Stacation Day 2: Panic and Clue Town

Not to toot my own horn, but I thought that Stacation Day 1 went pretty smoothly. The complaints were minimal, we all enjoyed the Aquarium and I ended the day thinking I was pretty much the best mother on the earth. Even better, the kids were super excited about our plan to go to Sky Zone on Tuesday and I was excited about visiting Ballard Designs outlet which is conveniently located next to the Roswell Sky Zone. It was a winning plan for all, which is why I was totally bummed when I looked at the Sky Zone Roswell website and saw that it opened at 4 pm. What? I get that when kids are in school, the pool of likely candidates to play trampoline basketball goes way down, but certainly someone can come up with some kind of trampoline exercise for adults. A quick Google search and...oh, of course:

I chose to picture the German version because I think it's kind of funny that it says, "Die Personal Trainerin," which is probably how many people feel after doing trampoline exercise with Gwyneth Paltrow's personal trainer. I'm a little worried, though, that Tracy's shoulders are all jacked-up from getting injured on the trampoline. Her posture looks a little weird, no? But, the point is that Sky Zone has an untapped revenue stream and my Day 2 stacation plans were ruined.

There is another (inferior) Sky Zone location in Suwanee (not to be confused with Sewanee, Tennessee home of The University of the South, which no southerner ever calls "The University of South," but instead refer to as "Sewanee."), but even that location wasn't open until 4pm. I went to bed feeling defeated and panicked that I didn't have a plan for the following day and I was going to have to break it to three kids who wore their special Sky Zone jumping socks to bed that we couldn't go.

Well, the news delivery went about as well as I had imagined: yelling, rolling on the floor, and cries of, "it's no fair!" After Sky Zone was off the table, no one wanted to do anything, but I was determined to find something for us to do...whether they liked it or not. Bwahahaha!

Stacation Day 1: Georgia Aquarium

Our school system is on a "balanced" schedule, so last week was fall "break." I'm using quotation marks with both because, last week was not much of a break for me and I was left feeling slightly unbalanced. Unfortunately, we were not able to travel for fall break, so I had to travel vicariously through the pictures my friends posted on Instagram and Facebook. I'll admit to having more than a twinge of jealousy when I scrolled through pictures of various beaches, Alaska, Australia, and France.

I knew that if I didn't plan something for us to do each day, we'd be in danger of spending the whole week holed up at home with the Boy playing Minecraft, the Baby watching "Bubble Guppies," and the Girl wanting me to work on craft projects with her. Would this have been okay? Oh, probably, but I didn't want them to go back to school and hear all about their friends' fun vacations and have nothing to offer other than, "I made a diamond pick axe in survival mode." We didn't really leave metro Atlanta for any of the activities. Of course, thanks to suburban sprawl, our trip to Kennesaw, Georgia should qualify as a day-trip. But sadly, Kennesaw, Georgia hardly compares with the Palace of Versailles.

Kennesaw:

Let them have guns.

Palace of Versailles:

Let them eat cake.

Kennesaw meets Palace of Versailles:

Because what six year old girl doesn't want a birthday
cake decorated with weapons?

I hope that this is for a paintball party.

Hello Kitty is not a Cat and Other Deceptions

Years from now, I'll tell my children that I remember exactly where I was when I heard the startling news that Hello Kitty is not really a cat. Of course, I'll say I was reading on a G-rated website and not Dlisted, which is my new favorite thing in the entire world, other than Mom's new dog, Hello Puppy.

This picture is your reward for reading this long, boring post.

But, now that I know that Hello Kitty is not a cat, I'm wondering about Hello Puppy. Maybe he's not a dog at all, but really a perpetual 3rd grader named Puppy White who lives in a London suburb with his parents, George and Mary. I'm sure that Mom is just imagining him peeing on the rugs and chewing the furniture legs because he's really in London asking his mate for proper DI-rections to the loo and noshing on some black pudding.

In all seriousness, there is a brilliant lesson in the Hello Kitty story, which is that things are not always as they seem. For example, when I wear yoga pants and flip-flops you might think that I'd just practiced Bikram yoga and executed a flawless crow pose. The truth is likely that I've just been to physical therapy where I had needles inserted into my back. (Also, I could never do Bikram yoga after reading this article. This wasn't a big sacrifice as I never considered doing Bikram yoga prior to reading the article. Just like it's easy for me to not go to Hobby Lobby because Michaels is closer and I already know where to find everything.)

Father's Day - The YETI Cooler

Okay, so it's a little late to be posting about Father's Day, but I don't seem to be able to do anything on time these days. I think I need this:

You know if you search "Sorry I'm Late shirts" in Google images you get images of people who have taken the time to style their Sorry I'm Late shirts, i.e.:

I am late because I left my shoes in a wooded area and couldn't find them.

When you take the time to style your Sorry I'm Late shirt and make an entire Sorry I'm Late ensemble (and then take a picture), it probably explains why you are late.

The creator of this ensemble had another issue:

in that she had to time travel back to 1995 to create her outfit. I mean, I can't tell the scale of that backpack, but I'm pretty sure it's one of those tiny backpacks that was all the rage in the mid 90's. Felicity and Baby Spice wore them and they were perfectly balanced by four inch-high platform sandals. I recently saw a picture of Miley Cyrus toting a tiny backpack, which means she's ruined both teddy bears and tiny backpacks forever. 

Obviously, you all can tell that I'm late with my Father's Day post because I got "busy" Googling, "Sorry I'm Late shirts" and looking up pictures of 1990's celebrities wearing tiny backpacks. 

Throw the Tiger in the Whirlpool: Why I love our á la Carte Chore Board

I have not been very good about giving the children an allowance for doing daily chores. I started a few times but got tired of nagging them to do the chores, and instead of leaving their chores un-done so they could bear witness to their slovenly ways, I'd succumb to my mild OCD and make their beds and clean up their messes. Sometimes, I would pay them even though they hadn't actually completed the chores which taught them nothing about getting paid for working, but instead primed them for a future as county road crew workers. We've always ended up back in the same place, scrapping the allowance and me doing everything.

Recently, I took a different approach, one that gave the kids the option of earning money on a per-chore basis. I think that when I've finished telling you all about the how this system has worked, you'll agree that it's vastly superior than just giving a straight allowance. I made a chore board where I post different chores that I would like the children to perform and assign each chore a monetary value. So, making your bed gets you .25 and taking out the garbage is .75. Value is determined by frequency, grossness, and duration of a given chore. This valuation system is no different from society where long-haul commercial fisherman earn more than Justin Beiber. Oh wait, no. Clearly my value system needs some tweaking to put it in line with American society. Five cents for scrubbing the toilet and ten million dollars for making up racist song lyrics. Better now. Anyway, here are some (as yet unperformed) tasks on our chore board:

This way the kids are earning money only for the work they've actually done (novel concept, I know). I wish I'd thought of this years ago because I would be a freaking millionaire.

Happy Campers

Remember back when camps were basically all the same? The camp had some name that evoked nature; Camp Porcupine Mountain, Camp Lake Vulture, Camp Meadow Chrysanthemum;  or it had some faux-Indian name that the owners had to change in the 1990's (yes, summer camps are more progressive than the NFL). And the activities at these camps were all basically the same: swimming, weaving lanyards, singing campfire songs, eating s'mores, drinking bug juice, and trying to eavesdrop on the counselor's conversations.

Remember this classic summer camp movie?
"Little Darlings," starred Tatum O'Neal (left, front row) and Kristy McNichol
(right, front row). Believe it or not, that's Cynthia Nixon (Miranda from SITC)
next to Kristy. Another bit of trivia: Matt Dillon played Kristy's love interest.
I was waaaay too young to understand the plot when I watched
 this on video at a friend's birthday party. 

Now there are all of these camps where children can explore their most arcane and specialized interests. When I was making our camp plans for the summer, I was floored by all the options. Here are a few camps that didn't quite make the cut for us:

1. Junior Exterminator Camp - Junior Exterminator camp provide the opportunity for kids to learn about animals in their natural habitats! Enjoy up-close animal encounters with roof rats, squirrels, possums, mice, and raccoons! New for 2014: Campers will love exploring our simulated attics, basements, chimneys, and crawl spaces and hunting for their favorite rodents. Camp mascot Billy the Bat will be giving out our fun, "I literally killed at Junior Exterminator Camp" shirts to the campers \with the most captures. Please make sure your camper is up to date on all of his or her vaccinations and sign up for Junior Exterminator Camp today!

Appreciation Fatigue

Last week was "National Teacher Appreciation Week," which is conveniently followed by "National Parents of School-Aged Children Nervous Breakdown Fortnight." This is a festive time during which copious amounts of alcohol are consumed, prescriptions for sedatives are renewed, and emergency rooms log a marked increase in the number of people coming in with hot glue gun burns. The end of school is nigh for many of us and this means that everything between now and June 1st will be a blur of recitals, field days, tournaments, end of year celebrations, moving up ceremonies, volunteer luncheons, teacher gifts, assistant teacher gifts, coach gifts, and assistant to the coach gifts (for reals - I'm collecting for this one, care to donate?). It's just all.so.much. I certainly appreciate all the teachers and coaches who have taught my children this year, but I feel like I would appreciate them even more if the appreciation week was in, say March. Further, I would appreciate the ceremonies and performances and tournaments more if they weren't all crammed into a two week period. It's like tragedy fatigue when one disaster happens on the heels of another disaster, people get overwhelmed and are less likely to donate to victims of the subsequent tragedy. I feel like I have appreciation fatigue, so that by the time that last school-related event on the calendar (the Boy's end of the year ice cream party) rolls around, his class will probably receive whatever I already have on hand for ice cream toppings. (Why yes, dried basil flakes and pepper are delicious on vanilla ice cream. And they're certified peanut and gluten free.) Luckily, the Boy is indifferent about my presence at his events. Sometimes he outright requests that I don't come. Maybe it's in how I ask him:

Me: Do you want me to come to the second grade lunch?
Boy: I don't care.
Me: What if I promise to sit next to you and hold your hand?
Boy: Mom, stop!
Me: I'll play with your hair and sing to you?
Boy: No! Please DO NOT come.
Me: Are you sure?
Boy: Yes.

It's all in the ask.