Vacation: Day One - Travel!!

Cameron on the tarmac in St. Thomas

 Okay, the wording on this post will be very brief because it is already Day 3 and I am just now posting Day 1.  Day 1 was simply a travel day.  We drove to Chicago the night before, stayed at a park and fly hotel and woke up at a ridiculously early time to get to the Chicago airport by 6:30 (A.M.!).  We flew non-stop to San Juan, Puerto Rico and had a 3 hour layover. After that we boarded a very small plane and flew the 27 minute flight to St. Thomas, where we rented two cars and raced across the island just as the boat ferry was getting ready to pull away. We managed to wave to them and they were nice enough to stop and let us drive right on.  The pictures that are on the water are from the car ferry, which took us to St. John, where a woman met us and drove us to our house, which is amazing!
   I will write more about the trip and who is here and why later. Enjoy the pictures....

Doug in his "travel attire"

The View from the car barge to St. John

My Sweet Hubbie, Cameron, and me on the boat

My Sweet Friend, "Susie St. John" as we have named her on this trip!

Penny & Susie waiting for the rental cars

Carolyn, Susan & Penny - lunch in Puerto Rico

This final image is one I took on the barge on the way between St. Thomas and St. John.  It is of my very good friends, Doug and Susie, who were celebrating their 21st wedding anniversary the next day. I didn't have time to edit all the above pictures, but I did edit just this one because they looked so great!

Doug & Susie - Twenty-One Years

My Discovery of Something "Icky" on My Computer Cord

Well, have I got a great story about my "wonderful" children for you...

The other day when I tried to use my laptop, I discovered that the cord input was covered in something icky - which turned out to be soda. See, we were in Des Moines this past weekend, just the kids and me.  we met my parents down there for my mom's birthday.  I treated them to a weekend at a hotel with me and the kids (not in the same room, I'm not that cruel).  Then on Saturday night we went to see the musical, Jersey Boys.  If you haven't seen it, you really should. It was awesome!

   Anyway, at first Cameron was supposed to come with us. Then it turns out he was on call. He knew he was on call when I made the reservations, it seems, but thought he would be able to trade out of call.  So, he was also supposed to find me a sitter to watch the two younger boys since I wasn't going to take them to the musical - if you have seen it, you know why, the language is atrocious. Its so bad that I wouldn't have even taken Grace if I had known, but I didn't (know) and I did (take her), which is reallly beside the point.  So since Cameron's friend who lives in Des Moines couldn't find a sitter, Ryan had to stay home from the musical (by "home", I mean, at the hotel) to watch the boys.  I wasn't comfortable leaving just grace with them since she's only 10.

    So, when I get home from the musical (and by "home", I again mean, the hotel), around 10:30, Caleb is sound asleep, Luke is almost asleep and Ryan is playing on my ipad, which I suspect is what he did the entire night.  I suspect this because as I was walking around our hotel room, there were pizza crusts on the floor, pizza boxes strewn everywhere, and I happened to step into a puddle of something which I later discovered was Coke!  I asked Ryan how it got there and he had no idea. It seems that an entire cup of coke was spilled all over the floor and he never noticed (or looked up from the ipad).  It wasn't until I got home and needed to charge my laptop that I discovered the 'icky' substance on the bottom of my laptop and also on the cord - and also on the connection between the charger and the computer!!

    So... I had to go to the computer store downtown to get a new cord, which they were out of at first, and just got in yesterday. I also had to get a new laptop battery, which I would like to blame on the boys, but is my fault because I didn't know that it was actually good to let a computer battery go all the way down before you recharge it!! 

   The worst part of the whole issue with replacing the battery wasn't even the cost, it was the fact that cameron has been telling me for years the battery run all the way down was actually good for it! So I had to come home and tell him this! (after this I didn't have the heart to tell him how much it cost to replace it!)

Now, I am including a picture below of the culprit. As I hear the story, he is the one who spilled and then didn't clean up the coke, but who could possibly hold anything against a kid who has a face like this?  I can hardly stand to discipline the kid.  

(as a completely random side note, cameron and I are reading a parenting book together called, Have a New Kid by Friday.  It's a great book and we both are learning a lot from it, but cameron is better at actually doing the stuff in the book.  I take one look into this kid's eyes and it's over for me.)

Our New Friends, Amanda and Bella (Amanda not pictured)

This is our new friend, Bella the Puppy.  She belongs to our friend, Amanda. I have no pictures of Amanda, so we will have to take one to post here soon.  Basically, we have a wonderful woman named Linda who helps me out at the house. Her daughter is Amanda.  When Linda started to not be able to come over as much, because of sick parents, she started sending Amanda, who is nineteen - and we may never let her leave!
   Amanda comes over in the morning on the days she works, she helps clean up from breakfast, she does laundry, she helps with cleaning.  One day she organized my spice cabinet.  She took all the spices out, she wrote the names on the lids so you can tell which spices they are from the top when you pull the sliding thing out and she put them back in - in alphabetical order!!  For a type-A person like me, it just doesn't get any better than that! 
   I could go on and on about how she helps us out, but suffice it to say, the reason I can sit down right now and type this out (and leave in a minute to go get my nails done) is only because Amanda is here!! She is also one of the sweetest and most genuine people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting! 
   So, the other day Amanda got a new puppy, Bella.  We all love Bella like she was our own puppy, but Caleb and Ryan especially love her.  The picture above is of Caleb sitting out front where we keep Bella during the day.  The below picture is just of Bella.  I'm beginning to see why my sister Bridget has a german shepherd! 
   Well, gotta go to the nail salon...

FIRST POST NEW FAMILY BLOG

I have tried this whole "blogging" thing so many times before, without much success I might add.  I think part of my hesitation with posting on a blog has always been that I have so many people in my family that are amazing writers (mom, dad, shelly, anna - who is not actually in our family, but is like family to me), that it inhibits my writing. I'm afraid I'm going to have huge grammatical errors, which would mortify my two teacher parents - especially since one is an English teacher by trade.    :)   Therefore, I have decided that when I post here, I'm just going to write about the family, and what is going on with us, hopefully on a somewhat frequent basis. So, if it doesn't read very poetically or beautifully, just know that I'm mostly trying to write as I would speak.

Now, on to the first post.  I have to write about my genius mathematician son - Caleb. (I know, I know, you were expecting me to tell a story about Ryan or at least Luke, right? certainly not expecting a brilliant math story about a five-year-old? Just wait.)

I recently purchased a math game from one of those Scholastic book order forms (which I absolutely LOVE, btw).  Anyway, I thought it might be good for Caleb and Luke both - we could work on addition and subraction, and they could learn those pesky "math facts", which we never learned when we were kids, but still managed to do well in life, anyway... (exhibit one of many: run-on sentence; but like I said, I write like I speak - running on and on...)
So, a couple of days ago Caleb and I got the game out and decided to play. One side is an addition game, and one side is a subraction game.  We started with addition.  Now, you have to know that Caleb, though only five years old, is extremely smart. He is reading at at least a first to second grade level. I know this because his teacher at preschool told me this yesterday.  She said to make sure when he starts Kindergarten, in 6 monthes, to make sure they have a plan in place for his reading skills. (Incidentally, the conversation started while she was loading him into the car. She said, "Caleb was just telling me what a noun is. I asked him how he knew that & he said he plays school with his sister."  Okay, the truth is out.  I am not responsible for any of his incredible skills - it is mostly his ten-year-old sister, Grace, well, Grace and genetics, which I can claim credit for.)  (exhibit two: another run-on sentence, plus an absurd number of commas in one sentence.)

Soooooo, we are playing the addition game and you roll two dice and have to add the numbers. I expected to show caleb how to start with the numbers on one dice and then count up using the other dice. His first roll he rolled a 5 and a 4.  As soon as I started trying to show him how to figure it out he said, "Easy. Nine."
I asked him, "how did you do that so fast?"
He answered me, "it was an easy one. I know that 5+5 is 10, so 1 less is 9."
Now, I'm not a math teacher, but I do know that this is the kind of thing they usually have to teach kids to do.  I asked Grace if she had taught him that and she said she hadn't.
Then a bit later he got 6+3.
He sat for a minute, obviously thinking, but not using his hands to count or anything, then he said, "9".
Then he said, "wanna' know how I figured that one out?"
(obviously, I had been really impressed with his skills up to this point, so he decided to show off.)
I said, "Yes! I really want to know how you figured that out!"
He said, "Well, it's like a phone.  I know that on a telephone, there are three rows of numbers, and each row has three numbers in it.  I know that 6 is the last number on the second row, so if I am adding 3, I go to the last number on the third row, which is 9."

Yeah, anyone else ever figure out a math problem that way?  I didn't think so.

Anyway, like I said, he's a genius.  I'm not even going to try to take credit for this one. (especially since we all know all the other areas of Calebs life that I don't take the blame, ahem, I mean the credit, for.) (exhibit number 3: I just ended a sentence in a preposition - enough to send my sister, Bridget, over the edge.)

Soooo, I am concluding this post with a picture of my brilliant little angel, Caleb.