Preparation

Tomorrow is Jeremiah's birthday, and Monday we're heading down to Tybee Island for a few days.  Today, we are packing, baking, and cleaning.  We have ambitious plans for tomorrow.  We're going to have everything ready to get our happy selves to the coast, prepare for a celebratory dinner with friends and hit the Decatur Arts Festival. 

I provided the girls with a list of things they should pack.  It included a column for each of them to check off every item as they packed it, because I'm one of those people.  It went...passably well.  Their items are gathered and it only took about 4 hours to make it happen.  Though the instruction "clean your bedroom" resulted in a great deal of sister-on-sister violence, some screaming, a bit of tattling (mostly from our little nark, Sarah), no shortage of whining and ultimately, a reasonably tidy bedroom.  After the bedroom drama, Sarah came downstairs and helped me clean the kitchen while Jeremiah's birthday caked baked.  She wanted to help with the baking bit, but because it took her so long to don just the right attire for the occasion, she arrived only in time for cleaning.  She looks fantastic, though, no?  She did a great job washing dishes too. 

We are ready to relax.  It's been a busy few months.   The girls have wrapped up a very active school year.  While we will only have a few days, I'm pretty thrilled to have each one of them.  I cannot wait to get to hang out with my family without having any simultaneous obligations.  Our goal for the trip is to use the soft landing of the packed wet sand at the shore to finally get both girls confidently riding bicycles sans training wheels.  They're so close.  I'll keep you posted on their progress.  Enjoy the long weekend!

What the Kids Have Been Up To

It's been awhile, too long, indeed.  We've all been very busy soaking up Spring, you see, and when it's Real Spring, one doesn't really want to sit inside and blog.  Not this One, anyway.  Kate and Sarah have been doing very well.  We met the first and third grade teachers and learned what we should expect from these grades for our girls.  Yes, first and third grades.  OH it seems only yesterday I held these wee bitty babies in my arms!  But enough of that nonsense, they're still not too big to cuddle.

Kate had a choral performance last week.  I had to miss it because Sarah was inconveniently running a fever.  We knew she wasn't feeling especially well, then by the end of the school day last Thursday her temperature hit 101 and she became persona non grata at school.  We know how she rolls, though.  Sarah will catch a bug, moan dramatically about not feeling well, finally run a fever, kill the sonufabitch off and be fine the next day.  This was precisely what she did.  She owned that little virus.  Take that, virus!  Anyway, Jeremiah attended Kate's concert while I stayed home with Sarah.  It was fun to see how pumped Kate was when she got home.  She loves chorus.  Then, yesterday, when I picked them up from school, the little set they'd used for the performance was sitting out in the hall.  Kate took me over to it, dropped her bookbag, and did her entire performance, moves and all, just for me, because I had to miss it before. 

So that was adorable.  Also high on my list of uber-cute things the kids do is how we've conditioned them to react to the word "jet".  Since Jeremiah and I both are unable to resist relating nearly every sentence and, in some cases, individual words, we hear to a song, we of course do the Wings vocal follow-up to the word "jet!" every time we hear it.  You know, "ewh eeeewwwh ewh ewh ewh, jet!"  That one.  Now, the kids do it, too.  We live right in many a flight pattern for the airport, so believe me, there are myriad opportunities for this to come up.  We'll probably get sick of it soon, but for now, I just love hearing my little kids sing Jet. 

Speaking of how everything's a song with us people up in here, last week's Kinetic Reiki blog entry about the root chakra was named for Root Down.  That's right, the chakra that houses the will to live.  The day after I published that, Adam Yauch died.  I'm not making any point here, I'm just mentioning it, because it was mildly startling timing.  Also, I'm sad.  I'm sad about Maurice Sendak, too, but that was less surprising.