May the Force Be With You - I mean, Merry Christmas

 

Last night I tried to get Zander to watch Christmas movies with me but he only wanted to play star wars on the playstation. I did finally convince him to get Santa's cookies and milk and feed the reindeer then it was off to bed. I decided that we would go to the norad Santa tracker site and see where Santa was so he would go to sleep.My mistake. Santa was in Argentina and he saw no need to go to sleep. When he finally fell asleep I think it was 10:30.
He woke up at 6:30 this morning and this was our conversation.
Zander: Is it morning yet?
Mom: I think so.
Zander: Is Santa here?
Mom: No, I am sure he is already gone.
Zander: (About to cry) Did he skip our house? Am I on the naughty list?
Mom: No sweetheart. I am sure that Santa left you some presents before he went back to the North Pole.

We went to the living room and Santa had put all of his presents in bags- how weird. My presents were never wrapped. His favorite items were the blue light sabre that he asked Santa for and star wars figures. Now he has gone back to playing star wars on the playstation. I think he has a one track mind. Merry Christmas everyone.

Christmas

Well, the tree and decorations are up. It was fun for Zander to help this year. I did put most of the crystal ornaments on the tree and we will wait and see how many are broken at the end of the season. Zander was quite pleased with the end results.

Chin up bar

 

Summers and I don't agree on alot of things when it comes to the house and yard. For example, he needs a chin up bar cemented in the yard. As you can imagine I was not too crazy about the idea and we argued for several weeks about where it would go. He decided that it would go over Zander's sandbox. Zander's bar is only put up when one of us is out there to watch him before anyone thinks about the safety issues as I have. He did have alot of fun and it is good for exercise. How long do you think it will take Wanda to figure out he is going to come down?

Change

 

We have heard alot about change recently.

Change is not easy for me. I like routines in my life and so does Zander. Summers on the other hand is exactly opposite, he hates sameness.
My sisters blog yesterday was about family routines and it made me start thinking. Does my family have any? The one thing that kept coming to mind was Mickey's. Mickey's is a little hole in the wall restaurant that we have been going to for 28 years. We went to eat there every Saturday morning. The employees were like friends to us and it was normal for our family.
Things are changing. They have sold the restaurant to put up our 4th drug store. Why does our little town need 4 drugstores? We don't. There is no way that they can all be supported and I suspect that the small family owned one will fail first. Well, I digress. We took some pictures of the restaurant and our friends to remember. I wonder if Zander will even remember this when he grows up. They gave us a napkin holder to take home with us and I will remember the good times there every time I look at it.

Black and Blue Friday

The day after Thanksgiving is black friday. This is supposed to be the best shopping deals of the year. Why do people brave the crowds and put themselves through this? I ask myself this question every year as I come home with my feet and legs aching trying to hold my eyes open for the rest of the day. I have done this for several years and my reason is we need to save as much money as possible when shopping for gifts. I am not so sure about the others out there. I really think that it is the people that have money that are out there shopping. I showed up at 3:15 to Kohl's this morning thinking I had plenty of time before the store opened at 4:00. There were not any parking places. I had to go to the parking lot for the store next door. The line was all the way around the back of the store already. There were only 2 stores opening at 4:00 and the lines for the stores that were opening at 6:00 were already very long. The line at Chick-fil-a was the longest I think, which surprised me. I waited patiently in the 30 degree weather. When the doors opened, no one stayed in line and everyone rushed the store. The carts and bags were all gone and people were running around everywhere. I never found the 2 toys that I went to get but did get a great electronic deal. I am finished in 20 minutes getting back into my car thinking, this isn't so bad. I am actually ahead of schedule. The plan was to do Walmart at 5, Target at 6, Sam's at 7, Bed, Bath and Beyond at 8:00 and Goody's at 9. Now this all looked great on paper last night. I spent several hours mapping this all out and planning my morning. Now, where was I- Oh yeah, I was feeling great about being ahead of schedule. Off to Walmart.
I arrived at Walmart and was excited that the store was open and I didn't have to stand outside for 40 minutes. I went inside and realized that people had been standing beside of the items that they wanted for a long time. some of them had been there since before midnight. You couldn't get the items that you wanted until 5. I went to the area of the store that I thought would be the biggest challenge and stood in line for 30 minutes to find out that the items was not there they had moved it. I went to get in the next line. Over the course of the next 2 1/2 hours I stood there watching people break in line, people fight, people hit me with there carts and again wondering what am I doing? By this time however, I was in the middle of this mob and couldn't leave even if I wanted too. The police finally show up and organize everyone in 2 lines. That is great, but everyone has muscled their way into the front of the line at this point. They went in throught the middle. So now I am almost at the end of the line that I started out close to the front of. To make a long story short I got the last item that I was waiting for and everyone behind me was quite upset. Now to the toy section. Everything that I had gone for was gone. Oh joy, now what? By this time, I got something that I thought they would like and I hope it is OK. I have 3 more to buy for but not today. I did go to 2 more stores but did not do everything on my list. I had to get home so that Summers could go do some work today.
What happened to people? People were so mean to each other. They broke basic rules of society and didn't care. I am glad that Zander was not with me to witness this. When grown ups act like this, I don't know how we are supposed to teach them how to be nice to each other. I hope that everyone else had more success than I did.

Craft Fair

Last night I told Zander that I was going to take him to a craft fair this week. I also asked him if he wanted to help me put prices on the items. He found all of this very interesting. In a few minutes he came walking over to me with his head down and he wrapped himself around my leg and said something. I said, "what?" and he replied, "Please don't sell me mama" and he looked up and was crying. Well, I wanted to cry too and Summers started laughing. The more he laughed the harder Zander cried. I forgot how literal he is and apparently taking him to a craft fair means that he is being sold. I felt like the worse mom ever. I spent the rest of the evening convincing him that I would never sell him.

Mountains

 

 

 

This morning CiCi and PaPa invited us to go to the mountains with them to look at the fall leaves. It was very pretty but I think we missed the peak by a few days. Zander loved it. He had never seen a mountain before. I on the other hand was a nervous wreck. We all made it back in one peice.

Pajama Day

 

This was pajama day at school. Zander was so excited about his new Star Wars PJ's as you can see in picture 1. Then he saw his best buddy Kaden come in with the same PJ's. You can tell from the pictures that he is just not sure how he feels about this. It turned out to be OK. How cute.

Halloween party 2008

 

Last night the grown ups (I use the term loosely) had a Halloween party. This is the first party that I have attended since.... I can't remember. I don't think that Summers and I have ever attended a party together. We had alot of fun. Alana won for best women's costume. She was Static Cling and Summers won for best male costume. He was a cockroach. It was very funny and he was the center of attention at the party. I think he has earned himself a new nickname- "bug". Fun was had by all.... too much fun by some.

Big Kids on the Beach

 

This is Charlotte, Zander and Rehm having a great time on the beach. I am so glad that they had this opportunity to play together. They had a great time playing with the sand toys, digging holes, catching little fish and sand crabs. I think they would have stayed out there all day, which would have been fine with me.

Bubbles in the wind

 

This is one of my favorite pictures from the beach this year. When Zander couldn't wear his fireman hat, he wore his goggles instead. He loves bubbles.

Lions and Tigers and Ghost Crabs - Oh My!

 

this is a picture of the ghost crabs that Summers caught. He stayed up half of the night chasing these things.

Sea Turtles

 

When we arrived at the beach we were very excited to find out that there was an actual loggerhead turtle nest right in front of our hotel. This is a picture of it. We also found out that the eggs would hatch sometime during our stay. How lucky is that. Summers parents are both marine biologists and neither one of them have ever seen a next hatch. We watched every night and waited. We knew that the turtles would come out and go to the water and swim away. Well, that is what is supposed to happen. Around 10 one night we heard someone say, 'the turtles are coming!' We all ran to the beach and sure enough there was a hole at the top of the nest. We didn't know if it would be 10 minutes or several hours before they came out. They (team sent from the aquarium to protect the eggs)told us that we could not take pictures or use regular flashlights. Also we were not to touch the turtles when they came out. Well, about an hour later the sand looked like it started to boil and all of the little turtles were trying to come out at the same time. The problem began then. The moon was not very large that night and even though they shown the flash lights in the direction of the water, the baby turtles saw the lights on the hotel and started going the wrong direction. There were at least 20 people standing around and no one wanted to touch them because they had told us not to. It became evident in a matter of a minute that we were going to have to round up the turtles or they would be lost or eaten by the ghost crabs. I tried to pick them up and put them back in the right direction but they just kept coming at me. There were at least 20 of them coming over the top. I finally held out my T-shirt and put in very carefully as many as I could carry and took them down to the edge of the water. It was so cool to put them in a wave and watch them swim away. We continued to find babies on our walk back to the hotel. Summers stayed out for a couple of hours trying to catch ghost crabs and rescued a few more. Later in the week the group came back and dug up the nest to do the research that was required and then very carefully covered everything up. The nests are protected by the law in NC, you can not mess with them. I tried to explain to Zander and Esy how amazing what we had just seen was, but they didn't understand. I hope that they remember it later and realize how lucky we all were.

What to do???

How do you know what is best for your child? I am doing good to figure out what is best for me most days much less the rest of my family. Child Development is one thing that I feel like I know. It is hard when you know that you have a child with some special issues and the rest of the world just views him as a brat. I see it everyday, the looks and disgust for me on their faces. The sad thing is it is only going to get worse. I have the ability to change his environment now, but what happens next year when he is in kindergarten and I don't have any control over his environment or his teacher?
How do I help others see the bright and very funny child that he is? If they only stopped and talked with him, they would see it. Don't they see his interests? Even the lady at Sam's knows that he loves firemen. He has worn a firehat for 1 year now. Would it be so bad to let him wear it on the day that the firemen come to school? He told me on the way home that there was a fire hose and fireman coats and hats in the block center today and then he said, with tears in his eyes, "I couldn't play with it, not even today." It broke my heart. He knew it was a special day but they don't see that they are killing his spirit. So he doesn't pick up toys as fast as the other children and he sometimes is doing his own thing. Isn't it a teachers job to teach children how to do the things that they don't know? As I try to read this through my tears, I wonder what I am supposed to do. Do I leave him in a place that is supposed to be the best school in this state? I know that he is learning some things there, but at what expense? He will get the Occupational Therapy that I know he needs if he stays there and he will get to be part of the social emotional pilot program that will be there, but I can't help but wonder if I am doing the right thing.

Riding the Waves

The beach was perfect this year! I can not remember a time when we didn't lose at least 1 day to the weather or really rough waves. The weather was perfect and the waves were perfect as well. We had so much fun and stayed on the beach the majority of the day. It was really scary to me to see Zander out there in the waves. You just never know what could happen out there, but he had a great time. I did too. That spot at that beach is my favorite place to be and I am so glad that I was able to share it with my whole family.

Cannon Blow!!!!

 

Canon Blow! That is what we heard from Zander, Rehm and Charlotte everyday at the pool when we were at the beach. Yes, I am well aware that when you jump into the pool like that it is a canon ball, but for some reason, Zander thought that he needed to rename it canon blow and that is what they decided to call it. So enjoy the pictures. They had a great time doing this and would do it over and over.

Eliza Claire

 

Isn't she cute. I loved spending time with my neices and nephew. I never get to see them. Eliza never warmed up to me until we were telling everyone goodbye when it was time to go back to our respective homes. She finally let me hold her and give her a hug.
Eliza wasn't too sure what to think about all of us and the ocean. She didn't like the water coming in and going out. She did like the pool but wasn't quite as daring as Ruby.

Ruby survive's

 

Last year at the beach, the twins were so little. They were so cute and I enjoyed watching them on the beach. This time they were big enough to run around with the kids and swim in the pool. Ruby was amazing. She tried to do everything that the big kids did. She did not care if water was in her face at all. She would get up on the steps and jump in completely going under the water and if she didn't go under she would put her face under the water. Somehow she managed to survive even when the big kids (Michael and Summers) would jump in causing huge waves that would literally go over her head.

Funnel Cloud!!!

 

You have to look hard but you can see the funnel cloud. It was awesome to watch. The funnel would form and then it would touch down on the water for a few seconds and then go back up. It contined for quite a while.

Zander and Esy

 

Zander and Esirae

Grandkids

 

The best we could do trying to get 6 kids to sit still and take a picture. We had just watched a water spout and we were getting ready to leave the beach.

And they're off!

 

Summers and Zander riding go carts at he beach

Professor Hacker's Golf

 

This is a photo from Professor HAcker's Golf at the beach. Zander loves to go there because you get to take a train ride. I hate it because it is so hot!

Big Sister

 

This is Zander's big sister, Esirae. She has grown up since our last visit. She lives on the other side of the country so we don't get to see her often. Zander was so excited to see her and very sad when it was time for her to leave. He doesn't quite understand why she is not here all of the time and I have tried to explain that her mother lives with her and that Summers is her dad. He asked me the other day if I was his real mom? Guess I have a little more explaining to do.

All in the pool

 

My sister said it best on her blog, "life gets in the way". I have been so busy lately with work, school, vacation, family visiting, new business and Zander's school adventures that I just haven't had time to post. I will try to do better.
This is a picture of most of us in the pool at the beach. Yes, for those of you that think your eyes are deceiving you, that is my Mom in the pool with us. It doesn't happen often that she comes out of the room to play with us so we made sure to document it. We had alot of fun in the pool and on the beach. This was the first time that we were all together and all had our own rooms. Esirae was here for her summer visit and Jenn and her family were also there. I have stayed at this hotel since I was a child, but I enjoyed this trip so much. We had an ocean front room and you could hear and see the ocean at all times. We sat outside in the evenings and talked and even played dominoes with Mom and Dad. It was great and ended way too quick. There will be more beach postings to come.

swimming

 

Daddy throwing Zander in the pool!!