Aloha

Today, my much-longed for Neal finally arrives in California, and then my vacation can really start. Early tomorrow, we jump on a plane to Maui with my whole entire family. All 25 of us on one plane bound for paradise.

I'll tell you all about it when I get back. If I come back. :)

Just Peachy

Yesterday evening, my ever-generous parents took Audrey and Parker to the baseball game. Miles and I had some time to spend together (as if he's not my permanent sidekick to the point that while he's sitting on my hip, I have been known to ask Neal, "where's Miles?" True story.) Anyway, Miles absolutely loves to go outside. If you want to be his friend, take him for a little walk around my parents' beautiful backyard. Find some birds for him to point to or some tree branches for him to touch, and you'll be his friend for life.

Well, we were walking along, enjoying the almost-sunset after we had taken a walk around the neighborhood, when we happened upon the fledgling peach tree in the side yard. The peaches from this tree are delicious, fuzzy just like Miles' head and a lovely shade of, um, peach. There were four beautifully ripe peaches just aching to be picked, so I reached up and picked one.

When was the last time you plucked a piece of fruit off a tree? Well, it has been a long time for me. But I discovered what a lovely sensation it is to tug gently at the little fruit a bit until it lets go right into your hand. I picked a peach, showed it to Miles and that baby looked me right in the eye, in a way that only he can do, with a big open smile and his three little teeth, as if to say, "look mama! you got it!"

He was so pleased that he let out a squeal of delight and reached for the fruit. He kept looking back up at me as I picked the other three, we brought the peaches inside and sliced one up, sprinkled a bit of sugar on top and shared it right then and there. It was one of those mothering moments that I don't think I'll ever forget. Miles and I, out in the breezy evening, picking a peach and being completely content with ourselves.

It was perfect, just like the peach.

Our Party

My sister and I decided it would be fun to invite a few old friends over for some good food and good fun with all our little kiddies. We sent out evites (the best idea ever), and had a great time visiting and eating and watching all the kids play together. It helps that our parents have a super fun party house, even when kids are attending. We munched on flautas from the local Mexican establishment and homemade desserts! I was having so much fun that I forgot to take pictures, but here are a few!

talking with friends

Katie & Kelly & their little dudes

Audrey & Annie. We can't believe they're six.

Sunglasses

This picture is so funny to me because all I see are our all of our huge sunglasses, but these are my girls. Amy, Rachel, Lisa and I lived in the dorms together our freshman year, and then shared a condo in subsequent fun-filled years at the BYU. We spent many many a late night talking, laughing, dancing, spy-teching boys, etc. So many good memories have been created and shared among the four of us. We were able to get together for lunch at Ruby's the other day, since the three of them all live here in SoCal. I'm so glad we got to see each other, compare little ones, and just enjoy life together, even if it was only for a couple of hours. Love you girls!

From the left, Amy with Truman (known here as "li'l gee"), Rachel's little Mia & Isabel, Rachel, Lisa with Charlotte, and me with Miles.

A Perfect Day

We spent Thursday at my grandparents' house. Picture in your mind the perfect Southern California day, all the windows & doors open, a fabulously sunny al fresco lunch complete with the perfect guacamole and icy lemonade, kids laughing in the hammock in the orchard, and jazz music playing in the background. This is what the days are like at Grammy's house.

The kids helped Great Grammy make peanut butter cookies.

the kids' table on the porch

Ice cream in the hammock. What lucky kids.

Grampy & me & Miles

Great Grammy with just a fraction of her posterity.
(L-R Parker, Oliver, Mabel, Miles, Breanne's Emeri, & Audrey)

Thank you for the lovely day, Grammy & Grampy!

more pictures here!

Way Too Much Fun

We're having so much fun in California, I just had to unload some pictures from my camera! Plus, Neal is pretty lonesome, so at least he can see our kids this way. These are from our first day here, when we went to Disneyland. It was a great trip to one of our favorite places. The kids had their first ride on Star Tours, but the Finding Nemo line was 3 hours. Um, no. We did not go on it.

Miles & me at It's A Small World. He absolutely loved it, of course.

Lunch in New Orleans Square

Parker pooped out.

And they had Minnie ears in Audrey's favorite color combination: dark pink + dark teal. It really is the happiest place on earth.

Grateful Sunday

Today, I'm grateful that:

• in T minus 2 hours, Neal will walk through the front door.
  
• in T minus 24 hours, we will arrive at Paradise Number One (above).

I'll be popping in now & then during my trip to blog a bit, and will be posting almost every day (except for the Hawaii week) over at A Room Somewhere, since I have posts all ready to go for that one. Hopefully Neal will get bored enough without us here that he'll write a few posts, too. I hope you all have a lovely couple of weeks! Don't you go and get sick now.

Saturday

Tonight, we took the biggest, fattest, juiciest, Daddyest strawberry we could find. This strawberry was easily four times larger than all of its pintmates. It was great for some good giggles just because it looked so ridiculously huge. Then we dipped it in chocolate.

And since Daddy wasn't here to eat it, we sliced it up three and a half ways and the three and a half of us ate every last delectable bite.

Other things that happened today:
1. The 'A' key completely fell off of Neal's laptop. Oops.
2. Miles' pink eye is completely gone. But mine looks like it's here to stay.
3. We packed the big red suitcase full of the kids' clothes.
4. Audrey wrote her own primary talk.
5. We had to say goodbye to Natalie and her kids. For who knows how long. It was sad and hard and we didn't want to do it, but we just had to go. We don't know when we'll see each other again, or where or how that will happen, which totally stinks. But the good part is that surely we'll talk on the phone within the hour. :)

Trial Run

Some friends of ours were off to the movies tonight and invited us along. We went to see Surf's Up, which absolutely thrilled my kids to pieces. (We don't get to the actual movie "feeders"* very often.) You know what? The movie was pretty cute! I actually enjoyed it (the parts when I wasn't wrestling with Miles, I mean). It's all about surfing and even features the voice and likeness of teenage heartthrob Kelly Slater. It took me back to those few and far between Saturday mornings when my brothers were glued to the TV because ESPN was actually airing a surf contest instead of a golf or tennis game.

All the other parents in our party agreed that it was money and time well-spent. A good movie for a hot summer morning and nothing to do! You're welcome. I hate going to see kid movies when they turn out to be lame and always wish someone had warned me.

More importantly, though (and I'm really only blogging about this because it is what I would talk to Neal about, were he here, but he's not, thus, I blog), it helped me to realize that Miles is at a prime age to be a complete nightmare on a 4.5 hour plane ride! On Monday!

See, he crawls, and if he's not crawling, he's pulling up on something, and while he's standing there, he's putting his mouth on whatever is in front of his face. These are not ideal positions to be in at sticky movie feeders and/or icky airplanes.

So I'm rethinking my game plan, and may go for something along the lines of what my friend, Emily, did with her baby (i.e., Benadryl). She just flew all the way to Hawaii with three kids and no spouse. Although, if you read Emily's post, be prepared for some bodily fluids. Eeewww. Poor Emily. Good thing she's the toughest mama I know.

Well, lucky for me, I'll have Neal (and 22 of my closest family members!) on that flight to Hawaii. Plus, when you're going to Hawaii, can anything really get you in a bad mood? I don't think so.

Nigh night.

*Parker's adorable pronunciation of the word 'theater'

now is a good time :)

My little shop will be closing until the beginning of July. If you've been looking at your cell phone and thinking it needs a little something new for summertime (you know you got some new flip flops, doesn't your phone deserve something pretty?), you can place an order today or tomorrow, and I can ship it out before I leave!

Click on over to Bellefleur!

Tomorrow's Their Big Day

Neal is headed out of town this weekend. It sure seems like he's been gone a lot lately, and if he were going away for any other reason than the one that's calling him away, I would be pretty um, not happy about it.

BUT he is going to his sister Georgia's wedding.

Georgia has been deserving a good man for a few years now, and she found one in her John. As the people who love her most, we couldn't be more excited for them to get started on their life together. They're going to have so much fun and I can't wait to see them as
husband + wife.

Congratulations Georgia & John! We love you outside of numbers!

image of pretty blue cake from Martha Stewart. their wedding colors are blue & brown. how pretty!

I Have the Greatest Friends

Having lived far away from both of our families for our entire marriage, Neal and I have learned to rely on friends as though they are family. We spend all the good times with them, the birthdays, the graduations, the holidays when family is nowhere to be found. They're ready and willing to help when a new baby comes, to come clean when you just can't clean. We've been very lucky to have made many life-long friends through our years in Texas. Finding true friends is one of the most valuable lessons I've learned as an adult, and today was only proof to me that my friends are heaven-sent people who not only help me in my time of need but teach me at the same time.
I am still feeling very lousy, as in on-the-verge-of-a-breakdown lousy. It's becoming hard to face a hot summer day of children in the house and a baby who wants to be carried when I can barely manage to swallow my medicine. Not to mention the fact that Neal's going out of town this weekend. Last night, though, never fear, friends to the rescue.

this was taken last year, when I was just showing my little pregnant belly

First, Natalie and I snuck out in between my fever sessions to do a little outdoor shopping and talking, a little smoothie imbibing, and probably our last time hanging out alone, since she's moving so soon. It was so much fun, so natural, and I'll always remember it for proving just how easy our friendship is. Plus, a little retail therapy never hurt anyone. This is after, amongst her towers of boxes in her little condo, she managed to make my family dinner and send it home with Neal a couple of days ago, much to my protesting. And she's done that at least half a dozen times since I got pregnant.

Then Audrey's best friend's mother called, who I also happen to be good friends with, and invited Audrey to spend the entire day on a sort of field trip to go blueberry-picking and swimming with her family. Audrey jumped at the chance to go, and even though their plans changed at the last minute, she still took her to the Natural History Museum and a picnic lunch.

My friend, Allison, has offered for days to take one or more of my kids off of my hands so that I can get some rest, and today Parker got to play at her house. She acted like she really enjoyed having him there and said, "You need to drop him off anytime!" Even if it wasn't true, it made me feel so good knowing that he wasn't a burden to her.

My neighbor, Kimberly, knowing we've been sick for so long (since our kids haven't been outside playing) offered to order us a pizza tonight. She knew that Neal had a business dinner to attend and that I was in no mood to cook.

Where do all these nice people come from, and why am I not this nice?

Needless to say, I have a bit of energy envy. I wish so much that I felt well enough to be doing all these fun things with my kids right now. It's summertime, they shouldn't be sick or inside all day with a tired mommy, but that's the way it's been. I'm downright jealous of all of you moms who feel like having fun. (This is a pity party, in case you didn't read the invitation.)

On a happier note, nobody is sick over at my other blog. It's kind of like that Castle on a Cloud from Les Misérables. Only lovely things are blogged about over there. Actually, A Room Somewhere is garnering some outside attention lately, which is very fun. Check that blog's sidebar for more info. :)

Deep Breath . . . Okay.

Well, the boys are feeling much better. Thanks for all your thoughts and well-wishes. The fevers are gone and although the pink eye remains, my Dr. assures me that the antibiotic they're on will take care of it. Now I'm not going to talk about the fact that I have somehow contracted what looks to Dr. H* to be a very nasty case of tonsillitis. It is so yucky, in fact, that it caused him (who looks into yucky mouths all day) to say, when he looked in my throat last night, "oooo, baby, that's really bad."

Yes, I know. I know because I am completely unable to swallow. Or speak without pain or fear of pain. So I am living off of otter pops, yogurt, ice cream, raspberry herbal tea and lots of milkshakes (don't worry, mom, we're supplementing Miles). I'm not going to dwell on this lest all you readers think that my family lives in some sort of germ-infested cess pool of a swamp down here. Nobody's family should be this sick, I mean, seriously! Who gets sick this much??
It should clear up in a few days, and now I can actually start getting ready and excited about our upcoming trip!

Here's the thing, we're leaving Neal here for 11 days all alone. I know, we're terrible, but we have lots of people to see in California, plus we really want to go on the new Finding Nemo ride at D-land! Remember when I went to Arizona and Neal was a guest blogger and how much we all loved it and looked forward with bated breath to each post? I remember that, too, but somehow Neal's not feelin' the love. He doesn't really want to be flowerchain's guest blogger again because he thinks he has nothing to say and that it's too much work. :(

I think he needs some convincing. Let's think . . . what can Neal blog about this time? Any ideas? Questions?

Children's Book of the Week: 16

Okay, we're all sort of on the mend. We're going to Disneyland a week from today, and so we're talking ourselves into feeling just fine. But that makes us kind of tired, so then we take a nap. But anyway, here is another installment in my Children's Book of the Week series. This book is very precious; Audrey and I both love it. I think my sister-in-law Charlotte gave it to us when Audrey was a baby. It reminds me of all the stories Neal tells about going to the nursing home with his mama when he was a young boy. They would visit with all the lonely senior citizens, and that's just what the boy does in this charming book,

Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
by Mem Fox

"There was once a small boy called Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge and what's more he wasn't very old either. His house was next door to an old people's home and he knew all the people who lived there." He would visit them all the time, and got to know them all for their best qualities, but "his favourite person of all was Miss Nancy Alison Delacourt Cooper because she had four names just as he did. He called her Miss Nancy and told her all his secrets."

Soon, Wilfrid learns that Miss Nancy has lost much of her memory, so he goes in search of memories so she can have some to keep. He asks all the old people, "what's a memory?" and they answer things like, "something warm, my child, something warm," "something that makes you cry, my boy," or "something as precious as gold."

He goes home and starts collecting things to give to Miss Nancy: seashells he found at the beach, the medal his grandfather gave him, which made him sad, fresh warm eggs, and his football "which was as precious as gold." He calls on Miss Nancy and gives her each thing one by one. At first she thinks him strange for bringing him all these little things, but then she starts to remember. Memories of her childhood and young life come flooding back, and all are illustrated so beautifully. She remembers "the day she had met [Wilfrid] and all the secrets they had told. And the two of them smiled and smiled because Miss Nancy's memory had been found again by a small boy, who wasn't very old either."

Oh, it's just the cutest book. You can get yours here.

A Sick Contest

I don't mean to blog only about my sick family, but seriously, these illnesses have completely consumed our life for three weeks now. We are single-handedly supporting our local CVS store.

And I figured out today why Miles and Parker just can't get well. (This is day 6 of the fevers, and we went to the doctor, too.)

They're having a "who can look more pathetic when I'm sick " contest. Parker, with his two completely bloodshot eyes and constant sniffling of congested boogers is currently in the lead. He's been saying things like, "Mama, I just want to lay right here until the day is over." Maybe Miles is slipping in the race because he only has pink eye in one eye. But then, he has two infected ears and Parker only has one . . .

I guess it's anybody's game.

We think they have this.

Grateful Sunday

I'm trying to remain optimistic since I don't see any light at the end of this fever virus tunnel. I'm sitting here wrapped in a blanket, freezing even though our AC is set at 78. Not good. I don't want pity, just be glad you don't live in our neighborhood. It's really going around. But anyhow, this Sunday, I'm grateful for:

• a well-stocked kitchen. Neal has been stopping at the convenience store to pick up milk and bread for about 2 weeks now. This arrangement was no longer sufficient, so Audrey and I slipped out while the sickies slept yesterday and went to the real grocery store. Our cart was full (I needed a running start to get it moving by the end), and our bill was high, but what a blessing to have food to eat and food to spare, especially since it's now officially Hurricane Season.
• the one perk of having a sick 9-month old: when his fever returns, he feels so unwell that he'll actually sit still and put his head on your shoulder and just let you hug him. The little Mama's boy has even been napping on Neal. Neal really, really likes that part.
• my ample house. You'd think that spending this much time indoors with my kids not feeling like playing outside would make me totally crazy, but our house is just big enough that we can spread out and have our own quiet space. After 7 years of our family living in an apartment, space is such a luxury.
• one more week before we go to California and Hawaii. We leave next Monday, and if we were leaving tomorrow, I would be seriously stressed out about traveling with these guys alone. I think Audrey is the only one in good enough shape to go anywhere, and she can't pull 4 suitcases. But I am fully confident that we will all be healthy and full of energy by NEXT Monday.
  

Goals for the week:

1. Figure out the suitcase situation. It's going to be really tricky.
2. Spend time with my BFF, Natalie, since she is MOVING really far away while I'm gone. I know, she's got a lotta nerve, that girl. :)

*speaking of Natalie, she took the above picture at a little party we had for her and Jay's going away. It was a lovely evening, but the images she captured of me at that party caused me to run out to my hairdresser yesterday and chop a good four inches off my hair. It was way too long.

Musical Beds

In our house, when children are sick (like they have been for going on 3.5 weeks now), nighttime is a little game of run-around. It's rare that any given person in the family will wake up in the same bed in which they went to sleep.
For example, the other night, after we put all the kids to bed in their own beds, Parker came out and said the classic, "Mama, I feel yucky. Like I might throw up," which he proceeded to do, and also proceeded to have a high fever all night long. I don't feel good about putting a sick child in a room all alone, so Parker ended up sleeping with Neal in the master bedroom. About 15 minutes later, Miles woke up crying, and I discovered that he also had a fever. After a dose of ibuprofen and a little Mama juice, he wouldn't go back to sleep in his crib, so he and I ended up "sleeping" in the guest room. I use the term "sleeping" loosely, as none of the four of us really got a whole lot of sleep that night. Or last night, since the boys are still sick and we had the same arrangement.

Last week, when Audrey was sick, Neal stayed with her in the guest room (thank goodness for the guest room), while I spent one horrible night with Miles, whose top tooth is just about popped through. But not yet. For at least one desperate hour that night,

I was in the crib.

And so goes the little game of musical beds that we play in our house when the kids are sick.

How do you manage it?


image found here