Out with old and in with the new

So enough about you, back to me because this is after all my blog. I have news yes, news that I can't stop thinking about! News, news, news! It's out with the old and in with the new for 2011! The house is sold, well at least in contract amigo. That's right the latest chapter in the always tumultuous life of the Bo's. And we have drum roll please.... found the house of our dreams, though honestly this house had never entered our city dwelling dreams in any form. As the thought of this family moving into a 101 year old monster of a house had not even occurred to us. I do happen to like old house's their history, I do, but owning one...well they don't tend to have jacuzzi tubs and walk in closets. And our new house is no exception to the rule. What it does have though is lots of bathrooms and doors. Doors everywhere, doors that lead you behind the walls in which you can exit by another door. This as you can imagine is a huge selling point for the kids. Not to mention (VBA (veiled brag alert)) a huge in the ground pool with a diving board and count 'em sister, 2 slides. Did you read that? Maybe you should read it again and maybe I should work on the veiled part of my VBA's.
I'm as enthralled as a teenager in love honestly. I can't wait to see the house again. Of course like any good romance their is the chance that it will all fall apart yet. We are merely dating not even engaged yet, which I think that going from accepted offer to "in contract" implies, don't you? I hope so I hope I am not just reading all the signals wrong. Ah the angst of finding the right one.
So what have I downloaded to my Kindle? (my poor Kindle had been the object of my affection only a week before, clearly eclipsing the strong feelings I once held for my droid, and though I still love them I fear that I am no longer "in love" with them. A book on interior design. Because, and not to beat a dead horse with a theme, like any good catch their is of course room for improvement.
So off to the races of home remodeling and decorating, as this house needs help and though I work had to keep negative thoughts like "money pit" and the "Adams Family house" out they do have a way of creeping in. But it does help me keep perspective because there are times when I daydream of my family's future in the house and I realize that in everyone, I am 20lbs lighter, with better hair, the kids are well behaved and engaged in book reading, piano playing and other Currier and Ives type of behavior. It is true that I told Steve that we should call the rooms by the proper names like the "salon" or the "gaming parlor" . This from a girl who for a full 6 years couldn't stop calling the entrance way the lobby, after moving from Manhattan to the boroughs.
So follow along the trials of tribulations of our latest adventure, next week: pictures!

Thank you commenters!

I don't want to blow my cover and reveal my airheadness to the world, but I never knew anyone left a comment. I thank all of you who did from the bottom of my heart. I never imagined that anyone besides my loyal niece Bethanie and my brother who pointed out my grammatical and spelling errors ( I try to pass them off as typos). Though I believed this was my harsh reality, in my escapist fantasy mode I do like to imagine that I am a world famous author that everyone cannot wait to here from! So thanks for feeding my always hungry ego by reading my little blog!

Thank you for your comments Alexa, Stacy, Nana, Lucy, Courtney, the Town Criers and Rachel from Someday is Now, her blog is Ma Juenesse and just to be sure she is much cooler than me!

times they are a-changin's

Well what a difference 3 years can make, when all of the kids were small, I thought that was my life, though I knew they would grow, having so many little kids was just a fact I mean it was 7 years of having a lot of little kids. Ahhh but alas they did grow and now I have 5 elementary kids. And though I am reasonably sure that one day I will have 5 HS age kids, I feel so wrapped up in this that it seems that these times could never change. And honestly just like when they were littler I would be cool with that. It is hectic and sometimes stressful, but it is a full and interesting life. I have learned much more about areas, perimeters, density, handwriting and history then I ever thought possible. I take magical train rides with Santa, tour caverns, and battle ships, breakfast with Santa, ice skate, sing Christmas carols, study religion, read the classics like Oliver twist, Huckleberry Fin, Desperaux, and My Side of the Mountain not to mention, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and 3 Billy Goats Gruff. And honestly most of this I did in the month of December which will only scratch the surface of interesting new things my kids will show me this month.

I know it is corny but in all honesty I wanted to have kids so I could share with them some of the things I love in this world, I would actually picture me walking hand in hand with a kid and pointing to a great monument in some unidentified but wonderful city and we would be happy. As it turns out they are really bringing a lot of the world to me where we both learn something, but at least the happy part still stands!

Now some of the latest gems

Cara you shouldn't give mom a hard time, you and mom are BFF friends! -Mark
She looked me correctly in the eyes-Cara

I'm not gonna put this finger in the air (thumb) its the bad guy finger- no its not- oh then this one (index finger) - no not that one- then which one is the bad guy finger?- Mark

that was a half bath-leaving Aunt Ruth's bathroom -Matthew

how much are you gonna offer them- leaving a house hunting- mark

That belt represents all my hard work and training - describing his white Tae Kwon do belt after promotion to yellow belt- Christopher

How about this, if Mark has a problem I'll call you -after I called Matt's cell phone to check on Mark,disrupting
his kick ball game.

Who will be the mommy in my family?- Micheal

How do you find the person you will Marry? - 3 years ago Matthew

Halloween

Well the highest of holidays have come and gone once again. This revered celebration and the boon of party cities everywhere was a three day event. Parties and junk food in abundance. Unfortunately Mikie was down with Scarlet Fever. So crazy right, sounds as archaic as the Black Plague. So he and I slept much of the holiday away (sympathy sleeping on my part, I am a dedicated momma)

The house looked great, scary music, five jack o' laterns lining the walk, and of course the remote control rat...gets them everytime. Matthew won a mummy contest at one party as evidenced by the pictures above. The boys even told some great Halloween jokes at their den meeting.

The insessent house shopping also continues. I was impressed when Matthew commented that his Aunt Ruth's bath was a half bath, but to top this is Mark with, "this is the trap, the sewer trap", and "what should we offer them for this place?" I mean he is five!

On to the rest of this great holiday season!

advent calanders

Yes it is only October 1st, but it is on my mind. Maybe it is because my forward planning mind has forced, okay he is bigger than me, so forced maybe the wrong word but I don't' like nagged Steve into ordering the costumes for the Most Reverent Holiday Ever so early that I can begin nagging, I mean reminding Steve and everyone else about the next Most Reverent Holiday ever. I've always like advent calenders. I remember loving this ritual and even past college my great and by that I mean fantastic aunt sending me an advent calender in the mail. A reminder of tradition, when I was far from it life wise.
Now I see wooden advent caladers which, I'm not sure about, I mean one advent for all 5: I usually get two one for each "set" Plus I used to love seeing all of the designs a reminder of Christmas like the smell of tape, that wrapped each present.
In the past I have experienced what the young might term Epic Failure in the terms of decent advent calenders. Okay not all true last year I got the ones with chocolate from the dollar store. Really I had found them two years ago and bought four of them. Oh there it is i served them all one year old chocolate for advent, and they were ugly. Not the chocolate it wasn't ugly the calenders were, must I clarify everything?

Okay so I would like to make a strong showing this year. Where can I get not permanenet advent calenders? Besides the dollar store people. Now It is early but when I lived on the UES ther was a German deli that would have them and be sold out early, and as a single twenty something early may have been December 24Th, who knows, but here I am now, all grown up and hoping to score the kids a good Advent Calendar. So where do you get these?

Virgina is for Lovers, how awkward is that?

Virginia is for Lovers! How awkward is that motto? People drive around with that on bumper stickers on their cars. Well now I can now say that I am a lover of Virginia. Yes. Yes I am.


The week managed to move forward in much the same way it began. Generally getting up each day to face down another day of fun. The kids were awesome and now we were able to ride so many rides with all of us! How fun is that? I did not spend the days sitting outside of kiddie rides watching the triplets twirl around in cars, helicopters, boats, motorcycles, planes, and various animals. No they were ready for big kid water slides and amusment park rides. Another pleasant suprise was Busch Gardens itself. Certainly not 6 Flags it was actually pretty!

Separated into countries with rides, shows, restaurants and stores in each. We ate at the ale house a huge space and a cute show. However the best of Germany was DarKastle. Off to Ireland for a great step dance show, which minutes before the start brought our own Christopher out of obscurity in a crowd of about 1,000 to center stage!

We had some great rides and Christopher hit his first ever roller coaster the Lock Ness ( which I edit to say he went back again for another turn on our return visit) , Matthew could not find a ride scary enough as even the roller coasters failed to make him hesitate! Steve and I could have shopped the cute stores for hours, but rushed in an out we did manage to purchase 3 light sabors and 2 traditional swords.

Water country USA was empty. No lines run up to any ride and on. We had a great time once Mark and Mike got there sea legs. Cara needed no transition and was seriously on the scariest rides notably the rampage. I will add that as I waited a mom and I got to talking. I told her that my 5 year old girl was on the ride. She looked at me like I was dirt and said " I would never let my 5 year old on that ride, and promptly ended an other wise nice conversation. Thats the great thing about being a mom, everyone cares deeply about your decisions. Eventually 4/5 kids tackled this monster ride, as Mike made his way on during our return trip.

Coming back to the condo for dinner was relaxing. The kids out of wet clothes and into PJ's for a quick pasta dinner, some TV and bed.

And this trip so far was voted either better than or the same amount of fun as the revered Myrtle Beach trip. this is impressive indeed.

Luck

Do you think that your luck can change? Or that there is anything called luck at all? I am not a big believer of luck, as the child of protestant Midwesterners, I was brought up in the "boot strap" philosophy, closely in line with the "you make you own luck" philosophy. But I actually felt my luck change this week and stay good for days (well 2 days thus far) things you can't control for.

Okay so to the beginning and a long ago planned vacation, which would have been swept under the carpet if we hadn't paid in advanced. We would have sold ourselves on the always disappointing staycation. Because it is the reasonable and good thing to do, when you are trying to sell you home, have 5 kids to raise and responsibilities to meet. But like I said we paid ahead.

So off we set accompanied by too much preparation, expectations, anxiety, tediousness, yelling and frustration.

First stop, NJ turnpike for some nourishment. Crowded, bad food, excited kids, tired parents. Not an illustrious beginning. So where is the change in luck? The silver lining you are waiting for so expectantly?

Here it is: We can't make it to Williamsburg VA before dinner. Another stop. I'm still sick from the last meal (which after so much time, fast food still looks tempting on the menu). Steve pulls off. What? the sign said the there was a MCD's but no. Nothing just picnic tables and bathrooms. But ya know we packed food for the condo. So a picnic was had. And it was good, and the kids ran. And we didn't need to keep counting them. And the moods lifted.

We made our way to Williamsburg pull into the condo development AKA Williamsburg Plantation. And it was pretty. We had gotten a good deal which can mean a bad place. So we were nervous. But open the door and wow it is pretty big, two beds, two baths. with a sauna, whirlpool, fireplace, deck, backyard, full kitchen, dinning room ,and living room. Clean, nice.

Its late we sleep. The next day is for organizing our week, and a haunted dinner, with finesse the triplets are free. This is a meal that would have cost them 30 bucks a piece. For what, a plate of mac n' cheese and a few rolls? So a good start.

Is this luck or what? No, just the beginning. We want to hit the major attractions but with 7 people pricey. But Steve, the smart guy, surfs the Internet and Viola. The most unbelievable deal on an unlimited 7 day pass for all of us. This mean Busch Gardens, Water country USA and Colonial Williamsburg.

Has our luck changed? I don't know. We had a rough time. It was hard so many little ones, the endless au pairs, ya know life. Could this be an upturn? I can't help but feel like that it might mean the beginning of enjoying a more ordinary life. One of simple pleasures and more breathing room.

I try not to cause its silly, but think maybe its all a good omen, a fresh start. and so close to the brink of buying a new house. It feel like, well like a change in our luck