Moving-Up, Minivan, and Mommycation

Big things have been happening around here, guys!

Jacob had his "moving-up" ceremony to celebrate that he survived Kindergarten. Or did Kindergarten survive him? We arrived at the school at 9:30 and gathered in the library, waiting for the ceremony to begin. The kids filed in wearing special hand-designed tshirts signed by all their classmates. Jacob and a couple other kids stood in a separate line in front of the group. This puzzled us, until the ceremony. Jacob and the other four kids in front were specially selected to read lines from "Oh the places you'll go." 

He didn't just read his lines, he went the extra step and recited them from memory. I couldn't really hear him because a kid sitting next to me was screeching. But it was adorable and we were very proud. They sang some cute songs and then there was a photo slide show of the kids throughout the year. I was smiling and laughing at the cute faces on the slide show when the song "You'll always be my baby" came on. All of a sudden without any warning, the tears started to well up behind my eyes. 

He's such a big boy. He's smart. He's (mostly kind). He's creative. He's funny. But he WILL always be my baby. He was my first baby. It's amazing to see how his confidence has grown, how he's built relationships, and how much he's learned in just the past year. I love this guy so much. Even when he's driving me crazy (which is a lot). 

Tomorrow is Jacob's last day of school so I asked him this morning to make his teacher a nice Thank You card. I went to my room to get dressed and when I came back to check on Jacob's card-making progress, he showed me this...

It says, "dead bear on a carrot." Apparently, that is what the drawing is supposed to depict. 

Yeah.

I made him re-do the card and he was most displeased. Ha ha ha. What the heck?

Other big news: I have a fourth baby! Ta-da! It's a minivan. A 2010 Honda Odyssey to be precise. And I absolutely LOVE it. It's the most amazing vehicle ever. There is so much ROOM. There are TWO sliding doors. I can haul THREE extra people! The A/C WORKS! And the mileage is low at 50,000 miles. Well, that's low for me. My Subaru wagon has 285,000 miles on it. It doesn't take much to please me, obvi. But I seriously do love it. I find myself gazing lovingly out the window to admire its beauty and to make sure it hasn't been stolen. 

I have never looked more gangster in my life. 

The kids love it almost as much as I do. Jacob loves that he gets the back seat all to himself and can sprawl out back there. The first time we drove it somewhere, he packed a large blanket to take with us. Just because he could. Minivans change lives. Seriously. My life is changed. For the better, of course. 

We've had unusually hot weather lately, even getting up to 80 degrees. (yay for working A/C!) However, Ryan still insisted on wearing this on Tuesday:

Jon started to crawl! But he prefers to do yoga. 

He loves to go into this pose and rock back and forth violently with a wide grin. He uses this as a launch pad for crawling. 

I have my own special pose. After the kids go to bed, you can find me like this:

Putting three kids to bed is exhausting. I'm seriously drained at the end of each day. Which explains the pile of dirty dishes that keeps accumulating in my sink (maybe some day I'll get a dishwasher).

I've been working 10-13 hour days this week thanks to a big hearing scheduled for Monday. Briefing for this hearing was a little crazy. But I submitted all my briefing just in time to leave for a work conference in beautiful Lake Chelan, Washington. I got to enjoy the beautiful four hour drive by MYSELF, drink Diet Dr. Pepper, and listen to all my favorite music without having to accommodate requests from the back seat. 

For the next three days, I'm FREE. Free to sleep in. Free to take up every single milimeter of my king size bed. Free to drink wine for lunch. Free to exercize at the 24 hour fitness center any time I want. I looked out my balcony at the beautiful sandy beach and beach-side pool and felt intense pangs of guilt for leaving my kids behind. But then I saw someone wrestling four whiny, sand-covered kids across the lawn and then immediately the guilt ended. 

I have my first massage ever scheduled for tomorrow afternoon and I have a bottle of Riesling chilling in my fridge. Yay for mommycations! Yes I have to sit and listen to law related presentations...but the free all-expenses paid trip is a nice trade off.

Tonight, I enjoyed a glass of wine on the beach while watching the sun set. I was tempted to jump into the water for a swim. But the wine won.