The Effects of Aging

Sunday was my birthday.  As all of you know, I turned 24.  Okay, fine, not really.  I turned 32.  Whatever.  Erin threw me a ridiculously fun 80's theme birthday party on Saturday night (pictures to follow, don't have my camera).  I was super excited that everyone chose to dress up because that just makes a party so much more fun, you know?  Even the kids that came (like including babies and toddlers) were dressed in totally tubular 80's style.  I will post pictures in a bit.

Anyway, Sunday I had to run into work to finish up some specimens.  I keep another pair of shoes there that are comfortable because my job requires I stand while cutting tissue and dictating (called grossing- and not because the specimens are "gross", even though sometimes they are, that's just what it's called).  It's commonplace for me to kick off whatever shoes I'm wearing and slip on my "grossing shoes". 

So I kick off my shoes and realize something rather upsetting:

These are the shoes I took off.

They do not match.

Now, you may be thinking "well, they aren't THAT different", but let me show you something else:

This is a view from the back.  The left one is significantly taller!  How did I not notice that?! 

Clearly it's the old age.

*Sigh*

Not crying today. Not going to do it.

The first day of kindergarten has finally arrived.  Kenzie was excited to go and has had her new Barbie backpack fully stocked for a few weeks now.  In Knox County, kindergarteners go to school on a "staggered schedule" for the first two weeks.  This means that each kid only goes for one assigned day (with another 3-4 kids) to get them used to school.  They also only go until noon these days.  Furthermore, kindergarten gets out of school at 1:00 daily (almost 2 hours earlier than everyone else) for the rest of the year.

I find this to be totally unnecessary.

First of all, Kenzie has been at a real school for the past two years for a curriculum based preschool.  She knows what school is.  I understand that some kids are fresh out of the house with no preschool at all, but come on.  Have they ever been to Sunday school?  Or dance class?  Or any organized activity at all?  If you're five years old, you know how to play with other kids and how to do what you're told. 

Second of all, this schedule is terribly inconvenient for working parents.  School has already started back (college too) so there are no available Samantha's or summer camps.  Daycares won't let you send your kid for 4 days only for 2 weeks only.  And I really didn't want to use 8 vacation days.  Fortunately, my Mom agreed to help me out so we have each driven to and from Crossville, over an hour away, twice this week.  That's roughly 560 total miles.  In 4 days.  And we will do it again next week.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the first parent to think this is completely crazy, so I'll hush about it.  Kenzie will be in kindergarten full time soon enough, so I'll deal with this bump in the road.

*stepping off of soap box*

I'm sure she will have lots of stories about today and I can't wait to hear them.  You will be proud to know that I successfully walked out of the school with my head high rather than as a sobbing lump of sad Mommy.

I did kind of want to cry a little though.

Yeah, yeah, so it's been since March.  Let me tell you about my morning.

Our roof suffered major injuries during the hail storm in April and has to be replaced.  The roofers got here today at 8:30 to begin work.  Today.  Like 4 months later.  It's cool though; I know they've been busy.  Well, when I went to pull out of the garage, there were about 300 piles of roofing equipment spread all over the driveway.  And a big long truck blocking the whole thing at the bottom too.  Every worker was on the roof so I had to walk down the driveway just for them to see me.  Trying to convey the message "Can you move your stuff so I can get my car out of the garage" was about as difficult as asking them to write out the pythagorean theorem because I don't think they knew anyone was home in the first place & couldn't see the garage door open from where they were on the roof.  And they didn't speak English.

Next, I went to Kroger because Kenzie needed a specific kind of Lunchable to take to school.  I stopped at the Starbucks inside and ordered my regular:  Grande Lite Mocha Coconut Frappuccino with an extra shot of espresso.  Trajedy struck again when she told me they didn't have the coconut flavor and it had likely been discontinued for the season. 

I took Kenzie to school and signed her in, however, not a single soul could be found.  I ran into a couple teachers and they denied seeing any of a group of about 30 preschoolers all morning.  I kind of feel like the noise generated from that group alone would be hard to miss.  Anyway, after walking all over the school, I finally found them all outside.  Behind the school.

Finally on the way to work, while driving down the interstate, a semi blew a tire and most of it flew back and hit my car.  Surprisingly, and thankfully, I can't see any damage to my car.

I had planned to get to work around 9.  It ended up being around 10.

This all happened in an hour.  See how my intentions are good and things just happen?  Same thing with the blog.  Good intentions + poor follow-through = neglected blog.

So here are the last two weeks in our life-

By the way, the top picture is "Diva Pippa", dressed by Kenzie of course, two days ago.

This "cake" is not really a cake at all.  In fact, it should be called "hardest to make fake cake in the world" because it's really made out of watermelon, kiwi, blueberries, strawberries, and whipped cream.  And making the bottom half wasn't hard.  But what happens when you have a really heavy, wet, watermelon disc and then try to set it on top of perfectly placed blueberries and whipped cream?  It squishes everything out because whipped cream isn't all that dense.  Erin showed me a picture of one (sans recipe) and since I'm such an awesome wife, I made it for him.  It did taste really good though.

This cake, which I did not make, was brought by Erin's coworkers for his last day at work at Fort Sanders Regional.  He had been there for 10 years so they threw him a little going-away party.  He has accepted a new job at Parkwest Hospital, which is much closer to us.  Same job, different location.  And he really loves it so far.

Our sweet Kenzie had to have surgery last week.  She had 2 hernias and they were evidently congenital.  They weren't causing her any trouble, but her doctor said they needed to be repaired before she got any older.  In true Kenzie fashion, she took it like a big girl and did really well.

The dog she is holding is a girl and it's name is Joshua.  Kenzie put bows on Joshua's ears the night before.

This is right after she came back down from recovery.  They gave her a grape popsicle, hence the purple teeth. . .

She was quite proud of her IV, although at the time, she didnt realize it was actually connected to her.  She thought it was just a tube taped to her hand.

She has since asked to go back and do "doctor day" again.

On the way home, she asked for ice cream for lunch.  She hadn't been allowed to eat or drink anything since midnight the night before and had done SO well at the hospital. . .

Who would say no?  I mean really.  Plus, I wanted ice cream with tons of candy on top too.

Speaking of ice cream, the ice cream truck has been frequenting our neighborhood and that is pretty much the best news ever for me because it's the ONLY way I can get one of these:

If you know where I can just buy these, please let me know.  Because we've been looking since I was about 8 or 9 years old.  That's a true statement.

Best.  Stuff.  Ever.