I went to go get my ashes today and as we were going back to our seats Colm wanted to know why I didn’t get my “snack”.
I was pulling out of the garage yesterday and I turned on the radio. An REM song was on and I had to stop the car. It is amazing how a song can bring back memories. It got me thinking about the music that was so important to me in high school and college. The music that my friends and I danced to, drove around the city to and played in the background while we were going about our lives. REM and the B-52’s always bring back memories. Loveshack! I think of the parties that Phil had in his basement. We were always dancing-always! The Red Hot Chili Peppers were a favorite when things got a little crazy. New Order always makes me think of dancing at the Monolith in high school. Whenever I hear Madonna’s Vogue it reminds me of a time when Dana and I were driving down the freeway with the windows down at night singing at the top of our lungs or the time I made Matt Livengood listen to it a zillion times in my car as we were driving around because I had it taped back to back the length of an entire tape. He loved it though. 🙂 Whenever I hear Erasure it reminds me of the mornings I drove to the hospital before I went to school to see my mom when she was in a coma. That tape must have been in my car during that time. The Samples and the Indigo Girls always makes me think of the last summer I worked as a camp counselor when I was in college. On the weekends, when the kids were gone and all of the counselors were left alone to gear up for the next busload of kids coming on Monday, those two were staples of our reenergizing. What soundtracks define my life right now? The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything soundtrack, Suzuki Book One listening CD and the Backyardigans CD. My how times have changed. 🙂
Colm and I went swimming today (inside!) and I look over and he is praying-in the pool! I asked him why he was praying. He says he is praying to God to help him find the pool toy he can’t find. I love it!
Liam informed me tonight that he has a crush (his word not mine) on Sarah. I will admit, Sarah is pretty cute. It’s her freckles.
Colm has never been a big Sesame Street fan…until last night. My MIL treated Colm and I to a night at Sesame Street Live at the Sprint Center and it was great. It was a much higher quality show than when we used to take Liam. It was about what you want to be when you grow up; it was very cute. Watching Colm’s face was priceless. When the show first started he had this look on his face…a little confused mixed with a little bit afraid mixed with a little bit of anticipation. Two seconds into it though and his face lit up…it would have been a gem of a picture, but I was too busy watching him to actually get the shot.
We got this game for Christmas and the boys love it and so do I. There are a few ways you can play it. We have never played by the official rules, but the gist of the game is to sort the squares by attribute in a dominoes sort of way. Different lines have different attributes and if you can’t play one of your squares based on what has been played you can try and start a new line with a different characteristic until you have used up all of your squares.
This is our fifth year of preschool, so by now I have several holiday parties under my belt. I always try to sign up to help in some way, whether that be bringing the treats, bringing the drinks, coming up with a game, etc. I have never signed up to bring the take home treat before though. I think these turned out great. I got these cute cellophane bags at Hobby Lobby. In each bag I put a pink plastic Valentine cup, a container of bubbles and some Valentine stickers. I had also bought some Valentine M&M’s to put in them, but I figured by the time the party is over they will probably be maxed out in the sugar department, so I saved those for a project Liam is doing at school. Anyways, I think I like these because it is a great excuse to buy something pink and I don’t get a chance to do that very often.
Sean and the boys have been playing a knights game on the computer after dinner for the past few weeks. They love it and look forward to Daddy getting home each night so they can play. Well, on Friday night, they absolutely refused to eat their dinner. (I don’t even remember what it was now, but they acted as if they might die trying to eat it.) So, Sean told them if they didn’t eat it then they couldn’t play knights that night after dinner. Colm still wouldn’t eat. Liam tried, but he was picking and poking at his food and I was not going to sit there with him all night. So Sean told them that they wouldn’t be playing knights that night and got up from the table. (oh, dear, you should have heard the wailing). But it got worse…Sean went and played without them. He went in his office, shut the door and played for a good half hour. Their little world collapsed. The tears. The howling. I think there were some pint-sized insults thrown in Sean’s direction. You should see these kids eat now though. Not only are they eating things they would never have eaten five days ago, but they know they have to eat it in a reasonable amount of time, too. They were literally scarfing down their pasta last night. I love it! I could serve them pigs ears with garlic sauce now and I think they would find a way to choke it down.
This afternoon Colm found his new favorite book in Liam’s room. He brought it to me to read to him, but he didn’t shut Liam’s door and the dog was going to go in his room. This is a big deal and Colm knows it. The dog is not allowed into their rooms because he eats their stuffed animals. I told Colm he needed to go back and shut Liam’s door and then I would read him the book. He wouldn’t shut the door, so I shut it. He then realized that I really wasn’t going to read him the book now because he didn’t follow directions and shut the door like I had asked. So he went back and opened the door so he could then shut it so that I could then read him the book.
We stopped at Costco to get gas today and there was an elderly couple there gassing up their bright red VW bug. These people were AT LEAST 80. They were so cute. She was in the driver’s seat with her bright white, fresh from the beauty parlor curls. He was putting in the gas. He had on a cute little fisherman hat. If I would have had my phone with me I would have tried to sneak a picture of them.
Before Sean and I even had kids we always said we wanted them to go to school A (we’ll call it that for anonymity-I have no idea who is reading this blog). My brothers went there and since they are 13 years younger than me we got to see what a great school it was. We had Liam enrolled there last year for kinder, but with our house not selling and moving and all of that jazz we forfeited our deposit and decided not to send him. I am SO glad we made that decision. There is NO WAY we could have packed, moved and done everything that had to be done to build this house and still gotten him to school and picked up each day. I am also glad we sent him to the school he went to this year. It was a great way for him to meet the neighborhood kids, he has a great teacher and the school is wonderful, too. We are in a position now, however, to send both Liam and Colm to school A now. I called them on Tuesday, the boys had their evaluations at the school on Thursday, we got the paperwork for next school year on Friday and we sent it back in on Saturday. There was only one spot left in first grade next year so we snapped it up. They are a private Catholic school in an urban setting that goes from Montessori (preschool) through Grade 8. It is a small school with only two sections of each grade with a policy of twenty or fewer kids per class. They have an indoor pool (which is ancient!) where the kids take weekly swim lessons, they begin learning French at the Montessori level, since it is in the city it is both racially and economically diverse (which is very important to us considering the reputation our county has for its affluence and whiteness), all students are evaluated before being offered a spot at the school (you don’t have to be a genius, but a certain level of smarts and behavior are expected), we love the history (our kids will be there for the school’s 100th anniversary) and it is Catholic. Another thing I noticed when we were walking around that is in the middle school level, their lockers didn’t have locks and most of them were ajar. I love it! They don’t need locks because that kind of crap doesn’t happen around there. I also love how they combine subjects for the little guys. For example, their P.E. class is conducted in French. There is one downside. It is not close, but there are several families around here who go there and the school is very good about helping families set up carpools since people drive from all over the metro to get to the school. I am so excited, but more importantly…so are the boys!