ;)

My mood over this keeps going up and down, but overall I'm having a hard time staying super-worried about it. Fellan does have trouble staying focused in class and I'm sure he's a pain to his teachers. However, we're not willing to drug him into a stupor (which one doctor was ready and willing to give us a prescription for!) and I just think there's something wrong with a school system that wants kids to be like that.

We did find one school that is awesome and we think it's really the way all schools should be run. They spend a lot of time "figuring out" each child - finding their strengths, finding their weaknesses, and then helping the kids to become their own advocate in his/her education. However, since we were late in the application process, we didn't make the cut this year. I can't say that I'm too upset about that either, though. The cost of the school would have just about put us in the poor house!

We're having some additional testing done this summer and we're thinking about trying out some neurofeedback to see if that will help his concentration skills for the upcoming year. The other thing that has become apparent is that he does have some processing speed and fine motor problems and the additional testing we're having done next week is for dysgraphia - It took him 3 hours to copy two pages-worth of LARGE text for his last assignment of the school year. Talk about torture! Poor kid. Writing papers and journals for every class was definitely not something that was required of me when I was in 2nd grade.

Which brings up the main reason I have a hard time getting super-worked up about this. Yes, I do want to make sure that there's nothing seriously wrong with him, but if we find out he's just immature and has slow processing speed, so what? He's still very intelligent. He remembers everything he's ever heard. He does fine on his tests and from a macro-perspective, he makes huge progress from year to year. He loves school and loves learning. And most of all, he's a healthy, kind, boisterous, sensitive, happy little boy. Why mess with a good thing?

Race Report: 100MON Houston Picnic Loop Edition

2011-06-07T12:44:00.002-05:00

Yes, we did, indeed, survive the 100 Miles of Nowhere ride last Friday! Although the "official" day of the ride was Saturday, June 4, we did ours on Friday because the Memorial Park Picnic Loop is mostly closed to car traffic that day. (When I originally talked people into doing it that day, I thought it was closed for the entire morning and afternoon, but it was actually open from 11am to 3pm. However, it was such an extremely hot day that it turned out not to matter so much. There weren't many people - or animals for that matter - out in the heat of the day like us...)

Anyway.

The day started off late because HISD decided at the last minute to tack on another day to the school year so what would have been the first day of summer vacation for our kids turned out to be the last day of school and we had to take them to school that day before we could start riding. (But I'm not bitter about that.)

We gathered in the parking lot, trying to ignore our impending doom.

Everyone looks so happy!

There were nine people who showed up to do the ride with us, including a father-son duo whom you can make out on the tandem bike there to the left of the picture. (I could add a comment here about the fact that they live out in Katy and the Katy ISD system didn't make the stupid decision to extend the school year by one day, but would that make me sound bitter again?)

After unloading and setting up the food, water, and cold, wet towels (learned that one from my husband who grew up here in this heat!), we rolled out at about 8:40am.

We chose to do the ride at the Memorial Park Picnic Loop because it's a small loop that is twisty enough to not be boring, but still conforms to the rule of " riding an infuriatingly small course for 100 miles". The course:

Memorial Park Picnic Loop (1.18 mi)

At a lap-length of 1.18 miles, we would have to go around the loop 85 times to get to 100 miles. The course looks deceptively easy - it's nearly pancake flat - but there's one section of the loop that we lovingly referred to as "The Wall". It's a slight incline, just enough that you can notice it in your legs, but nearly impossible to capture in a picture. Luckily, thanks to Fatty's guest post a couple of weeks ago, I was able to take a representative photo of it!

I captured the incline like a true professional

The first 10 miles were a breeze. We all chatted and loosened up and then the one guy in the group who still avidly rides many times per week sort of took off (I'm pretty sure he gave us "The Look", too), not to be seen again until around the 40-mile mark when he had put an extra 12 miles on us. The rest of us were content to line up and work together a bit, still not pushing too hard and still being able to light-heartedly joke with each other and pretend to be like that talking dog from the movie "Up" and say "SQUIRREL!" to each other every time we saw and almost ran over a squirrel.

At around mile 40, we broke into the doping products:

Preemptive Ibuprofen - a necessity once you hit 40 years old.

We managed to make it another 20 miles before stopping for lunch. By this point, though, the people who were only going to do 50 miles were beginning to finish, so I had to start giving out awards.

Winners of the Simultaneous Relay Division (they each rode 50 miles)

Winners of the Father/Son tandem-then-switching-to-individual-bikes Division

The son in this father/son duo really, really wanted to ride 50 miles. They started off on their tandem and rode about 15 miles and then switched to individual bikes. I think in the end, they were a couple of miles short of the 35-mile mark on their individual bikes, but we're assuming that there must have been a couple of extra miles on the tandem that they missed in their counting. Way to go to this awesome 8-year-old!!!

After lunch, I really started feeling it. When it was 1:30 and the sun was directly overhead - providing only minimal shade to the route - and we had only gone about 65 miles, I was seriously doubting the intelligence of choosing to do this ride. I actually started getting chills, which I couldn't decide were a result of dehydration or the pain that was shooting from my feet up into my legs. I ended up assuming that it was dehydration and tried to force even more water into my already-water-logged stomach. After soldiering through that trough, we managed to make it to 75 miles and another awards ceremony.

Winner of the Spontaneous 100K Division (a co-worker of mine who just decided to show up and ride!)

By this point, it was hot. So, so hot!

The heat.

My God, the heat!

But, ignoring all remnants of sense we may have had left, we got back on our bikes and started turning the pedals once again. We told ourselves that we would stop at 88 miles (when the avid-cyclist would be done, since he had 12 extra miles on us) and if we needed to, we could finish the rest of the 12 miles the next morning... in the relative cool of the day!

My Facebook updates throughout the day tell the story succinctly:

Almost to 40 miles. Starting to really feel it! Got all day to finish, though. We'll make it. :)
Up to 60 miles now! Lunchtime.
75 miles. The heat, my God, the heat! Gonna try to do a little more, but may have to finish this tomorrow in the interest of not passing out...
88 miles. Past the trough. I think I can, I think I can.
Finally! 100.31 miles of nowhere!

100.31 Miles of Nowhere!

When we made it to the 88-mile point and stopped to let Mr. Avid take his leave of us, he decided he just couldn't leave us to wallow in misery without him for the last 12 miles and he ended up riding them with us. So! The winner of the 112 Miles of Nowhere Division:

Oops. Either I forgot to take the picture, or it didn't actually take, so this will just have to do. Not quite quads the size of Fatty's, but still...

And the rest of us...

Winner of the 100 Miles having "flatted" twice during the ride (he missed a couple of laps, but we treated it like a Crit and didn't make him ride those last two)

Winner of the Most-billable 100 Miles (my husband is a drilling engineer and had to work during every break)

Winner of the Women's-age-40-who-talked-all-her-friends-into-doing-this-with-her Division (Me) (Also? Nice hair!)

We finished at 4:44pm and sat around, recovering while watching people as they showed up after work to put in their workout for the evening. As we were sitting there, we started noticing that the squirrels had come out from hiding in their cool nests and were running around again. Until that point, though, we hadn't noticed they were missing! So, on that realization, we packed up and went home. We decided that next year, we'll do it in April, instead.

One more before the end of the month...

2011-05-31T12:37:00.000-05:00

I felt bad leaving the month of May with only two posts (even though that's twice as many as the month of April saw!), so I thought I'd better just write something on here - just because.

We've had a pretty busy month at our house, but not with anything specific. We're still trying to clean and organize the house and this past weekend I finally cleaned out all the stuff from "my side" of the bedroom that had been piled there since we had our new closets installed! It's finally almost looking like a bedroom again when you walk into the room...

We've also been trying to get ready for Fatty's 100 Miles of Nowhere bike ride. We're going to be riding it on Friday this week - only three days away! - at Memorial Park. We'll be doing 85 laps around the 1.18-mile picnic loop starting immediately after we drop the kids off for their last day of school.

So, in preparation for this event, we've gone to Memorial Park for the last two Fridays in a row to ride as much as we could in about an hour and a half. And "as much as we could" turned out to be only 25 miles. And I was in severe pain. My butt just isn't used to riding for long periods of time on my road bike saddle. Yowch!

We're headed to Memorial Park for "date night" again tonight to get in some more riding... not that it's going to make much difference at this point other than to cement in my mind how painful the actual ride is going to be on Friday.

The good thing is that with this 100 Miles of Nowhere event, everyone gets to declare themselves the "winner" of their category. Which reminds me, I need to come up with my category before the ride on Friday! Hmmm...

8 years is a long time

2011-05-18T11:33:00.001-05:00

So, it turns out that 8 years is a long time to not have ridden your bike for "speed".

The husband and I used to ride our bikes obsessively every weekend at least 40 miles each day (otherwise we didn't think it justified loading the bikes up on the car and driving out to the countryside) and ride three to four nights per week at the Memorial Park Picnic Loop. And on those nights we would average 20 miles/hour. People used to draft off of us as long as they could stay with us, but when we got tired of having "wheel-suckers", we would put the hammer down, ramp it up, and just leave them in our dust. *sigh* Those were the days...

Last night (date night!), in preparation for Fatty's 100 Miles of Nowhere, we loaded up the road bikes and headed off to Memorial Park to get a taste for how painful this ride is truly going to be. And on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say I'm going to be at about a 7. (Reserving 10 for something like passing a kidney stone or having a ruptured abdominal cyst or something like that - both of which I've heard were excruciating. I'd say that natural childbirth was about an 8. So, not quite as bad as that. But close.)

Anyway... We attempted to ride fast enough to make forward progress, but not fast enough that we didn't feel we would be able to sustain the effort for 100 miles. I think we failed at the latter goal. There's no way I'm going to be able to keep the pace that we were going and we were only going about 17.5 miles per hour. And that was pushing it. Oh, the pain that we are in for!!!

In other news, 8 days is also a long time. I'm trying to see if I lose fat any faster by not drinking alcohol. It's been about 8 days since I've had any alcohol. I'm surprised my system hasn't gone into complete shock. But the jury is still out regarding whether or not my middle is getting any thinner, so I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it... ;)

Ding, dong!

2011-05-04T12:46:00.004-05:00

The husband was awake at "ding" and I was awake at "dong". It was a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday morning at 2am and our doorbell was ringing. What the?...

It would be strange for someone to be ringing our doorbell at 2:00 in the morning, but what made it a little frightening was that our front gate was locked, which meant that whoever was ringing our doorbell actually climbed over our fence to walk up the stairs to our 2nd floor front door to ring the doorbell!

We were completely baffled by what to do in this situation. We didn't want to go out to the hallway where the person at the front door would be able to see us, but we can't see the front door from our bedroom, so we couldn't see who in the world this was.

We spent a couple of minutes looking around, pacing, and then eventually wondering if we really did hear the doorbell in the first place. Then... *Ding, dong!* They pushed it again!

Finally, when we didn't answer the door, the person went back down the stairs - to where we could see this late-night visitor - stood at the bottom of the stairs for a minute, then climbed over our fence and started pacing around in front of the house. He looked nice enough - not a homeless person or anything like that - probably a person who just left one of the bars down the street.

But we called the cops, anyway! The police showed up about 20 minutes later, well after he had finally walked off down the street. But, we kept vigil at the window for awhile longer, making sure he didn't come back. And while we were looking out, we saw another police car drive by, shining their spotlight at our front gate. That made us feel a little better.

It took a little while to get back to sleep, but we've managed to avoid any additional late-night disturbances so far.

And other than that, apparently nothing interesting and blog-worthy has been going on! ...except that I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago. But we'll just keep that a secret amongst ourselves, mmmm-kay? ;)

Six pounds in one week?

2011-04-14T12:19:00.005-05:00

Six pounds in one week?! Nope, not even going to try that. I've officially given up on my weight goal for my 40th birthday. Really, I gave up on it about a month ago when I still had 8 pounds to lose in a month...

However! I'm still considering my fitness and health goal a success. My clothes are definitely fitting much better and I can feel the muscles in my legs and core. I feel great. And I look great, if I do say so myself! :)

Plus, I went out riding on Saturday morning and after going around all the construction and actually getting to a trail that was rideable, I realized that I don't even notice the little inclines that left me huffing a puffing 6 months ago. Success.

My next fitness goal is to ride Fatty's 100 Miles of Nowhere!

The back-story: Three years ago, Fatty was talking about a Christmas present he gave himself and was trying to make himself not feel bad about buying them for himself. It was a set of rollers - basically, a treadmill for bicycles. He was justifying the purchase by saying that he could probably ride 100 miles on the rollers. And he dared everyone to bet him that he couldn't do it. If he did, they would have to donate money to Livestrong, if he didn't, he would have to donate money to Livestrong. Of course, he completed the 100 miles on his rollers and an annual event was born.

The following year, he had people sign up to ride 100 Miles of Nowhere, donate money to Livestrong and then send in a "race" report. Some of those reports are really funny! Go to the sidebar and peruse Fatty's blog for 100 Miles of Nowhere. (I would link to it, but then his comments do that funny ping-back thing and link back to this blog entry and... well, I still like my relative anonymity.)

The idea of the event is to either ride rollers, your bicycle trainer, or an extremely small route for 100 miles. And then document the experience.

The "official" date of the ride is Saturday, June 4, but our plan is to ride the Memorial Park Picnic Loop, which is a 1.18 mile loop. The Picnic Loop is only closed to car traffic on weekdays, however, so we're going to do it on Friday, June 3 instead. And we have several friends talked into doing it with us! It's going to be a blast! Or something like that... :)

Dogsledding

2011-03-31T10:28:00.001-05:00

While we were off in Colorado for Spring Break, we also decided to go dogsledding. We tried it out last year and the kids loved it so much, we had to make it part of this vacation, too.

The way it works is that you go meet your guide and your team. The guide introduces you to the dogs and tells you a little about them and how they got to be there. For instance, one of our lead dogs, Lily, was a little less than a year old and had been trained to run the Iditarod for this year! Unfortunately, her team's funding fell through, so she "retired" to this place to take tourists dogsledding. Sort of sad that her "talent" is kind of wasted here, but she's an extremely friendly puppy and she LOVES to run!

After meeting the team, you get to move the dogs one by one, hook them up to the sled, and get ready to go. The kids got to ride in the dogsled and the husband and I took turns "mushing" the dogs - We each took turns standing on the back of the sled and when the guide said to stop, we put the brake down and jumped on it. It takes quite a bit to stop a team of 8 dogs!. The guide rides a snowmobile up ahead of the dogsled and has a sleigh that holds anyone not currently on the dogsled. About half-way through, you switch people on the dogsled.

This is Buffy. She's super-nice, we just got a funny picture of her!

Fellan took a liking to Willow.

Marxo was the Dog Whisperer. Lily loved her and so did Buffy.

Surrounded by friendly dogs!

Dogsledding family

Rodeo!

2011-03-28T12:32:00.005-05:00

The week before Spring Break was a whirlwind. We went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans the weekend before (and stayed for about 40 hours, total. You see, now that the kids are in school and the state will take us to court for the kids missing too many days of school, we're completely beholden to the school schedule. So that means that we don't dare take Friday or Monday off from school. See Section 25.094!).

Also, now that the kids are in school and we have to take vacation during Spring Break, it means we've missed the Rodeo the last couple of years because it happens to coincide with Spring Break and we're gone for most of the time that the Rodeo is in town. This year, however, the husband was given four tickets to go on Wednesday night before Spring Break started, so we put on our gear and headed to the stadium.

Turns out the tickets were really good!

Down by the action!

We also like to go through and look at all the animals that are there for the Livestock Show. We stopped by a Longhorn to take a picture for the husband's brother, who went to the University of Texas, but Marxo decided to just totally ham it up...

"What? I was concerned!"

Back from Spring Break!

2011-03-22T12:10:00.037-05:00

Well, we're back from Spring Break! Apparently I was gone too long, though, because when I went to work out today, someone was riding my exercise bike as if he owned the thing. I'm going to have to get down there earlier tomorrow...

Anyway. We went skiing last week and enjoyed the record-amount of snow they've gotten up there this year. It was really nice! The kids took ski lessons for a couple of days at A-Basin and then we spent another three days skiing together in different places: Breckenridge, Loveland, and Ski Cooper. We went to Ski Cooper on Friday, which turned out to be a great decision. They got about 2 inches of fresh snow overnight and the runs there are perfect for the kiddos. It was a great finish to the vacation.

Fellan's class apparently read a book about Flat Stanley before Spring Break started and he had an assignment to either send Flat Stanley to someone over Spring Break, or take him along on a trip and take pictures of him along the way.

Since Fellan got a camera for Christmas, he was pretty excited about doing this, so we have quite a few pictures of Flat Stanley which will be affixed to posterboard along with a map tonight to show where each picture was taken. Here are the highlights...

For the first day of driving, we didn't make it out of Texas, but we did see lots of wide open spaces and a few energy-related things:

For Grandpa

For Daddy

The next day, we pushed on through New Mexico and into Colorado!

(We actually had to take this one on the way back home because we missed it on the way!)

Once we got there, skiing ensued!

A-Basin

Loveland

We took pictures of the rest of the places, too, but you know, sometimes enough is enough! :)

On the way back, we stopped and took pictures at the state lines for New Mexico and Texas, but the picture that Fellan took of the New Mexico sign turned out to be only a small sliver of the sign! Anyway, we already had one of those and the Texas one is good. :)

And we couldn't resist taking one more the last morning on the road.

The Replacements

2011-03-08T06:24:00.002-06:00

Since we had to take everything out of our closet and I'm not allowing anything back into the closet until the decision has been made that we NEED it, our bedroom is an absolute mess. We still have old shoes, clothes, and general junk that had been stashed in the closet all over the place.

Two of the things that we had stashed in our closet were The Replacements. When Lamby got lost 5 years ago, we were determined to have back-up attachment objects, just in case the need ever arose again. We kept them hidden in our closet for all these years, but we had to take them out in order to re-do the closet. Well, we were still trying to keep them a secret from the kids, but Fellan discovered replacement Baby Tarah on Friday! :o

Since the cat was out of the bag, we went ahead and showed Marxo that we had a replacement Lamby, too.

The Replacements! (From L to R: Baby Tarah, Baby Tarah 2, Lamby, Lamby 2)

Check out how clean those replacements are! They're still hanging out on our couch at the moment and whether they become permanent members of the "lovey" community remains to be seen.

Now, the amazing part of this story is not that we were able to keep these babies secret for so long. The amazing part of the story is what Fellan told us after we told Marxo the truth that this one was not really the original Lamby.

We were explaining to her how the husband had gone out looking for Lamby and had spent an hour roaming the neighborhood in search of her, but he was never able to find her. So we ordered two more, kept one as a back-up just in case it ever happened again, and passed off the other as the original Lamby.

As we were telling this story, Fellan chimed in, "Yeah, I found her for you under a bunch of pillows!"

The husband and I were floored. We didn't remember the specifics of "finding" Lamby, but Fellan was less than three years old at the time, and he remembers the whole thing. Scary. On the one hand, I think it's awesome that he has a memory like that, but on the other hand, I figure he's going to need a lot of therapy later in life to un-remember all the horrible parenting he's been subjected to thus far in his life... :/

Amazing Closet Transformation

2011-03-01T12:32:00.000-06:00

I finally got the husband to send me the pictures of the closet from his phone since my grainy phone just would not have done the glorious closet justice. :)

The Spaceman guys showed up exactly on time Saturday morning and were psyched about not having to rip out the existing closet appurtenances. However, their joy was quickly replaced with dread when they realized how many trips they would be making and what they would be carrying up to the third floor for the next half an hour or so.

After they finally got everything upstairs, they started the installation. I couldn't help myself - I kept going in there every 30 minutes or so to see what it looked like. Finally, at about 1:30pm they finished installing everything and then used an industrial-strength orange furniture polish to clean everything up.

Yikes. It was overwhelming. We ended up having to open all the windows and leave the house for a few hours so the place could air out! I even had a bit of a rash on my face and chest and poor Marxo looked like death warmed-over.

Luckily, however, we were able to return to the detoxified house after dinner and bask in the glory of our new closet. I'm not allowing any clothes back into the closet until they've been washed (just because!), so we don't have everything loaded back in yet and I don't have final-final pictures, but at least you can see how awesome it looks without clothes.

(Also, I should tell you that we didn't clean up our closet at all before we took the "before" pictures - we wanted the difference to be as drastic as possible!)


Husband's side - before

Husband's side - after rip-out but before Spaceman

Husband's side - after [note the hamper, belt rack, tie rack (back side), and valet rod!]


My side - before

My side - after rip-out

My side - after (there's another hamper under those drawers!)

Looking from husband's side - before

Looking from husband's side - after

Built-in - before

Built-in - after

We had the guys who did the rip-out of the old closet paint this so that it would match the stuff that Spaceman put in.

AND the pièce de résistance - the jewelry drawer! :)

Can't Wait!

2011-02-24T17:32:00.002-06:00

I can't wait for Saturday to finally get here! That's the day that the Spaceman people are scheduled to come and install our fancy closet.

We had a handy-man come in on Monday and rip out the old stuff, fix the walls, and re-paint so that it would be ready to go. My clothes have, therefore, since Sunday, been residing in the bathtub.

I did think about the fact that I should probably pick out clothes for the coming week before making everything inaccessible. But I didn't do as good of a job as I thought. I completely forgot that our school fundraiser is tomorrow night. It's not a fancy affair, but I'm still not sure what I'm going to wear. Actually, even if we did have a closet in which to hang our clothes, I'm not sure I'd know what I was going to wear, so it probably doesn't matter. Looks like I'll be going shopping sometime tomorrow...

Or, I might just blow off trying to find something to wear and attend a meeting tomorrow morning about the proposal to cut all funding for bike lanes for the coming three years in Houston. Seriously?! I can't wait until 2015 for the bike path to get finished. It's gone beyond ridiculous at this point.

Biking in Houston

2011-02-21T12:16:00.002-06:00

It's been in the 70's for the last week - that means it's time to start working on that bicycling shorts tan-line!

Yesterday we went on our first bike ride of the year with the trailer bikes. We've been avoiding the trailer bikes lately for a couple of reasons:

The kids always want to ride their "two-wheeled bikes".
The City of Houston has been taking away all our bike paths over the last couple of years, making it virtually impossible to ride anywhere that we used to ride with the kids on the trailer bikes!

About four years ago, they did some road work and then started working on expanding the "bayou" (which used to be an actual bayou, or creek, I guess, but at some point in time, they turned it into a concrete-lined drainage ditch), and in the process of doing so, they removed part of the bike path. Each time it looked like they might be ready to open up a section of the path again, they would start a new project and leave the path wallowing in a sea of mud and weeds.

Then maybe two years ago, they finished the section of bike path they had originally been working on, but then they started on another section down the way. That was sort of OK, though, because we could just go around the section they'd been working on and we could still get in a good ride from our house down to IH-610 and back.

But then about a year ago, they decided to work on a bridge that goes over the bike path. So, the section of path that was closed became very long and the only way to get to the path in that direction was to go through the Medical Center and that's just dangerous. I felt like I was taking my life into my own hands every time we went through there - even early on Sunday mornings.

So, our only remaining option was to ride the bike path and go towards the University of Houston. That was OK, too, because it's the prettier direction to ride on the path. It's a shorter ride, but it's definitely prettier. And we can usually find some good sections of bluebonnets in which to take pictures of the kids each year along that section of the path.

However, about 6 months ago, they began working on expanding the "bayou" in that direction, too, and they removed the bike path.

So, all our normal bike path options were gone. Luckily, we discovered that the kids love riding trails and doing some "mountain biking", so we focused on taking day trips and weekend trips to satisfy our biking needs.

Yesterday morning, however, we figured that surely after so long, the bike path headed towards IH-610 would be open by now, so we hooked up the trailer bikes and took our chances.

You wanna ride your bike in Houston? You must be joking!

Yeah, right. There's a reason Houston is considered one of the least bicycle-friendly places in the country. This is only one section of the bike path that we had to get off and walk our bikes around.

Here's a picture of the lovely "bayou" with a section of the bike path that hasn't been removed... yet. I wish I could also attach smells to this post - it's truly an experience to be able to ride along, smelling the fishy water and then realize that you're getting close to the water treatment plant based on the pungent odors that begin emanating from the water. Nice.

Path along the "bayou"

Valentines

2011-02-15T12:31:00.000-06:00

Last night we had a nice evening of hanging out with the family, watching Star Trek Voyager (I love that our kids are science geeks), and having a delicious dinner (of leftover Star Pizza!). It was a perfect way to celebrate Valentine's Day. :)

My Valentines

You'll notice that one of my Valentines is "Lamby". In fact, the "wallpaper" on my phone is currently a picture of Lamby that Marxo took with my phone. She set it as my wallpaper as a joke about 6 months ago, but I've kept it because I love Lamby probably more than she does! There are times when the kids aren't around, I'll hug Lamby and get sort of overwhelmed when I think about how much love must be encapsulated in that smashed, worn-out little body.

And the wine of choice for the evening was...

My current favorite wine :)

We first picked up this wine at the grocery store because it was not only a "Manager's Special" (and the manager takes his wine recommendations very seriously) but also because of the name and the label. I mean, how could an engineer possibly pass up a wine called "Educated Guess" that has organic molecules drawn on the label? And as a bonus, it's really good.

Finally...

2011-02-10T11:53:00.001-06:00

Today was a weigh-in day and I've finally broken through what seemed like an impenetrable weight barrier - for the past couple of weeks, I just couldn't get below my goal weight from Fatty's weight loss challenge. So, today marks a glorious day in my weight-loss and fitness journey! I'm down 1.6 pounds from what I had gotten to back in December. Whew. It'll be clear sailing from now on, right? ;) Only 8.4 more pounds to go...

Fitness-wise, I'm pretty pleased, too. I'm finding myself pushing the wattage up higher and higher by riding harder and harder each day. I'm also finding that I want to ride the trainer for more than my "allotted" 30 minutes of time. They ask that everyone limit their time on the equipment to 30 minutes so that others can use it if they want. And there's another woman that likes to use the bike trainer, too, so I try to get there early and I usually stretch it to about 35 minutes and hope that she doesn't notice.

Yesterday, she had told me that she wouldn't be working out so I chose one of the long courses and rode for 55 minutes. It felt good.

Now, if we could get some good weather on a weekend day so that we could do some family bike rides, it'd be even better!

Spaceman!

2011-02-08T17:32:00.007-06:00

We are continuing to try to find our organized bliss by re-doing our master closet. It's something we (especially my husband!) have been thinking about doing for quite some time. I mentioned that we were planning to get some Elfa stuff for our master closet, but then when it was a small fortune just to organize the sports closet, we figured out if we're going to re-do our master closet, it would be really expensive!

So, then we decided that if we were going to be spending a ridiculous amount of money on our master bedroom closet, then we might as well spend an obscene amount of money on it and do it right. Enter Spaceman. See, right there - it says "organized bliss" on the homepage. Obviously this is the company for us! :)

After getting our most recent month's Visa bill, I can't say that this was the smartest of decisions, but it's too late now. We spent our "snow" day with the Spaceman guy, designing the layout of our master bedroom closet and making the down-payment for it! :o

I'm really excited about it, though. My requirements for the closet were to include a couple of tilt-out clothes hampers for us, drawers for our T-shirts, and a double jewelry drawer for me (I don't really have much jewelry, but it's just such a cool drawer, I couldn't pass it up). I mean, check out all those closet accessories!

We're set for installation at the end of February and in the meantime, we need to rip out our current closet hanging rods, repair the walls, if necessary, and re-paint. This should be interesting.

"Snow" Day

2011-02-07T06:30:00.000-06:00

The forecasters were predicting 2" to 4" of snow for Houston starting on Thursday evening and continuing into early Friday morning. They canceled school for Friday, told people to leave work early, and basically shut down all of Houston. So by Thursday evening when I finally went home from work, there was virtually nobody on the road.

We had been watching the radar all day long, just waiting to see it get close to Houston so we could go home from work. But the clouds just didn't cooperate.

By Thursday evening, they were saying that it would come through the area during the night, so the kids went to bed with visions of snowmen in their heads.

I happened to wake up at around 5:00am Friday morning (why can't I do that every morning, like I'm supposed to?!) and looked outside. The street was dry. But, I could see a thin layer of ice on our tree, so apparently some rain had eventually fallen and frozen during the night.

The kids got up on Friday morning and ran to the window to see... nothing. "There's no snow out there." Fellan came to inform us.

Yep, instead of snow, Houston awoke with a city full of disappointed children.

It's cold outside

2011-02-02T06:49:00.001-06:00

Last night, we went out to the garage and discovered that something had peed on some of our stuff out there. And the garage door was closed at the time. Hmmm....

So, after several minutes of discussing whether it could actually be animal pee or maybe just water that had spilled (and then turned yellow?), I went inside, figuring that it was a cat who was just trying to find a warm place to spend the night.

A couple seconds later, the husband yelled for me, "I found what it was!"

Come on, it's cold outside!

So the husband spent the next 30 minutes or so trying to get the little critter out of the garage!

Unlike my father, my husband did not call the radio station to try to find out what to do with an opossum in his garage. The radio guy, probably as a joke, told my dad to just make a bunch of noise, which would then make the opossum "play 'possum" and he would be able to pick him up and get him out of the garage. Surprisingly, that didn't work and I remember being really afraid of what was going on behind the wood pile in our garage while my dad was attempting to catch Harry (of course my brother and I named the opossum! - we were something like 6 and 10 at the time and loved all kinds of animals - we really wanted to keep him...) and get him into a trash can for relocation to the countryside.

My husband, instead, used a broom to sweep him towards freedom, but a cold front had come through Houston yesterday morning and it was down to about 25 deg F by that point. (That's downright brutal for Houstonians... of all species!)

Sensing his impending eviction from the warmth of our garage, the opossum instead made a beeline to go under my car. So, the husband again used the broom to sweep him out from under the car and force him into the cold, where he finally ran away to the neighbor's house.

His victory was short-lived, however. While the husband was occupied with the opossum, the neighbor's cat (the same neighbor who was on the receiving end of a cold opossum) tried to take advantage of the diversion to seek refuge under my car. It was beginning to look like the outdoor animals were teaming up!

The husband eventually prevailed and made sure the garage was free of critters before closing the door for the night. We think.

Room by IKEA

2011-02-01T12:19:00.008-06:00

Ok, I remembered to take a picture of the kids' room last night! There's still stuff sitting on top of their bookshelf and Fellan likes to throw his PJ's over the foot of his bed, but this is much better than it was before the purging - you'll just have to take my word for it.

Kids' room... by IKEA

Bunk bed

(After looking at the last few pictures I've posted, I've determined that my phone is really bad at taking pictures. Talk about grainy!)

Anyway, as we were sitting on the kids' (really hard) couch on Sunday evening, we looked around and noticed that nearly everything in their room came from IKEA. The bunk beds, the big leaf, the railing thing that holds Marxo's pink curtain, the fold-down desk and stools, the bookshelf/divider and baskets, the big world map, the couch... and a few other things I'm not thinking of. They must really like to see us coming! ;)

Continuing

2011-01-31T17:36:00.000-06:00

We are continuing our campaign against clutter in our house and also continuing to try to lose weight!

First, the clutter. On Friday, we were able to rid our house of another car-full of stuff. This time, it was donated to the preschool garage sale. We're not attending that preschool anymore, since both the kids are now in elementary school, but it's still a good cause. :)

We had spent the previous weekend getting rid of bunches of stuff from the kids' room and we finished up with it on Friday. I had convinced Marxo that it would be OK to give away her pink kitchen to a friend's daughter by telling her that we would replace the kitchen with a couch for her and Fellan so they could hang out with their "peeps" in their room.

So, on Saturday, we headed off to IKEA to pick out a couch for them. We ended up getting a couch that folds out into a bed so that when the kids have friends spend the night, we can unfold the couch. Of course, we will have to physically pick up and move the couch out into the center of their room in order to accomplish this, but that's beside the point. (I'll try to remember to take a picture tonight and post it tomorrow...)

And we continued our purging efforts yesterday with our room. I cleaned out most of my dresser and we put together the console desk thing that's going to replace it. We still have more to do on our room, but inch by inch, I can feel us getting closer to having an organized house.

On the weight-loss front, we've determined that it's really horrible to weigh-in on Monday mornings. I'm up 2 pounds from my Thursday morning weigh-in. But, in general, I'm still heading in the right direction.

Engineers = Social Ineptitude

2011-01-27T13:02:00.001-06:00

So, I'm an engineer and every day I spend the entire day around other engineers and I've got to tell you - in case you didn't know - engineers are generally just socially inept. I try not to be, but I'm sure some people think I'm a little 'off'.

However, I swear I'm not as bad as one guy who sits in my cubicle bay. We have sort of an open-office layout where four cubicles make one "bay" with no walls between us. There are currently three of us in the bay - two women and one man.

On Monday, I walked into our cubicle bay just in time for the guy in our bay to have a loud, obnoxious sneezing fit. At least he was sneezing down towards the floor, but there was no effort to cover his mouth at all.

This sneezing and coughing continued for the next two and a half days and I felt really sorry for the woman who sits right next to him. She's pregnant, but in her first trimester, so she hasn't told everyone about it and he just kept sneezing and coughing all over her! It's a miracle that she hasn't gotten sick yet. Yesterday she and I both felt a little under the weather, but we seem to be doing better today. We've been popping Vitamin C pills like they were Tic Tacs.

Since I wasn't feeling all that great yesterday, I took it very easy during my lunchtime workout. I think that was a good idea because today, I feel great! I rode the bicycle trainer for almost an hour and lifted weights like a maniac. I'm on a workout-related endorphin overload this afternoon. :)

This morning was also a weigh-in day for the husband and me. I've been having a hard time forcing myself to watch what I'm eating every day - I keep cheating throughout the weekends! So I decided to make us a weigh-in schedule and include our goal weights for the next three months. We have to weigh ourselves every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday and record the damage. :/

According to the scale this morning, I have until Monday to lose one more pound. Which, unfortunately, will only get me back to my goal weight from Fatty's Weight Loss Challenge! I'll have ten pounds to go from there to get to my final goal weight before the end of March. The ultimate goal is to be lean and fit by the time I turn 40 in April!!!

First Sparring Tournament

2011-01-24T06:17:00.005-06:00

This past weekend, the boy participated in his first sparring tournament in Tae Kwon Do. It was just something that was put on by the place where the kids take Tae Kwon Do, so he was fighting against kids that he knows, but it was good experience and he seemed to like it. We couldn't get the girl to try it.

In fact, she's been whiney and annoying for awhile now every time we go to Tae Kwon Do. And she keeps saying that she doesn't want to do it, but then during class, she has an excellent time. We're not really sure what the problem is, but we don't want her to quit and it's finally come to the point where we've told her that she's not allowed to quit until she gets her black belt.

Quitting was something that I just never considered when I was growing up. If you started something you finish it. I'm not sure how my parents instilled that quality in me, but it's something that I feel very strongly about. And luckily, the husband feels the same way.

Some woman wrote a book recently about how Chinese mothers are superior and got an article published in the Wall Street Journal about it in the last couple of weeks. When I started reading the article, I expected to hate it, but there was one thing I found that I sort of agreed with her about. It was that, in general, non-Chinese parents allow their children to quit things too quickly and don't demand excellence from them.

When I was growing up, I took piano lessons and continued them even when my friends quit. I continued in Girl Scouts and got my Gold Award even when all but one of my friends quit. I continued doing lots of things even when my friends quit. And in each case, there was a point when I did not enjoy what I was doing. But I continued because I just never thought I should quit something I started. And I was always rewarded by getting over that hump.

So I think that if a child doesn't learn to put in the work to achieve something, then s/he will never learn the satisfaction of earning the accomplishment.

Now, having said all that, I have to admit that we've fallen into the typical American life of over-scheduling our kids and maybe Marxo is just tired of always go, go, going. We have something planned for every night but one per week. Swimming lessons, Tae Kwon Do, and Gymnastics. And we're debating about whether to enroll the boy in baseball this coming season. We skipped soccer last fall so that we wouldn't have something controlling every Saturday's schedule, but Fellan specifically said that he wanted to play baseball and have me be the coach again (last year, I was an assistant coach for his tee-ball team and I guess he thought that was pretty cool). The thing is, he doesn't pay attention and doesn't really show much interest in actually playing the game. But, I'm afraid that if he ever does want to play in the future, that he'll be missing out somehow by not playing and developing his skills each year. (which is sort of crazy to think about - he's only 7 years old, for goodness sake!)

Anyway. Here's a picture that Marxo took of Fellan in his sparring gear on Saturday. At least she enjoyed being the photographer of the day. :)

First sparring tournament!

Garage Alcove

2011-01-19T12:08:00.001-06:00

I always thought that hiring a professional organizer to help us do something we could do ourselves was sort of a stupid idea. Until I was so enraged by the clutter that I just didn't care anymore.

It has been a very good thing for us. It's forcing us to really deal with all the crap in our house and get our "homework" done each week. We're now being held accountable to someone else, as well as to our wallet!

The other reason I feel good about paying someone else to come into our house and tell us things like, "I should just shoot you now and put you out of your misery." (seriously, she said that to us... right after we told her that we actually take our pile of accumulated mail on vacation with us so that we can go through it all while driving across country. And you have to admit, she's kind of got a point...) is because she took one look in our second-pantry-thing and said, "You need more shelves in here." And then the next time she came back, she had three different types of shelving units and we chose which one should go in there and it's now a much better organized second-pantry-thing.

She also took one look into our garage-storage-alcove-thing and said, "You could fit some shelves back there." And so we went and bought some cheap shelves from Lowe's and installed them. And it's awesome.

Garage Alcove

This coming Friday, we asked the organizer not to come, though, so that we can spend the weekend purging all the stuff that has accumulated in the downstairs room. We're also going to go through the kids' bedroom this weekend and purge a bunch of their old toys. They're actually looking forward to it. It seems de-cluttering and enjoying the feeling of clean is contagious. :)

Sports Closet Re-Org

2011-01-18T17:37:00.000-06:00

So, this past Friday's mission was to re-organize the "Sports Closet". We used to have a bunch of coats that filled up the right-hand side of the closet. However, after realizing that we live in Houston and we haven't had to open that side of the closet for the 12 years that we've lived in our house, we decided that space would be better used if we put up some shelves! So, we partook of the Container Store's 30% off sale and bought ourselves some Elfa shelves and drawers.

The left-hand side, decluttered.

The right-hand side, shelf-i-cized.

The drawers were the things that we really wanted. And they were almost half of the total price! :o But, I love them. In one drawer, we have our bicycling gloves and bicycling headbands and in the other drawer, we have all the kids' hats, gloves, and scarves. (They haven't figured out they live in Houston yet.)

Next up, pictures of the garage! I know, how exciting!

We both won something!

2011-01-13T17:21:00.004-06:00

After our success in Fatty's Weight Loss Challenge, we posted our weights and waited to see if we won any of the fabulous prizes.

Turns out, we did!

The husband received an e-mail from Fatty saying that he had won something and that he should be on the lookout for something to come in the mail. We were really hoping it would be the jersey signed by Levi Leipheimer, Lance Armstrong, and Bob Roll:

And we were secretly hoping that it wouldn't be one of the 100 Miles of Nowhere shirt because we would then feel obligated to actually do 100 miles of nowhere.

So on Monday afternoon, I got an e-mail from the husband, the text of which said, "Noooooo!" and this picture was attached...

Yep, looks like we'll be nursing some saddle sores soon.

At almost the exact same time as I got that e-mail from the husband, I got an e-mail from Performance telling me that I won one of the helmets!

(I haven't gotten the actual helmet yet)

Not bad for a little pain and suffering. :)

On working out

2011-01-12T17:24:00.004-06:00

I have always told my husband that I don't necessarily like working out. (Really, I'm lazy at heart.) But, I love the feeling of having worked out. I love feeling the tiredness of my muscles and the after-burn in my lungs.

On Monday, I forgot my shoes and my toiletries which meant that I didn't work out at lunchtime. I felt bad all day. But for the last two days, I have been able to get my workout in. And I feel great!

Also, I just have to make this observation: Some people are a little possessive about their possessions. Yes, that's redundant, but I've noticed that some of the people at my office fitness center bring their belongings from the locker room into the workout room. Today, one woman had her bag hanging off the handrail of the treadmill on which she was running.

Ok, I admit that there are no locks provided for the lockers, but you are required to get special access added to your work badge to get into the place and there are really not that many people in the place to start with! The thought never crossed my mind that my stuff wouldn't be safe in the locker room. Call me naive, I guess, but I have no intention of hauling my crap around with me from one place to another in there. Jeesh.

More organizing, no proof

2011-01-10T17:29:00.001-06:00

This past weekend, we did some more organizing around the house, but I don't have pictorial proof this time. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Actually, the house itself looks like all the closets barfed all over the place, but that's just because the pantry and the second-pantry-thing are now organized. And we're getting ready to organize the sports closet (again). We braved The Container Store yesterday and bought some Elfa shelves for our sports closet so that when the organizer comes again this Friday, we can work on getting it organized.

Actually, there's not a whole lot of "organizing" that needs to be done in the house anymore. Most of what needs to be done now is PURGING. Good thing the preschool garage sale is coming up and they're always in need of donations!

We did do one fun thing this weekend: on Saturday it was 67ºF and sunny, so we loaded up the bikes and headed out to Stephen F. Austin State Park for some mountain biking with the kids. It was beautiful and we all had a great time.

I'm still managing to keep most of the weight off that I lost before Christmas, but I don't seem to be losing any as of late. Apparently a little snack of cheese here and there will actually provide extra calories over time. Huh.

Proof of (at least temporary) organization!

2011-01-05T11:45:00.000-06:00

I'm really having trouble getting myself back into the swing of work after being out so long! I haven't made it to work on time yet this week. (well, that's only two days so far)

I was talking with a friend on Sunday and she mentioned how tired the kids looked. I told her it was because I woke them up at 7:30 that morning to try to get them accustomed to "school time" again. And then I mentioned to her how tired I was because of it also! We had all quickly slipped into the stay-up-late-sleep-in mode during our winter break and got very used to lazing around the house all day. So, during this particular conversation on Sunday, we coined a new phrase "Winter Break: All the jet lag of transpacific flight without the travel." Ha!

Anyway, last night when I got home, I wandered into the living room and soaked in the peaceful calm feeling that accompanies a clean, organized space. I can't get enough of it. I'm really hoping this cleanliness will continue.

And after the kids went to bed, I went through and took some pictures of the wondrous sights.

(cue the angel chorus...)

The two shelves on the bottom of the bookshelf to the left of the fireplace is what we "reclaimed" from the kids and we added those storage ottomans. Back by the stairs, you can make out the "Drawing Center" that we put together for the kids. Here's a closer picture:

We managed to find some boxes that fit our existing shelves perfectly and then found the drawer unit that's sitting on top of it at the Container Store. Now, what's really ridiculous is that everything there is chock-full of stuff. The drawer unit has two drawers full of markers, two drawers of crayons, one drawer of colored pencils, and one drawer for miscellaneous stuff like scissors, glue sticks, etc. But hey, it's organized and the kids can now find what they want and we never have to buy anything new for them again because this supply should last for the rest of their school days! Ahhh... I can't wait to get home. :)

A new, (hopefully) organized year

2011-01-04T12:22:00.004-06:00

Let's see, last time we spoke, I was drooling over the Mexican food we were finally going to be allowed to eat after the weight loss challenge. Ohhhh, it was GOOD!!! We had Mexican food, Indian food, more Mexican food, not to mention the gluttonous Christmas and New Year's dinner and drinks. It was like heaven. But now, it's back to reality! I've tracked my food for the day in my Livestrong MyPlate account and I'm back on the wagon. I, of course, didn't keep the full 10 pounds off over the holidays, so I've got more work to do. My goal now is to lose 15 pounds before the month of April. Five pounds per month should be easy after losing 10 pounds in 3.5 weeks, right? We shall see.

In other news, after my 11 glorious days off from work, we have a semi-organized house! I'm kicking myself that I didn't take any "before" pictures just to show what a true PIT it was, but I'll take some "after" pics tonight. It will at least Wow my parents and my brother - they know what it looked like before. Yikes!

We managed to reclaim our bookshelves in our living room and bought some storage ottomans from Target in which to keep the kids' toys and things and act as a coffee table for the living room. We also moved all the writing and drawing stuff over to a bookshelf that now sits beside a newly-fixed kid's table (it had been broken for something like three years after being used as a launching pad for some sort of Gymnastic/Tae Kwon Do aerial display) and created a drawing/project area for the kids. Last night before heading to bed, we wandered around our living room and soaked in the peace that came from the cleanness. It was amazing.

The organizer comes again on Friday this week. She's going to be surprised, although I'm not sure she'll really be all that happy. She had told us not to run out and buy the first thing we found to store our crap - and really, we didn't - so I'm curious to see how she'll react to our super-organizing effort over the holiday break. I think we did a good job and since I'm the one who has to live there, that's really what matters. :)

The next major project I think we'll attempt is re-doing our closet with an Elfa closet system. We've decided we're sick of having dressers in our bedroom (I don't even use mine) and what we really need is a bookshelf and a desk-type thing for the husband to use in the middle of the night when he has to get up and take phone calls from the drilling rig. I didn't necessarily want a desk in our room, however, so we ended up investing in one of these West Elm Console Desks over the weekend, too. The hope is that with another one of those storage ottomans under the center part, it won't look toooo much like a desk. We can't put it together yet, however, because my dresser is in the way...

Oh! I almost forgot about Fatty's weight loss contest prize - the husband won one of the prizes. We don't know which one yet, but something is supposed to show up in the mail in the next couple of weeks. I'm excited to see what it turns out to be!

I made it!

2010-12-23T06:56:00.002-06:00

I made it, I made it, I maaaaaade it! I'm dancing a little jig because I can't contain myself! This morning when I weighed myself, I was down 10.0 pounds. Then I did it again and it was 10.2 pounds. Then I made the mistake of trying again, which resulted in my weight loss being only 9.8 pounds, so THEN I had to try again and I was back to 10.0. I'm calling that a success. :)

Today is my last day at work for the next 11 days. I'm so excited to have that much time off. The last time I had that much time off in a row ...I was on maternity leave. Yikes.

Our plans for the holiday vacation? Organize the house. I know that doesn't sound like much fun - and really, it's not - but I just can't stand the clutter in the house anymore. The husband hired a professional organizer for me for Christmas and our first session was last Friday. I have some "homework" to do before she comes back after the New Year, but I'd like to do a little more than just the minimum she asked me to do. It's such a good feeling to finally be doing something about the "Pit of Despair", as I lovingly refer to our house.

Tomorrow the plan is to finally go to a Mexican restaurant and pig out on chips and margaritas- something we haven't been able to have for the last month. (way too many calories ...in just one chip!) Mmmmm... Chuy's...

P.S. The husband made it to his goal of 15 pounds lost, too. Together that's 25 pounds of fat that is now missing from our house. Yay!!!

This exercise business is really getting in the way.

2010-12-21T12:01:00.003-06:00

So I've been exercising religiously for the last few weeks and must continue doing so this week if I want to lose those last couple of pounds. However, this is really getting in the way of getting ready for Christmas!

In previous years, I've been able to go Christmas shopping at lunchtime during the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas. And to make it worse, a couple of months ago, my company banned shopping websites from our internet access. It's made Christmas extremely difficult this year.

The husband and kids are out shopping for gift cards and other miscellaneous presents today, but there are still a few things I need to get. Well, where there's a will, there's a way. I just have to find it...

Getting there...

2010-12-20T12:21:00.000-06:00

Today was weigh-in day and I'm slowly getting there. Actually, last week on Thursday, I was at a lower weight than today, but this past weekend of socializing with friends did me in. I'm down about 7.5 pounds today. And I only have three days left to lose that last 2.5. Somehow, I'll make myself do it, though. I've gotten used to starvation! :)

So, on Thursday morning last week when I weighed myself and found that I had finally broken that elusive goal-weight I've had in my head for the last couple of years, I immediately went and scared the crap out of the husband by waking him up and yelling, "I made it!! And look, if I stand sideways and suck in my tummy, I almost look skinny! And, and look! When I pinch my fat, there's so much less there!!!"

After he figured out that there wasn't an intruder in the house, he calmed down and said, "Yes, you look great, dear." Good husband.

And I'm off to drink some more water...

Sodium is not my friend

2010-12-15T06:40:00.002-06:00

I stepped on the scale this morning (just because I like torturing myself) but today I was met with a pleasant surprise: I was three pounds lighter this morning than yesterday morning! I must have been retaining a lot of water yesterday, I guess. So, I need to remember next week before the final weigh-in that sodium is not my friend.

Last night was supposed to be our bi-weekly date night, but the nanny couldn't make it, so we spent a quiet evening at home. It was probably a good thing, too, because Marxo's throat started hurting and she seems to have a swollen tonsil on one side. We put her to bed and spent the rest of the evening helping Fellan to finish his homework for the week.

You would think, then, that we would have been able to go to bed early, right? Well, at least, that's what I was fantasizing about. But, no, we had to pick up the house and put away clothes and wash the towels and finally made it to bed at about 10:30. I'm still recovering from the weekend, I guess - I'm still tired.

So, I'll be calling the doctor this morning to see if we can get an appointment. Seems like the kids have been sick a lot this fall...

Really? REALLY?!!

2010-12-14T06:18:00.002-06:00

I weighed myself last night and after starving myself for a second week in a row with only one evening of decadence, I've gained a pound since last week. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be female...

Need sleep...

2010-12-13T06:48:00.001-06:00

I need some sleep after this weekend!

The husband and I went to a Christmas party this past weekend in Midland, TX! It was fun, but it basically took up the entire weekend.

My husband does quite a bit of consulting work and the company he works through had their Christmas party this past weekend. They usually have it here in Houston, but last year, the Midland folks suggested that they hold it out there instead.

So, we all flew out there and tore up the town. Not really, but we did stay out much later than our normal bedtime. :)

And, on Friday night, we were up late, entertaining friends at our house and then getting ready for the trip. I'm really ready for a nap.

But! No rest for the weary! I must work out today to attempt to undo some of the harm that the tenderloin topped with lobster butter (yum!), potato cakes (yum!), wine (yum!), and flourless chocolate mint cake (yummy, yum, yum!) did to my "diet" over the weekend. It's not going to be good news tonight when I weigh myself.

But it was worth it.

Fed Up With Lunch: Eat Along Challenge

2010-12-09T11:38:00.007-06:00

Mrs. Q over at Fed Up With Lunch posted a challenge for this week. (apparently, I just can't turn down a challenge!)

This week, she's asking everyone who packs lunch for their children to post pictures of those lunches. So, this morning, I set them out and took these inspiring pictures.

Marxo's Lunch

Fellan's Lunch

Actually, after setting out their lunches and looking at them, I really found nothing inspiring about them. But, this is what they have every day. It is what it is - and at least there are no preservatives, artificial colors, or flavors.

Marxo's lunch is always either a Babybel cheese OR yogurt, half a sweet peanut butter sandwich on home-made bread (natural peanut butter mixed with honey), water, fruit OR vegetable (typically cucumbers and carrots), and a cookie (which many times she doesn't eat because she doesn't have time or she's full).

Fellan always eats his full lunch. His lunch is always a cheese stick, a toasted american cheese sandwich on home-made bread, Pringles, fruit (most of the time, the kids choose to have grapes), 2% milk, and a cookie... or two.

This year, we've been making the kids pack their own lunches. They get their fruit, cookies, and Pringles ready the night before, we make their sandwiches for them in the morning, and then they're responsible for packing it all up before they leave.

They've also been going to after-school care this year at the school and if they want a snack (they're not allowed to usually have the snack from the school because it's generally crap-food), they're responsible for packing that the previous night, too. Fellan usually chooses a mandarin orange cup and a package of Annie's Homegrown Bunny Crackers (similar to teddy grahams - chocolate is, of course, his favorite flavor, but we've been out of those for awhile...).

Marxo says she never has time to eat a snack after school, but I've been trying to make sure she has something in her bag, in case she gets hungry. There's currently a smashed Kashi granola bar and some raisins in her bag. And they've been in there since the beginning of the school year. :o

I wouldn't consider these to be in the same class as the very original, cutsie, all-wholesome lunches and snacks that others provide for their kids, but I do think they serve the purpose and they're still relatively healthy. And it works for us. :)

Coats!

2010-12-08T06:21:00.004-06:00

We live in Houston. A place that does not require a coat for probably 9 months out of the year. Yet, we've got coats. Lots of coats.

So many coats that they can't all fit on the coat hanger.

... and also a tire.

(Notice the "energy particle" I captured in that photo. You know, the things they're always pointing out in those TV shows about hauntings and ghosts. "We suddenly felt a presence and a cold draft of air came across the room. We didn't see anything, but when we reviewed the video later, an obvious energy particle can be seen shooting through the air!")

Progress!

2010-12-07T06:37:00.001-06:00

Last night when I got home, the husband and I went upstairs and ripped off our clothes and headed to... the bathroom to weigh ourselves. We both laughed at how funny this would look to anyone else.

Good news, though - I've lost 3.4 pounds! All that starving is doing some good! :)

I don't think this is a good long-term plan in the slightest - losing this much weight in this short of a time is just not a good idea, but I think it's going to help me finally get some motivation to keep it going and I think I should really be able to hit my goal of being fit and healthy by the time I'm 40. Yay!

UPDATED: Oh, and the best part is that the husband has lost 6 pounds, so I figure at least one of us should have a very good shot at being in the running for all the prizes. There are lots of guys who have already posted that they've lost at least 7 pounds. Us poor women are having a bit of a harder time, though...

Progress?

2010-12-06T06:24:00.000-06:00

Well, tonight I get to find out if I'm making any progress. I feel like I should be - I'm really embracing this gnawing in my stomach... odd as that may sound.

About 10 years ago, the husband and I got in very good shape and lost quite a bit of weight in the process. I'm trying to do the same thing now as I did then - only I'm kind of stepping it up a notch on the food part of it, tracking every calorie and severely limiting them.

At that time, I had heard about people who were using prayer to lose weight. It was an interesting catch-phrase that made it national news at the time, but it turned out what they were really doing was just waiting until their stomach growled to eat - which is really the point, right? You should only eat when you're actually hungry. But then they used prayer to help themselves get to the point that their stomachs were growling.

So, I tried to implement that idea along with the idea that calories out must equal calories in and suddenly the pounds started melting away. I'm hoping that if this "crash diet" gives me the kick-start I needed, I'll be able to keep up the weight/fat loss for awhile. I'll be 40 next year and it's my goal to be fit and healthy again by then.

So you know what can really help out in the "calories in" part of the equation? If you go for a bike ride that should only take a couple of hours, but then it ends up taking four hours and by the time you get home, you've entirely missed lunch! Which is what happened to us yesterday. (but I don't really recommend it)

We decided to take the kids mountain biking at Double Lake Recreation Area. We've been here before and it's a great place to mountain bike - and it's only an hour away from our house! The problem is that there are quite a few rolling hills on the trail and Marxo's little bird-legs just don't have the muscle-strength to get up them. She has to get off and walk in many places, so our average speed ends up being about 3 miles per hour. And since we haven't been riding much lately, the kids' tolerance level has decreased and their whining index has increased and then the 1st of Newton's laws comes into play: things at rest tend to want to stay at rest. Ugh.

Since a cold front came through Saturday night and it was significantly colder on Sunday morning, we didn't want to get out too early. But then we ended up getting to the park a little later than we probably should have: Noon. That's Ok, though, I thought - we'll be done and home by at least 3:30 or so. We'll have plenty of time to eat a (very) late lunch, clean up the house, have dinner, and still have time to finish putting up the Christmas decorations.

Hrmph. After taking two snack breaks and noticing that the sun was starting to get low in the sky, I was getting rather worried about our plans for the rest of the day! We finally made it back to the car at 4:00, which meant we got home at 5:00, we missed lunch and went straight for dinner.

Calories in yesterday = 1250
Calories out yesterday = 609 (approximately - hard to tell, we were going so slowly!)

I think by that calculation, I should have lost about 2 pounds just yesterday! (kidding) But, we'll find out for sure tonight when I weigh-in...

Another day, another (not) pound

2010-12-02T10:41:00.001-06:00

So I managed to make it through the day without cheating and made it to bed before my stomach started grumbling too badly. I was surprised this morning that I wasn't more hungry. I even made it to work before I really started feeling hungry at around 7:15 or so. I normally try to hold out until 9:00 to eat my granola bar for breakfast and today it was a struggle. I was actually shaky right before and after I ate. It's going to take a little while for my body to get used to this few calories - in the meantime, I'm sure it's going to protest.

Last night it took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get home. There was apparently a fuel spill on the highway that I take on my way home and it was closed. It was a nightmare.

There was a small up-side to this, however. It meant that we didn't eat supper until almost 8:00, so after my measly portion, I didn't have much time to get hungry before I went to bed!

I did make the mistake of weighing myself last night before I went to bed. I gained a pound. I don't know how that could be possible, but, for real, this time I'M NOT WEIGHING MYSELF UNTIL MONDAY!

My one concern in undertaking this challenge is the message that we're sending our kids. I don't want them to be concerned in any way about their weight while they're growing up. Fellan is a very healthy, very muscular boy, which means that according to the BMI scales, he's bordering on the label "obese". He is not in any way "obese" and our daughter doesn't have enough body fat to keep her warm during her swimming lessons! So, I don't like talking about my weight in front of them. We include the kids in our weekend exercise (bicycling) and the husband and I usually try to talk about being fit and healthy, but I know we occasionally refer to ourselves as being fat. Just an observation and something for me to think about.

And day one went down in flames...

2010-12-01T06:19:00.001-06:00

Like I said, I knew there probably wouldn't be a chance that I could lose 10 pounds before Christmas, but I was hoping to at least get some sort of weight-loss or fitness-enhancement started through this challenge.

If yesterday is any indication of how seriously I'm taking this, then I will have gained 10 pounds before Christmas.

Last night was "Date Night" for the husband and me. We let our nanny go at the beginning of this school year, but since the kids love her so much (and we do, too), we didn't want to cut all ties to her. Instead, we have her come every other Tuesday night so that we can have a Date Night.

So last night, we decided to go check out an Indian restaurant we've never been to before. And when I got to work this morning, I started putting in everything I ate and drank last night, but after the vodka martini, saag paneer, and saffron rice, I gave up. I was well over my limit and I didn't even get to the gigantic King Fisher beer I drank and the other two entrees! I weighed myself this morning. I'm up more than a pound. Nice.

However, I put in all the food that I plan to eat today and the exercise I plan to do at lunchtime. If I don't eat any extras, I'm under my caloric limit.

I'm going to make sure to have more resolve today. And I'm not going to weigh myself again until next week. There's definitely such a thing as too much data. :)

Kick in the pants

2010-11-30T12:11:00.001-06:00

I've been working out during lunchtime for the past several months, but I just can't seem to get in shape fast enough - or AT ALL!

I was recently moved to a different project within my company, but it happens to be located in the office building farthest from my house. I was not very happy about this since I would have to join the leagues of people who really commute every day to work, however, after I got here and checked out the workout facility, my mood brightened.

I have since been down at the fitness center every single day and I'm loving it. It's not because they have treadmills with individual TV screens for you to choose which program you would like to watch (which is really cool and would mean that I wouldn't have to watch Fox News while working out like I had to at the other office building) and it's not because they have elliptical trainers with individual TV screens. It's because they have one of these.

I'm totally hooked. I get a good workout and I'm not continuously checking how much time I've been working out, or how much time is left on the machine. I just ride and listen to the music (which is set to the XM satellite 80's music station) and remember what I was doing when each song was popular and then I climb another hill and check out the sheep or horses that they have programmed into the scenery. The people who did the programming must have a sense of humor, too - on one of the circuits, they included the abominable snowmonster off to the side.

So it has seemed that my pants are starting to fit a little better, but every time I weigh myself, I'm not making any progress. It's possible that I am losing some fat and gaining muscle, but Thanksgiving pretty much wiped out any progress I had been making!

However, I'm a reader of the Fat Cyclist blog (look over to the right on my "Blogs I Read" list) and it seems he has just given me the kick in the pants that I needed. He's laid down a challenge to lose 10 pounds before Christmas and I've signed up! I really have no hope of actually achieving that goal, but I might as well try.

I've started tracking my food intake through the Livestrong MyPlate website again and I might even use it for more than a couple of days this go-round. So far today, I've eaten 418 calories and burned 238, so I have 729 left for snack this afternoon and dinner tonight. (And I'm starving! Time to drink some more water...)

Tune in next time, when our topic will be... Rice

2010-11-11T17:41:00.000-06:00

There's a skit on Saturday Night Live called The Delicious Dish that always cracks me up. The most famous episode, apparently, is the one where Alec Baldwin is playing a character called Pete Schweddy and he makes cheese balls for the holidays. The best line from that particular skit is when one of the lady hosts says, "I can't wait to wrap my lips around your Schweddy Balls." They do such a great job with the double entendre and never once break character. I think the sign-out for that sketch was, "Tune in next time, when our topic will be (they pause, smile, and together say...) Rice."

Which brings me to the topic of the post: Rice. Fellan finally tried and loved some whole grain rice earlier this week. How can you go through 7 and a half years of life without trying and liking rice? Really. Rice. The most important food staple in much of the world? Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Well, that's not to say that Fellan has never been forced to try rice before. It's just that he would eat one grain of rice and refuse to eat the rest.

The stars must have aligned, however, earlier this week. He took a bite and literally gobbled down the rest.

We're going to be having rice again tonight. I'm interested to see if he has finally acquired the taste for rice, or if that was just a strange anomaly.

Halloween

2010-11-04T13:26:00.005-05:00

I've been lazy this week and haven't posted a picture of the kids from Halloween yet! Well, here it is:

The kids decided to go with an Asian theme this year, I guess. I sprayed Marxo's hair with black temporary hair paint and put a little bit of makeup on the corners of her eyes and then wondered if this would somehow be considered being politically incorrect for some reason. I'm actually not sure why it would be, but I'm certain someone could come up with a reason. Instead, I just decided I wouldn't worry about it. :)

I was also lazy and didn't post anything about Marxo's birthday party. It was very fun and much less work that last year. My mom was very happy to find out that we wouldn't be making anything in the middle of the night like last year!

Except...

Well, I went to Whole Foods to order the cake on Friday after lunch and they told me it was too late to order something for Sunday. Actually, what they said was, "Well! It's a little late, isn't it?!" Uh, obviously I didn't think so, but I guess you've answered my question.

So! I set about trying to figure out how we were going to make the butterfly cake that Marxo had requested for her birthday. She wanted a cake with a blue butterfly on it. I knew I could make a chocolate cake and put chocolate chips on it, but I wasn't sure how to frost the cake, or make anything that looked like a butterfly.

Luckily, on Saturday, we went to Arne's (I love that place! My mom thinks it's a very strange place, though. She's right, but I still love it.) and found a cake pan with 6 butterfly molds and the husband insisted I get it to make Marxo's cake. I ended up making 3 butterflies and then outlining them with "blue" frosting (all-natural food coloring doesn't make nearly the good colors that artificial coloring does!) and I think it turned out OK. It tasted good and that was the most important part.

I'll try to be a little better about posting more frequently, but I say that all the time... :)

I should have known

2010-10-06T07:51:00.003-05:00

Really. I should have known. I can't entitle a post with the word "Glorious" and not start singing that song from Ice Age 2. You don't know the song? It's really a catchy tune - and that's the problem. I now have it running through my head all day long!

Food, glorious food,
We're anxious to try it.
Three banquets a day,
Our favorite diet!

Just picture a mammoth steak,
Fried, roasted, or stewed
Oh, food!
Wonderful food!
Marvelous food!
Glorious food!

Apparently, this song was written for the musical Oliver!, but I guess I've never seen Oliver!, so the only thing I associate it with is Ice Age 2. (Which is OK, because oddly enough, the Ice Age series are movies that I can watch over and over without getting tired of them. I don't know why - I get sick of pretty much all of the other movies we watch/listen to on car trips, but hearing the kids pick out the Ice Age movies in the back of the car always makes me perk up. Strange, huh?)

Anyway, I've had to resort to playing my "office mix" of music that I have on my computer. It's a good easy-listening mix of Lyle Lovett, Jack Johnson, Susie Arioli, and Sting with a little Nine Inch Nails thrown in to keep me awake. I think it will work as long as I don't scroll down on my blog page and read the next title.

Glorious

2010-10-05T17:32:00.001-05:00

The weather over the past week here has been absolutely glorious. There's no other way to describe it! The oppressive heat was just suddenly lifted about a week ago. Amazing.

But, have we been able to take advantage of it? Nope.

We had hoped that we would be able to go mountain biking sometime this past weekend, but Marxo had some minor surgery on Friday (oral surgery), so we didn't want her to do anything really strenuous for the rest of the weekend for fear of causing bleeding.

On Sunday, we did walk over to the Black Lab for brunch, though, and played some chess with the kids at the outdoor chess board.

This coming weekend is Marxo's birthday party and I'm hoping that the weather stays pleasant for the weekend. My family is coming to town and it would be extra-nice for them to experience Houston in October when it's not beastly hot and humid! Wouldn't that be something?

This year, we're going fairly low-key for the party. Nothing like the butterfly extravaganza from last year. We're just having her party at a paint-your-own-pottery place and inviting the girls from her class. (See? I'm learning in my old age!)

Hmmm... but that reminds me - I need to order the cake and get some plates and napkins for the party. Marxo requested a butterfly on the cake again. I guess I'd better figure out what she has in mind.

Getting our lifes back

2010-09-16T11:32:00.000-05:00

There's a commercial out there where the guy who invented *whatever it is he invented* talks about how it has helped people get their "lifes" back. Every time that commercial came on, it would absolutely drive me crazy! It's "lives", you idiot!!!

(My husband would like to get me a shirt that says, "I'm the grammarian about whom your mother warned you.")

But this commercial now serves as an internal joke between the husband and I when we talk about getting the house back in order. "Ahhhh, it feels so good to be getting our lifes back, doesn't it?"

It's still like we're on vacation. And it's really nice. Last weekend, we finished dumping out all the accumulated boxes and containers full of parts of toys that had been separated from the main toy and put everything back together and organized the kids' room. We expected that we would have to get rid of lots and lots of toys in order to make room for everything, but guess what? When you put all the bits and parts of toys together and put them where they belong? It doesn't take up nearly as much space! Imagine that. We ended up with only one small trash bag full of broken toys to throw away. Well, that, and a clean room!!!

I think next on my agenda is my side of the closet. It's gotten a little cluttered in there lately, but I think I can knock it out in probably three 15-minute increments.

Why 15 minutes? Well, in our quest to get our lifes back, I decided I would finally join FlyLady. I'm not really doing everything that she suggests since I'm spoiled and have a cleaning lady, but I am trying to use her timer idea in order to break things down into small, manageable increments. The whole idea is that "you can do anything for 15 minutes". Very true. And it's amazing what you can actually accomplish in 15 minutes when you're focused on your task. So, little by little, the house is getting back under control. I'm hoping that by Christmas, we'll be "fly"-ing on autopilot. Har, har, har. :)

Henna Hands

2010-09-02T12:30:00.003-05:00

About 10 years ago, a woman with whom I worked showed up one day with orangish brown swirly patterns all over her hands. She told me that she had just gotten it done for fun over the weekend - I think she said something like it was a good excuse to have a cup of tea and relax while she was having it done - but that it's typically done for brides of Indian heritage right before their wedding.

I thought it was really pretty, and that's when my desire to have my hands henna'd started.

Finally, this past weekend, at our Fantasy Football draft, a friend of ours brought her henna. I had mentioned to her that I really wanted to have that done sometime, so she spent the entire afternoon giving almost all the women and little girls henna tattoos.

Here are my hands. I thanked my friend profusely and she said that I should have gotten it done by her sister - apparently her sister does this for brides and is very skilled. Here are some pictures of some really fancy ones. But I still think mine turned out beautifully!

Lucky for me, I work in a very international industry and nobody has really thought it was too strange. Everyone at work just keeps asking me if I was in a wedding over the weekend. I have to admit to them that I had it done just for fun at our Fantasy Football draft. That gets some strange looks.

They've already faded quite a bit. And by next week, I'm sure it will all be gone. But it was good while it lasted and I can finally say that I've had it done. :)

Freedom

2010-08-31T17:29:00.000-05:00

Since I last posted, we pretty much went through summer and the school year started. Wow. That's pretty bad.

Well, I'll just fill in with the highlights. We went on a trip up to Nebraska to visit my parents, we went on a trip to Chicago to visit my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and to celebrate our niece's second birthday, and we went on a trip to Colorado to visit the cool weather. It was a great summer.

And now, the school year has already started. Here are the kids on their first day of school. It's the second week of school now and they're still excited about it.

The husband and I are still excited about it, too. We feel this sense of freedom that we haven't had for the last 7 years - and it's not because both the kids are out of the house. It's because we've reclaimed our house to be our own!

I should explain. For the past 7 years, we've had a nanny/babysitter that came to our house every weekday to take care of the kids. She's wonderful with the kids, but, as I think I've talked about before, she's not as detail-oriented about putting things away as we might have hoped.

However, since both the kids are now in elementary school, we decided that we don't need her babysitting services on a daily basis. We're still going to have her come and babysit every other week so that the husband and I can have a "date night", but other than that, there will no longer be someone at our house every day.

And so we have this overwhelming sense of freedom suddenly. I don't have to worry that my cleaning up and organizing will go to waste. I have cleaned up a few containers in the kids' room so far, and they haven't filled up with miscellaneous stuff again. I can't describe the sense of peace that I get from thinking about getting our house back in order again. I'm taking it in baby steps, but at least those baby steps are not going to get wiped out every day again. *sigh*

Marxo's new bike

2010-06-08T17:23:00.003-05:00

Last weekend we partook in the REI sale and bought Marxo a bike! She had only gotten hand-me-down bikes before, so she was extremely excited about getting a bike specifically for her!

We knew that it was going to be a little too big for her, but took her to the park with it that afternoon anyway. Well, we had nothing to worry about. She took off and never looked back. We're now dreaming about the day that we'll head to our favorite mountain-biking ranch with the kids riding their own bikes. Can't wait! :)

Fellan's Sick Day

2010-05-19T17:24:00.002-05:00

Fellan got sick on Sunday evening. He ended up with a fever that lasted almost all day on Monday and since you're supposed to be fever-free for 24 hours before returning to school, that meant he had to stay home from school on Tuesday, too.

By the afternoon, he was apparently desperate for some sort of mental stimulation. He and the babysitter went out to "catalog plant species" and he apparently spent some time writing on the driveway and creating recipes in the kitchen. I always cringe when I see that the kids have been making "soup" with my spices because I know that I have some things in there that cost and arm and a leg, but I can't remember which ones! Anyway, here are some pictures of the evidence that he was bored yesterday:

If you look closely you can see the Start and the Finish. And apparently, "if you win you get 100$". I was home before the family got home last night from Marxo's gymnastics class, so I asked him for my $100. It didn't work.

This is a recipe he was creating. He must have gotten interrupted because next to this paper was a bowl full of water, paprika, smoked paprika, some empty pea pods that he must have stolen from the organic garden, and I don't remember what else. I cleaned that up before I thought about documenting his creativity in the kitchen. I'm not sure what you can make with "black barys, flouers, bazle, and res..." but I'm sure it must be good!

Bat Project

2010-05-11T12:48:00.003-05:00

The end-of-the-year project for the first grade at our elementary school is to choose an animal and do a research project on that animal. Each child must choose at least three sources (can not include Wikipedia) and must include information from each source in the report. The written report may be either be in the form of a five-paragraph document or in the form of a book with a table of contents included. Additionally, an art/craft project is to be completed for the project. It can be either a picture or a diorama of the chosen animal in its natural habitat.

Are they nuts?! Don't they realize they're giving this project to a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds? And yet... Fellan loved it!

His chosen animal was the bat. This happened to be quite an easy animal for him to do - we have a "Magic Schoolbus" book about bats (Source #1), we found a website about bats (Source #2), and we visited the Waugh Bridge Bat Colony (Source #3).

The husband was in charge of helping Fellan write his report and he, of course, chose the "book" form of the report. (ugh!) Fellan finally completed it at about 8:30 last night, but we still had to do the craft project.

We had originally thought that we would just have Fellan draw some pictures and write some bat facts and put them on a presentation board. However, over the weekend, we heard several parents talking about making their animal out of clay or making some other kind of craft project, so we figured we'd better step it up a notch.

Enter the build-it-yourself bat house kit! The husband went out yesterday morning and found one of these so we could build it last night. Luckily, it was a very quick and easy project. We taped an "actual size" bat to it and called it good.

Man, if this was a first-grade project, I'm dreading what the coming years are going to hold...

7-year-old in the House!

2010-04-29T16:56:00.000-05:00

As of yesterday, we now have a seven-year-old in the house! Fellan's birthday was yesterday and it's hard to believe what a big boy he has become.

Sometimes I worry about him because he is such a nice, naive little boy (compared to the other first-graders who seem to already be mean-hearted much of the time), but I think he's finally coming into his own.

He has finally developed his first obsession with an activity. About a month ago, he dug out the skateboard that Santa brought him for Christmas of 2008 and he has been practicing riding it every chance he gets.

There's a really nice skateboard park in Houston now, so we've been there once with him, but the bearings in his wheels were so bad, he couldn't roll very far.

So, for his birthday, we got his bearings replaced, got him a "cool" skateboarding helmet, and got him some "skateboarding shoes", as he calls them. (They're like "Vans" shoes that we found at Target.) He's also taken to wearing a t-shirt with a plaid button-down shirt on top of it. I think he thinks that makes him look more like a cool skateboarder. :)

It's fun seeing him develop this interest. Up until now, he really hasn't had anything to call his own - he likes biking, but that's only because we like biking.

I am a little worried, however. When we go on vacation to Colorado, we like to watch a channel called RSN because they're always playing shows we call "ski porn" - it's not what you think! They show all these semi-homemade videos of people doing crazy stunts on skis, snowboards, and the last couple of years, they've been showing crazy skateboarding stunts. I really wonder what he has in mind to do with his new skateboarding prowess...

Easter 2010

2010-04-09T12:09:00.004-05:00

Last weekend, we went on a little outing to Buescher State Park for some hiking again. I think the last time we went there was this time.

The kids are almost two years older now and I guess since they didn't whine about the long hike the last time, they figured they'd better make every single minute of this hike full of whining. It was very pleasant.
After we had done the "loop" part of the hike (and confirmed that the hiking trail map is horrible), we headed back towards the car. Fellan was walking next to me when he suddenly took a funny step and ran 10 feet ahead of me yelling, "Snake!!!"

He narrowly missed stepping on this little fella. We weren't sure what kind of snake it was when we saw it, but I thought that since it didn't have a rattle, it was probably OK. I showed the picture to the people at the ranger station and they told me it was a copperhead. (YIKES!) But, on further review by some guys here at my office, I'm pretty convinced now that it was just a rat snake. (Whew.)

After the hike, our plan was to head up to Austin and check out Mellow Johnny's bike shop and then try to find the original Chuy's for dinner.

But, since the bluebonnets were amazing, we just had to make a stop along the way for the obligatory Texas Bluebonnet picture:

Hmm.... After seven miles of hiking, the kids didn't really seem too into it. Still, it was a fun day! :)

Azaleas

2010-04-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

The azaleas in our neighborhood have exploded over the last week or so. I know that this happens every year, but for some reason, this year I'm just more amazed with the amount of flowers and the fact that they're everywhere in our neighborhood.

We walked to a local restaurant for dinner last night and on the way, I took some pictures of them.

Water...

2010-03-24T12:04:00.002-05:00

One of the reasons they've been working on our street was so that they could replace all the utility lines as well as fix the drainage in our neighborhood.

However, ever since they hooked us up to the new water line, the water pressure in our third floor (where our bathroom and shower are located) has been severely lacking. We've asked them several times what the problem could be, but they don't know. We've also asked our neighbors if they've had the same problem, but they haven't noticed anything different.

This is not a new problem for us. Pretty much everything that could go wrong with our house has gone wrong. I wrote about it here.

And the problems just seem to continue. They broke our water line on four separate occasions when they were installing it and digging around it, so we think that probably has something to do with the low water pressure, but the workers still seem to be stumped. It's probably time to bring in a plumber.

BUT, we found out one thing that they did do correctly when they built our house. They actually connected our sewer line to the main sewer line that runs under the street. (we must celebrate these small victories.)

You know how I told you that the worker always told my husband "that ain't water" about the mud bog in our street before they laid the concrete. Well, it turned out to be more than true.

As they were digging up our driveway and sidewalks, they discovered a line running from our neighbor's house towards the street. But it didn't connect to anything. And... Get this. It was her sewer line! The ground under our street has basically been a septic system for our neighbor's house for the last 10 years.

The only saving grace is that the two people who have lived in that house over the last 10 years were single women who traveled a lot and weren't home very much. Otherwise, I just can't imagine.

They have since connected her line to our line, which is definitely connected to the main sewer line. I'm sure, though, now that her house isn't contributing to the ground moisture that we're going to have some kind of subsidence problem and our big oak tree will probably die. Imagine all that good fertilizer that has been pumped directly to its roots for years! (ick!!!)

Yep, Houston has got some real winners when it comes to house contractors and inspectors. I sense that we're going to need Holmes on Homes to come to our house someday soon.

Coming up for air

2010-03-04T12:05:00.001-06:00

Urgh. I'm on a new project (my old one got cancelled - as are a lot of projects in engineering these days - and there aren't a lot more coming, either) so I'm happy to be on a new project, but I'm now sitting right next to my boss in a cubicle setting and he has his computer facing towards me, so there's no time except lunchtime to write in my blog and since I've been trying to work out every lunchtime, that means I just don't have time to update.

But anyway. I'm on a new project with a really short schedule. And I was also asked to work on a presentation for a training session, and my other part-time project deadline was today with another one next month and then the big deadline the following month. Why does everything have to happen all at once?

I'm also the assistant coach of Fellan's tee-ball team this season and we're having practices twice a week. I think we have something planned for every single day of the week now.

But, in other wonderful news, there's this:

That's right! They poured the cement for our street on Tuesday this week! We're allowed to park on it in front of our house tomorrow!!! (the street is still going to be closed and we won't have access to our garage because they're ripping out our sidewalks - probably as I'm writing this - and they'll pour those at the beginning of next week)

My husband sent me this picture on Tuesday and said, "I feel almost as privileged as when we got power back!" Indeed.

Everything today!

2010-02-14T08:24:00.002-06:00

It's everything today! Our nephew's birthday, Valentine's Day, Chinese New Year day, tomorrow is President's Day, and it's Mardi Gras weekend in a town that just won the Superbowl. Was that just last week?

Since it's President's Day tomorrow, the kids have the day off from school tomorrow, so we get to stay in New Orleans today and head back to Houston tomorrow.

The husband and I got up at 5:00 this morning to come set up the ladders on the parade route. And I'm now sitting here, holding our spot. I took a pictue with my cool new phone, but can't figure out how to upload it...

Ah, my reinforcements have arrived with some banana bread that I baked at 6:00 this morning. Time for breakfast!

Have a great day, whatever you're celebrating today! :)

A picture is worth 1000 words

2010-02-09T12:39:00.000-06:00

I finally took a picture of our mud bog!

When I took this picture, it hadn't rained in a few days. And yet, there is always standing water on either side of our "driveway", but according to one of the guys who works for the construction company, "That ain't water."

They're replacing the sanitary sewer lines on our side of the street and apparently had a little bit of a problem with the line one day. In case you're not familiar with the term sanitary sewer, it means the exact opposite of "sanitary". My husband is deathly afraid to get anywhere close to anything out there now. Luckily, it doesn't smell.

Also note the 2-inch white pipe running under our driveway. They added that about a week ago. Right after it rained so hard one morning that our entire side of the street got filled up with water.

It was a Friday morning and my husband had to get up really early that morning to head out of town. He called me at one point to tell me that he was pretty sure the end of the world was approaching, based on the amount of rain he was driving through.

We have to leave our house by 7:45am at the latest on school days in order to get Fellan to school on time and not get a tardy slip. So, at 7:15 that morning when I looked out the front window and discovered a pond in front of our house, I was fairly concerned.

It may not look very deep, but it's probably a foot and a half to two feet deep at the lowest point there. I spent quite a bit of time looking out the window and trying to figure out if I would be able to gun the car - in reverse, mind you - fast enough to make it through the two feet of water and pull out into the other side, timing it so that I wouldn't have to stop for a car coming up the street, without getting the exhaust pipe too full of water and killing the car in the process.

To my great relief, at around 7:30, I heard a pump start up outside. The construction workers had shown up to work in order to drain the street-pond. By 7:45, it was down to only about 6 inches of water and we were able to easily get out of the driveway.

And since they installed that white pipe, it hasn't filled up like that since. I think they must have finally created a drain system for the entire side of the street, or hooked back up the drain line, or something.

Thank goodness - we had to make use of our driveway last night during another huge rainstorm and there was relatively little standing water across our driveway. But, of course, the mud is back to being caked on my tires.

Mud Bog

2010-02-04T12:27:00.001-06:00

It's been awhile since I posted anything about our street deconstruction. They did finally pour the cement for the other side of the street right before Christmas, so for Christmas vacation, we had fairly clean cars and didn't have to worry about the continuously reappearing mud marks on the backs of our pant legs. I guess I'll count that as my Christmas present from the construction company.

But the mud is back. And it's worse than before because it's now on OUR side of the street. Every time we pull into our garage, the tires get caked with mud. (really, it's probably 1/2 an inch thick) And then when we leave, we back through the mud again and then for probably a mile or so, we can hear the mud splattering all over the back of the car and the wheel wells.

And the mud is making me angry. One day, a fairly nice Mercedes was coming up the street as I was backing out and didn't want to slow down for me to get backed out completely, so I purposely slowed down and then when he got close, I gunned it and slung mud up onto him! I was sliding across the street as the mud slowly worked itself off the back tires, smiling an evil grin. I must have looked like a complete maniac. Shame on me!

I'll try to take a picture of it and post it soon. And maybe I'll take a picture of the side of my car, that has had mud on it for a few months now. The mud has worn off from the area around the door handle, but the splatters are still very distinct. I look at it like it's a nice decorative feature of the car at this point.

Now you know why I haven't been posting very regularly lately. This is the excitement of my life! *sigh*

Sakya

2010-01-25T12:08:00.001-06:00

Little girls are so interesting. They have such life in them.

Not that I don't think my little boy has life in him. Fellan has LIFE! in him. Marxo has life. It's a subtle difference.

Fellan had tee ball tryouts this past weekend. Yes, I know, you're asking yourself, "Tee ball tryouts? Isn't he only six?" Yes, you read it correctly. And don't get me started. Luckily, for us, though, we're in the non-competitive league. The other is way worse.

Anyway, he had such a great time. He ran the bases, he "fielded" the ball, he hit the ball, he was in tee ball heaven for an hour and a half during tryouts. He was all boy for that hour and a half and absolutely loved it.

And then he had to come home and play with his little sister - who is such a girl. She likes to play mind games with him and will intentionally disagree with him just to make him mad. Or she'll refuse to play one small part of whatever imaginary thing they're playing and it will send him into a tizzy. She gets great joy from this and I definitely wonder what the future holds for us.

I never considered myself a very girly-girl. I took great pride in it, in fact.

I grew up in the times of Title IX and I remember distinctly singing "Anything you can do, I can do better" whenever I was told by someone that I couldn't do something due to my gender. (which was usually my dad - but in a completely joking way and I always knew that he meant the exact opposite.)

Marxo, on the other hand, is growing up in what seems to be a girly-girl time. Princesses are back in full-swing. She only wears pink and purple and she absolutely loves to dress up in her best and most beautiful clothing. It makes me worried sometimes at how girly she's becoming because I know that girls can be absolutely horrible to each other.

But, I'm trying to embrace (for the time being) this girly life that she has in her. She loves to write her name in "cursive" which actually just means adding curly-q's to all the parts of the letters in her name.

She also loves putting on makeup and having me paint her fingernails for her. Grammy gave her some eyeshadow for Christmas and she applies it with abandon (if given the chance) until she looks like she's been in a 12-round boxing match and ended up the loser.

Since she's only five years old, she didn't have any kind of makeup case in which to keep the eyeshadow, so I found something suitably small (I didn't want to encourage the purchase of anything additional!) that came with some lip gloss for her. All day yesterday, she applied and re-applied lip gloss and then talked with a fixed smile and tried not to make her "lipstick" come off. I don't even wear lipstick, so I'm not sure where she learned this behavior! Some things just seem to be innate.

She has also decided recently to change her name. It happened right before Christmas when she started calling herself "Jana" but when she wrote her new name, she would write it "Jena". And now all the little girls at the preschool have chosen pseudonyms. Brittany, Jessica, and Caroline are a few of the names that have been chosen.

Marxo decided however, to re-change her name to "Sakya". Which she pronounces "sah-kee-ya". I'm not sure where she came up with that name, but it's a pretty name, even if I do want to break out into song every time I say it. (Just try saying it and see if you don't start singin, "Zaccheus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he...")

Yesterday she asked me if I was skinny. I told her, "I guess comparitively speaking, yes, I'm skinny. Why do you ask?"

"Because you look skinny to me."

Well, I don't care what she calls herself. That little girl is a keeper.

Engineers are...

2010-01-12T12:36:00.003-06:00

so amazingly oblivious to other people sometimes it's humorous.

I came in to work for a little while on Friday and also took advantage of being here by working out at the Fitness Center. I usually ride the stationary bike machine thing because the elliptical trainers are always all being used, but on Friday, I figured I'd have the place to myself.

I was wrong. There were a couple of other "regulars" there - one on a stationary bike and another came out to run on the treadmill after I had started on the elliptical machine.

I had only turned one of the four TV's on before I started working out and the treadmills are in the row in front of the elliptical machines. I'm sure you can guess which treadmill the other guy chose to run on. Yes, the one that obscured my view of the TV.

At first, I couldn't believe someone could be that dense. But then I remembered that I work with a bunch of socially inept engineers. It made perfect sense.

P.S. The Fitness Center is pretty much back to just being the "regulars" again this week. There are a couple of hangers-on, but nothing like the first week of the new year. You know, I guess can't say that I blame them too much - I've always told my husband that I generally don't like working out. I like the feeling afterwards that I have worked out. I suppose if you never get that good feeling during or after any workout, there's not a whole lot to motivate you, huh?

Reprieve

2010-01-07T17:28:00.001-06:00

Marxo got a reprieve from her shot today at the doctor's office.

She has been dreading this date for a month now. She knew that January 7th was the day that she would have to go for a checkup to the doctor and that she would probably get a shot. Every day this past week, she has informed us as to how many days were left until her checkup.

So, it's not really surprising that she started crying when they called her name and then kept crying as the nurse told us that she was due for her chicken pox vaccine.

The nurse gave me a puzzled look, so I explained to her that the "Buzzy" didn't get to us in time for her appointment and she was worried about getting the shot without it.

The nurse then parted the clouds and a bright ray of sunshine fell down upon Marxo, "You don't have to get your shot today. You can come back later when you get the Buzzy and just get the shot without an appointment."

Of course, this made everything better and the nurse was pretty happy about that too since she was going to take Marxo's blood pressure and didn't want the numbers to be skewed by her apprehension about the shot.

Marxo checked out as a healthy little girl. Tall and skinny - and good blood pressure, too.

I checked on the shipping status of the Buzzy when I got back to work: "Out for delivery". Of course.

Full again

2010-01-06T12:13:00.002-06:00

Today the fitness center was full again and my faith in humanity was restored. Kind of. It was full of all the normal people plus a few new - but different - people. I guess all those Resolutionites are really just working themselves into it, right?

But tomorrow I'm going to miss working out because Marxo has a doctor's appointment at lunchtime - her 5 year checkup. Yes, it's nearly three months overdue.

Well, you see, I made her 4 year checkup late last year and since the insurance company won't reimburse you for a "checkup" if it hasn't been a year since the last one, I waited to make her 5 year checkup. And then I got caught up in the December craziness, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah... I couldn't get her in until January.

But anyway.

I ordered one of these things early last week, thinking that it would make it here in time for her checkup, in case she ends up getting any shots, but they apparently took the order, held onto it for a week, and finally shipped the thing yesterday. Too bad, too. We already told Marxo that it was coming and that any potential shots she would get tomorrow wouldn't hurt. That'll teach us.

Next on my list of things to order from my Wishlist is one of these handwriting manuals. (I've become a little obsessed with Fellan's handwriting skills - or lack thereof - lately and plan to spend some time with him each night working on it.) And that, along with the Buzzy, and the space heater that I got for my office will use up my Christmas money. Thanks Mom and Dad! :)

Til next time...

Well, that didn't last long

2010-01-05T12:41:00.001-06:00

I had a hard time trying to decide if I should go to the fitness center yesterday at lunchtime in order to establish myself as a "regular" so that my presence on my favorite exercise bike would be noted and therefore would be semi-retained for me.

Or, if I should just skip going to the fitness center altogether for a couple of weeks to make sure that all the Resolutionites (new word that I just made up in order to describe the people who make New Year's Resolutions) would get the exercise bug out of their system and quit going.

I eventually decided I'd better go and I figured I'd better get down there early so that I could stake my claim with sufficient time to spare. When I got down there at 11am, all the elliptical machines and two of the bikes were already being used! There was only one empty bike left, so I ran into the locker room to change and decided it would be better to risk peeing my pants than losing that last exercise bike to another newbie.

Lucky for me, nobody else beat me to the exercise bike, so I got in my 31 minutes of exercise (if I choose 30 minutes, the program stops in the middle of a hill and that's just annoying), finally got to the toilet, showered and made it back up to my office by around noon.

Today, I was nervous when I headed down there because it was 11:05 by the time I left my office. I was dreading the fact that I would have to use the treadmill to get in my workout today, so when I rounded the corner and saw one person in there, I was overwhelmed with relief... and disbelief. Seriously? One day is all they lasted?

Maybe they're taking it slow, doing the every-other-day thing and they'll all be back tomorrow. I kind of hope so - for their sake! Geesh!