Go Ducks!

The game time of 5:00 is pretty much guaranteed to prevent most parents of trick-or-treating aged kids from seeing the game, but ESPN is here in town and the Ducks are playing USC tonight. It's time for a little pre-game Oregon-colored fun, just before getting into the Halloween costume mood!

Ratty Kisses

Introducing... Olivia! Mackenzie gave Asa a rat for her birthday and she picked out little Olivia here. She has very big ears and a very sweet personality, and she loves to give ratty kisses as you can see!

Side By Side

Last week the theatre company that Asa has been acting with had a fundraiser, a Depression-era themed event with an auction, food, and they invited everyone from the theatre to be involved in a talent show. Asa and I did a little song and dance (well, she danced to be exact - some excellent tap footwork!) to a song from 1927 called "Side by Side" I haven't been on a theatre stage in many years, but my little sis and I used to perform this at our grandparents Melodrama theatre when we were kids. So it was fun reminiscing, fun being on stage with my own little theatre hound, and fun having her choreograph our little song-and-dance number herself. I'll have to see if the video turned out and maybe I can post that here as well.

"Oh we ain't got a barrel of money
Maybe we're ragged and funny
But we'll travel along, singing our song
Side by Side"

The Homeschooling Oblong

So I was standing in my brown belt/black belt karate class this afternoon and our sensei (teacher) asked us to form a circle for a drill. Well let's just say that the circle was not exactly circular in shape. It was more of a oblong with rectangular characteristics here and there. The sensei joked that since almost everyone in the class was a homeschooler, no wonder we couldn't form a circle. We all had to LOL at that one.

I was the only adult in the class, everyone else at that particular hour were homeschoolers. And our senseis homeschool their kids. Now I just have to say that I have never been in the company of so many cool teenagers as when I attend the classes at the dojo. Imagine being in a room with 20 teenagers who are all: polite, respectful, engaging, diligent. Exactly the opposite of what you would think teenagers are like, especially if you watch TV or read the newspapers. Where is the surliness, angst, and attitude? While I'm sure that none of these teens are perfect and that they may roll their eyes at their parents or grumble about taking out the garbage, there is much to be said for the wonderful intersection of homeschooling and karate that can turn out such a group.

Even if they can't make a circle.

Two Weeks of Birthday

Looking at my beautiful sparkling now-10 year old girl, the song that always comes to my mind are these lines from Simon and Garfunkle's Bridge Over Troubled Water:

Sail on silver girl, sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way

She's definitely a big shining star in our world. And this year to celebrate turning "double digits" as she reminds us, it took us about two weeks. First of all, she had asked for a kayak (like big brother's) for her birthday. Since an October birthday didn't leave a lot of time for hitting the lake, we decided to give it to her in late September. That left us with a glorious fall day to go up to the water and try it out. This will definitely be a big hit next summer when we can camp a lot more and the kids can both use their kayaks.


Then, her two biggest bros Rob and Rick came into town to visit, along with their wives Kristen and Alicia. I think the only thing better in Asa's mind than having one fun big brother is having three! Especially when they're big enough to turn you upside-down.

So that was birthday celebration number two with our whole family together. She had been looking forward to this for weeks, and keeping Rick's and Rob's cell phones buzzing with anticipatory texts.


Of course, what tenth birthday would be complete without a gaggle of giggling girls in pajamas staying up late and making banana splits? Asa had a sleepover with some of her friends to celebrate.

Then finally on her actual birthday we went to the pet store to let her pick out a pet rat (her present from Mackenzie) and ended up coming home with a new puppy! This is the new family dog Sophie. I guess birthdays don't get much better than this one.

So I Guess It's A Good Sign...

...when your teenage son says to you "Mom, you should write a parenting book. That way other parents or people thinking about having kids could have all the benefit of your wisdom."

After I got done laughing, I thought about it. Trouble is, I don't know what I'd say. Well maybe I do, but it wouldn't be enough to fill a book. When my son was just a baby I remember thinking about how helpless he was, and trying to put myself in his shoes. What if I was in some terrible accident and my memory was wiped out and I had to relearn everything all over again. What if my best friend was my caregiver throughout all of that. How would I want her to treat me? That's how I've tried to treat my kids. And I know my caregiver might sometimes get frustrated beyond all reason, so I hope that my kids can forgive me when I don't get things just right or when I blow a cork from time to time. I always apologize, after all they're my good friends too.

I guess it all boils down to the golden rule. Not enough to fill a book, but I guess enough so that your teenager still thinks you're doing a decent job of things. High praise indeed.

Bye Bye Old Kitty

Hopefully this will be the last time I write something like this in 2009. We had to have our old cat Noggin put down on Monday. He had stopped eating and it turns out he had cancer in his abdomen. He was a stray who came to us 16 years ago from my sister-in-law who had taken him in. Just a feisty 6 month old kitten then, he lived to be an old man of almost 17. Looking through my photos of him, he's always on someone's lap or in their arms. I'll put some more photos up of him tomorrow, but this is the last one I took, right before we left for Washington last weekend, he's sharing a sunbeam with Callie.

For the record, that's two cats, two guinea pigs, and two chickens in 2009. I know it's often natural and to be expected (all were in old age except for Asa's cat Bandit), but it's still hard. Especially since Noggin was one of our first "babies", along with Sabre our dog who passed away two years ago now. The house feels emptier, especially when I sit down to breakfast and Noggin isn't there demanding his lap time.

And If You Worry About Your Kids Getting Addicted to Video Games...

Maybe you should worry more about adults!

Police on a drug raid play a Wii in the raided house for nine hours! Maybe they need to get Wii's for themselves. We have one and it rarely gets used, let alone for hours straight, LOL.

Speechless

Quote from my daughter tonight on the ride home from Karate:

"Mom, don't you think Don't Stop Believing was the best song of the 80's"

And what do you say to that? LOL.

But, I did discover via Wikipedia that she is not alone in this opinion. Though the song by Journey released in 1981 never got higher than #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, in 2006, it was ranked as the 11th greatest song of the list of the 100 greatest songs of the '80s by VH1.

It is the most downloaded song not released in the 21st century of all time in the iTunes Music Store.

And in answer to her question, I'd have to give my vote to U2's Where the Streets Have No Name or X's Burning House of Love

Music From Nature

Both of the kids really loved watching this. I've thought of this many times seeing the birds sitting on the wires, but this composer brought it to life:

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

The Prodigal Cat Has Returned

This last week was worrisome as my cat Patches did another disappearing act while we were camping at Waldo Lake. She's a funny little thing, a stray that adopted us just over two years ago, the rest of the family calls her my "dog" because she follows me around and is totally dedicated to me. She loves to go on walks with our family, and at one point I even tried The Great Leash Experiment, figuring that maybe that way I could take her along with us safely when we got to the busier streets. But alas that was a dismal failure as Patches definitely despised The Leash. Still, as long as I'm in town she has never run away or gotten into trouble, but whenever I leave town I think she starts to worry that I'm not coming back. Despite the fact that while we were camping Wayne was here feeding and petting her, she has this notion that if I'm gone more than 3 or 4 days, she needs to go looking for me. Thankfully, I got her microchipped last year, so when she has gone on her find-Robin missions she has been turned in before (once almost 2 miles from home!)

After several days camping at Waldo I came home to find that she had set out yet again, and this time there was no news as the days went by. So we got out the Lost Cat posters, crossed off the date from the last time she did this and wrote in the new date and set out putting them up around the neighborhood. One thing you can say about the place we live is that people here are extremely helpful and love animals (this is so true that animal shelters in California have begun trucking their excessive animals up here because our adoption rates here are very high). I got no fewer than eight phone calls from separate people, some of whom had spotted Patches, some who had fed her and tried to corral her (she is extremely friendly but is not amenable to being picked up, making rescues tricky), and some who had seen my Lost Cat posters and also seen some Found Cat posters bearing her photo and just called to tell me in case I hadn't spotted those. I have to say, I get a little choked up thinking of so many people going out of their way to be so nice to just another little stray kitty. It sure gives you faith in good folks of the world.

As the days went by though, I was worrying more and my heart felt heavy. The saddest thing for me is thinking of her heading out to look for me. If she was just a cat who liked to wander, I guess it wouldn't bother me, but visualizing her out there trying to find me was just breaking my heart. Eerily, one night I had a dream that I found her, and when I woke up both of the kids said that they had a dream that we found her too (although Asa's dream involved her turning into a mermaid, which definitely didn't happen in Mackenzie's or mine...) That was the day we got the first phone call from someone who was feeding her on their back porch, so at least we knew at that point that she was alive and well.

That phone call came from a little over a mile away, but by yesterday evening she was found closer to home by a family about 7 blocks from here (maybe working her way back home?) and she was under their car. I drove over immediately, parked and called to her and she came running out (yet another reason she's called my dog, she comes when called). So all's well that ends well for the kitty this time. She's home, very hungry, a little skittish but settling back in.... at least until next time.

Touchstones

One of the things I loved most about my childhood was the sense of rhythm and almost of ritual, the notion that things would come around every year that could be counted on. I think predictability is one of our most basic human needs. Some people of course seem to need it so much more than others, and perhaps children more than adults. Having touchstones throughout the year brings a sense of comfort and a respect for the turning of the seasons of life.

One of the things I have most grown to anticipate this time of year is our annual camping trip at Waldo Lake. I know I've probably posted similar photos every year, of us doing similar things - floating in boats, swimming in crystalline waters, kids catching frogs, hiking through woods, the spectacular beauty that is Waldo. Every year the kids are changed, but the landscape is not. The frogs are different of course, but catching them is not. Perhaps the water molecules from last year's lake have gone up into clouds and traveled around the globe and rained in Botswana and the water molecules in the lake this year were a fog bank around Bristol at this time last year, but yet the lake looks the same.

This year we were blessed with a stretch of unbroken lovely fall days. The frogs were plentiful, from the tiny "fingernail frogs", just the size of my pinky nail, to these glorious golden bumpy frogs with sparkling eyes, to camouflaged tree frogs that you have to be eagle-eyed to spot. The water was warm enough for kids to swim and float in, and for me in my wet suit to hang out in (the perks of being a triathlete mom is having the wetsuit that lets me hang out in cold lakes with my kids all afternoon).

The kids brought bikes with them and took off en masse for a group bike ride led by mountainbiking mom extraordinaire, Maria. They suddenly looked 5 years more grown up setting off like that.




Of course, time does have a way of marching on and some things change. For years, we brought our faithful and wonderful camping dog Sabre on our Waldo lake excursions. In his final year, I even brought my Burley trailer and wheeled him on the trails around the lake when he was too feeble to walk. Then he was gone, and I spent a few moments last year crying when I saw people with dogs that looked similar to Sabre.



This year of course we have Callie, and its her inaugural year camping. As a small dog, she has the added perk of riding in the kayak (something Sabre surely would not have done, as fearful of water as he was depite his Labrador heritage). We say she's the "bow wow of the bow" and she enjoyed being ferried over to an island where she could be a wild leash-free dog for awhile without our worrying that she would chase a squirrel into the wilderness and never be heard from again.


One of the other things I value about this camping trip, besides the sense of the earth coming 'round again and the changing of the seasons and spending time with friends who we haven't seen enough of over the summer is that the kids get plenty of time to just be kids. Without computers and games and electronic distractions of any kind, they can spend hours in a happy mob keeping a balloon in the air, cheering each other on. Even my big 13 year old (who often vaccilated between the adult conversation by the campfire and the games of the children) was caught up in the excitement of chasing a balloon through the forest.

















In the end, the trip is really about everything important in life: family, friends, nature, beauty, fun, seasons, rituals, and appreciating the great gifts we are given here on earth. I am grateful for yet another ride around the sun, another season at Waldo.

Birthday Fun

Here's our birthday boy's big 13th in pictures...

Of course, he can't be serious for one moment for a pic with the family


Having cake after playing laser tag with his friends


Yes, he still LOVES hippos, and was really excited to get this cute stuffed hippo from his friend Tiff


Yes, he's a house of cards. Do you get the idea this kid always keeps us laughing?


His wish for his actual birthday was to go bowling with just family. So he's getting his family presents at the bowling alley


And enduring a hug from little sis


He wanted to roll out the first ball right at 4:14, when he became a teenager




















And spent some of the rest of the day making foam sword and shield. I still think he looks very elvish with those ears!

Teenagerhood

I just sat on the couch and hugged my big ol' guy who used to be my little teeny guy, and then my funny little toddler, and then my adorable little boy. Now as of 4:14 this afternoon he's officially a teenager. We measured him against the wall today to find out he's grown 3/4" just since July and he just grew out of wearing Wayne's shoes.

It's been a crazy week, he had a birthday party with friends last Thursday and went laser tagging, then Asa had an audition on Saturday, Wayne and I left the kids with my mom and went to Portland for my triathlon on Sunday, came back to our regular week's worth of stuff, Asa's last swim meet and water polo game of the season and now today the boy turned 13. He wanted to go bowling, just our family, and to roll the first ball out at 4:14 exactly (when I always set my alarm to go off every year on his birthday). Then it was out to Sweet Life Desserts for coconut cream pie, and to see Star Trek at the movie theatre. All in all a great birthday to turn 13 by. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to upload some pics of it all.

Pics from Family Reunion

It's taken me a bit to get these up, but here's some pics from the family reunion...
All seven siblings in one place!

Mackenzie's thinks it's cool that he's as tall as grandma...

Asa showing one of the pics on her phone to Rob, Kristen, and Rick

Dana with Shiner, the very big (and very sweet!) Great Dane.


Wayne and I are looking kinda shrimpy next to these big guys!


Mackenzie and Asa were so excited to get to hang out with Rick and Rob.

Words, Apparently Fail Me

Blogging is a funny thing. It's kind of like a diary, except that you put it out there for public consumption. The really good bloggers are great at dancing a line of witty self-deprecation and a raw self-examination that goes almost, but not quite too far to make us uncomfortable at reading the intimacies of their existence. I don't think I'm one of those bloggers, and maybe the reason is that when an experience in my life gets too intense, it's hard to find the words to share it with family and friends, let alone thousands of random strangers. This is probably why, unlike the incomparable Dooce, you won't ever be reading anything near a birth story on my blog.

So it is that while days and events, blueberry picking and beach trips and funny moments with the kids have flown by for the last couple of weeks, I haven't really been able to write about them. I haven't written a word here since the weekend we spent in Washington with Wayne's family following the death of his sister-in-law. I've wanted to talk about that weekend, which was definitely full of emotional highs and lows, but just couldn't find the words. And then it seemed silly that I couldn't write about it, and then it seemed even sillier to write about some other trivial thing that was going on, so basically I did nothing.

So (deep breath) here goes.

Don't know where to start... Let's see, Wayne's whole family was getting together for a family reunion, camping at Lake Wenatchee, which was planned several months ago. When his SIL died, we knew we would go wherever his brother would be, whether that was home or at the reunion. He decided to go ahead with going to the reunion, so we packed up the camper and headed north.

I can't imagine grieving my spouse's death. It's such a huge loss, none of us wants to think about it. Being with someone who has suffered that kind of loss is hard too because you so much want to make things better and there's really nothing you can do or say that will make that happen. Everything you think about saying sounds dumb because words can only carry so much feeling with them and it's not enough. Still, it was good to be there with his brother and just be with him - sit around the camp fire, laugh at the funny things his dog was doing (one of his 11 Great Danes, this one thinks he's a lap dog), and just be present.

On the total flip side of the coin, the kids and I got to meet their BIG brothers, Wayne's kids from his first (very very young) marriage. And that's really the part that's even harder to write about because it was kind of surreal. I was really nervous because while I know I'm a mom to my two kids, it's kind of different to be a step-mom to fully grown adults (when I don't always really feel like a fully mature adult myself half the time). And the kids had been really excited about this forever and I didn't want it to be awkward or anything. But I shouldn't have worried, because Rick and Rob are really the coolest of guys and Mackenzie and Asa ADORED them, along with Rick's wife Kristen. Being with them was eerie because while of course I knew they'd be a lot like Wayne, they were so much like Mackenzie and Asa in different personality ways and even at one point Rick looked over at Asa and pointed out that they were sitting EXACTLY the same. Like I said, eerie. They were so much fun to hang out with and Mackenzie summed it up with "I feel like we've known them forever even though we just met".

So while we were grieving a big loss in the family, we were also celebrating the growing of our family as well. Which made for a lot of emotional up and down over the weekend. I came back feeling like I needed to sleep for a week and then mentally process for another month or two just to take it all in.

The kids of course aren't old enough to really fathom grief in a big way. But they are able to process joy in the straightforward way that kids do. For days afterward, Mackenzie kept saying "I wish Rick and Rob were here, then it would be more fun" (and I would say "What am I then, chopped liver?" - but of course I can't teach him how to throw a football or any of that other great big brothery stuff like they were doing). And Asa has basically been running up their cell phone bills with phone calls and texts and sending and receiving photos.

And now the little details of life are smoothing down all of that big emotion, so I guess it's easier to process. After all, there's still laundry to be done and dinner to cook and swim meets to go to, and maybe even a few blog posts to write.

Checking the P-Mail

With temperatures over 100 degrees here lately, we've been taking our dog to the dog park late at night when it's actually almost cool enough for her to run around (as I biked home from work at 7:45 on Monday, the thermometer read a toasty 97 degrees!). Mackenzie keeps up a running dog impersonation as Callie runs around sniffing "Yep, I'm just checking my pee-mail. 328 messages! Some of these are from two months ago. I'm getting behind on my pee-mail, must check the inbox more often." The kid cracks me up, it's like living with a full-time comedian (when it's not like living with the bouncing ball of hormonal emotions, that is).

Score One For The Mom

Mackenzie had his phone stolen yesterday out of his locker at the pool yesterday (no it was not locked, yes this is definitely a lesson on how to protect one's more important possessions.) Normally he doesn't leave it in his pocket, but going in with friends he got distracted and, well, that's usually when a thief will get you.

How did I discover his phone was stolen? When the creep who stole it texted me something really nasty that for your sake I won't repeat here. So, given the content of the text message, I figured it was a kid or teen who nabbed the phone and I texted this back:

I have put GPS trace on the phone. Turn in to pool desk or I will prosecute u 4 theft!

Guess what? The phone got returned last night.

Just an FYI for those of you whose kids have cell phones, you can turn the GPS tracking on full time (my own phone I only have on for 911).

Summer's Symphony Synergy

Have you ever seen an almost teenaged boy just begging to go to the coolest concert in town, the one act he HAS to see this summer.... and it's .... Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. I'm LOL because at this age my parents would DRAG me to the symphony but I would've killed to have gone to, say, an Eagle's concert. I'm so glad we all ended up going though. We are so lucky to have this beautiful outdoor venue here, right next to the river and the symphony gave a free evening concert with many gorgeous works from Bizet to Gershwin, culminating in Tchaikovsky. Said boy was wiggling out of his skin with excitement as the climactic moment approached (especially when he spied them wheeling cannons behind the stage to the right of the amphitheatre - there had been just a wee hint of disappointment when no cannons were spied on the stage).

It was a perfect summer's eve and it seemed like the whole town had turned out to fill the amphiteatre. A heron did several lazy circles above the audience (garnering some applause, but luckily departing before the cannons made their grand entrance), the clouds above turned orange then pink, and the beautiful early strains of the Overture wafted over us in time with a warm breeze that set all of the leaves on the tall cottonwood trees in motion. Sometimes life achieves a simple perfection, a synergy of every element from the people you're with to your surroundings to sights, sounds, textures, smells, touch. Goosebumps pucker up on your arms and tears leak out of the corners of your eyes from the sheer joy of it all. Such was our evening with Tchaikovsky. As the band lit into Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever for the encore, we decided to march our way out of the amphitheatre (Mackenzie discoursing on the similarities to ancient Roman amphitheatres and me singing something about being kind to web-footed friends) and down the trail along the waterway.

Joyful Joyful

There is something indelibly sweet about the strains of Beethoven's Ode to Joy emitting from under a door frame, with this perfectly angelic voice singing the words to the hymn Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee....

....coming from the bathroom of course. I will definitely miss these days when my littlest angel still sings in the bathroom.

She's still on a Beethoven kick. Big bro sent her the Ode to Joy ringtone for her phone, and within minutes she was sitting at the piano and picking it out, playing the cellphone version then hitting the keys until she got the right notes, over and over. So I brought out my hymnal and since then she has been chipping away at learning the full chorded version. And of course singing it on the bike, at the pool, over dinner, in the bathroom.