Back to School 2011

Ah the first day of school.  I am in that window of time when my two high-schoolers have been gone for an hour, my middle schooler just started his walk up the street to start his day and I have about 10 min of down time before I need to wake a sleepy 3rd grader.  Then it will be 'just-you-and-me-time-baby' for me and Little Girl.  We use that you-and-me phrase a lot.  It will probably be exciting for her for about 15 minutes and then she will be bored.  Because I do boring stuff like laundry and picking up the house. Perhaps we can work some fun in there today, play-dough if she's lucky.  She will be lonely until the kids get home I am sure.

So to re-cap on what has been going on, we just escaped death two times this past week.  First there was Tuesday's earthquake then the hurricane.  The earthquake was the largest quake for this area for something like 100 years.  That is how we roll.  When we lived in Iowa we experienced the worst flooding in over 500 years.  Then in Korea there was all kinds of havoc being flung upon us by the North Koreans with their 'test' missiles.  It would seem that where ever we live there are catastrophes afoot- yet we manage to come through okay.  How about that Irene?  As wide as Europe- are you kidding me?  I tell ya, we must be living right because all we experienced from Irene was a couple hours without power.  From 2:00 to 4:00 in the morning.  Big Girl immediately blamed her sister for turning out the hall light and the bickering woke the parents up.  T commented on my amazing patience with her.  I have a tendency to be... well... extra cranky when you wake me up unnecessarily.  I have been known to bite off a few heads and hardly remember it come morning time.  I think I was feeling sorry for Big Girl.  She has exhibited some symptoms of anxiety lately and I have had to sit the boys down and give them the 'what-for' about teasing and pushing her to her limits.  That girl carries the world on her shoulders.  And if you've seen her then you know her shoulders are pretty small.  I'm not quite sure what to do for her, or if there is anything I can do.  This may just be her lot in life.

Our end-of-summer vacation plans changed at the last minute due to the storms, but we enjoyed ourselves anyways.  We went inland to a water park resort town called Massanutten VA.  We also went to Charlottesville VA to Thomas Jefferson's estate Monticello.  T and I had gone there for an anniversary some 9 yrs ago as a couple.  We found out it's much different when you take a family of 5 kids with you, especially when you take the 3:00pm estate tour right when your youngest girl is ready for a nap and not ready for a tour of our 3rd president's home.  Even though she said quite loudly in front of the tour guide "I want to go home" we made do.  We noted that Thomas Jefferson and Little Boy have a lot in common.  Both red heads, both played violin, both have April birthdays, both very high achieving smarty-pants types.  My son even chose TJ as his famous American character to represent in school 4 yrs ago...   We ate at a great BBQ place with the stickiest floor ever.  We rented movies, we played in the jacuzzi tub, we floated down the lazy river at the water park, we had bad fajitas at Chilis, we bought a generator, we drove through a lot of rain and made it home before the hurricane.  Then it looked as if a hurricane hit the inside of my house for a couple days.  Now it is the calm after the storm as all the kids are at their first day of school.  No I don't miss them yet.  As Little Boy left this morning for his 10 min walk to middle school I called out to him "remember who you are" and his reply was "yes- I am Thomas Jefferson."  Let's just hope he stays away from girls named Sally H.  He's only 14.