The Mystery of the Missing Bike

A NEW MOMMY DREW STORY, by Kate.

The rash of stolen goods started to go missing on a rainy night about a month ago. The neighbor across the street from our little family left his garage unlocked and his cars were broken into. A suspious person had been seen wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood. Yet another neighbor spoke a few days later of loosing things from a car parked on the street.

We spoke to Elleory of the need for caution in these dangerous times, and asked her to put her bike into the garage at night. Sadly, she ignored us. The crimes in the neighborhood continued. Late one afternoon, I noticed that Elleory's bike was not on the front porch, I congratulated her for finally putting it away. "No Mom, I didn't put it in the garage like you asked and now, I am distraught, (sniffle)and saddened (sob) by my disobedience because my bike has been stolen. " (this is how the conversation should have gone, but no...not nearly that much remorse, mostly just shoulder shrugging and a lot of "I dunno"s) Her bike was well, and truely gone.

"Did you ride your bike to school? Or to the park, and forgot it?" I asked later that night.
"Don't be silly Mom, I'd totally remember if it was at school. It's been stolen. I guess you'll just have to take me to get my new bike. Now we don't have to worry about what to do with my old bike."
"AS IF" I mock. I'd like for her to be just a little more repentant, and down trodden. At least for a couple of days. I'm just trying to decide at this point if I should call the police and make a report or not. Because truth be told, we DON'T have to worry about what to do with her old bike now.

Time goes by (about a month) and the neighborhood gang of children start to ride their scooters, so Elleory can join in with the playing. Elleory seems less distraught every day (if she could be LESS distraught), and is still planning on spending her hard earned money on the new bike of her dreams.

Wednesday mornings bring the business of the day early. First the gym at 5 am for my 9 mile run (only on Wednesdays, Mom). Next band carpool at 7:40am. ( the band meets at the Junior High School) Then get ready as fast as I can to drop off the boys across the street and race to Elleory's classroom where I help with MATH GROUPS (ironic, huh?). This morning was more tight than normal and I was running about 5 minutes late. I ran up the hill to the school in my new very flat mary-jane Keds, (which are not made for running I might add) I race past the bike racks and skid to a halt. There in the bike racks is a bike that is identical to Elleory's. I walk past the bike rack every Wednesday morning, just when I'm on-time it's swarming with kids, and I hadn't noticed the bike sitting there. I make a mental note to talk to her teacher about stealing Ellie for 5 minutes after math groups to check it out.

Elleory gets to school one half hour late on Band days and therefore misses most of math groups. So today as she wanders in I flag her down and say:

"Hey! I think your bike is in the bike racks."
"No Mom," she replies very curtly "someone else has the same bike as me, remember?"
I of course remind her that she will not speak to me in that tone of voice... Then she gets this look on her face. The "Holy Crap! I totally remember riding my bike to school and forgetting it" look.

We run down stairs to the bike racks were I hold the door open so she can go out to look at the bike.

Yep, sure enough, her bike, her helmet, her lock, her bike registration number. THE WHOLE NINE YARDS!!!

She sheepishly walks back into the school, goes to the classroom, retrives her bike key, and undoes the bike chain.

"I just don't remember parking it here, I always park it over there." she points to the fence by the walkway behind me.

I just shrug, and say "I Dunno, maybe you parked it over here once and forgot it."

Shrug, grin. (I'm at this point hoping that she a.) feels really stupid so that this will never happen again and b.) hoping that she doesn't. Momory loss is a hard reality of mortality.) She heads back to class and I ride her bike back down the hill to home.
Mystery solved.

I guess the proof that she learned anything from the experience comes when she gets home. If she puts the bike in the garage, or not.

A Very Merry Birthday and other Ramblings about Anders

I get so excited about Halloween that I really blow it in terms of reporting about other important events, such as...Anders birthday. He lived to see three! I promise that we are not planning to hurt him, it's just that he has actually survived all of the high adrenaline activities that he participates in. The newest is couch jumping. It starts with Anders climbing on to the back of the couch, then aiming for the mini trampoline, he jumps as high and as hard as he can. Most of the time he makes it, other times he misses. Most of the time it's pretty stinkin' hilarious. The other activity, is hill surfing, on the little muffin man car. He has not learned to stand up to surf yet. (Thank goodness!) He wears out a pair of shoes a month doing this little activity. He rides his bike to the top of any old hill, then turns around and goes down as fast as he can push himself. He uses the tops of his shoes as brakes. Most of the time, there are no cars coming, but I do stand at the bottom of the hill as a traffic break/"car coming" warn-er. No major accidents...YET. Just the shoes...

ANYWAY... we celebrated Anders birthday on the 23rd, the actual day! He took "happy cake" to his class and wore the Birthday Hat for all of 30 seconds, and sang the "Happy Birthday" song for the rest of the day. We got him a Lego Thomas the Train set, which he went nuts over. (somehow, he knew what it was before he opened it...we have a mole.) We spent the evening playing at Chuck E. Cheese's spending "money". The boys kept yelling "MORE MONEY!! MORE MONEY!!" Brian and I spend our time there chasing one kid or the other, and waving at each other from across the room. But, the kids are completely occupied for two whole hours and we only spend around 20 bucks. Totally worth it. We got home, and had more "Happy Cake" (a hostess cupcake, because I wasn't going to spend another 10 bucks on a second cake.) and even more singing. We built the Legos and then went to bed. All in all a pretty good day! We are so lucky to have him in our family. Anders and Charles E. Fromage

Best in Show

With only 6 days left until THE BIG DAY, we had our costume trial run tonight at our ward Fall Festival, (read Halloween Party). Brian, who never dresses up willingly, complied beautiful this year and as a result, won the most original costume in the contest. We were going for Gandalf (Lord of the Rings)because we found the perfect stick on a walk in the woods, but I just never found the exact right wig, so at the last minute we changed it to Moses, who also carries a big stick. He was a total hoot. For a guy who never dresses up, he sure plays the part well.

We also had Jay with us,
our Brother-in-law, also a non-dresseser-upper. That just doesn't go over in my house, so, we set him up with pirate clothes. There is NO WAY someone in our scope of influence won't dress up for a Halloween party. He played along nicely.

The rest of us looked fabulous, but we didn't even score honorable mention. Anders and Liam went as DRAGONS, Liam in full regalia, Anders headless. Elleory was a PIRATE PRINCESS, she looked really great!

I went as a rag doll. It's a funny story about the dress, which is the inspiration for the whole costume. I found it at the Gap on the clearance rack and I loved it. It was $8.97, so I just grabbed it. I didn't try it on in the store. I had my little entourage, and it just wasn't going to happen. SO, I got home, put the kids to bed, and then tried it on... FAT LADY IN THE CIRCUS!!! I just burst out laughing and started to plan my costume then and there. I might do some re-working on it after Halloween, because I still really like the dress. It just needs to be a different color, or something.

Anyway, there will be more pictures after Halloween. Congratulations to Moses.

Life on Pause

So, we(this is a grand WE, meaning the kids) have a virus, the general throwing up-fever-rash, bring life to a complete stop, virus. I'm going insane. I finally just took the kids to the doctor today so I could leave my house. Sad excuse to see the doctor, but you do what you have to do.

Anders looks like he has the chicken pox, which he doesn't. Liam, has a rash that needs a anti-bacterial ointment. How do two children who share everything (toothbrushes, cups, toys...etc) come up with two different rashes?!? I'm assuming that Anders will start with the new rash soon, but I'm keeping my chin up, and hoping that maybe, he won't.

Elleory is, after missing four days of school, just fine.

I've hired my usual babysitter for two hours this afternoon, because the doctor assured me that the boys are no longer contagious. I think after I do my run I might go buy a fumigator, and nuke the germs lying around the house. Hopefully life returns to normal tomorrow. We'll see....

I found Anders sleeping under my bed yesterday. I had him set up watching Robin Hood ON my bed, and apparently, he needed a littler space. This virus was really hard on both the guys, and they slept thought most of it, only waking up to throw-up, which is exactly what Anders did, right after I took these pictures.

Today we took our spawn...spawning!

There are certain things that occur in the North West that make it worth the 10 months of rain. July and August, for instance, are beautiful months when the sun shines and it gets warm (hot for a few days). In the month of October, is the Salmon Spawning, or as they have officially dubbed it in Redmond this year, Salmon SEEson. Today we took the kids to see the fish. Salmon are not attractive fish, but it is so cool to see them swimming up the little streams and fighting to get home...to procreate then die. The kids were so excited to find the fish, which in our area are sockeye, so they are bright red and easy to spot. We think they were wild salmon, not farm raised. There is a way to tell that has to do with a fin that gets cut off of a farm raised fish. We saw around 12 fish in the area where we went. The biggest was around 24 inches long. (There was a HUGE dead one, probably 36 inches, but his tail was missing, so, we won't count him.) Liam would spot them fairly easily, and get so excited, then he'd throw a rock in the stream and move on. Anders wanted to touch them and go swimming. Elleory would run ahead to see if they were any bigger than the last. Brian and I were just so amazed by the whole process, and glad to see the children enjoying it so much. However we were both sad not to see any salmon jumping over logs, or up waterfalls, like you see in the nature shows, this is just your average everyday commute home...upstream...really tired. I always feel a little guilty, after I see how hard the whole process is, with how easy it is to cook and eat one of them. Maybe we don't work hard enough for our Salmon. (But then that gets me going on the whole fishing thing...) We discovered today, from a 'Native' that it's the first week in October that is the best time to see them. I guess by the time you get as far into the month as we did they are almost done, and I guess a little smaller and more tired. Elleory and I made a promise to write it on the calendar for next year. Brian got a great video of two salmon swimming. Might make you want to join us on next years' outing.

At the end of the day, Brian's convention was WAY geekier then mine...

So we had two too-cool-to-pass-up events this weekend that we made time for and scheduled in pen on our calendars. The first was last night when Brian and I went to the U District in Seattle to a really cool old Gothic church to hear Neil Gaiman read a chapter from his new Graveyard Book. (If you are interested in seeing exactly what we saw, go to www.neilgaiman.com and the video footage is on his blog, the entire chapter) We enjoyed it immensely, as he is a fantastic reader, and the story was very good, funny, frightening etc... The chapter he read was the longest chapter in the book, and it took over an hour, but it was beautifully done. After a short intermission, he showed a few clips from the upcoming Coraline movie which comes out in February 2009. (Not one I'd recommend for children under 8, it's very Nightmare Before Christmas meets Stephen King... Brian was a little worried about seeing it. I can't wait!) Then answered questions for another half hour. All told it was around 2 and half hours of fun for me. Brian also enjoyed himself which I think surprised him.

Anyway it's always interesting people watching at events like this. Neil Gaiman started out as a comic book writer. He is very unkempt and badly in need of a good haircut. So there were the comic book contingent, U Dub students, who were NOT comic book followers but there to meet an author (generally the giddy teenager types), and then the truly interesting people who feel like it's appropriate to dress up as character from the book, or like they never actually left the battle fields in the south, after General Lee surrendered. I guess I'd classify them as the "artsy type". I feel into the largest group of people, those wearing black, and Brian won the award for wearing the most color. ( He wore this great shirt that is purple and khaki and blue striped. Subtle colors, pretty metro... very sexy.) All in all a great evening!

Now on to Brian's too-cool-to-pass-up event/convention. BLOCKCON 2008. Lego heaven. Like I said, his was way more "Star Trek" than mine. It was really cool and I found, to my surprise, that I was really enjoying myself. Brian was facinated by the "Lego Geeks" (I apologize, but there is NO OTHER WAY to describe them. Even Brian thought so. Yes... all children of God, but...) Brian started taking pictures of the people more than the actual art pieces.

It was like LegoLand, but on a much smaller scale. Anders and Liam had a bunch of fun playing in the toddler Lego Pit, and only Liam had a squirmish with another kid. Anders had a break down when he decided that all cars need real roads, not just pretend ones, and then we had to go, but all in all the boys did beautifully. Elleory was wandering around with her friend Drew and his parents and I didn't get to see her reaction to any of the displays, but she was ready to leave when we asked, and voted on her favorite.

So I'll post pictures of Blockcon 2008, but not of the Graveyard Book reading. We forgot the camera.

The Jedi Council discussing the matters at hand.

Rebuilding the Death Star for a speed record. NOT JOKING!!

Not a boat show, a LEGO show!

A Lego version of Seattle.