Balloon Fiesta 2011 - ABQ Aloft

I think I need to separate the balloon posts.  So, we'll start with the early festivities.  For my non-local blog readers, the city of Albuquerque hosts ABQ Aloft the day before Balloon Fiesta starts.  Balloonists volunteer to launch their balloons from dozens of different schools throughout the area at roughly the same time.  It's so cool to see them all go up from so many different places (we can see the whole city from our spot on the mesa.)  We are lucky at our school, as one of our teachers is also a balloon pilot, and apparently, so is her husband.  We were even more lucky this year because Harriet is in her class!   It seems like something right out of a story book - watching your school teacher launch and rise into the sky in a hot air balloon.  That's exactly what happened to Hattie a couple weeks ago.

Harriet's teacher and her husband are both pilots, and so, for a rare treat, brought TWO balloons to school and launched them both.

 There she goes!  She actually did an awesome job of flying and went out over the open desert and was able to come right back to the school, landed in the parking lot, and was on time to class.  Quite a teacher!!!

 There goes her husband...

It's an early morning to get to the school for the balloon launch and makes for a long day for the kiddos, but is so worth it.  It might be my favorite part of balloon fiesta week.

The day was made even longer by the school carnival that night.   I am not a model PTA mom.  I like to volunteer and help, but I'm pretty picky about it.  I have traditionally avoided evening school activities.  I feel like we are involved in so much and the kids spend so much time away from home that it doesn't really interest me to go back to school for a few more hours.  But, my little offspring serving on student council reminded me that they needed to set a good example and support all school activities this year and would be attending the festival.  I have to admit, I wasn't very excited to go, but I was pleasantly surprised with how great the activity turned out.  It was extremely well organized and so easy to navigate.  Each teacher had his/her own booth and they were all great and pretty unique too.  The kids really had a blast, and I was reminded of one of the reasons I have kept my kids at the neighborhood school, rather than opt for a charter school or some alternative form of education.  I really do value community and I like knowing the people in my neighborhood and I like feeling that we are all working together for a common, local, good.   It was awesome to run into so many people we know and also to meet parents of Grace and Harriet's friends that I didn't know already.

Staying with the balloon theme... Harriet's teacher brought an old hot air balloon for her booth and inflated it so that the kids could go inside and play in it.  I went in too and thought it was a pretty unique experience to be inside a hot air balloon.

Another favorite was the hair dye booth.  I was super nervous about this one because school pictures were to be taken only 3 days away...  I thought for sure Grace would still have black streaks in her hair.  Thankfully, it washed out.  

All in all... a great start to balloon fiesta with incredible weather as expected.  Little did we know that it would go down hill from here... I'll save that for the next post.

Grace's first karate tournament

I completely forgot to put this on the blog in the middle of all the summer travel.  I just found the pictures on a memory card.  In-between our crazy trips, Grace was able to participate in her first karate tournament.  She went to the New Mexico Games where they had dozens of different sports going on.  Being new at sparring, she opted to only compete in forms with her most solid form that she knew at the time - Short Form 1.  She did a great job for her first time.  It has got to be so intimidating to be by yourself in front of these serious looking black-belt judges.  She did the movements perfectly, but had a big pause towards the end when she had to take a moment to remember what she was doing, which was probably what knocked her to the bronze medal.  We were so proud of her though for trying it and being so intense about it.  Watch out for this girl when she gets her black belt!

September sum-up

(I think I started this post more than a week ago... finally finishing and posting it.)

Whoa, crazy busy month.  And, not.  The hours from 4-10pm seem like insanity, but the hours from 8:30 to 4:00 seem a little slow and definitely unorganized.  I'm still trying to get the hang of setting my own schedule and being productive and feeling like a contributing member of society.  My schedule up to this point has always been set by school, work, or children, in other words - someone else.  A whole blank day on the calendar staring me in the face is frankly, daunting.  I know I have so much to do, so much I want to do, and I don't know where to start.

Here are the highlights of what we've been up to:

*David - traveled nearly the whole month.  Mostly to exotic places like Virginia and Ohio.  Will be making up for ditching me so much tomorrow by spending his day off with me - all day, while kids are in school.  Fridays off make for great dates while the school babysits for free.  (well, nearly for free - what is up with those fundraisers?!)  Continues to escape on his bike(s) whenever possible and keeps commuting on them as well.

*Michelle - without an excuse left, started exercising at home with DVD, giant ball, and wii fit system.  (novel idea - exercising.)  Decided she hated it and quit after 2 days.   About the same time got invited to walk with neighborhood gals (i.e. - stroller parade.)  Feeling left out of stroller party, started walking the dogs alongside the strollers, who, nearly died (Velvet, please don't have a heart attack, please don't die!) on the first outing of nearly 4 miles, after (how old is Harriet?) over 5 years of near inactivity.  However, the old girls are getting back in shape and today marks almost 2 weeks of walking on a regular basis.  We include a variety to our walking from going with the strollers on the paved trails to heading out to the soft sand and sagebrush on the mesa off-leash by ourselves or with doggie friends like Max.  The dogs prefer the latter as they get to run in circles, sniff, scratch, dig, and be doggy.   We (the dogs and I) are mostly just relishing our time together as we haven't had any to ourselves since the children came along.  We forgot how much fun we used to have together.

We also did some doggie friend tending last week.  Dirk and Max's stays overlapped by a couple of hours so we got a picture of all the puppies.  We so love our furry friends.  I love this picture because you can see the different colors that each dog's eyes reflect.  Velvet's are always green, Shadow's always orange.  Interesting stuff.

I've also been trying to do some good in the world with volunteering both for organized and non-organized causes.  When the kids were babies and people asked for help, I always felt helpless.  Like, I was lucky I wasn't asking for help, so how could I help someone else?  I vowed that when life got easier, I would raise my hand more often and do more.  It's cool to be in that stage of life.  It's the good part of the trade-off when you send your baby to full day kindergarten.  I haven't yet busted into the school for volunteering in the girls'  classes.  That's what I really want to do, but the school hasn't gotten organized enough yet to allow parents in.  Hopefully, it will happen soon.

*Grace

 - back to her old self.  FINALLY!  She loves school again.  She is having a much better year and is loving her numerous activities.  She's working hard to master "Knights of Cydonia" on the guitar, trying to figure out what she needs to do to achieve that orange belt in karate, and loving her church activity days with the girls her age.  I'm so happy to see her liking a few girls here and there.  But, when it comes to play-dates, it's still usually the boys who get invited over.  She's also getting pretty great on her bike and took her maiden voyage out on her bike by herself to ride to her friend's house.  He sweetly came by on his bike to pick her up and they rode the mile to his house and then back home together.

She is also now enjoying having her own room.  She hasn't had her own since Harriet turned 2 and moved in with her out of the nursery.  We finally came to the point that it was silly for them to keep sharing with the extra bedrooms in the house and their increasing volume of stuff to store.  Little sister was finally ok with venturing out on her own too, so out she went.  Grace's room is much nicer with fewer things in it and a little freshening of the decorations.  She requested a horse jumping over her bed.

*Harriet

 - is earnestly trying to navigate the life of a big girl.  Kindergarten is tough!  Her teacher is great and she has some wonderful little friends, but we are also learning about GIRL drama.  Grace, having always played with boys (especially at this age) never had any of this stuff.  It's all new to me.  So, we have daily talks about what happened and who did what to whom, and how we can be a better friend and make better friends.

She is also much enjoying her newly painted room with new furniture (her first of her own!) and many butterflies.  She calls her room "the butterfly gahden" with her cute Boston accent.  The room separation and decorating was very productive and a great time filler for me.

Harriet also started karate here in NM!  She did it for a while with Grace in MA before we moved, but decided the instructor here was a little too intimidating and didn't want to do it.  Now, though, she has decided that it looks like fun so she signed up.  Unfortunately, she can't be in Grace's class until she is 7 (18 months away!), so we are doing 2.5 hours of karate every Monday and Thursday.   I'm glad David is done traveling for a while so we can divide and conquer.  

Harriet and Grace have both been asked to serve on student council, so they've been attending early morning meetings and I'm sure will have lots to do during the school year as the activities come up.  But, I think they both really like it and are excited to get to plan things for their school.  

And that about does it for September.   P.S.  I think September is my favorite month in Albuquerque.

new post for a new day

I'm just kind of sick of seeing the 9/11 post as my last one up, so this is totally random.  Today I'm so thankful for a gorgeous day of sunny sky, puffy clouds, perfect temperature, (made even more perfect by the fact that it rains every evening and makes the next day clean and fresh,)  and a morning at the ranch.  I was able to go feed horses this morning and do some mucking.  Both of which, are chores that I love doing.  Forget the dishes and the bathrooms at home.  Feed and clean up after a horse, is what I say.

Morning feeding at a barn is just one of my favorite things when I get to do it.  The air and the horses are fresh, the hay smells divine, and the sounds of soft noses nudging the hay around and munching on it in the otherwise quiet surroundings does a lot to sooth the mind.  (This being said, I am frequently just as grateful that I don't have my own horses to feed - every single day - no matter the weather or occasion.  In this regard I am ever so lucky to get to do it as a treat and not a daily, unforgiving, obligation.)  I also got to randomly chat for a lengthy time while mucking with my friend, Michelle, one of the nicest people on the planet.  She was sure nice to share her horses and morning jobs with me!

I took no pictures this morning, but I have a few leftovers from the girls' last day riding Coco at the ranch this summer that should suffice.  I mean, really, can we EVER get enough pictures of little blond girls on horses?  I think not.

9/11/01 - 11

Everyone says 9/11 is like the Kennedy Assassination.  Everyone remembers where they were, and who told them first.

Since 10 years ago was pre-blogging world for me, and I didn't keep a great journal at the time, I thought I'd write about it here so my kids know what I was doing that day.  Because, I do still remember some of the details as clearly as if I had seen them this morning.

10 years ago, I was starting my 4th year of teaching at Olympus high school?  Something like that.  I had just returned from Kenya with a favorite group of students.  Our flight there was very unmonitored.  We walked straight into the airport for an international flight without any real security check.  Parents brought their kids right to the gate and saw us off.  I remember boarding the flight home in Nairobi.  A Muslim woman boarded the flight with us in a full burqa.  You could only see her eyes and her heavy, billowing, black fabric covered her completely to the floor.  No one stopped her.  I actually remember thinking - that could be a guy with guns underneath the outer clothing and no one would know.  The thought only came to me because I have watched too many movies.  It didn't matter to me that she was dressed in Muslim clothing, it could have been any kind of clothing.  The point was that just that she was completely concealed under a huge piece of fabric and she could have been carrying ANYTHING under there.   As it turns out, she was simply a very orthodox Muslim woman who was flying to Amsterdam.  No biggie.

Fast forward to the second week of school.  I'm just setting up my classes, I have THE most annoying and incompetent student teacher assigned to me.  I start the morning with my favorite AP chemistry class.  A sweet, smart, blond boy (why can't I remember his name?! I remember his face, framed in the classroom door) comes in, just a hair under late, to AP chem and gasps out of breath "someone just hit the world trade center with a plane!"  I have no idea what this really means.  I'm thinking some little private 2 seater plane has lost its way and tragically ended by bumping into the world trade center.  I've seen that (those) building(s) in person and I'm pretty sure that plane vs. building = building wins.  I really don't think much of it, except we'll hear the details later on the news maybe.  My student was pretty animated though and thought it was much more.  I brushed it off in the interest of starting class.  In AP Chem, you can't lose 5 minutes of the year.  Every second counts.  Don't these kids get that?!   Some rich guy wrecked his plane... I just got back from Kenya, I have more perspective than that...

We plodded through the first period of the day.  Sometime during that period, or maybe the next, I walk into the library to make some copies.  Someone in there has the TV on and as I pass by, I see two burning towers with "debris" falling from the top.  As I would find out later, those were people jumping from the tops of the towers.  I'm momentarily disturbed and shocked.  I can't really process it in the 2 minutes I have in the library before someone burns down my lab next door, so I hurry back to class.  The next class comes in BEGGING me to turn on the TV.  I hear other classes doing the same thing, so I decide to follow suit for a few minutes.  More footage of the most unreal scene unfolding.  It was then I fully realized we were watching people die on live TV.   I decide that it shouldn't be up to me to allow impressionable and emotional kids to watch something so completely disturbing that I can't explain.  So, I opt to turn it off and go about business as usual.  My seriously annoying student teacher is all about living in the moment and thinks we should soak it all in.  I tell him to shut it.  I'm really wondering how we're going to get through the rest of the school day with this going on.  No one really knows what is happening, we just know it is B-A-D.

Soon after this, someone calls in a bomb threat to the school.  Lovely.  All the crazies are on the payroll today.  We evacuate the building and kids start calling parents on cell phones and as we sit on the lawn outside the school (for a very long time while bomb squads start rolling in), we get the real details of what is going on in New York.  It starts to turn into a pretty chaotic scene of hormonal, emotional high school kids trying to process such a huge event while at the same time feeling unsafe in their own school 2000 miles away from it.  Luckily, the principal decides to use his brain and actually sends everyone home for the day.  Of course, with the rest of the country, we all spend the rest of the night, the rest of the week glued to the TV watching the footage over and over in a stunned silence.  We can't believe that actually happened.

Fast forward 10 years.  My kids weren't even born when it happened.  Other kids I know were only toddlers and don't remember.  They have no idea why we have to be nearly stripped naked at the airport, take off our shoes, place our DVD players with disney videos in a separate tray, put our shampoo in miniature bottles, throw away our WATER, beg the security guard to please let us take the medicine and juice for the baby, leave the nail clippers at home, get to the airport 2 hours early, and say good-bye to the loved one dropping us off at the airport in the middle of traffic because they can only pause the car long enough to throw our bags out of the back of the car onto the sidewalk.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been going for Grace's entire life.  She has not lived on the Earth without those things, neither has Harriet.  What a world we live in.  Not that it was anywhere perfect before, but it has seriously changed, and tiny shampoo bottles at the airport are the very least of it.

Jessica's Wedding

My baby sister, Jessica, got hitched a couple weekends ago.  I was extremely excited she decided to have the wedding in Salt Lake so that I could go for sure.  But, her choice of date meant we couldn't make a very long trip out of it - the kids had just started school and Harriet was only a day into kindergarten.  She also got married the day before our 14th anniversary!  Must be a good wedding weekend.  So, we decided to fly out of Albuquerque right when school got out on Friday and fly home Sunday morning.  It meant we were only there for exactly the wedding.  Still, I am so grateful for this short, but important time with my family.  It was the first time that ALL of my family members have been in the same place since Harriet was born, and we were minus Kate then.  Can't wait to see that family picture!

The weekend, was of course, a whirlwind of activity.  Jessica and Nick just bought a house in Salt Lake this spring, and decided to design their untouched yard for the purpose of hosting their own wedding.  I saw it in June as a huge pile of dirt.  I cannot believe what they were able to do this summer to transform it into a beautiful and magical setting.  I also can't believe they were so ambitious as to host their own wedding and reception, but they pulled it off very well.  They hosted everyone for a rehearsal dinner as we got into town on Friday night.  Then, we all went back Saturday morning to help decorate.  The yard was really so incredible, it only needed a few accents here and there to make it perfect.

 

We all did get our hair professionally done at cousin Lauren's salon.  Those girls did a great job and we were so grateful for all the back-combing and pound of hairspray when thunderstorms ripped through the wedding just as the ceremony ended and we were supposed to have pictures.  

A little lipstick from the bride for the flower girl.  I think Harriet is one of the only people who saw Jess before the ceremony.  She was very serious about no one seeing her, even before she had her dress on.  

Jessica's choice of dresses also held up extremely well in the rain and when the sun (and a huge, full, rainbow) finally came out, we all still looked great!  I can't wait to see the professional photos.  Melissa and Randy also took some great shots that I need to get my hands on.  

Jessica's taste is impeccable.  The colors, dresses, and flowers she chose were all just gorgeous.  It was a rare moment for me to see Grace completely dressed up with her hair done.  She did it without complaining and said it was her wedding gift to Aunt Jess, to wear and do whatever she asked.  She was grateful, though, that Jessica chose dresses without lace and frills and bows.  Harriet was more than delighted to be a flower girl and dress up like a princess to toss flower petals down the aisle.

The flower girls:  Harriet, Kate, Grace

Jessica and Nick with flower girls, and ring bearer, Sean.

Bridesmaids:  Jessica's sisters (Emily, Me, Melissa), and Nick's sisters (Mackenzie and Missy)

Bridesmaids and Groomsmen:  I was actually pretty grateful to hang onto one of these guys as I walked down the aisle and nearly killed myself in my heels on the runner on the lawn.  There's a reason I don't wear heels 99% of the time.

The happy bride:  I really don't know if I've ever seen Jess look as happy and gorgeous as she did on her wedding day.  She was the perfect bride.

She had these darling red shoes on under her dress.  Love this photo of her sitting in the middle of her pond.

Beautiful girls with their Daddy

So happy I get to claim these as mine.

A few more random pics:

Father of the Bride - I think this was the second time he took off his tux.  Love my Dad.

Cake Time:

(check out the groom's cake - a motocross key lime pie because Nick is way into motorcycles and doesn't like cake)

 I've never had to cut into someone's wedding cake, but I ended up with the job of tearing this gorgeous thing apart so that everyone could have a taste.  We figured out the red velvet was on the bottom, so we just had to keep cutting!  (no wonder they took that corner piece.)

First Dance

 Mom and Grandma at the end of the night.

I have never given a toast at a wedding, but ended up being the family representative when toasting time came around.  That was kind of cool.  I do wish them all the happiness life can hold.

I just feel incredibly lucky to have such an awesome family complete with great sisters, parents, and grandparents and all the others in-between.  I'm so glad we were all able to go and be there on this special day.  Welcome to the family Nick.