Wednesday and Thursday

Ich brauche eine pause. Translation: I need a break. Things have just been busy. Busy is good. Busy is also tiring. I want a day where we have to do nothing and go no where. No cleaning, no driving, no picking up clothes and toys, no laundry, no whining, no dishes, no cooking, no whining, no folding, no washing, no wiping, and no whining. That to me is the celestial kingdom in a nutshell. But for now, I will keep in constant motion. Yesterday, Mason hung out at Amy's while I went to German. Which is getting harder and harder. Curses to the stupid doctors who told my mom to stop speaking German to me. After German I took Mason to get mail, where I found two packages returned to me that I had just mailed on Monday to Sean. First thought: The postal police caught me sending clothes to the Afghanis. Oops. WRONG! I was just silly and wrote the wrong zipcode on them. Oops. Hope I didn't do that to all the packages I sent out. We will see. Then Mason and I headed over to the middle school for an awards assembly. Jaxon is on the honor roll and there was a big assembly honoring all the kids who earned good GPA's. Honestly, I wasn't gonna go. There were a ton of kids getting an award, I didn't think it was a huge deal, and Jaxon said not to worry about it, but Christy went and told me I should go, so off we went. Plus, I thought it might provide me with a good opportunity to embarass Jaxon somehow. What cute pet name could I shout out to him? He came in the auditorium along with scores of other seventh graders, and I finally caught his attention. I gave him a big smile and wave. He looked shocked. His eyes got huge and he shook his head fervishly. Translation: Not cool MOM! I'm with my friends. Don't acknowledge me.
Well, that made me want to embarrass him even more. But then I realized that one day, he may be deciding which assisted living home I end up in, so I was nice and no longer tried to stare him down and smile. We waited for him to get his award and clapped loudly when he received it. Here he is among the masses going up to the stage and receiving it:

Here's Mason waiting patiently for the assembly to start:

Then we walked over to Ella's class to make sure she got to the flagpole alright. Today was her first day of pre Girl Scouts: Daisies. Every 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Wednesday of the month she will meet her Daisy troop at the elementary school flag pole, walk over to the girl scout hut, and have a cool meeting. She was soooo excited to start today. We were all invited at the end of the meeting for a special ceremony, kind of like an induction ceremony. They got a certificate and lit a candle, all held hands and sang something like Cumbaya. Here's Ella during the ceremony:



And here's Mason and Colton at BK using their kids' meals toys as forks to spear their french fries:


SO, Thursday is German at my house day. We had three ladies show up to practice German. We actually did pretty well for a good hour before we broke down and just started talking about pregnancies and kids. Mason has been, well, a bit difficult these past few days. We are probably doing too much and need to just slow down and spend more time together at home. Here's Mason starting off his Thursday:

I could have taken at least 5 more pictures of him today just like this one, but at different locations and times. He had a beautiful temper tantrum at the commissary, all because he wouldn't say please for some water. And, if you happen to be the commissary baggers and checkers who kept trying to get him to stop crying, you obviously don't have kids of your own since you don't realize that talking to kids while they are throwing a huge temper tantrum doesn't work. Trying to get them to smile and poking fun at them, doesn't work. Asking them "What's wrong?" doesn't make the 3 year old stop his insistent crying and fussing to explain in detail the reasoning behind his fit. It just ticks him off even more. Just sayin'. So, Mason didn't have the best day today. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I know it will be for me. My cleaning lady is coming at 9am. Woo Hoo. Here's a good picture to end on. Ella's diva fashionista self coming through as she bundled up to take the boys to piano tonight: