Life At The Circus

I love, LOVE, the tradition of decorating a Christmas tree.  If you stop to think of it, it’s kind of a strange tradition… I don’t even let my kids bring sticks into the house on a normal basis, but every December, we head out, chop down an entire tree and bring it into our living room.  We then string it with lights and hang tons of sentimental  and breakable decorations on it.  None the less, I love it.  And as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I am chomping at the bit to go cut down our tree and bring it home.  This year’s tree cutting was a momentous one.  2012… the year our oldest son chopped the tree down himself Now for years, Scott’s let him “help”… some years he’d come with his own plastic saw to cut with Daddy… as he got older Scott let him hold the real saw and take a few strokes at it. This year, he told my son, he thought he was ready to do it himself. I think Scott did one or two strokes at the beginning to get him started and the...

Our 6 year old had her first gymnastics meet this past weekend.  I can’t really put into words the feelings of pride I had in watching her.  When we first enrolled her in gymnastics 3 years ago , we did so because she was tiny, tough and flexible.  It seemed gymnastics might be worth a try for our then 3 year old. Somewhere in the last 3 years, a light when on inside her.  It turned every curb into a balanced beam, and made every wide open space beckon her to do a cartwheel or round off or handstand.  Saturday was her first competition.  I was so excited to see the new skills she’s learned.  But the thing that made me the most proud, wasn’t her round off back hand spring (though that was really cool to watch for the first time), but rather her ability to get back up on the beam after falling.  I was impressed with her poise and confidence.  She walked out by herself onto a wide open floor and performed her routine with people watching....

I had grabbed the camera hoping for a cute shot of all 4 of them sitting in the leaf pile… but darn it they kept having fun and not sitting still for the picture… it was then that I realized, I’d rather capture the moment than the portrait. So glad I did. Haven’t been making the time for the blog lately, but when I uploaded these pictures from last week, I realized I wanted to preserve these smiles to look back on later… and so I am enjoying this quiet afternoon during break to catch up a bit on preserving these fleeting moments…

It’s always fun to peek in on my kiddos when they are sleeping.  Sometimes because it gives me a good chuckle, sometimes because it tugs at my heart strings, and sometimes just because it sets my mind at ease to see them sleeping snuggly in their rooms.  Last night as I was crawling into bed, I realized I hadn’t peeked in on them.  I don’t know if I’m the only Mom out there like this, but when I realize I forgot, I just can’t shake it off… I have to go b/c sometimes this little quirky fear will rise up “What if the one night I didn’t check on them something was wrong?” Which is why it was all the more comical, that when I opened the boys room, the first thing I saw was this. “Oh my,” I thought.  And I confess for a split second, as my eyes scanned the room, looking for my baby boy, I had a little fear in my gut that something was not right. And then, I saw this…. ( yup, he’s wearing his big sisters bright pink Dora socks… No, she didn’t do this to him, ...

It was our first time trick or treating in the new neighborhood and I gotta say it felt weird this year not doing it with our neighbor like we’ve done for the past several years.  It wasn’t the same. Still we had a good time dressing up as our favorite characters and chowing down on candy bar after candy bar when we got home.  We let the kids go all in and devour their loot when they got home… then we let that sugar coma set in while we vegged on the couch with a little Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin.  This year we had Batman and Batgirl swoop in on the bad guys of Gotham City. As well as the American girl doll Kit (don’t they look like twins?) and bringing up the rear like a caboose was our very own Choo-Choo… We now have waaaaay more candy than any household should have in its possession. Happy Halloween from the Circus Fam 2012!

For many north of us on the east coast, Sandy was more than an adventure… it was a catastrophe.  It was devastation.  It was unlike anything I have ever seen first hand or experienced.  So, I hesitate to even really blog about our adventure… b/c for us… that’s what it was, an adventure.  An escape from the normal day to day living for a few days.  A “Staycation” if you will.  We heard about Sandy well before she hit MD and we did all we could to prepare.  I baked 2 loaves of bread, baked cookies, stocked up on pasta and sauce, washed all of our clothes and dishes, found flashlights and candles, bought water, filled all the bathtubs with water (so we could flush toilets when the power went out, filled pots and bowls with water for the dog, and for cooking, bought paper plates, and Scott did his very best to try and get our generator working.  Monday evening around 6:30 the power went out.  With a LOUD pop right before.  We knew that...

Some days we wake up on “school at the building days” with clothes all lined up and ready the night before, I’ve gotten lunches packed complete with notes from Mom, and we’re out the door on time so we can arrive at the building with plenty of time to drop everyone's books off in their classrooms and report to the sanctuary for opening with time to spare. And some mornings Mom oversleeps when her alarm goes off, laundry isn’t put away so we find ourselves scrounging through baskets of laundry looking for matching socks, lunches are packed but without drinks b/c we couldn’t find water bottles, and we stumble out the door racing the clock, with bed head and arrive at school only to discover the socks were left on the kitchen counter so we’re going in with just sneakers and no cute knee socks… Which morning do you think it was when we had class pictures in front of the building at 8:30am sharp?

As much as I hate the cold, I really am a 4 seasons kind of girl.  I love the beginning of a new season…. bringing out favorite clothes, decorations, foods, traditions only enjoyed for a season.  It’s refreshing and exciting and makes me so grateful for the climate we live in.  But, this year, more than most I have been crazy excited about fall.  I can’t explain it.  But, I’m more giddy than normal about pulling out my jeans and boots and sweaters.  I LOVE my fall decorations and am burning my pumpkin spice candle every waking second I am at home.  Speaking of pumpkin, I seemed to have fully jumped on the pumpkin band wagon this year, which is kinda funny b/c I’m not really that into pumpkin ( I think I like pumpkin spice more than pumpkin itself)… but this year I seem to be a sucker for any pumpkin product… we’ve had pumpkin waffles, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bagels, pumpkin spice marshmallows… and thanks to this thing called PUMPKIN SPICE MILK I f...

While he’s been interested in going on the potty for awhile now… even going on his own every once and awhile, I haven’t yet been reading to dive full in to the potty training process with my youngest.   Just last week I was talking to a friend about our 2 year olds and I told her "I am not ready yet.”  Because potty training is a lot of work.  It takes time and patience and flexibility.   While it is great to emerge on the other side with a child who no longer needs diapers, the process of getting there is, in my opinion, no fun. But, today while at Target for more diapers b/c he was wearing the very last one I could find in the house (as in I had already scoured the van, all the bathrooms, and dug this one out of the corner of the closet.. very last one), we stumbled down the underwear aisle and the kids found “choo choo” undies which he of course got so excited about.  I bought them b/c I knew they would be great incentive for the day when...

I was scrolling around on pinterest one night and a graphic caught my eye that made me stop in my tracks.  It showed 2 sides of the brains and listed descriptions for left/brain right brain people.  I think often people are largely a little bit of both.  However, when I looked at this graphic, it was like a portrait of my daughters. I swear my 6 year old could be the poster child for the left brained person. And equally astonishing to me was the fact that as I looked closely at the adjectives for the right brained person, I found my 5 year old fit it TO THE TEE!   As I think back to the post I did this summer describing her personality… this was her.   I am astonished that both girls could be SO DIFFERENT.  While my boys appear to be more blends of both, my girls are quite distinct in their personalities.  I see it in the way they organize their stuff, they way they dress, they way they keep their rooms, do their school work, even ...

I like to think of myself as a woman who can hold her own.  I’m not a girly girl.  I can follow a football game and I am currently 3-0 in my fantasy league.  I love camping.  Power outages don’t send me packing for the nearest Hilton.  And I will happily kill and remove any bug that comes my way without even a squeal. However, this “tough girl” fantasy that I have of myself falls apart rather quickly when confronted with my own personal kryptonite. 2 forms actually mice and snakes Nothing sends me squealing bloody murder and jumping for the nearest stool to stand on like mouse droppings or snake sightings. And I’ve encountered BOTH this week.  At MY OWN HOME! Saturday morning I went to let Maggie out from our downstairs rec room and as I went to close the door, I spotted a black snake hanging down from the side of the railing.  It took me a minute to process what I was staring at before I slammed the door shut, ran into the middle of the ...

We are three weeks in to our new school year.  I think I FINALLY have all the kids correct curriculum (missed a few things I when I ordered it this summer) and their books organized in a way that works for them, me, and their tutors at the tutorial.  I’ve done things a little differently this year, and SO FAR, it has helped our days to run more smoothly.  First of all, I’ve committed to waking up before the kids every day.  I’ve tried this in the past, but truthfully, what I did was sleep in as late as possible on “school at the building days” resulting in a rushed and flustered Momma trying to hustle the kids out the door in the morning.  Resulting in crabby and late kids and Momma.    On school at home days, I would just sleep till the first kid woke me and let the kiddos sleep in till they woke, with the aim of starting school right after breakfast.  I’ll be honest.  It didn’t work great for us.   For many reasons....

Lately, I’ve been asked several times what I do with my 2 year old while I am teaching the older 3.  Here’s your answer.  Yes, that would be pen mark up and down the corner of the walls in my dining room.    Yes, he did that yesterday morning while I was working with the big kids in the other room and thought that scraping sound was the sound of him scraping oatmeal of his cereal bowl with a spoon.