Every other year the kids have birthday parties, starting with Zoe's birthday in September. Isabella and Noah both have birthdays in January so it usually goes: birthday, birthday, party, party. It makes for a LONG, busy month. Don't ask me why I didn't stagger the birthday parties every other year. I'm just not that smart I guess. Anyhow, I think they each had a good birthday and some fun parties. Isabella turned thirteen! I can't believe I have a teenager. It was a good group of girls, they were all loud and crazy but they all behaved well. No drama! I guess we didn't get many pictures. Got more video footage.
Noah had a lego themed party. It turned out fun, Noah said it was as good as the bowling/laser tag party he went to the week before. That is saying something. It helps that he was the birthday boy. There were lego games, lego prizes, lego candy party favors! I even tried to make lego pizzas and lego cakes. Ten 7 and 8 year old boys running around! I swear you burn off about a thousand calories hosting one of these things.
The new school year has come again. Isabella had her first day of Jr. High-7th grade. Zoe is now in 5th and Noah is in 2nd. They're growing up too fast, dang it! They all had a good first week and no one cried or had any horror stories. Success!
I guess I've been taking some sort of blogging vacation. Well, it is summer. It has been busy. I spent the month of June working like crazy to get projects around the house done. You should have seen the pile of junk I took to the D.I. (a store like Goodwill run by my church). When I was done I had an organized storage closet in the basement that was a thing of pure beauty. I also once again had a walk in closet that I could actually WALK INTO. No longer do I trip and break things when I try to find some pants to wear. I found those sneaky little extension cords that are always hiding out, never to be found when you need them. I found things that were needed for other projects I was working on that I didn't even know I needed yet!
We also had a broken dryer so I spent some quality time either dragging baskets full of wet laundry to the laundromat or hauling it all to the backyard pioneer style and hanging it up wherever I could find a spot. I love crunchy laundry. Thankfully a dryer-less home is once again nowhere to be found here.
The best part of my project list was finally getting Isabella's new room done. She'd been wanting her own room for a while so I agreed she could have the guest room this summer. So we decided to redo the whole room. That led to deciding to redo Zoe's room too and some minor changes in Noah's room as well so he wouldn't feel left out.
Before: Rarely used Guest Room
and...
After: A really cool, fun room for a soon to be teenager! She's still got plenty of room to add her own posters and what not above her bed there. She picked the bedding and we picked the paint together. (I'm trying to get over my control issues here.) I love the molding and the white paint at the top, it makes the low ceiling feel higher, I've done this in all the kids' rooms now. I love the desk! $25 from Ikea! Funny thing, though not surprising, she actually misses Zoe a little. Actually she doesn't anymore, we moved Zoe's bed in there the other night until I finish painting her room. Which I've admittedly started to get a little lazy on but it will be done before summer is over, hopefully before July is over!
Now, Noah...
Noah's Room Before
and...
Noah's Room After! Not a huge change, got some things moved around, got a bigger table and got the girl's bunk bed. I figure someone should enjoy the bunk bed while he is still young enough to have fun with it. What boy doesn't want to sleep on top of a bunk bed? (And the ceiling is low enough that he can't possibly comfortably try to jump off the bed. :)
It's been one of those weeks where you just look back and think, Dang I love those kids!
First of all, Noah. Noah uses his foot as a break for his bike. His bike has a couple of perfectly functional breaks so I cannot be blamed for this. Unlike so many other traumas in my children's lives. This time he was unfortunately wearing his flipflops and it all ended in bloody hysterics and Noah later hobbling around like a spazy old man.
Big bandaged toe there on the left foot
Zoe had her end of year piano recital. She struggled and it was touch and go there for a minute but she didn't quit and she ended up doing quite well. She was a trooper and I was a proud mama.
Isabella graduated from elementary school! I can't believe she is off to Jr. High in the fall. She has worked so hard and I'm so proud of her.
First day of kindergarten
Last day of sixth grade and elementary school. Ready for Jr. High. Help us all!
Isabella and Noah each had birthdays. Isabella turned twelve. (Gasp!) Noah turned seven. Well, the birthdays were actually in January. I am just that behind. Isabella got the cool new purple mountain bike.
Zoe joined myself and Isabella in the land of the glasses wearers. Isn't she cute?
Ugg. Why is it painful trying to help Isabella convert pints to quarts and quarts to gallons and ounces to tons? It feels like your brain is trying to reach back through the recesses of time to that week in 3rd grade. After which you never bothered with it again (apparenty these days they are a bit more thorough.) Then your brain is being twisted in seven different directions.
Yesterday I watched the rest of the State of The Union Address. What struck me most about the whole thing was the bizarreness of watching congress stand up and applaud every three minutes. Then I noticed that there are far more women in congress who are democrats than republicans. I only noticed one female republican, not that there aren't more I suppose, that's just what I noticed. I also noticed that all those democrat women in congress like to dress like colorful polyester adorned peacocks. If I were in congress I'd definitely go for a more neutral looking dress suit or pant suit. Just sayin'.
All week I listened to classical music for my art class. A little Mozart. A little Verdi. A lot of Henry Purcell-from the Baroque period. My two favorite songs by Henry Purcell were "Scene of The Drunken Poet"from the semi opera The Fairy Queen and "Your Hay It Is Mow'd" from the semi opera King Arthur. They both had the added benefit of having cool titles too. Henry was my man to do a short paper on. Did you know school is a bit more complicated than it was back in the 1990s? When you submit your paper for your online class there is a thing that will check for you to see if you are a plagiarizer. It's so nice of them to warn you like that, huh?
So we took the kids to this family fun place for Noah's birthday a couple of weekends ago. We skated a bit and rode the crappy rides and watched the magician. The guy running the bumper car things- they were bumper cars with a big inner tube at the bottom- he starts the ride without checking to see if the riders had buckled themselves up. Noah hadn't and so after a second the guy stopped it and then kept restarting it because he was too impatient to wait for Noah. Seriously dude, your job consists of walking around and making sure a dozen people have their seatbelts on then pushing go and stop. It's not brain surgery! Then the kids rode this other ride that was kind of like a ferris wheel with things that spun in a circle. Brent rode it with Noah the first time then later Noah wanted to ride it alone so he could spin it whatever way he wanted. But they let some teenage boy sit with Noah and he kept spinning it as fast as he could. Noah was all smiles at first, then it was less and less until he did not look happy at all. The boy finally notice and slowed down. I think it may have occurred to him that he may have been in danger of having a seven year old barf all over him. Noah was ready to leave when that ride was over.
While we were there we were checking out the magician and he was doing some disappearing act with his assistant. After, Brent and I were commenting that we both liked that song that was blaring while the magician did his thing. I said it was Talking Heads or at least David Byrne. Brent disagreed. Because he's more of an expert on Talking Heads and David Byrne than I am. How do you explain that I knew David Byrne was from Baltimore and he didn't then? Huh? So when we got home I had to prove him wrong, but I couldn't! I could only remember three words of the song at that point so I google in the phrase "hold my hand" and "sounds like talking heads". The first thing that comes up is those exact words (of course) and a song by some band from the '90s called Rusted Root. So at least I was right that someone else out there thought the song sounded like Talking Heads. Google is awesome! Another example of that is Brent the other day saying to me, "Who's that actor? The one with the weird nose who tried to commit suicide?" Me, "I don't know." Brent,"Sure you do." So I google in "actor tried to commit suicide weird nose" and Owen Wilson comes right up. I'm going to find something really useful to google one of these days.
Isabella's friend Amber.... Her mom asked some of us if we wanted to do a monthly cooking class with the girls, rotating months. So this month was my turn and veggies were on the menu. It turned out to be a lot of fun with the girls, no one was injured with all of those knives cutting vegetables, and I think they may have learned something too!
Isabella turned 11 on the 4th. So this is a bit late but she just had her party a week ago. It was the first big slumber party here. Luckily, everyone was asleep by 12:30 so I'm not totally scared off of having another someday. I love Isabella, my firstborn. My best little buddy and companion when she was little. The sweet little girl who defied all odds with her long blond hair (the long part, not the blond part, of course). Now, she's such a smart, responsible, thoughtful, funny girl. A beautiful girl on her way to becoming a beautiful young woman. Growing up too fast! Isabella loves art, fashion design, reading, music, knitting scarves, her friends and often even her brother and sister. One big wish is to have her own bedroom, but Mom's not sold on that idea yet (it's yet to be established if Mom will ever be, but you never know). She's a blessing in our family, she's a good kid (knocking, knocking, knocking on wood!) and believe me, that's something I do not take for granted!
Thursday we went to the District Reflections Award Night. She took 2nd in her school in the Visual Arts Category. Finally, I'm able to post a picture! We're so proud of you Isabella!!
