Carbon Footprints

Chad gets a lot of packages. A lot. And most of the senders use gobs of bubble wrap. You'd think that people in the business of frequently packing and sending things would have switched over to materials like puffy stuff by now. But they haven't. So, we have enough bubble wrap in the garage to mail everything else in the garage. Trouble is, I feel guilty even using the stuff. It can't be recycled (although I have been known to stick some in the recycling bin from time to time, in the hopes that it sneaks by the recycling folks and gets melted along with all of the other plastic), and it can't stay in the garage forever. Plus, we just don't send that many packages. That's my defense for occasionally letting the kids tap dance on it.
Even with the environmental guilt, I just can't bring myself to deny my children the joy of popping.

My Blogiversary!

I've been typing away at this little blog for one whole year. It makes me very happy. Scrounging up the time to write it is never easy, but the memories recorded here are more valuable than graded papers or folded laundry or sleep. Without this blog, the stories would have been gone. Lost. I'd have maybe the tiniest, vaguest shred of a recollection about something..... "What was that Trevi said.....?" or "Didn't Clara make up something.....?" But now, instead of fragments, I have a year's worth of vivid details. This blog is a gift. It has taught me how to find small, sweet moments in the most tired and overworked weeks; in the dark days of sibling rivalry and offspring eyerolling; in the mundane.
Everyone says that time flies. It does. No stopping it. But this blog has slowed it down a tiny bit. So Happy Blogiversary to me! What a year, what a life!

What I Found on the Camera

Chad took these today. Aren't they lovely?

Happy Birthday Again

One of these years, we will get our act together and have one, and only one party for Clara, on the actual day of her birthday. Our main obstacle, year after year, has been the fact that on January 11, everyone is still trying to recover from holiday stuff. And, when I say, "everyone", I mean me. It would have been kind of nice if she'd been born in, say, July, when we don't have much going on. But I digress....

Today was the friend party.

You can take the teacher out of the classroom....but you're not supposed to take the supplies. Then again, what's the point of having access to a few dozen bottles of glue if you don't abscond with them for large kid-gatherings at home?

And look how cute the little people turned out. Here you see them admiring my fabulous cake. (There I go, boasting again!)
I admit that this is a bit creepy: smashing the dickens out of a referee. They didn't have a soccer ball piñata, so we decided to ignore the violence factor and just go with it.
Clara created a special scavenger hunt which led her friends to the piñata. She wrote a series of clues and hid them in little soccer ball Easter eggs (lucky for us, The Dollar Tree thinks it's April) which guided the girls around the house. Definitely a highlight of the whole party.

After a few dorky (but time-honored) games, like Musical Chairs, Freeze Dance, and Pin the Soccer Ball on Clara's Foot, we had an impromptu limbo contest. Hot dogs were eaten, presents were opened, candles were blown out, soccer was played, and gift bags were turned into hats by a little brother begging for attention. It was all a party should be.
As Clara climbed into bed, she said, "This was the best party EVER, Mummy."
Success! Yay!

But next year, when January rolls around, can someone please remind me that four hours is a really, really long time?

Cakes!

I think I might be a bit too proud of the birthday cakes I make. But here's the thing – I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm doing when it comes to cake decorating, so I always just wing it. If the cake actually ends up looking like the thing I was trying to make it look like, my head swells, and I begin to walk with a bit of a swagger. And, since I am a complete failure as a domestic goddess, I feel like I owe it to myself to bask in the glow of making a cool cake from time to time.

Like this one, for Clara's 5th:

Or the microphone cake last year (who knew that black food coloring existed?):

For her 8th birthday party (the one with her friends–not to be confused with the "This-isn't-really-my-real-party" that we whipped up on her actual birthday), Clara had requested a soccer theme. She went to town on little handmade invitations and everything:

I was relieved that the cake wouldn't need to be any freaky shape, but I had never once, in my entire life, drawn a soccer ball that looked anything like a soccer ball. Luckily, Chad knew the trick, and I will share it with you: Don't worry about the hexagons; just make the pentagons. So that's what I did:
Isn't that awesome???? It looks good enough to kick!

We rocked the decorations, too. Frugal, funky, and thematic:
Yes, we actually tacked jerseys and whatnot to the walls. Don't worry...I washed them first.

Okay, I'm done bragging now. Back to self-deprecation.

On A Clear Day

Apparently, it's possible to see Yosemite from the top of Mount Diablo. Today was a bit too smazy for that, but it was one heck of a nice view nonetheless.

Even with the thick windows, this still gave me the heeby jeebies.

On lovely weekends like this, it's hard not to wish away the school year.
Hiking got us all talking about camping, and dreaming about the adventures we'll have this summer. A good deal of the talk revolved around marshmallows.

I don't think we'll be summiting Everest any time soon, but we climbed a mountain!
Um, did I mention that there's a parking lot at the top? And that the car managed the 3,849 foot ascent without suffering from altitude sickness? :)

Croccer

After giving it her all on the indoor soccer field today, our little Energizer Bunny was still up for a backyard game of Croccer with Trevi. Believe it or not, Crocs make a decent stand-in for cleats, and their bright colors make it a snap to follow those little feet in action. We desperately need rain in these parts, but, man, are these sunny days ever wonderful!

PS: Thanks for the Crocs, Gomma! Bet you didn't know you were creating a new sport! :)

You had me at, "Othello"

I remember playing Othello with my brothers. "A minute to learn. A lifetime to master," the box claims. I love games like that. Everybody can play to some extent. And you don't have to feel all dumb like you do when you haven't played chess in a while, and you stare at the pieces with zero strategy.

***Just saying this about chess brings back a vivid memory of sitting hunched over a hand-carved, colorful little chess board in the Lima airport. Tara and I were laughing about how haphazard our moves were, and a few curious travelers were gathering around us as we played. Do you remember that, Tara? That memory was hiding way down in the recesses somewhere....

Trevi loves Othello because he likes to look for "diagonal sandwiches". Strategy doesn't concern him, and he's not compelled to make big captures. He just wants to find a diagonal sandwich every turn. A game with Trevor requires endurance, though, since he feels the need to count all of the pieces of each color at the end of every turn. And, since he knows that the teacher in me loves that kind of thing, and the mother in me loves to revel in all he can do, he can guarantee himself a solid 30 minutes of Mummy time when he asks me to play.I just had to include this photo, because it was taken under protest. Trevi's exact words, echoing those of his photo-intolerant (but loving and wonderful) dad, were, "Why do you need to take a million pictures of me playing Othello? I look exactly the same as I did yesterday. I'm even wearing the same shirt!"

Eight!

Clara looks a bit scrunched in this picture, but she was born beautiful, I swear.
Eight years ago.
We stared at her all day long for months.

Here she is now. Not scrunched at all. We don't stare quite as much as we used to, but she is even more fascinating these days.
Among the many things to love about Clara, these are some of the most Clara-esque:

• She has a sly sense of humor, and knows when her wit is over Trevi's head.
• She is Rain Man when it comes to remembering the most minute detail about anything that ever happened.
• She's all about reading.
• She has bizarre, yet effective, organizational techniques.
• She sings through her nose when she's trying to be Hannah Montana.
• She has never met a topic that couldn't be debated.
• She has a mental calendar that never fails.
• She writes snail mail letters to people all the time, and mails them right away.
• She is always the first one up in the morning.
• She tucks her soccer jersey in, and pulls her shorts way up, Pee Wee Herman style.
• She smiles when Trevi says something cute.
• She cries when sad things happen to the characters in books or movies.
• Her dance routines always involve props like couch cushions and tennis racquets.
• Her friends always talk about how funny she is.
• Her teachers rave about how hardworking she is.
• She takes pride in a tidy room.
• Persistence is her middle name. (Her other middle names are Honeybun and Monkey Girl.)
• She is full of imagination, sweetness, intelligence, curiosity, and joy.
• She is like no one else in the world. Our Clara.


The highly professional cake, by the way, was lovingly made by Trevor.
And, in requesting to make the cake, he had only his sister's happiness in mind. No alterior motives.
Other than licking the bowl, that is.

We had a mini shindig at home, complete with the aforementioned cake, and a hideous, birthday-themed ice cream called "Take the Cake", chosen by (who else?) Trevor. The ice cream was yellow-cake flavored, swirled with blue frosting and laced with sprinkles. 50 kinds of yuck.

On the non-yucky end of things, we had special folks to join in the festivities. Grammy and Grampy brought Tyra and Amani, which made for some happy kids.

I was bound and determined to get a nice Grammy and Grampy pic. I think this one fits the bill.
Happy Birthday, Clara! We love you, and we love watching you grow. But don't grow up too fast!

Music Man

Thrift stores, beware! We're working up a collection of plates to hang in a big asymmetrical swoosh on the kitchen wall (wish I could take credit for this cool idea, but it's 100% stolen from Sunset Magazine). As I was experimenting with arrangements this morning, DJ "The-world-is-my-instrument" Trevor was rockin' the dishware. I had envisioned the plate wall as being purely decorative, but perhaps I'll need to find a way to hang the things to allow for maximum resonance.

Speaking of the Fact That We've Been Living Here for Two Years....

...this was us in January 2007, saying goodbye to our beloved first house:
We decided to take the kids with us to the new place.

Fast forward to now (and this has zero to do with moving):
We almost bought Trevi a brand new Lisa for Christmas (one that was not on the verge of being condemned by the Board of Health), but that seemed a bit sad. We didn't want Lisa to feel replaced. So, we picked up a couple of copycats instead.

Sprucing Things Up

You know how, when you move into a place, you immediately notice all of those things that define the decorating taste of the former resident? (in this case: hideous) Then, after some time passes, and you haven't gotten around to changing things, you stop noticing how frightening your place looks?

We have lived with these lightswitch plates for two years. TWO YEARS.
Easiest thing in the world to fix. Cheap, too. But somehow we just stopped noticing the criminal awfulness of them. Then, since there was some rare and glorious free time at the end of Winter Break, Chad did a quick count, ran out to Home Depot, and coughed up the 59 cents or whatever per plate to de-gaudify our entire house. Ahhh. White plastic really is a beautiful thing.

There was a bit more free time to spare after all of that, so I painted the living room. And I discovered that white plastic pales in comparison to Tangerine Dream. Yes, this is the exact same color that we used in the old house. We loved it there, and we love it here.
Trevi helped me rehang the masks, and he decided to add a few of his own creations to the collection. The best part about the three new masks is that you can put them on and dance around to ABBA. Which is what we did to celebrate the orangeness of it all.

The off-white half of our kitchen has been staring enviously at the purple half since last March. So, after washing the Tangerine Dream off the roller and brush, I went green.
I think green can go horribly wrong, but this shade makes me very happy. I painted my little heart out until it got really, really late, forcing me to abandon ship mid-wall. Then, it was suddenly Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and all that.
The can sits on the counter, waiting patiently for my return.

Longer and More Winding

This is where it gets a bit tricky, because yesterday's post was in chronological order from top to bottom, so this sequel should technically be tacked on to the bottom of all that. But I think I'll just keep it up here so it gets its day in the sun.

So, where was I? Oh yeah, we'd finally made it to Sheet Harbour (and a bit beyond that, to the thriving metropolis of Lochaber Mines) after three long days of planes, Maine and automobiles. It was Christmas Eve afternoon, and there was snow all over the place. The poor kids had been chomping at the bit to get snowy all throughout the voyage, and we'd denied them the simple pleasure.... "Your feet will get wet....your hands will get cold...let's wait inside.....please get back in the van...."
Nana and Papa's place was the winter wonderland we'd all been talking about for months, so we weren't about to let a lack of snowsuits keep us penned up (the outerwear was lost in the luggage, remember?) Nana quickly put out the word that we needed some warm kid clothes, and a neighbor went around on his ATV collecting a few bags of boots and whatnot. Love and clothe thy neighbor.
Trevi's get-up was particularly cute. Clara wasted no time getting on with the business of pummeling her brother with snowballs. He was terrified, as you can see:
Angels:
I should actually make note of how fabulously angelic both kids were throughout our entire trip. So now I know that days of peace and harmony are entirely possible (though I may soon have cause to question whether it was all an illusion).

Clara worked up a sweat putting together this snow cheerleader:
By this point, I was completely amazed that no one was complaining about being cold, or requesting a hot chocolate break. We stayed out for hours. I think the kids were channeling their Canadian halves.

Trevi had been talking obsessively all day about cutting down a Christmas tree, so we went on a bit of a tree walk. He found a good one.
Clara followed suit.

There was some sleigh play. I'm not sure what was up with Trevi pulling the tiny red chair....

The snow had turned into rain at some point, but we carried on frolicking until dark. This would have been a great family shot to sum up the happiness of the afternoon, if Clara hadn't decided to smack a big chunk of snow out of Trevi's hand just as we were cheesing.

This was the second year in a row that we were forced to stagger our Christmas celebration as we awaited the arrival of our luggage, and Uncle Bryan (who was stuck in Toronto). Maybe it would be wise to dream of a green Christmas next year.....
The tomato for Santa was Trevi's idea.


It was a good thing we snowed ourselves fully on the 24th, because it rained all night. For the duration of the trip, there was mainly just a bunch of ice with white crust around the edges.

We spent much of Christmas day partaking in one of our favorite Nova Scotia pastimes: Rock Tossing. If you've never tried to jettison the contents of a rocky beach out onto a frozen lake, well, you're missing out big time. Serious fun.

I made the kids pose a few times.

And I can never seem to resist the urge to take one of those "Walk to Paradise Garden" type shots:

Papa had to saw up a fallen tree in the woods. Chainsaws can be fascinating.

Uncle Bryan finally made it, as did our bags. With them came a return visit from Saint Nicholas and a whole new day of gifts, glee, and extended Christmas music listening.

Trevi's old pal, Lisa, got a couple of cat cousins for Christmas.

Clara got some new brothers. The Jonas Brothers, that is.

One of my absolute favorite things about Christmas in Nova Scotia is the view down from the catwalk.

Please indulge me these cheesy shots.....

With Uncle Bryan:

With Kenny and Eric:

With Nana and Papa:

Which one of us looks more like our mom?

'Twas three days after Christmas, and all through the house, adults were trying to get the kids in bed early so we could play Balderdash and Scrabble....

In 2009, I will read my camera manual, so that I can photograph gorgeous moments like this one without making them blurry:

We had ourselves a Merry Little Christmas. Hope you did, too.