Mish Mash

It's been a while since I've let you all know about the craziness that is my life this summer. So now I'll let you know. Rest assured the boring writing parts will be interspersed with the cute picture parts. Here's one to get you started:
Better days: I want you all to know that my bad day did not continue past the car smashing, sandwich burning, sick child issues. I did miss the fancy French restaurant, but I got to watch about four kid movies instead. Good times. Lizzie's fever spiked in the early evening, so I was glad I stayed home. The next day, however, when I was grocery shopping, I heard the thunder and rain start outside and KNEW (you know, in the way I know things) that we were going to lose power and I needed to speed shop. As luck would have it (and I was much luckier on that day) I managed to get out of the check out line JUST as the power went out. The poor guy in line behind me might still be there for all I know. However, the storm was so bad that I had to stand in the vestibule for a good 15 minutes until it was safe for me to dash to my car, pushing a metal cart, holding a metal cane, running through an inch of rushing water under my feet. I knew my luck had changed for the better when I didn't die in the parking lot.

Time for a cute picture. This is Hannah and Lizzie on the new train ride at the Cape May County Zoo. Aunt Linda and Grandma Connie (who took this picture) took the girls to the zoo so Rob and I could have lunch together, when we were on vacation at the shore:
O Pioneer: I discovered this past Sunday that I would make a lousy pioneer woman. While that might not come as a surprise to anyone who knows of my pathological love of air conditioning, it turns out that I am also a deep lover of electricity, even the electricity in my oven, which I otherwise hate because it's not a gas oven.

This past Sunday we lost our power for more than 12 hours. I did my best to channel my inner Laura Ingalls Wilder and pretty much only came up with the plan that Pa should get out his fiddle and keep us occupied until the storm cleared and we could go back to picking vegetables from the garden. We don't have either a fiddle OR a garden, so instead I went to get a massage. Trust me, if Laura could have wangled a massage back there in the Little House, she'd have done the exact same thing.

Perhaps I was feeling a little guilty about leaving my powerless family, but when I returned I let Hannah and Lizzie watch Barbie Mariposa on the last of my laptop battery, effectively assuring that I would not be able to pass the dark, silence of the late evening playing solitaire or laptop pinball.

When the power finally came back on at midnight or so, I ended up sleeping in the nook because Lizzie (who had thought earlier that it was too dark to sleep in her own bed and wanted to sleep in my room, even though I wasn't there and it seemed just as dark to me) had taken over the entire bed and refused to move.

The nook (also our guest room) needs a clock. I know this now because I depended on my extremely (usually) dependable husband to wake me up at 7:45 when he left for work, to give me enough time to get the girls ready for their dental check-up. However, on THIS morning, because the power outage had interfered with his laundry cleaning he left for work at 8:10, causing me to have to rush everyone, including me, from sound sleep to the dentist chair in less than 20 minutes. We were late and Hannah was dressed like a homeless person (paisley pants that are way too short for her and a tie-dyed tee shirt) but we got there at 8:40 giving the most wonderful impression, I'm sure.

So now here's a picture. I didn't take this one either as I didn't go to the 4H Fair. Instead I was interviewing the lead singers from Maroon 5 and Counting Crows (they're bands, Aunt Brenda!) while everyone else was sweltering in the animal-scented heat that is always the 4H Fair. I love my job. Oh, and Rob, I cropped out the high white athletic socks you were wearing at the Fair. You're welcome:

A post to sink your teeth into: Once we were at the dentist things started to settle down. Hannah was in the chair getting her teeth cleaned about 10 minutes later. She has 20 teeth. And 27 cavities. :( She did great with the x-rays though (which is why we went to a children's dentist instead of our family dentist) and thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience (because she didn't have to pay for it.) Then Lizzie refused to wear the funky sunglasses they give to the kids to protect their eyes from flying tarter so we had to spend a good five minutes trying to talk her into it until I finally came up with the brilliant idea to wrap Dubba (her blanket) around her eyes. It worked for the cleaning, however the dentist told me that in 30 years he'd never seen anything like it. If nothing else, we Rasmussens are trend setters. When we got home and I asked Lizzie why she was so afraid to wear the sunglasses she said, "I wasn't afraid Mommy, they were just REALLY UGLY."

Lizzie has about 27 cavities, too, but hers weren't as deep as Hannah's. To be honest, the dentist was giving me a little attitude about the bad oral hygiene of my children, to which I simply replied (no not really, but I thought it!) ca ching, ca ching, ca ching. Seriously I'd think the dentist would be thrilled that his wife can now purchase that mink coat thanks to the bad brushing habits of my 5 year olds. Hannah had her first appointment for work on Wednesday and she loved every minute of it. They give the kids nitrous oxide to relax them, but apparently there is no such provision for the parent who has to sit there holding the other 5 year old on her lap while she complains that "Hannah looks like a big pig!"

I have dentist issues myself. And when I go to the dentist I pretend that I'm somewhere else (usually giving an interview to Oprah, if you must know) and hope that the time goes by quickly. Here, though, I had to pay attention to what was happening in case Hannah got scared. Which of course she didn't because she is the tough cookie of the bunch of us. She didn't even mind that when you are laying in the dentist chair, the wall hanging directly in your line of vision is a shadow box with a HUGE HAIRY TARANTULA in it. Tina, I know you're reading this and you'd have needed a valium to complete any dental work at all. As it was, I don't even mind spiders, but I found the thing sort of frightening. Especially when Hannah kept pointing it out. Over and over again.

Okay, now that you've put up with my stories, I'll give you TWO pictures of the girls. They are pictures taken during one of our photographer sessions (where I play the photographer and they play models):

One of those days

One of those days ... we've all had them. You know, the kind of day when you put salt in your coffee instead of sugar, or you drip jelly down your last clean shirt?

Well, today I am having one of those days. And, since I rarely have them, I'm having about 47 all in one.

So far today:

I smashed not one but TWO of our cars in the driveway. I did this because I was being nice and going out to get Rob's suit from the dry cleaners and ice cream for Shelby who was babysitting tonight when we were going to Le Bec Fin, a fancy French restaurant in Philadelphia where Hannah and Lizzie thought we were going to eat snakes (no way) or snails (possibly). Rob parked his car in a different place in the driveway which I saw before I got in my car, but then promptly forgot until I heard the crunch of metal (or plastic or whatever his car is made from). His car got the worst of it, but my bumper got a bit crinkled too. I was going, MAYBE 5 miles per hour, which shows you what American cars are made of.

THEN, I got to the dry cleaners and they told me they don't take credit cards for sales under $20. I've been getting things cleaned there for many years and this is the first I've heard of it. So I had to dig through my pocketbook to find my checkbook while a line formed behind me.

THEN, I'm on my way home from Kolb's dairy (where the organic 2 percent milk is still only $3.73 a gallon if you are reading this and live nearby) and I take a wrong turn on Ellis Woods Road. Granted, I was coming home a new way, but still, I DO know my way around here (except obviously NOT today).

THEN, I get home and Lizzie comes up from the basement and tells me that she has a headache which never bodes well for her, so I take her temperature and it's 101 degrees. Then Rob told me she'd been complaining of a sore throat this morning, too.

THEN Hannah asks me to make her a grilled cheese sandwich, which I end up having to do three times because I burned one side while I was searching for the mayonnaise in my refrigerator and the second side (which I'd switched over and just added another piece of bread to) when I was rejoicing FINDING the mayo, which, it turned out, was right there on the bottom shelf in front of the milk.

THEN I have to call my mother in law and tell her that because of the feverish child with the sore throat and crankies and the distance between Le Bec Fin and my house (it took my sister 2 hours to get home from Philly on a Thursday night this week!) I just didn't feel comfortable leaving my drama queen home with a babysitter, even if it was the most beloved cousin Shelby.

My mother-in-law gave me the best piece of advice I'd heard in a long time when I told her all the exploits of my day (and it was only noon!) and she said, "Tracy, I wouldn't even go out to the mailbox today!"

So that's why I have TWO blog posts up today. I'm staying put (and waiting for the insurance adjuster to call...)

I hope YOU all are having a better day.

Kiddie Kamera

I found an old digital camera when I was decluttering the nook (my private enclave on the second floor of our house) and I gave it to Hannah and Lizzie to take pictures about their world. Here's what they came up with...I'm sure my art therapist friend and photographer Bethany will have something to say about some of these rather odd photo choices...

Hannah's pictures:

Lizzie and Daddy:

Lizzie and Daddy being silly:A dog that Lizzie made out of scraps of construction paper and staples:This is a picture of a poster that hangs in Rob's office of his favorite car the Cord (if anyone wants to buy him one for Christmas)Your guess is as good as mine on this one. She said she was looking for a picture of the rain, which you can sort of see on the window.

And now for Lizzie's pictures:

Hannah being silly:

The inside of our garbage can (I have no idea why she found this fascinating, but then again, I am not five years old!)Me, brushing my teeth before a meeting:This is a partial picture of my bathing suit, which was drying in the bathroom:This is a picture of the TV, playing a ProActive television commercial:

I have to advocate giving your children a digital camera to take pictures of their world. It's eye-opening (and really, sort of weird.)

Sunsets

I know some people love to take pictures of the sun rising. I am not one of them. Instead, I like to take pictures of sunsets. Before children, I'd take pictures of sunsets everywhere we traveled. I've got great sunsets from Ireland, New Hampshire, Maine ... to name a few. In the last five years I've taken pictures of ZERO sunsets.

So when we were in Cape May, I decided I needed to get sunsent shots. We decided to take the girls to Reed's Beach which is a tiny ticky tacky community about five miles from Rob's Mom's house. It's also known as horseshoe crab beach because thousands of horseshoe crabs beach there each year to lay eggs and then try to make it back into the ocean. Let's just say that not a whole lot of them, do. If the tide hits a horseshoe crab wrong, it gets flipped over onto its back and it can't turn back over, so it bakes in the sun until nature takes its course. Back when I lived in the area I'd go down to Reed's Beach and save horseshoe crabs (being the humanitarian that you all know that I am!) by tossing them back into the surf to live another day. PETA would be proud!

So we decided to take the girls to Reed's Beach to see the ticky tacky houses, the beach covered with dying crustaceans and the sunset.

When we got there there was a huge dredging operation about to get started, absolutely NO crabs and about a gazillion biting bugs. Seriously, Rob RAN back to the car to escape them. However there was a spectacular sunset, so the girls and I risked life and limb to get a few shots. Here they are:

Beaches

We spent a week at the shore. And during that week I think I spent more time at the beach than I spent the entire six years that I lived there. Hannah and Lizzie LOVE the beach. But really, what five year old wouldn't love the opportunity to get completely covered in sand? Not mine!

We had spectacular beach weather (hot and sunny most days) and took advantage of that. Not that we had any choice -- from the minute the girls got up in the morning we started getting the "When are we going to the beach?" question.

We usually managed to stay a couple of hours each time, and, thanks to Hurricane/Tropical Storm Bertha, the waves were really rough at the beginning of the week. Hannah LOVED the big waves and sat at the edge of the surf and let the waves crash over her. Lizzie would bravely walk out to meet the waves and the first time one hit her in the face (which was usually the first wave) she'd scream "I WANT TO GO BACK!!" She liked the tiny waves that crashed around her ankles but she screamed everytime that happened too. I'm sure the lifeguards were talking about us. We were a very noisy family, even for the beach.

Here are some pictures from the beach. (I took these with my little camera, so they are a little blurry.)

Each day they insisted on wearing the same bathing suit:

Sandy Hannah:Hannah working on a sand village:Lizzie collecting shells (we now have about 47 million clam shells that look exactly the same to everyone except Lizzie):Sandy Lizzie:Dad at the beach:Mom at the beach (notice my spectacular tan???):Happy Beach girls:

And now a word from the travellers

We're home ... as hard as the Schuylkill Parkway tried to keep us from it. The usual 2 hour trip took closer to 3.5. We had a great vacation and I'll post scads of pictures later, but for now, Hannah and Liz have a few comments...

Funny Funny Funny!!

Since I am not able to post pictures to my blog while we are vacationing, and I know you are all checking for them (I'll post some on Saturday!) I thought I'd post this video to make you laugh and pass the time until I return. Seriously, this is FUNNY.
Enjoy (just like I am enjoying my vacation!!)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=T4_MsrsKzMM

One day I'll learn how to post the actual video, but this link will take you there. And did I mention that it's FUNNY!!!

Summer of Motherhood

Due to necessity and reality, I have changed the theme of this summer from the Summer of Motherhood (where I work less and parent/play more) to the Summer of Turning Off Lights Because No One Else in this Family Ever Does (where I turn off lights because no one else in this family ever does).

So far this experiment of less work and more mommy has taught me that when my daughters are good they are really very very very good. But when they are bad ... well, when they are bad Rob gets a phone call about about 2 in the afternoon asking when he's getting home.

It has also taught me that if you make something a game you can get away with it about four times. Right now we have played the Leave Mommy Alone So She Can Read the Paper in the

Bathroom game four times, so I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow.

I have also learned that peace and quiet is really NOT over-rated.

I have learned that my children love to cook and will cook anything and everything. I have also learned that they are really bad cooks. However, I have ALSO learned that even if it tastes burned and soggy and overly salted, if they made it, they will eat it.

So that's what I learned this month. I've got about another six weeks to go before they start kindergarten and I'm hoping that they will learn something during that time.

Of course at the end of the day (when they are SLEEPING!) I realize that they are really the two most adorable children in the entire universe and that even if they don't ever learn to cook or to read or to leave me alone they at least have that going for them.

See what I mean:

Total cuteness!

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July from VERY RAINY Pottstown!! We spent the morning trying to find umbrellas so we could go to the Pottstown parade (I don't think Rob has missed a year since we've lived here and girls haven't missed one yet, either) and, even though we only found two, we figured we'd chance it and go to the parade.
For those of us who GOT the umbrellas (those two up there...) the parade was a laugh riot. But for those of us who were soggy down to the soul it was ... actually pretty fun, too. Here are a couple of scenes from the parade. This is some classic car that Rob made me take a picture of:

Here is Rob pretending that the sun is going to come out by wearing his sunglasses. Luckily I do not embarrass easily...
Lizzie still managed to get wet, even though she was under the umbrella (and had a second umbrella covering her legs because THEY were getting wet, too) and complained for most of the parade. It was too rainy, too cold, too slow, too noisy ... but whenever I asked if she wanted to leave she'd say NO MOM, IT'S FUN. So we stayed and listened to her complain some more.

Hannah, on the other hand, really just loved the whole thing. She didn't say much, but her face told the whole story. She has always loved the parade and didn't mind the rain one bit.
The highlight of the parade for us is always the giant duck. The very first year we took the girls (when they were infants) they immediately saw the duck and started to laugh. So we know that no matter how hot (or rainy!) it is, we can't leave until we see the duck. The parade also had a lot of veterans marching, several bands (including two bagpipe bands, some Mummers and the Rah Jah band which has about 40 members and none of them are under the age of 98 or so. We also saw Clydesdales and motorcycles (including one motorcycle ridden by George Washington) and two guys riding those old-fashioned bikes with the huge front wheels. Oh, and we also saw the ambulance that rescued me when I broke my ankle. Oh, the memories of the Pottstown 4th of July parade!!
It's almost sunny out now, so we are hoping that the fireworks will still happen tonight, but we'll see. Rob's getting ready to grill some burgers and dogs, and that's more than enough partying for me!!

Another World

This post could have been titled Lunch with the Quartermaines, too. But I like to remember Matt and Lorna when they were together (albeit briefly) on Another World, my all time favorite soap opera ever.

I had heard at Curves several years ago that Matt Crane (who played Matthew Corey on AW) and Robin Christopher (who played Lorna on that show, but is probably much better known as Skye Quartermaine on my second favorite soap of all time, General Hospital) had built a house in the area. In fact, I even made Rob drive me down the Nantmeal so I could stalk the house. Then, being the really bad stalker that I can be, I promptly forgot that they even lived around here, much less that they have two children, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old.

Until today.

Today was the day that the girls and I went to Monkey Joe's, a bouncing, playhouse type thingie (http://www.monkeyjoesphilly.com/) that opened on Saturday about two minutes from my house. So I was sitting in the midst of the mayhem (a local day camp had about 150 kids running around) trying to pretend that I was ... well, ANYWHERE else ... when this couple came in with their two children.

My first impulse was to mock them because they were holding hands. Serious posing, I thought. Sure he's cute, but really NO ONE comes to Monkey Joe's to steal someone else's husband. You don't need to hold his hand, even though he is VERY cute. Then it dawned on me that his cuteness was familiar. My next thought was that I had dated him once a long time ago. Then I figured that I probably knew him from a former life. THEN it dawned on me that it was none other than Matthew Corey who was somehow managing to talk on his cell phone in the midst of the chaos (not to mention that MY cell phone wasn't even working in this building). Then I checked out the wife and it was, indeed, Skye Quartermaine.

I tried to call my sister Tina, who is also a crazed GH/AW fan, but, as I just mentioned, my cell phone did not work in the building. Luckily Tina is not so crazy about Skye or Matt, so there was nothing really lost. If it had been Jason, I would have had to ask to borrow HIS phone to call her.

Anyway, so after I realized the celebrities were in our midst, I had a dilemma. I am a BIG fan, and I think that people like to know that their work is appreciated. However, I am also TOTALLY COOL and did not want to look like the slobbering, stalking fan that I know I could be. At least until I was distracted by the concession stand or the giant monkey walking around the place.

So instead I figured I'd just hang out and wait for an opening. For the next hour I sat next to them, eating pizza (they were eating pizza, too, although I'm sure they followed their pizza with a 4 mile run and a Pilates class instead of coming home and napping on the hammock) and we watched some of the tennis match together. I almost said something about the tennis, but thankfully thought better of it because, I actually don't know anything about tennis.

It was getting time for us to leave (because I was losing what little hearing I have left) and, of course, Hannah and Lizzie did not want to leave.

Hannah had hugged Monkey Joe, but Lizzie had not. Lizzie had the same chance, but at the moment that the giant purple monkey made his appearance, she said she wanted to finish her pizza. Then when it was time to go she decided that she had to run all the way to the back of Monkey Joe's to accomplish this task. Then she had to bounce on every inflatible and slide every slide on her way back.

So that gave Hannah time to play with the hula hoops

Which, it turns out, gave me my opening.

Hannah was hula-ing away, very badly, as I'm sure you can imagine since she has never hula-ed before and she's not the most coordinated of my children. Or anyone's children.

So it only took a minute before she hula-ed right into Matthew Corey's son. Skye was sitting in a chair across from me. First I told Hannah to watch out. Then I said to Skye: "You know when we come to these places our goal is not so much fun as it is to not end up in the emergency room."

We smiled at each other and I'm certain that she went home and told her husband all about the incredibly charming and funny mom with the uncoordinated, yet equally charming child that she met at Monkey Joes.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, it was fun for me because even though I talk to celebrities every week, much of the time I don't even know who they are.

I hope you all had a fun day today, too! Here's a picture of them (not at Monkey Joe's -- it's not a formal place...)