Hubby is away in New York this week, all week. It reminds me of the way my life was a few years ago - amazing how quickly I can slip back into the old routine. In many ways it is easier as there is no choice of who is doing what with the kis - I know it is aways down to me this week.
He's only two hours ahead but even so, with his meetings and conferences we haven't spoken much at all.
Yesterday Rory and I were driving into a multi-storey car park at the mall and he asked me if that was New York....so maybe he is missing his dad after all.
Anyhow, we have been texting a fair bit to keep in touch. Thought it might be funny to track some of them.......
(hubby me.)
Monday
BOARDING NOW. LOVE YOU ALL WILL CALL FROM NEW YORK.
ARRIVED SAFE ON THE WAY TO THE HOTEL
.
Tuesday
GOT YOUR VOICE MAIL. NOTHING MUCH GOING ON HERE WAS JUST CALLING TO SAY HI.
JUST GOT A MESSAGE FROM ENGLAND, SHE IS IN HOSPITAL AGAIN. CALL ME
Wednesday
HI I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU IN YOUR NORDSTROM PURCHASES. LOVE YOU.
BLOODY HELL DID THEY E-MAIL YOU AGAIN ? SEEN ANY SWINE FLU MASKS YET?
IT WAS SOME KNICKERS.
I AM TRYING TO LISTEN TO A CONFERENCE HERE.
Thursday
ANY MASKS TODAY THEN?
NO BUT I AM IN A STUFFY CLUB WHERE PHONES ARE BANNED EXCEPT FOR IN THE TOILETS AND THESE TINY CUBES. MIKE STOOD ME UP. BILLY AGAIN TONIGHT.
CLUB AS IN LAP DANCING? CAN'T BELIEVE MIKE CAN'T MAKE IT WHEN HE IS SO CLOSE TO THE CITY.
CALLED THE UNIVERSTIY CLUB. ONLY POLE IS UP THE MANAGER'S ARSE (ASKED ME TO GO OUTSIDE WITH MY PHONE). ANNOYED WITH MIKE.
GOT TO GO TO THE LIBRARY FOR STORY TIME. YOU SHOULD GO OUT TONIGHT ANYHOW. CALL QUINN?
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I think he is back home tomorrow night.
Thirteen things I will be trying to do when we are back in England this summer......
1. Go on the top of a double decker bus with the kids.
2. Eat fish and chips.
3. Go to a Northern Seaside town.
4. Pub lunches.
5. Meet a few blogging pals if I can.
6. Learn Marks and Spencers off by heart.
7. Go to an outside market.
8. Eat a 99.
9. Try and get into Leeds by myself and shop etc and feel young again.
10. Visit an old relative for what may be the last time.
11. Go to Leeds/Bradford airport, several times. . . . .
12. Watch buskers.
13. Walk on a lot of pavements. Maybe even whilst using an umbrella.
The kids are already cery excited. The older ones are telling the younger ones about things they remember.....sausage rolls, penny sweets, CBeebies, feeding the ducks down at the pond, buying a sticky bun.
There are still a lot they have forgotten as well though. The stress of travelling out there, for one . . . . .
Dropped Mac off at school today (in the snow). Went in to his Pre-Kindergarten classroom and said hi to his teacher etc as she set up the room.
Me: Mac has a new belt on today, just in case he struggles a bit.
Teacher: Oh, right. Thanks for telling me.
Me: OK then Mac, I'll see you tonight then....
Teacher: What do they call it in England?
Me: Call what?
Teacher: A belt.
Me: Erm, a belt. (Really tried hard not to laugh. Failed).
I know this is old, but whenever I hear it I HAVE to turn it up. And it always makes me feel a little bit (ok a lot) younger.....
Today Paddy made his First Communion at church. Bee did this a few years ago and the mother in law flew out for it.....there was no real interest in that this time. Half of me should be glad - but the other half of me was quite cross (putting it mildly) that yet again there is a different attitude towards the girl than the boys.....
Anyhow, he was all dressed up in his finery. He looked very grown up to me but now I have down loaded these photos, it looks more like a UK school uniform.......
I thought we were going to be late as I forgot my camera and we had to go back home - then there was a detour for a local race and then it was hard getting parked. There were 72 kids making their First Communion - in a regular Mass so it was busy to say the least.
The girls with their veils and little white dresses made me fel quite strange. The non Catholic that I am, it seems too Bridal or something - even though my own little girl wore similar just a few years ago. There were some very glam outfits to say the least.
The Priest is actually really cool as far as Priests go. He has a great rapport with the kids and also with the parents most of the time. He got all the kids to stand on their pews to show off their outfits. Referred to the 'organised chaos' of the day and made the Sermon (Eulogy?) about the kids and went around asking them funny things - he made a long drawn out Mass seem very kid friendly.
Had not realised what a fidget Bee is in such a confined space. She drove me mad with her endless movement.
I had arranged a babysitter for Rory and Mac at home. Felt slightly bad to not be in church as a full family - but the smaller ones would have played up so much that one of us would have been walking them out anyway.
It was a very well spent $75 although I think the sitter let them OD on sugar as they were very hyper all afternoon after we got back.
After the mass we went on to a Celebratory Brunch at a friend's house which was interesting to say the least. Yummy food. They had it catered and a serving staff. When I asked for my drink with no ice the waiter said, "Ah, mmmm. British. Right, no ice."
Paddy asked "Can we have all these drinks for free?" and then I didn't see him without a glass or a plate of food for the next hour.
There was also a squirrel taking full advantage of the buffet left for him in the yard which was quite funny.
Another milestone for the kid then. Two down, two to go.
Hubby is suddenly into the kids learning Italian for our holiday which also includes 2 weeks in Italy. I can speak Italian a little - enough to get by. Did a short course when I was......21. I learnt it quite differently to the way I had learnt French and German. I learnt enough so that when I got out there I could communicate a fair bit, guess some and have a stab at the other. I loved the language, the place and the people and in a way I am really looking forward to going back. (If I survive the trip out there with the husband and the kids....).
Anyhow, we have the Rosetta Stone course which seems quite good for the pronunciation. Also Mac's aide in the classroom at school is a lovely Italian woman....I speak to her a little in Italian (she has lived over here for 30+ years so her English is perfect) and she is giving Hubby some private lessons.
And for the kids we have just bought this 'Muzzy' range. I bought the Muzzy series for Bee when she was little - for German but I never really used it properly and it seemed a little barren seeing as we weren't travelling out to Germany to hear it spoken and need to use it. The Italian series, the DVDs and CD roms is set up for all languages (well several) - and also comes with soft toys that the younger kids have their eyes on. Mac has decided the bigger soft toy Muzzy is his and Rory can make do with the little Muzzy toy. So much so that the past few days we have had to go and say good-night to the bloody Muzzys (Muzzies?) in Hubby's office (he is not letting them have the toys until they have finished all the course) - and tonight the younger ones would not even get in the bath unless I called them 'big Muzzy' and 'little Muzzy' instead of using their real names.
Anyhow, this morning Mac was asking when we were going to go ahead and watch the first Muzzy DVD...and which language we would be watching it in.....so I explained that we had them to learn Italian for going to Italy.....
"Well when are we going to do them in English then?" he asked......
"We can speak English already so we don't need to watch them in that," I tried to explain.
"But we might be able to learn other English, you know, like how in English sometimes they say 'Band Aid' where as we say 'plaster'".........he went on, and I realised he was talking about American English vs British English.
We watched it all in Italian........ (not sure 'courageous' is really that necessary a basic word to need to know.....), and then afterwards because Mac was going on and on about it so bloody bloody much and I just wanted to shut him up I decided it might actually be good for him to hear the same story in English too to give him the gist.......
So Muzzy seems a hit so far and I am quite impressed with some of the interacticve games there are for the computer.
And Bug Muzzy and Little Muzzy had their bath and went to bed quite happy in the end.
When I was an au-pair in Germany, many many moons ago, the mother in the house got loads and loads of magazines through the mail. I had never seen such things apart from in the Newsagents - where you actually went and browsed before you chose, maybe, which one to pick. The German household lived faily normally, but to me, coming from a 'every penny counts' extreme background, there seemed no end to their frivalous consumption. From buying overpriced clothes for the kids, having way too many shoes, having food go off in the fridge before it had even been opened, getting multiple beauty products which claimed to do the same job.....and then all these magazines just sitting around - rarely read.
I find a lot of this happening in my house too now....
But I can say that hubby is far worse than me in things that go to waste like this. One of the areas where this is most obvious is the amount of magazines/publications we have delivered which he NEVER gets around to reading. But still renews when the subscriptions expire.
With Annette, the woman I au-paired for in Germany, I never understood how she could afford to have so many magazines delivered. I didn't know that just because a magazine has a list price of $4.50, well getting a subscription DRAMATICALLY reduces the price of the publication....
Anyhow, here are just 'some' of the things we get at this house regularly.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Yes, I only really read one, maybe two of these.
Well there's a surprise........
Tonight, when the older kids got home from school, Paddy realised he had left his homework folder in his classroom. So he decided to phone a friend. His 'girl friend' who just so happens to be in his spelling group and so could give him some of the words for his sentences. No problem.....off he goes to phone. Then, all of a sudden Mac is also having a phone conversation as his 'girlfriend' is the younger sister of Paddy's 'girlfriend.' I have no qualms about their talking on the phone....but somehow or other, they got cut off. Hubby then says he wants them off the phone anyway. Then the phone rings again and this time it is Bee's 'friend - a boy' who is calling from California.
Hubby is not a happy chappy.
I remind him that it is, 2009 and he can't just compare it to his lack of phone calls from the opposite sex when he was young. Plus he was never allowed a phone in his room - well he had one, but the cable just dangled there - he wasn't allowed a phone jack/socket at all. This was, of course, before the days of cell phones or even cordless phones.
I am always on the phone in some which way. It was scary the way I saw toddler Rory copy my mannerisms and sayings on his toy phone....mmmm. I am also really bad at charging phones. My car charger for my cell phone needs replacing 'quite often.' How hubby hasn't figured that our home phones are missing handsets (one fell in the bath) - I don't know. I also get into a lot of trouble for ignoring husband's calls when I am on the phone. We have call waiting so I can be yapping away to a friend in UK and it beeps - I look at the caller ID display so I'll know who it is and normally, I think I can call hubby later.... so I continue my conversation.....then hear my cell phone ringing....also hubby - let it go to voice mail, then start getting e-mails or texts......Patience is not his middle name.
But I actually thought it was funny my kids being on the phone. Then Rory started shouting that he wanted to phone his 'girl friend' at which stage hubby went out.
It's only going to get worse.
PS We are terrible parents for not letting Bee get a cell phone. She is the only 11 year old in the world (apparently) without a cell phone. Even if she does have 'strange British parents' (her words) - it is still just not acceptable.
