Thursday, May 21, 2009

Graduation




So, I keep waiting to post so that I can put up some pictures to match the text, but maybe if I do the two separately, I'll actually get something up here. (Max's birthday will be a separate post)

Graduation day was incredibly busy, started with a bit of frustration, but ended perfectly.

Here was our schedule for the day:

9:15: Rich to take Tim and Sam to sign Tim up for baseball
9:45: Rich and two boys to baseball field for sammy's game from 10-12.
10:00: Elana to leave with Max to finish errands
10:05: Elana swear up and down under her breath because Max lets the dog get loose (I left anyway)
11:30: guests start to arrive for Max's family birthday party (most of the party was spent trying to get the filthy dog
1:05 start kicking people out so that we can leave for graduation
2:15: arrive at Bentley to get ready for graduation (Rich had to truck all the way across campus with the boys and his parents by himself)
3:10: graduation starts
5:15: graduation ends
6:00 we arrive at dinner at the teppanyaki place
6:05: I have my first scorpion bowl of the night
8:30: arrive home and get everyone in bed... phew

Dinner was absolutely fabulous, everyone got along, my kids behaved, we all ate great food. I do have to say, I think that was the best part of the day!

Some realizations about the difference between graduating with your bachelors and your masters (as an adult):

1. You don't cry because you are leaving your friends, you cry because your children are cheering for you and their huge smiles just melt your heart

2. You don't smile because of the gifts your getting or the big party you'll have, you smile because you and your spouse survived

3. You spend much of the ceremony worrying that your children are going to drive your parents crazy, only to find out that they were so well behaved, people didn't even know children were in those seats.

4. You don't take for granted that your grandparents are in the audience cheering for you, you are thrilled that your Gram is there with tears in her eyes and are sad that the rest of your grandparents are watching from heaven

5. You look forward to "free time" in both cases, but free time now really just means you have time to pick up the things that got neglected while you were doing homework... like playing with your kids.

All in all, I'm glad that we both did it (Congrats, honey! You are a stronger man for having survived this :-*) We are better off for it, but can tell you that the only homework I'll be working on in the future will be with my kids!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Of Mother's Day and baseball

This past weekend was very nice. Really busy day on Saturday as I spent 6 hours at the baseball fields watching Sammy and Timmy play. Tim had a double header and they won both games! It is amazing to watch his team progress... and Tim is just surprising us left and right. He is one of the youngest kids in the league and is holding his own. In last night's game he hit a ball into the outfield and pitched as the closer and struck out their final batters to end the game.

What impressed me most was his tenacity to do well for his team. A couple of kids were down on themselves for striking out (almost in tears, as he put it) and on the last better (the pitcher) Tim turned to his third baseman and said, "Hey Nuke, I'll take this guy down,1-2-3 for ya". And he threw the heat (according to Rich anyway, I wasn't actually here) and struck him out. Despite being really competitive, he is a great team player!

Sammy's team is slightly different, I think a lot of it has to do with coaching and personality. Sammy has a lot of raw talent, but not as much drive as Tim. In Sat's game Sammy was on third base and ready to come home, but while they were pitching, Sammy was running circles around his base :)

Then on Sunday, we went to my sister-in-law's for brunch and then to RIch's grandmother's. THen by that point my allergies were kicking in full force, so I took a nap! I really don't think that if it were any other day, I wouldn't have gotten a nap :) Then I made us a nice dinner.

More baseball this week and another busy saturday!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Mom... what does sex mean?

um......

Why are there no good websites telling us how to approach this with an 8 year old? (I'm still looking though).

Yes apparently the 5th graders saw something in health today about sex. So Timmy asked tonight what sex means. I stumbled a bit and Rich was no help. We did tell him that we were stumbling because it is an adult thing.

I told him that it is when two people love each other and it is how you make babies.

So he asked why the 5th graders saw it and I said well, in 5th grade you might start thinking about kissing girls.

So he asked if his friends older brother (the fifth grader) was gonna kiss a girl. I said maybe someday!

I think I'll find some better ways to talk about it and address it again tomorrow!

Yikes!

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Happy Dance!!

Just a quick note to say that last night was my very last class! I'm not getting overly happy yet because Rich has his finals tomorrow, so I don't want to be premature in celebrating!

Then we are done. I think that going back to school together, with three kids, while both working full-time was one of the hardest things that we have done. But we survived, the kids survived, and we are better off for it.

Now, we get to enjoy something called free-time... well sort of... we have a mountain of laundry as big as Everest that has been neglected the last couple of weeks...