January 2012

Keeping the Peace

January 31, 2012

My kids love to draw and color and cut and create. And they are always, always, always asking me for paper. When my 4 year old doodled all over my check book, I knew I had to come up with something better.

One day I stared at our empty popcorn tin and an idea hit me. For some reason the tin seemed perfect for storing crayons. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if we could have a roll of paper on our table like at Macaroni Grill? When I mentioned it to Scott, he was instantly on board.

So, when my grandparents sent us money for Christmas, I knew at once what I wanted to buy the family. (remember that hilarious Amazon description I posted back in December?)

This paper has worked out so so so wonderfully for the circus fam!

I love it. We don’t use it every day… I think the novelty of it is what helps it work. But, it is perfect to pull out on those days when we’ve just kinda reached that point where we’re all going a little crazy, we’ve done all that needs to be done and now I am just trying to survive till Dad gets home. You know that time of day?

I love that all 4 of them can enjoy it. With the paper covering the whole table, the little man can color without coloring the table. I love that they can draw bigger than an 8×11 sheet of paper. It’s thick enough that we can use it on both sides. Sometimes they’ll do such beautiful pictures that they’ll cut them out to save.

Sometimes after we’ve used both sides, they’ll just cut… Because it’s fun to cut.

If your interested in getting your own, I ended up going with 36 inch wide craft paper b/c it pretty much covered the width of our table… Even after the fabulous review for butcher paper I read on amazon, I found I didn’t have room for a roll quite that large and so the craft roll better suited our needs. It was skinner than I expected, but we use both sides of the paper so that stretches it some. I have aspirations of some day attaching it to the underside of the table, back by the wall and then we can just pull it out as needed. But, for now it stores easily in the rectangular box it came in and sits on the back of our piano. Craft/Butcher paper on the dining room table works for me!!

{ 2 comments }

My Secret Ambition

January 31, 2012

in About Me,confessions,Keeping it Real

I’ve had a few shows over the past 10 years, that I’ve really loved. You know the ones where you connect personally with the characters in a manner some might find unhealthy? But, if I had to pick one, as my favorite (I’d probably kick and scream begging you to not make me limit it to just one) But, if I had to pick one, than I’d probably say it was Alias. I remember when Scott and I first started watching, the show was already a few seasons in (which is the best way to start watching a show b/c we watched the first 2 seasons on DVD). I don’t even want to tell you how quickly we blew through those 21 episodes, staying up way later than we should for just one more.

I loved it.

Alias nights quickly became one of my favorite nights of the week, as we’d sit curled up on the catching watching Jennifer Gardner get the bad guys.

And here’s where I offer you my secret confession. In my head, when I watched her strut around in those crazy outfits with her blue hair and high heel shoes, in my head, I thought, “I could so be her.”

I know… stop laughing… please…

But do you ever do that sometimes? Have this version of you in your head that is so way cooler and so waaaay unrealistic? It happens whenever I play volleyball too. In my head, I am suddenly this awesome athlete that dives on the ground hitting the ball up setting it perfectly for my team mate to spike on the other team. When in reality, I am just giddy if I actually make contact with the ball in an appropriate way (rather than say, getting hit in the face). Reality is often a cruel intrusion.

But, back to me in my high heel shoes karate chopping the bad guys as I sneak off with the secrets of some terrorist organization.

I am a sucker for anything CIA, FBI, or any other acronym with I in it. If it’s a redbox night and I’m picking and I see any of the above acronyms you can bet that’s my pick. “What’s the movie about Crystal?” “I don’t know some CIA thing.” My heart is racing as they sneak into the building to steal the secrets… I can’t believe it when they go snooping through the stuff while the people are in the next room… How do they do that?

Lately, my movie obsession has crossed over into my book reading as well. Last week I plowed through the first 4 books in the Gallagher Girl series. OK, here is where my obsession perhaps starts to get a little embarrassing, as it leads me back into the world of Young Adult Fiction. But, truthfully, I’ve found that I like young adult fiction. (Hunger Games anyone?) It’s clean which I appreciate and an easy read. Anyway, Gallagher Girls is a cute series about a top secret spy school for high school girls. A tad adolescent, I know, but by book 3 and 4 I found myself up past midnight with my little book light on eager to read on. This weekend, I read a more adult CIA fiction book, which I would describe as realistic fiction. It gave a much less glamorized view of the spy life than that I’d seen on TV. And while I did enjoy it, I found myself forlornly telling Scott, “I don’t think I have what it takes to be a spy.”

Again, stop with the laughing.

It’s always hard when reality comes intruding again. I had this really cool image of myself with this awesome cover (minivan driving stay at home mom) who could totally kick but with a handgun, keep cool under pressure, and karate chop better than Daniel-son. And truthfully, I find myself realizing, I could NEVER lie to my husband, spot a tail, or shoot a bad guy. But, I’d love to file their paper work. Now that would be a dream job!

It’s Monday and I’m being "Miss Elaine-ous" over at The Miss Elaine-ous Life!

{ 4 comments }

There is HOPE

January 30, 2012

in Keeping it Real,lib,library

For all those wondering if there is truly hope for the hopeless… those who’ve made their resolutions and long since broken them… for those that thought, perhaps your just destined for failure…. to those… I offer this little glimmer of hope….

Our last visit to the library—if that trip didn’t redeem us, I don’t know what will!

Those who have been long time readers here at the circus… might recall I have a bit of a bad history with the library… first, we have the whole circus family wing of the library thanks to the $18 fine visit and the $42 fine visit. Then we have the patronizing librarian who made me feel insecure in my mothering skills…

I’ll be honest, for awhile I just avoided the library at all costs.

But, they keep luring in me in with the promise, the hope of free books. (and really great story times for the younglings). And now that my oldest is reading a chapter book a night, I had no choice but to buck down and get a system in check for the library. Because 1. I don’t want to discourage his love for reading and 2. I can’t afford to keep paying $40 a pop for a library visit.

So, my e-mail address is registered with the library and they e-mail 3 days ahead of my due date warning me that it is coming.

But, here is the miraculous part… now I actually do something about it.

Last Wed, we had a bunch of library books due. It was a kinda rough day at the circus, b/c my oldest was home sick from the tutorial and I was scrambling to take care of him, help him with his school work and do my normal Wed chores… not the ideal day for the library. Here is where old Crystal would say, “oh well… it’s not a good day, I’ll return them another day then.” but the new Crystal actually hunted down the books and put them in a bag before heading out to pick up my daughter from tutorial. However, we were running late (as usual) and I didn’t have time to gather them all. Old Crystal would have just returned what she had and given herself an A for effort for the others. But, instead, we picked my daughter up from tutorial, drove home, I left the kids in the van while I ran in and gathered ALL the books and we headed to the library. I had 2 books which I was still reading so I left those on my passenger seat so I could see if I could renew them and if I couldn’t, I’d just drop them in the book drop before pulling out of the parking lot.

LOOK AT ME GO!

Well…. when it came time to check out, the most amazing thing happened. We were checking out with our giganto bag of books and everyone, including the youngest, was begging to give their book to the librarian.. I was juggling the baby, the bag of books, the purse/wallet/library card… and in the midst of all this chaos, the librarian said, “Your kids are always so well behaved.”

REALLY?

Because I had shhhhshed them at least 10 times in the back of the library reminding them to use their “library voices” and thought for sure we were ahem… noticeable to say the least. I even said, “Really? Us?” to which she said, “Oh yes, you should be very proud, I see all kinds here at the library.”

This totally made my day. (funny how a few little words of praise can really brighten someone’s day… hmmm… I am sure there is a lesson to be learned there)

Turns out those 2 books on my passenger seat where in fact unrenewable as someone had put them on hold and OH WAIT… there is another book we forgot to return which is also unrenewable. So…. we head back to the car, I drive around to the book drop and have my oldest run the 2 books up to the book drop, then we drive home and I send my oldest up to his room to find that missing library book. He comes down book in hand and we head back to the book drop to return the book.

THIS IS A TRUE CIRCUS MIRACLE!

I must have been walking on sunshine from that librarian’s praise, b/c the old Crystal would have said, “eh… I tried… I went to the library that’s good enough” and $5 and 43 cents later I’d have found the book and returned it.

Because, yes, I really was that pathetic.

When Scott got home from work, I was literally beaming from ear to ear as I reported what a good job we did at the library. We got complimented by the librarian and wait Scott there’s more… NO LATE FEES!! Strike up the band, order up some balloons, let’s have a party…it can be done folks!

{ 8 comments }

There She Goes

January 28, 2012

in bike riding,Circus Shots,growing up

Truthfully, the circus family doesn’t spend much time on bikes. We do a lot of fun things here, don’t get me wrong, but there are only so many hours in a day, and teaching our kids to ride bikes has not been where we’ve spent ours.

But, today the sun was shining, the weather was unseasonably warm here in MD again, and as the kids played in the backyard while Scott did yard work, our oldest daughter decided that today she wanted to ride her bike without training wheels.

And I just had a feeling that she was going to do it. You know, how sometimes you just know?

They set off around 4:15pm. At 4:20, Scott sent me this text.