Thou Shalt Not Kill

As most who know me are aware, I’m not a very religious person however “Thou Shalt Not Kill” seems to be a basic human principle that humanity should be able to live by.  Today another abomination chose to ignore that principle.  Not only did this abomination ignore that basic human concept but ignore it by targeting children.  Young children.  Children who woke up this morning excited it was Friday.  Children who are celebrating Hanukkah or counting down the days to Christmas.  Children who had hopes, dreams, fears, friends, ambitions, and feelings.  Children who had families.

This was a tragedy that resonated across the nation and the world.  You didn’t have to be a parent to feel this pain this was a pain that screamed out into the Universe and embedded itself into the collective consciousness of all who see children as a gift to our future.

I know this next paragraph will likely make me unpopular but the talk about stricter gun control stopping the tragedy frustrates me and, in my opinion, shifts the focus from what happened.  It brings in hypothetical situations and calls upon data that is still being fully vetted.  I’ve heard everything from handguns were used to fully automatic weapons.    While I agree that as a nation we can certainly look at our current gun control laws and measures, I think the arguments offered today ignore one basic fact.  If you have delved so deep into the darkness that fills you that your plan includes shooting elementary school children (kindergarteners even) I somehow doubt that doing it with a gun that you shouldn’t have is going to be considered much of a deterrent.   This  horror did not have to shoot these children.  By all accounts he chose to take his own life.  He could have shot his mother and then taken his own life.  Yes, the children would have been beyond traumatized but they would have still been alive.  This was not an afterthought.  This action was part of the monstrous plan hatched within a deranged psyche.   Today is a day for grieving and processing.  We can discuss could haves, should haves, and would haves on Monday.

As a parent, I spent most of my day alternating between fighting tears and fighting the urge to drive to my children’s school and demanding to see them.  Intellectually I knew they were fine, I knew that they were probably not even aware of the situation that was holding thrall over a nation full of adults.  Emotionally I just wanted to reassure myself that they were safe, happy, and feeling secure.  How long will it be before the surviving children from the affected school feel secure again?  School is supposed to be a safe place.  For all the bullying that may take place or the childhood stress they might feel, for the most part children feel like school is somewhere that outside forces can’t touch them.   It is their own little community and that community has now been ripped apart in the most base fashion.

I don’t have the answers to this and don’t even know if this raving had a point, I just know that as I tried to explain this to my children this afternoon that my sense of frustration and sadness continued to increase. 

Children.  Parents.  Friends.  Family.  And Strangers.  This is another event which most of us will be able to remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news.  I wish I had more than condolences and empathy to provide the family and community in Connecticut.  I can only imagine the pain they are feeling and the pain that is yet to come.  The thought of one of my children being hurt rips into me so deep that I’m surprised it doesn’t become a physical wound.  The thought of one of them being killed and killed in such a senseless, despicable, heartless, violent, and cowardly manner almost paralyzes me.  I wish I could gather the community and embrace them, assuring them that the collective “we” will support them and be with them during this time.  Ideally I wish there was a way to heal the pain.

Going forward there are many questions for the families and the nation to address, some critical and some trivial.  Right now, for me, I hugged my kids a lot and told them I loved them more than I normally would.   I’m also grieving for those who won’t have the opportunity to hug their children again.

Really, you would think that Thou Shalt Not Kill would be the one rule we could all follow.

Winter Wonderland

As you may have heard we’ve been having some snow.  Some areas got less snow and some areas got more.  We are definitely in the more area.

The boys have been out of school all week and have had a lot of fun playing in the snow, playing LEGO, playing on their computer, reading books and being creative.  We have probably had about 18 inches of snow fall, but a small amount melts every day and get tamped down so while it is still pretty deep outside there seems be just a little over a foot on the ground. 

Today the boys went out and came back inside in a relatively short amount of time because the snow was so deep it went over the top of D’s boots and his feet got cold.  When I went out the snow was over the top of my boots and well up my leg so I wasn’t too surprised that they didn’t stay long.  The depth combined with the fact that the snow that came down today was extremely fine and dry so that they couldn’t make a snowman, which was their goal, made it inevitable that they’d look for something else to do.  I think tomorrow I’m going to give them paper cups and they are going to make snow castles and pretend to have a sno-cone stand. 

A few photos of our little winter playland

    

 

On the first day it snowed we went over to the “sled hill”.  D decided he needed to bring some snow home with us.  Apparently it was different than the snow at our house.   

They actually stood still and let me get a photo of them when I asked.  Yea!

   

I love it when the trees are covered in snow.  That big white are in the middle is a road.  Really.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the last day of snow with rain coming mid-morning. Then we get to deal with slush and flooding.

It was sure fun and pretty while it lasted though.

Tale of a cake

Most people know that I normally start obsessing about my sons’ birthdays in June.  By August I have everything planned out and from there it is just a matter of buying stuff, making a test cake, making the real cake, and having a party.  Last year, that system didn’t quite happen and this year there may as well not even have been a system. 

I’ve decided to blame it on the fact that the boys’ birthdays are so close to the beginning of the school year, and that’s my story.

This year K and I couldn’t agree on a location, a theme, or a cake.  Now, when I say “agree” I don’t really try to influence things too much beyond we can afford it and I can make that cake.  If we meet those criteria I’m good.

This year, meeting those criteria wasn’t as easy as it sounds.  We finally settled on a place, after I begged them to break the rules and allow us to start the party one hour earlier than they are supposed too.  We are going to one of those bounce house places, but it is a more grown-up party where they blast music, turn the lights down, give everyone glow bracelets, do a laser show on the walls and ceiling, and generally allow for something a little different than just the normal party. 

Once we had the location and time decided, we had to invite people.  This should be the easy part.  Not in my house.  See, K has lots of friends, I just don’t happen to have any of their phone numbers or a way to contact them.  Since you can’t hand out birthday party invitations at school unless you invite the entire class (Not everyone in life is going to like you.  You’re in 4th grade, suck it up kids.  Sorry, personal rant.) we couldn’t just invite them at school.  For three weeks I sent a paper to school with K to get phone numbers of his friends so that we could call and invite them.  In three weeks he managed to get two phone numbers.  One to a friend whose number I actually already had and one that wrote so poorly that neither K nor I could make out what it was.  We tried 4 different phone number combinations of what we thought it was before we got an answering machine that he thinks was right and left a message.  We didn’t hear back.  So thank goodness K has a lot of cousins up here or it would be just him and his little brother at the party. 

Next came the cake.  One part of me loves that K and D think I can make any cake they can imagine.  The other part of me has to remind them that I do not posses any artistic talent and we need to be realistic.  He started off wanting a Coruscant cake from Star Wars.  For those who don’t know, Coruscant is a city done in soft tones with mile-high skyscrapers.   Moving on.  Next he wanted a Tatooine cake.  I can do that.  Desert setting; adobe, domed buildings.  Okay, I’ll have to practice but that can be done.  Of course then he wanted me to make a land speeder and an exact replica of Owen and Beru’s dwelling.  Maybe not.

Next was a present cake.  YES!  Easy, easy, easy.  I can whip that up in my sleep (and considering the time of night I normally make cakes that would be helpful).  Unfortunately, I had to open my mouth and make a suggestion from my Mom (thanks Mom) that instead of a present cake we have gummy worms crawling out of it.  Somehow in K’s brain that became gummy worms crawling out of a planet, or asteroid, to be more accurate a la the Millennium Falcon in Empire Strikes Back when Han et. al. escape by flying into the asteroid field and land in a cave only to later find out it was the mouth of a giant worm.  Once again, I’m not sure how to do that.  Especially with only 48 hours notice. 

Finally, somehow (I’m not sure how) that became a planet/asteroid shaped cake (ball pan), with chocolate frosting, covered in crushed up Oreos, with gummy worms crawling out of it, and Star Wars cupcake picks fighting off the worms.  I have no idea what to call it, but I’m positive I can make it.

Now I just have to talk D out of the cake he wants.  A skyscraper with two Peregrine Falcons and a their nest of eggs.

Since I haven’t blogged in forever, here’s a couple pictures of the boys at the pumpkin patch.  Maybe I’ll write about that before Spring.

Fun in the Sun

Okay, so that blog title might be a little optimistic.  With the summer we’ve had it would more appropriately be titled “Fun in the not rain” however the day was over 65, I’m pretty sure the bright, shiny ball in the sky was the sun, and there weren’t any rain clouds so I’ll take it.

By the way, I’ve given up trying to catch-up the blog.  That obviously isn’t going to happen so the choices are never blog again (since with that mindset if I don’t catch-up I’ll never post again) or just start from today.   

This weekend the boys, my Mom and myself headed to Northwest Trek.  We had always heard how fun it was but had never been there (due to the fact that it is an almost 2 hour drive to the middle of almost-nowhere).  We spent about 4 hours there and didn’t see near all 700+ acres but we did have a lot of fun. 

I always amazes me that my kids, who can run around for hours on end outside at the house, run out of energy after about 4 hours at places like this.  I need to figure out which part exhausts them so I can use it at home.

Northwest Trek has a number of very open looking exhibits, but the main attraction is the tram ride through a free roaming area.  The ride is 50 minutes long and while the boys were very enthusiastic for the first 20 minutes, the middle 20 minutes weren’t as thrilling.  I think because we were seeing fewer animals towards the middle of the trip, riding on the tram had lost it’s thrill and the slow rocking motion of the tram was a little too relaxing.  During the last portion some more animals came into view and they perked back up. 

I have to say I was a little worried about the tram ride because the free range area is 400+ acres, some through forests, and there is no guarantee that the animals are going to want to be on exhibit.  There are plenty of places for them to hide if they don’t want to be seen.  The driver/guide said that we saw every animal in the free roaming area, including two moose.  According to him (whose word I’m taking with a grain of salt) there are people who ride the tram 3 and 4 times on different days and never see a moose as they are the animals most likely to hide in the woods.

It was hilarious how accustomed to the tram the animals were.  As we left the tram station a caribou started walking right in from of the tram and didn’t seem to be in any hurry to move over, obviously not at all concerned that something could happen.  Several of the animals we passed, including a moose, a bison and a big horn sheep, were literally lying on the edge of the tram road.  Had it been allowed you could have stuck you hand out of the tram and touched them as you went by.

Our driver/guide was a little crotchety, but also amusing and knowledgeable.  I was never sure if I was going to be annoyed by his tone of voice or fascinated by the new fact I learned, none of which I remember right now.

After the tram ride we walked around and saw black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, foxes, lynx, bobcat (so they say, we couldn’t find it), cougars, raccoons, river otters, fishers, wolverines, coyotes, badgers, beavers (the boys favorite), a golden eagle and a bald eagle.  There was also a snowy owl and some other animals we could have seen but by this time the boys were tired and even the prospect of seeing “Hedwig” wasn’t enough for them to walk down the path. It was a close call but in the end going home won. 

I have a love/hate relationship with my camera.  Some of the photos turned out very nice, while others, which I thought should have been easy shots, turned out horrid.  The boys also had my camera for quite a bit of time so I have a number of shots that look like this…

along with shots of trees,  my derriere (which no, I’m not dumb enough to post), the inside of the tram, and, when the little one had the camera, photos of every sign in every exhibit.  Not the whole sign or a necessarily in focus sign, but photos of the signs none-the-less.

Here are a few random photos from the day.

I think I’m going to save this one until his first date and then make a poster size print to hang in the living room.

Gorgeous lake in the free roaming area.  View from the tram station.

A bison (I know, like you didn’t know)

A moose.  That shadow you see is the shadow from the tram.  That is how close we were.

A caribou, aka reindeer.  Aren’t those antlers spectacular?

Everywhere near the exhibit that the boys went this beaver followed them. Thank goodness they don’t have an adopt-a-beaver program or I’m sure the boys would have begged to bring it home.

It’s hard being a wolf.

K trying desperately to escape his brother’s paparazzi-like stalking

Bald Eagle (I know, again like you didn’t know)

Tired kids.  Why can’t they sleep like that at home.

Overall it was a long drive and I’m not sure it is somewhere I’d want to go more than once a year but it was fun to see those animals so close and it was great to walk around in the sun and just have fun.

Next week my in-laws are here and rumor is we are painting the house.  At that point I will be known as the ‘daughter-in-law who slacks off and doesn’t help’ since I will be working all day and then have Cub Scout Twilight Camp in the evening with the boys every day next week.  The theme is Frontier Days and it should be a lot of fun.  The boys can’t wait and K got very excited when he learned that in addition to archery, which they do every year, they will get to fish.  Truth be told, I am excited too.  As tiring as it is watching over a group of boys I love seeing how excited they are and watching them learn things and gain confidence.  K just heard about the theme while were out shopping tonight and he can’t wait to yell “YeaHaw” all week along.   Maybe I’ll let him borrow my cowboy hat one day.

I am the Walrus

For the past few weeks K’s class has been working on a report for their end of the year project.  All of the third grade classes pick a habitat and then each child in that class is assigned an animal within that habitat.  The kids then have to draw a picture, write a report and build a 3-D model.  The report was surprisingly extensive with the kids having to look up and note facts in 4 different categories and then write a full report including outline, rough draft, table of contents and final draft.  K’s report got off to a rough start as he has a hard time getting his thoughts from his brain to the paper, but even the teacher commented that once he got started on it he did great with each section’s rough draft needing minimal if any corrections.

K’s class had an ocean theme and he was assigned the Walrus.  I now know more facts about the Walrus then I every cared to know.   Since the first day of school, way, way before he even knew which animal he was going to have, K was determined that it was going to be built out of Legos.  K built a really rough model out of the bricks we had here, then J helped him refine it.  Thank goodness for a Lego store nearby that we could drive to and pick-up individual bricks, otherwise it would have been the Technicolor Walrus.  I guess we could have said it was a tribute to the Beatles. 

Here is K’s finished Walrus.   I have no idea why it has a white mark on its chest.  It was never explained to me.

    

Wednesday was habitat night where the families came in and toured all three classrooms seeing the fun projects.  Some of the things the kids did were amazing.  But prior to that night, some of the other students and faculty came in to tour the classrooms during school hours.  Monday K came home all upset because the girl next to him had a Great White Shark and everyone wanted to learn about it and only a few kids were able to come ask him questions before their time was up.  Only my son would be upset because he didn’t have enough public speaking time.

Each of the classrooms was decorated to match their theme.  The boys and I had even snuck away to help K’s classroom decorate the week before.  There were fish hanging from the ceiling, a drawing of the different levels of the ocean on the chalkboard, shells and other sea paraphernalia placed around the room and a jellyfish forest which for whatever reason I think is really cute.  The boys and I may have to make a jellyfish forest this summer as a project.

K and his Walrus

K’s Walrus drawing

Jellyfish Forest.  You can’t see it very well in this photo but they have long tails of curling ribbon handing from them.  There was another forest hanging in a different corner of the classroom but I can’t find a photo of it.

 

K reading his report to D and D pretending to listen.

Overall it was a very fun project and I’m proud of all the hard work that K put into it.

Graduate

Okay, from Pre-K so not really but D was still proud of himself. 

J, K, myself and my parents all attended D’s pre-K graduation last weekend.  I thought it was going to be about 45 minutes but it lasted 1.5 hours.  K did a great job sitting while waiting for his brother’s turn.  D was over with his class and how they kept so many kids from running amok for that amount of time I’ll never know.

While D’s class only had 12 people in it, all told there were probably 175 kids going through Graduation.  About halfway through I handed K my phone as I could tell he was getting antsy.  I figured for my high school graduation (all 600+ of us) we had walkmans and game boys so it made sense to me that K could use my phone during his brother’s graduation.

D was excited for graduation because it was going to be on a ‘big, tall stage that you need steps to climb up on”.  We then found out that they were streaming the ceremony live on the internet which at least explained his comment that he was going to be on TV.  In addition to the live video streaming they showed the ceremony on a big screen behind the kids.  D was so excited that when I asked him about it later he told me he forgot to turn around and look.  I have feeling it was more they were told not to turn around and look rather than he forgot but oh well.

D did a great job.  He was decked out in a black and red striped shirt, black pants and bright blue dinosaur rainboots.  What can I say, his rainboots where his signature look this year.  This is his second pair (you might remember the spider ones) and I just noticed this afternoon that the dinosaur boots are coming apart.  D pointed out to me that the top was pulling away from the sole and noted “I think that is why dirt and water are getting in my boot”.  I told him he had to wear his tennis shoes now, although I think that really translates into I need to go buy him new tennis shoes now since I’m pretty sure the ones he has are at least a size too small.

Speaking of shoes, I took K shoe shopping as his shoes were too small and he is almost into men’s shoes.  Noooo.  He’s not even out of elementary school.  I finally found a pair of size 7 boys shoes that fit him which was fortunate.  I’m learning that most boys shoes don’t come in a size 7 (the largest is a size 6) but the smallest men’s shoes come in is a size 8.  Apparently he’s supposed to go barefoot for 6 months or some such craziness.

Back to graduation, D had already warned me ahead of time that he didn’t want to sign the song.  I told him he didn’t have to sing but he did have to stand quietly.  So here is a picture of D not signing.

The expression on his face makes me giggle.  You can’t really tell from the photo but he is standing plank straight with his arms at his sides.

D received a diploma and he got to bring home his cap.

I say his because right after this photo the mortarboard part of the cap came off.  I was right below him in front of the stage and he looked down at me and said “really, I don’t know how that happened”.  It was a mystery, truly.  The Director did a quick swap with someone else’s cap and everything moved on.

Now D has to wait 2.5 months before he gets to go to Kindergarten.  I just hope Kindergarten is ready for him.

D Turns 5!

D’s Birthday party was a quiet affair with his cousin’s and a few friends.  Most of the guests ended up being sick and unable to attend but everyone who was able to come had a great time.  Because D’s birthday is right around Thanksgiving we decided to wait until December to have his party.  It made the house extra festive to have the Christmas tree up during the party.

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After much deliberation and last minute mind-changing, D decided to have a Buzz Lightyear cake.  That was about as far as a theme went.  We did have some foam sheriffs badges that D made for everyone but for the most part it was a play-date party with no real structured activities just people coming over to play. 

D received lost of Legos for his birthday which thrilled him.  The boys never seem to feel they have enough Legos, despite the approximately 100,000 that we already have in our house.

The birthday boy all decked out.  One of the best presents I ever received.