When am I old Enough?

There have been lots of discussions this past week in the Royal house about age. And when someone is old enough to do something. Okay. Really, they’ve all centered on Hope. She is now in 4th grade and will be 10 in a few short months. And I am amazed. I won’t go on and on here about how the time has flown, but it really has!

The latest conversation is “When am I old enough to walk home from school?” But, as I’ve been pondering the question, I think it really boils down to me. Hope is ready. Her school is right down the block (seriously, I could stand in front of our house and watch her walk most of the way). She even has a sister to keep her company and lots of other kids who would cross the street at the same place—not to mention the crossing guard.

So the question really is, “When am I going to let her walk home without me?”

And I still don’t know the answer.

As I think back to myself at her age, there are some major differences. I was a very independent and responsible child. In fact, looking back, I was too responsible. And most of it was my own doing. Hope’s personality is so much like me that it’s often scary. And I try to protect her from herself more often than not.

But am I doing her any favors? Am I protecting her or am I protecting me?

Have I told you how hard it is to be a parent?

More Learnings from the Laundromat

Yep, we are still without a washer and it looks like it may be a while before we get one. Not a bad thing, really. Just inconvenient at times. But, oh, so nice to get all my laundry done in a 2 hour period and not have to worry about it the rest of the week (unless you send your daughter to soccer practice in the wrong uniform because you didn’t read the email…grrr).

The girls now think the Laundromat is a fun place to go. They seriously beg me to be able to go with me. And I make them help fold, so they are working (even when one is folding and the other is sliding it down the table so that it is all messed up by the time it gets put on the pile). So, Saturday night, I let them go with me—even though they would be up a little later than I would have liked them to be.

Here are some of the things I learned this time around:

• There are big lessons you can teach about sharing and treating others the way we want to be treated. Especially when they try to “hog” all the baskets and feel the need to guard a whole side of a table so nobody else can use it.

• It’s much easier to teach my girls kindness toward other people than toward each other. They love to help people by opening the doors when they have a full load--even when they are fighting over who's gonna do it.

• No matter where you, there will always be rude people. You can choose whether you want to let them affect your experience.

• When the triple load machine that has all your soccer clothes, pants you wanna wear the next day and most of your hubby’s good clothes doesn’t work, but the door locks and you have to wait 32 minutes for it to finish before you can move them to another machine, it’s a great lesson in patience.

• Your kids will notice the way you talk to the employee—whether he’s being effective at his job or not.

• Using the change machine is almost as good as a video game

• When strangers comment on how well your girls get along (even when they are running, being way too loud and not focusing on the task at hand) it makes you re-evaluate the ultimate goal of doing laundry together

As crazy as it sounds, I think I’m gonna miss taking them to the Laundromat with me in the coming weeks (I’m gonna have to do it while they are in school). They make me crazy and every time I leave there, it usually ends with me talking in the “mean voice.”

But then I reflect on the entire experience and I realize that crazy as it sounds, these will be some of their favorite memories of time together when they grow up. My challenge is to get out of the momentary task at hand and be willing to see the big picture.

Neatly folded clothes are not as important as giggling girls.

Consistency Ain't Easy, Folks

Consistency is hard. I think it’s the most difficult thing for me as a parent. It’s so much easier to change the way I do things—I like to call it “adapting” and being “flexible.”

But really, most of the time, I’m just being lazy. I don’t want to enforce the new chore system, or schedule or rule about watching TV during the week. I want a break, so I “give in.” It’s something that all parents are guilty of at one point or another.

And the first step is always the hardest. For example, I came home last night, utterly exhausted. Thankfully, Brian brought me some dinner left over from his date night with Caroline, so I didn’t have to cook anything—I just had to warm it up in the microwave (which I’m still convinced is tied with the dishwasher for the best invention ever for a mom who works outside the home).

So I ate. And when I was done, I just put my plate in the sink. The dishes in the washer were clean and I didn’t want to unload it. My plate wasn’t alone in the sink—there were a couple of cups, a bowl and some silverware.

This morning, when I went into the kitchen, the entire side of the sink was filled. Guess I wasn’t the only one who didn’t feel like unloading the dishwasher. And, since there were already a few things in the sink, it made it easier for everyone else to add to the pile.

If I would have taken the time to empty the dishwasher last night, rinsed my dirty dishes and put them in there, my job this morning would have been much simpler. Instead, I still emptied the dishwasher and now filled it back up with dishes that others would have put in there themselves if they had not seen a sink–full of dirty dishes.

I’m not doing anyone any favors by being inconsistent—not myself and especially not my girls. But it doesn’t make it any easier. Or exciting. Consistency is rather boring.

But, God calls us to it. Jesus modeled it. I think it would have been so much easier for Him to just hang out with his 12 friends—they didn’t “get” it anyway, so why keep telling them? Why not just enjoy the time with them? Seriously, this is the man who turned water into wine--think of how much fun they could have had if He had gotten off-course of His purpose for being here.

He didn’t do that. And while His role of teaching the masses and saving the world was and is so much more important than my dirty kitchen, I think the same concept still applies.

Consistency isn’t easy, but it’s what He is calling me to at this moment.

First Day of 2nd and 4th Grade

I'm a creature of habit. I like things to stay the same. I also get stuck in a rut. Seriously—I could eat the same meal for lunch and dinner every day for a week before I was sick of it.

So, while I am sad summer is over, I am glad to be able to get back into some kind of routine. To know that my girls are learning something since their loser mom didn’t really make them read much or do multiplication facts at all over the summer. Just one more reason why I don’t home school—my kids would sooo be the dumb ones if I had to be the one to teach them. We’d start out looking something on the computer and end up on YouTube watching Tim Hawkins’ videos all day. Really. That’s what we did for over an hour tonight instead of doing anything productive, but they now know most of the words to “Fire Ants.” Lovely.

I am not great at capturing memories on film. And if I do, the quality is so poor that I might as well have just enjoyed the moment instead of trying to take a good pic.

BUT, I make my kids pose in front of the school sign every year. Hope hates it. Even Caroline has decided it’s not cool. Thankfully, there were other kids being humiliated by their parents doing the same thing, so I didn’t have to argue too loudly and was able to snap a quick one.

And since you probably can’t see it from the distance, Hope’s shirt says, “Hope.” She wanted to make sure her teacher would remember her name. And Caroline talked me into one of those shirts with the dye that smells like food. So she was going around all day asking people to smell her shirt. Yep...I don't think anyone will forget either of my girls very easily.

It was the Summer of 2012

Summer will officially be over at midnight. School starts tomorrow and I now have a 2nd grader and a 4th grader. This was a good summer. It didn’t feel too long or too short—it was just right for the Royals.

Here are some of our highlights:

We jumped right into Fine Arts Day Camp our 1st week after school was out. Hope was Snow White

Caroline was a Minstrel

We went to a Royal family reunion in Gruene, Texas and floated the Comal River one day—such fun!

We took an extra day to go to San Antonio so the girls could see the Alamo for the first time.

Brian did some work at the farm for Granny, so the girls went with him and stayed for a couple of weeks.

I joined them to watch fireworks from the roof on the 4th. So sad that the pic came out too dark to show how much fun this was.

The girls spent a lot of time at their Mimi’s. Each Wednesday, she volunteers at a local pet store and the girls were able to go with her—this was always a highlight.

We went to a wedding in Oklahoma and stayed another night with Granny. Hope took pics of us in our “dress clothes” but she only got head shots.

We went to Hawaiian Falls with friends and got really burnt because I let the girls put on their own sunscreen

And, we ended the summer with snow cones from our favorite place—The Snow Cone Lady.

No big family trips this year. No big camps either. Just a simple summer. But a good one.

Like Father, Like Daughter

The other night, we were at dinner and Caroline did this:

Yep, it’s a roll that she hollowed out and put on her nose. There was something vaguely familiar about this.

Oh, yeah—here’s a pic of Brian around the same age:

He used a pickle.
Like father, like daughter.

Things I learned from the Water Park

…if you’re not around when your 9 year old and her friends are hungry, that won’t stop them from helping themselves to lunch

…if you take your eyes of your kids, they’ll feed their animal crackers to the birds
…ice cream makes everything better
…there are places that will still give you free ice water
…Hope + wave pool and a tube = happy 9 year old
…Caroline + lazy river = happy 7 year old
…it's always more fun with friends

…when a bird poops on your daughter’s towel, she will take yours
…there’s no such thing as packing too many snacks
…7 year old girls still hold hands when they are running off to play
…when you allow your children to put on their own sunscreen, they will more than likely get burned
...this is what you get at the end of the day: