Friday, July 18, 2014

Sitting around waiting.

Owen had practice for a parade he is in on Sunday night for karate. I did what I do best... Sit around and watch. I feel like I do two things now days, sit at lessons and vacuum fruit flies, luckily not at the same time!!  (Thank heavens when I am at lessons, there are no fruit flies. That would drive me to my breaking point.)

Here we are, passing the time....

Photobombed by an arm! 

And we wake up tomorrow for gymnastics! Time to sit and watch some more!!!

Thursday, July 17, 2014

The lessons we are teaching

11:30 and the kids have been asleep for about 20 minutes. We ate soup at 10:00, despite the fact it has been 90 degrees for what feels like forever and the rest of the state is dying. We have zero regrets about our air conditioner, we even say that to each other daily.

Back to the soup... It was a disaster. I started making it too late and had to leave it to go to the park with the kids. When we got back, I tried to pick up where I left it and I started heating it up again only to have it never thicken, boil over all over the stove, and then burn on the bottom. Whatever, I was going to eat it anyway. So at 10:00, we ate soup. It was sort of like a deli soup, one where you wouldn't send it back and you would eat it because it was there, but you wouldn't order it next time. The kids only ate some because they didn't want to go to bed and even then, Owen ate the broth, Ivy ate the carrots, and Autumn ate the broccoli. 

Greg cleaned up the disaster I made from making disaster soup. Bless him for that, cause I really didn't want to and it has been a long day. He is a good egg. 

Well, I thought that anyway until Autumn told me what he has been teaching her. I asked her if she washed her hair in the bath. She said yes, when of course the answer was no. Greg reminded her that she was lying to which she proudly informed me of the following: 

"Daddy says if you want to lie, then just lie."

Greg swears that isn't true, but coming from someone who teaches if you want to lie, then just lie, I am not sure who to believe. 

She looked very convinced. 

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Man I am Busy

Once upon a time I didn’t have kids in lessons.  I was going to say that instead, I had a clean house and was a really efficient lawyer, but that would be a lie.  I still got nothing done, but I was home a lot more (I think).  Well now, I am running around like a crazy person and my kids are running around like crazy people and who knows if I should be doing any of it. 

Ivy is in gymnastics, dance, swimming and piano.  Owen is in Tae-Kwon Do, gymnastics, swimming, and piano.  Autumn is in dance and gymnastics and pretends she takes piano.  We started all of these things as a recreational sport, something to do, something to have fun with and then right before my eyes, they started becoming something else.  Suddenly, Ivy is taking gymnastics 7 1/2 hours a week, of which one of those hours includes a mandatory ballet class that I got to add to my monthly tuition.  Suddenly, Owen is in the leadership program at karate and is now required to do two extra classes a week on top of his already recommended 3-4 classes.  And, to top that off, those extra classes don’t even include the random list of parades I was given for him to be in, which all include multiple practices.  We started taking swimming to stay alive, but then once they started learning fabulous things like side breathing, the crawl stroke, the backstroke, and the butterfly stroke, we realized that now we stay in swimming to swim strokes and laps and be amazing.  Autumn started taking gymnastics because she was watching Ivy there and the owner guilted Angie and I into a mom and me class.  Now she is in a preschool class for kids ages 3-5, while she is only 2, and not only that but often more than once a week.  If I let her, she would go everyday.   Oh, and that reminds me, Owen’s gymnastics class is once a week for one hour, but without fail, EVERYTIME he finishes, he reminds me how much he loves it and BEGS to stay for another hour.  We do this song and dance every week.   Then we have piano.  I felt that they recently outgrew their teacher and we found another.  This requires me to take Ivy, come home, take Owen, pick up Ivy, come home, pick up Owen, and come home, all within a very short time period.  They will have new group lessons and competitions to be in and to think, we used to have our teacher come to our house.

Thank heavens we finished baseball and T-ball…. that is until Owen starts back up with Fall Ball. 

We started out to have fun at things but we have now crossed the line over to trying to be amazing at things. 

I think we are still having fun and I know we are spending a lot of money.   In fact, I do hope they become amazing at their things, as they may be their only hope for an education. 

Now, if I can only keep my head on straight and remember to work and take care of life outside of lessons, things will be good.