Okay, not a BAR (because that would be totally inappropriate)… but down the street to trick or treat! Last night was our 5th annual Halloween together. Izzy manned the door as our pizza delivery “man” and we cleared over 100 trick or treaters at our house (yes, she kept track..).
I hope everyone had a great Halloween. Now comes the fun part… stealing the candy from the kids’ stash.
Having a big family comes with its share of the traditional ups and downs. I mean, having two teenage girls and a baby means that feeling rested is really just a memory. But as I have mentioned before, the big family thing comes with its share of sweet moments. Sweet moments that are really more like a suprise, something I never anticipated.
My two oldest — Jade (14) and Izzy (13) — get up and ready for school on their own. ( I try not to feel too much guilt about not cooking them omlettes every morning – my energy isn’t endless…). Each morning they pile their backpacks and instruments next to our front door and wait for the HONK that signals the carpool is waiting outside. About the time they get their shoes on and switch into “hang out” mode before the carpool arrives, Ty, Emme and I mosey on down from upstairs to start our day.
But when Ty and Emme lay eyes on those two big girls, they go absolutely crazy with joy. If Dora and Anakin and Buzz Lightyear all showed up at once, they wouldn’t get the kind of reception that Ty and Emme greet Jade and Izzy with every morning.
The next 10 minutes is a carinval of love from my two youngest to my two oldest. Still in their jammies, Ty and Emme practically mob Jade and Izzy demanding the last few seconds of their attention before leaving for school. Lego catalogs come out to be delved into, toys materialize, the itsy bitsy spider and twinkle twinkle little star is sung…over and over… oh, and over and over… sometimes it is an imprompu game of hide-and-seek as Ty jumps under a blanket and instructs “come find me.”
Final snuggles are given and plans for their return in the afternoon are made (“If you don’t have a lot of homework, Izzy, will you play Wii with me?”). When the HONK comes Emme and Ty both run out to give one final goodbye to their big girls as they drive off. Ty shouting his BBYYEEE!!!!! and Emme blowing kisses with a MWAH ..MWAH.
It is only after all of this that I can change Emme’s diaper, make breaksfast, and get our morning focused on Kindergarten drop off and baby music class.
But I wouldn’t change it.
Jade will be heading off to college the year Emme enters Kindergarten — only 4 years away. And it is the time they have together now — even those few minutes in the morning, or maybe especially those few minutes in the morning — that will part of their relationship forever. There will be a day when Emme will run out to blow Jade a kiss and she won’t be coming home until Thanksgiving.
So, until then, I will enjoy that the highlight of their morning is with each other.
Last Tuesday, we all said goodbye to my Grandmother, Lois Maxine Moulton.
We had had a few “false starts” to her next life, but Tuesday was “it”. My mom sat by her side until lunch time, and within minutes of my mom stepping out to get a bite to eat, Grandma passed on. My mom and Uncle and the rest of the family are at peace with her passing. Sad, sure, but mostly just a goodbye or a “see ya later” — she was 87 and had lived in a nursing home for 9 years after her stroke. It was time for her to go to Jesus. There isn’t going to be a service. This summer we hope to scatter her ashes into the ocean that she loved so much.
How does one write a tribute? Being the writer in the family, I was called upon to write the Obiturary for the newspaper. So, I did. But Obits are so short and don’t really do justice to who a person was. There isn’t space in the Obit to tell the story of Grandma Lois’ first love. Who went to war (that would be World War II) and didn’t come home. There isn’t space in an Obit to tell the story of my uncle’s first migraine. Headaches run in our family (why couldn’t it have been the skinny gene???) and he got his first migraine when we was a teenage. His mother sat by his bedside, put a cool cloth on his forehead, and held his teenage-boy-hand until it passed. How do I capture in just a few short words what it was like every Thanksgiving and Christmas growing up… going to Grandma’s house and eating a huge meal she had worked to prepare. How my cousin, Amanda, and I would always… always be in charge of filling the amber glasses with ice and cool water right before the meal. Her kitchen was always clean and there were always cookies in the cookie jar. My Grandma’s house was full of books and she was always reading. And it is perhaps because of her that all of us… I mean ALL of us in the family are voracious readers. Her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren devour books.
She was the type of woman who did things for herself. When the vacuum cleaner broke one day, she sat down, pulled the darn thing apart and re-wired it herself. When she got mad at her husband one weekend, she decided to get some space by packing up her two kids and going camping. Not something a woman in the early 1960′s did. So, she and my mom — then about 14 years old — had to work together to put up the tent. Grandma got to laughing so hard trying to put up that tent, that she pee’d her pants! Now, that is my kind of woman!!!
When I was a baby I burned my hand on the front of the oven. I cried and cried until my mom, in desperation, called her mom to come over. The moment Grandma got there and picked me up, I stopped. There is just something about a Grandma…
My Grandmother doted on her children and grand-children. She looked on all of us with perfection in her eyes — even when we didn’t deserve it. She golfed, she sewed all my mom’s clothes growing up, she was a working mom in the 1950′s and 60′s, she played Bridge, she gardened, she cooked. And she loved to dance.
Most of all, she was deeply kind.
In her last days, she held my mom’s hand and told her that she was the best daughter anyone could ever want.
We will all miss her. And, as we examine our beliefs and hold on to what we hope, we hope to see her again someday.
Goodbye Grandma, I love you.
One of my good growing up memories of my father is when we would lie on the big master bed in the big master bedroom at our house in Glendale, California. We would lie there on the turquoise and brown bedspread (hey, it was the 70′s) and he would teach me words in Spanish or repeat huge vocabulary words and have me say them and then teach me the meaning of those words. I must have been about five or six at the time. I have to say that it introduced a love of language that I still have today.
A few years back I introduced my own version of the vocabulary game.
Each year, I pick a word or phrase that is organically grown out of our everyday language at home. By this I mean, that I actually have used this word in front of my kids and then said kids look at me askance, wrinkle their browns, and say,”huh?” Anyway, I pick a word and challenge them to use it when speaking to an adult in their lives. IF they can do so, they win the game. At first I thought about delivering some sort of prize to any kid who can pull this off. But, soon it became apparent that the legendary status that comes with using the yearly challenge word appropriately with a teacher or coach is reward enough for my sweet little nerds.
So, a few years back the challenge phrase was “CARTE BLANCHE” — you should have heard the story of Jade going up to her then 5th grade teacher asking her for “Carte Blanche bathroom priveledges.”
In case you were wondering, the answer was “no!”
Last year I picked a phrase I heard Dr. Phil use one time, “No matter how flat you make a pancake, it still has two sides!” Seriously, the kids had to weave that into a conversation with a grown up? Yup. The winner? Izzy. She used it in a book report over the book Swindle
when the protagonists had to break the law, but for a good reason — her 6th grade teacher was there, so it counts. Well done, Izzy, well done.
This year the word is REMISS.
I mean, THAT is a great word.
Think of all the real-word applications. “So sorry, I have been remiss at feeding my fish and, thus, it has perished.” “Excuse me, but I have been remiss in informing you that I need a ride to soccer practice tomorrow.” “Mrs. Smith, I fear you have been remiss in giving me that grade I deserve.” Okay, maybe not that last one.
Or maybe the example I just used moments ago when talking to Izzy, “I have been remiss in telling you that this year’s word is… remiss.”
Nevertheless, my kids will be out there looking for reasons to use the word REMISS. Watch out, they could be looking for you! So, try not to judge them too harshly when they point out that you have been… well… remiss.
