Taking the Scenic Route

The car wouldn’t start for a while yesterday and had some odd gauge readings, so we called my Dad to help with some troubleshooting on the car. Zora was, of course, wanting to be part of the action.

It has seemed to work just fine since the repair, so it seems it was successful. Yay us!

There are times in life, more frequently than I would have imagined, that I think “kids are weird”. Zora caused that to run through my brain today. She took my backstratcher and very carefully and intently taped a red magnet to it. She carried it around all day, claiming it was “a present for Oma”, wanted her princess wrapping paper so that she could give it to her for her birthday (which isn’t until the end of July, btw, so it isn’t like we were talking about her birthday). Huh? Yeah, kids can be really weird. Sweet, but weird.

Once a month there is a meetup for parents who have kids with Autism. It is a great group and we always have a good time blowing off steam and giving each other the local scoop on autism services. Sometimes it is just a small group, sometime we are a much bigger group, just depends on weather and whats going on. This group is a sanity saver for me.

Mom came up again today (the kids are being spoiled, they have seen Grandma (and usually Grandpa) almost every day since Saturday for one thing or another. Today it was Grandma who came up to watch them while Zach and I went to the dentist. She also took them to Speech Therapy, and then to the McDonalds play yard to burn off some energy, then back to the house to play some more while we finished up some errands. (it was almost weird for us to go out together on mundane tasks. It was the first time we have walked into Dillons together, without kids, since I was pregnant with Zane.)

The saga began the day before Christmas. I made toffee to give as gifts to my family, and another batch to send to family living at a distance with the photos that didn’t come in until right before Christmas. That batch of toffee was sitting there waiting for me to have the funds to mail it, and then Zach lost his job and I realized I had 3 pounds of toffee on my hands and no way to get it to the intended recipients.

I can’t eat it, and I don’t really want it fueling my children, and was debating what to do with it since the local recipients already had a bunch of toffee from my first batch. Some online friends suggest I hold a short auction on it at the parenting forum I participate in (and where the recipe came from), and since the toffee still looked beautiful and Zach confirmed that it still tasted great, I did. I pulled it out to start boxing it up and saw this —->
The chocolate bloomed and had that funky looking white stuff on it. AAACK! So, when the bidding was done and the paypal in my account, I ran to the store to get stuff to make more for the generous winners. So, they will get fresh toffee, but now I have UGLY toffee that I am not sure what to do with again…maybe take it to the University again…there is a new batch of students, and college students might not care as much that is is ugly.

Making the new batch:

mmm…still warm.

And I can not tell you the monumental amount of restraint it took to keep from licking the spoon. (but last time I ate some of this toffee I totally obsessed and craved it MASSIVELY for over a week, and I don’t want to do that again.)

When you are babysitting a 6yo boy who wants to play the Star Wars Lego game on the Wii, be able to name all of the Star Wars characters and you will see a look of amazement and “How do you know who they are?!?”

I ended up playing with him after Zane got tired of playing. Zora wants to play but isn’t great at it, and Zach was helping transfer old files to my parent’s fixed computer while they waited, so he couldn’t play with him. I am not fabulous at the game, but apparently, I impressed him anyway. lol.

Zach laid down for a nap. Zora isn’t feeling very well and crawled on him to snuggle, and 10 minutes later I looked over to see this cuteness.

Later, after the nap, Zach took her to the video store. We had confirmation that she has nerdy genes, when amongst all the princess and girly movies, she insisted on this one:

I spent several hours, over the last two days, trying to untangle two slinkies. 15 minutes later, I see this. Now it is two slinky’s + a table leg. ACK!

A seriously bad virus and/or trogen infected my parent’s computer and they brought it up today so Zach could work on it some more. They brought us yummy Three Brother’s BBQ while Zach worked to find out if was a quicker fix or an overnight stay. After working on it for a while, he decided to do a complete reinstall, so it is staying here for the night. Robert is here too, so it gives him some company while he deals with it.

The kids were thrilled to see them again so soon, and Zora kept her Oma occupied the whole time they were here.

My cousin’s son got married today. Zora thought it was a prince and princess during the ceremony and was craning her neck to watch. Zane behaved reasonably well, although he did actually resort to reading the boring stuff on my Kindle for a bit. When they clapped after introducing the couple, he started doing the “WooHoo” sound and I had to clamp my hand over his mouth and whisper loudly “just clap, no shouting”, before it got up to full volume. lol.

Zach ended up running out to my parent’s farm to save a totally pooched computer during the first part of the reception (he was just not really feeling up to all the social stuff and told me later that the trip out to the farm, and the utter silence out there, was probably the best thing he could have done. Well, except the owl family that startled him a few times. lol.)

Zora made friends with all the other kids there and just had a ball dancing and running around with the crew of kids. She slow danced with another, taller girl, and it was so cute watching them try and dance like the grown ups. The DJ had all the kids come out in a circle and do all those goofy wedding dances, with the bride and some other grownups that joined in. Even Zane joined the fun and danced around, often joining the other kids. There was a girl after him that kept trying to get him to dance with her, and he actually did sometimes. He loved the flashing lights too.

It was one of the first weddings I have been to in a loooong time that I could actually eat some of the food. Usually people drown everything in sauces and dressings, all of which are dangerous to somebody with an onion allergy. Here, they had plates of veggies (including colored peppers, which I LOVE) and had ham and turkey sandwiches with no dressing on the actual sandwiches (yay!). Zane actually ate an entire bowl of chili too, which amazed and thrilled me. (he has only very recently started to actually eat chili…for years he has just dipped crackers in it and eaten the crackers, so I was happy to see him pick up the spoon after his crackers were gone and actually eat the bowl of chili). It was fun to eat at the wedding instead of just starving the whole time watching everybody else eat. Although I do wish I could have eaten some cake, because it was beautiful and looked so yummy, but after the “just one bite” at Christmas time leading to weeks of fighting carb cravings, I decided I wasn’t up to that again.

With the kids entertained by the dancing and goofing around, I actually had a chance to catch up with several cousins that I haven’t been able to actually stand around and talk to in ages. That was really nice. I couldn’t believe how grown up some of the “kids” were either…they are all still little in my brain, but here they were, in their early 20s, some even having drinks. Life is really a blink, and it is going faster and faster as time goes on.

I did actually bring my camera with me, but the batteries died as I was taking my first picture, so I only got a few blurry cell phone pictures (I have an old cell phone, so I didn’t even try when the lights went down).

The whole wedding was really beautiful, and we had a very nice time. Both of the kids came home exhausted and ready for bed, so that was a bonus too.

eta: the picture I got on my regular camera.

And, new pictures trickle in on facebook.