An Open Letter

To my dear Blog,


I know that I have neglected you lately. For some of this neglect I have good excuses. For some of this neglect, I do not.


Let's stick with the parts where I have excuses.


First, I will reiterate that someone crashed into the back of my mvan. At the time of last blogging, I was in that grateful I'm-so-happy-my-kids-and-husband-came-out-in-one-piece stage. A lot of me holds on to that, but as the royal pain in the tooshie of getting a rental car big enough to fit your family began, wrestling with insurance companies reared its ugly head, and dealing with the body shop nonsense became my harsh reality, I started to have hatred towards the accident. And I still can't get over the fact that kids born in 1993 can drive automobiles. Maybe they shouldn't, in which case this thing would have never happened in the first place.


Next....


My eldest turned the ripe old age of five. *I* have a five year old! Yes, that freaks me out.


Kids these days don't just have birthdays, they have birth weeks. Does that make me sound old?

The beginning of the festivities was on Sunday. Only in Florida can you throw a pool/beach party in the middle of October. And it was hot as all get out, too.

Mason and Cole (and maybe even Lila? I can't remember at this point) had been rather sick in the days leading up to the party. What started off as a good effort towards pre-party prep ended in a mad rush to get the thing over with. Perhaps it makes me a bad mama, but I was not feeling like a party animal.

Cousin Alex was our Master of Ceremonies.

The kids had fun sometimes...

And sometimes they did not have so much fun...

Lila, she was definitely livin' large.

But by and large the biggest hit was this game--Drip Drop Slash. A Florida version of Duck Duck Goose. The kids had a wild time.

Not such a tight grasp on the part of the game where you run around the circle though. Instead they ran away from it.

A close second for entertainment value was the hermit crab races.

Disgusting little buggers, if I do say.

I sewed this spiffy banner.

And I made some nifty cupcake toppers. Too bad I neglected to bring them to the party...

Sometime back we started an event of taking the birthday child to a special, one-on-one breakfast with a parent. Cole picks daddy, and I put on a brave face even though I want to die inside when I don't get picked.

But Mason! Oh my Mason! I can trust him to pick me.

And when it was all done, he even asked me if next year I would bring him to breakfast on his birthday again. So despite my doubts and convictions, I guess I'm doing something right here.

I bought him $40 worth of Spiderman cupcakes to take to school. The boys' school does not allow homemade goods to be brought in. How do you people feel about that? I think it's crap. I'm sure someone out there agrees and doesn't want their kid eating someone else's homemade stuff, which makes me think that the world has gone to pot.

Mason's birthday happened to be fire truck day at school, and my original plan had been to go and take pictures of the event and his cupcake eating. But alas, I had to go to the body shop for the mvan, thus eliciting less accident gratefulness and more accident hatred that I was discussing before.

That night, Mason's request was a grilled cheese dinner at Calistoga. A boy after my own heart.

And like that, a three day celebration, two cakes with singing, one happy boy later and we were finally done celebrating.

Okay, Blog, I get it. That's probably not a good explanation as to why I haven't posted in 33 days. So I'll continue.

We took a trip to Tampa. Rey's best friend Nick is getting married, which to say the least is freakin' amazing. He is lucky to have found his beautiful fiancee Angie, even if we can't understand what she sees in him. (Kidding! Love ya Nick!)

They lived in Michigan but were visiting Florida for a friend's wedding, so they had an engagement party for the ol' college crew.

It was a bit of a frat boy reunion. But I am happy to say that not one but TWO of Rey's frat brothers told me I haven't aged a day in the eight years since college. LOVE those boys!

Which brings us to Halloween.

There are no words.

Oh, wait! Yes, I can think of a few.

Candy. Candy. Candy. CANDY. Candy. Candy. Candy. Costumes. CANDY. Candy. Costumes. Candy. CANDY!

Kids with stomach aches eating more candy!

And lastly, mixed into all the everyday mayhem, the sick kids mayhem, the birthday mayhem and the Halloween pandemonium, there is running.

Remember? I decided that running a half marathon was a good idea!

And now, running is no longer something I do for fun, something I do on days where other forms of exercise elude me, it's something that I have scheduled.

For real, I have a calender with mileage and rest days and strength days and cross training days.

I'm still pretty sure I have no clue what I'm doing.

But as much as I bitch about it, and I really do hate to run, I will kick ass and take names.

Cause that's how I roll.

So you see, Dearest Blog? I have neglected you, I know.

But I had my reasons.

XOXO,

Ashley

P.S. Lots of complaints were lodged through the various channels about the lack of your updating, Blog. It's amazing that none of these people who miss my posting ever, AHEM, leave comments. : ) Cause then I would be more aware of my wide and vast and expansive audience and how it misses me so.

The Week in Review

I guess you could say we've had a bad week here at casa de me.

It all started innocently enough with a trip to the movies on Sunday. We enlisted my mother to babysit LG and we took the boys to see the Toy Story 2 3D double feature. Somehow this sounded like a good idea....

$44 dollars in admission tickets later, plus $14 in popcorn and diet Coke (candy from Target was stashed in my purse) and we were in, equipped with nifty black 3D glasses.



Here's where it gets hairy. To expect your 3 and 4 year olds to sit through one movie is a large enough request? But a double feature? Eeek. Not to mention that as an adult, sitting through a double feature of kids' movies was like erasing half of my college education. If that lands me on Oprah as a bad mom a la the mom they had hang out with NieNie because she would rather kill herself than play with Play-doh, sobeit.

The boys sure did look swell in their glasses though.

Tuesday Cole emerged from his slumber and announced, with eyes barely open, that he was sick. Sick in his mouth. Translation: he has a sore throat. Fever followed, although in typical Cole style he was generally well tempered. I dutifully kept him home from school on Wednesday, of which he was happy. He really likes to stay home with me. I think it's sweet.

Later on that morning, just as I was about to sound the "all clear" whistle on Cole's sickness, the school called--Mason was running a fever. Drat. I dutifully collected my second sick boy from school.

Mason is a quick study. He saw Cole sick that morning and the day before and noticed the extra babying he got. So Mason was ready for his share. I, being the good mommy that I am (mommy dearest??) delivered. I set them up on the couch with pillows and Ruffies and movies galore. We all snuggled together. My to do list grew and grew.




Thursday is a no school day for Cole, and Mason I kept home due to the prior day's fever. And if by noontime they weren't about to kill each other and me kill them, I'll be a monkey's uncle. Or Aunt.

Fighting.

"He's got my toy!!!!"

Kicking.

Screaming.

"He pushed me."

I was ready to medicate. Both me and them.

Surely after Thursday's display of rambunctiousness they were healthy enough for school on Friday. So off they went at 8:30am.

8:57 am. Caller ID -- Preschool.

Hi Ashley, this is Miss Alexandra. Cole has a fever.

"Say what?" I say. He's not had a fever since Tuesday, a whole 72 hours!

A call to Dr. Bob was in order, and being the fantastic pediatrician's office that they are we were set up with an appointment at 11am.

The verdict--Cole has an ear infection.

Good news--that's not contagious.

Bad news--that's why he's feverish.

It was lunchtime, I was spent from the past four days of sick children, so we went home. I would send daddy out for the prescription later.

Cole deteriorated throughout the afternoon. Soon he was literally delirious from the fever, sweating buckets and passing out on the couch. I felt awful for him.

Rey came home an hour or so earlier than usual and headed out with Mason and Lila to fill Cole's prescription.

Ten minutes went by and I got a phone call.

Ash, we've been in an accident.

Your heart does really drop right into your stomach when you hear that your children have been in an accident. Rey assured me they seem okay and I rushed over to collect my oldest and youngest from the side of the road.

Enter complication (there's always a complication). I can't fit three car seat in the back of Rey's Jeep.

Enter another complication. We have two spare booster seats that the boys use on rare occasions, but not a seat for Lila (you're not supposed to reuse seats if they've been in a crash, this much I knew).

I called Keri, who came to the rescue in her black Batmobile with hubby and kids in tow. Mason was all too pleased to ride in her car and I am told he chatted the whole way home.

We used Cole's seat for Lila since his was unoccupied in the crash. Later I found out this is a no-no. Even unoccupied seats need to be replaced. This whole thing is becoming a pain in my tush... but I digress.

The girl who hit Rey was a teenager. The accident report dates her birth year at 1993. 1993!!!! I am seriously having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that people who were born in 1993 are legally allowed to drive.

My parents didn't let me get my license until I was 17. My sister was almost 18. I am thinking there might be something to this.

Her little Toyota Corolla was smashed in almost to the dash. I thought this was a bad sign of car safety but my father corrected me that crumpling is a good thing to protect the driver. Makes sense.

The mvan did me proud. She held up well, although her entire ass is shifted up about 6 inches. The parking sensors are hanging out and there was holes all over the plastic. Of course the back hatch doesn't open. My Bugaboo is being held hostage back there. Since it folds the way it does, we can't get it over the seat. We can't put the seat down to free it because the third row seats in the Honda fold down into the cargo area in which the hostage is occurring. I don't see how we're going to get it free without becoming a member of the Cirque de Soleil or something...

We spent all day trying to get the insurance company get us a rental that will carry our whole family places. All at once. Apparently this is a big request. Listen people, I don't drive the mvan because it's sexy, alright? I actually need all those seats for people.

Finally, after I kid you not, four hours and a 30 minute car ride, we have a rental mvan. A red Dodge that is such a base model I am lucky it has power steering. Rey is making fun of me. I can no longer back up without assistance of a backup camera and parking sensors. I'm ruined, alright?

Like spell check and calculators before it, back up cameras are ruining the intelligence and skills of people worldwide.

Myself included. Except I can still spell.