It’s almost June. It’s almost the end of the school year. It’s almost the end of Cubs Scouts, Girl Guides, Activity Days, Choir and SCHOOL! Everything is winding down which leaves room for us to wind up our time at the park or time spent in the mountains. I can’t wait to throw on my hiking shoes (note to self, by hiking shoes) and traipse across the mountain tops with my little family.

Before we can begin our summer excursions we need to tie up loose ends with all our school related activities. The first of those being Jocelyn’s choir. They had their year end recital this week and they did an amazing job. We didn’t take any videos this time so I can’t show you how talented these kids are but I do have pictures from after the recital.

There is a park behind the church where the kids performed and it was such a beautiful day that we stayed at the park until after 9:00! We can be real wild parents sometimes. Letting the little ones stay up that late. I’m surprised no one called the cops on us!

I don’t know if you can tell but we had a lot of fun. I love the warm weather. Maybe we should move somewhere that has climate like this more often. Chuck? Chuck?

Neil Patrick Harris is on Glee tonight and although I don’t talk about television on my blog I thought I would pass along my favorite Neil Patrick Harris performance.

Ever heard of Dr. Horrible? If you have you’re probably holding your sides and uncontrollably laughing right now!

Joss Whedon, the man behind Buffy, Angel and Firefly. I wasn’t ever a watcher of Buffy or Angel but I loved Firefly. Anyway, Joss Whedon did a project with some great people called Dr. Horrible Sing a Long Blog and posted it on Youtube. It was a huge cult classic immediately and is one of my secret (not anymore) pleasures. Since I love you all so much I thought that I would pass on the hilarity and point you to the Sing a Long Blag because everyone should enjoy a good sing a lon, don’t you think?

Act 1 Part 1

Act 1 Part 2

Act 2 Part 1

Act 2 Part 2

Act 3 Part 1

Act 3 Part 2

Often I find that although my instinct is to do, say or believe one thing my habits keep me going in the other direction. One of my instincts is to believe that children, left to themselves, will amaze us at what they are capable of. I really do believe that and yet I worry sometimes about how involved I make myself with my kids’ day to day interactions and activities.

My kids don’t need me meddling and getting involved. In fact, I believe that if I let them follow their own direction they might even sail solo across the world. It sounds crazy but a 16 yr old teenager just did it and landed in Sydney last year. Her name is Jessica Watson and she has been sailing since she was 8. She told her parents that she wanted to sail around the world and they had enough faith in her to let her go. They helped get her prepared, supplied and sponsored even!

She has a blog where she wrote all along the way and you can see that here.

I find this so amazing and in a small way predictable. I know that kids can do jaw dropping stuff. In all the interviews Jessica’s mother sounds not the least bit surprised because she really did know that Jessica would pull this off.

Makes me wonder what my kids will do.

Medical TV shows aren’t my favorite. I am not a die hard ER or Grey’s Anatomy fan but I’ve seen enough episodes to have felt ready to lay inside one of those enormous machines. So when I went for an MRI yesterday I felt prepared. I’ve seen people talk with the technician while going through their scan and I’ve seen that they have what looks like space enough to move around, although you don’t move around while getting an MRI. My point is that I was ready.

It turns out that I was about as ready as someone who feels that watching A Baby Story is enough to prepare for giving birth. That’s about how different my experience was from what I’d seen. It wasn’t a bad experience but it was different. The craziest thing was the ginormous (yes, that’s a word) headphones he told me to wear and not take off. Apparently getting an MRI is loud! I couldn’t move a muscle and I was a little nervous when the bed started to move into the machine and I got a better idea of what a cramped space it is.

Right above my head were two different warnings telling me not to look at the laser. Laser! Now I’m cramped and I have a laser penetrating into my knee. I sure hope we find out why my knees been hurting because I don’t want this to be all for nothing.

Once the machine turned on I startled and tried to force myself to stay still. The MRI was freakish loud! It’s like having construction going on right next to you! I went into my head, took some deep breaths and tried to focus on the radio station playing through my headphones.

While I laid there, trying not to think too much about my knee dancing with a laser, my kids were at the park with their Dad. Chuck took them to the park near our old apartment. It’s been 2 years and although I love having my own space and not working out of my home, I miss all the shops that are so close. I miss the Chinese Western restaurant with the older Chinese woman who oos and ahhs over my kids and gives them lollipops every time we saw her. I miss the used book store with it’s smell of old paper and the owner who knew the location of every book I ever asked him about. I miss the shops that I never even went into but always intended to shop at. I miss the flower shop on the corner that had the most elegant arrangements and baskets sitting outside on the sidewalk. Half the street smelled of flowers and greenery.

I thought of all my favorite neighborhood stops while I laid inside the loud monster and I was so happy that my little family was in a neighborhood that has so much memories in it for us. On our way home I asked the kids about how they felt going back to our old neighborhood.

“It was awesome! I wish we could have our view of the mountains and our house but our old streets. That would be nice!”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

(Sorry about the small amount of pictures. My batteries of my camera died! I’ll try to take more pictures today.)

There are a couple of things that I have been busy (in my head) about. One is that I have been neglecting my blog and feeling really guilty about it. Normally, I don’t really care when I take a break. Sometimes life gets busy and it happens. No biggie. Why has it really bothered me lately?

It’s because I really want to be writing. I have been reading and listening to and doing so much and all of it warrants a blog post or two. The problem is that I’ve been trying to keep things light and fluffy on my blog. I know that there are some of you that don’t want to hear about my Doula workshop and the women that I met there. You want to see more pictures of the kids and you want to hear about what we’re doing as a family. The problem is that what is at the front of my min and at the tip of my tongue is what I want to write about.

So I’m going back to my roots. There will still be fluff but I’m going to write what pops out of my head. I’m much better at verbal vomit than I am at mincing my words!

So I’m going to write a couple blog posts of things I found interesting and fluff about what we’ve been doing. I’m breaking it into several blog posts to make it up to my mom for not having a bunch of pictures. I had my camera at the park yesterday and after only 2 pictures we batteries died! Sorry mom.

I wanted to tell everyone about something that looks amazing! Chuck sent me an email about a movie coming out soon and I am excited to see it! It’s called Babies and it’s done a lot like March of the Penguins. The movie follows four different babies from four different parts of the globe and it looks adorable. The movie, as well as the babies! The babies come from Mongolia, Namibia, Tokyo and San Francisco. It looks like so much fun! Check out the trailer!

Babies Movie Trailer