We're back! And...Princesses!?!?

So, so, so many things to blog about... but I will start from today and so as not to become overwhelmed and simply not do anything I will add in the old stuff if I have time...

I am opposed to Barbi and princess stuff for little girls for several reasons.  Primarily because they presuppose a man/knight-in-shining armor as the means to salvation, rescue, and ultimately happiness. I could go on...  Although I had intended to simply ban Barbi and princesses from our house and toy collection I have once again been reminded that parenting in the future-tense is far easier than parenting in real-time.

Miss. A loves princesses.  Actually she loves beautiful and girly things.  It happens that princesses are readily available and marketed directly to her.  She is drawn to them, in the store they are like fishing lures.  Pink boxes with cursive handwriting and blond dolls with unhealthy proportions call to her, and she is absolutely powerless to resist.  Consequently, she has received princess costumes, and toys of many kinds as gifts (not from me).

Miss. A was thrilled to unwrap a huge set of Disney princess legos from Nana (my mom) for Christmas. She hastily set about scattering the pink and white legos about the living room.  Having located the princess and prince figures she quickly enlisted me to build the castle.

Ta dah!!!

A was horrified to see that the prince's bed was right next to the princess'.  "Ewwwww!"  She announced. "The princess can not sleep near the boy!"  Oh I laughed, so many witty thoughts that would be lost on a three-year old, but I knew that this would headline my return to the blog world. Definitely funny, right?  And maddening (see next paragraph)!  So, the boy bed was moved, by A, to a location more suitable for well, a boy...  You see his bed in this picture, now perched precariously on some kind of castle turret, or outcropping.

But the mom in me can't help but be upset with toy makers.  We have had countless lego sets through our home in the last 12 years.  They were all of the "boy" variety until recently.  I know their are a lot of arguments to be made by making a gender distinction about toys, but we have had the knights, and the space ships, etc.  These sets don't come with a bedroom set.  This is one small part of the over-sexualization of our society.  As a mom of both boys and girls, it is tragic that girls fall prey to this and in seemingly innocuous ways. My opposition to princesses has been underscored and reaffirmed!

Running Buddies

I love to run.  Actually I love what running does for my body.  And now that I am no longer a spring chicken I am realizing how important running is for my mental health.  Running makes me happy.  Happier when I get to run with my two favorite running buddies.  C and K are fast, really fast.  On shorter runs (less than 4 miles) they can kick my booty.  I don't let them do much more than 4 miles right now, it can't be good for their growing bodies, right?

When we run together I have started taking selfies of us.  These aren't the prettiest pictures, but I love looking at them.  C and K are such troopers.  If I suggest a detour that might add another mile to our route or some significant elevation they are almost always up for it.

Here are the latest selfies from our runs.  All of these are recent, and so, so sad because in two of them I am wearing my headband to keep my ears warm--in June!

Here C and I went out for a nice little 5 miler in the neighborhood.  When I run with him, it is like running with an alpha-dog.  No matter how painful it is for the dog, or how tired, or how thirsty he is, he will still strain to be at the very, very end of the leash.  That is C, he has to be in the lead, by about 30 yards no matter how much it hurts.

We discovered an awesome trail in Moore Park.  It is a trail run, so it is a little more technical than we are used to and the single track is fun.  Big elevation gains on this one, but coming down is soooo fun.

 

 

A couple days later we returned in the evening for another round on our new favorite trail.  Cold enough for a headband and sweatshirts.  C was killing himself to maintain the lead, and K was killing himself to try to claim the lead.  As a result of all this competition I was killing myself just to keep them in my sight...  So we had to play follow the leader.  Every time a new song came on we had to switch leaders and run at the leader's comfortable pace.  It was so much more fun for all of us.  Even the boys admitted that they liked it better without the pressure.

 

 

 

Lucky me, my running buddies are also my biking buddies.  We are fortunate to live in a town small enough that we can bike just about anywhere.  When the weather is warm and we have enough time all of us prefer two wheels to four.  Here is a shot from this week.  I had to go in to work, but we had time to ride.  On our return trip we tried to find a couple geocaches...we were unsuccessful this time.  The girls had no patience for geocaching...

 



Happy Birthday A

I can't believe it has been 3 years since we were on the beach in Mississippi waiting and waiting for Miss. A to arrive.  A is 3!!!  And she is amazing--hilarious, fabulous, so much fun.  I could go on, and on.  I usually do, anybody who has to listen to me marvel about A would certainly agree.  To those people who have to endure my endless adoration of A, I am sorry.  I truly can not help myself.  She is the most incredible package of girliness, glitter, sweetness, confidence, bossiness, competitiveness, compassion, and hilarious fun that I have ever encountered.  Oh, did I mention that I am a bit biased...

So she turned 3 on Tuesday.  We kicked off the birthday with...ladybugs and praying manti (sses???).  Johan had to work so the presents had to wait for the evening.  A loves critters.  Now that the weather is warm and butterflies, beetles, and spiders are about, she can usually be found in the yard with a net catching something.  She can catch butterflies like nobodies business.  She usually has one in her hand and 7-8 in the butterfly house.  She will enthusiastically remark, "Aw, this one is so cute!  Look he likes me!"  I don't think they like her... just guessing... probably the giant with the net who is going to cup you in her sweaty palm isn't  so much a friend.  But I digress.  I gave A a container filled with 1500+ ladybugs to release in our garden and one with two praying mantiss eggs.  She and the boys were in their glory!

All three of them had the ladybugs crawling all over their arms and legs.  I was a little creep-ed out by the quantity.  A few ladybugs are cute, but hundreds of them all moving about on your children was a little bit yucky for me.

Here is A opening up the ladybugs.  She was pretty excited.  Unfortunately, she was just a little off all day.  Pretty enthusiastic, but just not herself.  I was suspecting that she was starting to get sick.  Cut to tonight...I just returned from a late night run to Freddies for cough medicine.  Yep, she was on the verge all week.  She has a cough and plenty of congestion now.

Here are the boys, with feng shui bed head.  C must have slept on his right, K on his left.  Judge away, I should have had them brush their hair.  But we were so excited to set the ladybugs free.

Some of the less fortunate ladybugs were transferred from their container into our butterfly house.  This is hands down the best toy purchase ever!  This may be our third one, but the kids all love this thing.  When the temperatures finally climb past 50 degrees they always have something captured in here.  On this day there was a dead butterfly in it when the ladybugs appeared.  We learned that ladybugs like dead butterfly.  Thus a good discussion about why ladybugs are good for your garden.

Oma and Opa sent balloons and a stuffed animal.

Later we had dinner and cake at my moms.  She made A a yummy strawberry cake, similar to the one we made for her in Mississippi when we were waiting for her to make her first appearance.  She missed that cake, but loved this one.

  Here we are the day after the birthday.  My sister got A some fun sparkly outfits for her birthday.  A LOVES sequins, and pink, and purple.  I did not make her that way.  Nature not nurture on the girliness here...  Here she is happily showing off one of her new birthday outfits.

Johan's sister sent A some glitter-glamorous tattoos.  C and K could not wait to put them on her.  Again...in her glory.

Happy Birthday A!!!  You are awesome!

May Flies By...

So we are five months into 2013!!!  It seems like we are always racing around, sometimes literally.  The garage never gets cleaned, the laundry continues to pile up, but there are trophies, and bib numbers, and fun memories...  This month has been a whirlwind.  C, big K, and A spent a week with Oma and Opa at the beginning of the month.  We participated in the Pole Pedal Paddle on the 18th in Bend.  And, we bought a boat!!!  The boys and I have wanted a boat for years.  We found a deal that was too good to pass up, and Johan was finally in!

Here is a quick wrap up of the month from my phone:

At the Pole Pedal Paddle, the boys were amazing.  The race started with big J downhill skiing to C.  C then skate skied for 8K.  Big J then biked for 22 miles.  He handed off to big K who then ran 5 miles.  C and little J then kayaked for a couple miles, it was a circuit so some upstream, some downstream.  Big K completed the final sprint to the end.  I am so proud of these guys, and they are already planning for next year.

C is in the green below, I quickly stopped to get a picture of him before racing down the hill to meet Jill for my second leg of the our PPP.  Jill and I participated as a pair team.  So much fun!!  And special thanks to Jim and Johan who handled all the logistics with the boys' team while Jill and I did our race.  And to Nana and Hector who watched the girls while we all did the race.

 

Here is the kayak launch.  Toward the middle of the pic you can see Johan and Jim helping the boys put their kayak (orange) into the river. 

 

 

 

Here are little J (big J's younger brother) and C on the kayak course.  This is arguably the toughest section of the race.  This event requires a lot of upper body strength.  These boys are fierce competitors.  I love how passionate they are and totally willing to commit themselves.

 

 

 

Memorial Day weekend should be hot and gorgeous...but we live in southern Oregon.  We have lived here for seven years and every year I am shocked that we are still dealing with freezing temperatures at the end of May.  Ugh!  We had some nice tomatoes growing in our garden.  But it snowed a little this week.  And now they are finished...

 

 

 

Along with dead tomatoes, basil, and bell peppers the weather ruined our Memorial Day weekend plans.  We had reserved a campsite at Lake of the Woods, but with lows in the high 20s we decided to stay home.  As a consolation prize for the boys we let them have a sleepover on Friday, and on Saturday afternoon we decided to take the boat up to Lake of the Woods for a trial run.  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!

 

Here is A on the dock just before we launch the new boat to see if it runs.  It does!  Look at Mt. McLoughlin in the background.  Gorgeous!  It is calling me, "Summit me, summit me, summit me!"  That is on the boys' and my summer bucket list.  Gotta wait for some snow to melt first...



 

C obliges me with a photo op.

 

My driver looking hot.  Sooooo this fun, quick trip was kind of miserable.  The boat works great, but the temperature was so, so cold.  The girls were freezing.  C was trying to be tough and prove that the weather was warm.  He was stubbornly insisting that he didn't need a coat because he really wanted to go tubing.  And the cherry on top...little K hated going over 10mph.  So we shivered as we putted around the lake with two disappointed boys, and a miserable baby.



 

Big K and A putting on a happy face.

 

 

 

The boys are still liking BMX.  Here is a shot from today of them practicing:

 



 

Uh Oh and Hollywood!

Whenever one of the kids puts on sunglasses I dramatically call out, "Hollywood!"  Here is K in full Hollywood mode.

And K's newest word, which I realize is actually a phrase, "Uh Oh!"  It is special because it comes with an Uh Oh face.

Singing

While we were driving the other day A announced to me that, "Some people ARE NOT NICE!" She was adamant.  I answered, "Most people are very nice."  She countered, "No K, says NO!  Some people ARE NOT NICE!"  Hmmmmmm.....I wasn't sure where this was coming from so, "Why did K say that?"  A answered, "At the store some people ARE NOT NICE!"  A will be three next month.

Ah ha!  She had fallen asleep on the way to the store the other day so I asked K to sit with her.  Well of course she woke up about two minutes after I left.  She loves the grocery store.  Actually she loves shopping for anything, but she has to settle for Fred Meyer because that is about the extent of what we have in our little town.  She wanted K to take her in, but he explained (wisely) that you have to be with your mama in the grocery store because some people are not nice.  A really took this to heart, but I didn't want her to be afraid of people. 

So as we drove I casually made up a little song.  "People and nice, people are good, I like people-people-people oooooohhhhhhh I like people-people-people..."  I went on, and the song was pretty zippy (probably have some music industry scouts on my tail already, uh media).  Anyway, A was feeling pretty contrary because she kind of hijacked my song and carried on with her own.  I quickly (and safely) whipped out my camera to catch some of her musical genius for posterity.

When I could get a word in I tried to steer back to my happy lesson on liking people.  But A could not be swayed.  She quickly jumped back in:

By now I was enjoying her version so much that when she stopped all she needed was a little nudge from me.  So I sang about two or three words from my people song and that was all A needed.  She bullied her way back in:

Soccer Break

This spring we decided to take a break from travelling soccer.  And by we I mean (Johan and I).  The boys kind of just went along with it...  The plan was to for go soccer and all the crazy driving around the state in order to try some individual sports with less strenuous travel schedules. 

Since December the boys have been doing Tae Kwon Do again.  But they have decided that there was a reason that they stopped doing it a couple years ago.  They just don't enjoy it...  C has been participating in track with the local middle school.  He is starting to enjoy it, and he has a great deal of talent.

For their birthdays we got the boys new BMX bikes.  The racing season began here two weeks ago.
 

The first day was a lot of fun.  C and K loved it!  That is C on the far left in the starting block.  K is the second racer from the left.  This is a warm up round.  They had an opportunity to practice for about an hour before the actual racing began.

C and K's biggest fan.

The races are held at a rough time for us.  They start at noon on Sunday.  Noon is little K's naptime.  So we left church and little K fell asleep.

I thought it was going to be perfect because we could get the boys registered and little K could sleep in the car.  Nope!  A is not so good at doing anything quietly and when we arrived at the track she was excited and bopping around the van.  Her excitement was contagious.  Little K could feel the energy... 

The first day of racing was a success.  The boys had a great time, and A enjoyed making friends at the track. 

This weekend, I was in SF so Johan was on his own.  He did great!  So did the boys.  C and K both brought home a first place one of these:

I think we will be going back to soccer in the fall.  But for now, BMX is pretty fun!