Happenings

I didn't know what to call this post, because it is basically just a random selection of happenings around our house recently. Hopefully of the sort that is vaguely entertaining to relatives who don't live nearby (which is all of them).
Dan and I are into House recently. Jaime already posted the Valley Girl House takes from the second disc of the second season (OK, I'm going to try this link thingy, Jaime, let me know if it works!), but Cameron's "That's hot" at the end makes us go into conniptions!
Elena has a kidney ultrasound tomorrow, so she couldn't eat anything with fat tonight from dinner time on. I had no idea how many things have fat in them! Yes, Mandy, I know, but I am not the incredible dieter that you are. Speaking of, I think I will be "en regime" while I am in Maine this summer and one of my reasons for choosing that time to lose a little weight is because I am hoping you (still talking to Mandy here) will encourage me to stick to counting calories. Feel free to make me feel guilty constantly. Anyway, Elena had dry rice and stewed tomatoes with peas for dinner, can you imagine? I was practically gagging just watching her eat it. But I gave her jell-o for desert (wow, the computer actually made me put that hyphen in for "jell-o"), so my Mommy rating isn't too low...yet. Wait until she can't have breakfast or even drink a glass of water in the morning, then we will have cries of impeachment. I am comforting her with the promise of French Fries after the ultrasound is over. This picture I have of her is from Hilton Head on a Gregg Russell boat tour and she is watching the dolphins playing in the water. It was really hot that day, so her sunglasses were sliding off her nose.
Alex has new glasses. Actually, he has had glasses for months and months now but he keeps eating key parts and so we had to break down and buy a second pair for him, one for wearing and one for fixing after he destroys it. This has worked well for him, but not for our budget. I am amazed at how expensive and annoying poor eyesight can be. I know lots of people go through the glasses/contacts thing every day and pull it off with style and grace but I'm not sure it isn't up there with missing limbs on the disabilities list...just more common, so no one thinks much of it.

Today is father's day (happy Father's Day, Dad!!), and we gave Dan a shirt from St. John's College that says, in Greek, "If you can read this you are over-educated". Obviously Dan loved it! He decided that he wanted to go camping with the kids in the back yard tonight, so they set up the tent and we all went out and played "hot potato" and now everyone is sleeping peacefully. It's sad, really, because we have to work ourselves up to using this thing properly. The first time we set up the tent Dan and Andrei slept in it. Tonight everyone is sleeping in it except Pavel and me. Next time we will all try it together, and then hopefully the next step after that will be to actually go somewhere with it. I remember all those camping trips to that lake (in Kentucky?) when Sam had the earaches and Anne Marie and Mandy were little and Ben I had the raging nightmares and I guess I am really happy to go slow with the whole tenting thing.

Andrei has new Spiderman sheets. I have this thing about waiting until Christmas and Birthdays to get my kids anything they might actually want, but my oldest son was sleeping under my comforter from college that has flowers on it and when I saw the Spiderman bedding on sale I rethought the whole thing (Christmas is a long way away) and went ahead and got it for him. Now his bed is the most popular spot in the house. Pavel plays in it rather than playing with toys like a normal human child, and even Alex will slip under the bedcovers every once in a while and pretend he is the lucky one. It's a good thing Andrei is pretty easy-going about sharing his things.
And now an Inga story. We had a storm here, and Inga and Dan ended up stuck in Blockbuster while the rest of us huddled in our basement during a tornado warning (who was it that hates tornados? Jaime? I still have nightmares about them from my childhood!). Inga, being Inga, made fast friends with a little girl named Anna she met there and managed to get herself invited to this little kid's birthday party the next day. She in turn invited Anna to her Adoption Day party, which was the day after. They exchanged phone numbers and then began to work on their parents. I have never seen Inga beg so hard for anything in her life, and from what I understand after calling Anna's mom the same thing was going on at the other end. So we went to the store and bought a gift for this kid we didn't know and then I spent 4 hours at this party with about 12 girls who were all in the first grade. Inga and Anna were inseparable. Inga made several other friends and exchanged more phone numbers and tried to invite more kids to her own party the next day (I put my foot down, though). Life will never be dull with this kid...