Beantown!

We made it to Boston. I have dreamed of this day since I was 14. That was the trip of a lifetime with my family in the purple station wagon for a month-long odyssey across the county. The trip today was nearly as traumatic.

It all started with an all-nighter for me, as I frantically tried to get our house and kids ready for us to leave for 10 days. Plus, we had 70 shrubs I had to place in the beds in order for the planters to get them in the ground today. I finished everything I needed to do at about 2:30 am, but I figured that going to sleep for one hour would mess me up more than staying awake, so I stayed up.

Our taxi came to the house at 4:15. We hopped in and he asked where we were flying. Mark told him we were heading to Boston to run the marathon. The driver said, "no kidding? How far is your marathon?" I was stunned. 3 minutes into our trip and my second-least favorite question had been asked. My ultimate least favorite question is when I have all the kids with me and someone asks, "are they all yours?" Duh. Look at them.

Anyway, we sailed on to Denver without an incident. While waiting for our connecting flight to Boston, it started to snow. I was in heaven. We hopped on to the plane and made our way out to the runway. The plane started to take off, but then stopped. Sadly, we were without a functional engine #2. We spent an hour on the plane while they assessed the damage, and then spent an hour in the terminal while we waited for a new plane to arrive. We loaded up on the new plane, where we sat for another hour while they loaded bags and 2 entire trailers of US mail.

Finally we were on our way.

Tomorrow we are going to run around the commons and then go walk the freedom trail before the masses arrive Friday night. I also must go find Dorchester heights and a memorial to my hero Henry Knox.

Good night.

Where is heaven?

I have always told Zachary that he came from heaven and that he is an angel. He loves to look through his baby pictures and have me tell him about the day he came from heaven. He tells me that he "pickeded" me to be his mom and that I cried when he came out of my tummy because I was so happy.

He has been asking if we will ever have a new baby, and also asking where heaven is. I tell him that he is our baby, and that I don't exactly know where heaven is. He says that "we need a new human baby to play with because we love babies."

I did not know these questions were related until today.

Zack told me that if I would not buy a new human baby, then he was going to sneak out of the house tonight with Jacob and go to heaven where he could get a baby for us.  He told me that Jacob knows how to drive there.

I love my Zack.

Status symbol

In the running world, there is perhaps no status symbol as prestigious as the Boston Marathon jacket. It has always been a very nice looking jacket, with beautiful embroidery of their unicorn logo all over the back. I mean BEAUTIFUL embroidery. But manly. The embroidery was what made this jacket so authentic, and so elite. Runners wear these jackets when they want to get noticed. Not exactly subtle, and perhaps a bit in-your-face, but the Boston jacket is something to envy. If you see someone wearing it, it means that person is a faster runner than you are, or has achieved the unachievable by qualifying for the Boston Marathon. These jackets aren't free, typically $95 at the running expo. But almost everyone who runs Boston buys a jacket. You just have to buy one, even if you are a big, buff guy who doesn't typically wear unicorns on your apparel. It's just THAT cool to have one.

During the past 2 1/2 years as Mark and I have become runners, we would see someone at a race with a Boston jacket and stare. As Mark's BQ became more likely, he really started watching for people wearing their unicorn jackets--at stores, at airports, at races. They are all over when you start watching for them. When Mark qualified last summer, he couldn't wait to buy a jacket and wear it as a real Boston 2011 runner.

Well, Adidas is the official sponsor, and when their product line for Boston 2011 came online, Mark went to take a look. He noticed at first that the logo colors have changed from the historic blue and gold to black and bright green. Fine. Whatever. But then on closer look at the jacket back, it was OBVIOUS that the logo was screen printed. Yeah. Like that guy down the street can do in his garage. Not that there's anything wrong with screen printing. But for the Boston Marathon official jacket? What?

Upon reading the comments, everyone was complaining about a screen printed jacket. So many people complained that Adidas posted this lame-o excuse on their website:

We sincerely appreciate your feedback on the Official Boston Marathon Jacket. You helped us discover an error made in our supply chain that resulted in a screen printed logo instead of embroidered logo. As seen in previous images on shopadidas.com, we thought we were getting embroidered products too. We apologize for the confusion and thank you for alerting us. While not what was anticipated, the Official Boston Marathon Jacket for 2011 is screen printed.

"Helped us discover an error????" How dumb do they think runners are. Crazy, yes. Dumb, no. Nobody on their design team noticed? Nobody in manufacturing or shipping? Nobody? They had models wearing the jackets and photographers shooting pictures for the catalog and website, writers inspecting and handling the jackets to write their little blurb sales-pitch to go alongside the picture, other promotional materials made showing the screen printing, but it took some consumers purchasing these jackets to help them discover the error? What planet are they from?

To compensate the 20,000 runners who were so excited to buy and wear this jacket, Adidas slashed the price by-----$10. Are you kidding me? Lame, lame, lame, lame, LAME!!!!

Of course, Mark will buy one of these jackets, even though Adidas thought they pulled a fast one. Who knows if we will ever be back for the Boston marathon? And everyone knows I love a guy in a unicorn jacket.

Let's hope Adidas had no involvement in the medals.

The snoring granny

Zachary is a pretty tough kid. He doesn't complain about things, and he has a very high tolerance for pain. He doesn't scare easily, but he is terrified of one thing---the snoring granny.

I have no idea what it is about the snoring granny in this book that gives him nightmares, but boy, does it ever give him nightmares! We have had this book for about 16 years since Abram was a babe, and all of our kids have had it read to them, and the pictures were always just a fun part of the story. But Zacky doesn't like that snoring granny. Not one bit.

He wakes up about once a week in the middle of the night screaming and crying. He is inconsolable. When you ask him what is wrong, he tells us that he had "a snoring granny dream." What happens in a snoring granny dream? Well, turns out that the snoring granny tries to take Zachary away from his family.

This is one reason that Zachary is afraid to be in any room of our house alone. He is sure the snoring granny will be able to get him if nobody is with him. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the youngest of 7 kids, who has rarely ever been alone in his life, is terrified of being alone. Especially when there is a snoring granny involved. It makes for some complex psychology in a 4-year-old's brain.

Saggy no more

Let me start by saying I love Jacob. He is a good kid who luckily has a good sense of humor.

Sometimes if your mom warns you every day that your pants are sagging and they will disappear, you should listen to her.

I don't understand the fashion concept of the teenage boys and their jeans belted below the butt. It is just so disturbing to me. Sadly, Jacob doesn't share my fashion sense, and he thought it was cool to wear his pants saggy and low so that a mushroom of boxers showed. Momma doesn't like that. Not one bit.

I tried to warn this cute boy that something bad was going to happen to his favorite jeans if I saw his boxers again. I don't think he thought I was serious. And then yesterday I couldn't take it any more. So I told him to drop his pants on the floor, and I pulled out a pair of scissors. I'll never forget his face as I cut up the inseams of the pants.

When I make his jean blanket, I will make sure that this former pair of jeans is incorporated into it so we can always remember... and hopefully laugh about it.

At least he still has one pair of in-tact jeans. Hopefully he is a little more discreet about how he wears that pair.

My baby can read!

Any wonder why I love to snuggle up and watch movies or read with this boy? He really is a snuggle bug.

He learned how to read this week. Life is totally different now for him. It all started last Friday. He has known the letters and the sounds each letter makes for quite some time, but he just never wanted to learn how to put them all together. But last Friday was his magic moment, where for some reason he was ready. I wrote some easy 3-letter words for him, and he made each sound slowly, and then faster, and then when he realized he had actually read a word, he would just start laughing. He thought it was hilarious! I wrote more and more words, and he read every one of them. I pulled out some letter tiles we have, and I made words that he could read. Then we pulled out the Bob books. He thought it was cool to read words made from tiles, but he thought it was amazing when he read a whole book. By yesterday, he could read Hop on Pop--at least most of the words. We still have some lessons to learn about "the magic E" and "the spy L", but he is well on his way.

With all 7 of our kids it has been the same. They knew letters but did not want to learn to read. And then one day, BAM! They figured out how to hook the letters together, and it was magic. With all of them it started with letter magnets or tiles, then the Bob books. Next we move on to Hop on Pop, and then Dick and Jane. Dick and Jane books are amazing as the next step toward reading. Simple words that repeat in order to produce mastery. I love them. Sure, some sentences can cause you to giggle, but they are great progressive books. Somewhere along the way, we throw in Green Eggs and Ham, Fox in Sox, The Cat in The Hat and Ten Apples Up On Top. It has been so fun to be with each of the kids as they had their eyes opened up to the world of reading.

Most of you know that I have a degree in teaching. I knew in college that if my kids were ever going to learn how to read, I had to teach them before they went to school, because they were never going to get it from school with all the garbage they were teaching me. I got my degree in 1993, and I remember sitting through classes in college where I thought, "What the heck? How's a kid supposed to read if you don't teach them to sound out words?" And also, "How is a kid supposed to learn how to spell something if you are forbidden from telling him that he did it incorrectly?" This was the philosophy of the early '90s, and is still the accepted curriculum in many districts. Ever seen The Music Man? The "Think Method" was a crock, and that's what I was taught in college.... Just show the kids pretty books, and they will feel happy and the words will just enter their minds as they guess what is going on from the pictures. We were taught to not encourage them to sound out words, but that if they didn't know a word they were to look at the pictures and make a guess as to what that word was. I actually had a professor tell us that Dr. Seuss books were the worst books for kids and should be banned from schools. His illustrations were apparently not epic enough to keep the interest of children so that this "Think Method" could work its magic. A bunch of hooey.

To all those idiot professors I had in college, I thumb my nose at you, in honor of Dr. Seuss whose books are brilliant and imaginative. If the professors thought that Dr. Seuss books were bad, you can imagine how they felt about Dick and Jane...

Savanna

This is one spunky girl. She makes me happy every day.

She has been bringing home some things from school lately that have made me smile. They have to write a short paragraph every day, and these are some of her latest ones:

I am a great friend cause I do fun stuff. I am nice. I help and care. That's why I have a lot of friends.

I have a such embarrassing moment that I can't write it down.

I am really good at Tetris and Mario Cart. I don't know why.

You should be 16 to get a job. My brother is sixteen and he has a job and it is lifeguarding. So we go to his pool a lot.

S- Smart

A- Awesome kid

V- Very strong

A- Awesome kid

N- Nice

N- Nice

A- Awesome

When I grow up I want to stay home with my kids. Because I am nice. And I don't want to waste my money on daycare.

The most awesome thing in the world is my family.

****

I should also let you know that she is an expert at cloud identification. She loves to tell me what type of clouds are in the sky. This makes me very happy, because I was as a kid (and still am) rather interested in the weather. She asked me this morning if we could make a rain gauge when she gets home from school. What a kid.

She also can beat every boy in her class at arm wrestling. She wasn't kidding when she said she was very strong.