"You Hurt My Feelings"

Since Kristen turned five, she's had a personality malfunction. Part of the problem is that she has a difficult time having her sisters around full-time, and since they are on summer break, that's a problem she's going to have to learn to live with. Where she was once sweet and thoughtful and kind, she is now purposefully annoying to her sisters. She will spit, she will yell naughty words, and she will hit. All behaviors that have garnered her some unhappy attention.

Chris went camping with the older two girls this weekend, so Kristen and I were hanging out at home. To break up the monotony, we went to Target--I needed to find a birthday present for Misha's friend and get Amy and Kristen new goggles. Most of the time shopping with Kristen is not a problem, but today she flipped because I picked out water goggles for her that were the wrong shade of pink! Just think this next comment very saucily, "I like lighter pink things!" Well, I finally took the goggles away from her, set them on a pile of clothing and started to walk away with her and the cart. Crying, more crying, loud crying, crying so the whole store could hear you, crying, crying, crying. I don't often tell my kids to "shut up", but they usually know that when I do, I've reached the end of my patience rope. No one sent Kristen that memo today. She looked at me with a horrified expression and kept on cry/talking loudly throughout the store. "I can't believe you say that to me. You hurt my feelings. I want the goggles back," Wah, wah, wah throughout the store. Finally, in the shoes, I take her out of the cart and make her walk. Well, that was the right thing to do. More crying and wailing. Yes, it was wailing at this point. We walked past one lady who said to her, "Aw sweetie" as though I am torturing my daughter. Kristen's torturing me!

So, now her wailing changes to, "You can't just walk away and leave me. You just can't." I'm not, though I'm wishing I could. And she's cried so much that she's now got to pee. Great. I walk with her by my side to the bathroom while she continues, "You can't just walk away from me", send her in to the bathroom next to the pharmacy, and stand outside the door to wait. My instructions are, "You better come out of that bathroom happy." I wait by the door listening to her crying. I have exerted great patience while all the people in the store probably think I'm horrible. I still haven't found a present for Misha's friend, so when Kristen emerges--unhappy still--I head over to jewelry and hope to be inspired...and to have some peace. Kristen whimpers, "I know I am a cute girl. I'm sorry I just can't be one today." So what do I do? Take a moment and write it down in my notepad, and I'm finished shopping at Target. No birthday present.

On the way home, Kristen thoughtfully asks, "Do you think I am on Santa's naughty list." I tell her it is quite possible. "Well, I don't want to be, because then I wouldn't get any presents."

Loving the Pool

My girls started swimming lessons this week. That combined with swim team twice a week for Amy and Misha makes for some tired little chicas. Love it.

In Full Swing

We are in full swing with summer vacation. I try to keep track of the funny sayings going on around here with three kids adding to the mix.

I dropped Misha off at the library on Thursday to pick up some books while I went to pick up Kristen from a play date. While en route, Misha was kind of snuffing her nose, and I asked, "Do you have stuffy nose? Are you getting sick or just have allergies?" She responded that she was fine, but I demonstrated the sound of her snuffing her nose and said, "That doesn't really sound fine." Her reply, "I'm just sighing through my nose." What?

Kristen contributed this next one. Previously on that same day, Kristen and I drove past a field with horses in it. She proceeded to tell me that she knew of two other places where she has seen horses. The first was at her great aunt Lori's ranch and the other was at an old lady's house. "But we don't tell her that she is old when we go to her house, right Mom?"

For the finale, I was waiting in the car with my three wonderfully behaved, non-whining children while Chris returned an item to Home Depot. Misha was playing games on my ipod, and Amy was reading in the backseat. Kristen wanted my ipod and proceeded to begin asking, complaining, whining loudly and finally said, "I don't have an 'i anything.'" Amy, from the back of the van, pleaded, "Can you call Dad and have him pick up some duct tape?"

Call Me Crazy

For the past number of years, we have gone "Camping with the Hansens" with a fun group of friends. I told Jen that we would be there this year as well, and then I realized that it was just days after getting home from Disney World. Knowing how exhausted we were even before coming home from Orlando, I just couldn't fathom packing or camping, but we had already committed to go.

So Friday morning, the girls and I started bringing out the camping gear. I wasn't planning any fancy meals. Normally I take both of my dutch ovens and use them for cooking, but this time we had hot dogs. Yes, hot dogs. It was quick. It was easy. And the girls had fun roasting them and the marshmallows.

That simplified the packing process a little when I eliminated all of the cooking stuff, but there was still lots to do. While Kristen had her play group, Amy and I drove in to Target to pick up supplies. Misha was happy to stay home while Chris worked.

Chris quit working shortly after 1 pm, and we were out of here around 3 pm. The drive took us through Boulder and up toward Golden to Golden Gate Canyon State Park. Kristen asked every couple of minutes, "Are we there yet? How much longer?" As we neared the campground, we spied a police car sitting at the top of the hill. The speed limit was 35--amazingly slow. Chris was in first gear coasting down the hill with his foot still hitting the brakes, trying to keep to 35, when the police car pulled out behind us. I guess Chris coasted a little too fast because the lights went on, and we pulled over. Are you kidding me?

Chris tried to be nice to the guy, but I was muttering under my breath and slamming the glove box. So ridiculous. He noted that we had a burnt out brake light (I had just noticed it an hour previous and told Chris about it), our registration tag was expired by 5 days (we had the new sticker at home on my desk), and we were coasting 7 over the limit. He came back with a warning, which was lucky because I was in no mood to be congenial. Stupid cop. (Sorry to my cop friends, but this was totally stupid).

We finally arrived at the camp and got things set up. The pad site for the tent was not quite long enough for our tent, and we had to work around a tree, but it stood.







The girls were pretty excited to have arrived, and they usually are, so I tried to hold in my camping displeasure. We realized as we unloaded our gear and bins that we had forgotten to bring the air mattress that Amy and Misha usually slept on. We had to rearrange our sleeping configuration so that I, along with the girls, slept lengthwise on the two foam mattresses and Chris slept on Kristen's single air mattress.

Kristen was not a happy sleeper in the middle of the night, because she got relegated to sleeping on pillows and kept slipping off. Around 2 am, I had her bring her sleeping bag next to mine and sleep. I might have gone to sleep after that except for some camper had brought their dog, and it barked non-stop for hours. What were they thinking?

The girls had fun whittling sticks, running through the forest, playing with friends, roasting marshmallows and Starbursts, popping jiffy pop popcorn and getting dirty. Normally, we spend two nights on this camping excursion, but because we had just returned from vacation, Chris didn't have any extra days. So, it was a lot of set up and take down in a short amount of time. We were packed to the hilt; Amy's in the back seat somewhere.

Back to Reality

We arrived home from Disney World Tuesday evening last week and Wednesday morning we were up and running. Amy had band camp at 8:15 am, all of the girls had music lessons between 1 and 2 pm, and Amy and Misha started swim team at 3:30 pm. Amy's band camp goes through June 11th, so no sleeping in for this girl!

Misha continues to take violin this summer. She is improving and almost finished with her first lesson book. Amy has piano lessons and is developing quite a talent for playing. Kristen is beginning to take piano/voice lessons from Amy's teacher. We'll test it out for the summer and see how she does. I asked Misha if she would help Kristen with her rhythm assignment.

Disney World Day 8

Our last day. So if this is the first entry you are reading about our trip to Disney World, you really ought to start at the beginning. This was not quite a full day at Disney, but you know, we were a little pooped. Linda had never been to Animal Kingdom, so that was our final stop. My girls were especially excited to go on "Expedition Everest" with her. We started in that direction first thing to get a FASTPASS, but realized that the stand-by line was only a 20-minute wait. My girls were roller coaster aficionados by this point. I think it was my favorite ride of all the rides in all the parks. So, lucky us, the line was still short when we got off the ride; we got right back in line to wait again. Maybe some of us were a little less enthusiastic after the second time around. You gotta love Kristen's face in this picture:



Realizing that I had an entire day ahead of me, including a plane ride, I opted not to ride the "Kali River Rapids" again. I thought it was a wise choice on my part. Kristen got soaked this time around and Linda was just a tad bit damp as well.





We had to be at the airport by 2 pm local and didn't have too much time at Animal Kingdom, but we still had time for a few shows. Our final show of the day was "Flights of Wonder". We were all pretty enthralled by the birds. Disney does an amazing job of putting on a show, holding its employees to the highest of standards, and making dreams come true. We were exhausted to be sure, but we had an amazing vacation.

Off to the airport. We arrived in plenty of time to get checked in and have lunch before boarding. Plus a last-minute trip to the souvenir shop. Grandma loves to spoil her grandchildren. Somehow Linda lucked out and had Amy and Misha sitting beside her on the airplane. Now, there's nothing wrong with sitting by Kristen, except that she chatters and chatters and chatters. Non-stop! We set up a movie for her to watch on the iPod, but she'd seen them all already and they didn't hold her interest for long. After two hours, we decided to switch kids up. We got Misha, Grandma got Kristen. Kristen began her chatter, chatter, chatter routine immediately. We sent over coloring books and crayons and that cut her chatter down to an intermittent level.



Cue the sad music. My children were not happy to say goodbye to Grandma. In fact, they would love to spend the whole summer with her if they could. She had to change planes in Denver, so we walked with her from our plane to the new boarding area. Misha had tears rolling down her face. Goodbyes are no fun, but we had a fantastic time together. Thanks, Linda, for making the effort to come.







She sent an email after arriving home and I thought the last part was so her (she's a cryer too): I watched you leave at the airport until the 2 sets of mouse ears turned the far corner. And yes I cried. ;). Love you all.

Disney World Day 7

And our first non-Disney day of the bunch. We decided to go to Cocoa Beach. We could have gone East or West to get to a beach, but this was one of the closer ones in the eastern direction. Lunch time again, you'd think we'd plan these outings better. We stopped at Wendys. It was definitely not up to par with our hometown Wendys which has been rated the best Wendys in the nation. It had one of those bathrooms where you really weren't sure you wanted to use it. After lunch we stopped at a store and purchased boogie boards, sand toys and a hat for me. We SHOULD have purchased more sunscreen.

It was a beautiful day and this was a first-time experience to be at a warm-water beach not only for my girls but for me as well. It was wonderful. We sprayed everyone with sunscreen and came to the end of our bottle. Curses!

I took pictures while the girls and Chris had fun playing in the water. You might wonder why Chris is wearing my new hat. We got to the beach and the breeze would just blow it right off my head. Since I didn't want to be without a hat, he graciously traded and let me wear his baseball cap. I think he was secretly grateful to be wearing it for the large coverage it gave in keeping the sun off his face.









The water was warmer than the pool back at the condo. Once the girls were exhausted from the waves, they traded to sand toys; Chris pulled me out into the waves with him and the boogie boards. I quickly learned that I needed goggles AND to keep my mouth shut. We had a blast. I never knew it could be so much fun to play in the ocean.



We spent hours trading off sitting on the beach and then using the three boogie boards Grandma purchased. We all had so much fun. BUT, and this is a big one, when they say you need to reapply sunscreen when in the water, they mean it. Misha and Kristen both had swim shirts, but the rest of us got nicely burned. There's something different about a burn at the beach in sea water, I am convinced. My burn did not hurt for two days and then the pain came on with vengeance. And the itch! My lands, I have never felt such an itch before. Chris came up from working out, and I had just showered. I was scrambling around our bedroom trying to figure out how to stop it. I took benadryl, but it took some time to kick in. I also took Zyrtec, I was in such discomfort. I couldn't stand still and though I am not normally one who throws up, I was nearing that point.

Christopher's sunburn on his shoulders was pretty weird too. He was outside washing the cars one week later. When he finished and was getting in the shower, he noticed that his shoulders were covered in tiny blisters. Covered. They would pop as he wiped his hands over them and the skin would come too. It was pretty disgusting.

One of Kristen's funny sayings of the day: "Where's the Mish?

As we were packing up to leave the beach, a group next to us offered our girls some cheapie kites they had purchased at Wal*Mart and never used. The girls were thrilled. We added them to our stash and headed to the showers to TRY and get rid of the sand. It never really washed away until we took showers later at the condo. The girls quickly dressed so they could fly kites. The wind was perfect. Kristen's kite fell to the ground a couple of times and she would say, "Its battery ran out."



We finally decided to leave, much to their disappointment, and told the girls to take their kites over to the family that had just arrived at the park. We told them they were paying it forward just as the people who gave us the kites had done. Some of our children weren't so excited to lose their newly acquired gifts, but they were finally all delivered, and we were on our way. We stopped for take out at Chick-fil-a and headed back home. Grandma stuck her dinner in the fridge and headed over to the outlet mall. Yes, we were right next to an outlet mall the entire time in Kissimmee, and I never had a chance to go. Bummer.

Loved the beach. Not so keen on the sunburn. My girls nicely browned.