me & my nana

This picture is typical Nana.  Multi-tasking (paying bills, chatting on the phone, loving on children, probably just cleaned the house and sewed some clothes and did the dishes too) and doing everything faster & better than I would do each thing one at a time.

And good lord, my face was chubby.  :)

special day

Yesterday was my Nana's birthday!

I wish I could throw her a party like I did last year (read that here), because it was so much fun. 

I guess I better start planning a HUGE bash for her 100th, in case (fingers crossed) we get to celebrate that with her!

But we celebrated her 91st with lots of singing, some gifts, and some CAKE.

Still so much fun.  I love my Nana.  :)

I told her in the card I gave her that I hope to God when I am 91 years old, that I will look & act & feel half as good as she does.  And I totally meant that.

Later that night, me & the girls watched the video we had made her last year (which almost didn't happen, save for the Christmas miracle...and a lot of hard work). 

It makes me happy, as does my Nana.

pictures & funny girls

This post is supposed to be about the girls' parent/teacher conferences at school, but then when I went looking for photos, I found a bunch from our "christmas photo shoot" (with our own personal, fabulous photographer Andrea Flow) and I wanted it to be about that too.  And so it shall (be).  :)

These girls are very, very sweet:

And taking pictures of them is always hard, but fun. 


It's hard because when I want them to all smile, they frown.  When I want them to be silly, they get mad.  When I tell them to look that way, they look this way.  When I tell them to act natural, they look posed and strained.


But it's funny because when you're able to capture them just being themselves, the results are always (in my opinion) winners:

Ah, good times!  Those are my favorite.

I couldn't exactly use this picture for our christmas cards, but I sure wanted to!  Don't know why I love it so.

Anyways, back to the girls & school. 


I expect certain things when I have appointments to meet with their teachers....I expect that they'll tell me they are good, they try, they are generally nice girls.  I even expect to hear about a few behavior issues here or there.


But I was so happy & proud at the conferences I had this week.  I couldn't stop smiling, and it made my whole day.

Arissa:

The facts: She led her own conference and showed me all her work and her report card.  Her grades are great but what really impressed me was her "plan" she had written out which identified her "problem" areas (such as they are) and how she plans to improve.  She sounded so self-assured and confident!

The funny:  When we were discussing a paper with her teacher which we all agreed could have had a more developed ending, she tried to call me out by saying "I had to finish it like that, because my mom was watching Oprah and yelling at me to go to bed!".  :)  Her teacher and I thought that was pretty funny.

Mallory:

The facts: She is the one I kind of expected I might hear about being too "chatty" in class, or god-forbid even bossy.  But her teacher only raved about her and how bright she is and that she strategically placed her next to someone she wouldn't be too chatty with, and in fact her seat-mate is a little less motivated than her so she keeps him on task.  She is helpful and respectful and well ahead of the standards for mid-year second grade.

The funny: The teacher was so impressed with a certain project that was given to the kids just for fun to supplement what they had learned in class, and how thorough Mallory was.  The reason that's funny is that when Mallory told me the project was "just for fun" and didn't even have to be turned in, I thought she was making it up and I was bound and determined to teach her good work habits and planning and I made her work on that thing bit by bit, even meeting with an actual police officer and writing a play about it!

Mariah:

The facts:  She is eager to learn, takes on extra responsibility, is so friendly and kind.  Her grades are perfect, she catches on quickly and likes to help those who are not as quick.  She loves to write and always goes above and beyond what's asked.

The funny:  Her teacher likes her new glasses.  wtf??  She doesn't HAVE glasses!  Apparently for the last two weeks though, she's been wearing a pair daily that I had gotten her from the Dollar Tree to play with.  I'm pretty sure they're reading glasses which means seeing beyond her desk must have been a challenge, but she stuck with it!  Silly girl.  Also, her teacher showed me this paper that Mariah wrote, which had me laughing out loud the entire time I read it:

My great-grandma is very special. She is ninety years old.  She is very beautiful.  She sounds rich, she gets money from the government.  She is careful with living creatures and will always help.  She is stronger than me.  She has many friends, and is curious about dead things.  She has two children.  Her daughter died but her son is still alive and helps her with her garden work.  She says she is ugly, she has wrinkles.  She also lives alone.  She is very special to my whole family.  She is about to die...I am not sure, but I think.  She likes having family over.  She likes to eat spaghetti.

Oh my goodness.  :) 


Oh and one more thing, which really amazed, delighted, and shocked me:


All three of them excel in math.  It comes easily to them.


How that's possible is beyond me, but I'm just thankful.

Nana Can Do ANYthing....

...even re-create the experience of a camp-out when there's a rain storm outside.

Well, she created the best part about camp-outs: s'mores.

We all enjoyed the warmth of the fire, and the girls toasted marshmellows and sandwiched them between graham crackers and chocolate bars (which Nana just happened to have on hand---one of the many differences between her and me, and one of the many things I love about her. I never have anything "on hand". Most often, her house is my extended pantry).

Mmmmmm... Arissa was multi-tasking....enjoying the warmth, savoring the yummy-ness, and figuring out the new cell phone that Grandpa got her: The only bummer was having to go back out into the storm to go home!

Nana's 90th

Today is my Nana's 90th birthday. I can't believe she's 90 (they grow up so fast). I can't believe that at 90 years old she still keeps house better than me and has more energy than me. I am so thankful for her. She deserves the best birthday gift that money can buy, but instead we did our best to throw her a sweet, simple little party.


She didn't want a party. She didn't want me to make a fuss over her, she didn't want people to feel obligated to come to a party for her with all the other stuff they probably had going on.



She told me if I threw her one, I'd be in trouble.



But I finally convinced her that I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I did nothing, and couldn't we just have a few family and close friends over? She agreed.




So I set to planning. But for those of you who don't know, I've had a weird couple of months since October, which made focusing on this party and planning it kind of challenging. Yet, it was really important to me so I was determined.



I wanted to have party favors to hand out, so I got some fancy little frames and put a picture of my grandma in her youth:










And then tried to wrap them up prettily. I don't know why, but I like the look of plain packages, tied with string. I added doilies and a paper rose in an attempt to make it look kind of vintage:








We played "Dee Bingo", which was my version of Bingo but with facts/info about my Grandma and the year/times in which she was born. I used paper butterflies for the space markers:







She received some lovely gifts and sweet cards which she was surprised and delighted by:








My girls all wrote her a little note and read it aloud (Mariah got the jitters so I read hers for her):








We handed out the party favors and everyone seemed to really like them...even the younger guests (which I thought was so sweet):






Nana took time to visit with each of her guests, and she was just so happy that people came to celebrate her. She and Jesse's grandma have a special friendship which is so sweet it makes me teary:








And our gift to Nana (besides a pretty mini rose plant) was a video. We love making those. :)

This one though is counting as my "christmas miracle" of 2010. This is why:

As I said, I began working on it back in October, those "weird" months I mentioned previously, during which it was hard for me to even function. I snuck over to my Grandma's and pulled out all her old photo albums and took pictures of each of her old photos. That way I had them all available digitally so that not only could I use them for this birthday project, but they're now all safely on our computer, backed up in cyberspace so that even if all of Lemon Grove goes up in flames for some reason, those pictures are safe and sound.

About a month before the party, I started putting our video together. I adjusted each and every picture in Photoshop. Some of them I just had to crop or resize, some had rips or tears or discoloration so I had to do more work to fix them. I picked the songs, I organized all the photos, and by December 6th, I had it all ready to be burnt to a dvd. Then a funny thing happened.

Our computer froze, shut itself down, and wouldn't turn back on. When I tried to turn it on, all I got was a blue screen telling me it was "dumping physical memory". Which is greek to me, but did not sound good at all.

So Jesse decided the best (and probably only) option was to wipe out the entire computer, and re-install all of our programs. That alone took 48 hours. The photos were all safe, because we had them on an external hard drive. But all the work I did in fixing/cropping them had to be re-done. And then the video, which had been finished, had to be completely re-done. I was heartsick and panicked and stressed. That video was not only a big part of the party, but it was our GIFT to my grandma. Plus I worked really hard on it. I had a huge ache in my chest the whole week until the video was re-created and burnt to a disc so I knew it was safe and our computer couldn't destroy it again.

I spent 6 hours on Tuesday night re-doing everything. Come Wednesday morning, it was done and burnt and the ache in my chest was gone. I even had time to watch it on our tv and decide to make a few more changes which we did on Thursday and burnt it again and had it in time for the party.

So this is our tribute to my sweet amazing Nana (and my 2010 Christmas Miracle):

On Thursday I left work early, M&M left school early.

Not cause anyone was sick...

Not for a special spur-of-the-moment trip to the beach (we would've brought Arissa for that, of course!)...

We had our (their) first encounter with:

dunh dunh dunnnnnnnnnn....

the dentist

(picture that said in a deep, scary voice, and the text in a big green slimey font)

:o)

We waited a long time before we were seen. So long in fact, that I had just gotten up to walk out and change dentists when they finally called our names. But then they were super nice and gentle with the girls, so my anger dissipated.

Nana came along:

When the dentist walked in and looked at what was waiting for him in his patient chair, he said "I'm good, but I'm not that good"...

Guess he wasn't up to two patients at once. :o) Maybe if he WAS, the wait time would be shorter!

Anyways, yes this was M&M first dentist appt, and yes they should have gone in much sooner.

But insurance companies being what they are, it didn't happen till now.

The girls were excited. I was scared. They have very low pain-tolerance levels.

If brushing their hair causes screams of pain and torture, how well could a trip to the dentist go?

Especially when the free dental screening at school had revealed that Mallory had 8 possible cavaties in that little sassy mouth of hers.

But! Never ceasing to amaze me, they loved it.

They loved it, and they got glowing reviews from Mr. Dentist.

Mariah = 0 cavaties.

Mallory = 1.

None and only 1! I was so glad.

Mallory, however, was dissappointed. She was so looking forward to getting lots of "metals" on her teeth like her friends. :o)

Mariah thought the "chair that went up to the sky" was awesome (and quite comfortable):

Mallory was fearless (I should have known better than to worry about her).

Here she is telling Mr. Make-Us-Wait-Forever: "Come on, dentist, hit me with your best shot!":

Mallory, show Mama how pretty the dentist made your teeth:

working on....

This past week I've been soooo busy at work.

Nothing to do with my actual job though. :o)

I've been working on a project for my Grandma:

I'm typing up the memoir that my Grandpa wrote (he died in 2000, a month before Arissa was born).

I've spent every spare second (before work, on my breaks, on my lunch...) working on this thing, and I've been having so much fun (even though my hands ache after 30 minutes of straight typing).

It's fun because it's like a history lesson...about how things were in 1919, how the Great Depression affected my Grandpa and his family, and about WWII as well. But mostly it's fun because as I type it up, I can hear my Grandpa's sweet voice---but not in the delusional-hearing-voices kind of way. I mean in the way he's written it, I can remember the way he used to talk, which I've forgotten. I do wish though that I could have been working on it while he was still alive, because there's a lot of things I would like to ask him follow-up questions about, or things I would like to have him explain further. But something is better than nothing.

And the best part is reading about how he met my Grandma and how they got together. I just love it. I've told my Grandma that if she leaves me nothing else when she dies, the one thing I do want is the box of letters she has that my Grandpa wrote to her from world war II. I asked her once to let me see them but she said they were private, and that I could look at them all I want when she's dead and gone and I can't tease or make fun of her. How cute is that.

This is me and my sweet Grandpa...and a super big loaf of bread. Don't know the story behind that. :o)

Friday night we went to the Christmas Dinner @ our church; Arissa brought her friend Vanesa along:

(Arissa had a parade the next morning, hence the hair-do)

Mallory wasn't there because she chose to go to Movie Night at school....they showed The Polar Express & had pizza and popcorn. Mallory loved it.

Then M&M had a girl scout's Christmas program on Monday night. It was too cute:

And then the other night we had a wee celebration for a big occasion:

Nana's 89th Birthday!

We surprised her with a visit. We tried to ring the doorbell and started caroling, but her sweet 89-year-old ears couldn't hear it so we just walked in and sang. :o)

The girls gave her their hand-made cards, and her gift:

A new pair of shoes.

(Why is Arissa sniffing the old slippers? No idea!)

We brought cupcakes that the girls and I had made that morning:

Gathered 'round the table, Jesse presented Nana with the cupcakes:




We sang happy birthday:

Nana made her wish and blew out the candle:

While we got plates and napkins ready, I caught Mallory eyeing the cupcake display....no doubt wondering how she could manage to sneak more than one:

The aftermath:

It was a lovely celebration. We sat at the table and talked about birthdays....the girls love to remind Nana that she's EIGHTY NINE, which she'd rather forget! Every time they say "happy birthday" it's always accompanied with "you're 89!".

I thought it was cute till they started telling me "you're 30!". :O)

Thanksgiving dinner #1:

...was at Church last Friday night!

Mmmmm......

Enough said! :o)

BOO!

So as the previous posts eluded to, Saturday was the Boulevard 'Boo!' Parade.

Though I was still sick, M&M & Nana & I headed down to watch Arissa & the drill team do their thang.

M&M passed the hour we had to wait for the thing to start by doing this:

Nana, of course, had foreseen the boredom that would ensue while we waited for the parade to start, so she brought her " bag of tricks ". Toys, snacks, etc.

We waited about an hour for the parade to start, and once it did, there was so much for the girls to look at and enjoy.

(This one kind of freaked me out):

And finally, the wait was over!:

Those girls, that whole group, is so awesome. You see other groups in these parades, or at other shows, and you think they're really great, and they are. But then these girls come out, sometimes half the ages of the kids in other groups, and they just sparkle & shine and amaze.

Speaking of sparkling & shining....

Jesse was also in the parade! A month ago, he'd had a few drinks and had volunteered to carry the banner for the Sherry's Gotta Dance Drill Team Alumni group. He tried to back out, but Sherry held him to it!

:o)

End of day: