Sunscreen Mud

Peyton is in soccer camp for spring break. Being the awesome mom that I am, I forgot to send sunscreen with him today. (In my defense, it was raining when he left the house this morning). But he let me know it was ok. Animals roll around in the mud to protect themselves from the sun.  So he went ahead and rubbed mud all over himself as a sunscreen. 

Yay? 

We might be watching a little too much wild kratts in this house. 

 

Dance, dance, dance

Elliana is getting ready for her dance review in June. I took a few pictures in dance class a couple of weeks ago.

 

 

Patrick's day

 

Elliana came home today and told me she was having a Father's Day party in her classroom this Friday.

Father's Day? Really? That seemed odd. I actually thought about this and tried to figure out why they would do that.

Then she started talking about the leprechaun in her classroom too.

Wait...do you mean you're celebrating St. Patrick's Day in school on Friday?

She was like...Yeeeeuuus!

As in....duh!

So we explained that not every dad was named Patrick. Lol.

It's mine, mine, mine, mine....

I think Elliana wants to make sure we all know that this is HER floss. 

 

The struggle of a working mom is real

Patrick was away for the last couple of days at a work conference.  But I had plans in place for everything to run smoothly. I had an important meeting at 8am this morning that included deans and directors, where the task force that I've been on would be presenting our recommendations for some programming on campus. One of my neighbors would bring Peyton to school and I would bring Elliana to school earlier than usual, but it would be fine.

Except at 4:30 am this morning, it suddenly wasn't. But I was in denial.

Elliana: Mom, wake up. I don't feel good.

Me (groggy) what's wrong?

Elliana: I don't know. I just don't feel good.

Me: breaking a cardinal rule - get in my bed and go back to sleep.

At 5:30, it's now time to get up. But Elliana has finally just fallen back to sleep.  I decided to get up and start getting ready and then get the kids up, hoping it would all be fine.

Peyton was grumpy, but I got him out the door. Elliana was sleepy but I managed to get her dressed, amid protests she wasn't feeling well.  I had to make a call, stay home with her in the chance she was sick and miss the important meeting? She wasn't running fever and couldn't really tell me what was wrong. Or send her to school and hope for the best?

The eternal optimist in me decided I would bring her to school and hope for the best. It's hard to tell with her sometimes whether she's being dramatic or whether she doesn't feel well.

I dropped her off and drove 45 minutes to campus, ran across campus to my meeting, walking in 15 minutes late. I'm already making a great impression here. 

I sat down, contributed to the conversation with about three sentences when my phone started ringing. It was daycare's phone number. You know where this is going....

Teacher: um, Elliana is sick and just projectile vomited all over the place. 

Raise your hand if you're surprised. Anyone? Anyone?! 

So I drove 45 minutes back to school to pick her up at which point she runs over and jumped into my arms, excited to see me. I guess she's feeling better? 

She's currently on her third episode of wild kratts, after several episodes of Daniel Tiger and a viewing of Frozen. She isn't eating much, but she's still singing and dancing. And hamming it up for the camera. She isn't allowed to go bank to school tomorrow since she threw up all over the place there this morning, so we'll do it all over again tomorrow. Except the part where I drive an hour and a half across town. 

 

As for the meeting, I quietly picked up my stuff and left after being there for just a few minutes. I'm quite sure I was judged. Whatever. Isn't the first and won't be the last time I'll need to run out the door to rescue a kid. 

District Pinewood Derby

Peyton recently placed 3rd in the speed category at our Pack Pinewood Derby.  This is serious business, where the placement of the wheels and axels and weights can make the difference of 0.001 seconds, which separated Peyton from first place. It was our Pack's turn to host the District Pinewood Derby where the top 3 racers in speed from all of the packs in our area compete against each other.   Patrick, as the cubmaster of our Pack, served as the emcee for the event.  He did a great job, but I won't lie, he was stressed out and sweating the entire time. 







There were some technical issues with communication between the track and the computer system and there were lots of errors and, hence, delays.  This picture kind of captures the essence of the morning.  Poor Mr. Dominik was stressed out too.  







But in the end it was a good event.  Peyton didn't place among the top in the district, but he had fun just being able to be there and participate.  

3 Boys. Boogers. Target

Peyton won a $5 gift card to target playing Bingo at the Family Fun Night.  So he wanted to spend it.  Except I didn't think I could handle taking Peyton and Elliana to target at the same time.  They're having....trouble getting along (to put it mildly).  So I asked the neighbors if Elliana could play with their daughters if I agreed to take the boys to Target with us.  Elliana only agreed to this plan if I promised to bring her back ice cream.  Deal.

They talked about picking their nose and eating boogers the whole way there.  Boys are so.so.gross.

Then we spent the evening hanging out by the fire and grilling while I drank sangria from a juice pouch to recover from the Target trip.  And ate ice cream.  Good times on Cavell Ct.

Family Fun Night

There was a family fun night at Peyton's school Friday night.  He had fun playing this game where he had to get the cookie from his forehead to his mouth without using his hands.  What can I say?  He's a kid with many talents. 

They all axed for you

We went on down to the zoo this past weekend. Patrick and Peyton got to go Saturday night with their Cub Scout pack and spent the evening learning about reptiles. They even got to go on a night time hike through the dark zoo.

Elliana and I enjoyed a girls night where fingernails were painted, we ate Mac and cheese, and we visited her pal Luca. There may have been a kiss between her and Luca to end the evening, which my friend Laura and I agreed was not the best idea, but we couldn't stop laughing).

Anyway, back to the point - Elliana and I drive down to the zoo Sunday morning (in our matching girl shirts) and spent the day checking out the animals. I just wanted to share a few pictures.



























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More Pictures from Peyton's TKD tourney

Another Dad took a bunch of pictures of Peyton's TKD tournament last weekend, so I thought I would share a few of the ones that Peyton is in. 

Call me Carly Rae Jepsen, Maybe

Elliana LOVES to sing. This is one of my favorites to hear her sing along to.

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Peyton and James

Peyton got a programmable robot that he named James for his birthday. He has shown some interest in coding so this will help him develop that skill!

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TKD tourney

Peyton participated in his first TKD tournament on Saturday. He competed in the Kata and Sparring categories. Here is a video of his Kata (he placed 4th in this category).

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Wacky Wednesday

Three minutes before Peyton needed to walk out of the door for school today, I realized it was Dr. Seuss's birthday and therefore Wacky Wednesday at Peyton's school. I managed to throw a few things together to help him out, but I don't think he'll be the wackiest kid in second grade today. Hopefully he will have fun with it anyway.




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Alrighty Then...

Walking into Tae Kwon Do this evening:

Patrick to Elliana: "Can I hold your hand while we cross the parking lot?"

Elliana: "No"

Patrick: "Then, can I hold you?"

Elliana:"No"

Patrick: "What can I hold?"

Elliana: "You can hold the door open for me."

Then, later....

Me: "Elliana, I brought you a book back from my trip to Philadelphia" (I should add that it is a beautiful kids book of Van Gogh paintings)

Elliana: "Well, I don't want it. I wanted an Olaf book."

Oh, to be 4 again!




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A weekend in Philly

I know most of ya'll don't read the blog to hear about me. But there's a small chance that my Grandma still wants to know what I'm up to, so bear with me.

I've been in Philadelphia this weekend while Patrick has held the fort down with the children. I'm pretty sure he'll be a little grayer by the time I get home. He leaves for his annual ski trip on Wednesday (this time to Salt Lake City to visit Will and Cory too!) so don't feel too sorry for him.

Anyhoo, I went to a conference - Understanding Interventions - for professional development to help understand strategies meant to recruit and retain minority students in science. My colleague and good friend Josh gave a talk about the data we have that shows that GRE scores aren't a good predictor of success in graduate school (for the sciences). People seemed really interested in his talk, so hopefully he'll get around to publishing his data soon.


The conference ended Sunday at noon and my good friend Jess, who was a post-doc in my grad school lab, came and met me for the afternoon to hang out. We stopped for an authentic Philly cheesesteak, of course. One, whiz, with.



It was a beautiful day so we walked everywhere and went to the amazing Barnes Foundation Museum, which made for a fantastic afternoon. It has the largest collection of Renoir paintings, over 180! We so got to see some Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, and Degas too. (No pics of the paintings, sorry!)

The Philadelphia city hall is a beautiful building, so...I took a picture.


When we were in Philly over the summer, Peyton really wanted to see the Ben Franklin Bridge, but we never actually got to see it. This picture of the bridge is for him that I was able to take on the drive to the airport.


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Phoenix or Bust!

"The trucks are all lined up. They're getting ready to go to Fenix Awazoana to visit Aunt Tobi."

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The Close Race

Here is a video of Peyton's car racing at the pinewood derby. Each car races 4 heats, one heat in each lane. In this video, his car is in lane 2 - the angry bird. He won this particular heat, but because the rankings are determined by the overall average, he came in second place, 0.0029 seconds behind the first place average.

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A Miracle on Scout Sunday

Today was Scout Sunday at the church that sponsors Peyton's Cub Scout pack. The scouts served as greeters, readers, and ushers, and Peyton did a great job reading his lines.

There was a pot luck following the church service. (I brought my mozzarella cheese ball, tomato, pasta salad, because that's what I bring to these things). On the way to the church, I realized I hadn't brought any food for Elliana to eat, which I usually do. I'm surprised I don't have a stash of it in the car. When the time came to go through the line, I let her get a plate and choose what she wanted. She wanted a roll. That's it. I asked her if she wanted some ham, which I've heard she eats at school sometimes. No, thanks, she said. I just want bread. As we went down the table, I offered her everything. She wanted nothing. So, I filled my plate with a little of everything and we sat down to eat.

We sat down next to another little girl, probably around 8 or 9. She had some bread and ham on her plate, along with a couple of brownies and a whole lot of whip cream. I'm not sure if it was the influence of the older girl's plate with ham, or the fact that there was a reminder of dessert if you eat a good lunch, but suddenly, Elliana wanted ham. And then she went back two more times for more. And then she knew she could have a big ole brownie. With a ton of whip cream on the side that she could dip her brownie in. Note: she did NOT want the whip cream on top of her brownie. In any case, the girl ate something from the pot luck offerings. There's a first time for everything.




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Cub Scout Pinewood Derby!

Peyton placed second for speed with his car at the pack pinewood derby today. That means he gets to go to the district pinewood derby! I have a few other pictures on my camera and on Patrick's phone, so more later.





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