So long, Kindergarten!

Stage fright. It comes in many forms. Apparently for Chipmunk it expresses itself as "anger."



Chipmunk was a bit upset over having to perform in front of parents with his classmates. Just a bit. Can you tell?

As long as the performance was going, Chipmunk had this glower going. Once the performance was over, however, the glower melted away and a smile lit his face.



Congrats, buddy!

Meal Planning Misery

In college, I had a monthly budget. I used it to pay rent, pay utilities, buy food and anything else I chose to pay for that month. I thought I was pretty good at keeping within my budget, especially when it came to buying food. I cooked and bought food that was at lower cost and I managed to have enough for going out on weekends with friends.

So I've been driving myself nuts as I've been meal planning and writing up grocery lists each week trying to figure out how to keep the costs down…

It dawned upon me that when I was in college, I didn't worry too much about my health…so dinners of cereal? Definitely. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all the time? Yup, did that. Skip a meal in order to study? Yup, did that, too. Buy 10 packets of ramen for a $1? Isn't that a staple of young adulthood?

Enter kids. Enter the mom complex. It's the battle between the mom-that-I-think-I'm-supposed-to-be and the-mom-that-I-am-in-order-to-make-it-to-the-next-day.

I would love to be the all-organic mom who bakes cookies for the kids upon their return from school, or whose house is uncluttered and free of dust, but in reality anything I bake becomes charcoal and I'm staring at the piles of stuff on the floor hoping they'll "poof" themselves into their proper places.

So my meal planning misery is thus: I write down my plans every week into my online calendar, I make the lists for grocery shopping onto my online lists, but how often do I really follow it? How often have I just given up and called Matt and asked, "Could you pick something up on the way home?"

Today I planned to make ribs. I didn't have to run to the store to buy anything because the meat is in my freezer. The problem being...the meat is in my freezer. It's still in my freezer. It's hard as a rock.

This is my problem with meal planning…I can't plan for things like defrosting meat. Or side dishes. I just realized that we can't just eat ribs, can we? Does this mean I need to put a salad together? I don't have anything for a salad. Plus, the kids have to be somewhere at 6:30 pm, so I don't have time for this! What's the point of having a meal plan if I have to plan to defrost, make side dishes, have stuff for side dishes, and fit it all in before leaving for something else?

Okay. Meal planning rant over. Mac n' cheese it is. Thank God for mac n' cheese.

Three Hours

…or how I spent my afternoon with my kindergartner.

Three hours. Three hours of listening to my son's ramblings about Pokemon. Three hours of me, trying to show my interest, nodding, and working hard to timely place those "uh-huh"s into the conversation. Three hours of being asked about my opinions on the effectiveness of each Pokemon and how they would do in battle with other Pokemon. Three hours of being asked quiz questions that were made up on the fly asking obscure facts about Pokemon. Three hours of musings and thoughts about how Pokemon do their business (bathroom business) while stuck in a Poke-ball. Three hours attempting to feed my kindergartner lunch and getting him to finish his homework amidst conversations analyzing the pros and cons of Pokemon trainers or guessing where each Pokemon resides.

I'm a bit Poke'd out.

Things I haven't written about...

It's been rather quiet here on the blog front. Mostly because writing posts require my actual thought and attention, and as I don't like writing things just to fill space, many bloggable moments get passed over. So for those four of you who still like to read up what's going on with us, here's a few things that I haven't written about…



Our kids are part nerd (guess from which part!), so since the Star Wars exhibit was going on, we visited the Tech Museum in San Jose.

Chipmunk has a fascination with learning how to build things with movable parts, so he was overjoyed at the chance to program robots.





All in all, a neat and highly interactive museum.

I went on a women's retreat with our church and was refreshed at the sight of beautiful sights like these:





Of course, I was happy to come home to this:



There was a dance that Bear got to attend with her dad. It was a "Masquerade Ball," hence the mask.



Chipmunk spent his night bowling instead.



There was a "Retro" themed night for MOPs. Yes, I crimped my hair. No, there aren't any pictures. There was however, a disco ball and a mashed potato bar. Yum.



And last but not least, the Awana Grand Prix.





Hopefully this catches you up…at least until March. The rest will just have to come later.