37 And Counting

I honestly had to make myself do this tonight. The guilt was getting stronger than the desire to hide from myself. Do you ever get that way? Sometimes the sarcasm and angst gets to be too much and I don't want to live with me for a few days. Last Friday life was piling up and the last straw was dropping a full bowl of pineapple on the floor. That sounds dumb but it is just one more example of how I have shot myself in the foot. My kids will only eat fresh pineapple cut by mom. They won't touch it out of a can. I started doing it a few years ago and now they won't let me stop. I should have learned my lesson when we took Reagan and Kale to their first movie. The Lion King at the IMAX in Seattle. How can any movie stand a chance after that one on the biggest screen they will ever see? The next movie we took them to was, well I don't remember, but they were so not impressed with the 'small screen'. They were like 4 & 3 and they were already movie snobs because we started them out with nowhere to go but down.

Back to the pineapple on the floor. Dane rode his bike over the big pile before I could get it cleaned up. (Yes, we let Dane ride in the house. Give me a break. Many of you have had the delight of entertaining him for a few hours so you know what I am talking about.) I look up at the ceiling and said, "I want to go home." The realization that I was home and not just on some fun adventure punched pretty hard. That added to hormones, three days in a row of getting the kids to the bus at 7:05am, a love/hate relationship with this house and not being able to find my planner pages for April - June shut me down for about 24 hours.

But, life goes on right? Bad Tam fights her way through and to the races we run. No time to miss, mourn and remember.

The kids take turns sleeping with me while Erron is away and one night Dane was lying there holding my hand and he said, "I miss Stratton." Stratton is his best little buddy back in Portland. He is the same size, blond and blue eyed too. They were quite the pair. I said, "You do?" and he said, "Ya. He was a good digger." "A good digger?" "Ya. He had a shovel and he digged the dirt with it. Will I get to see him again?" It is the sweet moments like this that show you how you really suck as a parent. Couldn't I just leave well enough alone and let him be close to his buddy? No! I have to haul him 2,800 miles away for some 'grand adventure'.

Had an interesting meeting with Reagan's teacher today. We didn't get to go over anything when I enrolled Reagan in school so we met today to talk about classroom expectations, rules and the curriculum. About 30 minutes into what I will call my 'enlightenment', it became glaringly obvious that we are not in Oregon anymore. These people are old school! You actually get grades. A, B, C, D & U. None of this just trying is good enough stuff. Here there are winners and losers and they keep score in sports. Our school in Oregon had an amazing art program and the teachers integrated it into every part of the curriculum. Here not so much. They teach to the tests and they have to scores to prove it. Can you imagine multiple choice spelling tests? Couldn't even come up with a good reply to that one. I felt like I needed to give her teacher a glance at what Reagan is coming from. I told her about art, the mobile computer labs and the often thematic based curriculum. She was a little envious of Oregon right then. Then I had to shatter the emerald picture she was viewing of Portland and tell her about the math program. In Oregon the thought is this. You don't have to get the right answer. You just have to be able to show how you got the answer you did. The accountant in me has always loved this approach:) Really though. Would you hire and engineer who had taken 'almost right math'? The poor teacher grabbed her chest and I started looking for the defibrillator. No timed math tests? Nope. No memorization? Nope. Guess what? Tennessee State testing is next week. The kids finished Oregon State testing a couple of days before we left. What do you think? Are they thanking me for the 'grand adventure' yet?

Kale had a melt down on Friday because he didn't want to write a poem about pizza. That one surprised me actually. He doesn't like to write. His entire school career has consisted of 3-5 word daily journal entries. But, if you can't pull it out of him by making it about pizza then it wasn't going to happen for anything. I tried to talk to him about it today and he refused. We sat on the couch and I just held him like a not so little baby and tried every question I could think of to get him to give me just one little hint about what is going on in that Sorensen noggin. Nothing.......wouldn't budge. Guess whose turn it is to sleep with me tonight. Usually, when he asks me if I have any jobs I have to do before I come to bed I give him my hours long list, kiss him goodnight and leave the room to fold the clothes or to do whatever earth shattering chore awaits. I'm not dumb though. I know what he is really asking me. He wants to know if I will lay down with him and cuddle and sing his favorite Goodnight KI-KI song without him having to say that because he is just a little to old to say it anymore. It's not efficient so it's not easy for me to give in to it. All afternoon I knew he needed it. So, here I am with my sleeping little man. He held my hand until he fell asleep. Let's pray that at least his dreams are happy.

Heather, you will be happy to know that the house's owners came down on Saturday to 'fix' some things. You could tell from the look in their eyes that they didn't believe me about the stove and I honestly didn't expect it to perform the same show for them as it had for me but we warmed it up anyway. That little oven went into a repeat performance and I was vindicated. We gave them the rest of the list. The dishwasher doesn't wash but it sure plasters those ants onto the dishes well. They actually had someone come and spray for the ants and they are gone now. For a few weeks anyway. The garage door opener doesn't work and we don't have the car units yet. They were able to fix that and Erron programed the new car units. The foyer lights won't go on at the same time as the front porch lights. The guy looked at me like I had been smoking pot. I have lived in the NW for 12 years so anything is possible. After I showed him he just shook his head and spent the next 5 hours back and forth from Home Depot working on it. The last time the owners left they were headed to the appliance store to buy a new stove and schedule someone to look at the dishwasher. They came back with an appointment for a new dishwasher to be installed and the promise that someone would be calling to fix the stove. Let us review. There are 6-8 dishwashing hands in this house but even the 5 of us together couldn't come up with the hot air required to cook dinner. NO SMART COMMENTS. Is anyone else confused like I am?

Now we are getting to the important things. Food--more specifically chocolate. An easy, yummy recipe from Giada that we have enjoyed for a couple of years.

1. Slice a loaf of pound cake into sturdy slices. Not so thick that you can't fit two slices in your mouth at one time but thick enough that they can take being spread with Nutella and eaten like a sandwich.
2. Spread the Nutella on two slices just like you would peanut butter.
3. Slice some strawberries and put them on top of one of the Nutella covered pound cake slices.
4. Cover the strawberry covered slice with the other Nutella covered slice. Nutella facing the strawberries.
5. Now grill it like you would a grilled cheese. The butter in the pound cake will brown.
6. Serve it warm with whip cream on top.

Don't we all feel better now?