Month: July 2010

The Chinese girls and my two kids are busy, busy, busy. This week they’ve gone to Seven Peaks, hiked to Timpanogos caves, went shopping at University Mall and Walmart, and today spent the day downtown in Salt Lake.

The only down side is, they are so tired when they come home. They don’t really want to interact with us or hang out with the Americans. They would rather go up to their room, read, write in journals, take showers, and just relax without having to think too much. I understand. I remember those first few weeks in a foreign country.

Tonight we’re going to try “make your own pizza night” and see if they open up a little bit more.

Since the big kids are off having fun afternoon, and when I’m not driving three times a day to Provo, I’ve been trying to do fun things with the three younger kids. So WE’VE gone swimming, we went out to lunch at Mimi’s Cafe, and we went to the mall ourselves. We had a BIG talk about how to behave in the mall and how just because we saw something we liked we were not going to be buying lots of things. They (meaning John, mostly) agreed to the rules and behaved much better than the last time we went to the mall. But he was not happy until he had spent his allotted $5 of allowance money on a small overpriced motercycle.
Whatever.

On Saturday, I think we’ll check out Thanksgiving Point, and then go to the Folk Festival in Springville at night. I want to give them the most possible experiences while they are here, but not totally overwhelm them with things to do every minute.

Sunday is church. Do you think we should have them go the whole 3 hours to church, or let them off easy and come home after the first meeting? Hmmm?

My husband assures me that if I have seen this and he’s seen it, that EVERYONE else in the world has already seen it. But it’s too funny to not pass along.

John, barging through the bathroom door without bothering to knock, “Mom?”
“Hey, hey,” I said urgently, “I’m using the bathroom here.” As in, not just using the bathroom, but–you know–using the bathroom.
“But Mom?” he calls, thankfully from outside the door.
“Yes? What do you need?” I asked.
“I need someone to tie my shoes,” he said.
“Can you get someone else to help you tie your shoes?” I asked. The whole family is home, in various stages of getting ready for church, so surely there has to be someone who can help him, right?
“There isn’t anybody else,” he calls back through the door.
“What about Dad?” I said.
He makes that exasperated sound that is part sigh, part “Whatever” noise, and walks off.

My husband is still in Korea. He’s actually coming home Sunday (we hope). In honor of his trip I was watching M*A*S*H. Ok, It wasn’t really a choice. We have no cable channels because Comcast switched something or other on us and Ryan’s the only one who can install the special boxes they sent us. So, there’s nothing on. As I was folding laundry, I turned on the tv, and M*A*S*H was the best I could find. That Hawkeye sure is a character, isn’t he?

And what exactly is Icore?

When I was a kid I used to LOVE the Ramona the Pest books. Love them. I read all those Beverly Cleary books.

They were the thing to read for the elementary aged kid. Well, I picked up Ramona the pest on CD so that we could listen to it in the car. My kids really love to listen to stories in the car, and I’ve found that it keeps the fighting and arguing at a minimum on a long car ride. Even if a child groans when I start up the story or says they would rather not listen, once it starts they pay attention. As we started up Ramona today, I was laughing out loud. Oh, that book takes me back. Susan and her boing boing curls, Howie and his sister Willa Jean in the stroller, Beezus the big sister, the kindergarten teacher Miss Binny. The red boots that she gets stuck in the mud and Henry Huggins has to rescue.

I also realized how much different my school days were from those of my kids. I could relate to the “resting time” in Ramona the Pest because when I went to Kindergarten, we actually did lay down on little mats and “rest”. Kindergartens seem to have so much to do now. Testing, reading readiness, field trips, programs. It seems they don’t have time to rest. And the teacher says “we don’t want you to be tired when your parents pick you up.” Um, yes we do. Wear them out at school! I would LOVE it if my kindergartener came home to take a rest. Most of the time they don’t, but they certainly won’t rest at school.

Another thing my kids have probably never heard of… galoshes. Or the boots that you wear OVER your shoes. Who wears boots over their shoes? And rain slickers. In the book it said that all the boys looked the same in yellow slickers and brown boots. Now if it’s raining, the kids just pull up the hoods on their hoodies and call it good. And when her teacher comes out to help her when she is stuck in the mud, she is wearing a plastic rain bonnet or something like that. Here’s one I KNOW my kids would laugh at. Remember those little plastic cases like a tiny suitcase for Barbie that held a tiny plastic bonnet, all folded up? My grandma used to keep one in her purse, and I think my mom did, too. I don’t know how that thing would EVER fit back into that tiny box once it was unfolded, but I think they were reuseable. Remember those?

Oh the things we can learn (or remember) from Ramona the Pest. Oh, and “I’m the baddest witch in the world!!!!”