Rockin' Out - Christmas Style

Our resident rockstar in training had not one, but two Christmas concerts over the past week. On the 18th Ryan had a "gig" on the big stage. It was the annual show put on by his guitar school. He played Away In A Manger with two other boys. I may be biased, but Ry totally stole the show. Scroll down and pause the music player at the bottom of the page or else you will hear Bon Jovi instead of Ryan. It can be quite easy to confuse the two!



On Christmas Night Ryan performed a private concert for the family. In this picture you can see the new amp that Santa brought.



He played some Christmas songs and then took requests, tips accepted, of course. He made a total of $13.00 at that performance. Not too shabby!



I have a feeling that this video and pictures may be seen on an episode of "Behind the Music" sometime in the future!

Socks

I just walked through my house and picked up a sock in every single room, including the hallway and staircase. Why is this???? It's like Hansel & Gretel, except with balled up dirty socks, and if you follow the trail you get a tour of EVERY ROOM IN OUR HOUSE!!!

And yet every morning someone yells out "I have no clean socks!"

KISS - The Hottest Show on Earth

"They try to tell us we don't belong

That's allright, we're a million strong

You are my people, You are my crowd

This is our music, We like it LOUD!"

from Crazy, Crazy Nights by KISS

Last Saturday I went to see KISS' "Hottest Show on Earth" tour and I got to go with the coolest kid on Earth. Ryan donned his Gene Simmons face paint (which was KISSterical) and we rock and rolled all night with about 18,000 additional members of the KISS Army! I even sprung for the high dollar tickets and we were in the 20th row, which was great for the eyes but not so much for the ears. My ears rang for two days after the show. Must be getting old! As you can tell from the lyrics that I quoted above Ryan found the place he belongs and the people he belongs with. Not sure what this says about him, but I sure do love my little rocker boy!

The Amazing Race

Some of you might know that I love television, particularly reality shows. My all time favorite is "The Amazing Race". This is the one reality show that I would actually like to participate in. If you have never seen the show, just watch the clip below, it is awesome. It doesn't really give you the full idea of what the show is about or how great it can be, but it is good for a giggle. Scroll all the way to the end of the blog page to pause the music so you can hear. And if they are doing maintenace on the feed site the video may not appear, so try back another time.

Anyway, just watch:



"Right in the Kisser". It makes me laugh every time, which is sooo wrong, I know.

Road Trip 2010: NC to NYC to DC

Right before school started back for the year, we took a five day road trip to NYC/NJ and Washington, DC. A big thanks to Aunt Betty and Jim for putting us up (and putting up with us). Since we try and find something to teach the boys in all of our adventures these are the top 20 things we learned on our journey:

1. I would prefer for Scott to check the car the weekend prior to our road trips, not at 10:30 the evening before we leave. This would avoid stopping for an hour somewhere to change out the battery.

2. Tolls along the East Coast are no longer paid with coins. They are paid with dollars, and lots of them. I brought a bunch of change with me, apparently I thought we were driving to 1976.

3. One day Sam would like to count all of the tiles in the tunnel in Baltimore.

4. It is physically impossible for Sam to ride in a car without creating a ring of crap and garbage around him. It just seems to magically appear.

5. Ryan would like to live a few blocks from Times Square, but in our house and neighborhood. The idea of a McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts on every corner was very enticing to him.

6. Ryan found his heaven in the form of a room full of WWE stuff at the world's largest Toys-R-Us.

7. If the boys never hear a Bon Jovi reference from me again it will be too soon. I pointed out his hometown, a shore bar he played at, and of course The Meadowlands, which when they asked me who played there the answer was The Jets, The Giants, and Bon Jovi.

8. NJ tends to have a variety of smells.

9. Scott learned he will never again complain about traffic on I77 again.

10 The bleachers in Yankee Stadium are damn hot in August, but the lemonade is awesome.

11. A new chant for when Ryan plays catcher this season: Hip Hip Jorge!!

12. Although I am way familiar with the concept, the boys learned what a Guido and a Snookie are.

13. Those slingshot rides are awesome.

14. Ryan loves Zeppoles, and is insisting that I learn how to make them.

15. You can slap the name NY Style in front of a pizza in NC but it just isn't the same as the real thing.

16. Ryan loves Jewish bagels.

17. DC has a lot of homeless people

18. The Korean War Memorial is my favorite, and Ry loved Iwo Jima.

19. Sam is too lazy to climb the steps at the Lincoln Memorial.

20 According to Ryan the Air & Space Museum (the one out at Dulles) is the most boring place on Earth, but Scott and Sam could have stayed there all day.

And the last thing that we learned on our road trip was if you have been putting air in a tire once a week for six months, you might want to get a new tire before you drive 1800 miles. You'll only make it 1700!

Here are the highlights of our trip in photos. I would like to add one explanation of why I am standing in the middle of Times Square looking like I just went to the gym. My sister pointed this out and now I am self conscious about it. These were the comfortable clothes that I wore on the 10 hour trip up. I didn't know that we would be going into the city right away and I didn't plan to get out of the car. Soooo many people tell me I look like Miranda from Sex In the City, but clearly that was not the case here.

Gone Batty

For the past month I had been hearing little scurry/scratching noises coming from the attic. Scott assured me it was most likely a squirrel and threw a handful of rodent poison up into the corner where I had heard the noises. Didn't work - the noises continued and were moving down in to the wall just behind my bed. YIKES!! So I sent him up there for further investigation and he returned with the verdict that we had "a bat" and that I was to research how to get rid of it on the Internet. All of the internet sites I found were way more concerned about protecting the bat, and most suggested that you could not do anything to bats in the summer months because of the possibility of babies. Now I understand that bats provide a valuable service to our environment, but Dude, come on, when they decide to take up residence in your house they need to go. The first thing that all of the sites said to do was to go out at dusk and watch to see where the bat exited from. So that night I went outside and stood in my neighbors driveway and watched as two bats exited from the gable vents, all the while hiding behind Scott's back and screaming like a 12 year old at a Jonas Brothers concert. My sister had given us the name and number of a friend of hers who has a critter control business, so I had Scott call him the next morning. When I checked with Scott for an update that afternoon, hoping to find out that the "Bat Guy" would be arriving sometime that day, my wonderful husband informed me that it would cost $900, so he found out what to do, and would handle it himself. WHAT??? Flash forward to dusk once again. My husband comes home with a BB gun and a flashlight. WTF???? Was this what the bat guy said to do??? No, of course not. That was a multi day process involving screens and a net to "exclude" all of the bats over time, and he could do all that, but, ya know, it's really hot and he didn't want to have to get on the hot roof, blah, blah, blah. Again I say, WHAAAT??? So the bat hunter goes up to the attic and proceeds to start SHOOTING at bats at they are preparing to exit for their nightly feeding. Meanwhile, I stood outside and counted as 21 bats flew from my house. Let me repeat, in case you missed that the first time, 21 BATS FLEW FROM MY HOUSE!!! I then found Scott outside looking through the pine needles for all of the dead bats that he was sure he had hit. Uh, No Dude, they flew away and will be back at dawn. As he stood there looking bewildered, I asked him, quite bewildered myself, if this was his "plan"? To shoot at bats ever night? He had the nerve to ask me if I had a "better plan?" HELLO, pay the man his $900!!!! So a week later (we had waited too long to get on his schedule), Jeff a/k/a The Bat Guy a/k/a My Hero show up to rid my house of bats. Now, even though Scott had assured me that there was ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that a bat could get in the house the first thing The Bat Guy asked was if they had been getting in the house!!! Instantly made a mental note to self that Scott must pay dearly for that one. Anyway to conclude, after 3 days of having an "exclusion" net draped halfway down the side of my house we are now bat free! YAY! Although I am not going back into the attic for a long time, we are peacefully coexisting with the bats, which The Bat Guy informed me most likely have moved next door. Sorry neighbors, if you need a referral, I know a guy.

PS - Just FYI, we had no babies, so we didn't violate any rules regarding bat exclusions in summertime. And I know it's illegal to kill a bat, but we didn't know that at the time Scott was shooting at them, and he didn't hit any, anyway.

We're Still Here

We're still alive and well, just been busy these last couple of months. I had to look back through our photos to see what we've been up to, but here it is. Here is a synopsis of our summer so far:

Baseball: Ryan finished up his last season in coach pitch. We've been lucky enough to have had the same wonderful coach for a few seasons now and Ryan has really grown as a player. His favorite position is catcher. I get such a kick out of seeing him jump up and throw that helmet off.

Football: Sam finished up his first season of football. I know football in the spring is weird, but they have it. Even though it was a winless season for his team, Sam did great. He was the starting center, and by the end of the season he was playing nose guard as well, so he played the entire game. Poor child lost ten pounds with all the practicing (2 hours 4x/week). And Sam did not have 10 ounces to lose, so that was a lot. I still have to pick up his football pictures so I don't have one to post. Although he enjoyed football, he is thinking that he wants to go back to basketball this fall. I think that his heart is really in basketball, but he had kind of a crappy winter season that turned him off for awhile. We'll see, he is still kind of on the fence.

Ryan's nose: As many of you know, Ryan has had a lifelong battle with nosebleeds. They can be quite heavy and last a long time. After a particularly bad run this spring he told me that he wanted to see a doctor to find out if anything could be done. We had seen an ENT when he was three, and I knew that they could cauterize it, but we hadn't wanted to go that route. But now the school freaked out if he got blood on anything, we have closed down the pool and rides at Carowinds with blood. and he was waking up every morning with his hair caked in blood, so I guess he was so over it. So off we went to have the nose cauterized, or as Ryan described it "tortured". I felt so bad when I saw his little hands gripping the seat and his body stiffening. He's been dealing with nosebleeds basically 3 to 4 days a week, and he hasn't had one in over a month so he says it was so worth it. I have picture of Ryan with the anesthetic stuffed up his nose, but he has absolutely forbidden me from posting it.

Sam and Ryan both had their awards day at the end of the school year. They both got awards. Ryan got a Citizenship award (despite what his father says, not everyone gets this) and Sam got several, including Honor Roll (they don't have this in Ry's grade), math and reading awards, and get this, Writing Superstar. Not sure how he pulled that one out of his butt, but my assumption is that this should be my award since I "proofread/edit" all of his papers. We'll just keep that to ourselves, though. Look how thrilled they both look:




A couple of weeks ago Ryan and I had the perfect Mother Son bonding outing - We went to WWE Monday Night Raw. That's right, folks, Wrestling. We had great seats and all of Ryan's favorite guys were there, so he had a great time. I'll just say, WWE is what it is, and you just need to go with it. I did find it kind of cool to see a live prime time TV show being made.

So now we are just hanging out, swimming, going to Carowinds and hanging with friends. We are also looking forward to our upcoming family beach trip in July and our trip to NYC to see the Yankees in August. We'll update on those events as they happen. See ya soon!

Mother's Day

I guess that since most of this blog is usually dedicated to stories involving my children I should share a Mother's Day tale. Here goes:

Mother's Day morning started with an attempt by my wonderful husband to make me breakfast. He attempted to enlist the boys help in this activity, but neither could be roused out of bed. "Sleeping in" around here is not reserved for holidays, it is our usually weekend routine. Anyway, his attempts at this breakfast were thwarted by MY lack of preparation, i.e. I hadn't shopped for the proper breakfast supplies. So his plan B was to go get us breakfast at Bojangles. Again, neither boy would get out of bed. Scott leaves.

Eventually Ryan wakens and tells me that he did not go with his father because he has a gift for me. He runs off to his room to retrieve his "gift" for me. My heart fills with joy. I must stop here and give you some additional background. Ryan made his First Communion on Saturday and received about $300 as gifts. (FYI - thank you notes are on the way). Well, Ryan comes back and hands me $1. That's right, the generous soul has give his Mother one dollar. Yay, that should cover the $.89 burrito at Taco Bell for lunch!

So Scott returns from Bojangles with breakfast ONLY for the two of us. In his words "these spoiled, lazy kids don't deserve anything." This caused a meltdown in Ryan the likes of which I have never seen. That child went off about his lack of a biscuit, and of course this was all to me, because he would never yell at his father. Oh, the joy!

So Sam, who has neither gotten out of bed nor given me any sort of gift, somehow became my "happy" moment in my Mother's Day morning. What are you gonna do? But alas, all was forgotten a few hours later, and we went on to have a very pleasant day with our own mothers.

Ryan's First Communion

He learned all his prayers

and confessed all his sins,

what a good Catholic boy

Ryan has been

And so we all gathered

to celebrate with great joy

the First Holy Communion

of this special boy

May 8, 2010

Spring Break 2010

So I know how totally lax I've been on the blog lately, but really, who knew these damn kids would take up so much time. I love em though, so they're worth it. Seriously, though, Sam started a spring football league that practices four days a week for 2 hours. And Ryan's baseball usually manages to fill in the other days. Busy spring around here. I thought we'd have a relaxing spring break, but we managed to fill our days off from school with all kinds of activities.

On Monday we took the train uptown and had lunch and went to the Imaginon Library. Very cool, never been there before. Mostly we went as a way for Darnell and I to test out whether we wanted to take the train or drive to the Bon Jovi concert later this month. We tried to trick the kids into thinking in was an exciting outing, but they didn't buy it and they concluded that we were lame.

Wednesday we went to Carowinds for the first time this season. We rode the new Intimidator roller coaster, and Sam has awarded it his highest honor of best coaster in the park. Very neat coaster.

Thursday we went on a hike to the peak of Crowders Mountain, and had a semi picnic lunch afterwards. It was a great day for it and I think everyone had fun. I, however, am rethinking my bucket list item of climbing a well known mountain. Now, I never had Mt. Everest in mind or anything, but this was little more than a big hill, and today my shins are killing me. Better start that training now.

Today we finally slept in and are having a day of relaxation. We did venture out to the arcade though.

Now, if you will all pardon me, I'd like to take a moment to tell the person at the Target this afternoon who thought it was acceptable to park his silver Toyota truck lengthwise across three parking spaces that he is a JACKASS!!! For future reference the entire back corner of the parking lot is usually completely open and no one would bother your precious truck. I hold tight to the hope that karma will push one of the abundant wayward shopping carts right into your drivers side door. Oh, and just for the record, putting a shopping cart on the median is not an acceptable return place. Only the shopping cart corral is acceptable people! Let's all work together on this. Thank You.

Wax Museum

Today I went to see Sam's class put on their "African American Wax Museum." This was one of the strangest projects ever. His assignment was to research and write a report on a prominent and influential African American. The only stipulation was that they could not pick anyone who you would normally learn about during Black History Month (i.e Rosa Parks, MLK, etc.). Easy enough, right? Well, the second part of the project was that they had to dress as their person as a figure in a wax museum. Out of the 21 kids in this class, 18 are white. This did not make for some easily identifiable wax figures. Though Sam's BFF Marcus is biracial and he pulled off the perfect Barack Obama. Other than him, though, we had a red haired Samuel L. Jackson, two skinny white girls as the Williams sisters, and a black girl as Michael Jackson (there is some ironic humor in that one that I won't touch, but she pulled it off)among others. Sam was Bill Cosby. He wore an old crazy sweater of my Dads. Close as we could get. Some friends of ours at another school had done a similar project in the fall, however theirs was much more elaborate. They had to make a backdrop/display sort of thing, with info about their person. I made Sam do this as well, but he was the only one. When the teacher set it up around him, he looked absolutely mortified. Thus no picture of him. He was mad enough at me already. If I had stood to take a picture all hell would have broken loose. He was very cute though!

Did He or Didn't He?

Yesterday morning, about 10 minutes after he woke up, Ryan realized that he had lost a tooth. We can't find it. We search all around and in his bed to no avail. So, did he swallow it? This is a child who will let a tooth hang on by a thread for days rather than pull it out, but this one didn't seem to be all that loose. I had to double check to make sure it was a baby tooth. I had begun to think all my shouting about "teeth rotting out of your head" in an attempt to get him to brush better, might be coming true. But the tooth fairy did show up and leave $5, so either he/she knew where the tooth was, or she doesn't actually require an even exchange of tooth for cash. He's not sure which, and frankly doesn't care, as long as he got some bucks.

The Snow Mystery

Sometimes when there is a winter storm in this area the schools will get called off, and when you look out the window and see a dusting of snow, you go "Huh, what snow?" Well, last night we drove home from the mountains of West Virginia in a snowstorm, and I am now convinced that my house is in a little bubble that is protected from snow. It snowed the entire way and the boys were getting so excited. They were convince they would arrive home to a winter wonderland. Going through Mooresville just north of here, there was a good 4 inches on the ground and it was still coming down hard. As we approached uptown Charlotte heading south, the snow lessened and there was maybe and inch or two. Once we got through uptown, the snow stopped and it was 32 degrees. When we excited the interstate, it was clear that there was to be no snow at our house. Talk about two very pissed off boys. The only saving grace was that they had spent the whole day skiing in the snow. Sometime during the night we got dusting of sleet, but our snow bubble remains a mystery.

We Three Ski (and one snowboards)

On Thursday we headed up to West Virgina to go skiing at Winterplace. This was the first time that either of the boys had been skiing. We had been planning to go the previous week, but a sudden string of 60 degree days delayed our trip. But the timing worked out perfectly for my Friday birthday. We stayed at what appeared to be a very nice place, The Resort at Glade Springs. I say appeared to be because we didn't get there until 10 p.m., even though my plan was to be there before 6. Not bitter, not bitter (I just keep repeating that to myself). Anyway, there was an indoor pool and spa, sauna, indoor basketball court, and a bowling alley. We were too late to enjoy any of these, but they all looked like they would have been fun (not bitter, not bitter). We got an early start on Friday, and were at the slopes just after they opened. Sam decided to try out snowboarding, and he got the hang of it right away. You never have to worry about Sam in these types of activities. He usually picks them up fairly quickly, and will just keep plugging away until he masters it. He wakeboards so that may have helped him some. According to Sam, snowboarding is easier than wakeboarding. Ryan, on the other hand, I was worried about. He very easily could have tried, fell once, and said "I'm cold, I don't like it and I want to go." And then he would have repeated that every 5 minutes for the rest of the day. BUT, this kid absolutely loved to ski. It was amazing, he just kept trying, run after run, until on his last run of the day he didn't fall one time. In his words, he "conquered" the mountain. I was so proud of him. We had purchased a snow tubing add-on, which was for two hours, but after about 30 minutes, both boys said they wanted to return to skiing. I think that when sledding is set up in lanes and you can't try to knock each other off, or double up or form a chain, it took some of the fun out. It was like structured sledding. On the drive home Ryan said it was his best day ever and Sam made the decision to make a ski trip and annual family trip. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Locked Out

Yesterday I locked us out of our house. I couldn't find my keys when it was time to go get the kids from school and just thought that I would use the keypad entrance to the garage to get in. What I didn't remember at that moment was that I had gone through the garage that morning when I took the kids to school and had, out of habit, locked the door from the garage into the house. Here's the thing - that door always stays unlocked. It is our backup entrance to the house. If we somehow lock ourselves out, you can always get in using the garage keypad. Now I realized that I had locked the door behind me about 20 seconds after I did it, but I was halfway up the stairs and told myself to remember that and unlock it when I got back downstairs. Didn't happen. Anyway, so we get home and can get into the garage, but not the house. Of course I didn't have my phone. I'm not a person who carries a phone everywhere, only in the car (and most of the time I'm lucky if I remember that). I had my ipod, but that wasn't helping. Ryan has a phone which is supposed to be kept in his bookbag at all times in case there is ever an emergency and I can't be there when school is out. Problem solved, right? We will just call Dad or Grandma to come let us in. WRONG, his "for emergency use only" phone was at Grandma's. Oh well, still my fault that the house is locked, a fact that Sam was only too happy to keep repeating when he finally rolled in about 20 minutes later. He also threw in that he had always thought that he should be given an emergency key. I chose to ignore him rather than choke him, but it took some restraint. Anyway none of our neighbors were home, but the girl next door would be home by 4, so I knew we could use her phone then. And I knew that my friend Darnell would eventually come home and be able to shelter us, so at the most we may have had to stay outside for two hours. Now understand that it was 60 degrees outside. The first warm day after like three weeks straight of freezing temps. The boys most likely would have been outside anyway, but you would not have known this by the complaining that ensued. For the past three days we have watched news footage of the devastation in Haiti and my children had the nerve to whine and complain longer and louder than any poor person stuck there. They received a lecture on appreciation and being grateful, etc. but by the way they looked at me I believe I must have sounded the way that adults do in the Peanuts cartoons. Waan Wa Waa. Anyway to wrap this up, all ended well when after practicing baseball with Ryan and street hockey with Sam, I decided to try some windows to see if by some miracle one was open, and low and behold the laundry room window was unlocked. Possibly since we moved in by the amount of dust that fell from the blinds when they were moved. So we shoved Sam through we were "saved" according to Ryan. They than ate like they had been lost at sea for weeks. It was 3:54. We normally get home around 3:00. Bit disturbing to know that I have had an unlocked access spot in my house for 10 years, but it came in handy yesterday.

Ever Evolving Traditions

Yesterday, as I was taking down the Christmas tree and boxing up all of the decorations, I was thinking of some of the Holiday traditions that our family has established and how some are ever evolving. Such as:

1. Before children, Scott and I would spend Christmas Day having lunch with his family and then we would go to my family for dinner. We even did this the first few years after we had Sam. We eventually put and end to all of this running around, and now have Scott's family over for Christmas Eve, and we go to my parent's Christmas afternoon. We had never really been Christmas Eve people. so this gives us an additional day to celebrate, and makes it exciting for the boys, since they get presents early. This brings me to #2.

2. In my family we didn't get Christmas presents from our parents. They might argue this point, but if we did, they were not clearly marked as such. Scott cannot remember if he did (you will see this as a reoccurring theme in this post). This year, however, my friends guilted me into thinking this was absurd, so we gave the kids gifts, which we allowed them to open Christmas Eve.

3. In a nod to my Italian heritage, I make either lasagna or baked ziti for the Christmas Eve dinner. I just can't do that whole seven fish thing.

4. In our house Santa does not bring wrapped gifts. I did not get wrapped Santa gifts, and Scott cannot remember if he did (see the theme). My friends also say this is crazy, but I have always preferred that Santa just put all of the gifts in individual piles for each boy, and I get to enjoy the look of overwhelming joy on their faces when they see all that has been left for them. However, for the past two years, the boys have gotten up before us and have gone downstairs just to check out whether Santa came or not. Then they go back to bed. Seriously, they go down, see what they got, and go back to bed, They don't touch anything, but it has taken away my joyful moment. So I think I may send Santa a quick e-mail asking that he wrap from now on.

5. This is the first year that my siblings and I have not exchanged gifts. A few years back we went to a name draw, but that got kind of tedious, as you were pretty much just buying items off of a list they gave you. Very impersonal. It was my suggestion that we not do it this year, and although I came off as the family cheapskate, I think that they were all happy in the end, whether they admit to it or not. Maybe next year we will do a Chinese auction or something just to put some fun into it.