Magoo

Snow Problem At All

February 13, 2019 by Kathryn

My kids and I are Canadians real bad and we crave the snow. We’re not Canadians enough to, you know, actually live in Canada or even to have watched a complete hockey game in the past six months. But we are Canadian enough to eat poutine, to wear toques, and to think we know how to drive in the snow.

Except for Wanda.

She is nine and her snow-driving skills are sub-par.

But we live in the Pacific Northwest, where our closeness to salty water and mountains strands us in a sea of grey almost-snow all winter long. Some years we get nary a flake. And we mourn so hard.

This year the Farmer’s Almanac predicted a wet and mild winter and we made peace with our snowlessness. But then the weather channel app started messing with us.

10% chance of frozen joy sprinkles.

30% chance.

JK rain.

And then:

100% CHANCE OF SNOW!!!

But we didn’t believe it. They’ve burned us before. When it finally fell, we were so excited.

We expected an inch or two and that was enough to make us crazy with joy.

We got snow. We got more snow. We got freezing temperatures.

Over TWO FEET of snow fell in about a week in a place where school will be canceled if a rumor circulates that half an inch of snow sent Seattle a spam email once.

School was canceled.

We didn’t get in any driving practice for Laylee’s impending driver’s test. She didn’t feel up to practicing her parallel parking.

We played a Catan mega game and no one even cried.

We drank hot chocolate by the gallon and made cinnamon rolls and did puzzles and burned half an Ent in our fireplace.

The kids made snow men and snow poffs.

Our power went out Monday night and Dan and I got up at 4am to start the generator. And restore heat and refrigerator power. When he went to pull the cord, this happened.

We spent over an hour repairing the pull cord multiple times (it kept breaking) and trying again and again to start the generator. Then we said a prayer. And tried again. And it worked on the first pull!

So we had heat and refrigeration and Minecraft. We were hooked up! And the snow kept falling, even as the temperatures warmed up.

At one point our two-story vaulted metal roof got melty enough that it roof-alanched all of its snow in one massive 5-foot-tall hard-packed mound at the side of the house.

So, of course, they sculpted a sled ramp that ran from the side of the house all the way down and through the forest owned by our neighbor.

There are benefits that come from allowing your fence to be reclaimed by the moss and slugs of the pacific northwest. Those benefits include turning your yard into a deer highway and having easy access to sled-trespass on your neighbor’s property during Snowmageddon.

A couple other Snowpocalypse highlights were:

Dan working from home

hauling wood for the fire using the kids’ sleds in the middle of the night

watching Dan zoom out of our driveway to go help a friend and leave an 11-inch-deep tire tread in the snow

eating “snow” cones at our awesome neighbor’s house next to a driveway campfire

using my thermal cooker when the power was out

reading by the fire as a family

There will be consequences for this week. The kids have already missed five days of school and had one late start and they’re still home until more of the snow melts. Those days will have to be made up at the end of the year. This is going to wreak havoc with summer plans and youth conference schedules.

The trampoline looks unnaturally stretched and the back deck is suffering under the weight of several inches of unmelted snow.

These are just the consequences for our family and they’re pretty minor. I know other people have suffered much more being stuck and cold and injured on the roads and hungry. I feel terrible for them and we’ve prayed every night that people would be safe and we’ve offered to help where we could.

But, there is nothing our being stressed or anxious or mad will do to change the snow or keep people safe or make the school year any shorter. It will just make us miserable.

So, we choose to celebrate it. It’s been a fat party for a week and a half and we have made amazing memories. Thank you, Mother Elsa. We have LOVED the freeze!

Post-Op Grocery Shop

August 25, 2016 by Kathryn

The worst day for me after my surgery came when I went for my check-up a week later and the doctor gave me a clean bill of health. My blood count was up a bit. My incisions were healing nicely and he said the dreaded words, “You can resume normal activities as you feel able.”

This sounds like good news, but to me it was horrible because it turned on my guilt faucet. When I was on bedrest, I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t. Doctor’s orders. But as soon as he said I could listen to my body and decide, I found myself feeling guilty for not being 100%. I was still dizzy when I stood up. My incisions were still painful when I sat upright for more than a few minutes at a time and even walking for short distances left me weak and out of breath.

But I felt bad because I wasn’t up and doing everything. It’s amazing how hard we are on ourselves, right? The heck?!

I told myself it was fine, to listen to my body and take it easy, but it was a real struggle.

Hello. My name is Kathryn. And I have a hard time being nice to myself consistently without conscious effort. I’ve gotten better over the years, especially the last few, but it’s still a struggle and I still have to be mindful about it.

So it turned out we needed groceries (re: kids eat food all the days) but I was worried about walking around the grocery store. I’d had several friends offer to pick things up for me at the store, but I thought of a better idea.

The kids could do it!

Isn’t that a good solution to most problems in life?

Newly free of the narcotics, I drove the kids to the store. We had a pep-talk where I told them about looking for brands and sizes with the best price. I took them down the cereal aisle and showed them how to look at the price per ounce and see if a bigger box might be a better value even if the price tag was bigger.

I refreshed their memory on how to pick produce.

I told them that vacation as coming so the budget was tight and I asked them to stick to the list unless they saw something they thought we actually needed for a good price. If that happened, they were to come and ask me.

On the list, I indicated that they could choose one treat that they all agreed on.

If they got along and showed good grocery manners, they could have a free bakery cookie at the end.

Then I planted myself in a reclined position in one of the comfy chairs in the pharmacy waiting room and read a great western novel for book club.

My 13, 11, and 6-year-old navigated the grocery store beautifully and had a great time doing it.

They came and found me with questions like, “You wrote down red bell peppers but the green ones are so much cheaper. Is there a reason you really need red?” and “We want to get a box of Cheez-Its for our treat but there’s a deal where they are way cheaper if you buy three boxes. Can we please buy three?”

They made hard choices and proudly told me about how they refused to buy the salad dressing brand I specified because it was way too expensive and there was a store-brand alternative that looked just as good.

Seeing the pride on their faces, even though one of them wouldn’t admit she’d had a good time, I wondered why I hadn’t done something like this before.

And when we got to the long lines at the end, I asked the kids to pay for the groceries. They balked. Using my credit card was taking things a bit too far for them. I told them I could really use their help and asked them to try it because I didn’t think I could stand up in line that long.

Then a sweet lady overheard us and asked if we would like to take our massive load of groceries and cut in front of her in line. Drops of Awesome for kind strangers. I meet them all time!

All About that Base…ball

April 19, 2016 by Kathryn

BASEBALL IS NOW!!!

At the beginning of each calendar year, there comes a point, and I never know when it will be, when I get an email that essentially says, “BASEBALL IS NOW!!!”

What this means is, “You signed your child up for baseball six months ago, not knowing when it would be, and then you planned your schedule and moved on with your life. But starting tomorrow you will have baseball practices and games 3-5 times per week in various towns all over the valley and you will no longer be in any way in control of your family’s schedule. You will not eat normal family dinner for the next 4 months.”

baseball1

And we do this every single year because, flying in the face of everything I thought I knew about genetics, I have a kid who adore sports, particularly baseball.

This year is especially special because not only is Magoo playing, but Wanda is six and it’s her first year playing softball. And she’s not the only one playing softball. Due to an utterly desperate coaching situation in our little corner of Little League, I am managing and coaching her team.

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Have I ever played softball before? No.

Have I ever touched a softball before? No.

Have I ever watched a single game of softball being played? Not so much.

Am I much more qualified to direct a theater production, conduct a band, or coach a team of mathletes? Yes.

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But I do know how to dial up the YouTube. And I know how to interact with kindergarteners. And I have great parent support and the sweetest assistant coach ever, Coach Laylee. So I’m doing okay so far. Our games start soon and then we’ll see exactly HOW okay.

Not only am I… ahem… coaching, we also decided to sponsor Magoo’s team this year. I have a business license in Washington State as an LLC for my writing and coaching work. So when the team asked if any of us had a business who’d like to sponsor the team and have our business name printed on the back, I could not resist.

Meet Team Drops of Awesome.

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While other kids go around with the names of local restaurants and hardware stores printed across their backs, our kids wear the banner of Awesome.

I love to cheer for them but my cheering is at best awkward. At the moment, I’m working to use phrases that don’t in any way come naturally to me to support the kids as they try to do the good baseballing.

When other parents call out things like, “Good cut,” and “Way to get a piece of it,” they sound cool and sports-like. When I call out those things, I feel like I’m dressing my vocabulary up in a baseball mom costume and the costume doesn’t fit so well and I sound silly.

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One seasoned baseball mom recently told me it’s all about yelling things with authority. It doesn’t really matter what you say. You just have to commit and sound like you know what you’re talking about. So here are a few I’ve come up with this season and I’m excited to try them out.

“That was high quality cutting!”

“Your arm is nice!”

“You swing with great strength!”

“Throw the ball with more hardness!”

“Knock it to Sammammish!”

“I like the way your bat touched that ball even though it didn’t go the right direction to allow you to run to a base!”

Okay, that last one’s a bit long but I think it gets the point across nicely. I could also go uber short with things like, “BOOM!” “Ska-DOINK!”

I’ll fine tune it and let you know.

Besides vocab choices, the main concerns I have during baseball season are how to feed my kids when we’re at baseball from 4:30-8pm and there’s no eating allowed in the dugout, how to get stains out of white pants that are worn exclusively for times when you plan to slide and roll around in the dirt and grass, and how to prepare for every possible weather situation.

We’re wet and freezing. We’re sizzling and baking in the sun. Sometimes we do both of those things during a single game. So I bring umbrellas and sunscreen, snacks and water bottles, sunhats and parkas.
This year Magoo’s level of Little League team chooses a Major League team for their team name, so we’re the Dodgers. I like this because it makes finding fan gear easy.

The Northwest, and online store that specializes in exciting, new and innovative products for the majority of the world’s most recognized and loved brands in sports, entertainment and lifestyle

9 Secrets to Raising Happy Kids

The Northwest, an online store that has all kinds of great MLB gear, reached out to see if I was doing a story on baseball this season and when I told them I was, they sent me this awesome Dodgers blanket which helps keep us snuggly warm on rainy days or as the sun drops behind the trees sunny days. It’s fun to be cozy and support our team at the same time. Their site also has tons of other cool licensed products from just about every type of sports team and entertainment companies like Disney, Universal, Marvel Bros, etc. Next time you go to a hockey game, played between Kylo Ren and Santa Claus, they can hook you up for that too.

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At least next time I yell, “Dodge like a Dodger baseball man!” I will look legit while saying it.

**Sometimes I get free stuff for mentioning it in a post. I always tell you when that’s the case.**

Leprechauns and Expectations

March 17, 2016 by Kathryn

The Leprechauns must be stopped. That much is clear.

I think the unicorn blood we’ve smeared over our front door is working because we’ve been largely spared their antics, some green milk here, shamrock-colored toilet water there. It’s just harmless fun at our house.

But others are not so fortunate and sadly my kids have been affected by what Leprechauns are doing at their friends’ houses.

When fifth-grader Magoo came downstairs this morning, he looked intensely in my eyes and said, “I wonder what the Leprechaun brought us.”

“Um… I’m pretty sure nothing,” I said, “Leprechauns don’t bring gifts to this address.”

“Oh,” he looked deflated.

This surprised me because for the past several years, as Leprechaun activity around our town has escalated to the point of total Pin-sanity, we have been continually spared. It’s not as though last year the Leprechaun swept in like an abusive husband, trashing our house and leaving reconciliatory gifts, but then forgot about us this year.

No.

Green milk.

Every year.

That’s all she wrote.

So Magoo continued, “I’ll go check my shoes… just in case… to see if he filled them with Rolos or gold coins.” Again the intense eye contact, pleading, hopeful.

The heck? I bought you Lucky Charms and offered you spinach eggs (WHICH ARE GREEN!!). What more do you want from me?

lepro

I do not understand the magic of Leprechauns.

Santa and the Easter Bunny bring gifts, symbolic of the gifts of the Savior. The tooth fairy brings money in exchange for harvested body parts. These make sense to me. But Leprechauns?

They trash your house or school room and then I guess feel bad about it so they leave you gold or high fructose corn syrup or adorable hand-made prizes as seen on Pinterest.

What’s next, a Flag Day Gollum who burns your house down and then leaves you a new car or fills the charred remains of your socks with diamonds?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this and I’ve come up with a plan.

Next year.

For St. Patrick’s Day.

I think I may go crazy and dye the milk green. I think the kids will love it.
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Brace Yourself

May 5, 2015 by Kathryn

It’s that time. It’s time to give my children the gift my parents still refer to as my most expensive possession, a gift my kids will use every single day of their lives. I will now give to my children the gift of good teeth. I will give to their orthodontist the gift of a Hawaiian vacation.

We’ve been putting this off for years, as friends all around us are getting their kids in braces younger and younger. I don’t see a point in emptying my bank account into my kids’ mouths, only to have to do it again when the rest of their permanent teeth come in. But recently our dentist suggested we get their oral weirdnesses looked at.

So, yesterday we found ourselves in a big cheerful office with a huge Nemo tank. Aren’t all fish tanks Nemo tanks these days?

“Great fish tank, but where in the world has Nemo gone? We have to find him!”

I started off my relationship with the desk staff on an awesome note by complaining about the repetitive nature of the online paperwork we filled out.

The paperwork was super annoying and redundant, but if you’re beginning a multi-year relationship with a team of people who are the gatekeepers to your children’s highly-expensive, highly-skilled health care provider, it’s probably better not to alienate them at first go.

“Welcome to our office! Thank you so much for filling out the paperwork in advance.”

“Thanks. And, about that paperwork, it’s the worst. I challenge you to go through and pretend you’re a new patient filling it out for her two kids. I had to type out my address no fewer than six times. It is the worst. Did I mention it is bad and I did not enjoy filling it out? I’m not a complainer, though. I only complain because it was bad with a great badness and not the eighties Michael Jackson kind. The ungood, opposite of awesome, super annoying kind of bad. Nice to meet you.”

They seemed to take it in stride, but then when the treatment coordinator came out to greet us (she wasn’t there for my tirade), she apologized for my negative experience with the paperwork. Word had reached her. Not good. You don’t want to be THAT lady.

We were taken into an office and that’s when the gifts began, t-shirts for all the kids, balloons, tooth brushes, gift cards. I was even entered into a drawing for a mother’s day basket by having my kids write nice things about me on paper flowers.

I like this one from Magoo that says I’m the best mom in the world because I let them stay up late. This was written in direct response to me stupidly letting them stay up way too late last Friday watching old episodes of Star Trek until two of my three kids ended up having nightmares about salt monsters. I’m the best. It’s the truth.

I know the swag is just a normal thing at orthodontists. When I was in high school, my orthodontist’s office was like a luxury playground. But am I the only one who gets nervous as her kids are picking prizes out of a basket, their new dental wardrobe slung over one shoulder? Someone is paying for all this. Wait. It’s me.

Laylee and Magoo both desperately want braces so I told them not to get too excited because , “Each set of braces is roughly equivalent to one trip to Disneyland for the entire family.” Disney has t-shirts too and the rides are way more fun.

But our doctor seems cool and is not one to rush things so we ended up with an order for a tooth extraction, a retainer for Magoo, and Laylee gets to wait six months or so because apparently you need to have teeth to receive orthodontic treatment. She lost six molars in a 48-hour period last week and is drinking her food these days.

Laylee was disappointed.

Magoo is counting the days until he gets his glow-in-the-dark retainer with the spider on it. We pick it up on his birthday.

“Mom. It occurs to me that now I have three awesome things to look forward to on my birthday this year. One – well, it’s my BIRTHDAY! Two – I get to have a tooth extracted. And Three – I get to start wearing a retainer.”

“You don’t get the tooth extracted on your actual birthday.”

“Oh,” he looks disappointed, “Well, two awesome things then.”

Awesome as a tooth extraction.

Crazy Hair

January 21, 2015 by Kathryn

They sleep in their clothes most nights. Wear-Pajamas-To-Bed-Like-Normal-People-Gate 2014 did not end in my favor. I decided to cave and save my fight for fights worth the fight, knowahmsayin? I still put my foot down hard in the face of their desire to wear the slept-in clothes the following day. If you sleep in them, they become pajamas until they go through a washer reset.

This morning, Magoo woke up in his basketball clothes with dark face-punch-looking circles around his eyes. He’d been up late reading like a disobedient literate. He looked awful and when he’s tired, which is most morning, re: he is my son, he oozes around the house wrapped in a blanket and running into things.

Suddenly his eyes brightened, “Oh! It’s pajama crazy hair day at school. I almost forgot.”
He shed his fluffy blanket and ran upstairs to change out of his slept-in clothes in favor of un-slept-in pajamas. I spent several minutes combing gel into his hair so it would stand up all over.

Oh how proud he was of this look.

The hair put us behind schedule so I drove him to the bus stop. As we were waiting, Wanda suddenly opened her sleepy eyes and gasped, “Oh mom! Did you see Magoo today? He looks sooooo HANDSOME!”

Yep. He does. Tall hair is good hair, says the eighties.

Lows and Highs

December 10, 2014 by Kathryn

I wrote this post a week ago.

This day could not figure out what it wanted. For a while things were great. The sister missionaries from our church stopped by and chatted and shared this amazing Christmas video with me and Wanda. Incidentally, Wanda cursed them in her prayer tonight by praying that they’d “grow big and strong” and “have great travels.” So she wants them to grow fat and leave, basically. Sad.

We got some stuff done. Men were no longer excavating my crawlspace and hauling hundreds of pounds of rock through my entire house to lower through a tiny hole in my hall closet. That was yesterday.

It was cold but not freezing. There was snow on the ground but not the roads. This strange yellow orb was sending magical light rays down on us from the sky. I spent some fun time chatting with a friend today.

And then things sort of unraveled. There is just this sort of brain-slamming chaos that happens sometimes in the hour after everyone gets home from school. We need snacks and we need to share the stories from our day and everyone wants to hear about everyone else’s day while simultaneously telling about their own day and if we are five-years-old, we need to yell, “MOM! MOM! MOM!” into the wind every few minutes in hopes that anyone will pay attention to us ever.

If it’s a day like today, people lose their homework and procrastinate the rest and they ask you for some wood and a saw to make a quick catapult… for science. Eventually you decide you have to skip Cub Scouts because the homework is too big and too deep and too wide. And everyone cries. Because Cub Scouts is where the joy lives.

And through the tears and the mania and the MOM! MOM! MOM!-ing, you work to make dinner for your family and the family up the street whose mom is sick, only to get a text telling you that the dinner didn’t come soon enough so the whole family has already left for their evening activities and you KNEW you should have asked what time they needed dinner but you neglected to ask and you just want to dump the coconut chicken curry and naan bread out in the snow.

And then you realize that your problems are actually quite small and that you should be grateful that you have lovely children and you’re all in good health and your marriage is going strong and your careers are going well. You realize these things, but you don’t feel better. You just feel guilty because you shouldn’t be frustrated, but in that moment the day just really REALLY eats rocks.

That was my day today. And when Dan got home from work, I stood there in my un-earned stretchy pants. No yoga happened today, even though I was dressed up for it in case it somehow snuck up and attacked me from behind. And I unloaded on him about each and every straw that had contributed to my camel’s back injury. He listened. And then he left for his band rehearsal.

My internal Magic 8 Ball told me that its sources said no good would come of this night. But its sources were wrong.

Laylee, who had been madly reading her scriptures all night in an attempt to achieve a very aggressive, bribery-induced study goal emerged from her reading with a happy glow about her. And she made peace in our house.

She listened to Wanda while I worked with Magoo. Then I took Wanda up to bed and when I came down, Laylee was tenderly coaching Magoo through a written assignment. There is such a thing as coaching someone in a way that lets them know exactly how big of a moron they are with sighs and eye rolls and repeated reminders of your own personal brilliance in comparisson to their pitiful nine-year-old pea brain. This was not that. This was kind, gentle, encouraging study help, the kind of study help parenting dreams are made of.

For a second, I considered relieving her and taking over homework helper duty. Then I listened to them for a minute more and chose to sneak away and let the magic happen.

“That’s a great sentence, Buddy, but you already started one with that word in this paragraph. How could you say it a little differently? Perfect!”

When they had finished, Magoo proudly showed me the paper.

“I wrote this whole thing myself,” he beamed, “With a little help from Laylee.”

And she stood behind him grinning and giving me a thumbs up. Um? Angel choirs! If I could bottle that moment and uncork it next week when angel choirs are far far from my thoughts as I look at the way those two interact, I would shave my head in payment.

I apologized to the kids because, oh, yeah, I forgot to mention earlier, I had snapped at and yelled at and snapped at them again earlier in the night.

Laylee, still bearing a halo, smiled and said, “Of course you did. Anyone would. Your day was really stressful, mom.” WHA?

I asked Laylee if she thought her time reading the scriptures had made a difference in how she treated everyone tonight and her eyes got really big with understanding. “Yeah… I really think it did!”

Deal. Sealed. I love watching my kids choose things that make them happy.

And to think, only a few hours earlier my scalp had been going numb at the thought of all we had to do and the frustration, stress and chaos of my home. Parenting is a bipolar realm.