The Family Visits Our New Home

My family drove half way across the country to visit us in our new home. They spent a week with us. Before my Dad walked out the door on the last day he said, “I can’t wait to get home and read the blog post about my visit!”

Talk about pressure.

Well I didn’t get the post up by the time you got home, Dad. I was too busy cleaning the mess you all left trying to get back into our normal routine to crank out a post that fast.

But hey, it’s been less than a week since you left, so that’s not too bad. So here it is, Dad. The Great Big Family Visit post:

Since the day we moved into our new home, my parents have been itching to visit. Did they miss their daughter so much that they couldn’t stand it? Were they interested to see their beloved daughter’s new domicile? Were they just dying to visit the Midwest?

Nope.

They came for one reason, and one reason only:Molly.

Oh sure, they tried to make it seem like they had other motives, but the truth is they came to see Molly. It was totally transparent. Did they shower me, their baby daughter, with love? Did they oooh and ahhh over the house? Did they marvel at the splendor of autumn in the Midwest?

No.

But they did shower Molly with love. They did oooh and aaah over every single thing she did. They did marvel at the splendor of my daughter.

Yeah, yeah. They paid lip service to the former, but it was the latter that they were really here for. See:

Molly was around my parents nonstop and they loved every.single.minute.

I know my parents love me and were glad to see me and my house, but I also know where I rate in the pecking order. And it ain’t numero uno. Not any more.

I can live with that because the person who now tops their list also tops mine!

Basically my daughter ditched me for the week so she could hang with grandma and grandpa, and grandma and grandpa ditched me for Molly. You might think this was a lose-lose for me.

Wrong-o!

Because my parents weren’t the only ones who made this trip. My sister came to visit me too! I love my sister so very much. And she doesn’t ditch me for the cute little pig-tailed princess.So while my parents were loving on Molly, Michelle and I were going shopping and hanging out and doing other sisterly things. All without the munchkin. Kind of a win-win, if you ask me!

Don’t get me wrong, Molly was able to woo my sister away for a quick game of Candyland while I cooked dinner. Her powers are strong. But I always got my sister back.

Ryan was such a trooper. Not much for him to do here. No kids his age. Not a lot of great sights to interest him, but he never complained. He played with Molly, kept himself occupied on the computer and went to see a few local attractions.

I came to realize on this visit that my little baby nephew is not such a baby anymore. In fact, he just turned 14. It doesn’t seem possible! He wasn’t even a year old at my wedding, and now he’s all grown up. *sniff sniff*

We gave Ryan an impromptu birthday celebration while he was visiting. There were presents…

and a cake with 14 candles.

Unfortunately he had to suffer through the pink napkins and silverware and butterfly birthday plates. It’s all I had on hand. Not to macho, I know, but he didn’t seem to mind. I mean who is gonna complain about cake and presents, right?

At least he was surrounded by his family.

Before I knew it the week was over and the family was packing the car to go back home. Grandma and Grandpa got a last little bit of sugar from their number one.

And the whole family gathered for one last photo op. Except for Tony. Because he took the picture.

Mom, Dad, Michelle and Ryan made it home safe and sound and everything is getting back to normal around here. Well almost. Molly informed me today that she loves Grandma and Grandpa more than me.

I get no respect, I tell ya!

Hope you had fun while you were here family! Miss you! Come back soon. Well not too soon. I need time to win back my daughter’s heart.

What the Heck?

Our last house was surrounded by trees. Great big deciduous trees. Trees that dropped all of their leaves every autumn. And all of those leaves needed to be raked and bagged. By me. And Tony. But mostly me.

Imagine my joy when we purchased a home that had coniferous trees. No leaves to rake or bag. I was giddy just thinking about all of the time that I would have this fall now that we owned a home with evergreens!

I just love that word. Evergreen. Break it down: Ever Green. As in NEVER orange or yellow or red or brown. And  never shedding leaves that needed raking. Or Bagging.

Or so I thought.

Much to my horror, Autumn arrived and my beautiful conifers started dropping needles. Lots and lots of needles. Acidic needles that will kill the grass if they are not.…RAKED and BAGGED!

What the heck is up with that? Don’t they understand the concept of EVER GREEN?

I was almost ready to put our new house back on the market, but then I found this:Children who actually thought it was fun to rake and bag. Children who were thrilled at the prospect of doing this oh-so-tedious chore. Heck three out of four of them weren’t even my kids but they willingly raked their ever-lovin’ hearts out and then thanked me for the opportunity!

All they asked for in return was to be able to do this:

And this:Small price to pay  to have someone else do the raking. And bagging. Next year maybe I can even talk them into carrying the bags to the curb. Hmmmm.

Yep, life is good at our new home.

Make New Friends But Keep the Old

Remember that old song from Girl Scouts? Well, since we moved to a new town, we’ve been living it. Our neighbors behind us have seven kids and our next door neighbors have a little boy Molly’s age.

But that’s not all. Now that Molly has started Kindergarten we have met lots of kids in the neighborhood, all within walking distance. It’s a dream come true for our little socialite.

Molly hasn’t always been this social. Sure, she’s always had friends but there was an obvious change in her that happened around five. Friends became extremely important.

She would rather be playing with friends than anything else in the world. It even nudges out princesses. *gasp*

Of course, if her friends want to play princess, she’s not one to argue!

Here’s Molly and her best buddy Max. Max and Molly are in the same Kindergarten class and just love each other. She hasn’t talked him into playing princess…yet!

Molly, Max and Riley. Molly met Riley on the school bus. Who knew that the Kindergarten bus was a place to conduct social networking!

Of course, we can’t forget our old friends. We make the drive up to see them pretty regularly, too.

Here’s Alex, Molly and Abby eating giant slices of pizza on one of our recent trips. Frightening thing is, all three girls finished their slices…and are still as skinny as ever. I just looked at the pizza and my butt grew two sizes. So unfair!

Molly recently “made friends” with a new park in town and has proclaimed it her favorite! There’s a rope tower…

and this wacky thing that you stand on and lean…

…which causes you to spin around in nauseating circles. Only fun if you are a kid. Trust me, I tried it. Definitely not fun!

Molly was a little scared of this slide,and I can’t blame her. Umm, what happened to the sides?

But with a little help from Daddy, she soon had it mastered and is scared no more.

Playing bongos.

Swinging on monkey bars.

And sliding down poles.This park has it all.

I am sure we will be back to visit this new friend very often.

“Hey, Mom! I Wanna Do a Projick!”

Molly loves a good craft projick (project) and is constantly trying to rope me into doing one for with her. Hey, I’m as crafty as the next gal and I really don’t mind but somehow it seems that even if Molly can do the project by herself, I end up doing the lion’s share of the work with the set up, material prep, instructions and clean up.

And Molly hardly ever picks a project that she can do independently, although there are plenty in the craft cabinet.      No, she wants the seriously detailed, difficult projects.

In addition, she always wants to do them at the most inopportune times. Like when I am cooking dinner, or paying the bills.

Oh, I understand what she is doing. She sees me not paying attention to her for 4.5 seconds and remedies the situation by roping me into something that puts 100% of the focus back on her. I’m onto her little plan, but somehow she sucks me in every single time.

Here is one of Molly’s favorite projicks….Perler Beads:These were lovingly given to Molly on her birthday by her sweet friend Avery and her evil equally sweet mother Christine. Just look at them. A five-year-old with teeny tiny beads. I can’t imagine how anything could go wrong with this.

So what you do is take these teeny tiny beads and put them on teeny-tiny pegs to form a design. You do this with teeny tiny tweezers.

You also have to follow a complicated pattern to make the design come out correctly. Well, you don’t actually have to follow a pattern but the ones on the box look so cool that you would be a loser parent if you could not help your five-year-old replicate the design.

Molly has enough patience to place about 20 beads onto the pegboard pattern.

And then she is content to rummage through the beads looking for the correct colors….

while you-know-who finishes the projick.

After about 10 minutes of bead hunting, even this becomes boring and Molly begins to lose interest.So, she wanders around the house playing with other toys and occasionally checks in with me to make sure that I am still working.

Finally I am finished placing all of the teeny tiny bead on the teeny tiny pegs and I call Molly over to inspect my work. 

She jumps for joy….which causes about 20 or so teeny tiny beads to fall off of their respective pegs. So I reapply.

Then I must use the iron to melt the beads so that they all stick together in one big beady design. Another step that Molly cannot do. You know, the whole hot iron thing.

While I’m busy ironing beads Molly grabs my camera and begins to take pictures of herself. Wonder where she learned that???

After the design is ironed/melted it must be placed in the freezer (next to the pumpkin muffins we made during a different projick), so that it can cool down quickly because five-year-olds don’t like to wait for anything.

Soon enough the project is done.

And Molly horses around with it.

Molly poses with all of the Perler Bead projects that I she has done this far.

And I go clean up the mess. I know, I know. SHE should be the one cleaning it up, but the teeny tiny beads need to be transferred from the bowl we had them in while we were doing the project back into a Ziploc bag for storage. Would you trust your five-year-old to do that?

I didn’t think so.

Can You Tell Your Kid Is Stressed Just By Looking At Them?

I can. With Molly it’s easy. It’s all in the lips. She tenses the muscles around her mouth, making her lips into a weird little pucker. Even when she smiles her lips are tense.

Here’s an example….

Earlier this week we went to the park. This is typically a pleasurable experience for Molly and she squeals with glee when she sees the playground equipment from the window of the van.

But on this particular day she had the stress-mouth thing. I have no idea why. There was nothing different about the park, or the day, or the kids. At least I don’t think there was, but every.single.picture. I took made it striking clear that there was something going on. I asked her 10 different ways what was bothering her, but got nothing. Maybe she didn’t really know.

I felt so bad for Molly. Visiting the park is one of her all time favorite activities but she clearly wasn’t having fun. And to top it off her maniac mom was going around taking pictures of all that stress.See of you can tell in these pictures.

Like I said before it’s all in the lips.

Even when she was giggling, the lips were still tense. Can you see it, or is it just one of things that only a mother can tell?

After we returned home, I heated up a bowl of homemade chicken soup, one of Molly’s favorites….(Excuse the make-shift bib—Molly is a sloppy soup slurped!)

And all was right with the world again!