Chocolate and Conversation: August 2009

School starts

Is there a blogging etiquette? What I can say or not say on the blog?

I watched my 11 year old daughter get on the bus to middle school today. She looked scared and small. Who would've thought little girls or boys would grow up, in only 7 years, she will be off to college. I feel as if I am losing her already.

I want to drive over and spy on her today, just to make sure she has someone to talk to during lunch. Is she finding the bathroom? Do the kids in older grades push her around? Is she getting lost in a big school? Does she miss home....

She had a hard time opening her lockers during school open house, I wonder if she is able to open hers today...

Life feels different today. My husband just barely started his second year in med school... I checked, there are 17 weeks in this semester. Only 17 weeks, I can do 17 weeks. I've done it this many years and I can push it through again... today I can...

Andrew studies while the kids are growing up. I feel old.

ps: I have only one son, i need another for him to play with, he needs to come fully assembled, 6-8 year old, know where to get one?

MI.SER.ABLE. Fun!!

My friend Shandra invited our family to go crabbing with them this last week. I jumped at the opportunity. After making sure I really was serious, She then painstakingly describe in detail how it will be the most miserable experience of my life!! In fact, it's so miserable, she said, no other families who have been invited previously ever want to go back again. And she kept rambling on with such talk every time we see each other... I kept asking her, why do you keep saying that..."Because" she said, "It is SO miserable!"

A couple of days before our departure, we got all the food needed to feed 4 adults and 8 kids. NO problem, we are fast and we make good decisions together.

We didn't plan on leaving until Friday late afternoon. Just before I left the house, I found out there was a hurricane warning, not exactly going towards where we were headed, but my feeling is that we might be somewhat affected by it. Whatever, let's go!Then we headed to their house to go together. Jason, her husband had to first stop at a sporting store to renew his fishing licence. The wives were waiting inside the cars with whining kids saying, aren't we going crabbing, why are we stopping right here. Meanwhile, Shandra remembered she forgot to bring any spatula to cook with...we wonder what we have laying around the car that we could use..."how about using the CDs?" I half-seriously suggested. And Shan, being a good sport, found two Cds that she doesn't want and began practicing how to cook the eggs with them. Just as we were solving our little domestic issues, my husband who went inside the store with Jason, came running out and told me he needed to go to Target to buy some strings for crabbing, because it was too expensive at the sporting store. And Jason also wanted a bigger pot to cook the crabs in. "What?" roared Shandra, "Does he knows how expensive a stock pot is? We might as well buy crabs at a restaurant, it would have been cheaper!!"

We decided it's best for us girls to go to the store since we are good at speed shopping. And the guys will just drive the cars to pick us up. Luckily, Target is only next door, well, sort of.

We spend a little longer time then anticipated in the store,they had rearranged things around since the last time either of us has been there. By the time we spend a fortune, the sky was considerably darker. I grabbed a pack of bubble gum for the kids at the check out, feeling sorry that they had to wait so long in the car. I know you wondered why bubble gum was important to mention, well it is, because it became the cause of a traffic jam. Just read on.

Unwrapping the bubble gums, I tossed the gums Shandra needed for her crew inside the brand new stock pot she was carrying and both jumped into our vans. We drove on with great speed. Just before getting on the freeway, right on the ramp, Shandra stepped out of the car and went to open her truck, fishing something down on the truck floor, I saw her picked up what looks to me like a piece of bubble gum and handed to her daughter.

Of course, I understand why Shandra did what she did, bubble gums are big deal, especially to a kid who had to sit in the car forever waiting for everyone to finish shopping.

After giving her daughter the bubble gum, Shandra then proceed to step into the van, when someone somewhere behind me honked the horn. Shandra, instead of having a sorry look on her face, yelled towards the honker, "I am leaving!"

Then honked

Shandra: " I am leaving!"

Then honked

Shandra: "I am Leaving!"

I think the other driver got it. Because I didn't' hear any more honking.

Ok, so we made pretty good speed on the road, stop to eat at Taco Bell and got to camp at about what? 10pm? Don't quite remember.

We set up tent, the kids were excited, we got the bug sprays out, we had the cars running so we could use the headlight to see...or maybe the Fishers thought they had the car on? The headlights on the Fishers car looks dimer and dimer by the minute.

Fianlly our light died, Jason had to jump our car, while we were still trying to set up tent. And what's camping without s'mores at 12 o'clock at night! We had s'mores really late, didn't brush any of our children's teeth and we went to bed.

Inside the Fishers' tent, the kids were being quiet. Inside the Harris' tent, kids were giggly, talking and being excited...and still being excited...

Oh, almost forgot to mention, Shandra and I took the girls on a peeing hike while the boys were putting up our tent, Shandra spotted a place that looks secluded and private, and started to demonstrated to the girls how to properly pee on the ground without wetting the pants. After giving the lesson and getting much admiration from the girls, one by one, they all decide to give it a try. While they were still squatting down, sticking you know what out in the open, doing their thing and luckily, I was hesitant about not wanting to do it so publicly...we heard voices coming...we saw a group of people walking up towards us...and then we realized that what looks like a private backyard is actually the major and ONLY road to the bay!

What kind of crazy psychos would take a walk to the bay at pitch dark! You can't see a darn thing on the water!

We got busted by stangers and what else could we do but cracked up laughing, I laughed so hard, and being the only one left with a full bladder, I think I almost peed my pants! Oh, who cares, so much has happened already on the trip and we only just barely got here!

The next morning, the mosquitoes ate the kids before the kids had their breakfast. We had bagals without jam, because Shandra forgot the spatula and the jam and the grapes and the soap. And she said: "I come every year and I forget to bring things every year!!"

I have a feeling she is going to keep the tradition alive! Go Shan!!

(Chaoyi brought soap and grapes and everything else Chaoyi was supposed to bring!!)

After breakfast, it was crabbing time, so that's what we did. Setting up the chicken necks on the stings and we sat and waited for the crabs to "tuck" on them.

All I can say is WHAT FUN!! What a blast! We had such a harvest such as can only happen to the righteous as described in the scriptures!! We caught about 35 crabs and had them for lunch.

We were so thrilled and decided to crab some more for dinner as well.

While crabbing for our dinner, the weather started to turn, the sea looked murky, the sky was heavy, and the rain came. At first it was ok, but it didn't let up. Then the wind started to pick up and the younger kids were shivering. Shandra had enough too, so she took the kids back to camp. So all that were left were me, my husband, my two oldest girls, and Shandra's oldest daughter, and Shandra's husband came join back with us after making sure everyone was settled at camp.

The next hour or 40 mins was just completely amazingly fun and cold and windy and cold and shivering and rain pouring on our bodies and faces and I couldn't see a thing and when I talked, it felt like my mouth was pouring out water and shivering some more and more netting up crabs and as foretold, a complete MI.SER.ABLE. Fun!!! We even netted a greedy turtle!

What chaotic fun!! We finally decided it's best to call it good 20 minutes into crabbing in the thunderstorm.

Got back to camp, found out the tent was leaking, some of our bedding got wet. At first, the men couldn't start a fire because it was still pouring!! I sat shivering outside of Shandra's tent where there is a canopy and a screen to protect me from getting more rained on. But I couldn't go inside her tent because I had no dry clothes on.

The boys worked hard to keep the fire alive and at last, we were able to have dinner! They even came up with the clever plan of eating underneath a gazebo thing on the playground, yes, we had a playground right next to our tents!! We feasted on crabs while the mosquitoes feasted on us! Awesome!!

That night, I went to bed with a wet T shirt on, and my pants were completely wet. And got up the next morning with a stiff neck but otherwise feeling happy!! It was Sunday morning, while packing up and taking down the tent, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was singing inside my car and the beautiful music filled the woods. It was happiness!

Thanks, Harris Family, for such great fun! Good food and good company!

I think I am going to have crabbing withdrawals by December, too, just like your kids. Both of my girls proclaimed to me today, "Crabbing is way funner than Disney World!"

Can you believe that!!

Tis Woe when there is no food in the house

I bought a bake-at-home pie from a local orchard for my eagerly awaiting, pie-deprived children, after removing the cookie sheets I had stored inside the oven, I proceeded to warm it up. I noticed as the oven was warming up, it was venting a little bit of smoke, I didn't give it much thought. Once the oven was ready and as I was putting the pie in, there laying at the bottom of the oven was a pool of pink goo, and long streaks of melted pink plastic was dripping down from the oven rack.

By then all the smoke started getting worse, I have a super sensitive fire alarm, it started to beep and announced in its high pitched voice: "Fire, fire" non stop. I rushed to opened all the windows and grabbed a kitchen chair and a magazine, put the chair right under the alarm and frantically fanned it to hush it.

The kids were smarter under pressure, they brought out a real fan and started blowing towards the alarm. By then the house smelled like burned plastic, the air started to fill with smoke, amidst all this, I still thought maybe it was ok to still bake the pie!! After some deliberation, I decided to use the self clean feature to clean the oven first.
Proud with how clever I was, I knew we would have a pie in no time. A few minutes into putting the oven in the self clean mode, it then really looked like my house was on fire, with thick smoke coming out of the vent. It felt like a jungle in my home, it was sticky, hot and foggy, it would have been the full rain forest experience if we only waited for the sprinkler to turn on.

I thought maybe it would get better in a little while, and it didn't. The house was so hot, I felt I was I was being roasted alive. To add to that, now the fire alarm not only says: " Fire, fire.", it also says "carbon monoxide, carbon monoxide"...

Needless to say, I turned the oven off and now all of my children were doing their best with their little arms fanning to quiet the alarm!! All this happened while my husband was still away for the summer, the pie was my treat to my fatherless children. So now they were whining as they realized there will be no pie that day or any time soon.

The next morning as I was ready to give the kids some milk for breakfast, it was not in the fridge. Puzzled, knowing I had milk just yesterday, I couldn't figure out where it went. Thinking I must have just missed it somewhere in the fridge and will go back to dig some more, I opened the pantry to get them some cereal... There it was, right in front of me, the milk sitting right there on the pantry shelf!

So we had no pie and no cereal! So sad.

The wisdom of Pooh

If you read my last blog, you will know my husband is now offically out of the country for two weeks. I dropped him off at the metro station for him to catch a train to the airport and drove the rest of the family to a ward party. We had a blast, all without him!

I've been without a husband for as long as I've been married to him, it seems - It will be 13 years by tomorrow! When I was young and didn't know better, I thought once I reach a certain age and I will have this. And when I reach that age, I will have that. It seemed I measure my success to what I can obtain in life and on a fantasy marriage that does not exist and I put an age limit as to when I should have all of my wants. I am not saying my marriage is bad, it's actually as solid as ever. I am just saying that it's natural for our hearts to have those wanting,of things better,of a kind of life that we wanted since young girls. If you asked me 10 years ago how I pictured my life would be and compared to what my life is now, they can't be more different. But what's interesting is that I actually do like my life. Why shouldn't I, I am in it, might as well love it!! I have to admit it is a bit sacry that I am 36 and I am just figuring out that even long after we stop throwing temper tantrams, we still don't get what we want most of the time. The trick is to find happiness no matter where we are in life.

In one of the Winnie the Pooh book, Christopher Robin says this to his dear friend, Pooh: " If there's ever a tomorrow when we're not together, there is something you must remember: You are braver then you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." How sweet and reassuring are these words. Sometimes I find myself thinking this phrase to myself when I am a little down. It helps me to focus on my strength and my blessings, and I thank God for friends who love me despite of my flaws, like Christopher Robin is to Pooh. I think secertly we all wish we have a little bit of Pooh in us that can be completely content with life just with a jar of honey!