new template and catching up to xmas

i don't have a lot of time...story of my life...but i suddenly felt compelled to blog for me...not for nablopomo or to say something to any random reader but because i wanted to...and that was nice...so these are my attempt at sharing photos of a lot of free associating ideas flitting around in my head when i should be wrapping gifts or sleeping...story will inevitably wake up shortly and leave me without the words to fill these in...this first photo was taken several months ago but is good at showing the concept of sea the ballerina...tonight she dressed herself in this outfit along with white tights and tap-like patten leather dress shoes...she promptly climbed up on her craft table and did a dance for us...i let it soak instead of running for a camera or video...here are sea and story with santa at a xmas party earlier this year...sea BELIEVES in him this year...telling him what she wanted for xmas...listening for jingle bells overhead tonight...story was still a little reticent but followed his sister's lead of being ok...
i love the angles in these...50's style lamp, afghan throw...story is pointing at "oo-ahh" (rudolph)
and there he is...story love bumble, the abominable snowman in the story...
sea didn't really get into making xmas cards (last year or the year before i had her draw a little drawing for each...WAY too much work)...but she was excited to draw one for her friend ruhi...
and a ballerina...
this was the decorating she did for her cousin on the east coast (we exchange names with the relatives on my dad's side)...this is my favorite way to wrap gifts...roll out butcher paper and let sea go crazy drawing/coloring/painting and then wrap them in her art...
a couple weeks ago we went to a holiday playdate with the moms/children from the waldorf mommy and me preschool story and i attended...here is the little girl hope with her new little kitty who was SO sweet...i really want to find a little cat who lets sea and story carry her around everywhere and LIKES it...our cat claire (she is 16) slept inside the past few nights when it was pouring down rain but darted back outside when the children woke up...
i LOVE this felt map in hope's room...this is a close-up shot of some of the labels/felts you can move around...
this shot shows the whole thing with the children playing in the foreground...she said it was really expensive but i would pay a lot for it...it would be such a great learning tool and we could mark all the places we travel to...
sea's winter/holiday concert was last week...i like this grandiose shot of the whole elementary singing a finale...choir instructor's arms open wide in front...sea was getting ready to copy her just next to her left ear in turquoise (yes, she made her way to the front center row)...
and a close-up of her singing...did i mention i arrived an hour early so WE were in fact in the front center seats to watch the concert?
her tooth was so wiggly that night she couldn't bite into her burrito at the taqueria...sure enough, she lost her second tooth when we got home...looking forward to singing "all i want for xmas is my two front teeth"...
friday of last week we had a holiday party at her school...it was supposed to pour down rain so i let her wear her velvet church dress and patten leather shoes (it was of course clear weather and they ended up playing outside for recess after all)...here sea is eating "stone soup" (they read the story and then all contributed veggies...i would have put a stone in the soup myself but all the parents thought i was crazy...i'm telling you our children don't get exposure to enough dirt and germs)...
then they decorated sugar cookies...you can see how much sea loves sugar (this was just the base of her frosting)...
story was so excited to share in the school experience...the older grades walked around campus playing holiday songs on their musical instruments...the violins were my favorite...
the past couple of days i've been going crazy trying to construct 8 calendars (each unique to the family) for my family and in-laws...this photo really should have made it in somewhere...it was sea and story playing nicely together shortly before sea started kindergarten...
and caught loving one another without being prompted/posed...
i love little feet and story's smile...can't believe this one didn't make it into anyone's calendar, either...
then two from our days at the pool this summer...

MPT #11: 8th grade lucky to have my dad

i'm obviously not 13 going on 14 in this first photo...but it is our last post before christmas so i thought i'd focus much of this post on how we celebrated xmas...specifically memories of my dad...today, december 18 is his birthday...he would have been 70. he died 4.5 years ago just after his 65th birthday. i had hoped to take him on a harbor cruise or at least out to dinner by the bay here in san diego where he could watch the parade of lights (boats decorated with lights that create a parade on the water) for his 65th but late planning didn't allow this so i always have regrets he never got to do that even though he was always just happy to spend time with us and didn't care the "what"...he was always my cheerleader and would literally shout out "hip-hip-hooRRAYYYY" type cheers with his fists in the air and a huge cheesy smile and i'd roll my eyes and be embarrassed but he was our advocate when we needed him and junior high was definitely a difficult time!

i forgot in seventh grade to write about being pulled into my teacher's office to hear my dad had been in a serious car accident right after dropping us off at school and he had broken his neck and was transported to a nearby hospital. he had some disease as a child so he always had a stiff neck but wearing a halo and going through the recovery was yet another example of his "many lives" he weathered with no complaints...

[i'm doing a bad job watching my 2.5 and 5-year-olds right now rushing to get this out...plus trying to work on xmas cards...so i'll hope to edit this post later and probably won't read yours until the middle of next week when i visit my mom and she can watch the kids...so i'll be brief...]

this next photo again shows my horrible feathered hair...i'm holding my little cousin ally i was telling you about last time...the one who is in her 20's now and engaged!
this next photo makes me laugh in part because i can tell i "tried" to wear make-up and my curly feathered hair and semi-formal set-up but the main reason i get a chuckle out of this photo is my mom was SO intimated my the woman who hosted these parties...her name was kay bayor and she was like bree on the desperate housewives...always put together with the perfectly created homemade items for any occasion...all details covered...my mom would always say she could never have this woman over to her house because she could never pull that off and i reminded her the lady probably enjoyed entertaining and having people over so i always strive to allow visitors even in the messiest of circumstances...
ok kids are taking over the computer so more later...i'll leave you another photo again not from 8th grade but with the xmas theme of me and my sister...

i'm recording my childhood a year every friday through MPT (mommy's piggytales)...thanks for joining me!

MPT #10 7th grade: misunderstood and what didn't happen

oh man, 7th grade was rough for me...one of the roughest of my childhood years...i'm not sure if it was all the hormones and puberty stuff (mine were late to kick in remember) but everything was so dramatic and i was so emotional and heart broken over things...cara was still my best friend (here you finally get to see a better close-up of her)...we had one of our biggest fights complete with pages and pages of lined 3 ring notebook paper notes trying to explain ourselves and i remember it ended with her not wanting to be my friend anymore and me running out of the classroom sobbing and so i got a drink of water at the drinking fountain to calm down and when i came back in she said something like "you aren't really upset, you just put water on your face to look like you were crying"...i felt so misunderstood which was a common theme through most of my childhood and life...i'm sure i wrote some really mean things to her, too...i know once she had boyfriends i always told them like the worst things i could think of about her because i was jealous...honestly we were such close friends it felt like we "broke up" a few times! or maybe it is because i never had boyfriends...i was quick to become the confidant or adviser to the boys...the perpetual "friend" instead of "girlfriend"...

i also have a very vivid memory of the "in" colors for the couple years i was in junior high...anything florescent! i'll have to dig up some photos of these...and "feathered" hair...this was NOT an attractive style on me...remember i was already awkward being so tall and not growing into my big size but a late bloomer...no period until high school...no first kiss...no boyfriend...i think this year was more marked by what DIDN'T happen...i'll be curious to read the other posts!

i also remember the "cool" or "in" crowd definitely became a lot more pronounced this year...cara and i were kind of off on our own though there were lots of guys interested in her...

school became challenging for the first time for me...i always enjoyed learning and still do but i remember having to work at it for the first time this year...i had a wonderful english teacher, ms. taber who taught me a LOT about grammar (sorry you can't tell that in my posts!)...

here is a family photo from that time...those horrible collars make my sister and i look like quakers or pilgrims or something but you can see we both had the feathered hair...

i've never been good with style...currently i'm fairly ecclectic and "hippy" in throwing together comfortable and colorful clothes but back in the day the way you dressed and how you did your hair and make-up really mattered...so i definitely failed at all of those. i remember cara was good at both and would give me advice and/or do my make-up...i suppose i eventually rebelled or found my own style by NOT wearing make-up...or more likely because my mom would say things like "you would look so much prettier if you wore a little make-up"...sure way to get a teen to NOT wear make-up...

i only had a couple minutes to write something so i'll try to edit this post and write more over the weekend...finally wrote 6th grade if you are interested...i really want to go back and read all yours...just haven't found the time...i did start keeping a really regular journal in 7th grade so it would be interesting to put some of the things i wrote about in here...now to find it....

i'm recording my childhood one year every friday through MPT "mommy's piggytales"...thanks for joining me!

MPT #9 6th grade: loss, guilt and training bras

in sixth grade i had ms. fund as my teacher...things were definitely looking up from 5th grade though i notice the polo shirt which probably had a matching pair of baby blue pants with a pink horsie...oh how to avoid those trendy "cool" items with my own child who is already telling me what the kids like and don't like...speaking of baby blue...it was 1983 and 1984 and baby blue was THE color for eye shadow and eyeliner and even mascara...i remember experimenting with this using those magic crystals that grow...my best friend cara and i took them from our class and put them on our eyes in the bathroom...i remember sharing a lot of secrets in those bathrooms, whispering, passing notes trying to figure a lot out during these pre-teen years...i was still very awkward...most of elementary school i remember being too big for my self-confidence...i was one of the tallest girls (or children for that matter) in my grade but quite insecure so i walked in a clumsy way and tripped over my long limbs so-to-speak...i was also a very "late bloomer" wearing training bras when i had nothing to train...

i could check with my mom to get the specific dates/years correct but i'll go by memory about my her parents...i believe my grandma had a heart attack and was in the hospital and then her husband called my mom up in the middle of the night and said he couldn't breathe so my mom said to sit up and she would be right there...she found him dead (i was too young to understand all these details at the time)...that was maybe june of 1983 the end of 5th grade and then they didn't want to tell my grandma he had died because they thought with her heart attack she might not survive the news...i don't remember who told her or how but sure enough she died the following may...here is a photo of them with me and my mom...
i'm not sure if i already mentioned how my mom's mom had more or less resigned herself to never marrying when she literally bumped into my mom's dad going around a corner in the hospital where she worked....he fell in love at first sight and pursued her despite her bitterness and pride and brushing him off for some time and my mom thinks she was a mistake since her mom had her at age 40 or so which was unheard of old at the time...so needless to say they were both born like 1901 or something so they were 73 when i was born and 84 or so when they died...i felt like i never got to know either of them in part because they were both private people who didn't share much of themselves but possibly also the fact that we were really different from one another and didn't understand one another and i was young and hyper and too much for them to handle at their age. anyway, i felt like i really let me grandma down and i remember the day she was buried i wrote her a long letter that i poured out my guilt and sadness over not being a better grandchild...details i still remember like how i wished i'd learned how to sew from her and appreciated the sewing kit she gave me (that lay unused and unopened in my closet)...i tucked this note into one of the flower bouquets on top of her grave and somehow idealized when God came it would still be there and she would read it. i chuckle reading this now but i spent a LONG time feeling so guilty and ashamed and didn't know who to share this with or what to do with these unresolved feelings. i'm sure my parents had no idea. i resolve to encourage my children to share how they feel with me but i'm sure this could happen to them, too. anyway, it is interesting because after my dad died 4 years ago i had similar guilt feelings...why didn't i hug him that last day, conversations i wish i'd had, etc. even though i always tried to live without regrets with him knowing he had a heart condition and could die anytime...this theme continues with other people who have died in my life and i wonder where all the guilt came from? i know one other contributor in group 3 wrote about this if i can find the post maybe we can brainstorm on it more...

so on to lighter brighter memories...i remember being in the school parade...the first purple clown is our friend sarah that we babysat after school...next is my sister and the girl looking the other way with the green around her neck is my dear friend cara...i have the white face and too big smile next to her...

i went over to cara's house a lot and she came over to mine...some specific memories i have through elementary include going up and down the laundry shoot from our 2nd floor to the basement laundry room...climbing through the garbage shoot (my parents had a hole cut in a cupboard so that the large garbage can could fit in the back and you could take the garbage out from outside...nice IDEA but super disgusting dirty inside...i think i was forced to do this when we locked ourselves out one day)...i think i already wrote about riding down the hill leading to our house in a little red wagon using the handle to steer, we also were active in gymnastics and swimming every year and still taking piano lessons without practicing or enjoying it...funny, i LOVED gymnastics even though i was way too tall for the sport and not that good at it...later in acro-sports or whatever it became called they wanted me to be a base instead of climbing up on top and that is about when it was no longer fun and i quit...

here is my dear dog snowflake (i named him) on our front porch...he looked like benji only white...i just learned recently this may be a breed of some sort but as a child i always thought he was a mixed mutt from the pound...
i'm losing steam on this post...saying goodbye to elementary and wishing i had more memories or that i had shared more or that i had done things differently or not been so insecure or appreciated my youth...my dad was always very upbeat, optimistic and seeing the glass half full or the donut instead of the hole or however the saying goes so he did help me appreciate much...i guess i'm thinking about loss and guilt and how those feelings spill over into today and feeling extra sad without my dad right now...this last photo reminds me a lot of him because he loved to walk...i want to say he walked every day (when he wasn't swimming or doing some other exercise that was low impact but moving as quickly as he could with his arthritis and stiff neck from some childhood illness)...i often walked with him and was proud i could walk faster than him from an early age...in part because i had such long legs...anyway, we would take a dirt road up behind our house to the "water tower" with our dog snowflake...here is photo of part of that walk...
life is a journey so i know i have a lifetime of opportunities to appreciate all the little things and make more memories...thank you for sharing these records of my childhood with me. i'm going to try and read all 21 MPT 6th grade posts in the next 24 hours...

i'm recording my childhood through MPT mommy's piggytales writing one year at a time every friday...this friday i'll write about 7th grade...