A tale of a frozen family

I don’t want to say it too loudly, for fear of jinxing myself, but holy moly…. it’s GORGEOUS today!!!!  For the last month or so it hasn’t been warmer than 60, at the very most.   I am discovering, since moving to south central Alaska that the summers just don’t get warm like they did in Fairbanks.   While Fairbanks may have -60 in the winter, it always had a spell of 90 or so in the summer as well.  I MISS THE HEAT!   But I digress.

Today is beautifully sunny and at 10am it was already 62 degrees!  I bet we might see 70 today (crossing fingers).

I begged the offspring to get up, get dressed and GET OUTSIDE!!!!   Of course, she can’t do anything without me taking pictures… so here we go:

I am astutely aware that it’s a good thing that we’ve got a new health insurance plan.  I have a feeling it may come in handy.  You see, she has the guts to be a dare devil, she just doesn’t necessarily have the skill that is required.   I see many ER visits in our future.

And I will say, that soccer has really helped with her ability run and not fall down every other step LOL

She runs like the WILD!  Breaking the speed of sound!

Mooooooommmmmmmmmmmmm are you taking my picture??????

In that case…. here…. let me cheese for you!

Okay, enough with the cheese… back to warrior rockwall princess!

It’s such a nice day that even the Franklin… who is painfully acclimated to antarctic temperatures thinks it’s TOO HOT!

I giggle at this picture because he reminds me of those cartoon animals that have the enormous heads and tiny body.   But then again, he does have a giant head. LOL!

Well, as boring as this entry may be…. it is entirely too gorgeous to spend another moment at this keyboard (although it does rock that I can sit on the deck as I type this!) I’m outta here to go endure a soccer tournament with the offspring, in which I’m sure she will kick my butt!  

Everyone enjoy your day!!!!

We have struggled over the last year with various Van de Graaff generators not really performing to a standard that we are happy with.   For those of you that don’t remember what a Van de Graaff generator is…. It’s that electrical machine with a big dome on top, that you put your hands on and your hair stands up… remember that one??? 

At any rate, after 3 disappointing models, we decided to heck with this and bought the BIGGEST, BADDEST Van de Graaff we could find.  This thing is ENORMOUS!!!!  It stands over 4 foot tall and I almost swear that the lights dim when you fire it up!

We did an experiment with it last night.  I stood on the rubber stool and placed both hands on the dome.  Certain that I was about to be shocked into orbit, I stood there shaking as hubby fired it up.  Now, you may ask why hubby wasn’t the test object for this experiment.  If you recall from the “eating fries and gravy picture”

Hubby has no hair.  Therefore, he was not a viable option for our test object.  This left me or the offspring.  Since the thought of having our offspring shocked into orbit was more frightening (although some days… it would be a welcome break!) I decided to bite the bullet and step up to the plate (or orb on this day).

With in seconds of it being on, I felt the little hairs on my arms standing up, and then my head followed.  Every ounce of my hair stood on end.  The force field on this thing is AMAZING.  Hubby was standing about five feet away from it, holding a florescent light bulb and it LIT!!!!  Can you say HOLY SMOKES????

He turned it off and I stayed with my hands on the orb, still fully charged.  Hubby went and got the camera and took this picture about 2 minutes AFTER it was turned off. 

With the force field being so wide, I was terrified to let him near it with my digital SLR bad boy camera, for fear it would zap it.  Therefore, the pictures were taken after the fact!

After that, we fired it up again.  Only this time, we’d see what would happen if we sprayed my hair with water.  AMAZING!  You would think it would weight it down, but it made it stand up even more.  

The next super cool, amazing, out of this world, TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME experiment…….  I only put one hand on the orb… he turned it on… and I had LIGTENING BOLTS come out of my fingertip!  DUDE!!!! I HAD LIGHTENING COMING OUT OF MY FINGER!!!!   That was the coolest thing EVAH!

That is the upside of being in a business that teaches science to children….. we get to play with the COOLEST TOYS!

Here is a picture of the hubster, standing with “Frankenstein” as we’ve so lovingly named him.  He’s one cool dude!  Or would that be… “he’s got an electric personality”??  I know.. I know… I won’t quit my day job.  (oh wait, I don’t have a day job anymore!!!)

Yes, yes, I know… for those of you ready to lecture me.  I’m insanely behind in my blogging.   Since quitting work, and trying to readjust my daily schedule to help hubster as much as I can with the business, and keep the offspring from burning down the house, and trying to keep the house from being at condemned status, I find I’m not here much.  I AM working on that!

At any rate…..

The offspring graduated from preschool *sniff* but not in the normal sense.  You see, she misses the age cut off to start kindergarten.  She also misses the age cutoff for testing in (by 20 days) but because she’s a bit ahead of the curve adademically, she also can’t return to preschool next year.   She’s already bored to tears with the content…. but I digress.  Where was I???

Oh yeah, so she didn’t graduate in the traditional sense, like her classmates.  They will be going to kindergarten next year, and she will be home schooled.

Here she is with her best friend, before the ceremony.

And the entire graduating class.

The whole class sang the “graduation song”  which translates to “I’m not sure WHAT that song was… but it was so stinking CUTE!”

And finally… her walk… to get her bag of graduation goodies.   *sniff* my baby is growing up!

psssst…. did anyone notice she’s wearing a DRESS??????

I will preface, that this will be an INCREDIBLY long post to my blog.  I have so much to say about this fabulous city, and I made the cut, down to 540 pictures.  The architecture is so amazing in that city.  Breath taking amazing.  I can’t explain why, but I truly do ADORE Montreal.

I think it has much to do with the French language and culture, mixed with the history (so much more history than we have in Alaska).  It’s like being in Europe without having to cross the ocean.  Although, given our airline fiascos, it probably would have been quicker to actually go to France, but that’s a whole other blog post LOL.

Thankfully for us, we get to go there once a year, as our franchise headquarters are there and our annual conference is there every May (WAHOO for us!)

If you have never been there, I REALLY recommend that everybody visit, at LEAST once in your life time.  I’ve been there in winter and in spring and it’s equally beautiful both seasons.  I will admit, it’s a lot more fun to walk around the city in the spring though!

So, we’ll start this photo montage with a picture of the offspring, showing her Canadians loyalty!  Say it loud, say it proud sister!!! (it’s just too bad they were eliminated from the cup right before we got there).

The girl loves her hockey…. what can we say!

We took a horse and buggy ride through old Montreal.  Another thing I highly recommend.  It’s worth your time and money, I promise.

Here are some photos of the tour…. did I mention I am in love with the architecture?

I had to chuckle…. Montreal can make even McDonald’s look chic!

and more beautiful buildings *swoon*

and the replica of the Empire State building, which is built right next to the Notre Dame.

And this is the Notre Dame that I speak of.  I REALLY, REALLY encourage anyone visiting Montreal to take the time to tour this amazing building.  If you are not a religious person, I swear this building will bring you to religion.  It is amazing, breath taking, overwhelming in beauty.  The level of detail inside this building is world class.  The stained glass inside is like nothing I have ever seen.  It truly will take your breath away.

At the end of our ride, Em decided that she needed to reward Tom for his loyal service to us during our trip.  He was very happy to take the carrot from her.

Now… aside from the beautiful buildings, they also had an abundance of flowers in bloom.  Now some of you, I realize, this is nothing new to you, but please remember…. when we boarded our plane, we still had snow on the ground, so the never ending sea of flowers was a beautiful sight for these *still frozen* eyes!

I tried to use the flower setting on my new bad boy camera and tried some different angles, etc.   I’ve not done any work on any of these photos… they are raw

and it just doesn’t get any cuter than this

Another one of Em’s passions in Montreal is to ride the Metro… AS MUCH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.   She has 2 of the 4 lines of the metro memorized, and can say them in English and French.  Here she is with Grandpa Cindi, enjoying one of her millionth or so rides on the green line.

In usual fashion, Em was quick to make friends!

Next, we were on to our bus tour of the city.  Another tour I really recommend everyone take at least once (this was our second time taking this tour).   We got the same driver this time, as we did last time…… Angelo.  Angelo is an amazingly sweet Italian man, who adores our daughter and treats her like a complete princess every time he sees her.   Just like last time, he let her “drive” the bus before the tour.  She was in heaven!

It was rather hysterical to watch everyone board the bus.  As they did, Em would say “good morning” to each and every one of them.   The looks on their face were priceless.  Many were from other countries and I almost wonder if they thought for a brief moment that the minimum driving age in Montreal was four.

Here is China town.

More of the beautiful buildings.

It was such a beautiful day and the bus tour is a few hours, so Angelo stopped at a park for everyone to stretch their legs.  Em enjoyed a run through the park.  

And of course… MORE beautiful buildings.   Did I mention that I love architecture?

Another stop on the tour that I really recommend you come back and tour the inside.   St. Joseph’s is another amazing creation.

And Em with her favorite Montreal Man…. Angelo!!!  Bless him for being such a sweet man to our daughter

A section of the city from the mountain.  The one thing I like about Montreal, is when you look down onto the metro city, you still see large sections of GREEN!  There is still an abundance of trees in the urban jungle.

So, after our tour, we were tired and hungry and it was Sunday and most everything was closed (the malls in the metro area… the underground city… a whole other thing to check out!  The malls go for miles and are all connected to the metro.  You can live, work, grocery shop, clothing shop, live and never have to take one foot outside.  I could see how that could come in handy in the winter months!) at any rate… we were hungry and our options were limited.  We found a little place that was open and hubby HAD to try the infamous “fries and gravy”.   I took a bite.  I won’t say I’ll be doing it again anytime soon, but I tried it.  Hubster said he like them.  It was fries, brown gravy and cheese curds.   Me, being me, had to document the eating of this strange combination!

We did so many other things on our trip, but I will close this tour for now.  I don’t want to scare off anyone who still might have some little interest left in Montreal.  I apologize to all of you that I O.D.’d, but I love the place… what can I say

As many of you know, Em is a hockey freak.   She is OBSESSED with all things hockey.   I’m going to assume that not all four year olds can tell you every single NHL team in existence, which city and state they play in and for many teams, she also knows the goalies.   Which quantifies my “OBSESSED” comment!

Well, yesterday it was a beautiful spring day and she was outside playing hockey with her playset.   The neighbor kids joined her.  Both of the kids play hockey, so Em was in heaven.   The neighbor girl plays goalie, so she decided that Em should wear some of her gear.   First she brings the helmet.  Em shrieks in delight.

Next they decide she needs to be better protected.  I mean, you never know how hard you can be hit with a tennis ball puck, so they go for the leg pads (they forget the height difference between the girls is a foot or so!).

Em is a FIERCE goalie though… she protects her storage bin goal with all her might!

But I guess they felt she wasn’t protected enough… so they brought MORE pads.

and of course, you can’t have THIS much padding and not have a JERSEY!!!  (I try very hard not to pee my pants every time I see this picture).

But wearing this much gear and so fiercely defending your goal makes you very hot.  So she had to lose the helmet…. she was “too hot”

Back to defending her net till the death.

UH OH…. she starts to topple….

HEEEEELLLLLPPPPPPPPP!!!!!  I’ve fallen and I LITERALLY can’t get up!

It was at this point that she decided that leg pads are completely over rated and she decided she would rather play defenseman.  

The demise of a goalie career…. at least for this afternoon.

I am trying very hard to be positive today, but I woke up to a BLIZZARD!  a BLIZZARD at the end of April…. are you kidding me?????

I’m also sore from head to toe.  Every part of my body hurts, I’m tired and I just want to sleep

Every Thursday, I devote my blog to being thankful.   I think in this life where everyone is under pressure to get everything done as fast as possible, where we are overbooked and under rested, we need to take a moment to stop and smell the roses.  I got the idea from here

Since I’ve not posted in a while, I have lots of things to cover and be thankful for!  My biggest is that I was able to quit my job.  I can’t even formulate into words how immensely thankful I am for that happening!  It renders me speechless…. how thankful I am.  Thank you so much hubby for pushing me to make this decision!  I LOVE YOU!

I’ve also come across a few things this week that I’ve read, heard, seen that really hit home for me and I wanted to pass those onto others.

First was an article I read in my monthly edition of Woman’s Day.  I think there is something in this article that we can learn from.  Here is the link to the story

Another one of my weaknesses is reality TV.  I watch this really cheesey show called “Workout” which is about a gym in Beverly Hills.  Last year, one of their trainers took ill and tragically, passed away.  I’d only seen him on a few episodes, but he was one of those people who you could tell really touched the lives of the people that knew him.   When they talked about his funeral, they talked about “Doug’s rules” and those too really stuck with me.  Here they are:

Just for today, do not worry.

Just for today, do not anger.

Honor your parents, teachers and elders.

Earn your living honestly.

Show gratitude for all living things.

 I will be the first to fully admit that I’m guilty of NOT doing many of those things every day. 

 And lastly…. a quote I read from Mother Theresa “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.” Because lords knows, over the last 3 or 4 years I feel like there has been WAY too much trust in me LOL.

Okay, so Wednesday is suppose to be reserved for weight loss.  This week is different.  I imagine hubby and I both lost lots of weight this week from moving Christmas lights. 

You see, hubby is… well… he makes Clark Griswold look small potatoes.  As you can see on my “about page” we are kind of Christmas light fanatics.   Each year we do a display as a fund raiser.  Last year we were blessed to raise over 5 thousand dollars for the Boys and Girls Club.  Knowing this, the great folks at Home Depot donated us their left over light inventory. 

THREE PALLETS full of lights!  Hubby and I lost count after 400 thousand.  It was an insane amount of lights.  And of course, since our house is little and we run our business out of our house, the only place we have with any storage left is the crawl space.  So… you guessed it, we had to move all 3 pallets worth of down into the crawl space.  

In case you can’t wrap your mind around how large a stack it takes to sum up 400 thousand plus lights, let me enlighten you.

Lord have mercy.  I’m POOPED! 

 As you can imagine, even for the stead fast light junkie… this is just too much (I mean really, we already had over 100 thousand in our possession).  So we called around and the local Elks lodge wants to do a huge display for their skating rink this winter, so we loaded up 75 thousand or so into the truck to take to them tomorrow.   Spread the cheer

At this point, all I can say is that I’m glad Christmas is still 8 months away… because I really don’t want to look at another Christmas light for quite some time!

I wrote a while back about our governor announcing her pregnancy, in her SEVENTH month and no one was aware of her pregnancy (and she’s a TINY woman!).  I cried and whined about how she takes the bar on motherhood to a whole other level and that she needed to act just a little bit normal to make the rest of us not feel like monumental failures.

Well… our governor had her son, a month early this last week and it’s stirred up quite the controversy among folks in the state (and outside the state for that matter).

This is an excerpt from www.adn.com  “Gov. Sarah Palin gave birth to her fifth child at 6:30 this morning at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, her spokeswoman said today.

The boy’s name is Trig Paxson Van Palin. He’s 6 pounds, 2 ounces.

“The governor’s labor began while she was in Texas, and I do know that she got on a plane and landed in Anchorage late last night,” said Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow.”

It turns out that Trig was born with Down Syndrome. Something that she was made aware of in early testing. Another quote from the Palin’s: “Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives.

“We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

Now the controversy that has been flying around is the fact that her water broke during a summit in Texas and that she stayed to give a 1/2 hour long speech, then left and boarded an Alaska Airlines flight back to Alaska (a good 6 plus hours depending on your connections). The arguments stem from “that was incredibly risky and irresponsible, ESPECIALLY since they knew he was a DS baby, who are born with more complications” to “it’s her body, her choice”. There have been some pretty nasty comments flying around about the whole thing.

I’m of the camp that I don’t think it was the wisest decision. I can’t imagine a doctor on this planet would encourage their patient to board a plane for a long flight after their membranes have broken. Alaska Airlines would have never let her board had they known her membranes had ruptured.  A whole other argument has arisen that she openly lied by omission to the airlines, and what does that do for her credibility??

I am glad that the little man made it into this world without serious complications. He definitely has someone looking over him.

I spent all day yesterday sleeping, or lounging around.  I was POOPED!  

Saturday was our annual “expo” for our company.  It’s basically a trade show for all things children.   Since we run a children’s education company, it’s very beneficial for us to be there.  But it’s EXHAUSTING! 

During the day, we see over 15 THOUSAND children.  It’s complete and utter chaos from the moment we walk in, until we drive away.   It doesn’t help that someone apparently stabbed our tires while we where there too (grrrrr) which has now prompted the purchase of a new set of tires.  Not an expense we were looking forward to, just one day into my unemployment!  HA!

At any rate, I can’t put into words how amazing it is to spend all day with children, watching this reaction, over and over. 

They just get so amazed… and it’s just cool to see their little minds open up and learn.   It’s really heart warming, and I’m quite proud to say that I FINALLY made it through watching one of hubby’s stage shows without crying.  For those of you that know me, you KNOW that is a huge step.   I’ve been unable to watch our shows since the very first one I saw…. to watch the children get sooooo excited about what we do, sends me into tears every time!

God I love what we do!