I thought about writing about all this snow, but I’m so sick of the subject, I am not even going to think about it! I will just say that my kids have now been out of school since Thursday, Feb 4th. THE FOURTH. IT IS NOW THE SEVENTEENTH.

I KNOW. TRUST ME I KNOW.

School is on tomorrow, but on a 2 hour delayed start all the rest of this week. It absolutely boggles the mind. Along with the fact that Target is/has been selling SWIMSUITS since January 1st.

I HAD TO ORDER SNOW SHOVELS OVER THE INTERNET. So many chain stores missed the opportunity to make a killing by getting more winter stuff in stock, but no. They insist on putting out spring fertilizer instead. Thank god for local hardware stores (I love my True Value!)

Anyway, on to happier subjects!

I really enjoy the Olympics, but it seems like I just never get to sit down and watch them the last 2-4 years. They make me somewhat nostalgic, because I remember watching as a kid, seeing Mary Lou Retton get that 10 — what a ride! And also, my husband James and I first met 1996, and he came down to Atlanta where I was living at the time the summer of the 1996 Olympics. I remember it as such a heady time of new twitterpated love, my first experience truly away from home as an adult, and to top it all off, Olympic fever in the city — it was an exciting time!

So I was determined to get some Olympics in and when Ethan asked, upon arriving at home this evening, if he and Jocelyn coudl watch some TV, I immediately replied, “YES!” with such vehemence, that he instantly knew something was up! I flipped on some Tivoed figure skating/skiing, and let it run as I got some dinner ready.

The Olympics are pretty exciting on their own, but seeing through my kids eyes made it even more awesome!

here’s pretty much how it went all night:
from them:
“WHOA!”
“WOW!”
“MOM! YOU HAVE GOT TO SEE THIS!”

(I was right there, by the way!)

Jocelyn was especially taken with the figure skating, as I knew she would be. She instantly starting dancing around the room and talking about how SHE could be in the Olympics when SHE was grown up. I tried to tell her that some of these athletes started training and practicing at HER age, and she instantly took it up.

“Mom! I’m going to do it! I’ll practice every day after school, see? Like this!” (Jump. Soar. Run. Twist. All in my living room.)

“Mom, I am going to need a dress like that when I’m grown up. Can you sew me one? How about Grandma? Can she sew me one? Look mom, the skirt only comes down to here. Are you sure we could find one when I’m big?”

Ethan wasn’t planning and plotting his Olympic wins, but he was still extremely impressed. He hasn’t been tainted by male machismo and thought the figure skating was just as impressive as Jocelyn did, and the vice versa – Jocelyn thought the mogal ski runs & jumps was spectacular as well.

At one point, at their outbursts and gasps at these seemingly death defying feats, I replied with a mild, “Yes, I know, it’s neat, isn’t it.”

Ethan instantly corrected me: “MOM. IT IS NOT NEAT. IT IS…. A W E S O M E !!!!”

I’m glad I’m not the only one in this house not to have Olympic fever!

Ahh, hello blog!

It’s been busy around Casa de Panders. Monday was Columbus day, and I had it off… but no one else did. It was quite nice to lounge around the house doing nothing all day! I debated on what I would do, but with my car at the shop (it needed a new radiator, sniff) I was stuck at home and ended up cutting rings and chain mailling all day.

Here’s what I made:

Celtic Visions in copper

Jens Pind in 14 gauge (ie: HUGE) sterling silver

And here’s another Jens Pind, in 18 gauge sterling that I made last week. It’s listed in the shop now.

So, it was a pleasant enough day – unfortunately, I think I overdid it and the joints in my right forefinger and thumb are kind of aching – this is really kind of pissing me off, as I just bought new pliers that I really quite liked. I hope it wasn’t the pliers that did it.

Oh, and here’s one more picture: Any guesses as to who Jocelyn is going to be for Halloween? Someone from one of my FAVORITEST movies!

-amy

My child. She slays me.

I KNOW that if I had stepped in and “helped” her with this project, they would not have turned out as AWESOME as they did.

She said, “I’m making some paper dolls, Mommy!” And make them she did.

Behold! The dolls!

#1: halloween (note the ghostie earring) #2: rocking out with headphones (note the music note) #3 ROBOTS! OMG SHE MADE ROBOTS!!! #4 normal girl

Behold! The clothing she made for the dolls!

And here are the dolls with their clothes on. I laid the clothes on the dolls and scanned them “dressed”:

#1: halloween girl now has ghostie shirt too! #3 That robot girl is lookin’ pretty boobtastic!

If you click the images, you’ll go to my flickr page where I have added a few notes to the first and second page.

Oh man. These just kill me. KILL me. I am going crazy in the best way, when I look at these! That girl. I love her.

-amy

I am basicly holding the phone next to my ear to get these shots of them laying on top of me.

They were very sad when it was time to say goodbye three days later. We miss you Clara and Mary!

Taken by Ethan.

I haven’t posted any kid art in a long time, but now have I got some good ones! Ethan came home from school today with this treasure tucked away in his folder. You can tell he really spent some time on it!

It is a worksheet he made for Jocelyn. The first part is a “matching” section, where she is supposed to look at the first shape and then circle the matching shape in the next 3 columns. The next is a simple counting question, complete with multiple choice (!!! multiple choice! oh god, it kills me!) And then he also has a blank for the answer (asr). I almost flipped when I saw this.

Next up we have some beautiful ladies drawn by Jocelyn, in fancy upturned dresses. I asked her if they were doing the splits or something, but no, those are their DRESSES. I absolutely ADORE the first girlie’s face. I don’t know if you can really tell in this picture but it is just the sweetiest little face EVER! I have had the urge to sew something lately and this little gem is pushing it over the edge – I simply have GOT to make a little dollie with that face!

Oh man. I can’t even tell you how much these feel me with GLEE! I just love them and HAD to share!

-amy

What? what’s that? You want to know how Week 1 of Project Skinny went?

You mean… you aren’t on Twitter? Because I told the twitterazzi already, and .. oh fine, I’ll BLAAAAWWWWG ABOUT IT TOO.

I am down 3 lbs. It was actually 3.something but I forgot the Important Weight Watchers book that they put your official sticker in with weight + loss and as a result, I just remmeber the important “3″ part of the 3.something.

I’m pretty happy! I was hoping for like, you know, to be ultra skinny after only 1 week, but you know, it works. OK, not really, but I was thinking I could do 5 lbs easy, so there was a teeny tinge of disappointment until I mentally smacked myself and said, “HELLO, THREE POUNDS IS AWESOME” and then was happy.

So yeah, there you go. and now, at home, I’m out of vodka, so that can only be good for the whole week progression.

In other news, things are just going swimmingly. I haven’t updated about Ethan in a long time, and trust me, that’s a good thing. The reason this blog has seen all this ethan action and no Jocelyn action is because I write when things are PLAGUEING MY BRAIN and so blog-silence usually means EVERYTHING IS JUST SWIMMINGLY LOVELY!

I neglected to update on this when it happened, but Ethan is now on ADHD medication. And I could kick myself for waiting as long as we did. James was ready probably a long time ago, but was OK with the waiting. It’s like we have our awesome kid back again. And in the evening, when it wears off, we still have our awesome kid, he’s just tied himself up in a pretzel on the floor, is all.

Honestly, I think the meds have helped a lot, but I also think that he has matured a lot too. When we go outside and he’s running around with kids, I think now he’s just more clued in to himself and when he is reaching his breaking point — now, he will will come inside and say, “I’m done playing outside.” Whereas before, he would stay outside and possibly get overworked up about something until it has escalated past the point of no return. Now, he can remove himself before it gets to that point. It also helps that we’re pretty much always out there to monitor. And I do want to give credit to the medication as well, I think it has helped him to be less scattered and just, ALL OVER THE PLACE to make these realizations about himself.

Jocelyn is doing great too. If I had to complain about Jocelyn, it’s that 1) SHE TAKES FOREVER TO DO ANYTHING, 2) She is ALWAYS hurting herself, and 3) she will get PISSED at you if you don’t give her her own way (but not always.) And to all of the above I have to remind myself… SHE IS REALLY, PRETTY DAMN YOUNG. It is hard to remember that, even though she’s my own kid. Is it just the fact that she’s a second child maybe? I have to remember what Ethan was like before he was even in kindergarten and in my mind, he seemed back then a LOT younger than she does now.. Do we expect more from her? I’m not sure, maybe. If she would just hurry up and buckle up in the car now and then, our lives would be a whole lot easier, is all I’m saying But really, she is a joy and is doing the cutest damn stuff all the time.

This past weekend, we decided to take the kids to see Up! Jocelyn said, “What’s “up?”" and I said, “you know, the movie with the house that goes up with all the balloons?” And she got this look of recognition in her eyes, and she says, “Ohhhhhhh, you mean, ‘PIXAR’S Up,’ Mommy.”

And then she corrected herself, “I mean, not Pixar’s Up, it’s ACTUALLY DISNEY Pixar’s UP.”

Indeed.

Partway into the movie, there’s a part where they come down out of the clouds and try to figure out where they are. the little girl next to Jocelyn said, “What IS THIS??” in a kind of way that really meant, “where are they?”

But Jocelyn quietly whispered to her, “It’s Disney Pixar’s Up.” I had to smother my chuckling.

Anyway, so things are going well. There’s 2? 3? weeks left to school. Then Ethan will go to Taekwondo summer camp, and Jocelyn will pretty much carry on at her daycare as she already is except probably with more water and sunscreen involved.

We are making plans to go to Oregon in July for my brother’s wedding.

We are also making plans to do various painting and carpet replacement in the house over the summer.

So. Yeah. fun stuff!

2 other things:
My toe is still dislocated, and now? NOW?? My other foot is kind of irritating me too.
In my last storytime post, I remember I had another childhood memory that I was going to post and I remember it was a DOOZY.. and now I can’t remember what it was about. Doh.
And last, the keyboard on this laptop is starting to get screwy. Well, sticky, to be exact. I’ve tried to clean the keyboard once or twice with disastrous results (let’s just say cleaning laptop keyboard VERY DIFFERENT from normal keyboard cleaning).

You don’t want to bring any vodka over, do you?

-amy

Me: Can i see your new birthday spy tool?
Ethan: Sure.
Me: Oh cool, a compass.
Ethan: I know.
Me: Whats this? Oh, a whistle!
Ethan: Yeah i know.
Me: and tweezers.
Ethan: yeah.
Me: …that come off!
Ethan: I have ALREADY established that.

Let me just repeat that last one.

“Already established that.”

!!!

James and I just looked at each other and repeated it about a zillion times the rest of the day.

Seven going on thirteen!

(Here is the afore-mentioned spy tool:)

So birthday-ness was celebrated. This year we did not do any fancy parties. I took cupcakes in to Ethan’s class at school, and he got to choose where to go out to dinner. He choose Chuck E. Cheese, where as soon as he found a fake ID machine, all tokens were unceremoniously fed into said machine. And then, he got Jocelyn and she did the same thing.

Basically, child poses in front of camera, machine takes child’s picture, machine prints picture on 1 of 4 different ID badges. Boy badges were skateboarder, firefighter, policeman, and some other one. Girl badges were rockstar diva, princess, and 2 other ones. (Oh boy what a good memory Mommy has!)

I am not kidding — Ethan posed for about 20 cards. And every single picture of him on the cards is almost the same, except perhaps that he tried his darnedest to look MORE and MORE menacing in each one.

Jocelyn, on the other hand, tried to look more and more cute and adorable in every shot:

Um, yeah, LET’S LOOK AT THAT ONE AGAIN:

I fear the teenage years ahead of us.

Along with the spy multitool, he also received a spy safe (complete with access code and voice saying “ACCESS DENIED” if you get it wrong), a spy scope (can look around corners), a skateboard, legos, and SPORE for the DS. Can you tell that we have a little secret agent spy man on our hands? In his free time? He likes to construct… not a FORT, like we did in MY DAY.. but a secret hideout.

It was a nice birthday.

Mother’s day was very nice too! Jocelyn brought me the toast that Daddy made. Ethan poured the OJ and brought it up himself, and then cleaned my room and made his bed. Ethan’s card had handmade paper flowers, and after seeing them, Jocelyn promptly went and made some of her own. Too sweet! I took Jocelyn to her ballet class, and then we went to Sweetwater Tavern for a Mother’s Day lunch. Very nice. I told James to please, PLEASE not buy me anything, because I have ordered enough in the sterling silver wire and lucite bead department to last several Mother’s days! I got my lucite beads in time for Mother’s Day, and so worked up a few pairs of earrings.

Here’s one pair:

I looooove them — but I’ve actually had a second vision and will be making some adjustments… will work on them this week!

-amy twiddles her fingers waiting for the sterling silver WIRE to arrive!

NOT THAT FAR FROM HOME

Yesterday, I enthusiastically hollered when we crossed the (first) state border, “we’re in WEST VIRGINIA!” and the kids and I hooted at holered and wheeeee-ed. About an hour later, we pulled over at a rest area for a pee pee stop, and there was a pay phone right in front of our car. Ethan immediately was drawn to it.

“MOM! Can I call Daddy?”
“No,” I said,
“Please? I just want to tell hin we’re in North America!”

Then 15 minutes later when we stopped at a fast food place, as we were climbing ou Jocelyn asked, “Do they speak english here?”

THIS IS WHY WE CAME

Here’s my Dad, reading bedtime stories to 3 kids who then wouldn’t SLEEP for another hour or so: