Report Card Time

For Melissa anyway. She is doing great! Don't know if I shared that she was struggling. A lot. Such a catch 22. I love that her Kindergarden experience was about the process of learning, however, they had such issues with special needs kids (and I mean some severe special needs) in the room with them that she came out of there with almost no knowledge of letter sounds. So when we moved back to CA, where the standards are far and above where CO is, she walked into a class full of kids who already could read. A little daunting to say the very least. They worked with her a lot in Clayton, but when we moved down here to San Diego she was even more behind. Her self confidence was next to nothing so we invested in Sylvan for about 4 months. And thankfully that was money well spent. It was interesting though, when we pulled her out she was terrified that she couldn't read without Sylvan. But she is caught up to where she needs to be in reading and is doing fantastic in Math and Social Studies. She's the child her teachers love to have. Inquisitive and curious. She pays attention and asks intelligent questions. Go Melissa!

I have to tell you, she has such great teachers this year. Mrs. Dickey is there on Monday's and Friday and Mrs. Budde is there Tuesday-Thursdays. They work great together. Completely opposite of one another, but it's such a seamless blend. They are both great for Melissa. I'm excited to see where she goes the rest of the year. She's one bright cookie.

Melissa goes to Boot Camp

How fantastic is this? Melissa's teacher has arranged for Marines to volunteer in the classroom weekly. It is such a great program. The kids get to have a "hero" in the class who comes to school to play at recess, read with them, and help with assignments in the class. One of the Marines has been deployed to Iraq (with Flat Stanley) and the kids get to e-mail Matthew and also they get to video conference with him. How great is this?

Anyway, this past week has been Red Ribbon week at school and Mrs. Budde managed to get about 15 Marines to come in and do boot camp with the entire school. It was such a blast to watch the kids take direction from these guys! They did exercises and then broke off into groups to discuss good character; how to be respectful, trustworthy, responsible, etc. Here's a couple pictures and a great video of Melissa at boot camp!

Citizenship Award

Melissa's elementary school is really good about recognizing kids for doing great things. Every couple of months they have assemblies to hand out awards for specific character traits that they see in the kids. Melissa got an award for good citizenship because of her great attitude in class and for being such a forgiving friend to some of the kids in class. YAY!

The school also has a "running club" that allows the kids to run laps during recess twice a week. They get a pop-cicle stick for every lap that they run and then they are tallied up. At the assemblies they also recognize the kids who have run based on 5 mile increments. Melissa was given an award for running 10 miles already this year. Not too bad for 10 minutes of running twice a week for 6 weeks.

Miramar Airshow

Holy COW!! We went to the airshow this weekend, in part to celebrate Greg's birthday, and we were mighty impressed! Unbelievable. Without a doubt the best airshow we have ever been to. Check out Greg's Pics on the right hand side. He took some great video. I still can't believe what the F22 Raptor can do. It is an airplane not a helicoptor after all.

Chef Melissa

Melissa's reading has improved greatly! So much so that we purchased her a cookbook. And boy is she cooking! She has made both garlic and cinnamon bagel chips, purple cows (yummy) and Sunday morning she got up and made us some crepes. Yes. That's right crepes. Strawberry to be exact. They sure were good. Somebody needs to come for a visit so she can show off her new found talent!

How DID those kids get so smart?

That is the question.
Austin's guitar teacher came out of his lesson a few weeks ago and says, "Wow. His math skills are phenomenal. In fifteen years of teaching I've never had anyone pick up on the math/theory aspect as quick as he has. Before I can even finish my explanation, he has the answer and is moving along to the next part. You've got one smart kid." Well, duh....
Thursday, I was talking to one of Melissa's teachers and she asks, "So did Melissa inherit her smarts?" They had been working on reading schema and apparently Melissa is the only student in her 8 years of teaching that managed to get text to world concepts within a story. She was floored! Again... well, duh.....

School Started

Well, we made it. School started. Whine.... Austin is now in Middle School. Doesn't seem possible. Honestly. He's only 10. Whine.... And then there's Melissa in 2nd grade this year. Yikes! Doesn't seem like that long ago that Austin was in Miss Milliken's class in 2nd grade. I know it wasn't that long ago. Cause I'm not getting any older!
Anyway, we'll just have to see how this big bad world of Middle School goes.

Sea World Trip

Greg was off to Vegas this morning and the kids and I were wanting something to do; so we dropped him off and headed over to Sea World. (You just have to love the season tickets) Austin hadn't seen any of the evening shows so we knew it would be a looooong day. We arrived at 8:30 a.m. and planned to stay until the fireworks show at 9:55. Glutton for punishment I know, but with school starting in a few short days we might as well make the most of our summer.

Needless to say we had a great time. We rode all the water rides in the morning so we'd be dry when the sun went down. I certainly didn't want to have to head out to the car to change clothes or buy anything new. We managed to catch every show they had. I don't believe there was one we missed.

The highlight of the day for Melissa anyway was meeting Clyde. We were walking by the stadium prior to the Clyde and Semore Show and Austin was asked if he wanted to be part of the show. Of course he does, but you know how little sisters can be... she piped up with, "but I want to too." So the gal says, "You can do rock, paper scissors for it." Guess who won the best 3 out of 5?

One of those days....

Or years? I don't know. So the whole Perpetual thing threw me for a while, but I thought I was adjusting well. Moving to San Diego; fine. One more place to say that we have lived. And while I am enjoying it here... I'm thinking we need to give away our cars. Greg's Jeep stolen in June and then my 4 Runner was hit today. Left rear bumper completely torn off. Maybe I should consider walking everywhere.

UGH! That is all I can say. Greg walked in while I was talking to my brother and says "you know, someone hit your car and your bumper is hanging off." I thought he was joking. But no. He was not. Just kill me now. What a pain in the arse. Luckily that woman that hit me did leave a note and called her insurance company when it happened. So at least she was cool about it. But come on!!! Give me a break. What a huge inconvience. Maybe her insurance will be quick about it and we can have it fixed while we are going to Pagosa Springs next week. Just what I want is another rental car.

Can we say road bike?

I'm Behind!

As you can tell, I'm a little behind in the blogging department. We have been busy! I need to see if I can get some pictures organized and then I'll post. I'll probably back date them too. Just so it would appear that I am with it. HAHA.

So I Was Shocked into Reality

Is what my friend Shawn called to tell me. She had been shopping at the Disney Store and found boys sweat pants on sale for next to nothing. However she realized that Austin going to MIDDLE SCHOOL with Grumpy on his sweats might not be the coolest thing.
Yep. Middle school. What is up with that?!

The Gymnast

Austin decided he wanted to try guitar and Melissa decided she wanted to be in gymnastics. She started just in time to participate in the Summer Spectacular. And while she only had taken about 4 classes she did very well. The gym rented out the gym at a local high school and made developed all the routines to a disco theme. They had the coaches out there to make sure the kids were safe. Anyway, she had a blast!

Mother's Day

Taking advantage of having the zoo membership we headed down into San Diego for Mother's Day. (Poor Greg was still a little jet lagged from the Japan trip he had just gotten home from 2 days before.) We had a great time! My favorite polar bears were showing off for us as they swam and played in the water. The kids had a great time posing with all the metal statues they have around the zoo. And again. This place is so big you can't see it all in one day!

Greg's First Trip to Japan

Work called and Greg answered. Greg had to go to Tokyo for work, something he has always wanted to do. He had a blast! First of all they had a limo come to the house to pick him up to take him up to LA to catch his flight. Then of course because they are in business class they get slippers to wear on the flight and pretty decent food.

While there wasn't time for site seeing he did have a few adventures. The Grand Hyatt is the best hotel he has ever stayed at. The beds had tempurpedic mattresses and the toilet was heated and had a tushie washer! Ha ha.

He said the food was phenomenal! The first night out they went to a small little restaurant and they ended up meeting Sylvester Stalone. Go figure! Who would think you have to travel halfway around the world to meet a celebrity.

Greg said it was probably one of the safest and cleanest cities he's ever seen. He says that the kids that would be Austins age ride the subways by themselves and he never felt unsafe.

The last night he was there the hotel got to do the hula. Yes. That's right. The hotel did the hula. He happened to be there when Japan got hit with about 8 really good size earthquakes within an hour or so of one another in the middle of the night. Not always fun to hear back in the States.

He is back safe and sound. Thank goodness! And ready to go back again I'm sure.

Off to the Wild Animal Park

We thought it would be a good idea to get a membership to the Wild Animal Park and the Zoo. We should be able to make a couple trips this year since they are both so close to us.

We had a blast! We discovered the train that runs around the Savannah. Very informative! And while you wait in line, you can wait under misters. Always a plus. There is so much to this Park. We saw things on this trip that we had no idea were there when we visited in June of 2007. This place is big!

As you can see from the pictures they have a few lions at the Park. Must be a proud Daddy. One of the females had 4 and the other had 3. The park also adopted another cub that was a month older whose mother wouldn't or couldn't care for him. So there are 8 cubs in all. Apparently the adopted cub cannot be let out with the adults. But he goes and hangs out with the other cubs to learn how to be a lion. This particular day Dad was not to be messed with. Those cubs would go over to him and he would yell, in a loud voice that they were to sit down and be quite. I guess he was busy watching all of us on the other side and couldn't hear.

Hmmmm....

Our CPA wanted to know why he cringes everytime he hears, "Hi Bill. It's Christy"

It's Still Warm Out...

So we went to go explore the San Diego Natural History Museum. That was really neat. They had a Pompeii exhibit that was facinating! Note to self...when doing self guided audio tours that have both adult and child versions; always listen the the kid one! It is always so much more interesting! Greg managed to take a bunch of really cool pictures while we were there. The Museum is located in Balboa Park, parts of which are very old and really cool architectuarally speaking. And then there's the fact that Greg takes excellent pictures....

90 Degrees Already?

Yikes!

It was 90 out this weekend. It's only April. Greg said that it is considered Santa Ana weather. Hope that doesn't mean that comes with winds. We took advantage of the weather by going to the beach. And we weren't the only ones with that idea. We managed to time it right and got there about 11 or so in the morning. Managed to get a picnic table up on the grass area for our picnic later. It was surprisingly not that busy when we arrived, even though there was a surf contest going on. The kids loved it. They went pretty far in the water and let the waves hit them. Then they build sand castles. Or maybe it was that they built motes. They had a good time.

Then we really had some fun and Greg grilled some steaks on the mini egg. Yes. That's right. The mini egg. It is perfect for us to tote to the beach! For those of you who don't know what the Big Green Egg is you're missing out. (Check out http://www.biggreenegg.com/) Oh those steaks were yummy! We realized that at some point while we were up on the grass that not only had the tide come in and was pretty close to where the kids were building, but that the beach got crazy crowded! We don't know where they all came from, but boy it was busy. We certainly had a great time enjoying the southern California weather!

A Visit with the Montagus!

It is so good to see great friends! We didn't get to say goodbye to the Montagus before we left Colorado. But thanks to those crazy chamber events, Denise managed to get in contact with Greg again and asked if we could get together while they were on vacation in LA. We jumped at that opportunity and booked a room where they were at the Embassy Suites.
The kids had a blast swimming in the pool and riding the elevators! They swam, we took advantage of the free happy hour, we went to dinner, took more advantage of happy hour and then got back to the hotel, put the kids in bed and met Denise and Trent for drinks in the bar. Ahhh a good vacation.
Let me just tell you though, the live music in the bar... well it was like nothing I've ever heard before and like nothing I want to hear ever again. This guy was sooooo bad. But what can you do?
Austin and Addison were really funny too. They decided that they were going to work out while the girls swam. So we watched them on the eliptical machines while they "worked out". We were informed at one point that they were "responsible, ripped and good looking, so we're going to go ride the elevators". Near about died laughing. The hotel was filled with high school band kids. Ha!

We did have a great time. Found out that the Montagus spent 2 months in Mexico this winter for Trents work. Very cool. I think they would move back in a heartbeat if given the opportunity. They blogged about thier adventures and I've listed it on my links.

Getting Settled

Well,

We made it here in one piece. And we have unpacked what we are going to be living with and the rest is crammed into the garage. (Thank goodness we have a garage) Anyway. We are making do with our 1200 square feet until we figure out where we want to be.
The good things about living here are:
the pool! And boy have we been taking advantage of that!
we can walk to school! YAY! Mom's lost 5 pounds!
there is a gym! Need to use it more often.
Greg's commute is only about 15 minutes!
More soon.

Disney Princess on Ice

Thank you Mike and Annette! A little background...Mike came over after an interview on the Eastbay and we got to talking about taking his son Ethan ice skating. Melissa mentioned, after she charmed him with chips and drinks, that she LOVED ice skating. He then asked her if she like princesses. And when she replied with a yes, he got on the phone with Annette and asked if she still had some tickets and that she needed to send them to Melissa.

And WOW did she have tickets! These were on the floor, front row, club level, 3 feet away from the ice! Melissa chose to take her friend Ingrid and they had a blast! Disney really knows how to put on a show! Breathtaking! The girls and I had so much fun watching these skaters that Melissa wants to take up lessons again when we move. Yay!

Sorry for the bad pics. I forgot my camera and had to use the phone!

On The Road Again.....

"Just can't believe that we're on the road again.

The life I love is packed in boxes once again.

And I can't believe we're on the road again.

On the road again.

Goin places I thought I'd never see again.

Unpacking boxes again and again.

And I can't believe we're on the road again."

Says it all doesn't it? Can you guess? We're moving once more.

Greg has gotten a great job with Sony Online Entertainment. He is going to be their Exectutive Director of Technical Operations. (please don't ask me anything beyond that, cause I couldn't explain it if I tried!) Anyhoo. They are based out of San Diego; ergo the move. He starts on Monday. And the rest of us will be down there over Easter weekend since the kids have spring break. Lucky kids...they scored spring break both here and down there in April.

The kids are amazingly ok with this move. I think they are both old enough to understand everything now. Which helps out tremendously. We are going to be in somewhat of a temporary situation for a while. Probably rent an apartment for 6 months or so. We are going to give ourselves time to figure out where we really want to be in the area. So you'll have to look for another change of address at the end of summer.

Boxes are calling!

It Has Been 6 Years.....

Oh the advances in medical technology are great. Did you know that you can seal up a head wound with superglue?

Yep. You guessed it. Austin tripped and fell last night and we made a trip to the emergency room. We don't know what he did really. He was SUPPOSED to be going to take a shower and instead he ends up on the office floor bleeding from his head. He managed to somehow catch his head on the office chair just above and to the left of his left eye. Swelled up almost instantly which was nice because it stopped the bleeding a lot faster!

The picture doesn't really do him justice. (I'll see if Greg can take one this afternoon that is better.) Greg had to clean him up and applied a bandaid on our way out the door and he bled through that at the hospital. They cleaned him up again and applied the big gauze and then he bled through that and finally he got this little contraption that just caught the blood that was dripping down his face. Anyway, he's fine. Some Dermabond was applied and we were out of there! No fuss, no muss. Didn't have to knock him out, didn't have to numb anything.

All this to get out of taking a shower. Well, joke is on him... because he got the Dermabond instead of stitches he can hop in the shower tonight!

When Life Hands You Lemons.....

Squish the snot out of them? Yep. That's what the saying should really be!

As you know, life at our house is ever changing and here's the latest: Perpetual Entertainment is no more. As of today. (We found out Tuesday evening that this was going to happen) I'm sad, I'm angry, I'm confused, I'm pissed off. I feel horrible for Greg. If we only had a crystal ball 6 months ago when we made the decision to move here. Or, if we had just had truth laid out in front of us. But, you can't regret the decisions that you make when you make them with the best intentions and the information you are given. No matter how hard you want to kick yourself.

So now we don't know what direction we are heading in, where he'll be employed, if I should be packing... (Because let's face it. I'm a pro at that!) We're trying to keep things as normal as possible for the kids. Austin's first question was "Does that mean we're going to move again?" And of course that answer is "maybe", "probably", "I don't really know". What do you tell two kids who are in the middle of school and have gotten settled in? Frustrating to say the least.

Anyway, we'll get by and things will be fine. I just had to vent.

The Quote of the Day From Our Son

"I'm going to go outside and play and if no one can play, I'm going to come back in and clean my room. That way I'll be organized. I figure that if I am organized I'll have a better life and I'll be happier."

The Time has Come

It's finally here I'm afraid. Kitty will have to find a place of honor in Melissa's room. No more swimming, skating, sliding, flying or bathing. Her tail is split. She has a little opening over her nose where her stuffing is going to come out. Her paws are worn almost through. And my little girl's heart is breaking. As is mine. She has been well loved without a doubt. Melissa is in tears and I'm sitting here with tears rolling down my cheeks as we mourn the loss of the ever present best friend. It'll be a strange site to watch play without Kitty.

Thank you Bayleigh for letting Kitty be a part of our lives! I don't think any one of us could picture Melissa with out her!

OVER IT!

We are finally done with that @#$%>#@*&# autobiography project of Austin's. 2 1/2 months to get it done and he tried to do it in 2 weeks. UGH!

Storm Hit

Whew! This one was a doosy. The winds were whipping everything around here! I've lost our Christmas tree that was out for recycling somewhere down the street in a neighbors yard. Found our trash can about 5 houses down. And this is what the backyard now looks like.

Somewhere under there is our patio table. And luckily the egg didn't get hit!

May Have Forgotten to Mention

Our neighbors teenage son got a drum set for Christmas...

Greg and I are thinking about getting him a metronome...

Oh! And he has friends with guitars and amps.

The Power of Guilt

I called my parents to chew them out. They never told me how guilt works so well with parenting. I had no idea. It is such a powerful tool...

All I wanted was a new shirt, or sweater or something to go out in when Greg's parents were here. We had some time to kill before a Dr. appointment for Melissa and McCoulou's is just down the street. I grabbed the kids some Jamba Juice and over to the store we went. And out of the store we went. My kids were HORRIBLE!!! We couldn't walk 2 steps without one of them whining, or hollering that the other did something. I had had it! We get in the car and I laid it on THICK! I told them how disappointing it was that I couldn't ever do anything for myself it they were with me. I was really bad and told them that I took it personally that they were behaving so atrociously, that it appeared that they were very selfish and couldn't possibly want anything good for anyone else, the least of all their mother. Well, at the end of my ranting and the appointment, they were to come home and go to their rooms. Nothing else, just that.

Here's where it gets good. My little guilt trip worked soooooo well that without even been asked, or told they started cleaning. And I do mean cleaning. Beds were made. Clothes were hung up. Toys were put away in the right spots in the closet. Books were organized by size and under the bookshelf was cleaned out. Mirrors were wiped "clean" with moistened toilet paper. And it got even better. Underwear drawers were emptied, folded and put back in. Sock drawers were emptied and sorted.

Ahh, the joys of parenting. Almost brought tears to my eyes. Mainly because I was laughing so hard!

Anti Procrastination Resolution.....and NOT for New Years

HELP!!!

We all know that I can procrastinate with the best of them. I've been whining for years that I need to get all the kids pictures in some sort of order. You know; instead of the huge tote I have in the garage that is full to the brim that I keep lugging around move after move.

Well, it caught up to me. I am going to have to get something done about it in the next week or so. Nothing like your kids homework to prod you into doing what has needed to be done for the last 10 years.

Austin is working on his autobiography. He too has been procrastinating (I taught him well) and now he has about 10 days to finish it all up. Pictures need to be included. Won't I look like the bad mom if I can't find them! So, out comes the box to the dining room, the table will be covered for weeks I'm sure, but maybe, just maybe I can make sense of it all.