Social Beautifulflies

I’m home from church again, this time with a sick little Kate. I’m actually not completely sure whether she is sick or just utterly exhausted (I would fall in the latter category). She is breathing like a Darth Vader and I heard the beginnings of a barking cough last night. Either way my mom instincts were telling me to let her be this morning. She, of course, would insist that she is “not sick and NOT TIRED!,” that is if she were not completely comatosed in her bed. I think we may have overdone it a little this week.

I began the week off by hosting a luncheon for my “Asian and Asian-looking friends.” Last year I became friends with a few Wharton spouses from Japan. For some reason our schedules haven’t been in line this year and I haven’t seen as much of them, but I really wanted to have them over again before we all go our separate ways in May. I also invited my dear friends Jinhee, from South Korea, and Asialene, who is as American as can be but she looks Asian. They are both from the Wharton LDSSA group. Aya, a first year spouse from LDSSA who is from Japan, also joined us. Thao, a young mom from Germany whose husband is doing a pediatric spinal surgery fellowship in Philadelphia, completed the group. Thao lives in Edgewater and became acquainted with Aya and some of the other LDS moms. She joined us at playgroup one week and was so excited to find other mothers getting together during the day. She is German, but looks Asian, so I figured she would fit right in as well. ☺ I made Nicoise Salad, spicy herbed breadsticks, and a citrus pound cake for dessert. We had a nice time. Chaos reigned upstairs with all the kids playing, but below them the mothers had a relaxing, fun time together. Sometimes it is nice to have an opportunity to associate as adults.

Tuesday was preschool in the morning and a trip to the dentist in the afternoon. I discovered since I broke my tooth a few weeks ago that pausing to get my tooth fixed does not fit into my schedule. We finally managed to find a dentist that would accept our insurance and I went. This place was the Great Clips of dentistry. Clean. No frills. Acceptable, but not luxury. That is just what I needed however, because I just wanted a dentist to glue my tooth back in as a temporary fix until we are in Dallas. As the dentist told me, “this is not a normal procedure.” He also added, “so I don’t know exactly how it will turn out.” Always comforting to hear before you lay back and open wide. It looks good enough that it won’t draw attention to itself. Now let’s just hope it lasts.

Wednesday was our long anticipated Snow Party. Most of Kate’s friends have already turned 5 and consequently had birthday parties. Kate’s little heart wanted to have a party too! She kept inviting her friends over, “Come to my house tomorrow for a party.” After overhearing this at least six times I decided we needed to have a little talk. I told her that we could have a party, but it needed to be something we planned together. Thus was born our “Snow Party.” On Wednesday we had seven little friends over. We had a snowball fight with white foam balls, we made snow globes with beautiful flies inside them, and drank hot chocolate and ate snowballs (vanilla ice cream rolled in coconut). The party was fun, but the best part by far was seeing the girls’ anticipation and excitement. Although it has been showing signs of Spring around here lately, we got four inches of snow the day before our party and Kate was delighted. We cut out snow flakes and hung them from our ceiling. Jane walked around with her arms outstretched saying, “It’s snowing inside. It’s so beautiful!” Kate climbed up on the counter and sat there looking out into the living room most of the morning because it was “a good view.” Both girls were giddy with excitement as they waited for their friends to arrive. Fun times.

We have recovered now from all of our social events, well somewhat. At least the house has been scrubbed. We are back to hanging out with friends rather than entertaining. There is a time and season for both, but low key is always nice.

We got Cowboy Sam and the Indians in the mail this week. Kate the Indian nearly went wild. She ran to the couch hugging the book and started turning the pages. “Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy!” she kept saying. It was one of the cutest Kate moments of all time.

Kate gave me a couple great compliments this week. One was Tuesday night as we were making an example snow globe for our party. As we were watching the glitter fall like snow she said, “Mom, you are so awesome!” Then yesterday she said, “Mom, I love you more than (pause) my soft green!”

Jane is in a really cute phase. I can’t believe how much she is growing. She’ll be lost in her pretend world for a chunk of time and then check in and ask you to read her a story. One moment she wants to be independent and run down the sidewalk without holding your hand or ride her scooter without any help and the next moment she wants you to “hold me”. I’m about to get out the clothes Kate was wearing when we moved here for Jane to use as the warm weather arrives. Craziness.

Cute kiddos. If it wasn’t so exhausting to take care of them they would be practically perfect. ☺

While we have been playing and entertaining Josh has been working hard. He has midterms approaching and has also been spending a lot of time working on his business idea. They made it to the semi-final round in the business plan competition at Wharton, have been making all sorts of presentations, are working with a PhD Stats class to develop the algorithm for their site, etc. He is looking forward to graduating and starting with BCG, but this is a fun experience in the meantime (i.e. Don’t worry, Mom and Dad, he is not going to give up BCG. His partner may give up on recruiting, but we are going to Dallas!).