A Few Words on Packing, and a Disney Surprise

I started packing us today for an upcoming trip, and this has reminded me how much I HATE PACKING.  Ugh!  Not everyone feels that way, some people enjoy the packing experience and feel it adds to the anticipation of their trip, (which as we are all supposed to know by now, is half the fun anyway).  Um, no.  Packing is not part of the fun for me, and you people who enjoy packing are weirdos from another planet that I will never understand.

My kids are part of "those people" who get excited about packing, but that is because they have the mental flexibility to pack only a stuffed giraffe, some colored pencils, and maybe a tutu and call it a day, with no concern for having forgotten anything.  Case in point, when we went to Missouri last summer, I asked Waylon if he wanted some help packing his suitcase but he said no, he was already finished:

In my defense, just because I do not like packing does not mean I'm not good at it.  I pride myself on packing light (or as lightly as one can, anyway, for a family of five headed to the beach with babies/young children, as the case has been for us over the last several years).  Also, the key word in my packing complaint is "us"; packing for only myself is a cakewalk.  It's the responsibility of remembering every single item that 3.5 other individuals might need that makes me run and hide.  (3.5?  I came up with that because yes, Joe helps. Neither of us has stooped to the level of having me pick out his clothing.  And yet, it is mostly my brain that is tasked with remembering all the 1,000 odd items, from toiletries, to kid medicines, to rain gear, to water bottles, to allergen-free food, or headphones, or whatever else the occasion calls for.)

This afternoon, I relied on the kids' excitement about packing to spur me into action.  No, really - Georgia had to stay home from school due to pink eye, so I told her it would be her job to force me to begin packing.  Fast forward to 3:30 p.m., me curled up on the couch somewhat exhausted, the girls employing loud music, poking/sitting on me, and walkie-talkies cranked up in my face and set to static to get me moving.  It finally worked.  I'll stop complaining about packing for now, because it's hard to garner sympathy for a task that by definition means I'm getting to travel.  We are fortunate and lucky in that regard, but c'mon, I don't have to enjoy the packing part. 

All of the dragging of my feet and required cajoling yesterday got me to thinking how amazing it is (and please forgive me for patting ourselves on the back here) that Joe and I managed to pull off a pretty cool Disney World surprise for the kids back in September.  A surprise the nature of which involved me single-handedly packing everything in total secrecy, essentially under cover of darkness, since I could only work on it after putting the kids to bed each.  (Have I mentioned that we went to Disney World?  No?  Okay, see, that's the problem with taking enormous blogging breaks.  Our Disney trip was a big deal for us, something that in my head I was definitely going to immediately report on here, I just haven't found the time for it until now.)

We decided to surprise the kids for a couple reasons.  First, it would be super fun!  I mean, how often in life do you get surprised out of nowhere with wonderfully happy news?  And how often does life present opportunities to surprise someone you love like that?  So we wanted to at least try to pull off the surprise and see what happened.  Second, we selfishly wanted to avoid the incessant questions about, "When are we going?" "How many more days?" "Is it tomorrow?"  "Is it today?"  Keep in mind, at least two of three children here still have a pretty loose grasp on the passage of time.

As luck would have it, we needed to leave for the airport at the same time that we would normally have been hopping in the car to drop Joe at the train station and the kids at school.  So that's how far we pushed the charade of this being a regular old school day.  I had secretly loaded our suitcases into the back of the van the night before, packed Georgia a lunch box that she didn't actually need, gotten everyone dressed for school with backpacks ready and into their car seats, the whole bit.  Our plan was to start driving to school but then take an intentional wrong turn to head toward the airport instead.  When the kids noticed that we were driving the wrong direction, that's when we'd tell them:  WE'RE NOT GOING TO SCHOOL, WE'RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!!!

Sounds pretty rad, right?  It was, with two caveats.  First off, we were never expecting immediate screams of excitement, because our kids weren't at the time 100% aware of what Disney World really meant.  (Waylon especially - he had no clue.)  Even for someone well aware of what going to Disney World entails, it seems reasonable to expect it to take a while for the news to sink in.  The other part of the kids' reaction, which we were not so much expecting, was just how long it took them to realize that we were not driving the right direction!  Funny thing, it turns out children are very trusting of their parents to transport them from Point A to Point B with no questions or doubts.  I guess I was counting on Georgia to be the first to notice, but even she was finally tipped off not by the fact that we were aimlessly driving into the next town over, but by the fact I was holding up my phone prepared to video tape.  All of which is my roundabout way of explaining why the video you're about to see has been heavily edited for length (and it's still long - sorry, but I have no clue how to really edit videos and therefore can't waste half my day shortening this for you).  I assumed I'd have a 15 second clip that morning to easily share with my sister and the handful of friends who knew about this surprise in advance, but instead we ended up with over four minutes of boring driving video.  In the end, though, it all made for a very good story.  The kids have certainly enjoyed in the months since telling anyone who will listen about how their parents told them they were going to school but took them to Disney World instead.  That's worth it in my book.  Even with the packing.


Disney Surprise from Kate on Vimeo. (password is notrickypeopleallowed)

There you have it.  And in conclusion, school secretary Mrs. Peterson was notified of the children's absence, and we managed to have a decent time at Disney despite me having forgotten to pack Roald Dahl's "The Witches".

Just for good measure, or for anyone unwilling to spend 4+ minutes of their life on the video, here are some stills taken shortly after the news had sunk in.



Crazy in love with this plan.



Pretty pumped!


20-30 minutes later, a little freaked out and nervous.  He came around.  : )



  

  

Self-Centered Interviews of My Kids

Hi! I have vowed not to start this by blogging about blogging, or rather, blogging about not blogging, so now that that's out of the way, let's just dive right back in.

There was a set of questions circulating on Facebook recently among a few of my FB friends. I thought it would catch on more widely, but it seems not to have. The gist of it was that you interview your child, about yourself, and see what awful or adorable truths they come up with in response. I got a kick out of seeing my friends' children's answers and thought I'd give it a whirl, but I decided to record the answers here on the good ol' blog rather than FB.

The instructions were, "Without any prompting, ask your kids these questions." To save you some scrolling back and forth, I'm going to paste the questions in 3 separate times, since I conducted three private interviews.  I've included a few of my own thoughts in brackets; couldn't help myself.     


JUNE
(6 years old)
1. What is something I always say to you?  You either say, "Home sweet home!" or "Alright, here we are," when we pull into the garage.  No!  You always say, "I love you."
2. What makes me happy?  When the house is clean.
3. What makes me sad?  When I get a burn.  [Ed.: True.  June recently burned her hand on a hot skillet.]
4. How do I make you laugh?  By reading the part in the book that says, "My only friend in the whole wide world is a hippo named Boo Boo Butt!"  [Ed.: That's a reference to "The Book With No Pictures" for those of you not in the know.]
5. What was I like as a child?  I don't know!
6. How old am I?  I don't remember.  Something like in the 80's or 70's.  [Ed.: To be clear, she was not speaking of the 1980's or 70's.]  
7. How tall am I?  Half of my stomach and one of my brother and half of my brother.    
8. What is my favorite thing to do? Go have fun.  [So then I asked the follow-up question, "How do I have fun, though?"]  By snuggling. 
9. What do I do when you're not around?  Do stuff on your phone and computer. 
10. What am I really good at?  Yelling.  [Ed.: Ouch.  The truth hurts.]
11. What am I not very good at?  Thinking of stuff to play.  [Ed.: It's good to make them think for themselves, right?]
12. What do I do for work?  Be our mom. 
13. What is my favorite food?  Vegetables.   
14. What do you like to do with me?  Go to fun places with you.  And also, make you spend money to take me on rides. (*insert June's cackling maniacal laugh here*)  [Ed.: I think she was specifically referring to a couple of Ferris wheel rides that were quite memorable to her.]

WAYLON
(4 years old)
1. What is something I always say to you?  I love you!
2. What makes me happy?  Cleaning up. 
3. What makes me sad?  I don't know.  That I shoot rockets on to pictures and the pictures fall down... At least I don't actually do that.  [Ed.:  Waylon has been indiscriminately adding the phrase "at least" to at least 80% of his sentences for at least 6 months now.]  
4. How do I make you laugh?  When you say, "Don't smile!"
5. What was I like as a child?  I don't know.
6. How old am I?  Give me a clue.  (It's a number, honey.  You have to pick a number.)  I don't know - 10? 11? 
7. How tall am I?  Very tall.
8. What is my favorite thing to do?  Reading Penderwicks and painting with music. 
9. What do I do when you're not around?  You miss me!
10. What am I really good at?  (HUGE PAUSE...)  (Shakes head...)  Throwing balls up in the air and catching them.  
11. What am I not very good at?  Lifting weights.  [I giggle and say, "How do you know?  How do you know if I'm good or not?]  I just know because your age.    
12. What do I do for work?    
13. What is my favorite food?  That's a hard answer. 
14. What do you like to do with me?   Have mommy days!  [Ed.: "Mommy days" are what we call me pulling preschoolers out of school whenever I want to, to do whatever else we'd rather be doing, simply because we can.  Once they hit public school, we take attendance more seriously, but until then, all bets are off.]     

GEORGIA
(8 years old)
1. What is something I always say to you? I love you.
2. What makes me happy?   Food.
3. What makes me sad?  When we don't pick up our toys. 
4. How do I make you laugh?  By tickling me.  
5. What was I like as a child?  I don't know.  You lived right across the street from your school.  
6. How old am I?  39.  Going on 40.  
7. How tall am I?  5 feet 14 inches.  I think.  
8. What is my favorite thing to do?  Do art with me and June and Waylon.  
9. What do I do when you're not around?  Big mommy projects.  Like organizing drawers.  
10. What am I really good at?  Trumpet, cooking, and soccer.  Mostly cooking because you're a real good cook.  
11. What am I not very good at?  Starting big projects and finishing them.  [Ed.: To be clear, it's not the "starting" part that she's being critical of here...]    
12. What do I do for work?  Take care of your family.
13. What is my favorite food?  That's hard.  You eat a lot of foods when I'm not around.  Sushi maybe? 
14. What do you like to do with me?  Projects.  Like art or sewing.  And cooking.

Whew, domestic much, Kate?  That last answer of Georgia's was influenced by recency I'm afraid.  We had just finished sewing a button on a cloak that she insisted on creating for wearing to a friend's fairy-themed birthday party; however, this project was a rarity.  Most sewing in this house still consists of minor repairs that are delegated to Joe.  

So, there you go.  I'm dipping my toes back into the waters of blogging with an entry that wrote itself.  Baby steps, but I have to blow the rust off somehow.  Thanks to those of you who faintly heard this tumbleweed blowing by and clicked over to read it.  Leave me a comment if you have a moment; the dopamine sensors in my brain have been trained by years of Facebook and Instagram use to expect it.  Grrrr.... (Now there's a meaty topic for a different day.)  

I'm off now to go throw some balls in the air and catch them.  Or maybe start organizing a drawer that I will never finish.