pictures from the party 4-5-14

 Yeah, we've got a bunch of birthdays in one week.

 Miss Fourteen--her birthday is tomorrow:

And that is the end of that.   love you all, Mom

day two of they went to mexico

Yes, they did. This is the van they thoughtfully left here for our use so we didn't have to wrestle car seats.

You think we're going anywhere?

Oh, hell no.

This picture was taken out the bathroom window where last week I happily took a photo of buds.  Yah, they're under there somewhere.

So we had the supper of pizza and bananas.  b.g. howled he hated pizza.

Who hates pizza?

I asked, "What do you plan to eat then? Help me out here."

"Pancakes."

Well, luckily we saved the pancakes from last night and I could pop them in the toaster.   When I asked him about this he said, "I like pancakes at this house."  He ate it, and also some carrots.  Good enough, then.

This was taken after baths, but before picking up toys, everything incentivized along the way.

"Let's take baths!  Then we'll pick up toys in our pajamas!"

Then when the toy clean up commences, "As soon as we're done we'll have popsicles before bed!"

Their special milk cups were filled while they ate the popsicles, so then it was, "Let's hop in bed and drink special milk!"

Boom, they were asleep in an instant.   I put in my CD again of crashing ocean waves.

 Lydia, aka Kari told me she wanted a lizard for her birthday.  There is no problem with that, except we lack information.  We must have a plan to house and keep care for the creature.

She did the research and crafted a plan and Phillip is now here, and he's doing well for a gecko in room full of Justin Bieber posters.

This big-toothed beagle kind of scared me a little.  Julia has been decorating an entire box in collage form.

Well, yes, that's lovely, a great idea.

 This is a weirdly cool box.

Here's their dog, who also came to stay. She's undemanding, but the energy of this house tires her.

 And here they are asleep, resting up for tomorrow.

What a great couple days this has been, all the noise and mess and racket.  There's something so incredibly touching about being part of someone else's happy childhood.

Sigh.   Tomorrow we will take them and their van and their dog over to the other grandparents for the next two nights.  But how lovely it was to have this time together.  The little brother is so attached to the mother he barely talks to me usually.

Well.  He has a lot to say!  And he's very observant and pretty funny, a little comic in his own right.  The big brother is his usual self, but also strangely responsible, big brother-like.  And the little girl?  She loves having her cousins here, but they get in her SPACE, stress her out, make her crabby.

Whee.  Onward to tomorrow, which it will be in five minutes.

Love you all so, MOM aka GRANDMA, aka Val

they went to mexico

We had this conversation a few times today about where are Mommy and Daddy?

I know it means hardly anything to them, but not going to bog down in sorrow over it.

"Mexico, dudes!  We're having a sleepover!"

That sufficed.

They rambled around all day and played their little hearts out.  I leave the TV run in the background.  I always have.  They pay attention at points, but not as much as you'd think.

These two--the imaginary play is pretty hilarious.   There was a whole dialogue about this Don't Wake Daddy thing.  I just listened.

And him?  He had a job scheduled, drove to it, as requested, and was anything ready?

No, of course not.   Does the contractor have the  brains or courtesy to inform him?    "No counter tops, tile not finished, painters not done."

No, of course not.

So the work he scheduled into next week he could have done today had he known.  But he made the most of the abruptly empty day, rented a chipper and chipped all the branches from the tree he cut down, got that hellacious mess out of the driveway.

b.g. put his hands over his ears, and then ran for the house.

This morning I took him to his preschool and that was great.  His daycare lady was dropping off other daycare kids, and she was so nice to me.  I met his friends, his teacher.  He was so excited he was bouncing like Tigger.

When I picked him up he told his daycare lady how he was going home with me today for a sleepover and then he was having another sleepover with his other grandma, only not Grandma Wansin. (My parents.)  "She lives by this school."

Whee.

Here's Grandpa taking a rest.   The funny part about this is the other side.

Napping with the dogs.  He says he's not a dog person.  The dogs are obviously Him people.

For supper he made sausage and pancakes, oranges, fried egg sandwiches, a big old cabin breakfast.  

They ate.   See that thing on the high chair?  The high chair is a vintage piece of crap, but it's been around here forever.

There was a tear in the vinyl and to keep it from getting bigger, I taped a picture over it.  For a long time it was a gorilla.  Then the gorilla wore out and came undone.

James asked about it, and about putting on a new picture.

That would be fine.

"What kind of picture?"

"Whatever you want is fine."  (Stupid me.)

Okay, he googled, "Turd sliding down a rainbow," and clicked images.

I've lived with enough teenaged boys to know better than, "Whatever you want."  Sheeze.  What was I thinking?

 Okay, here he is, b.g.'s little brother, Mr. Angel-face.

He's sassy though and has his own ideas.

 b.g.:

 Kirsten came over and showed us how to use the chopper to make salsa.

That's Lydia, aka Kari being difficult.

This little device chopped everything in perfectly uniform little pieces and it did it fast.  Heidi gave us one for Christmas and now we know how to use it.

Okay, this is seriously so delicious I could eat nothing else for probably a year.  She made it for the party on Saturday, but I told her it could not be left here with me.  It's not safe.

At the middle of the evening, we picked up toys and helped the little guys get on pajamas.  The little brother wanted to sleep in his clothes.

I can live with that.   He went into the pack and play bed, and b.g. and I climbed into Tim's bed.

We put on my CD of ocean waves--it's twenty minutes long, and we put it on repeat.  It's still in there now, waves rolling.

In less than fifteen minutes they were asleep.  I stayed there a while longer.  It's been a very long time since I cuddled b.g. to sleep.  I listened to the ocean waves, and watched the snow falling, sky like a big, bright dome.

Spring may be delayed, but this night is once in a lifetime.

love forever, Val, aka MOM, aka Grandma

twenty-two

A plan was hatched to meet out at the university and have supper at the legendary Chinese buffet.  When the kids heard what the dad and I were planning, they wanted to all come too.

All you can eat?  Okay.   

It was a lot of fun and Jay, I was so glad to be able to have supper with you on your birthday day.

Just for fun, here are some old, goofy pictures:

Here you two are, ready to head to Mall of America, to Camp Snoopy one Memorial Day.  This was way back when Kirsten was taller than you.

Here's a cute one of you uncles and your wild nephew.  He looks pretty calm there.

This is the two of you back when Jimmy was born and you were just about to turn five.  You still pretty much look the same now, just bigger. James is no longer cross-eyed, so that's good.

 Oh yeah, there you are in the front, Mr.  Funny Man.

And this taken by our friend Todd during a very hot week they came from Toronto to stay with us--mostly at the lake.

Jay?  Baby Jay, Little Jay?  How about you now?  All grown up, about to take your biology degree and head out into your own LIFE?

Tell you what, if I could hit rewind so we could go back twenty-two years and do it all over again, I absolutely would.  Knowing you has been that much fun.

I wrote this about you when you turned fourteen, and still the same story:

"The conscientious sweetness of him, his long eyelashes and huge blue eyes, the whole shape of his gentle, lanky person kind of overtake me now. And actually it’s been nothing but a privilege to be his mom." 

"And he was obsessed with the number seven, insisted he was seven. Even when the line at the grocery store was a mile long in Aisle 7, we’d get in that line, just for him. He’d look up at that glowing seven above his head with an awed smile on his little face."

You'll be interested to know, that as I scanned a couple of these old pictures tonight, every single scan identified itself as Scan007.  Just thought you'd like to know that.  It seemed a little coincidental, but hey.

Your joining us transformed this family in so many ways--yeah, to be expected, but also in deeper, complicated, spiritual ways.

(Yes, even with your raunchy sense of humor and bad language, and all.)   This family could not be who it is without you.

Happy Birthday, Jay.   Lucky, lucky us, loving you.   Love, Mom and Dad and Everybody