We *thought* we knew what tired looked like

Tonight, Mike says the pads on his feet are tired, and his arms feel spongy. I know what he means, but am glad my feet don't feel like that.

We moved all the rest of our stuff onto the 16' trailer, loaned to us by my brothers (thanks, guys!) and drove it and the van and truck to NJ yesterday. We left about 2:30 pm, stopped several times for various breaks and one gas refuel, then arrived in NJ about 11:30 pm, which is good traveling time, considering the loads we were carrying. Christopher, who is the best traveling boy! Maya, who has learned to like traveling in her old age. The little piggies who just run around and try to avoid being picked up, but who then love being held. My Christmas Cactus that has not bloomed for THREE years...but now has about 7 tiny buds on it that will hopefully be blooms in about a week if they don't get freaked out about being moved around in mid-bloom. Did I mention how the beautiful and big plant has not bloomed for THREE years! hmmph!

We unloaded half the trailer at the house in NJ, pushing a calif-king mattress and headboard up a staircase that turns on the 3rd step, and so barely fit to go upstairs where we will be sleeping. Put a few things downstairs or where they needed to go, and then took the rest of the stuff to a temporary storage unit about 10 miles away, then came back to have a great homemade dinner.

A shower never felt so good!
Tired never felt so personal.
Christopher is such a great trouper and child, he will certainly try to test his limits, but he has been so patient and flexible during all these changes. His current interest is his new "pet caterpillar named Roosevelt". He was not happy to learn that Grandma Roslyn is a caterpillar killer, and I think he either needs a bigger jar or to let the little guy loose. It's been a little too much on the hot and humid weather, the poor little guy must be miserable in his little cup with air holes.

Mike just put on some icy hot and tiger balm and took pain meds.
we have to return the trailer tomorrow, as the guys are prepping for the first demolition derby for the season and need it back, so guess I'll be driving the first leg of the trip.

It's a journey, for sure, but the hardest parts are OVER now.
Anyone who ever said moving was fun was LYING! moving is a bitch.
and I say that with the utmost love and respect for all things in the universe.
LOL!!!

and now, back to our scrabble games...

Thermostat Update!

There I was, poking the bushes and mulch and prickly, thorny bushes with the long skinny piece of driftwood we had.

And must have pushed it further into whatever alternate universe it wants to live in.

Now the house has been rented to another family...so the remote thermostat is officially history.

dang thermostat! we have an atomic clock that works perfectly, except for the missing outside temp! oh, well...

Atomic clock thermostat....where are you?

we are fans of the atomic clocks, they keep time, even when they spring forward and fall back. and we especially love the ones that have the temperature inside and out. we had one several years ago, and replaced it last summer with one that has clearer digits, with the time and both temps. perfect for us!

...and now our outside remote thermostat has disappeared! we "thought" it made it on the first trip to NJ a couple weeks ago, because the fold up chairs went on that trip, and we sometimes had the outdoor thermostat in one of the cup holders. when we returned and didn't see the outside temp, we made that assumption.

then...a couple of days later the outdoor temp appeared! then, disappeared! hmmm, so the remote must be on the porch. nope, nowhere to be found.

so we tested the clock in various places around the property, a variation of the "hot / cold" game. not in the back yard, not in the garage, not in the kitchen, not upstairs. ah ha! the front porch it is, but perhaps invisible.

you see, we did a lot of intense yard work about 3 weeks ago. trimming bushes, branches, raking leaves, cutting grass, everything. it took all day, literally, to do this work. and where we suspect the remote must be hiding is somewhere near the front porch, in one of three sets of sticker bushes! no, not just plain hedges or trees, where we can dig around with our hands or rake. can't get to the bottoms of the hedges with a clear view, been using a long skinny piece of drift wood to poke around.

no remote! but the thermostat works great if you put it on the porch, or in the front window.

we've each taken some time here and there to try to poke around again, trying to find the dang thing. sure, it will mostly work without the remote thermostat, and perhaps we can order a replacement, but it's RIGHT THERE, somewhere in the bushes!

and we leave the house for good tomorrow. and the remote will begin the process of eternal burying, may he rest in peace.

dang remote!

Home stretch

trying to hold on to survive the home stretch

some days are better, sometimes it's more hour-to-hour
moving, consolidating, going thru old paperwork...it's enough to bring out the CRAZY in a person
this, I know, is true

the good thing...all 12 or so boxes of paperwork -- you know the ones, old bills, old CYA paperwork from jobs, cards, letters, certificates, and who the hell knows how other things got stuck in there -- are now down to about 2
about 12 lg boxes/bins of fabric have all been moved to new homes
miscellaneous stuff has also been dispersed throughout the region
sources of offloading: freecycle in NM, 2 large yard sales, thrift store pickup, 3 carloads of thrift store dropoffs, and more, hundreds of pounds of stuff to the trash, including 16 lg bags in the past few days (mostly the paperwork stuff)
where did all this stuff come from!!!!
and what we have left "still" feels like it's too much

thus, bordering on the dangerous ledge of being reasonable and trying not to be defensive when comments are offered, no matter however well-intended they may have been when once in thought form

and to not forget to do things, like get the mail forwarded, oil in car changed, pickup birthday presents, pay the electric bill, blah, blah, blah

trying to keep our son entertained and distracted and not frustrated
trying not to burst into tears at the stupidest of things

and that is how it is. if you believe in higher powers, send some positive thoughts and prayers this way. if ever we needed them, today and these next few days are the ones calling the loudest.

the home stretch

She was just so pretty and I loved her smiling at me

And so it begins....
we can't cook much this week, being how the kitchen is all packed up and it's not convenient. sure, we can cook some things, but we're also tired and trying to finish going thru these dang boxes while taking care of business.

anyway. so we left the house tonight to head to Subway for those advertised $5 foot longs. we get there to find one couple sitting there eating, one person ahead of us and two girls leaving. as we waited for our order to be prepared, the next thing we know is Christopher is trying to talk to the woman having dinner with her date. and then he's next to her giving her a hug.

okay, she was cute, actually very beautiful. average height and weight, dark hair, pretty brown eyes, nice smile, probably in her late 20's. and she smiled at him. when he hugged her, she laughed and hugged him back. not wanting to embarrass him, we tried to handle the situation and told him he can't be hugging people he doesn't know. so, he said he did know her, "she's nice." we told him that when you get to know people, you need to know their names, so he called across the room, "what's your name."

she tells him, "my name is Lindsey"
we tell him that the proper way to find out a person's name is to tell them, "hi, my name is Christopher. what's your name?"
so he tells her immediately, "my name is Christopher!"
then he runs back over and gives her another big hug, and then asks her who that guy was.
laughing, Lindsey tells him, "this is my fiance"
he just kept turning to look over in her direction, and of course, she was laughing and smiling even more now!


we call him back over, and the Subway shop was a small room, so he was back in an instant. we strongly suggest to him that they are eating and not to bother people when they are eating, so he stayed with us then, but kept looking over to her.

thankfully, our sandwiches were ready now, because no other diversion tactic that we tried on him was working this time.
as we left, he called out loudly, "BYE!!"

in the car, we started our conversation with him about, "well, you are not in trouble. let's talk about Lindsey. why did you go and give her a hug?"
he replied back quickly about how she was just so pretty "and she smiled at me and I had to give her a hug"

both Mike and I were trying desperately not to laugh as Christopher was candid in his answers, literal man that he is, but I have to say it was very difficult to not laugh! given the seroiusness of the problem of talking to strangers, we had a rather lengthy conversation back and forth about how it was inappropriate to go and hug strangers. that even though he now knew her name and had given her a hug, we still did not know her very well. that in the future if he felt he needed to go and hug or talk to a stranger, he had to get permission first. we explained the dangers and how not everyone is a good person, at which he started asking if the bad people were all like Hitler. we have a lot of work to do. they discuss different people at school, so Hitler has come up in conversation before, but not lately.

he clearly knows about not going with strangers, not letting anyone steal him, and so on, with about as much training as we can give him without going overboard and making him neurotic. and then today, a pretty face added another dimension to our parenting work a little sooner than we had anticipated.

and so it continues. for it is true that the first time we caught him flirting with beautiful faces was when he was an infant of 6 months old, and also sick with croup. we had gone to Disneyland with some friends and all got sick while he ended up in the hospital for about a day. we stopped to get dinner at Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles in Los Angeles to get dinner before driving back to northern CA, and he actually flirted with our waitresses, who then went and got their other pretty waitresses to come see this beautiful baby. he batted his eyes and smiled differently than we had ever seen him smile at that point. his first and also successful attempt at flirting at the ripe age of 6 months old! and now almost 6 yrs old and still in the game. by our calculations, he's too dang young to be enamored by eye candy!

Pillow of Hugs

Today was Christopher's last day of kindergarten here.
We took homemade oatmeal cookies to school for lunchtime
snacks, which he proudly served to all his friends.
(we won't mention about his little friend Kaela that also rides his bus was
sitting at the end of the other table blowing him kisses...and getting them back!)
After lunch, he gave cards to his teachers
before the class went outside to play for recess.
He came home this afternoon with a
Pillow of Hugs.

* Life is good *

We are so blessed to have such a beautiful son, inside and out.
Here are some pictures of his artwork from school,
and also the contents from his new pillow.
I just love the artwork and the imagination of the little folks!

* Enjoy! *

Christopher the Police Officer

Spaghetti & Meatballs

Christmas Penguin

reading his card today for teacher Ms. Barrett


* The Pillow of Hugs *

This is from Kaela...

Spring is "almost" here...

"almost" because it keeps getting COLD, then hot, then windy, then cold again

of all the gifts that come with Spring, some of my favorites are all the fresh new wildlife, all the babies that venture out to discover their new world. but, also the beautiful colors of all the trees, shrubs and flowers are just awesome.

perhaps best of all, is being able to make colors with our little guy. wish we could have been with some of his cousins to do it as a team, but there will be other opportunities for that in the future.

Happy Easter & Happy Spring!

contemplating how to color his eggs with the invisible crayon

Very proud boy with all the decorated eggs!

this is the one where he wrote his own name on the egg, and then wanted to crack and eat it, then he didn't, but it had been dropped a few times by now, and then he negotiated to "not" have anyone crack his special egg. it's still in the fridge.

while Chris called most of his eggs "scribble scrabble" he was very excited to see how "Papa" worked out so well. he loves his Papa!

this is a few days after the first half of our move from VA to NJ. everyone was tired, and appreciating a little R&R

"Look, Mommy, the Easter Bunny did come find us!"

"And he hid our eggs we made!"

ahh, our good girl Maya keeps guard on the happenings of the house, supervising the moving and packing. we are slowest of all this time around, going thru ALL the boxes from ALL the previous moves! not one single unnecessary "anything" will survive this move.

the guys take a break to wrestle
good thing the bed was in the living room to break his flip and fall

the little piggies in their temporary housing pen. problem is: Lucky (the tri-colored one) keeps shredding and eating the bedding. and, we just discovered he's blind in at least his left eye, not sure if his right is affected yet. he doesn't care about that, though. he still sings for Miss Lisa, and talks to us all the time.

were able to catch a few minutes at Buckroe Beach in Hampton Roads, VA

the beautiful tree in the front yard in Newport News, VA. not sure what kind it is, but the blossoms are painting my car yellow and brightening up the front yard nicely

dang turtles! if you look closely, you can see Three on the log. 15 seconds before taking this picture, there were about 12 or so on the same log, as well as another 10 or more on the log directly behind it, and another bunch on the log to the left of that one. they hear or think you are coming by, and the slide on into the water. dang turtles! the only way to see them all is to do a drive by in an automobile or to setup a crittercam.

these are a little harder to see, but if you look, you'll see the huge goose standing in front, and a few turtles on the log behind that.
the geese apparently also like to come strolling into the neighborhood and eat up the clover in the front yards, then stroll on out, making traffic come to a halt. even though they can fly, they waddle out instead.

here's to the beauty in Spring
and to the beauty of the world and people around us

for me, I hope that I can keep focused on the natural beauty of life
of what is Really Important in Life