hamsters.

Our hamster stinks. Smelly stinks. Also, he is getting chubby.
Don't buy your child a hamster.

the end of all things

My days as a child are soon over. I take my last finals this week and then I am a graduate. I realize many of you out there have had their doubts about this girl every graduating with anything, let along going on to graduate school. I know this because I too have had these doubts. And now thinking of it, there probably aren't "many of you out there" reading my blog.

So, it's official, I am growing up. If you have any uncertainties about this, don't. I can allay any fears any of you might have by this proclamation with my recent purchases. It's true, I purchased grown-up clothes to fit the role of graduate student and one day professor and researcher. It is time to throw away some of the old clothes that give me the appearance of a teenager and accept the fact that I am an almost 27-year-old mother and soon to be serious adult. Don't let anyone fool you, clothing is everything.

all I need is peace, love, and green tea

This is Amy, my baby sister. How cute is she? (Hint: she is blasted cute!) She is still literally a baby, by the way. I told her with this kind of picture circulating she better start teaching yoga and stop shaving and she cried. Kidding! Geez... She didn't actually cry, I'm not sure I actually said all of that, and she is not a baby. She took this picture and I absolutely loved it! Besides, even if she was a hippie I would still love her. But she's not a hippie so what am I even talking about. Wait a second... she does want to be an art major or modern dance major or psychologist (and we are not talking about behavior analysis here, we are talking art therapy). Amy, are you a hippie?!!?

Dreaming of the Future

I have a dream...
Or I had a dream that we visited Florida and it was a complete and utter bust. I dreamed it was a remedial school and that was why they accepted me. Then, in the dream, I said, "Well no wonder I got accepted." This made a student angry and she started shooting at us. Luckily we all survived, but we did have to come back to Logan and tell everyone we were no longer moving to Florida. Then I had another dream that taking a gym class was required for graduating with a BA. Unknown to me, my adviser signed me up for the required class and so I failed it and couldn't graduate. This, once again, led to me calling Florida Tech and telling them I was unable to attend, leaving us to live in Logan with no immediate graduate studies.

Thankfully, these were both dreams, or nightmares, rather. I love to say that dreams are without meaning; however, I must say that they do reveal a pervasive stress I have been feeling about moving on in life. We are moving across the country for my studies and if I don't succeed with flying colors I will have wasted a lot of our time and money.

At least some of the time, I do manage to remember why I am going to graduate school. I finally get to study what I love and apply my knowledge to help advance the field of behavior analysis and benefit others. I am going to graduate school because I am excited to have more responsibility and pressure to succeed. I am excited about the upcoming changes all of the time and think it's beneficial to have the confident feelings only sometimes. I must keep the anxiety at bay so that it pushes me to succeed but doesn't leave me staring into the future that could have been.

The Psychology department has given me a reason to feel adequate in my pursuits by granting me the "Undergraduate Applied Psychological Service" award. I am thrilled and surprised. I actually read the email twice, then called my dad to tell him why I don't deserve it. Pretty cool.

Milestones

Eliza scored her first goal in soccer on Saturday! She got the ball and dribbled it about 5 times before shooting the goal. The ball got away from her for a sec but she stole it back and shot it in! I am pretty sure I annoyed the other parents from screaming and cheering so loud about that.

Yay! Today I made my very first goal in soccer and when I made the goal it got us tied with the other team.

The same day she played in her first piano competition and did great. She got stuck on part of a song and stayed so calm and got back on track that the judges complemented her on it.

Today, Sunday, she had her birthday party. It was a hit. All of the kids had fun. No tattle telling, no hurt feelings, and no injuries. They even ate the healthy apples and carrots. Eliza even did karaoke on her own and loved it. I even tried to join in on a Hannah Montana song with her and she pushed me away so she could be the rock star. Pretty awesome girl. Who knew organizing a party could be such work?

Yay! Today I celebrated my birthday. It's really tomorrow but we had to celebrate it today. I got some really cool presents. First of all, I got a My Twinn doll from my Grandma Claudia. I got 3 Webkinz, one was a monkey, one was a tree frog, and the other one was a dog. PS. I forgot what kind of dog it is. My real-mom helped us plant some seeds. Afterwards, my friend Hailey came over. Me and her colored on each other and then we took a bath to get it off.

Can you believe how grown up my girl is getting? 8 years old! She is old enough that we gave her her first perfume. It's exciting to watch but I am still so relieved that she still acts like a little girl sometimes. She cried because her friend's plant spilled and was worried that the seeds would be lost. Sometimes I am happy that she still needs my hugs.

New Hair

Here we come!

We are moving to Florida this summer for my graduate studies. I sometimes take for granted how lucky I am to have such a supportive and loving husband. I am asked incessantly whether Joe is moving with me or if he is o.k. with the move. Somehow I am still surprised by the question. When I have been apprehensive about moving somewhere so distant and unknown he is the one to reassure me of the decision. Maybe he just realizes that he can succeed no matter where we are. Or maybe he just wants to be a beach bum. Either way, I should tell him more often how amazing he is.

We'll miss people. Which is why Eliza is excited, scared, and sad all at the same time. We'll miss our friends and family being as close as they are. Here's a picture I stole off of my sister's blog page so you can see some of the cute family I am leaving, all except my sister who is taking the picture. Don't worry though, I promised Eliza she can get a new kitten when we move. That will fix everything.

"Girls Girls Girls"

My dad used to say that as a phrase of endearment. He wanted boys and had 1 boy and 4 girls. Eliza is a girl. Of course, but I mean a girl. She had a big crush on a boy last year. Brady also liked her back, but he liked a few other girls too. This, of course, was all a secret told to Eliza's best friend, Rachel. This year a boy has a big crush on her and she doesn't have a crush on him. He is the cutest little boy ever. He is also good friends with her friend Rachel. I suggested she invite him to her birthday party since her step-brother and two of her boy cousins will be there. She sort of avoided the conversation.

Well... At bedtime I asked her if she finished her invitations so she could get them to her friends tomorrow. She replied by asking me to check my dresser. How curious. There was the cutest damn thing ever.... a note:

"To: Mom, From: Eliza... do I HAVE to Give an invatachon to Fox? p.s please don't make me."

I copied the spelling and emphases as much as possible. One part that HAS to be elaborated upon is the HAVE, which began as have was replaced with Have, to finally end up as HAVE with lines through the words and arrows directing me to the most important level of emphasis. I laughed, because I was overwhelmed with the desire to squeeze and kiss her. This was not the correct response, if any other mothers are taking note. I reassured her that she doesn't have to and that it was a sweet, sweet note. As I said, the cutest damn thing.

My Eyeball

Yay! Happy News! I touched my eyeball ten times in a row like I was supposed to. I feel a little bit more ready to go in and try the contacts on. I can't wait to be able to do stuff without glasses... like soccer, dance, and snowboarding. I will even be able to read the board at school without glasses!!!

Joe and I are in love... with snowboarding at Snowbasin.

Our last day for the season... sigh. We will sorely miss spring snowboarding when we are in Florida. We went with our good friends Christine and Steve, who also live rock n roll lives. The snow was great for spring snow, not icy but slushy. The sun was out all day and we shed our jackets and skied and boarded in our t-shirts all day. What more can you ask for? Oh yeah... I asked for a really sexy goggles tan line. One day we will own a less bulky camera and get some killer pictures of us boarding like maniacs. With the helmet I am a rock star and go off of jumps. If Joe or Christine or Steve read this they may have to laugh, a lot, because my jumps were actually little moguls or mere bumps in the snow. But I did technically get some "air" and didn't fall. We took the gondola and John Paul and took many different runs. Off of JP there is another gondola that goes even higher up. That's right, "There's no easy way down." We wish we could have taken Eliza more this season because she is getting totally awesome at boarding.

Staying at my parents' condo the night before was fun too. We rocked, once again, by playing guitar hero. I'm almost ready to join a band. With ping-pong, pool, and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," I think it may have been a dream.

Sushi Every Night

Some days, or rather most days, I wish we could afford to eat out every day. Then again, when we were on vacation and eating out every day I just wanted to eat at home. Grass is greener as they say. Eliza's cleaning up after soccer practice and dinner is in the oven. At least we got that far today, right? Problem is, even I don't want to eat it. Chicken in cream of mushroom soup with carrots and celery in the broth and mashed potatoes. Boring, blah, blah, gag. It would be lovely if I were completely wealthy and could get sushi on a whim, which would probably end up being sushi every night.

Inadequate

I found out today how totally inadequate I am. I told my friend about the sad cupcakes and she said she's never seen a cupcake do that. So along with taking 8 years to graduate (bachelor's not PhD) I now am the only grown woman to utterly destroy a batch of cupcakes and should be a Dr. by this point. By the time I get my PhD (better only be 5 more years) then I better be able to make cupcakes that don't both sink and crumble, cookies without burning them, and sew a button on my damn coat. Who teaches all of these mom things anyway? And why won't the blasted drycleaner's hand-wash my sweater? I thought it was a normal request... I said "This is hand-wash only, can you take care of it?" They answered slowly, which I now realize is because they were surprised at the question, "We can dryclean it." I said, "It says to not dryclean it." They told me I would have to do this myself. This is a sad sad world when a company specializing in clothing care cannot hand-wash my cardigan. Or perhaps I should have taken a different lesson away from this experience...

Baking

Last night we made cupcakes.

They sunk in a little bit but they were really good. We food colored three of them...blue, turquoise, and green.

Quite the understatement. They sunk like a volcano after it has exploded. But, they did taste awesome. We definitely need more practice before we bake Eliza's birthday cake! It's Eliza's Spring Break so we did this at 11:00pm. We like to get crazy when our bedtime is put on hold. Eliza got to have pink milk in her teapot while mom had a nice rum drink. Too bad I'm not on spring break too.

No Contacts Yet...

We went back to the optometrist today. Eliza was pretty nervous. I told her that there aren't any rules about when she gets the contacts in and out by herself. She is to keep practicing touching her eye at home until it doesn't make her blink until we go back next week. She's sure brave.

Piano

Eliza had a small recital last night. Joe and I are so proud of her. I remember my recitals and getting so nervous that I would forget parts of the songs. She played "Yankee Doodle" and "Come See the Parade." She sat up straight and played both songs perfectly. What a rockin' girl.

I was very nervous! But after I started playing I didn't feel as nervous. I had never played in front of so many people just by myself. I'm really excited for the musical festival where I will get to be in a competition with those same songs.

Touching Your Eye

Eliza is getting contacts. Seems a little young, right? Well... not when she is playing soccer, dancing, and snowboarding. We went to the optometrist and he put the contacts in for her and she was thrilled. She keeps talking about wearing them to school so that her friends will think she broke her glasses again... Also, she hadn't seen herself without glasses without her face being blurry! Then it came time for her to learn how to put them in and take them out on her own. She did pretty good, but by the time she got to the second eye she was pretty tired of it. The assistant told her to come back the next day to work on it some more. She also told her to practice touching her eye before the next appointment. I promised Eliza I would practice with her. You have to hold your eye like you are putting a contact in (Eliza had to show me how... "opposite hand!") Then you quickly touch your eye ten times. This is much harder then it looked. Eliza thought it was pretty funny to watch me, the mom, not be able to touch my eye very easily. Hopefully today it goes better from the practice and she can wear her contacts!