hello, sorry about the (sometimes unattended) mess

Well, just got back from a week up in western Pennsylvania and it was really quite amazing to have been up north for a "White Christmas"--more on this in a bit, though. As always, I have a few (maybe) observations to share.
( Would you like to know more? )
So, there you have it. All in all, a fun trip and quite educational to boot.

While Abby and I were out fighting my way through Wal-Mart tonight, Jon discovered a cache of lollipops that Rachel had somewhere in the house. Rachel went for them in order to find a better, more secret place for them.

Jon very helpfully offered, "No, no. I hide them from me."

He then grabbed his propeller cap, hid the lollipops and took off.

Rachel likes to keep neat and organized TiVo lists. After her shopping excursion today, she came home tonight and was going through the list and deleting programs that have been watched, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

She got to Batman: The Brave and the Bold and asked, "Did you watch these already?" I told her that we did not, but Abby, Jon and I did watch all of The Brotherhood.

She was not amused.

This entry took me a bit longer to type as I was riveted to the opening segment of Fringe.

The elementary school where I work has words painted on the sidewalks going from class to class. I don't recall anything like this when I was in my various elementary schools. Anyway, there is a bit of an odd subliminal message in a particular series of the words. They are painted as follows: marriage, lose, interest. Just seemed a little odd to me, how about you?

Abby is seven years old today. I have had a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around that. It just seems like yesterday that she was born and I cannot imagine life without her or Jonothan.

Rachel and I bought Abby a fairly large stuffed horse as a gift and the best hiding place we had was the trunk of her car. Since buying the horse, I have continually referred to it as our message from Don Corleone (despite being a full horse and not just its head). There was a bit of debate as to how to give Abby her horse. We ended up actually putting it in bed with her very much like the delivery to Jack Woltz in The Godfather--minus the gore, of course. The girl LOVED the thing. She came in to wake us riding Butterscotch, as she now calls it, and enjoying it much as we expected her to. This evening before dinner Butterscotch had some sort of medical emergency, to which Abby broke out the kiddie doctor set I haven't seen in months. Life is good.

He's actually not as unhappy as he looks in this image.

Jon ran the gamut of facial expressions and I happened to catch this one the clearest.

Silly boy.

Love Date: What Abby now refers to a night out that involves only Rachel and I...she emphasizes love as loooooove!

She's so funny.

Rachel and I panicked this morning when neither knew where Ms. Kitty had gotten to. She typically will wake us early to feed her.

So we took her bag of food out, shook it a bit--which usually brings her running--and nothing.

Rachel then remembered that she had taken the garbage out into the garage last night and sure enough, Ms. Kitty bolted into the house. She ran to her litter box, took care of business and then proceeded to greet and rub on all of us as if she hadn't seen us in weeks. Then she ate.

In other news, Abby managed to get a hold of eyebrow trimmers that were in the medicine cabinet this morning and shaved nearly half of her eyebrows off. It was odd to me that Abby was being really slow at getting dressed this morning.

Her school pictures are set to be taken next week.

Nothing speaking of grandma's authentic chocolate milk goodness like Nestle® Chocolate Abuelita®--or, as I like to think of it, Euphegenia Doubtfire's chocolate syrup.

I felt compelled to buy a bottle of the syrup just because of the picture on it.

I wonder if anyone else has felt the same way.

Doesn't mean I want to be talked down to, and really I have to say this is probably more a situation of me stressing and then adding more stress to it.

See, what happened this morning was that Jon and I were ready to head out to his first day of VPK. A quick aside, Abby will be at the same school that Rachel has started teaching this year.

So, Jon and I get to his room to find out we'll have to head to the office to fill out some registration paperwork. No big deal, but I distinctly remember doing this several months ago.

We walk across campus and walk into the cacophony that was the front office. Okay, I'll just follow the lead of the other parents who were sent up for the same express purpose. An office staff person proceeds to assist another VPK parent, so I politely tap her on her shoulder and ask--in what can be very clearly construed as English--"Excuse me ma'am, I'm also here with my son about VPK and need to fill out paperwork?"

She looks at me as if my head has transformed into a manifestation of Cthulhu itself and then begins a machine gun rattling off of commands to me. In Spanish. I mentally, if not physically, begin to twitch and very sternly--heck, I'm absolutely SURE I was rude--bark at her, "In ENGLISH!"

She paused for a moment and then kept speaking to me--in essence telling me that Jon is not on the list and I'll have to wait.

Minutes later, I run into the liaison that helped get us set up a long while ago at school (she too is puzzled because, see, we've filled out papers all the way back in oh, say, January) and another person calls out Jon's name. Jon's folder has been found and it is missing a proof of residence. While I am reading what forms of proof are acceptable and whipping out my wallet, said person yells, "It can't be a Driver's LICENSE!" To which I reply, "I know! I am getting my VOTER REGISTRATION CARD!"

What, people don't walk around with those in their wallets?

So, proof has been provided and we're told we are good to go.

I have to say, that experience didn't do a lot to set me at ease for Jon's first day of school. He did very well though, according to his teachers.

P.S. -- he's home telling Rachel, "I LOVE mah teachers!"

Abby has spent the majority of this week in Jacksonville with her Uncle Dean, Aunt Stacey and cousin Allie. Our niece Lindsey that lives nearby also went up to JAX.

There have been phone calls almost every day to say hi and keep us informed on what's been going on.

Allie just sent me a MySpace message on behalf of Abby. It was cute and I figured I'd share. So there.