i have a friend who loves me, who loves me, who loves me...

i have a friend who loves me and jenny is her name! hi jenny! today was a trying day... certainly not the worst, just difficult, and i was feeling AGGRESSIVE to top it all off. yet, right now as i sit here on my deck with a beautiful evening breeze blowing, i feel like everything is going to be okay. it always is.

today was ralph's first day of school at border star. ralph, although the most easygoing of our children, is being used as a weapon/pawn against us by his principal. stupid lady! she'll get hers! so we are looking into st. elizabeth's after all. i really hope i can work it out to have ralph at st. e's this year and, subsequently, have one more year with him home with me once or twice a week. i have missed those days and longed for those days.

i made up with my mother-in-law. hi sue! it was a hard phone call to make simply because i had no idea what i was up against. but there ended up being nothing but love. thanks for that!

my husband came home after toiling away, worried and upset. about ralph, about his mom, about the financial state we're in (we've been in worse!) and about our ever changing, seemingly more and more full schedule.

the kids, thankfully, are unaffected. they came home talking about homework, making up pat-a-cake games, and 'tickets' to eachother's rooms. a ticket consists of 1/3 of an 8x10 piece of paper with a giant letter on it (c=cecelia, l=lionel, r=ralph.) now cecelia is hopping in the tub with ralph to teach him more pat-a-cake games. lionel is calling, so gotta go...

i could really use a wish right now, a wish right now...

so tonight ralph is headed back out to the car to look for some lost wings for his guy. on his way out: "dad! i have three, no four, just four wishes! 1. that my pets could come alive, 2. that my blue blankie was a magic carpet, 3. that i could go outside without shoes on, and 4. that i could find the wings for my guy!"

you know at the beginning of the monkey bars? well i fell from there today and now my knee is stiff and it hurts. it's not so careful being a 6 year old as it is being a 4 year old or an 8 year old, you know!

cecelia: lionel? lionellllllllllllll!??!

lionel: i'm not lionel. i'm noah.

my great great granson, lionel, is NOT available!

cecelia worked on her child of god project for GS. this is a picture of what she made! i love her! i love her creativity! i hope it grows!

today, at school, lainey did not sit with her at lunch. lainey wanted to sit with the cool girls, so she left cecelia in the dust. cecelia did not care. she told me, very matter of factly, why lainey was sitting elsewhere. i was TORN UP inside!! i was so mad! i listened to the conversation of those girls... shameful!! rude!! selfish!! downright MEAN!! and they are only in third grade! i'm proud of my girl for being so UNaffected. she really is an awesome little lady!

my baby is gone!

yesterday morning my baby baby ralph left with gramma and papa to go to wisconsin for a week. somehow, this one was harder. i REALLY don't want him to grow up, even though he's been telling me since he could talk, "mama, i grow up."

he left without abandon. he did not care! he hopped right up in that car like it was nothing for him to leave his mother! i guess i have some preparation to do before college.

meanwhile, back at the homestead, we have been living it up with only 2 kids... both of whom can pretty much take care of themselves. fewer fights, smaller messes, faster departures... less love for mama :..(

last night, we visited the library, the mixx, and a meeting at st. peter's. today, we went to breakfast, to mass, to susan's pool, and to the ice cream social. right now i am waiting for two naked little messes to clean themselves up in the tub and shower in preparation for school tomorrow... oh yeah! fewer lunches to pack!

i love you, ralph! i miss my baby baby!

we went to the zoo zoo zoo

ralph was sick this weekend, so i took monday off work (kind-of... i went in from 6AM until 730AM) and took the kids to the zoo. we fed lorikeets, twice. we rode the carousel, twice. we watched the sea lion show, only once. we climbed trees, fed deer, danced in spray areas, visited the brand new exhibit with polar bears, played with crazy monkeys, learned about momma's favorite monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil... have no fun) and slid down slides. all the world was right that day.

AFS called the other day to see if we would be interested in hosting a foreign exchange student. I told them i would talk it over with my husband and get back to them. she emailed me the information for the 16 and 17-year-old students and jonathan and i looked it over. we decided, after much discussion in front of the boys, that our house will be suitable for a such a visitor in 8 or 10 years. that way, our kids can better interact with the student and offer a more entertaining sojourn to america. in our discussion, we mentioned our own experiences with foreign exchange situations, as a student as well as in the position of host. when i was a senior in high school, we had a girl from the netherlands stay with us for a while, a few weeks. lionel informed me that it's not the otherlands, it's actually SUtherlands. ralph stayed in his own world, as host and student, speaking with british and australian accents.

ralph and lionel's latest obsessions are with the "shakolater." ralph will come up and give my arm some love, then grab it and tell me that, yep, i DO need the shakolater. a shaking weight that is supposed to 'shake' the weight off whatever on your body is not firm.

lionel loves the commercial on qubo for qubo stating that nothing inappropriate is ever shown.

ralph pipes up with another product we might consider where a man 'magics' ingredients into the thing and it magics into a smoothie. (the magic bullet.)

cecelia has her own favorite... telling dad that he needs a tempurpedic bed because it melts the stress of your day away. she says it just like that.

well, it's 10PM, time to hang out with jonathan and melt the stress of our day away...

joy to the world!

"...that barney's dead. they bar-b-qued his head! don't worry about the body, just flush it down the potty. it circles around in o's, like a bowl of cheerios..." sung at the top of ralph's lungs.