Summer update

We went to Oregon, Scotland and Seattle...it's been busy. A few photos in lieu of stories.

Family.

Adorable nephew.

My husband taxiing for take-off.

Edinburgh.

My sister.

In Response to (Not Unreasonable) Questions About My Health and Well-Being

Sydney was awesome. I really need to write more about the trip, but am still battling the time-change and will have to do that later.

We got back on Saturday morning, and I am mostly unpacked. For those who know me well, this is agonizing for me, yet I find I have no time to actually complete the task of removing all my stuff from my bags. And then there is the matter of the soon-to-be-five-year-old's birthday and her party. So, to answer necessary questions:

1. Tim is home.
2. We are not sick.
3. I am not pregnant.

More on Australia to follow. Until then:

Did I Ever Tell You About Our Drive Back From Oregon?

We chose to travel home on the busiest weekend of the summer: the one right before the littles go back to school. No worries, we were only planning to stay at Lake Tahoe on a Saturday night. Tragically, I spent my 3 hours with internet service in Oregon acquiring hotel reservations for Sydney, leaving Tim to attempt camp reservations whilst still in the Middle East. Poor choice, I know.

We thought at least our first night would be an easy one: Tim had secured a spot on a LAKE! As we approached the "lake", we noticed a certain smell in the air. Sort of like that swamp smell? And then we pulled up to our "campsite" and Tim began apologizing to me, as I crinkled my nose and asked, "Are those gnats? Or is it foggy? OMG, what color is that water?" We left the children in the car for safety, and approached the owner of the "campsite" explaining that we were the ones with reservations (we were clearly the only fools there for the night). The kind man gave us a map, which we promptly used to find another nearby campsite.

Playing a game called Dump Dirt on the Bench Where Mommy Will Sit, & Then Eat Some Rocks For Good Measure.

Perhaps the most hilarious picture of Kate, ever. I have no idea why she looks so dejected, but I suspect it has something to do with burned hot dogs or that someone made her wait until after dinner to eat marshmallows. Future blackmail potential of this photo was worth whatever caused it.

Whatever you do, do NOT enlarge this photo. Doing so will likely cause you to want to shower immediately afterwards, and perhaps to eat a roasted marshmallow or 3. Luke ate approximately half a bag while at Lake Tahoe.


Yes, the girls are eating graham crackers and chocolate milk for breakfast. It was day 3 on the road. We had each had approximately 4 hours of sleep per night by then, and I was ready to let them eat s'mores and jujubees for breakfast if they would just be good on the drive.

More of My Favorites

On a walk with Aunt Buji. We picked blackberries and Luke ate them by the handful.

Life on the Farm

Blowing dandelions all over Great Grandma's yard.

Wheat fields captivate Kate.

She was so excited to climb the apple tree her Daddy climbed when he was a boy.


Walking out to pick blackberries with Great Grandpa.

Completely unrelated to this post, but so endearing:

Kate eyed me in the mirror tonight after everyone was [finally] ready for bed and sternly told me, "Mom, God wants us to let go of our anger." Yes, baby girl, but He also wants children to obey their parents.

Letting the Pictures Tell the Stories

First time camping; Lake Taco was a huge hit. It turns out the children are surprisingly adept at surviving on little to no sleep.

Kate helps Aunt Sheila milk a goat at 6:30am. **Stunned silence.**

She is loving this vacation.

McLaren and Luke in awe of Snow White's house at the Enchanted Forest. Both could have stayed there all morning.

Water!

Signs That I am Losing My Mind

1. In a moment of weakness several weeks ago, I succumbed to Kate's fierce and persistent declarations that she wanted needed purple fairy curtains with a pink butterfly segment at the bottom. They are the ugliest curtains I have ever made. Note that they are not pictured here. Not only are they unsightly, but I have only completed one panel. And the curtain rod is still on Kate's floor. I am the queen of unfinished projects.

I also somehow ended up with fabric to make dresses for both girls.

2. Despite currently owning only a 2 person tent, I booked us (Tim, me, Kate, Claire, and Luke. At last check, this is 5 people) a campground at Lake Tahoe for Sunday night. We have never camped with children. Tim and I have not camped for approximately 10 years. The adults own proper camping gear, but the girls' sleeping bags have fairy and princess decorations and light up when the bags move. I am certain that they will be useless and ineffective in the much-cooler-than-we-are-used-to mountain air of the Sierra Nevadas. The boy one has no sleeping bag, and would be unlikely to nest in one if he did. I also fear that the boy one will be unlikely to sleep at all given the lack of containment device he knows as his crib.

3. We leave in 1.5 days. I have not packed more than shirts and shorts for myself, and have only managed to gather Kate's pajamas for the kids. We will be gone for 3 weeks, in weather that I presume will be vastly different than our current 110* highs/90* lows. We are all bound to be stunned by the cold that 55* mornings will bring.

4. I am blogging instead of packing.

With a cough-cough here, and a bark-bark there

This is the second trip in a row where Luke has come down with croup either on the trip or on the way home. He had a shot of steroids on Wednesday, but sounded bad enough last night that I "slept" in his room with him. Needless to say, we are both exhausted and he has another appointment today. Claire also has croup, but seems to be responding better to the meds.

Our trip to Tucson was a fun one, though - we arrived on Friday night, shortly before my dad did, and spent three days enjoying excellent food, consuming copious amounts of wine, and eating cake in celebration of Tempie's 3rd birthday and my sister's thirtysomethingth birthday. We also got to see our neighbors, the Humphreys, from when we lived in Tucson.

Luke tries to steal cake from the birthday girl. She is not amused.

He thinks he has scored the jackpot: watermelon and goldfish crackers at his level. I didn't see him with an empty hand for the duration of the party.

Kate gives Grampa a kiss.

Kate and Luke playing with Olivia and Isaac.

The best of the approximately 47 photos we took of the children lined up in order of age.

I guess it could have been worse?

We were planning to go to Tucson for spring break, but then my sister and her daughter got pink-eye, and we reevaluated. Going to San Diego to see my dad seemed like a good option. I certainly didn't want to hang around Las Vegas by myself with the children out of school for a week. Then Kate got a fever last Wednesday. She recovered for the most part by Thursday, so I decided we were going to push to California. On the drive out, things got challenging. I had rearranged the car so that the girls were sitting next to each other in the back row, in order for them to entertain each other. Who knew that by "entertaining" they meant fighting? I guess I should have seen that coming. Just south of Vegas, I pulled over on a dirt road and tossed bags and car seats out of the car gently suggested a new seating arrangement. I put Kate next to Luke in the second row, which also turned out to be a mistake. She refused to leave him alone. At one point AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' came on the radio and I mused about its timeliness.

Almost 6 hours after we left, we arrived at my dad's. Luke had started coughing a couple of hours into the drive, and by Friday night, he sounded awful. I must have been up every hour that night, helping him get back to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, his cough turned into barking, followed by a slight wheezing. This completely freaked me out, and I don't know if I slept much after that. He wasn't better by the morning, so I told my dad we needed to take him to the doctor.

My dad got online and found a clinic to go to. It was on the way to the beach - perfect! He called, and told them we were on Tri-Care, and the woman mentioned that there was a Tri-Care outpatient facility nearby. Great! We headed there instead. Turns out it was like a Tri-Care office off base, and they would only see you if you were a patient there. The woman gave me directions to a different place for us to go. I asked her if it was an ER (I absolutely detest going to the ER; in fact, it is probably the number one thing I hate to do), and she said no. I asked if it was on an installation. She said no, and also that she wasn't from San Diego. Um? I should have taken this to mean that she didn't know what she was talking about. We wound our way closer to downtown....and ended up at a military gate. We should have turned around right there. But, not knowing where else to go, we parked and walked into the hospital. It turns out we were at the US Naval Medical Center, San Diego, a large concrete structure full of sickies. We checked in, and I asked how long they thought the wait would be. No idea. Awesome. I think it took about 20 minutes to get into triage. And another 4 hours to be seen. So there we were, all in our beach garb, Simone with a migraine, three sick and crabby kids, on vacation. Luke has croup, and ear infections in both ears. They gave him some liquid steroids and amoxicillin, and he is finally sounding a lot better. Now Claire sounds bad.

Ready for his chest x-ray.

On Sunday we finally made it to the beach. For an hour. Luke and Claire were still not feeling great, and Luke cried for most of the time we were there. He was interested in the sand for a bit, though, until he rubbed some of it in his eyes. Claire went down to the water once, but the wind combined with the cold water made her head right back to the warmth of the beach towel.

Mama, this bath is cold. Also, my ears hurt.

I'm supposed to do what with the sand?

Kate loved the beach. LOVED. She giggled with delight as the water rushed up to her feet, sucking the sand out from under her toes. "Mom! The beach is moving!" She ran back and forth, into the water and out again. She splashed, made friends, gathered shells, and giggled some more. I felt bad tearing her away from the water, but Luke was a crying wreck.

On Sunday afternoon, I made the command decision to head home on Monday, earlier than we had planned. We got home at 6pm and Claire went straight to bed, in her clothes and without dinner. This from my little night owl who likes to stay up until 9 or 10pm. Kate and Luke were also asleep by 8pm. Today we have an appointment for Claire to see what sort of illness she is harboring.

In all, I am glad we went. It was a good diversion for all of us, even though it was painful. Here we would have been sick and bored. And it somehow gave me a confidence I haven't had in awhile: I can do pretty much anything alone, if necessary. I would prefer to have Tim here, but we do okay when he's gone.

Visiting family

I had sort of been dreading our postponed trip to Michigan. I mean, who wants to fly, outnumbered, for 4 hours cross-country? Not me, that's who. We started out okay, with Tim leading a coloring marathon with the girls, across the aisle from me and full-of-energy Luke. I fed him some Chips Ahoy cookies, and talked amiably with the girl next to me. Then, about 30 minutes into the flight, Luke started gagging. Turns out he had eaten part of the cookie wrapper while I had been distracted, and he proceeded to vomit it and the cookies. Thankfully, he's not much of a vomiter, I caught all the barf in my hand (wait, am I really thankful for that?), and my neighbor was very understanding. Me, genius mom that I am, I forgot to pack a change of clothing in my purse for anyone. Awesome.

Then, towards the end of the first flight, Claire fell asleep on Tim. Cute. Except that she peed on him, soaking her clothing and his jeans. See above note about not packing any changes of clothing for anyone in the carry-on bags. Tim was pretty pleased about that.

Once in Michigan, however, things went well. We spent 3 days with my mother and grandmother, and the kids loved seeing their grandmas. We even got to see our friend Tabitha and her daughter Natalie, whom we hadn't seen in 2 years. There was snow on the ground when we arrived, and the kids made a snow kid. Claire seemed to overcome her fear of snow, and Luke got to crawl around outside, tasting rocks.

Pre-barf.

Showing off her creation.

Claire and Great-Grandma Lorraine. Almost 90 years apart.

Dinner out with everyone, including family friend Carol.

Luke and Grandma Lorraine.

Thanksgiving in Tucson

I have barely unpacked, let alone found the camera and cord to download our photos from last week, so that will have to come later. Right now I'm in a tizzy trying to figure out how to pack approximately 2,548 things into the next 3-4 weeks. The holiday stress fun has begun!

We drove to Tucson the weekend before Thanksgiving, and spent the whole week with my sister and her family. The kids were in HEAVEN. The parents were mildly amused. All in all, it went well, minus the sleep thing. The title to this post could also be:

• Does Not Sleep Well Away From Home (mostly Luke)

There are a lot of other good titles out there, actually. Maybe I'll just use titles to tell you about our trip.

• Birthday Parties and Turkey, Oh My! (Happy First Birthday, Lucy!)
• Our First Black Friday Shopping Trip, by Jessica and Jennifer
• Mmmmm, Good Beer
• Mmmmm, Excellent Mexican Food
• Mmmmm, Turkey, Stuffing, Habanero Mashed Potatoes...you get the idea
• Oops, I Messed Up My Running Schedule; I hope 9 Miles Instead of 10 Will Not Destroy Me Next Weekend
• Yay, Bookmans!
• WHY Do We Always Get Stuck at the Hoover Dam?
• Seriously, We Have to Drive All the Way Back to Kingman to Go Around the Damn Dam?
• Tucson to Las Vegas: the Longest Trip Yet (30 Hours)
• Can Everyone Just Be Healthy For Like a Week? Please?

I finally ordered our Christmas cards. Hopefully you will receive them before Christmas.

Christmas shopping! Aggggggghhhhhhhh! Christmas tree? Not yet. Maybe next week? Why does everything happen at once?

Now we're off to the dentist for the girls' first teeth cleaning. I've been trying to talk it up. There are movies there! The dentist is so nice! He will tell you to say 'aaaaahhh'. Can you say 'aaaaahhhh'? Yay! I'll let you know how it goes.

Wasting time is so much fun

I've been playing with some old photos...

Milford Sound, New Zealand.

Hong Kong.


Hong Kong.

Hong Kong skyline.

Great Wall.

Busy much?

I don't even know what I've been up to for the past week, but I've been busy enough that I just found my camera cable yesterday and downloaded pictures of the past two weeks' events.

We all went to Tucson last week for 3 days, as Tim had a short TDY to DM. The trip was quick (sorry to those of you we didn't get to see this time!), but fun. Somehow we survived the 431 miles each way, with three small and slightly vocal children. Let's just say that google maps says it will take a person who never has to stop for gas, food or poopy diapers approximately 7 hours and 47 minutes to drive from our house in Las Vegas to my sister's house in Arizona. Our drive there took eleven (11) (ELEVEN) hours. OMG. I'm pretty sure Tim was cursing me for most of those 11 hours, as he was skeptical that we should all go on this trip to begin with. (His thought process: I could fly to Tucson in 3 hours, on the government's dime, stay overnight without screaming children, get drunk with the guys after the conference, and then fly back home.) I coerced him into taking us. (My thought process: Tim will be gone for 2-3 days, leaving me stuck home with 3 crazy vocal children, or we could ALL endure the crazy chaos together and I could also see some good friends and my sister.)

We had a great time, staying at a nice hotel close to Jessica, and spending as much time with her and her family as possible. We also got to see Shayne and her family, and Rae and her boys.

The five cousins: Kate (3 3/4), Claire (2 1/2), Tempie (2), Lucy (6mo), and Luke (2mo).

Lounging at the pool.

Loving the pool.

Since we've been back, I have managed to unpack all of our bags, but that is about it. The house is a disaster, there is clean (and dirty!) laundry everywhere, toys in every room of the house, and my level of sanity is decreasing. I do, however, have a babysitter coming tomorrow morning for a few hours, so Luke and I can go to the dentist. Woohoo! A few hours with just one child! It's the little things.

Home again

It was a long trip, in terms of the amount of driving and whining we experienced. But it felt like a short trip in terms of family time, especially since a good portion of time was devoted to car stuff.

The girls did okay on the way up to Oregon. We got up early and were actually on the road just after 8am: a record for us, and possibly anyone with small children. It still took us more than 2 days to get to our destination, but we survived, and didn't even encounter any bad weather. Kate and Claire decided it would be fun to not nap in the car on the way north, and they also apparently thought it a good idea to not go to sleep until approximately 10pm each night, so they were good and crabby by the time we reached Oregon.

A rare nap.

Surrounded by princesses.

Not a new look for Kate, but an old favorite: underwear on the head. At least it's clean.

A short run-down on events, to be expanded upon later: we bought the Mazda CX-9. LOVE. Love love love. Even after (gah) 1200 miles of driving it. Super comfortable, super luxurious, super pretty, super super super.

We spent almost all of our free time with family, soaking up every minute. The girls had so much fun with their cousins. We all had so much fun with everyone. We had a family birthday party for Claire and Aunt Donna, and a baptism ceremony afterwards for Claire. And we sadly drove away the next day to return to Las Vegas. We are glad to be home, but we miss everyone!