Will this ever end?

I still haven't located the elusive camera.  Which is tragic, because some seriously cute stuff happened.  Oh well.

This shot seems so beautiful to me!

As does this.

 To the reception site!

A family friend, Ann, and Ashley's new mother-in law, Karen

The place ended up looking amazing, thanks to Ashley's planning, and lots of help from friends and family.

Dawn, my mom's longtime dear friend, and her family ran the salsa bar.

I'm trying to make one of the million little decisions we had to make that night.

 

 Alicia, who is awesome, helped us, as did Steve.  She volunteered to run the candy bar, we will be forever grateful!

Okay, I have limited patience for endless picture posting.  I'll do more later!

Where was I?

So I spent a lovely Wesley's birthday with his parents, his brother, Patrick, and his family.  Unfortunately, I can't find my camera.  Lillian did something with it.  Oh dear!

In funny stories--Lillian was swatted on her bottom for some misbehavior this week, then I went further into her room to get something out of the closet, when I got to her door to leave, I realized that she had locked me and Roland into her bedroom.  She was unhappy with the two of us, and lock someone in their room for timeout is an appropriate response in this house.  Luckily, Wesley was home, and I was properly chastised.

Okay, here are some more wedding photos.

Typical Roland behavior

My sweet niece, Jayden (whose saintly mother came to help watch kids while we were in the temple)

My baby sister Melanie, waiting with Ashley's bouquet.

This waiting outside these doors didn't happen when Wesley and I got married there, 13 years ago.  We just came out of the dressing rooms out the front door.  This seems nicer.

Lillian came right up to Ashley after she came out.  I love this picture.

This one is so sweet too.

The group picture.  My in-laws and Staci and my niece are there, which means a lot to me.

The photos of Matt's side of the family are very nice, but I am focusing on ours here.

First family photograph since this:

Yes, we were all that young once.

I kind of like this one.

My mom looked so pretty on the wedding day.   I was very happy for her.    Considering the state of her health, that was an accomplishment.

Okay,  I think I'm done for tonight.  More to follow!

Do you have the pictures yet?

As it relates to Ashley's wedding, the answer is yes!  We have received our pictures from the lovely Katie, and it is exciting to see them.

Jack giving Grandma Hare a kiss.

I thought I'd post some of my favorites from the temple today.

Lillian waits for her aunt.

In his spiffy new tie.

I just love pictures of her on this day.

My Father in law, Wes, and niece, Jayden

Wesley waiting with his buddy.

I love them together.

Wow, Wesley tells me my computer time is up.  To be continued!

How about another Book Fair post?

So this is a photo of me (and Jack), and our Media Specialist (who our school is losing, along with the rest of the district), giving the check to Angela for the Zambia Foundation.  The children raised $594.07 with the contest, and the week of the book fair, patrons donated another $48.17, making this check for $642.87.

We gave it to her at the Parent Teacher Club Meeting, and our PTC president intially wanted to have another parent present it to her.  Now I really didn't mind not being the one to present the money.  The people in the organization already knew I was the one who came up with and executed this plan.  However, while the staff were super helpful and supportive, and our library teacher, or one of the other teachers would have been a great choice to present it, none of the other parents, not even my Book Fair volunteers did anything in this effort.  In the end, I just did it with our librarian.  It was pretty exciting to be able to contribute that much money from the Schirle kids' efforts.

What did you say?

Roland cries because the Ducks are losing the national college football championship

A couple funny things:

When Lillian says 'spider', she always adds 'man'.  It's interesting to have an older brother.

Last night Roland said 'He had a big. . . what is another word?  Owie sounds babyish.'  I gave him the word wound.  I heard him use it this morning, so there's another bit of childhood drifting away.

Lillian finds the mascara

Where do you want this sticker?

In our Family Fun Magazine, an advertisement had a bunch of small stickers.  So we had to put them on her arms.

I love toddlers.  Lillian is saying "I love you, mama" with no prompting.  She is starting to sound like a 3 year old more than a two year old.  It's exciting and sad.  Luckily, I have one on deck.

Where did he come from?

Roland, in many ways, is the boy of my dreams.  Except I never would have thought to dream of a boy so passionate about plants.  He comes alive every spring, planting seeds in our raised beds, requesting plants every week at the Saturday Market.  He has a few adult friends that he really has his own relationship with, and they are plant people.

I really think that he is destined to work with them somehow, whether as a farmer, nurseryman, or scientist.  He is now interested in making a 'purple strawberry'.  So I have had lengthy discussions where I have been explaining genes, DNA, Mendel, and selecting for characteristics (which in turn has led to discussions of  what proteins are, what nuclei are, what a generation is. . .)  It's difficult to explain concepts usually learned in High School Biology to an 8 year old.  But this is the job.

Roland and I discussed gene splicing last night, and he said 'Oh, I need a lab so bad!  I need one right now!'  and I wondered;  Am I raising a super-villian here?  He prayed tonight that he was thankful for learning more about plants and that 'mom used the internet just for me'.

Could I make soup with this shirt?

Saturday,  my friend Alicia and I did some freezer cooking.  Even though I'd broken up with once a month mom, they had a new menu writer who was doing a seasonal, whole foods menu that I thought sounded pretty good.  I didn't take pictures of the process, because I was pretty dirty from food splashes early on, but I did take a picture with my partner later that night.

I don't really like this picture because I'm making some sort of weird face, but I'm trying to record my life, and she is a really important friend to me.
As for the cooking. We'll see how the food turns out.  I was glad to get back to the freezer cooking, but I think I'll go back to using my own, tested recipes, rather than trusting someone else.  I worked so hard trying to figure out if the grocery list was accurate to the recipes, and bought some things that were never seemingly called for in the recipes. I know I'd have felt better if the mistakes (which are inevitable) were my own. 
One thing we have done in the past is having cooking nights rather than cooking weekends, which are more manageable, and interspersed with baking nights, which are just infinitely fun.

Who had the camera?

Where have you been?

So blogger went down one day, and I thought:  Great I'm off the hook!  Actually, I had a little of that problem that I first noticed as a young teen who kept a diary faithfully:
The more you have to write about the less time you have to write.  Conversely, the less you have to write about, the more you write.  Unfortunately, that means I have a large box of my ruminations from an age that I probably had the least to say.  I am sort of afraid even to open it.  I think it's full of ghosts:  self-centeredness, immaturity, and poor decision making.  Unlike Pandora, I don't have the curiosity to open that box.

One thing I have done this last week, is watch Harry Potter 7 with Wesley.  It drew my attention to just how very complicated and intricate the world of HP became.  I pretty much never stopped explaining things to him, as he had only seen all the movies once, but not read the books.  I enjoy Harry and Co. so much, but it's hard to watch the movies, as so much is still missing (despite this last one being ENDLESS) and so many things are not as I pictured.

What's on your mind?

A few thoughts:

On Criticism:  Why do some people feel the need to nitpick other people's volunteer efforts?  I've had someone visit my book fair twice this year (winter and spring) to tell me how to improve things.  Thanks, but no thanks.

On Goals:  My goal is to clean bathrooms on Tuesdays (different days have different chores that I hope will happen).  I swept the bathroom floors in preparation early in the day.  But then life intervened and Jack, who is sick needed a lot of holding.  So nothing else happened.  But I feel like a victor, because I never would have even swept those floors if I hadn't had that more lofty goal.  Yes, I'm not a great housekeeper.

On Pets:  If I didn't give birth to you, I do not want to interrupt a desperately needed 15 minute nap to let you out to the garage.  I think pets can be a great thing, but to me, it's kind of a child that needs stuff, but you don't love them the way you love your real children

Do you have any questions for our author?

Suzanne at our stand, just having signed Molly's book, Smells Like Dog

  

Our author for the year, Suzanne Selfors, arrived Friday and it was fantastic.  She signed (and personalized) the hundreds of books that the children bought.  Her presentations were fabulous.

She then ate lunch with our student reviewers (children who had reviewed advance copies of our book fair books).  She answered questions (no she hasn't met Dave Kinney or Rick Riordan, but she'd like to), and chatted so wonderfully with the kids.

Molly was to shy to talk to her, but she is really enjoying her signed copy of this author's book.  If it weren't for the librarian situation, I would say this is the best book fair ever!  Val Brown, a teacher I have known my whole life asked me if I felt pretty proud of myself.  I had to admit that I did.  I made this happen.  I wasn't the only one, but it was me that caused this awesome day to occur.  The Statesman Journal was there, as were my two Scholastic reps, and I even made scones to welcome all the visitors to our school.  I have been recovering all weekend, but I know it was so worth the effort.

Was it a wild ride?

Here is Lillian doing her Mr. Toad impression:

She got those goggles out for her inaugural ride in the little truck.  She drove it a little too, right into the house at full speed, with Molly trying to brake with her foot.

Did you see the paper?

So I am in the paper.  I know you are so impressed.  The above picture is not me, but

B.J. Toewe,  our Salem Public Library Admistrator who I love because a few years ago she asked me if I used to come to the library as a little girl.  She saw me with Molly, and it jiggled a memory in her.  She thanked me for continuing to come to the library.  I thanked her for everything she does.

In other happenings, here are some pictures of our book fair.  I'm going to post some more, I'm pretty proud of this year's fair.

We asked over 20 students to review books for our fair, and my great volunteers made an awesome display table about that.