Category Archives: family

holiday

Tomorrow we are off to Aunt Susan’s house to celebrate “Anti-Consumer Day.”

This festive event is always the Friday after Thanksgiving. We gather and play games for much of the day. We do crafts. We jump on the trampoline and look at photos. We eat good food. The one thing we don’t do is shop.

Chris MacMurdo started this tradition a few years ago and each year it gains momentum–the circle of celebrants widens. So my challenge to each of you is to join in the fun. Even if you can’t be with us at Suz’s house, you can be with us “in spirit” as you commemorate AC Day in your own home.

🙂

skate


E skating with her Girl Scout troop friends on her birthday! She had so much fun 🙂
John has accompanied her and her troop each year for their day on the ice–E and John have built many happy memories from this annual event.

halloween


halloween
Originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

Here’s a picture of the family at the local “Trunk or Treat” party. E is dressed as Hermione and C is dressed as a mage from the DragonLance book series. At almost every car C was identified as Harry Potter (even tho he wasn’t wearing his glasses!!). But then he slowly and mthodically explained that he was a mage [note the staff w/the jewel on top–not from Harry Potter].

When the rather dumbfounded parent looked at me for clarification about the mage thing (why is it that no Moms who drive large SUVs in OC know what mages are?), C would then add:

“It’s like a powerful wizard. You know what that is, don’t you?”

manx

Got a postcard from Mom today. Guess she’s enjoying her trip to the Isle of Man.
Thinking of IOM reminded me of Peel Castle, kippers, the Prom in Douglas, St. John’s church, the elevator of Mannanen, Tynwald Day, etc.

Quocunque Jeceris Stabit….

it’s back

Today E got her expander removed. Her expander was a medieval torture device that was wired onto her upper palate. It expanded her upper jaw to make room for her adult teeth to grow in. It undid the damage from years of thumb-sucking. And it cost a small fortune.

Well, today after she got the appliance-thing sawed off (and, yes, I sat in the waiting room cringing at the sound of the saw), she got her whistle back. I’m not talking about the regular kind of whistle that most people do when they pucker up their lips and blow. E’s is the kind of sweet little whistle that blows gently each time she says a word with an ‘s.’ I’d thought it was gone forever, and I really missed it.

But it’s back, and I couldn’t be happier!
🙂

for real?

Sometimes I think my kids aren’t for real. Like twice this week when they’ve been given candy at school and they’ve brought it home to share. E got some candy in her orcehstra class. She got 4 pieces and said the Twix for me (knowing it was my favorite ) and did the same with everyone else’s favorite treat. Today C’s sub gave him dumdums and tootsie rolls. He brought me the tootsie (yum) and figured out which flavor of dumdum that everyone else would most like. As I savored my tootsie roll I thought to myself about all the times I’d been given cookies & candies at school. And I knew that NOT ONCE did I ever bring any home to share with my sibs, much less my parents. The thought wouldn’t even have ever occurred to me. Instead, I stashed away any extras in places where I was sure only I would ever find them.

Yet for my kids, they wouldn’t be able to enjoy such bounty without sharing it with the rest of us.

Can you see why I wonder if: a) C&E aren’t really real children, but are aliens modeled on child characters from 50’s sitcoms, or b) they are deities incarnate?

local

We go to a local music store.

We’ve been customers there for six years or so. The place is crazy with long-haired geeky musician guys–most of whom are still wearing the same favorite rock band T-shirts they loved in high school (and for them high school was in the ’70s). But Jim’s is a totally cool place–wizened rockers included.

Today C’s cello need new fine tuners, two new strings and a repair to a tuning peg (the D string, I think). I cringed when I brought it in. I’d been putting it off for weeks because I didn’t want to have to pay for the fixes.

But Randy, the repair guy, took a quick look and mumbled a few numbers. We chatted a bit about how old the cello is and how much C uses it (which is a lot). He said he’d have it fixed in 2 hours and it’d cost $55 bucks.

How cool is that?
🙂

Q&A

Q: What do you get when you have 6 legs, 3 heads, and a super-size bean bag moving from one end of Verano to the other under cover of darkness?
A: Two very happy kiddoes and a lot of giggling.

PS: The best part was when we met people coming the other way on the path and the kids would ever-so-nonchalantly park the beanbag in the grass nearby and act as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to be sitting on a large beanbag next to a footpath at UCI…

worship

One of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen:
Last night E spread her homework around on the living room floor. She sprawled her own body out in the middle of textbooks, papers, pencils/pens, erasers, etc. As she tapped her toes together while doing math problems, well, it rivaled the most beautiful painting on the Louvre. To see her wholly absorbed in the moment as her pencil moved across the paper, to have her look up at me every once in awhile and confirm a math question. To see the small ringlet curls that had escaped her ponytail, and the way they framed her face.

John, C and E can always capture my complete attention. To me they are the most disarmingly beautiful creatures. Perhaps it is sacrilege to say that I worship them. But I do. I devote most of my life in serving and loving these three people. They are my trinity.

It brings to mind a quotation from Jeffrey Holland that I heard a lot this summer. He said “Heaven just wouldn’t be heaven without my wife and children there.” I agree with him wholeheartedly. But I can also say that, for me, every day _is_ heaven. Because every day I mingle with deity.