Total Success (with Dan Abrams!)

Sibling argument overheard at our house tonight (and how could I help but overhear--they were both bellowing at each other) that was so funny, I couldn't be annoyed:

Claudia: WHO CHANGED THE CHANNEL?!?
Jordan: I did. NO ONE WATCHES VERDICT WITH DAN ABRAMS!!!
Claudia: I DO!!! TURN IT BACK!!! And I HATE YOU!!!

O-K. It's possible that they both get their dramatic natures from their mother. Could we call it "passionate about life"? Thank you.

These girls. I'm enjoying parenting all three so much right now. They're all such completely interesting people. For just a few instances, Jordan and I had the best time going to see Wall-E on Saturday night. She's so fun to go out and do things with. And she's asking me to call the Obama headquarters so we can volunteer. Claudia's totally immersed in politics and so *smart* about it. And she's been drawing increasingly cooler things and I've had need of an artist lately for social justice stuff and it's been really fun to tell her what I need and watch her work on it. The latest thing she's doing is helping me with the logo for the church's Social Justice blog. Sammy's skipping two grades in math because she has a totally amazing math brain so she's been working on math this summer and it's really cool to watch her working on it with Jamie who is another person with a totally amazing math brain. And she's having a really fun time with a make-believe game she has going with Jordan and one of their friends based on a series of books she's reading.

Sunday, I stayed home from church with a migraine. Jamie took Claudia and Jordan and a list as long as his arm of things I needed to do for the Social Justice committee. Thank you, Draling! When he arrived home from church he had an additional child with him--Claudia's friend K. So he made lunch for everyone and took Claudia and K. to the festival our town was having and dropped them off and then came home and we started getting ready for the party we threw Sunday night. The festival has a big fireworks display every year and they do them right, like RIGHT, next to our house, about 200 yards away from our back patio. So we invited people over to watch fireworks and we made a bunch of food and had a really great time. Jordan dubbed it "a total success". That's what I like to hear! The only thing that would have made it better is if it wouldn't have been on a Sunday night so out-of-town friends and family could have been here.

While we were getting stuff ready for the party, Jordan and Sammy went and sat by the curb near our back patio where the Festival parade started. They totally cleaned up--they got tons of candy and a huge bunch of balloons.


Jamie made chocolate chip cookies that were turned into ice cream sandwiches with vanilla ice cream and I made gingersnaps that were turned into ice cream sandwiches with lemon sorbet. Other made from scratch items were salsa, flour tortillas, corn tortillas and ranch dressing.


Here's Jamie enjoying an icecream sandwich. Yes, those are really tall weeds. You know, when you let them grow tall like that and, uh, artfully arrange them, they look um.......super great.


Watching the fireworks.








While we were waiting for the fireworks to start, we played with sparklers and those popit things.




See how happy and unknowing Jamie is here? When he's totally unaware that right behind him is Bo the Demon Dog! (what the hell is up with that dog's eyes?!?)

Thursday

It's pretty much all good news at our house at the moment and for everyone all around us!

Jordan's finally feeling better and going to her first tennis lesson this morning. Jamie found a really cool tennis program that runs every day for two weeks and she'll be taught by highschool tennis coaches. Unfortunately she's going to miss three days due to illness and other things, but that's (going to have to be) ok.

Jamie took Claudia to see the new Get Smart movie last night. The little girls were bummed because they weren't allowed to go. It's PG-13, so just no way without us seeing it first. But Jamie and Claudia had fun.

Leah just turned in her thesis and she defends on July 31. You are awesome, Leah!!!

Amy has some of her photos in a gallery in Los Angeles and how cool is that?!?

Jana is updating her blog again! Wooo!!!! You should check it out.

And we're planning our trip to Texas and are super excited! We're leaving on July 11 and we've decided to drive south instead of through Illinois/Missouri/Arkansas (which, for the most part is very boring and ugly and I want my break from the midwest to start as soon as humanly possible), so we'll go through Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. I'm going to be a two-fisted bbq eater starting at noon and hey, kids, I don't care if you don't want barbeque, because that's what we're having!! We'll stop for the night and stay with Jana & Co. in Baton Rouge and then head to Texas the next morning to take the kids to the beach in Galveston. Then we'll buy some shrimp off the boat and head to my parents' house in Austin that evening.

The Weekend

This pretty much sums up our entire weekend. Poor Jordan was sick for all of it. She's finally, thank God, feeling better today.

Jamie bore the brunt of the running around this weekend. Friday after work he had a meeting at church, which I skipped to stay home with Jordan. Saturday we had a party to go to and he took Claudia with him and I stayed home with Jordan. Saturday afternoon he took Claudia to the mall so she could get a birthday gift for a friend and then that afternoon I took Claudia to her friend's birthday party/sleepover. Today Jamie ran by Sam's mom's to pick Sammy up for church (they were finishing their ceramics projects from last weekend). Jamie ended up going to the store I don't know how many times this weekend, including a middle-of-the-night run to Walmart for pedialyte last night. We are exhausted! I was up several times each night pushing fluids on Jordan so she wouldn't get dehydrated and she was up off and on all night.

Sammy reports that her tennis lessons are going well and she won all three of her matches on Friday! Jordan's taking tennis lessons at a different place this year and hers start on Tuesday. They were supposed to start tomorrow, but there was a scheduling conflict for the courts which is GOOD, because no way she can play tennis tomorrow!

Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day + 1!

We started out the day by dashing to church and were only a few minutes late! It was our minister's last day so the service was kind of painful. Claudia opted to stay with Jamie and me instead of going to class because she likes the minister. The RE summer session is very cool. They have people from the congregation teach the kids arts and one woman gives them lessons on animals and they also learn some other stuff I forget at the moment. Anyway, one of the many professional (is that the right word?) artists we have in our congregation does ceramics (she had one piece on display in the sanctuary about a month ago and I want it so much. It was nothing like I've ever seen before) and she taught the little girls' class this weekend and she's teaching it next weekend, too, so they can finish up their work. Jordan said one of the things she made was a rattle which I think is intriguing and I can't wait to see it.

After church Beverly and Walter drove down from Ft. Wayne to hang out with us and we had a great time! We just threw out some sandwich stuff and made strawberry shortcake for dessert. I made it with homemade biscuits (I added about 3 tablespoons sugar) and it turned out pretty well. I usually make pound cake for that purpose but this worked, too. They once again declined to take the beagle when they left so we STILL HAVE HIM! Yes, I'm joking--we wouldn't actually make him move out.

Sammy decided it would be very funny to lick Jamie's forehead and his grossed out response totally cracked her up so while he was trying to eat shortcake, she licked his arm. And Jordan thought it was hilarious, too, so poor Jamie was fending that off for a while.




Beverly ended up being Thumb Wrestling Queen and Sammy was very funny with her mock disappointed face and wail "I lost to my GRANDMOTHER!!!".




Then last night the girls and I gave Jamie Father's Day gifts. One of his friends asked him to play soccer on his team so he asked for a soccer ball and Claudia got him that. The kids had a blast playing with the dog and the ball!




The little girls both got him pretty polished stones which I think are supposed to be good luck charms for his tests and I gave him a sketchbook journal so now he has to draw every day!

Pride Parade

Saturday was completely chaotic but so much fun! We dropped one car off close to the festival *early* on Saturday morning, checked in for our booth assignment and got the booth set up. Then we drove the other car over to the start of the parade. We put all the banners together and met our group. We had more people show up this year, which was my goal, but not a lot, so we didn't have enough people to do the Chinese dragon moose we had.











When we got to the booth we sat around and talked to everyone and that was a lot of fun. Sammy, Jordan and one of their friends were running around getting free stuff from all the different booths and Claudia was hanging out with one of her friends.


I had woken up with a migraine and so the heat was making my headache *super* bad, so around 1 we left and went home for lunch and then Jamie went back to work at the booth again. I felt a little better after more medicine and sleeping for a while so I took the girls back up there in time to buy stuff they wanted and help Jamie break down the booth.

All in all, I think it was a success. I think it's meaningful for faith communities to march and participate in the festival. I think we got the ball rolling this year so next year will be even better.

The event made the paper.

Rambly post about lately

School's out! Thursday night we had a little celebration with a cake that was not attractive enough to photograph, sundaes and chinese food. (not necessarily in that order).

Jamie took his exam on Tuesday but we won't have results for around ten weeks. Yes, they really do take that long!

Wednesday I took the day off work to go to the littles' school and see the 4th grade awards ceremony and then go to their picnic and games afterwards. The awards ceremony was really neat and they had a great slide show at the end with a ton of photos of the year. I wish I could get a copy because there were a lot of photos of Sammy and Jordan. I got a little teary over it. This was the last elementary thing ever, because they're going into middle school next year.

Here's Sammy with an award for participating in Math Bowl. This is the only one of the girls accepting awards that turned out even remotely usable. My camera is a miserable contraption in general, but its true suckiness really shines in large spaces with bad lighting.


Here's Jordan after the ceremony with lemonade and cookies.


And here's Sammy afterwards.


The games were really fun to watch! Facts we learned: Sammy is very good at spitting watermellon seeds and Jordan is really good at hopping quickly in a burlap sack. Who knew?!?

I'm running crazy these days mostly because the Pride parade is next Saturday. In between planning, purchasing and lots of emails, last night I had to go to an orientation meeting and that was cool because I knew people from the various segments of my life here and I was able to network with another church which was a very good thing. After the meeting I got food together so I could take breakfast to our painting session we had this morning at church, led by one of the artists in the congregation. We had around 13 people, including Sammy's mom and step-sister, join us to paint banners on silk for the parade. They look amazing!

This one is the one we'll lead our group with. I love the chalices because they're created out of the initials for our church.

Love is love is love.

Value all families.

Equal marriage for all.


Jamie and Sammy painting.


Jordan with the finished product.


Tomorrow morning is church and I have to go early because we're having a social justice retreat and then we're speaking in church and displaying the banners.

Here's a photo of the sky here last night.


We went outside to feed the ducks and geese and there were some super (bless their hearts) unattractive baby geese there and the mother goose tried to bite me. She chased me off!

Click on this photo to see Zombie Geese are coming to get you!

Monday

Ok, so how excited am I this very moment? VERY!

OhMyLord, at the end of this week, we have a break from actuary exams, homework, getting kids up early and to school, it's big break season at work, and at church, YEAH!! And, icing on the cake--I just found summer project number 1 for Claudia! I was so happy about this I got her out of bed to show her (she wasn't asleep yet). She loves the movie The Royal Tenenbaums and look--it's the cross stitch!



Claudia is going to learn to cross stitch this summer (when she's not feeding the dog cake.)




Sammy was in a class play today (she was one of the narrators) and Jordan got to see it. Jordan reports it was a big hit! Tomorrow morning Jamie takes his exam and tomorrow night Claudia has her end-of-the-year band concert. I'm taking Wednesday off work to go to the school with the littles for their awards ceremony and 4th grade picnic.

Oh, and it's Super Tuesday II tomorrow. Can't wait!