Party Time!

We had a very busy week last week, mostly because we had so much to do to get ready for Jacob's party.  As you'll recall, last year we had so much going on all summer that Jacob's party ended up being in October, which is pretty much unacceptable, but was essentially unavoidable if we wanted any shot of getting a reasonable amount of family here.  Most of June was overtaken by lacrosse, and between family reunions, two bridal showers, one baby shower, two weddings, one baptism, and the cousins' sports schedules, there were simply no weekends where we could have pulled it off with any reasonable amount of attendance.  And with his hoop finally in his possession, all he dreamed about was being able to play basketball with his cousins.  So we finally got around to it in October.

Clearly that was going to be unacceptable this year, so we did everything we could to get it as close to his birthday as possible.  The weekend after ended up not working out, but this weekend--Saturday specifically--looked good all around, so we locked it in!  The only problem is that this week was my crazy week at work prior to the end of the fiscal year on June 30, and time off was generally frowned upon.  I took a half day for the last day of school, and that was all I could really risk.  But having the party on Saturday meant that our prep time would be minimal.  I set the party time at 3:00 to give us max time that day, but given that our anniversary was Friday and my parents were nice enough to stick around after watching Carter on Friday so we could go out to dinner alone, we didn't have a lot of time Friday night either.  But last weekend I did a ton of yard work and some dusting, and over the course of the week Craig did a lot in the yard, too.  It was a constant struggle all week to keep the house picked up, especially because of the avalanche of year-end stuff coming home from school.  I shopped on Thursday and picked up some final cake decorating stuff on Friday at lunch.  I finally did some final bathroom cleaning and vacuuming on Saturday, along with cake decorating, after staying up late enough Friday to get both layers baked and start on early assembly.  It was a struggle, but I kept telling myself it's always worth it to have family time!

As for the cake...Originally we were considering a Raptors' jersey, but then when they won the championship I figured, "How often do you get to integrate your team's championship trophy into your cake design?"  Usually it's pretty rare (Knighthawks and Golden State Warriors aside), so I started hatching a plan.  Of course, Pinterest was absolutely no help this time, so I was really on my own.  The plan had a lot of challenges.  First, red frosting.  Making red frosting is nearly impossible.  I did it for Carter's Spider-man cake, but it was nearly impossible and it still looked a little pink.  After some Googling, I determined that Super Walmarts stocked cans of red Wilton frosting.  Of course, when I went to Walmart on Friday, it took me multiple tries to find it.  Not in the grocery baking section, not in the craft section, and not in the cake pan section.  I finally found it in the party supply section.  Second issue, gold trophy.  Aside from playing around with red and yellow food coloring to find the perfect mustard yellowish color, I wasn't sure what to do.  But then I found gold sprinkles in bulk at Joann, and found gold "color mist" in stock at Walmart, and figured between those two things we could create a gold trophy.  It would be a bit of an artsy take, but Jacob was on board.  Issue three, visual interest.  I was not going to try to build a trophy out of cake (gluten-free cake isn't trustworthy), or cut the cake (too much waste), or use fondant (just nope), so I wanted to think of something interesting to do with the cake.  The sprinkles would help, but when I realized I could bake a small portion to make the ball look round, that worked for me!  The end result wasn't quite as attractive as I would have hoped, but Jacob still liked it!

He originally didn't want his age on it (but I wanted it so it was easier to know which year I did it), so we compromised by paying tribute to his favorite players on the back of the cake!

The biggest challenges were the sprinkles and spray being completely impossible to work with.  The sprinkles rolled all over the place, and the spray was very hard to aim properly.  Too far out and it sprayed too wide and too light, too close and it wasn't even.  I also forgot to draw the lines on the ball and net before I did the first round of sprinkles.  Eventually I gave up on fixing the rogue sprinkles and spread them all over the cake like confetti.  In retrospect at that point I should have taken the shaker top off the sprinkles and just dumped and spread them, but I didn't want to make anything worse and it didn't occur to me until later.  Putting them on the ball was nearly impossible.  But I did rock getting side-by-side different colors of frosting without doing one color or another as a full crumb coat, so that was cool to figure out.

We ended up with a beautiful day for the party.  Around 80 and sunny, with a pleasant breeze.  And even better, we finally got the pool to a reasonably swimmable point.  It's not really clear, but it's clean and blue and warm.  Carter and my mom swam for hours on Friday and the kids had a blast in it yesterday, too.  We had a pretty limited crew for various reasons (my dad's family has a lot going on, and the teenage cousins had other plans), but we had a very nice group.

One funny little oddity from the day was that the house two doors down was hosting a wedding!  We could just see the ceremony from our yard...

They had a nice tent set up over their patio/deck that looked pretty at night with lights on, and they recently constructed some sort of shed/cabana so maybe that played a part as well.  It didn't last too long into the evening, though.  But it was funny to see them and hear the applause at the end!

True to this birthday so far, Jacob only had one gift to open.  He got some nice cash in his cards, which was good, but I think he was in the mood for real gifts!  We tried to explain he's tough to buy for, but whatever.  He did get a cool retro Raptors shirt, though!

We had a delicious meal and Jacob was very eager to get to his cake!

Yummy as usual!  After cake, the kids swam and the adults enjoyed the pleasant evening.  It's amazing how quickly the day goes when you're busy preparing and getting dinner up and running!  Everyone left by around 8:00, I think, and then I had about an hour of cleanup (mostly dishes).  It was still pretty light out at 9:15, and the boys were all settled in watching a movie, so I ran out to the pool for about 20 minutes of solo swimming.  I was afraid it might be too cool, but the water felt good pretty quickly and the bugs took a while to find me.  It was so peaceful.  Not as many fireflies as usual, but very nice.  It was a very busy couple days, so it was nice to get a few minutes to chill--even if every part of my body was completely exhausted!  Floating felt good, at least!

We were hoping for a fun family day of some sort today, but that got derailed by the unfortunate discovery of the disappearance of my work laptop.  We accidentally left the garage door open last night (since we were focused on the backyard) and I must have accidentally left my laptop on my car floor on Friday (it blends in to the carpet in a dark garage).  It was nowhere to be found when I went to do work this afternoon, and I even drove into work to make sure I didn't somehow leave it there.  The only other thing that appeared to be disturbed was the change in Craig's van, so it's possible it was just a quick job.  Lessens your faith in humanity, doesn't it?  It also took forever to hear from one of my bosses, so needless to say, I was not in a great mood today.  I'll hopefully feel better after figuring things out a bit more tomorrow.  The cops are on it, but most likely it won't amount to anything unless they're stupid enough to pawn it.  Sh**.

So, onward to a new week.  Apparently my two days at work won't be as productive as planned.  Carter starts camp #1 tomorrow, and is super excited to see his bestie.  We still have a trip to plan, starting as early as Wednesday, that will culminate in Watertown next weekend for our last lacrosse tournament.  Those plans will apparently be a little last-minute...or a lot.  We have thoughts, but will probably be relying on Hotwire or Priceline to do hotels as cheap as possible.  Probably will be a bit of a disaster, but we'll see!  I'm probably most annoyed that a weekend that started out great ended up so crappy.  Summer's too short to be grumpy. 😭

School's Out for Summer!

After at least a month of watching other people's kids finish school via Facebook and about three days of local friends posting their year-end pictures, on Wednesday our district finally finished up.  Jacob and Carter are done for the year!

For your entertainment, here are the before and after porch photos...

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

They're both definitely taller! Presumably they've learned a ton and become better people.  They both had great teachers.  Jacob wasn't sure about his at the beginning of the year (as usual), but once he got used to his sense of humor (and realized he hit the jackpot with very little homework), he loved his teacher.  Carter had a bit of an up-and-down year, but I think his teacher was a great fit and his report card was mostly good--just a couple things to work on.  Jacob's was probably his best yet academically, with maybe one thing he needs improvement in.

In true mom fashion I snapped a picture of Jacob walking into elementary school for the last time.  Next year is going to be a complete change--early wakeups for him taking the bus, a bigger school, new friends, a different class setup, uniforms, and so much more--so I'm trying to savor our last bit of normalcy before all of that comes flying at us in the fall. 

I actually got a little emotional in the car after this as I drove to work, because I started thinking about his first day of Kindergarten and where we were at emotionally the day we sent him off on the bus for the first time.

It was such a difficult phase for us, possibly the hardest time of my life, as he was in the early stages of his meltdowns and we just didn't know what was going on with him.  We were a mere couple weeks away from the out-of-the-blue, probable Celiac diagnosis--and oh yeah, Carter was showing signs of a rice intolerance at that point, so I was just a giant mess all around.  I felt like everything was spiraling out of control, and on top of it I had to send my kid off to school.  Thank God he'd already been in daycare for years, because the physical separation and socialization weren't really an issue like they would be for some parents, but knowing I was sending my kid with serious behavioral concerns into a new classroom setting, where there would be pressure on him to learn at a pace he was unaccustomed to, was absolutely terrifying.  Not all of my concerns were unjustified, clearly, as we had a very tumultuous year, but it really struck me Wednesday that his last day of elementary school sort of bookended a very difficult period for us.  Things are still hard, in different ways, but certainly not as traumatic as they were then.  Whether that's because things have calmed down or because we just got used to the challenge, I'm honestly not sure.  Probably a little of both, if I'm being honest. Kindergarten really did mark the "official" beginning to a lot of the challenges we've faced, if only because teacher concerns drove us to start evaluations to actually determine what was up.  We actually started therapy prior to school, out of sheer desperation, but hearing other people have so many concerns (as the daycare staff never really raised alarm--they just knew him and "got" him) really solidified the battle we had to fight.  Almost six years later, we've been through three different rounds of therapy, three years of medication, and way too many sibling battles to count.  Through it all Jacob has continued to do well academically, and by all indications he's just a regular kid...so I guess that should be counted as a win, right?  Regardless, we've come a long way, and Wednesday really brought that into focus.

So, now summer has begun.  Finally.  The weather was late, the end of school was late, and suddenly the kids are done, it's 87 degrees out, and the 4th of July is less than a week away.  And oh, we have vacation next week and haven't planned it yet.  Probably no passport, so it appears it will be stateside somewhere.  Jacob started camp yesterday, and Carter starts back at his old daycare on Monday.  One less lunch to pack for the next 10 weeks, and one added passenger for my daily commute.  Our new normal starts now.  We don't have a lot of plans, but hopefully we'll have a great summer nonetheless!

Ladies' Night

As you may recall, last month when Craig and I had our night out with his family to the fundraiser gala, I won two tickets to the Mixtape Tour concert in Buffalo.  The headliner was NKOTB, but I was more excited about the other acts--Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Salt-N-Pepa, and Naughty by Nature.  It's the perfect lineup for someone my age, as all of those acts peaked anywhere from the late 80s to the early 90s, right in the middle of my impressionable pre-teen years.  I figured out pretty quickly that Craig probably wouldn't have much interest in going, and after much consideration about who to take (I have many friends who were big NKOTB fans back in the day--how to pick?), I was thrilled when my sister-in-law Andrea was able to work it out to go.  We don't get to spend much time alone together, but we do have fun so I thought it would be a good excuse for a moms' night out!

After spending the afternoon with Jacob, I headed out to Buffalo, battled a ton of traffic, and finally met up with Andrea.  We headed downtown together.  Luckily it was a beautiful night so the walk from the parking lot in was perfect.  I even ran into two high school friends, which was nice!  We got inside, grabbed some food and a beverage, and eventually settled into our seats, which were awesome!  The first thing that struck me as we walked through the arena was that 95% of the crowd looked to be middle age women.  That wasn't surprising, but actually seeing it in person was striking.  The second thing that struck me is that the male significant others that tagged along were very brave indeed.

The concert began with a DJ tandem that remixed a bunch of 80s tunes and had the whole crowd singing along.  It was a little weird that the DJ had a bear costume on, but whatever...

Despite being the headliner, NKOTB came out first.  Like I said, I wasn't a huge NKOTB fan.  I had friends who were, so of course I knew their music, but I was never a fanatic.  The opening video showed a bedroom that I have a feeling many of the concert attendees could relate to--pink walls and NKOTB bedding--which I know at least one of my friends had!  I listened to them on the radio and no doubt watched some videos on MTV, and I definitely thought Joey McIntyre was the cutest, but that's about where it ended.  Still, I was looking forward to seeing them perform, almost as if it was a bucket list item I never knew I had!  I guess I'll just chalk it up to always being eager for a new experience!

I know I shouldn't have been surprised, but seeing them up there doing all of the same coordinated moves was...weird?  I get that boy bands are supposed to appeal to teenage girls with their good looks, smooth moves, and sweet voices, but what happens when those teenage girls grow up?  Apparently not much.  Women still screamed like teenagers.  NKOTB did an uncomfortable number of pelvic thrusts and gyrations.  They still made love to the camera.  They still made anyone they interacted with swoon.  But it was odd.  I mean, most (all?) of them are married, and one is gay, for Pete's sake.  I found myself laughing and shaking my head most of the time because some of it felt really ridiculous, but I'll admit that for pushing 50, they still had it.  Mostly, anyway.  Joey and Jordan could still sing like crazy, and the dance moves were good.  They were certainly entertaining, at the very least!

Joey

Donnie

My favorite part of the set was how the stage looked like a cassette tape, and usually they'd show the name of the current song on the bottom of the cassette, or sometimes just the performer's name.  Here's what it looked like for "Favorite Girl"...

They kept things interesting out in the crowd with confetti drops, streamer cannons, and a cell phone app that used phone flash lights to coordinate with the music or the mood.

Confetti!

Like I said, our seats were awesome!  I used the zoom but this is basically the view we had.

Does Jon Knight find it weird to sing about girls now?

The coolest part of the concert was that it was constant action.  Because there were two stages, it was easy for them to shift between acts seamlessly.  There was also a lot of crowd interaction because the performers could go out into the crowd to move between stages.  At one point the New Kids ended up on the small stage and up popped Tiffany on the main stage!  Seeing her sing the iconic "I Think We're Alone Now" was pretty cool.  She looked a little different and her voice might have deepened a bit, but she still had it!

Next up was Debbie Gibson, who was probably who I was most excited about!  I loved Debbie when I was a kid!  Heck, we even shared a birthday!  My Uncle Mark was actually a huge fan of hers, and I spent a good chunk of my early teenage years borrowing her CDs from him, including a long time after most people stopped listening to her!  Considering she's pushing 50, she looked pretty darn great!

Still has the hat...and such a fun dress!

The little stage was cool--it raised up, almost like a UFO, complete with exhaust!

Seeing Debbie was a thrill.  I never would have dreamed I'd have the chance to see her (or any of these folks, actually), but 30 years later, here we were!

Next up was Salt-N-Pepa!  I almost forgot how many good songs they had--Shoop, Whatta Man, Let's Talk About Sex, and of course, the one I have on my iPod, Push It!  They definitely still had it, as well.  They looked, moved, and sounded great!

NKOTB came out again, and this time did a bunch of crowd interaction--first from the small stage...

Then walking through the actual crowd.  They all ended up in a different section.  Donnie was particularly memorable as he kept taking people's beer and drinking it!  Between that and the gratuitous F-bombs, it was clear this wasn't a teeny bopper show any longer!

At one point they sand the song "Boys in the Band", which was a new release a couple years back with an absolutely hilarious video full of cameos.  Since it had a high school theme, I guess it made sense to have cheerleaders, which happened to be the Buffalo Bandettes, the Bandits' cheerleaders.  Good for them, eh?

Oh, and Donnie also liked to show off his muscles.  He ripped off his tank for this one.

Good for him?

I really only knew a couple Naughty by Nature songs, but "O.P.P." and "Hip Hop Hooray" were serious staples of my youth, so it was fun to see.  They had a ton of energy!

Incidentally, earlier in the day when Jacob asked me about the concert, I told him a little bit about it and he asked if there was any hip hop (his current preference).  I shared that, yes, there was some!  I played "Push It" for him from my phone, to which he sort of winced.  Then I pulled up "O.P.P.", and he nodded his head a bit, as if that was "real" enough hip hop for him.  The whole conversation cracked me up.

I was excited when Debbie came back out, particularly since she was with her piano.  "Foolish Beat" was cool enough...

...but the whole crowd went nuts when "Lost in Your Eyes" started.  And when Joey McIntyre came out to do it as a duet, it was pretty freaking cool!

My other highlight was seeing "Push It" live.  It was so awesome.  It's one of my running songs sometimes, so it's still near and dear to me, and seeing it like this was amazing!

At the end of the concert, NKOTB came out in bedazzled Bruins jerseys (daring in Buffalo!) and then were joined by everyone else.  It was quite a finale!

It was really a super fun show!  You know how life seemed simpler back then?  That was sort of the feeling I had during this concert.  The music was a throwback to a simpler time and made me miss that era even more.  Were the performances the best ever?  Not even close.  For being 30 years past their prime, everyone did great.  But certain performers were certainly not the same, and sometimes (like with those pelvic thrusts or the overly dramatic pauses during a couple NKOTB songs) it felt a little staged or forced.  But you know, none of that really mattered because it was just so fun!  Most of the crowd was there openly admitting to having been a crazy, teeny bopper fan 30 years ago, and I guess that just made it a safe place to let loose and unapologetically sing and dance like a bunch of kids.  It just made me smile!  I couldn't help but wonder, though, if there were moments during the show that the artists think to themselves, "I'm too stinking old for this!"  Or, with all of those dance moves, if they all get together after the show and distribute the Aleve to ease their aching bodies!  I guess we've all officially grown up!  

I'm so happy that I took a chance and bid on the tickets.  It was a fun night out with good company, and now I can always say I've seen all of these artists live!  If you would have told me 30 years ago that I'd be seeing any of them in concert as a full-blown grown-up, I'd have thought you were nuts.  But what a crazy, fun night it was!

Movin' On Up

We had a big couple days to finish off the week.  On Thursday Jacob turned 11, and on Friday both kids got a little closer to finishing off their respective milestone school years.

Jacob's birthday ended up being pretty low key.  The weather was terrible and his field trip to Seabreeze got postponed, so it was mostly a normal day.  I ended up missing out on my annual lobster night through work because I didn't want to miss Jacob's entire birthday.  The weather also ended up canceling lacrosse practice, which saved us a tough decision and ensured Jacob could have a normal birthday dinner.

Because he's had a pretty big couple months with the Raptors, including two trips to Toronto and a number of new shirts and souvenirs, he knew he wouldn't have much to open on his actual birthday.  In fact, he got only one gift...

A waterproof Bluetooth speaker--for when he plays basketball or is out at the pool

I snagged a selfie before we left for school, too...

He chose Outback Steakhouse for dinner, and very much enjoyed his steak and shrimp while peeking over the partition at the NBA Draft on the bar TVs.  We let him stay up a bit later since the next day wasn't a real school day, and that was about the extent of it.  His party is coming up next weekend, so a lot of this weekend has been spent getting the house ready for it.  Now if I could just figure out how to do his cake, that would be great!

Friday was a very busy day and started bright and early!  Carter had his Farewell Breakfast at school, so we were off to eat a snacky breakfast with his class at 8am.  Unfortunately, not a lot of people showed up, but we had a nice time with a few of his classmates and their parents.  We saw a very nice slideshow his teacher put together, and it sort of choked me up!  It was amazing to see all of the things they did all year long, and realize (despite my reservations about his reading and writing skills) how much he's learned this year.  After all the teacher drama last summer, it's hard to believe the year is already almost over!  How can my baby possibly be done with Kindergarten already?  

Showing off his bubbles from his teacher

After leaving him at school, I did some running around before meeting Craig at the high school auditorium for Jacob's 5th grade moving up ceremony!

They sang their school song to open up the program...

See that girl next to him?  He's known her since he was an infant at his first daycare, and you may recall him going to a couple of her birthday parties when they were little.  This was the only year they ended up in the same class.  

There were a bunch of awards handed out, and despite a large group of kids winning at least one, Jacob was not one of them.  I told him afterward that it was a little bit of a bummer because we know how smart he is and if he made more of an effort (beyond the bare minimum to do things just well enough), he could run circles around most of those kids.  He has always done well academically, so that he didn't even receive one of the academic awards was interesting.  But without them using real grades, I guess we have no real way of knowing why.  I told him he just needs to be a little more intentional about his interest and effort, and told him my goal for him is to win an award either by the end of 6th grade or by the end of 8th grade, depending on how his new school handles their awards.  I tried not to make a big deal of it, but it was a little tough seeing so many of his friends get them and not know what in particular led to him not getting even one.  He's certainly capable, so all I can figure is that it lies in them knowing his potential but knowing he's not doing it justice.

He finally got to walk the stage for his "graduation", and look!  A nice pair of shorts that are not athletic shorts!  (Yes, we had to go out and specifically buy them for this event.  Thank goodness we found a pair at the second store!)

The girls are looking at their class picture on the screen--they had one nice picture and one silly one!

They finished off the ceremony with the song "Hall of Fame".


And that was it!  Had to grab a shot of the guys before we split up for the day--Jacob and I went home, and Craig went to work.

Both kids now have 2-1/2 days left.  Jacob will be at Seabreeze tomorrow, his class picnic is on Tuesday, and I'll be picking both kids up before 11:30 on Wednesday.  Jacob starts camp the next day, and Carter will spend Thursday with Craig and Friday with my parents.  They'll both have a couple days of camp the next week before we potentially go off on a pseudo-vacation prior to Jacob's last lacrosse tournament.  No idea where yet, though hopefully my passport comes back soon so we can include Canadian destinations in our options!

But before all of that, I had one more exciting thing on tap for myself...