and so it begins....

Yes, it's the last day of school today before the onset of the kids' two month summer vacation. Actually, it's not even a day, it's an hour and a half, which really translates into about an hour by the time I drop them off, then race back home to retrieve the farewell thank you cards Emily made for her teachers that she forgot and didn't remember until we pulled into the school parking lot, even after I asked them all if they had everything when we were leaving the house....anyway, then I race back to the school to hand over the cards, then home again, and the kids are being "released" at 10:30 after one final assembly which really, couldn't they have taken care of this business yesterday, not that I'm complaining because ultimately it is one last hour of peace before my two month summer boot camp begins. Phew. Some of the other parents asked me if I was staying for the assembly but I just smiled, waved my coffee cup at them and wandered off to my van. I have to psych myself up for summer. Although I have to say, it doesn't feel much like summer today, it's overcast and drizzly, booo. However, as of 10:30am summer is officially on weather cooperating or not, so I'd better get my game on.
Summer tends to be just about the busiest time of year for my husband's business, which translates into us basically spending the summer at home. The girls and I generally become tourists in our own city - I have a couple of guide books to loads of parks, lakes, beaches and trails all around the greater Vancouver area to keep us occupied. We pack some lunch and some water and take off to explore most days of the week. My rule of thumb is, if it's free then I'm all over it! With three kids it's just not financially realistic to take advantage of any of the day camps that run all summer long, much as both myself and the girls would like to at times. Not to mention that even if it were affordable it would still be a logistical nightmare trying to coordinate all three of them into something that each girl actually wants to do, so another good reason to just say forget it, and head off to explore, as I call it. Over the past few summers the kids have gotten used to my system, although it still tends to stress Kate out at times when she realizes that I don't always know exactly where I am...however, so far we have always made it out alive, so I think she has a little more faith in me than she used to.
People always ask if we go away during the summer, to which I say no, other than perhaps one weekend of camping squeezed in somewhere. But I think we stay pretty busy, and I think we have a lot of fun. I mean, who wouldn't want to turn their entire backyard hill into a giant slip and slide? It completely destroys the grass, but hey, this is Vancouver, it'll grow back! The only organized activity I put the kids into is swimming lessons at the local outdoor pool, usually for a few weeks midsummer. We love those mornings, with the girls taking turns in the pool, and whoever isn't swimming is hanging out on a towel with me, reading a book, or whatever. And lets not forget camping out in our own yard, that is a blast, at least for one or two weekends. All in all, summer vacation is a good time, I have to admit.  Being able to be home with the girls is great, I get to feel just like a kid all over again, doing all those lazy summer day things with them - eating freezies, playing in the sprinkler, hanging out at the pool, playing outside on those long summer evenings when it stays light out for ages.
So okay, while I know that there will be times that I long for some peace and quiet all alone, I also know that it will be a great summer. Really, it will. Of course, ask me how I'm doing a month from now, and my thoughts on summer vacation might be completely different, especially if the sun doesn't get into the act and make a decent appearance....but in the meantime I am successfully psyched up and ready to go.
And speaking of going, I have just enough time to top up my coffee and then it's go time - school's almost out!

put me in coach

Well, the soccer experiment has not really played out, so to speak. Back at the beginning of the spring soccer season, I registered a keen Kate, and dragged a kicking and screaming Emily off to their first practice. With one game left a couple of months later, the situation has completely reversed itself; Kate no longer wants anything to do with soccer, and Emily thinks it's the greatest game on Earth. It's not that Kate isn't athletically inclined - she is, but she thinks too much about what she should be doing, and ends up psyching herself out and blowing it. Whereas Emily - as usual - lives in the moment and throws herself with utter abandon into the game, and ends up doing well. Sigh. While it's great fun to watch Emily turn into quite the little soccer player, it's been equally if not more painful to watch Kate retreat further and further away from the game. Every week she cries before she has to go to practice, and every Saturday night she starts to stress because there is a game the next morning. Oh, and just in case I wasn't aware of how my children feel about soccer or how well they have been performing, their coach made it very clear at practice last week. He made his way over to me just before they finished for the evening to ask if Emily was going to be playing winter soccer this coming season. I answered that she was and he smiled and said "oh that's good, she should play, she is very good." Then before I could reply he went on "oh but Kate, she shouldn't play, she can't play soccer." Well. Seeing as how there were other parents present, not to mention several children, I swallowed hard, smiled and said something like, well, that's fine since Kate actually doesn't want to play any more. And I left it at that. But of course, what I wanted to say and swallowed until I have opportunity for either a private conversation or a formal coach evaluation is that perhaps if her coach had been more encouraging, she might have enjoyed the game more. They are seven years old, for goodness sake. However, I did not want to make a big issue out of it for Kate's sake. Which became even tougher for me at the game that Sunday when after almost 20 minutes of play, Kate was still standing on the sidelines, waiting a turn on the field, a turn that every other child had been given. Again, I didn't want to embarrass her by drawing any unwanted attention to her, but when the coach was about to sub in another child who had already had lots of playing time instead of Kate, I had to do something. So I started waving my arms frantically from where I was watching behind her, and pointing at her head to get the coaches attention. Apparently he got the message, and sent Kate in instead, and then looked back at me and said, oh sorry, I must have missed her by accident...and cue the swallowing of harsh words and tongue biting again.
So anyway, one practice and one game left and then she can retire forever if she wants to. I have officially registered both her sisters for the winter soccer season, but not Kate. We are going to find her an activity of her own, one where she doesn't have to compare herself to her sisters at any rate. While I don't want the other girls to think she is getting some kind of special treatment or whatever, I think in the long run it will be a relief for everyone, and hopefully make up for the stress we have all had to endure from Kate for the past couple of months as she suffered through spring soccer. I don't care what she does really, or whether she is actually any good at it or not, it would just be great to find something that she likes to do, that makes her happy and brings some joy to her worried little face.
Anyone need a barely - and I mean barely! - used pair of kids size 13 soccer shoes?

liar liar

Well, here's a new one for my memoirs...we had plans to go to friends for dinner Saturday night with the girls, so before we left I asked them all to get their soccer gear out and ready to go for the following morning, knowing we would likely be home late and that Sunday morning would come way too early and I would be stuck dealing with three kids running around wailing "where are my cleats? where is my jersey?" and we would once again be late getting to the field. Anyway, the girls did as I asked, and when Sunday morning arrived I got up feeling pretty confident that we were organized and on target to get to the games on time. Until I heard Elizabeth say "what the heck??? I know I put both my shin pads here yesterday, and now one of them is gone!" Fabulous. I looked her in the eye, and asked "tell me the truth. Are you sure you put them both here?" and when she answered a definite yes, I could tell she was for real. Elizabeth is a child who can do a great many things, but one thing she can't do well is tell a lie. So we started hunting, thinking maybe one of them had been accidentally kicked off to the side, but after searching every corner of their dressing room, we widened our search path. While a small part of my brain was still hoping at this point that the dog had picked it up and raced off with it in his mouth to greet someone at the door, the rest of my brain was becoming deeply certain that someone else in our household was the guilty party. Call it mother's intuition or whatever. After searching in all the obvious spaces that the dog might have dropped a shin pad, like the entry, the living room, and basically every other room in the house, I cornered my husband in the kitchen and furtively whispered my suspicions to him. He was very reluctant to go along with me however, and just said, well, you'd better be right. At this point he went outside to start looking around on the off chance that the dog had been the one to take it and perhaps had carried it outside when he greeted us the night before when we got home. I didn't think the dog had gone outside when we got home, but whatever. I returned to the dressing room where the girls were continuing to don their gear, and said "okay, if there is someone in this house who knows where the other shin pad is, you need to tell me now. IF you tell me now, I will not be angry with you. However, if you do NOT tell me now, I will be very upset, and you will be punished." No dice. So I start going through the dresser drawers, opening boxes, really digging through their stuff. Emily says, what are you doing Mom? And I reply, I don't think the shin pad is lost, I think the shin pad has been HIDDEN.
As the girls finish getting ready (minus one shin pad for Elizabeth) and sit down to eat, I continue to tear the house apart. I am now 99% sure I am right, and if I'm not, I will apologize on the spot. But I have no luck. By now Kate is in tears and is insisting that she doesn't know where the shin pad is, I PROMISE I didn't do it, she says, over and over, which is not a good sign, as this is her standard response after whacking one of her sisters in the head during a sibling battle. I am not even asking her if she did, after my initial comment to the girls about 'fessing up to the crime. I smell guilty all over her, but what can I do? I need proof. Finally time runs out, we have no choice but to leave if we are to make it in time. As the girls grab their water bottles and head to the door, Kate makes a detour into the dressing room, and Elizabeth is right on her heels. And sure enough, Kate walks straight over to a Disney Princess suitcase in the corner of the room, unzips it, pulls out the shin pad and says "oh look what I found..."
Honestly, how am I supposed to deal with this one? Since the clock was ticking, I just told Elizabeth to put it on, and everyone else to get in the car. I was feeling both vindicated and totally poleaxed at the same time. What the hell??? Crap. If there was a magic parenting genie that I could call on right now, I would, believe me. But since there isn't that I know of, we head to soccer, and I spend the morning biting my tongue, and basically not speaking to Kate at all. I guess I am a mommy monster, but it's like MY mom always told me, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
Several hours later soccer is over, and we are all home, and I get Mike and Kate alone in my room, lock the door and proceed to ask her how she knew where to find the shin pad. And that's about as far as we get, because she goes into melt down mode and just shrieks I didn't do it, over and over. So we calmly say to her that we know that she did do it, and we want to know why, and we want her to know that if she continues to lie to us about doing that she will be punished. We tell her this is her last chance to come clean and tell us the truth. Which she doesn't do, so our hand is forced and we tell her that she will not be allowed to have any play dates or attend any birthday parties for the rest of the school year - one month basically. Still she refuses to confess. So we carry on with our day, while Kate cries, and wails, and yells at everyone, and tries everything she can think of to get us to back down. And finally, finally, finally, after another hour of this, she asks me to come to the living room and sit with her for a minute. When I do she tells me, okay, yesterday Elizabeth hit me and I was mad so I hid her shin pad.
Well. I took a deep breath, and then thanked her for telling me the truth. Then I tried to have a short simple and calm discussion about how that's not a good way to cope with being mad, and that I had given her plenty of chances to come to me with the truth today. And I explained that while I was glad she had finally told me the truth, that she would still be punished for lying to me all morning.
I was bracing myself for another display of hysterics at this point, but she actually took it pretty well, and thankfully we moved on with our day without any further issues. I think by then she was just relieved to have it all off her chest. But what a gong show in the meantime. I swear, I feel like I am constantly being held hostage in my home by a small terrorist. And you know what they say, we don't negotiate with terrorists, right? Right. All I can say now is, Mommy needs a margarita....

we've got talent

Okay, apparently we do have talent in the family! Elizabeth finally got the news yesterday that she made the final cut to get into the talent show. My normally composed child actually ran up and threw her arms around me after school yesterday when I went to pick up the kids, she was that thrilled. Other than knowing she has a scheduled rehearsal on Monday, she still doesn't know when the show will be. I asked her if everyone got in, or if any of the kids were cut, and she seemed to think that only 17 of the 28 original groups who tried out were selected, but then another child told me that she thought that everyone got in, so it's still all a bit of a mystery. However the kids were told to let us parents know that there will some kind of specifics in the school newsletter next week, so I will wait and see. Anyway, after we got home, Elizabeth asked if she could borrow the karaoke machine (which technically belongs to the kids anyway, but I figured that since they couldn't read when it was given to them that we adults would just take care of it for a while) and shortly afterwards the basement was filled with the sounds of her practicing her song for the show. The twins tried to accompany her on the piano for a while, but eventually either got bored or were asked to leave because they both wandered upstairs looking somewhat dejected and in need of something else to do. Who knows? While this could just be a passing phase, inspired by watching American Idol all season to it's finale this week, maybe we are witnessing the birth of a future star....or not. Either way, she's a star to me. Once again I find myself in awe of her confidence in herself. Does she get the things she wants in life because she is confident that she will? Or is sure of herself because she gets the things she wants? Probably a bit of both I guess. So far her complete belief in herself has worked out for her pretty well. As her mom I admit I sometimes worry a little about how she will handle disappointment when it happens. I mean, you can't always win, right? Although she takes the occasional loss in soccer pretty much in stride, I think she still mostly judges a game by her own performance, and if she's happy with that, then the final score doesn't seem to concern her too much. Anyway, I am fascinated by her, and am thoroughly enjoying witnessing her journey through life. If I can help her out along the way, even better. If she'll let me that is!

still auditioning

Hmmmm, this talent show is shaping up to be quite the contest. Unbeknownst to Elizabeth (or perhaps beknownst but forgotten) she had to audition yet again on Tuesday for the impending talent show. Apparently several groups were called back to re-audition. I asked her what the judges told them and she said that they said they did "much better than last time", which is interesting since I'm pretty sure she told me they said "thank you, that's good." Maybe as in okay, we've heard enough! Anyway, I honestly didn't expect this to be such a serious event. I am starting to feel badly for these kids, I mean come on, they have the gumption to get up and give performing a shot, and these teachers are shooting them down, telling them they are not "polished" enough? I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I am starting to wonder what they are actually expecting. Perhaps they have been watching too many episodes of American Idol, or Dancing With The Stars. We're talking about kids in grade 3 to grade 7 here, who feel they have a talent worthy of sharing with the rest of us. Unless they are performing something that's inappropriate for the general rated G viewing audience, it seems to me they should be allowed to enter. Isn't that how talent shows work? You enter, and then we the audience get to decide who we think is the winner? Oh, I forgot, these days EVERYONE'S a winner, there are no losers. At least that's how it works on Fun day, known to those of my generation as Sports Day. No wonder the kids are getting confused over this talent show business. The rules have been switched on them before they even get a chance to start the race!
Anyway, I think most parents would be pleased to have the opportunity to go and watch their kids perform, no matter how great or awful they actually are. It's about the willingness to get up there and TRY that we care about, and for most of us, that's all that matters. That's what I'm proud of Elizabeth for at any rate. Not to mention that I suspect that anything the kids choose to attempt will be highly entertaining in some way or another, whether it's in the way they intend for it to entertain us or not.
So I really really hope that in the end they all get their chance to try. I think I am more anxious now about the whole thing than Elizabeth is. At any rate, I will continue to keep you posted!!

a long weekend

It was the May long weekend here these past four days...yes, four days. The kids had Friday off school as well as Monday. It started off in fine fashion my birthday Friday. The weather was perfect, nothing but sunshine and blue skies, so the girls treated me to a tea party in the garden - they got beautiful little porcelain tea sets from my parents for their birthdays earlier this year, "real tea sets" as the girls call them - and we had a lovely morning out there. I took them for Slurpees later on that afternoon, first really hot day of the year definitely required Slurpees I figured, and apparently so did everyone else in the neighborhood! Usually I have to give them a hand with the Slurpee machine, but I took a chance and sent them over on their own, since I could see quite a few of their friends already over there. They managed quite well of course, although they did put them in the Big Gulp cups instead of the slurpee cups, which caused the cashier to give me the evil eye as she tried to figure out what to charge me, oh well! Then home to lounge on our deck, with some intermittent jump rope action now and then. My mother in law called with exciting news - she and my father in law were on their way to pick up the kids and take them for a sleep over so that Mike and I could go out for dinner, so I sent the girls off to pack up some clothes and before long, I had the house to myself. Now it was time for the ultimate birthday treat...a cold beer and a good book on the deck in the sunshine, ahhhhh. I am really pretty easy to please! In fact, I was so comfortable by the time Mike got home that I suggested we do take out sushi and stay home and watch the hockey game instead of going out. He's pretty easy to please too, so that was the just right end to my just right day.
Woke up the next day to rain. Since we were planning to have our traditional May long weekend barbecue the following day, we went into battle mode, and took advantage of the kids being otherwise occupied at Grammy's house. Made the shopping rounds for our supplies - we were expecting about 12 kids in addition to all their parents, and the forecast called for more rain, so we hit the dollar store and stocked up on a wild variety of crafts and deadly toys made in China - and then worked on getting the house organized. The kids arrived home, and for once didn't go into total post Grammy and Grampa sleepover meltdown, but instead maintained their composure and played fairly decently with each other while Mike and I spent the evening doing really important things to prep for the party, like set up the outdoor canopy, arrange lawn furniture, and test out the new karaoke CD on the machine, you know, to make sure it worked properly...
Anyway, up early for soccer Sunday. The twins were up first. Em was in her usual aggressive form, hit the post twice and the goalie in the face once, but didn't actually score. Kate tripped and fell early on in the game, immediately jumped back up and started to cry, and so we spent the rest of the game telling her she was fine and to go go go! She carried on, just barely. I have a feeling winter soccer is not going to be on her to do list, sigh. Elizabeth was next. She had a great game - the rest of her team was a bit sleepy the first half, but not E, and the second half they all perked up and did well. She didn't score, but seemed happy enough with her performance afterwards. Then it was onto phase 2, the hockey game!
Yes, home to watch the Canucks win another game, a good omen for the rest of the day for sure. And the sun came out! Yes! So by mid afternoon once the game was done the party guests began arriving, and soon we had a yard full of kids gone wild. All the parents either lounged on the deck above, played bocce ball out front, or rocked it out with the karaoke machine in the living room. It was a perfect party with no drama from the kids, other than when one of the boys cracked open his glow in the dark baton, causing it to leak glow in the dark fluid all over his hands which he promptly rubbed in his eyes. By chance I happened to be standing right there, so I grabbed him and hung him upside down in the sink with his face under the tap until his dad came and relieved me. Other than being wet he was fine, phew. Unfortunately after witnessing the incident half the girls were somewhat traumatized and wouldn't go near their glowy batons after that. Probably for the best...!
After being up till nearly midnight, I figured the girls would be disastrous the next day. Maybe it was the sunshine, maybe it was the all day Sweet Life of Zach and Cody on Family channel marathon, but they held it together pretty well. Mike and I actually got to sit on the deck and read for a couple hours that afternoon, with minimal interruptions. When they got antsy after dinner I sent them outside with tin foil pie plates to make "pies" which we got to down and "buy" sometime later on. Other than Emily, who was covered in mud right down to her toes the other two were pretty clean, but it was a good excuse to force showers upon them all and get ready for bed.
It felt like we'd been away for a week when I took them all to school this morning. The twins face the first day with a new teacher, and Elizabeth is supposed to find out whether she is going to be in the talent show, so I will most certainly have some good writing fodder by this evening!

audition update...

So Monday came and there were too many acts to get through in one day, so Elizabeth's groups audition has been pushed back to Thursday this week. She has been following the results from the rest of the auditions, and it sounds like they have their work cut out for them! I was kind of thinking that unless someone showed up with something really goofy that all the kids would make the cut for the talent show, but apparently I am quite wrong. Elizabeth has reported that on the first day all the acts that tried out were sent packing, and none of them made it in, due to a lack of "polish". Now I am actually a little concerned for her, one wrong giggle and they might just blow it! However, she seems totally undaunted, just a little bit nervous now she says. So tomorrow is the big day, I am dying to find out how they do! I will keep you posted...