Easter

Easter was one week ago and I'm only now getting around to blogging about it.  Life has been very very busy -- lots of grading, getting ready to take 6th grade to environmental ed for a week, prepping a spring break road trip, as well as excitedly waiting for the birth of a baby (not mine obviously).  With so much going on Easter was a much smaller celebration.

We dyed eggs.  I didn't end up doing a hunt with them and we only ate about 4.  It's about the experience right?

I didn't buy Linus an Easter outfit.  He ends up fighting about it anyway no matter what I buy even if he chose it.  Robin excitedly picked out his shirt and I just paired it with a pair of pants he already had.  I bought Eileen's dress on a whim from GAP and was excited when it only cost $5.  There are no pictures of them in their outfits all together.  It was that kind of morning.  We are lucky we made it to church.  Linus still balked when I said no sweatpants.  Robin's behavior at mass was horrible.  Normally, he does pretty well.  I was pretty mortified by the time mass was over. The other two were fine and actually listened for most of it.

The Easter Bunny brought copious amounts of chocolate.  The kids each got something small (worth about $10).  Robin loved his present, a Pikachu hooded towel.

After church I made a nice brunch for just the 5 of us instead of hosting a larger brunch. We still set a table, plated the food on serving dishes, used the good china, and there were mimosas for the adults.  Later in the afternoon we attended a large Easter egg hunt hosted by someone from our parish.
                                               
                                                              On his way to the hunt

The pelting winds and rains made things pretty miserable.  We bailed early.  By the time we were back in the car, the temperature had dropped 10 degrees from when we first left the house.  Brrr.
Back home we got cozy and watched the Easter Bunny is Coming to Town. 

My sister, Sally, and her partner, Gino came over in the evening and announced their engagement!  I'm so excited for the both of them.  While they took Linus and bought chocolate and flowers for my mom who is recovering from knee surgery, the rest of us ate ceasar salad for dinner.  Dessert was apple dump cake a la mode (one of Linus' favorites).

Easter was simple and low key.  Knowing we were leaving for a trip the next day made it easy to dial it back.  It won't go down as my favorite Easter although I did get the best Easter basket ever for myself.  Hopefully, next year  we will strike a better balance of reverence, fun, and good behavior.

From the Mouths of Babes in March

Dave:  Last one is a rotten egg.
Robin: Hey!  I'm the only Robin egg.

Linus:  I get to choose the flowers because I'm the best at it.   (Buying flowers at hospital for Grandma after knee surgery)

Robin:  I need my guitar.  Where's my guitar?

Cell Phone Rescue Mission

I swear I don't know what is happening to me.  I am becoming so absent minded.  Friday I just could not seem to remember my cell phone.  I left my phone at home when I went to work.  That evening I drove Linus and two classmates all the way to West Seattle for a basketball game.  It was cool to see to be back at my first teaching gig, Our Lady of Guadalupe.  The gym didn't exist back then.  It was a great game.  The boys have improved significantly since the first game.

Linus and I met up with some of the team back in Shoreline for pizza.  Once inside the restaurant I reached for my phone to text Dave and let him know the plan.  I realized my phone was not in my purse.  Checked the car. Nope. Shoooooooot.

I decided to enjoy my pizza and cider and not fret for the moment.  I got home and Dave suggested using the Find my phone android app.   It worked great!  We figured out my phone was still in West Seattle, but no longer at the gym.  I correctly guessed that the gym manager had found it.  I sent a message to my phone screen to call Dave's cell phone number.  A nice man named Mark called less than 2 minutes later.

We were able to figure out I could get my phone back Saturday afternoon.  Thank goodness I didn't have a ton of plans!  Nothing like a trip to the far reaches of West Seattle from Lake Forest Park.  Traffic was on our side.  The kids napped in the car. 

I felt so lost without my phone.  I keep notes on my phone that I didn't want to lose, like a list of books I want to read (there's like 20 books).  Having safely retrieved my phone, I took the kids on a little tour of  West Seattle.  "Look kids! There's the sketchy apartment on Delridge your dad and I lived in when we first got married!"

We went to the Junction for cupcakes--it was interesting to see what was still there, what was gone, what was new.  I love the free parking of the Junction.  Ballard could learn a lesson here.  I thought it would be fun to go to Lincoln Park.  I was disappointed to learn that the zipline was gone while the playground undergoes renovation.  Luckily, the beach did not disappoint.

Seattle is the best sometimes.

The kids each found a cool stick they liked.  We skipped rocks, hopped along driftwood, and had a grand time.  Once we got to the pool, we headed up the trail. Robin did great although his lack of balance was nerve wracking.  The kids loved hiking trails, identifying plants.

Eileen discovered this tree root and declared it a "snake eating an elephant."

While I'd rather not lose my phone again, I wouldn't mind another day trip to West Seattle.  It's a pretty great place.

Budding Young Paleontologists

These days it seems rare that we have a weekend afternoon that isn't already filled with something --sports, birthday parties, stuff.  I entrusted Linus to come up with something to do today that did not cost too much (he wanted to do iFly) and was something everyone could enjoy.  I was impressed with his Google search skills.  He landed upon Dino Days at the Burke Museum.  Linus was super pumped and quickly roused everyone to get ready and out the door.  I'm pretty sure that if I had suggested it, Linus would have recoiled in disgust.

Parking was terrible.  I had no idea they were building a new Burke Museum.  While I'm happy to hear it, it took us more than 20 minutes to find parking.  The people at the Burke have definitely upped the ante since the last time we attended several years ago.  We headed the online advice and bought tickets ahead of time.  A bingo scavenger hunt was devised to walk you through everything.  Normally, we skip that sort of thing, but the prize was a super cool plastic pith helmet.  It was all the motivation Linus needed.

It was neat this year how you could see real paleontologists at work behind glass and ask them questions.

Linus might not look excited, but it's all an act.

It had been awhile since we had visited the Burke Museum.   I enjoyed seeing the kids remember parts of exhibits and still get excited about the fossils. 

Young paleontologists at work.

Backwards hugs!

After we'd visited everything, Linus and Eileen wanted to go back to where real scientific illustrators were at work.  They got to try their own hand at it.

Dino Days was a big success.  No one had a melt down.  Everyone had fun.  Linus told me he thought he would make a good paleontologist some day.  I agree.

From the Mouths of Babes in February

Eileen:  Can I have one of those?  (Hershey Kiss)
Dave:  No. It has milk in it.
Robin: (trying to come to her rescue) I think it has almond milk.

Robin:  Pee pee poo poo (giggle)
Me:  No potty talk.
Robin:  Boogers.

Robin:  I have long hair. 

Robin and his long hair.  He ran throughout the house like this.

Eileen cracks me up.  While waiting at Linus' basketball game, she dug through my purse and found the hat, beanie, and necklace.  I think she wears a beanie well.

A Peek Inside the World of Eileen

There is no one quite like Eileen.  No one.  She is her own person, even when it conflicts with what I think.  Eileen is creative, imaginative, and an introvert.  She is shy until she isn't.  She is an observer of all things around her.

Words that describe Eileen: loving, kind, fun, mildly feral, with slight propensity for whining.  She is not competitive.  She is the girl on the soccer field, swaying and holding hands with a teammate while the rest of the kids fly around the field.   What I admire most about her is her ability to stay out of the fray.  She is comfortable in her own skin, doing her own thing.

Eileen lives in her own little world.  She is content to be by herself and spends hours in her room.  If you send her up to go change her clothes, you may not see her for a good hour or two unless you repeatedly hassle her.  Instead she will be drawing, playing, reading, rolling around....

The other day I attempted to go into her room.  Rather than be annoyed by the state of her room, I decided to document it as a moment in time of who Eileen is.

Frequently, it is difficult to open the door to her room.  If she is not sitting and blocking the door, something else is.  Her room is a minefield.

See the rope?  Eileen used her Goldie Blocks to rig a system that allows her to turn on or off her bedroom light from her bed.  The only flaw is that she has to decide which operation it will do.

The hanging necklaces, glow in the dark rosary, and bell?  Alarm system.
The pink thing wrapped around the stuffed fawn?  She took the cover off her alarm clock to use as clothes for the fawn.
Stuff hanging above her bed?  Clouds, a paper hummingbird.
Under her bed?  Her own personal chill corner modeled after the "chill corners" in mine and my partner's classrooms.

I can't believe how much stuff she keeps in her bed. So.many.toys. It's not uncommon to find the pooh bear adorned with random costumes, socks, winter clothes.  She has pencils, multiple books, the mickey mouse bubble wand/flashing light thing, random toys.

I'm pretty sure she purposely always slants the pictures on her wall.  Her floor and shelves are  littered with randomness.  If you look closely though, it isn't always so random.  The giant unicorn has a hair clip on its ear.  The two tiaras mirror one another with a carefully placed hatchimal reflected across an invisible line.  Symmetry.

I find peace and joy in order.  I like a clean house, free of clutter.  Eileen revels in the messiness of her life.  It's a struggle to find the balance.  I hope I am able to teach Eileen how to be responsible and organized.  In return, I hope to gain an improved ability to let go, embrace the chaos, and remember how it was to be young once.

Eileen is still a child who knows how to live in a land of make believe.  She isn't too old or too cool to pretend to be a sea turtle with her little brother, listen to stories, or truly play with toys.

I may not always understand you Eileen, but I do appreciate you.

Forced Family Fun

Sickness, work, more sickness, sports practices, grocery shopping, games, volunteer work, and more sickness has kept our family from spending quality time as just the five of us.  No longer content to let another weekend slip by without our little family doing something together.

Linus was not sure to make of this.  He kept suggesting things that fell along our usual lines of divide and conquer.  They weren't bad ideas, but they defeated the purpose of togetherness.  I decided that we should all go to the Living Computer Museum.  This museum had been previously recommended to me, and as luck would have it, there was a 2 for 1 coupon in the Entertainment book I bought from my niece.

The promise of Minecraft got the kids out the door....

This place is pretty cool.  The main floor has robotics and virtual reality.

Eileen loved controlling the robot.  Linus later chased me around the main floor with it. It was a little reminiscent of the part of the movie, AI, where there are all the outdated robots.

There were also robot cubes that you could assemble and play with.  Robin liked those.  Dave tried out the virtual reality.  Linus was disappointed to learn you had to be thirteen or older.

Luckily, Linus was old enough to do the self-driving car simulation.  Eileen hopped along for the ride.  I could not watch due to motion sickness.

The main floor has a digital art studio.  The kids all enjoyed that room.  When we first walked in, on one of the Apple IIg computers, someone had drawn a Pepe the Frog.  I was not happy about this at all.  It took me a few minutes to remember how to use the program and then I was able to successfully erase it.  Linus then created his own work of art.

We spent some time on the mezzanine level --aka where the kids could play Minecraft.  I personally played around with Super Mario maker.  Personally, I think upstairs was the best....

Right when you walk in, there is an enigma machine. So cool.

There is every kind of old computer imaginable.  Even cooler, they all have games -- the big floppy disks of the 80s, the square floppy disks of the 90s.  There was even a Commodore64!  It took me a while, but I found the Apple IIe computer with Oregon Trail.  I loved how they even had a pretend 1980s living room with an old Atari set up with at least 20 games to choose from.

Seriously, if you miss playing video or computer games from any era, this place has them.  If I didn't feel the need to supervise my kids, I probably could have spent way too much time there.  We didn't get the chance to check out the room with the giant mainframe computers.

We didn't get the chance because kids.  What is forced family fun without a trip to the urgent care?  Eileen had been complaining about her eye.  It had looked irritated, but she said she had poked herself with a stick.  While at the museum, her eye really began to swell and had crusties. 

We cut our visit short and headed home.  Dave took Eileen to urgent care.  Diagnosis: stye.  I'm just glad it isn't pink eye.  Thank God for the Everett Walk-In clinic.  I feel like we are there every weekend at this point.  Even if we didn't get to see everything, I think everyone had fun during our forced togetherness.