Conversations with Smiths- Part 14 (Or Why Emilia Keeps a Journal)

While we were in Europe, instead of writing in my journal, I chronicled our trip on postcards representative of the things we saw that day, so even though I had my trusty journal in tow, it didn't get opened much on our trip. When we arrived home, I discovered my entry from the plane ride en route to England. I'm SO glad I recorded this conversation!

This took place in the car on the morning we left the house of our friends, the Shropes. And after our bemused families and significant others sat and watched as my friend, Dave, and I pummeled each other for hours.

Me: It was so fun to wrestle like that again!! I never get to do that anymore!

Todd: Do you need to do that more?

Me: [Questioning eyebrow, wondering where he's going with this]

Todd: I'm not offering myself, mind you.

Me: Oh, really? Are you offering to get a wrestling partner for me?

Todd: Sure.

Me: Do I get to pick out what he looks like?

Todd: Sure. You can even pick out what color speedo he wears.

Me: Oh my gosh!! Best 40th birthday present EVER!

I don't turn 40 until next year, but Todd's been asking me what I would like for that milestone birthday. Unless he proposes something better in the meantime, I may need to remind him of this conversation in a few months. ;)

Seven Things Sunday

1. This is what the first week of March seems to look like in central Ohio. *sigh* We are all so ready for spring and no more snow and ice. BUT, at least the sun is beginning to emerge and the cement gray skies will go away until next late fall finally. Oh happy day!

2.  And this is what a math test looks like at our house lately. A few months ago we switched over to an online math curriculum called ALEKS. It has made math time during the day a much happier experience. When I read the reviews about the program and it talked about how motivated kids were by a pie chart, I confess I did not believe it. But it's totally true! Caleb checks his pie chart all the time to see what he needs to work on to make pieces bigger. It's bizarre to me, but I'm really glad it's working for him!

3. I made my last payment at the hippie-commie preschool this week. Sad to be done being there daily, but Lilyanna is so excited to go to Kindergarten in the fall, that it feels right.

4. On Friday, we had the wonderful pleasure of meeting up with some friends that we were young marrieds with back in our pre-kid days in the Perth Amboy Branch. Serving together in that branch forged a friendship probably stronger than it would have been otherwise (seriously, refiner's fire, people!!), but we sure are glad that we get to touch base with them every few years! Our kids are such compatible ages, that it makes visiting with them fun for the whole family! Here are the kids (except Benjabooboo who had a choir competition and couldn't make it, and Warren who has his own life.).

5. Oh, and then there was this:

 My BABY turned 15 years old! I sure do like this kid and I'm glad he's mine.


6. I'm just going to leave this picture here and say that there is more to come regarding it.

7. I can't believe how quickly spring break is coming. We have just a few short weeks before our big hike!! Appalachian Trail, here we come!

Seven Things Sunday

Phew! This week has been exhausting. Here are 7 things we did this week:

1. Lilyanna went to her friend's birthday party. After 2 days of school being cancelled due to frigid temps, some playtime with friends on Saturday was a blessing. Getting her face painted like her beloved white tiger was a dream come true for her!

2. After 2 days of those aforementioned frigid temps we then got a large snow storm on  Saturday. The roads were awful Saturday morning, but alas, the school district's science day did not get cancelled. Nathaniel was not happy about having to slip and slide through the storm.

3. Friday night was the opening of  the high school's production of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying". Now the last time I saw this show was on Broadway, so I went in with very low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised, though, and enjoyed the show very much. Their Bud Frump was better than the Broadway version, IMO. Benjamin was one of the Junior Executives and in the chorus and had a great time dancing and singing his little heart out. And then Saturday's show was cancelled due to the snow. (NOT THE SCIENCE DAY, just the play. Grrrr.)

4. Earlier in the week, Nathaniel deigned to get his haircut before his audition for his school's production of "The Sound of Music". I took lots of pictures of the process and kept trying to convince him to stop at each phase, because he had kind of a cool emo thing going on. Alas, he didn't think it would be authentic to the period of the play.

5. Nathaniel was cast as one of the children in the Von Trapp family. I believe he was typecast, as Kurt is the incorrigible one after all! ;)

6. All of my careful trip planning for this summer fell apart this week. We were supposed to spend part of our trip this summer visiting our relatives in Spain, but they discovered this week that they have a conflict the only days that we can be there, so in a flurry of fb messages, phone calls, texts, and emails, we managed to purchase tickets for a few weeks from now so we can visit the Spanish relatives in the Western United States while they are visiting other relatives. We're really excited to see everyone, but figuring things out almost cured me of my omnipresent wanderlust for the week. (Almost. I was back at it today to try to figure out where to go for the days we would have been in Spain. I know. We should all have such "problems".)

7. Warren got not 1, but 2 jobs in the last couple of weeks! Fingers crossed and prayers said that all will go well for him.

BONUS:

8. I had my first mammogram yesterday. After the first couple of pictures, I wondered what all women were whining about. (Unless they are relatively flat chested women. That would be awful.) THEN they did the sideways pictures with the arm up and all manner of contortions and just OUCH!! The technician gave me chocolate afterwards, which did help assuage my shock at the whole thing. But still, I think at the very least a good dinner beforehand should have been warranted. Oy. This was also on the same morning of the icky, slippery roads. The upside of all of this was that everyone else had cancelled, so I was in and out of my appointment before my appointment was even supposed to begin. Silver linings, you know. 

Seven Things Sunday!

1. Lilyanna had her first French lesson this week. It's with a private tutor originally from Haiti and a couple of other preschool age kids. Her first question, "How do you say 'tiger' in French?" Now that she knows 'le tigre' we've been hearing about it a lot! She's really excited for this week's lesson. Hopefully when we spend our 36 hours in Paris this summer before flying home from Europe, I will get our point across to our waiters, etc. and after butchering their lovely language, I will stick my 5 year old in front of me to charmingly discuss tigers, colors, and body parts. It will hopefully diffuse their annoyance at me.

2. I have managed to lose the weight I put on over the holidays. The weight that I was specifically working hard to NOT gain over the holidays. Good grief. Imagine if I hadn't been trying!

3. I have a little girl turning 5 this week. To say she is excited is a drastic understatement. Oh, and we still haven't gotten a party planned for her. She changes her mind about what she wants about every 30 seconds. I'm apparently over party planning. When the boys were little, I was crazy about planning birthday parties. I spent weeks hand designing invitations, gathering ideas around the theme, picking out the perfect cake to decorate. Now, I can barely summon the desire to ask Lilyanna what she wants. So sad. I'll get it all together for her, but I lack the obsessive enthusiasm for the project that I once had. Sometimes it's tough being the youngest.

4. My oven quit working this week. It's been a rough few months for our kitchen. We had to replace the refrigerator. I managed to fix the dishwasher (I'm still preening over the fact that I fixed a major appliance!). Our neighbor got the food waste disposal working again, but it's on borrowed time. The water filtration system is in poor shape and needs a new tank. Todd and our neighbor ended up having to replace the kitchen faucet, and now the oven. It reminds me of a couple of years ago, when it was a bad time to be a pet in the Smith household. (They all died.) Now it's apparently a bad time to be an appliance in the Smith kitchen. The oven, btw, will require professional help. I managed to get it all taken apart and isolate the problem, but fixing the problem is beyond my pay grade.

5. I've joined a scripture reading group with some friends from church. Basically, we just email or text one another when we've finished whatever we're studying that day, sharing a favorite passage, or personal insight. It's been interesting to see their perspectives on different scriptures and I'm enjoying a little extra accountability.

6. A certain husband of mine who shall remain nameless is turning 40 very soon. He doesn't want a big party, my little introvert. And he doesn't want us to spend any money, since all extra dollars this year are going into our travels and apparently repairing every single thing in our kitchen (and my van). This means we've had to be extra sneaky and creative with what we're doing for his birthday. In the off chance he's actually reading this, I will simply say that details are to follow.

7. It is Kindergarten sign up this week! Hard to believe the day has already come in some ways, but in others, she's been ready for school for about 3 years now. ;)

Living the Dream!

Nathaniel has been obsessed with manatees for years. I'm not sure how or why it happened, but it did and we've all adapted to it. 

On each of their birthdays, I give my kids the option of present or adventure. I don't tell them what the adventure will be, just that they will definitely love it. Sadly, they almost always go for the safety of present. I'd actually come up with Nathaniel's adventure years ago and was just waiting for him to get brave enough to ask for it.

Happily, this year he finally did! The adventure was a trip to Chrystal River, FL to swim with the manatees! I found a hotel right on the river that basically was made for Nathaniel. It was all about the manatees. What I did not realize, was that the entire county was all about the manatees as well. He was in heaven and insisted that we stop for LOTS of pictures. 

And here is the photo dump from the fantastic trip!

So early in the morning, but so excited to be on a plane travelling to FL!

At the Tampeco Manatee Viewing Center. This was our first stop after arriving in Tampa before we headed up to our hotel.

When we arrived at our hotel and checked in, Nathaniel was given a bag full of information about manatees, several pictures of them, and a stuffed animal manatee. It was as if he'd met his people. Finally, people who understood the obsession and speak his language!! He was ready to move there post haste! He may still be looking for banking jobs down there for Todd!

We'd woken up really early that morning to catch our plane and went to bed really early that evening because the next day we got up just before 6 to have breakfast in the hotel dining room and then head over to the hotel dive shop for our swim with the manatees!

There are no pics of me in the dive suit. Because I looked like something that could be clubbed on an ice floe...

 I have to extract the underwater images from my other (mostly dead) computer, but let me tell you, it was an amazing experience. The gulf water was murky but the water we swam in at the springs was clearer than a swimming pool! We saw nursing manatee mothers and babies all over. There are VERY strict rules surrounding the swimming and contact with the manatees, but I will say that it was a fantastic experience and that if you are ever able to experience it, you definitely should!

Post dive. So cold!! It was literally freezing back home, but FL water in November is still chilly. Not cold, but chilly.

Our captain was great! Just the right amount of strict and funny. That being said, he's a scalloper from Maine, so he was completely unsympathetic when we complained of the cold water.

After the dive we were exhausted. We'd been out on the water and/or wrestling in and out of wet suits for 3 hours by then, so we went back to our room and collapsed in our beds and watched mindless tv until we felt guilty about not enjoying the sunshine. So, we went out and about and discovered that we really were in Nathaniel's world! Manatee everything was everywhere!

But first I insisted on a little drive to the actual Gulf. It was only a couple miles from our hotel and I needed to dip my toes in it since I never have before. I've never even been on the Gulf side of Florida before, always on the Atlantic, so a new experience was necessary!

And all passed out from the excitement of the day. A boy and his manatee. What could be sweeter than that?

The thing I loved best about this trip was that Nathaniel was so very himself. He wasn't being the annoying little brother, or teasing big brother, or nerdy 8th grader, or surly son who hates to do chores. He was just being him; a clever kid who really, truly loves manatees. I liked spending time one on one with that kid.

Birthday Flowers Then and Now

 I received this lovely bouquet of flowers for my birthday a few weeks ago. The card indicated that it was from my parents, and I fully enjoyed their happy spring colors as it snowed more outside.

Whenever Todd comes home from work and sees flowers he says something to the effect, "Are those from your secret lover?" Which is funny, because I'm terrible at keeping secrets. Anyway, he and I agreed years ago that if I wanted flowers I should by them for myself and not wait around for him to think of it. It's not that he's never done it, but the event is so rare that after 15 years of marriage I can still count the number with one hand.

But with this bouquet I suddenly remembered a bouquet that was delivered to me on the first birthday I had right after our wedding all those years ago. My birthday was 3 months after our wedding, so we were still in full on newlywed mode.  When I arrived home from work the afternoon of my birthday to find a bouquet of flowers on the doorstep, I immediately was sure my sweet husband had sent them. Until he said, "Who are those from?"

And then I read the card. Only to discover they were from one of my old flames. Barely even flames. We had been friends all through our college years even though we attended different colleges in different states, but on Spring Break my senior year I went to his college to spend a couple of days and he decided we should try more than friends. I didn't have a good reason to not, but we sort of continued in an awkward more than friends, but not really and only when we happened to be in the same place at the same time pattern for a few months. And all while I was dating other people until finally the week before I convinced Todd to fall in love with me, I said terrible things to this slightly more than friend and we parted badly. We definitely needed to part, but I didn't need to be quite so harsh.

I hadn't contacted him after that. Even to let him know I was getting married. So these flowers were his way of 6 months later, reaching back out. Todd snickered and told me I should probably go call the poor guy.

So, I went into the computer desk where the phone was and placed a very awkward call. "Hey, thanks for the flowers, they're lovely, btw I'm married now!"

Happily, the birthday bouquet of 2014 wasn't nearly as complicated as the bouquet of 1999.