Easter 2011

I had put off posting anything about Easter in the hopes that I would have some more pictures to go with it, but alas, those elusive pictures have yet to magically appear on my camera's memory card.

We had a good Easter.  Quiet.  Simple. 

The Easter bunny usually visits our home on Saturday morning, the day before Easter.  We like to do it that way for a couple of reasons.- 

First, it's a nice separation of the Christian "True meaning of Easter", and the more paganistic celebration of Spring with the eggs and the grass and the bunnies and chocolate and all that.  I mean don't get me wrong, I don't think there is anything wrong with a holiday that involves chocolate, I just don't necessarily think it really has anything to do with the death and resurrection of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Besides, reason number two, is that by doing it the day before, I don't have to deal with four kids hopped up on sugar for three hours at church.  They get it out of their system the day before.

Unfortunately this year Nick was off on a boy scout camp out Friday night.  He had a big triathlon the next day, and wouldn't be returning until sometime Saturday afternoon. So I talked to him about it, tried to get his feelings on the matter, and he said he would be fine if the Easter bunny came while he was gone.  (I think at 14 some of the magic might be gone for him.)  So, I took him at his word and put the baskets out for the Easter bunny on Friday night before we went to bed. 

I took a couple pictures of the magical morning, but my pictures didn't turn out so well, I think it was a combination of bad lighting and smudgy fingerprints all over my camera lens.

Madison had written a little note to the Easter Bunny (which I had to pinkie swear not to look at, but she told me the contents of anyway) in which she asked for exactly two things - a kite, and a real live baby bunny. Guess which one of those items she didn't find on Saturday morning?

One of the hot items they did find in their baskets were these little Lego mini figures. They come in packets like trading cards, and you don't know what you are getting until you open it.  I found several blurry pictures of those on my memory card. 

(See?  I'm not crazy for hoping pictures will magically appear on my camera- it happens all the time, hence the smudgy lens, but I do admit it's a bit of a stretch to hope for the kind of pictures that I like to see.)

Fortunately it was a perfect day to go fly the kites in the green belt behind our house. I just don't know how much pestering I could take if it wasn't windy enough.  My kids seemed to think that by merely asking me permission, they would be able to make the kite fly.  They didn't understand that they were asking the wrong mother.  Mother Nature had to cooperate as well.

We had an Easter egg hunt where the kids hunted for eggs with money inside. Sorry, no pictures, again bad lighting, and the kids weren't really interested in slowing down for a photo opportunity.  There were brightly colored plastic eggs with change to be found.  Afterwards, Nick calculated how many 79 cent slushies he could get at Circle K with his spoils.

We were gonna dye Easter eggs, but while I remembered the obligatory box of Paas dye, I forgot to purchase eggs.  I now have 4 dozen eggs in my fridge and no motivation to color them.

 On Sunday, the kids looked lovely in their new Easter attire.  Madison and John went on a daddy-daughter shopping date and bought her a pretty dress and all the boys new ties.  But after church was over, before I could even think of the word "picture", Nick and Maddie were arguing over who had changed out of their church clothes first, and Christopher wasn't far behind.  Maybe next week I will post an "Easter 2011 part 2" post complete with freshly dyed eggs, and good looking kids dressed in their finest Easter wear..

I thought this was cool.

While going through my old pictures from my childhood, I ran across this picture. 

I think I am about 2 in this picture.  This must have been just after my parents planted this apricot tree in the front yard.

Anyway, it made me think of this picture-

Recognize the tree?

More than 20 years later, it served as Nick's favorite climbing tree when he was 3 years old.

 Anyway, I thought that was kinda cool.

Easter- another excuse to post retro pics

Just a trim

Maddie has been pestering me for awhile to get her hair cut.  "Just a trim."   The ends were a little raggedy and uneven.  It was time. Ok, so it had been time for quite awhile.

So we walked into our local salon, I sat down with the most interesting looking magazine I could find, and sent her off to the chair.

The hairdresser asked me what we wanted done, and my reply was somewhere along the lines of  "It's up to her.  But I draw the line at anything that involves shaving it."

 I should also mention I happened to be on the phone with Madison's father, who does have very strong opinions on the matter.  He likes long hair.  On me, he prefers it long, blond, and curly.  I threaten that one day he's going to come home from one of his trips out of town and find my hair short and red. 

The end result?

I texted a picture to John.  Maddie is officially on his naughty list.

a very, very dim light at the end of a very, very long tunnel

First off, I'd like to apologize to my other kids that my posts lately have been (and I still have a couple more stories to tell) mostly about Christopher this past week or so.  It's just been same old, same old for the rest of the kids. Not much new to report.  Squeaky wheel gets the grease, I guess.

Anyway,  most mornings Christopher and I go for a walk.  Well, he rides his bike, and I do my best to keep up.   

It doesn't really have much bearing on this particular story, but I just wanted to mention Christopher's almost rigid adherence to a schedule.  Around 6 am, (even on Saturdays) he crawls in bed with me and cuddles, and elbows me, and kicks, and squirms, and asks all sorts of silly questions "Where's mommy's blue eyes?" until I drag my sorry butt out of bed.  At which point we have to go down and read scriptures with the family and say a family prayer. He sits next to me with a particular "brown blankie."  After the kids go off to school, then he starts hounding me about going for a walk.  "Put on mommy's gray pants!"  ( exercise pants).

A few times a week we meet up with a friend Jamie* and her son Joey*  and walk together.   (*names have been changed to protect the innocent)  Anyway, Joey and Christopher ride up ahead, while Jamie and I try to keep up.  Much to Jamie's frustration, Joey likes to drop his shorts and pee on one particular bush about halfway through the walk.  Every. Single. Time.  (I personally find it hilarious, but more than anything I am sorta thrilled about it because Christopher is right next to him, watching and hopefully, cross your fingers, taking notes.)

Usually he doesn't drop his pants all the way, but the stance is unmistakable.  However, Friday, I looked over, and could tell Joey had dropped his shorts all the way to his ankles.  And then, Christopher was standing next to him, with his shorts around his ankles, and striking the same hips pushed forward pose.

I cheered.  It's something.

Of course, there was only one wet spot on the ground. So it wasn't a total success.

But it was something.

Mission accomplished

Back in December, my dad set out to teach Christopher to ride a bike.  He used the same tactic he used on Zach last summer- take the pedals off. 

Christopher hated it at first.  Just sat on his bike in the driveway and cried.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he learned he could coast down the driveway (it has an almost imperceptible slope). 

Pretty soon he was cruising everywhere he could using only his feet, and I could tell he was starting to put 2 and 2 together and that pedals were good, and his bike wasn't adequate.  So we finally put the pedals on.

That was the easy part.  It took 2 of us, and several different wrenches, etc to get them on but we did. 

The hard part was getting the dang-blasted helmet on.   Admittedly we are lousy at making our kids wear helmets on any regular basis. (yes, we deserve a good flogging for that)  but Christopher hated the helmet.  You would have thought we were trying to permanently attach it to his head with a nail gun or something.  Just showing him the bright red thing decorated with one of his all time favorite characters- Lightning McQueen, caused him to cry so hard he threw up.   What a pill.

 He got over it after awhile, but I am surprised someone didn't call CPS with all the screaming going on (for quite awhile I might add).  Later, he pretended to put his bike away so his dad would take off the helmet, and then jumped back on the bike, helmet-less and has almost been riding it non-stop since.

when all else fails-

Adapt.

Against my will, I finally switched over to the new and improved updated version of blogger. (It's been around for months) I'm not entirely comfortable with it, but doing a whole post with pictures and all wasn't too bad, and my spacing didn't get too wonky, so that's good.

At the zoo

I have a friend who is never content to sit still and do nothing.  She usually has something planned for the day.  I'm the opposite, I like to do stuff, it's just the initiating, and planning, and getting going part that I have seem to have trouble with.   So when she called up the other day and wanted to take our little boys to the zoo, I was game. (she has a five year old who is probably Christopher's best friend.)

 I'm a little embarrassed to admit that it's been a couple years since we'd been to the zoo, and the beautiful AZ weather is coming to an end, and we were just going for the first time.

I'm not sure what he thought of the actual animals themselves, but he seemed to have fun.  Plus, he got a big popcicle out of the deal, so that was a highlight.

rainbows

When Madison was little, she once told me that her favorite colors were "pink, and red, and purple, and blue, and rainbow, and sparkly." I know she now knows that "rainbow and sparkly" aren't technically items you include on a "favorite colors" list, but she still likes them. I currently wear a friendship bracelet that she picked out and Disney World last October with a rainbow string woven through it. Hers fell off quite awhile ago, and I think mine might be following pretty soon. Anyway, she's all girl. Unicorns, and horses, and shopping, and pink sparkly things, and rainbows.

I've recently come to (somewhat- I'm still figuring things out) understand the influence of "the rainbow" in my boys' lives as well. It started with Zach. When he was little, he was anti-social, ridiculously shy, couldn't talk, wouldn't make eye-contact, difficult to potty train, ate only a half a dozen things, refused to wear long pants, and had other issues. I had him checked out by specialists to see what services we could get to help him. That's the first time someone mentioned "the rainbow."

"Autism is a spectrum disorder." (to say that correctly, you need to make a rainbow with your hands while saying "spectrum disorder". ) Meaning that every kid is different, has different symptoms, etc. Fortunately, he did get the help he needed, and "the rainbow" is pretty much a thing of the past. (knock on wood.)

He still has some little issues. Mostly with food. Weirdest of all I think is that he won't eat cold cereal. I mean, come on, who doesn't like cold cereal? With a whole stinking aisle at every grocery store dedicated to the 14 thousand kinds, even the pickiest of eaters is sure to find something they like. And it doesn't matter if it's dry or with milk added. He won't touch the stuff. (and he likes milk.) Also, he has anxiety issues, but as long as he knows what he can expect with any given situation, he does much better. But I'll take it.  I used to have so many worries and fears.  I used to cry because I'd dream he'd say "mommy" and then wake up to realize I might never hear those two little syllables.  An aversion to cold cereal is nothing, nothing, in comparison.

Next up is Christopher. He was formally diagnosed with autism last Friday. At least now I have something to blame the lack of toilet training on besides bad parenting. Anyway, a bunch of specialists and child psychologists, and autism experts got together, and sent me home stuff to fill out, and everything was coming up rainbows.

The good news is that they have a special kindergarten for autistic kids that caters to their needs and learning abilities and speed, and they can do that because there are only 7-8 kids in each class with 3-4 teachers and helpers trained in autism. He'll be included in a regular class as well as much as possible, with a special helper along to make sure he doesn't get lost in the shuffle. These days with regular kindergarten classes having ratios of 25 kids to a teacher (it could be more or less, I'm just guessing) I'm choosing to look at Christopher's 2 to 1 ratio like I hit the jackpot. And it's free.

And the wild card is Nick. Short story long, my mom drives a short bus (special needs) up in Utah for the school district up there. Given the nature of her riders, she has a bus helper that she's friends with and talks to. The bus helper's husband just happens to work with high-school aged kids with Aspergers. His job is to help those kids remember their stuff. Pencils, homework, turning stuff in...

Sound familiar? All those things that Nick has trouble with, despite the fact that we've been medicating him for a couple years now. So at our last appointment with the psychologist doctor who's been working with Nick, I brought that up. She pulled out a standard questionnaire to help diagnose Aspergers. Sure enough, Nick's score was high enough to make it a real possibility. Not conclusive, but after reading about some of the symptoms (flapping- which to be fair he hardly does anymore) I have to think it makes sense.

Now it's just figuring out what to do with that info. His counselor at the jr. high is on maternity leave for the rest of the year, and the 7th grade one is carrying the load for the whole school. She told me that there were a few hoops to jump through, and by the time we did that, the school year would almost be over, and I'd have to do it all again next year anyway. Plus, it seems to be they just don't know what to do with him anyway. The doctor suggests getting him a monitor, someone who keeps an eye on him at school, but they just don't have anything like that in place (yet?).

Normally I try and shy away from labeling my kids, I fought the whole ADD thing with Nick for years, (which btw, now we don't know if Nick was just misdiagnosed, or if he has both, the medicine seems to help only marginally, but since he is on the brink of failing a couple of classes, we are reluctant to pull the rug out from under him ) but if labeling helps, maybe that's the answer?

Ren Fest

(Arizona Rennaisance Festival) My kids beg to go to this every year. It had been a couple of years, so I broke down and took the older three. The first thing they absolutely had to do was the pirate catapult. Zach was afraid of it a couple years ago, and refused to do it, so he could not go another minute without rectifying that situation. He didn't try any flips, but I could tell he was at his max just being brave enough to jump that high. Madison of course was the gymnast and had her flip perfected by the time it was over. Bless his heart, Nick tried. And tried. And tried. He's a little, shall we say, un-coordinated? (but he does get an A for effort Ü) Then we hit a couple of shows- the sword swallower was at the same time both intriguing and disgusting. The actually sword swallowing I an handle, it was the 5 inch drill bit into the nose I couldn't. We ate some treats including icees and sub-par pasties (if you live in the Phoenix area, {go here} for really good pasties- or better yet, call me and we can do lunch and/or double date- John loves it too). Amazingly enough, I managed to get out of there without purchasing some overpriced item that my kids suddenly discovered they needed, yet would forget about in less than 2 weeks, despite every effort on their part to convince me otherwise. (I speak from experience- "A flower wreath for your hair for only $20- what's wrong with the one hanging on your coat rack at home? Why didn't you just bring that one? Oh? you forgot all about it's existence? hmmm." ) But by the end of the day, we had all had fun. Nick learned the art of people watching (we're working on being observant of the world around him- and there's no more entertaining place than to just sit back and watch the world go by) Maddie got her usual picture taken with the resident fairy, and the kids got to do all sorts of activities. All-in-all a fun filled day.

favorite Costco finds

I just wanted to share two of my current favorite Costco finds.

I love these pistachios. I've always loved pistachios, but now I can hardly eat other brands. The salt and pepper just gives it that little extra somethin'.

This bread is to die for. I thought I'd give it a shot since it says that it's imported from France, and they really do have the best bread in the world (in my humble opinion). I've been told that even if you could get your hands on one of those recipes passed down from generation to generation, you could never make it the same because the ingredients just aren't the same. The wheat is different, the water is different, blah, blah, blah. (sorry, blogger flipped my picture sideways. I might just have to break down and upgrade to the newest version of blogger. )

It's found in the freezer section. You defrost them for about 15 minutes, then pop them in the oven for 8-10, and presto! Fabulous, fresh, French bread.

So this is the next best thing to actually being in Paris, and eating a baguette on a street corner with a view of the Eiffel Tower. I promise. I take that back. Find a perfect little tart for dessert, and then that's the next best thing. A little pricey at $10 for 10 baguettes. But we think it's worth it. It's perfect plain, with butter, served with dinner, or as a sandwich. Personally my favorite lunch right now is that bread with a good chicken salad stuffed in it.

{updates}

blogger is still not playing nice. I am going to separate the different paragraphs with some of these ~~~~~ I thought about giving each topic it's own post, but then I'd have to re-write everything.~~~~~~~~~~~ Nick is not loving his new braces. He's got a good attitude. "It will all be worth it in the end...it will all be worth it in the end..." But his mouth hurts, he can't eat anything, his lips are dry, he's afraid he's going to start drooling cause his mouth doesn't close right, and Christopher seems to be afraid of them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I finally went and saw a doctor about my shoulder. She recommends physical therapy. I haven't made the call yet, because I am so sick of doctor/dentist visits I could scream. PLUS with Christopher's schedule, it makes things difficult. His schedule is great for going out for lunch with friends ( any takers? I've got less than two months left any time between 11:30 and 2, Mon - Thurs) but unfortunately most doctors offices are closed over lunch, so I have to figure out plans for Christopher -and I shot myself in the foot by telling him he couldn't go play at friend's houses until he started using the potty, I am trying to make diapers as un-fun for him as I can, but not only is my scheme not working, now I have to decide whether to eat my words and start calling friends to see if they can babysit while I go to stupid physical therapy sessions or wait two more months for summer. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Christopher asked where his daddy is (he's off on a trip) and I actually said "I don't know." Thinking about it, I am 50% sure he is in DC. But only 50%. I can't keep track. I try. I listen. But things change all the time. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One thing I thought was funny (he didn't so much- because he was tired after having gotten up at 3 in the morning to catch his plane) There was a lady freaking out on the airplane and screaming things like "We're all gonna die!!!!" Every 15 minutes or so. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Spring is upon us. I thought it a terrible April Fool's joke last week that it actually hit 99 degrees on April 1st. I think it was a record. In fact, I've decided the only redeeming thing about spring is the scent of the orange blossom trees. I think that is my favorite scent in the whole wide world right now. Unfortunately John has developed seasonal allergies over the past few years (we actually had an argument about it a couple years ago-"I think you have hay fever." "It's not hay fever. I don't get hay fever. It's just a stupid cold that won't go away." "I think you have developed hay fever. It happens." "It's not hay fever." "Humor me. Take a Claritin." Anyway, John has now come to the conclusion his allergies are caused by the blossoming citrus trees. Which besides totally sucking, is a bit ironic that the very thing that smells so heavenly is the very thing responsible for his loss of smell (due to a stuffy nose).