It's the MOST wonderful time of the year!

It's here!  I absolutely LOVE the fall season and especially this part!  It's the end of September, the weather is finally starting to cool off and for the next 3 months, we have something to look forward to each month!  First up is October - my favorite month of the year.  Not only is it my birthday month, but Halloween is here too!  I already have Hannah's costume (unless I find something better).  Brittany and I found the most adorable fairy witch costume at a consignment shop for a steal of a price - 12 bucks.  I couldn't pass it up - she looked adorable in the outfit and it came with even cuter stockings!  Emma's newest idea for a costume is a big cat.  She's been one before so I'm trying to talk her out of it, but it is fun to watch her pick out what she wants to be.  Her list for this year has included: a firefighter, a doctor, superwoman, a donimoes girl (as she calls dominoes pizza and her grammy has a PT job there and Emma thinks its amazing!), Miley Cyrus (since she was Hannah Montana last year), and a few other things.  I wanted Hannah to be a monkey because she loves them, but we'll see, the witch costume gets cuter and cuter each time she puts it on!

Then we have Thanksgiving only a few short weeks after Halloween.  It's one of my favorites and is so underrated.  I LOVE Thanksgiving!  Last year was the first year I cooked and I plan on it this year too.  My Dad comes and we have a small little gathering with a whole lot of food.  I wish my place was bigger and I had family more willing to travel here, I love hosting things like that and I love cooking all of the food.  The Paula Deen in me comes out!  My new favorite tradition is Black Friday shopping.  I went for the first time last year and LOVED it.  It was cold and a little stressful but WELL worth the deals.  I knocked out most of my list that day for unbelievable prices.  I'll never forget walking into Wal-mart and realizing there were no carts.  I was able to squeeze by the people with carts, but holding an oversized sweater and my purse was very difficult when it came to holding a giant vacuum box!  At least I can smile now.  I somehow managed to hold onto everything until I ran across one of those carts with the big section in the front for multiple kids to ride in.  It was the biggest pain to manuever the crowds in, but at least I wasn't holding the vacuum anymore!  I'm desperately trying to find someone to go with me this year - the biggest lesson I learned from last year is that it works best with a partner!  You need someone to run across the aisle to grab something so you don't have to abandon your cart! But if I have to go alone again, I guess I will!

Then we come to Christmas!  I've already started shopping actually.  I've been trying to pick up a few things here and there for the kids each time I go grocery shopping.  I add it to my grocery budget and it makes my christmas savings last a little longer.  Matt's family gets together every Christmas Eve at his Grandparents house.  It's almost more fun than Christmas morning.  His WHOLE family is there and we have dinner, dessert and open presents.  We start with the youngest and everyone opens up one gift until we're all done.  Then we do a grabbag type of exchange.  Everyone brings one present and wraps it but doesn't put their name on it.  Then we all draw numbers.  Whoever is first gets their first pick of their gifts.  Then the second person goes, they can either pick what person one has or open a new present.  There are always a few really good things that everyone always wants.  We'll switch back and forth, as in I'll have something someone really wants so they take it from me, and I'll take something from someone else and so on and so forth.  But if the present has already been "stolen" during a round, it can't be taken again.  It makes it very interesting and exciting. 
Then Christmas is at our house for the four of us.  Last year, Matts mom, brother, nephew and nephews mom joined us to open gifts.  Matt likes to leave a trail from the fireplace and leave behind some sort of "item" that Santa may have dropped.  Last year I couldn't find where I hid some of my gifts and at 230 in the morning, I was panicking BIG time!  I made monkey bread and a breakfast casserole and then it was all over.  Of course there is New Years, but with kids, I don't really stay up late anymore. 

I end the season with Emma's birthday.  She's almost 6, boy has time flown by.  I never expect gifts because her birthday is so close to Christmas, but everyone is always so generous!  Last year I just planned a small little gathering and most of Matt's family turned out.  They are so great to her! 

But I LOVE this time of the year.  There is so much to look forward too and I'm so glad it's all started.  I'll officially welcome fall when I chaperone Emma's field trip to Graves Mt. Lodge on Thursday for pumpkin picking!  We'll head to the pumpkin patch with my Dad and maybe my mom and some of my other family in the middle of October and this year I'll try to make a homemade apple pie - hopefully with apples from Graves Mt. Lodge!  Let the excitement begin!

Disappointment

Sometimes I just get so tired of putting in all the effot and getting nothing in return.  I head into it thinking, well it's not going to happen unless I try too, but I kind of feel like I'm done trying.  I did my best, I tried HARD, even went in other directions.  Maybe it wasn't meant to be.  I'll be thankful for who and what I have in my life now because I'm tired of putting in the effort and getting nothing back....

Risk Taker? Not Me!

This morning on The Today Show, there was a segment about when your kids are old enough to walk to school alone.  They never really answered the question, so I'll never know, but what they did say startled me.  They said that parents should NOT be afraid of letting their kids walk to school alone.  White men are usually the predators and that their victims are usually girls in the age range of 12-15 years old.  So why wouldn't we be afraid?  Well they said because out of the 60 million children that attend school, only 115 are abducted by complete strangers (someone not related to them or someone they know).  Yes, this figure is VERY low and the odds of MY kids being abducted compared to the next is quite slim, but would I take the risk - I'm going to go with NO.  Sure, I'm only dealing with Kindergarten issues and we're only in week 4 of school and Emma rides the bus.  We walk to the mailbox for her to get on the bus and the bus driver drops her off directly in front of my house for her to get off.  But I would NEVER leave her alone to wait for the bus, to me it's just not worth the risk, even if she was in 5th grade. 
I understand parents have to deal with the issues of allowing their child to walk to school alone or having no other choice due to demanding work schedules, but I was just amazed when they said don't be afraid - but it's probably because I'm a scardy cat about things like that.  As much as I hate it when people say, well when I was young, we didn't have [fill in the blank], but literally 15 - 20 years ago, I walked to elementary school.  I rode the bus to Kindergarten because it was half a day, but first grade to until fifth grade I walked to school, with no supervision and in Falls Church it was quite a hike.  But I just could NOT imagine sending Emma alone to walk to school, not now, not in a few years - not with all those psychos out there!
Any thoughts?

Germ -A-phob

I knew once Emma started school our relatively healthy house would become tainted with GERMS - ugh! I am a pretty healthy person, I rarely get sick, maybe once in the fall and once in the spring.  Emma is the same way, she has ALWAYS been very healthy and must have inherited my super immunity genes, thankfully.  Hannah and Matt on the other hand, though they remain pretty healthy, they do pick up things more frequently than Emma and I. 
So I'm dreading this cold and flu season.  I know Emma is going to be carrying home A LOT of nasty little bugs and we're going to be nice little carriers for them this year.  In turn, I've turned into a hand washing nazi, washing my hands ALL the time.  And if you knew me before, I wasn't a frequent hand washer - I just never got in the habit, but I recently picked up an assortment of antibacterial soaps for the kitchen and bathrooms and "hanitizer" to keep on hand (no pun intended) and I'm constantly washing my hands as well as the kids.  I don't want to get sick.  With Matt's work schedule and his lovely place of employment, he can't really be there to take over for me if I'm out with the flu, I have to push through it, so I would rather just not get sick! Which reminds me, no slacking on flu shot appointments this year, time to call the pediatrician! :)

The First Day of Kindergarten

I survived, Emma survived, we all survived.  It was such a weird day, but it was exciting too!  We started off our weekend by hanging out with Brittany and Kayla.  We wanted to have one last LONG day at the lake before starting school but Mother Nature decided to let it rain instead!  So the kids played inside all day saturday and once the rain let up, we headed to CJ's to get our favorite soft-serve ice cream, where ironically we had only been one other time this summer and it was last week! 

So now Sunday was upon us, the day that I had now been dreading.  Ughhh... I thought I was excited for her to start school, apparently I was not ready.  We went to church, then to Target, then headed home where we hung out while Hannah napped, then we spent a few hours at the pool.  It hit me at the pool that this was no normal day for us where we would head home, make dinner, watch some tv, lounge around, go to bed and do it all again in the morning.  Nope.  I would be waking Emma up bright and early to GO TO SCHOOL in the morning.  That was such a weird feeling, I couldn't even really think about what it would feel like to do it.  Once we headed home and got changed I started making dinner and decided to pack her lunch and that was enough to throw me over the edge.  I lost it over a packed lunch! This event we had been counting down to from what felt like forever ago had finally arrived and it was all becoming too much for me to handle!
(But she got a good lunch once I pulled it together)

She went to bed without a hitch because she woke at 645 Sunday morning, so she was pretty tired that night.  She barely wanted me to read her a story.  Thankfully she got up pretty easily, probably because of the excitement, we'll see how long that lasts!  After a quick shower (if only I could shower that quickly!), she got dressed, I made her pancakes (the frozen kind, I didn't wake earlier enough for homemade, give me some time!), but she only ate one, so thankfully I made her a giant lunch because I'm pretty sure she was ravenous by lunch! I dried her hair, brushed her teeth and we headed out to take pictures.  Her bus driver was about 15-20 minutes late and I'm so glad she didn't want to eat breakfast at school because she wouldn't have been able to today!  I was fine and dandy; I took some pictures with her, played tic-tac-toe with her with some chalk, went over a few more rules and manners and made sure she knew her bus number.  Then the bus turned the corner and those tears decided it was time to show up! I held it together long enough to get a picture of her walking to the bus and once she got on and to ask the bus driver if we needed to walk down to another stop with another group of kids, but once those doors closed and the bus took off and I turned around I was a goner!  Matt asked me if I was ok and assured me she was coming home and I responded, "I hope so!".  I think the hardest part for me was the letting go part.  I wasn't there to hold her hand anymore or help her along anymore.  I just had to let - go and that was sooooooooooooo hard for me!   I really thought I would be OK.  She goes to her dad's and is gone for days and I usually look forward to the break.  I do miss her and love when she comes back and we get back into a routine and plan things for us to do all together, but I guess it's different.  This was a big step, she is growing up.  Now she'll be in school until she graduates and I have to start letting go. 

But I did let go and it was hard but she had a GREAT time.  I thought about her ALL day.  I kept wondering what she was doing at different times of the day.  I wondered if she thought about me or missed me or Hannah.  I wondered if she behaved or if any of the manners or rules I taught her paid off or if she gave the teacher the same sass she gives me.  I wanted to drive to the school and just look.  I told her I would come eat lunch with her but she doesn't want me too.  I think I will anyway!  Hannah and I ran some errands today and came back in time to get her off the bus.  She jumped off the bus and gave me one of THE biggest hugs she has ever given me, it was SOOOOO nice, I loved it and made me feel so good.  I guess she missed me a little :)  I asked her about her day and the first thing she said was "We had science", I guess she was amazed!  Her favorite thing today was circle time, they read a story about a girl in a red dress.  And she played outside and said she showed everyone that she can do the monkey bars.  Throughout the evening she kept telling me these amazing and inredble facts like, "did you know they have a cafeteria?" or "did you know they even have a library?", you can fill in the same "did you know" with any part of the school, she was fascinated to say the least.  She was exhausted shortly after she got home.  After she ravenously ate more, she fell asleep on the couch!  It was a big day for my big girl!

She told me about some of the kids in her class.  She is very social and talks to just about anyone.  As soon as she got on the bus she sat on the first seat behind the bus driver and immediately began talking to the little girl next to her.  She said it was her "best friend".  (Don't worry Brittany, Kayla will always be her BFF!) She makes friends very easily and I don't really worry about that part of school, thank goodness!

So we do it all again tomorrow.  I wonder if I'll cry again tomorrow or the next day or if I got it all out today. I had a few people call to see how either I did or how she did and it really meant a lot and I was surprised by 2 of the phone calls.  It's was a big day and not just for her, but it was for me too!  Hannah did surprisingly well too.  I was too overcome with emotion to see what she did when Emma got on the bus (Matt was holding Hannah) and she was playing in the yard when I walked to the mailbox to get Emma, but throughout the day she was fine, so that is a good thing! But the first day is over, all the excitement and worries.  Time for reality and lunches, baths, stories and bedtime!

Cry Baby

So I had my first cry session of the "Emma is starting Kindergarten" year! On my way to Wal-mart to get groceries of all places too! I don't know what started it, maybe because she was wearing one of her new outfits to meet her teacher later on, but I was thinking about what bothers me the most... I'm going to put her on the school bus Monday morning and then she's off. I won't be there to help her find her room, I just have to trust that someone will do that for me; I won't be there to show her to go through the lunch line and order her food and then enter in her SIX digit pin number (YES, six digits even for Kindergarten!) if I don't pack her lunch. In my head I know they help all the new kids do these things, but it's so hard to just let go and let someone else take care of it for me (brings tears to my eyes now, sniffle sniffle). Emma had no interest in buying lunch from school, she wanted me to pack her a turkey sub (everyday she says) in her fancy new lunch box that matches her fancy new backpack; so at school today I checked the box on some paperwork I was filling out that said she would be eating breakfast at home. I figured if she didn't want to buy lunch she wouldn't want to buy breakfast, no naturally she says she wants too! But her teacher was saying that a lot of kids just come in off the bus, drop their backpacks into their cubbies and go eat breakfast and I was like, that's it, no one takes them? they just go? they know what to do? Things like that are what scare me the most. And I don't know if scare is the right word to use, it's just so different now. Maybe it's because I have my own social anxiety problems that I worry for her when I don't need to.
Her teacher is wonderful though. Ms. Mikulan is the same later that tested her when we registered her for school. I really liked her and hoped Emma would get her. The class size is small too. Emma's school day is pretty short and I'm so grateful we live so close to school. Emma is one of the last stops to pick up, so she'll be picked up at around 755 and be the first home, around 245 which to me isn't bad at all!
Hopefully I can get through the next few days without crying and I'll save it for when the bus pulls away and then I can sob like a little girl myself. And I thought I was ready for this??? Apprently not as ready as I thought!!!

Panic Mode

So I'm starting to panic, school starts on Monday! As much as I was looking forward to having a routine for the kids again, I'm starting to dread it too! We've always been so easy going. We'll just pick and go somewhere at the spur of the moment and now we can't or at least so it seems. It has to be this somewhat thought out plan. And I can't just ease myself into it, she has tball practice, not just once a week, not just twice a week, but three times a week until her games begin. So I have to figure that out with everything else! And I wanted to enroll her in dance again, so that once tball was over in October, she would have something to do this winter, but I think it may be too much just for ME to keep up with, let alone her! Then I have to figure out some sort of routine for her to go to her dads. If he had a normal work schedule it would make life so much easier, but he's only off certain weekends a month, usually back to back and I'm hesitant to let her go (ok be away from me), two weekends in a row during school season. I grew up doing the every other weekend thing, so that is what is normal to me.
Hopefully once school starts I'll see that it's not so bad and we can still do things spur of the moment when she gets home from school. I just have to make time for homework and bedtime routine.