Not Quite The Weepies...but still sharing

Every once in a while I come across a band or a song that seems to cast a spell over me and my very impressionable brain. I'm hooked, I succumb and I can't stop listening. My brainwaves change from frenzied hysterics to ahhhhhhh......and I'm addicted forever.  I can hardly seem to create a playlist without including it, whether it's a falling asleep medley, collection of brisk walking tunes or a clean-the-house rock out.

For example, The Weepies.  I think pretty much every person I know has been told to LISTEN TO THE WEEPIES RIGHT NOW and most have ended up with some Weepies tunes on their playlists here and there.  (Though not all. Becky.) The Weepies are still my faves and I don't see that changing.  But I've come across another band.  I confess, not every single song they sing is going into my itunes - they have a lot of stuff I don't really care for. But the stuff I love I love a lot.  And I wanted to share.  So here you go. I give you.....The Bombay Bicycle Club. My brainwaves thank them.






Sometimes aren't you surprised when you find out what members of a band look like?  I can't even describe what I thought these guys looked like when I first heard a song.  But I was not expecting four British guys who look like they are might graduate high school one of these days.  And I have to say, that second video is kinda....meh. Lame.  I just love the song. So despite everything, Them Bicycle Bombay Clubbers have a new fan.

Happy Birthday to my Sweet Momma

My sister and I tried to pull together a big ole party for my mother, seeing as how it was her 70th birthday this past Sunday.  I guess we didn't try that hard - it was pretty obvious from the first mention of a party that my mom and dad just wanted to hang out with their kids.  So that's what we did.  Margaret and I did spend a week stressing out about what to get her for a birthday gift.  From my dad my mom had asked for Muppets DVDs.  Funny - she's got a thing for The Muppets at the moment.  I can't really blame her.  Anyone who saw the latest Muppet movie had to be as charmed as I was, right?  Anyway, Dad bought her movies.  Margaret and I weren't sure what to do and both of us did a lot of browsing.  I ended up buying her a bracelet. It took me pretty much until I got out of the store and into the car to realize that she wasn't going to really like it, so I returned it a few days later.  Margaret did better with some really yummy natural soaps and lotions and stuff.  But better than that, Margaret hit it out of the ball park.  She had me and both of my brothers email a bunch of photos of our families to be printed up, put in a box and given to mom.  Such a simple gift.  I had a pretty little cigar-box type thing covered in flowers that was just the right size for photographs.  Dad's really good at keeping all the family photos neatly organized on their computer but that's hard for mom to access without help so we thought just a stack of pictures that she could sort through and hold anytime she wanted would be great.  And it was.

We all gathered at Margaret's house on a perfectly gorgeous spring evening.  We had homemade tostadas for dinner and this amazing flourless chocolate cake for dessert.  The kids jumped on the tramp and Margaret's cute girls played Apples to Apples with dad and Stomper and me.  A lovely evening.  Then we gave mom her gifts - the soaps and lotion, some pretty silver earrings.  It was all very nice.  But then she sat down by dad on the porch swing and they opened up the box of photos and promptly burst out crying in delight and happiness.  It couldn't have been a simpler or more perfect gift.  Good job, Margaret, and happy birthday mom.

Egg Tales

Spring Break has come and gone and I'm very proud to say that the Preslar Family survived. I'm such a wimp.  Any time a long break with no school shows up on the calendar I start shaking in my boots, sure that the empty days will drag on forever filled with absolutely nothing but the kids tearing each other to shreds and making messes on top of messes.  Do NOT mention the word "Su_ _ _ r" to me please.  And yes, there was a good healthy dose of fighting and messiness, but guess what, Spring Break was really fun this year.  We went nowhere, we just filled up the days with friends and fabulous outings like our first Real Soccer Game and Bundle's first dance class.  We had a little BBQ on a freezing cold night over here and an equally chilly trip to the zoo with friends.  We walked to Einsteins and got bagels and ate them at the park with other friends.  We rented red box movies and ate lots of popcorn.  It was great.  No, the house never really did get clean for the duration of the week (how do you people DO it with a house over 1000 square feet?) but we really did have a great week.

Eggs played a prominent role in our adventures.  Of course we had the egg-dying session that must always happen in the days leading up to Easter.  Yes, as is usually the case with us, it was late the evening before, but it was fun.  It's another one of those times when I have to suppress my inner...okay, OUTER control-freak craft-monger who was aching to make a gorgeous array of perfectly dyed, brightly colored eggs.  I just have to let the kids go for it.  Bundle spent the entire dying-session on just one or two eggs, systematically dunking them in every single color but only after delightedly exclaiming, "Ohh!  Purple!" or whatever color came next.  She produced two very interesting grayish eggs.  And the big kids weren't much different, actually.  They are the funkiest eggs.  And I managed to just leave them to it, and they loved it.

We spent our Saturday morning at a friend's neighborhood egg and candy hunt.  My children successfully restocked our house with colorful little blobs of sugar and chocolate that I am now fighting with myself about all day long.  I'm losing that argument, just so you know. On Sunday morning the kids awoke to more candy and small tokens of adoration such as art projects, a bike helmet for Stomper and new dresses for the girls. I've never done the Easter Dress thing before but I couldn't resist those purple ruffly things at Costco.  I'm glad I didn't - they were adorable. After a lovely church day we spent the afternoon with my parents and my sister eating a completely non-traditional Easter feast of Vietnamese rice noodle and tofu salads.  Hey, when you have to go both vegan and gluten free in a family dinner you have to let the ham and rolls go.  And it was delicious.  Plus, you know...we got more candy.

I have to say that of all the eggs we encountered over spring break what with Easter and all, I had one specific favorite egg of the weekend.  Not everyone in the family loved this egg like I did but Troy and I laughed so hard about this incident that we had to hide while laughing ourselves sick while the victim of the egg was crying in the bathtub.

So, on Sunday morning I was making my favorite thing which is poached eggs.  Bitty decided she didn't want one and instead went with a hard-boiled member of the colored collection made the day before.  I cracked and peeled it for her and placed it on her plate.  She watched it slide around there for a second before picking it up and asking if we could heat it up.  We've had this encounter before and I have told her that putting an already-boiled egg in the microwave is a bad idea but as happens a lot in our mother-daughter relationship she didn't believe me.  She insisted that only 30 seconds wouldn't hurt anything, so I let her put her theory to the test figuring that she was probably right.  She microwaved the egg all by herself and even pulled the plate out and set it down in front of herself.  I had my back turned for a few minutes when I suddenly heard this surprisingly loud "THOOOMPH" sound, followed by a moment of silence before there was an eruption of tears. I turned around to see my sweet daughter absolutely covered head-to-toe in tiny little bits of exploded egg.  In her hair, her eyelashes, down her neck...I'm only laughing because she wasn't burned or hurt at all.  Just heartbroken and probably a little shell-shocked after the explosion of her breakfast.  Troy calmly led her to the bathtub before joining me in the bedroom to laugh silently until tears were running down our cheeks.  Best egg ever.

Just Have to Remind Myself...

....WHY I love my daughter.

That sounded awful.  It was awful.

But before I explain myself I just have to share a quick mommy moment I had yesterday.  And by the way, why does it feel like I'm the only one who has these?  Like I'm the only one who manages perfectly to have every catastrophe erupt simultaneously as if I had planned it that way?  Okay - here's how it went.

The first hour after school is always nuts, but it can escalate to new hights when you have three extra friends plus a mommy over to chat for a bit before soccer practice, which all the kids went to after much scrambling for gear.  Soccer practice was great - sitting in the sun and soaking in the Vitamin D while the boys played soccer and the girls twirled and asked to go potty again and again.  I was feeling pretty good getting my kids out in the sun and knowing that I had dinner chugging along in the crock pot which would be perfect and ready just as we came home from soccer.  It was all going to go just as I had planned.  Then Bitty had the kind of accident where you just remove the undies and wrap them in a paper towel and shove them down in the garbage can under more paper towels and just have her go commando until you get home.  Then Bundle refused to put on shoes as she walked to the car and walked straight through a prickle plant of some kind.  Also, dinner was pork tacos (I'd share the recipe but it wasn't that good) and I didn't realize that somehow the pork "juice" had leaked in the fridge while the pork thawed all day yesterday.  So I get home with a screaming 2-year-old and a tear-stained 6-year-old and the most disgusting mess in the fridge ever.  And as I sat there on the couch plucking 100 minuscule splinters the size of hairs out my daughter's feet and thinking about how to contain pork juice, the other two kids start having little emergencies of their own.  I don't even remember what they were.  My brain couldn't keep up with that information. It was full already.  I just wonder why sometimes the forces of the universe see fit to leap into action all at once.

Okay, enough already.  Back to my daughter.  Lately, it's been the younger one causing me to question my suitability to be a mother.  But I think that might be mostly because she is nearing her 3rd birthday, day by day getting closer.  You know, I absolutely love the terrible twos.  Might be my favorite age ever.  The really rough infant-not-sleeping-and-often-screaming days are gone with just enough of the darling baby-ness left over to be delightful.

And then three happens.

What is happening to my darling baby girl?  She has gone from being sweet and playful, all blond ringlets and squinchy little smiles to spending her days furrowing her brow, shushing me and insisting on doing every last thing herself, despite the fact that she can't actually do any of those things.  And she's mad about it.  All the time.  She even tells me.  "I'm still very mad about you right now."  And she likes to just get ON me, in my lap, across my legs, over my arms, and then roll around and groan.  And kick.  And look miserable.  And moan.  And...and...you know, I just can't even describe the transformation she's made and you can only understand it if you've had your very own 2-year-old angel transform before your very eyes as he or she neared that dreaded third birthday.

Moving on.  I am going to remind myself about her most precious qualities and habits that I adore about her.  I just need a little refresher as to her finer points.

This gal adores the zoo and we spend a lot of time there, much to her delight.  I love putting her hair in little ponies.

We were lucky enough to get some tickets to the Disney On Ice Show with the Toy Story guys.  I was nervous that she'd be scared of the dark and noise, but Bundle spent almost the whole show on her feet shouting and cheering for her favorite characters.  The guests in front of us graciously appreciated her enthusiasm.

After only three short years my baby has just started sleeping through the night almost every night, partly thanks to her big sister who has decided that she likes sleeping with her.  Hooray!!

Bundle is an artiste - she paints her heart out almost every single day.

When she's not painting she dressing up in fabulous costumes.

But it really is painting that she turns to as her outlet - and it often leads to a little self-decoration followed closely by trip to the bathtub.

Need I say more?

Loved this - on our way to the Real game the other night she  zonked out momentarily and apparently quite suddenly, as noted by the straw in mid-suck position.  Luckily she does not take after her big sister and let cat naps ruin her bedtime.

So you can see, there is much to adore about my sweet little gal.  And seeing as how she has spent the day today keeping her undies dry, I'm feeling pretty good about it all now.