Father's Day

I bought my husband a summer membership at a local country club for Father's Day. It is really a family membership, but I would not have purchased it if it hadn't been for his love of golf. The winter is our busy season, so they have this incredible summer membership. Actually, they call it a summer memberhsip, but it is for half of the year, May 1-October 31. We will take him there for lunch on Father's Day and give him his membership stuff.

Oh, for those who read yesterday's post............. we did a five minute room rescue. It was our first one so far, there was only a little complaining!

Summer summer summer................

..................it turns me upside down! Remember that song by the Cars? It really has nothing to do with the season, but its still a catchy song none-the-less.

Got any fun plans? We are planning on going to DC for a week. As far as our day to day plans, the two older boys will be going to baseball camp. The oldest girl will be working, the middle girl is hoping to babysit, and the youngest boy...........nada, zippo, zilch! I am thinking I will take this summer to teach the boys about the Flylady. For those of you outside of "The Know" she helps pathetic people like me who can not keep their houses clean. Just fifteen minutes at a time. So, that is what the boys will do. I will make minor adjustments to her system to make it more appropriate for young people. She does this 27 fling boogie where you grab a garbage bag and throw away 27 things, I hand them a bag and tell them each to put ten things instead. I will break their room into zones and have them work in the zone each week. At least that is my plan. I'll keep you informed of how it goes.

PT 5 Dallas Airport

Remember when I had you picture me raising my eyebrow at the comment that the SP in Phoenix was paying close attention to everything that was in the bags? What I said exactly was:

As each bag is scanned by the machine SP#1 watches the monitor closely (You need to imagine seeing my right eyebrow go up as if to say, "Yeah right". I will explain more about that later).

It is four o'clock in the morning, in Dallas and we are going through security. We did not have to check any bags because we already checked them all in Phoenix. We have again, taken off our shoes, loaded the car seat, loaded the stroller, you get the picture. This time, however, we DECLARE the gun ahead of time. The SP (who does not yell or treat us like imbeciles,) tells us that is fine, just set the gun aside, now I know what that means, so I put it in its own tray. We move along without event. We all get through the x-ray machine, put the gun back into the bag from whence it came and another SP takes the bag and moves to a different table. I know this is hard to imagine, but there was no yelling to close down the line, no yelling to turn over the car seat, there was a request that I take the car seat apart, but they actually believed me when I told them it didn't come apart! I did not know why it was taken to another table until the SP started going through it. He took out a large tube of toothpaste, I said, "throw it away", the a tube of nasty gelatinous candy, I said, "throw it away", a small bottle of mouthwash that my husband had in this bag for probably five years, and I said, you guessed it, "throw it away". After all of my stuff has found a new home in the trash can the SP informs me that the gun has to be checked and can not be carried on. Hmmmmm. Does that mean that none of my stuff actually had to be thrown away? It could have all been checked with the gun. Oh well!

Do you know what that means? That means that we consolidate our carry on stuff, someone, I mean I take it to the counter, check it, answer all of the questions- no there are not explosives in this bag, and then that's right, go through security again. Take off the shoes, empty the pockets, get x-rayed, get puffed, fill my pockets, put on the shoes, and find my family who is waiting at a little cafe eating breakfast. We ate our breakfast, drank our coffee, waited patiently for the plane, boarded, rested, disembarked in Tampa, claimed our luggage, got a gigantic cart for all of our stuff, stepped out into the sauna that we call Florida, found our truck, loaded it up and headed for home. It took two hours to get home and ten minutes to discover that one our our bags was left at the Tampa Airport. It is funny today. Want to go with us on our next vacation?

This was still nothing compared to the vacation we have dubbed "The Vacation from Hell". If I run out of things to say, or if I have requests I will share that some time.

Pt 4 That Dangerous Rice Milk

I have to take a moment here and explain that I am a rule follower. I don't like to make waves and I believe that given an opportunity, I can explain what is happening and everyone will get a good chuckle and we can move on. I know that if I insist on trying now to explain to the SP I will only be slowing things down. I know that as soon as the police office arrives I will be given the time to explain. So, I wait patiently while all of the other passengers glare at my huge family and think, "Hey lady, don't you know what causes six children?"

Now I wait, with all eyes staring at me while one of the SPs walks down the corridor- note, not SP#2 who is still sitting on her behind- and tells my husband something. Then one of the children yells to me, "It's the cap gun" Oh my goodness! I can not believe this. The cap gun did it. Someone did not pack the cap gun in the check in luggage. AHHHHHHH!!!!! So here comes Officer Airport who looks at the machine (our bag is still in the x-ray machine)and then at me and says, "What is in this bag that might have me concerned?" Now, I am not feeling scared or intimidated here, but I did feel as though Officer Airport thought she was talking to a second grader and it was a bit annoying. So I say, "It must be my son's cap gun." With a sigh of relief she says, "Yes it is." I fully understand, and appreciate, the concern for airport security, but some things are a little silly. Not one person who has committed an act of domestic terrorism on our country brought their children along for the fun. What upset me was not -the police being called in, the stopping of the line, the seriousness of the situation. In all seriousness, it is quite possible that we could have looked away from our bags for a moment while someone did slip a gun into our bag, hoping that the SP would not worry precisely because we are obviously not terrorists and then reclaimed the gun while on the plane. No, what had me so upset was the way my family was spoken to and treated, as though speaking to us in any fashion other than rude might result in the attitude that guns on planes are not dangerous.

Officer Airport took the bag to another table so that the line could be reopened and searched it. Removed the gun, examined it, determined it to be a child's toy cap gun and pardoned the gun from a sentence of a lifetime in a landfill. No, she allowed us to bring the child's toy cap gun onto the plane and gave a stern and grave warning. "This toy gun must remain in the bag at all times. If it is removed and seen by other passengers panic can ensue. AND if there happened to be an air marshal on board, real guns could be drawn!"

"No problem!" I declare. However, my husband was not satisfied. He needed to explain, he needed Officer Airport to truly understand, that we are not careless parents. No, we are not the kind of people who think that bringing a gun, even a toy gun, on board a plane is just a big joke. So, every time Officer Airport takes a breath during her diatribe, he squeezes a few words in. And every time he speaks, she stops speaking and then starts ALL OVER AGAIN when he is done. I finally elbow him and tell him to be quiet so that we can leave.

Finally, the nightmare ends. We are on the plane. We can see the sun setting on our vacation. We know that home is approaching. Ahhhhh, the peace, the tranquility. Then I remember. We have to do this again tomorrow morning at the Dallas Airport!!!!!!!

Pt 3 Arizona or maybe Rice Milk Will Not Crash a Plane part 3

It is off to phase two of the security. Child #6 could not drink cows milk. She could only drink rice milk. Now we got all eight of our tickets for free with our frequent flyer miles and the only catch was that we would have to spend the night in Dallas on our way home. We would arrive in Dallas at 10:00 pm and leave the next morning at 5:00 AM. That would leave no time to go to a store. So our carry on bags had to have anything that we would need for over night, including rice milk for the baby. Now, I knew from going to the airport and airline security websites that we might be allowed to get her milk on the plane. It is at the discretion of the security personnel.

We are standing in line with about 50 other people. We take off our shoes and put them on the conveyor, take the baby out of her stroller, put her humongous car seat on, unpack our video camera, empty our pockets, and tell the security people about the milk. It is important here to get a full understanding of the events and spirit of the situation. About 50 people who DO NOT WANT to be in line behind us who are all talking, a recording over the loud speaker continually reminding us of the 3-1-1 rule (3 ounce bottle or less (by volume) ; 1 quart-sized, clear, plastic, zip-top bag; 1 bag per passenger placed in screening bin. One-quart bag per person limits the total liquid volume each traveler can bring. 3 oz. container size is a security measure.)a man who keeps shouting that if we need one quart zip-top bags he has some and where the garbage cans are for containers that are larger than 3 ounces, security people talking- well they were mostly yelling, machines beeping, "puff machine" puffing (that is a machine that sends a puff of air at you and then "smells" the air looking for the scent of explosives).

I declare the milk first, before we do anything else and the security person (SP from here on out) tells me to "leave it out". I am not really sure what that means so I held it in my hands. Well, then SP #1 yelled at me to put it in its own bin. I guess that is what is meant by "leave it out". I can see that the car seat is not going to go into this machine, and the SP can tell too. He tells me to take it apart and I assure him that it does not come apart. Well, eager to show me just how much of an idiot I must be, he begins tugging on different parts of the seat until he relents. Maybe the person who owns and operates the car seat, does actually know something about it. One of them, SP#2, whom I might mention, sat in a seat across the corridor the entire time and not once did I see her get up, yelled at me to turn the seat over. So I turned it over. I guess I did not turn it over the right way, so she yelled some more for me to turn it over. This went on and on until I figured out what the rude SP meant. I am still baffled at why she could not simply get up and turn the seat herself. So finally the car seat will go forward.

Each member of the family has gone through the metal detector without an ounce of fan fair. Life is looking GOOD! I am the last member of the family. I give each child his or her shoes and bag and send them to the end of the corridor with Dad to reduce the confusion. As each bag is scanned by the machine SP#1 watches the monitor closely (You need to imagine seeing my right eyebrow go up as if to say, "Yeah right". I will explain more about that later) and he elbows the SP#3 next to him and says, "look at this". The SP#3 says, "Close it down and call the police". WHAT??!?!! It is rice milk for crying out loud. I keep thinking if they will just ask me about it I can explain to them my babies dietary needs, but no, you have to really stress the "no" when you say that in your head- but noooooo, no one asks me about it. They just close the line and scream "CLOSE THE LINE, CLOSE THE LINE, CLOSE THE LINE. GO TO THE OTHER LINE!!!!!" Oh, for crying out loud- you think the other 50 people were a little annoyed before one of the two lines were closed, imagine how thrilled they were now.

Pt 2 Arizona or maybe Rice Milk Will Not Crash a Plane part 2

Okay, so with my cart full of luggage, I approach the counter. I am completely organized and I know what I am doing. Each child, except for number 4, is sitting quietly (sort of, well as quiet as five young people can be) and I hand the woman behind the counter one boarding pass. She types some stuff on her computer, asks me a question or two about the person for whom the boarding pass has been issued, takes one bag, puts the tag on the bag and hands the bag to me. I hand the bag to child #4 who then takes the bag over to the x-ray machine and onto the conveyor belt, where we wave (telepathically anyway, we wouldn't want people to really see us WAVING good bye to luggage) and then he returns to the counter with me where we, unceremoniously begin the process again. Now we are at bag number four when she decides to ask some questions about the baggage. The questions go something like this, "Do you have any blah blah blah" or maybe it was more like, "Oh, you wouldn't happen to have any blah blah blah packed would you" or something else along those lines. While the way the question was presented isn't really that important the blah blah blahs ARE! The blah blah blahs are flammable things like matches, fireworks, lighters, etc. Not wanting to be the cause, or effect, of a mid-air explosion I say, "Well, we do have caps for a cap gun packed". Errrrrrrr!!!!!! Did you hear the breaks on the machine we call progress stop short?

"Oh, I am not sure if you can have any caps on the plane" She looks over at the men running the x-ray machine and says, "Well, if they didn't notice them then I guess it must be okay" She must have thought about that for a moment because then she said, " well wait a minute" and began to type away on her computer. "Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm" is all she is saying. She keeps looking up from her keyboard and reassuring me, "Give me just a minute". I am thinking, "Oh, okay, she only needs a minute to figure out if our caps are going to crash the plane" Now it is my turn, "hmmmmmm".

She looks up, sticks her pointing finger up in the air and says, "give me just a minute" and walks away to see, I guess, I don't know, the wizard behind the green curtain? She comes back a few minutes later, and says, "Just one more minute". Now I am not exaggerating when I say that this took about 10 minutes, just to find out it the caps are going to cause a flying catastrophe. In the mean time, while waiting for the news, I turn to child #4 and say, "which bag has the caps in it?" He says, "one of the bags that has already gone down the conveyor" AHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Now if you are anything like me you are asking yourself why on earth the woman waited until after three bags had been sent before asking me these obviously important questions.

So finally emerging she announces that she has just one more place to ask- the x-ray men. She walks over and says something quietly and they respond, almost yelling, "OH NO, NO CAPS ALLOWED ON THE PLANE. NO WAY, UN UNH, NO CAN DO, ETC. ETC. ETC" You get the picture. "Okay, which bag has the caps in it?" she says smiling. Child #4 and I exchange dreadful glances, "one of the bags that already got sent to wherever bags go". In my infinite wisdom I put colored ribbon on all of our bags, so it made the bags easy to describe. She calls to the keeper of the bags and has our three bags sent back. Children #1 and 4 now go all the way to baggage claim, bring all three bags back, remove the offensive caps and put all three bags back on to the conveyor and now we can move on to the rest of the bags. Here is about where my husband showed up. Let's hear it for showing up to the airport a couple of hours early.

Okay, so you will still have to tune in next time to find out what happens to the rice milk!

Pt 1 Arizona- our vacation! or maybe Rice Milk Will Not Crash a Plane

I always keep a journal when we are on vacation. It is funny the things you forget.......... and remember. I love to read my vacation journals. What is really funny is the way I will retell a story months and years later compared to the way it actually happened. I have a way of taking a half hour to tell the story of something that only took ten minutes to actually happen. Here is an example.

While in Arizona we went up to Jerome. A really neat town that everyone who goes to Arizona should see. It once was a mining town that was dubbed "America's Sinnningest City" or something like that. The two main industries were mining and prostituting. And it seems that the only form of entertainment was drinking, gambling, and well, hanging with prostitutes. While it is no longer a mining town, or a hotbed for red light bulb salesmen it has a pretty neat history and they have manged to use their infamous history as a marketing ploy- that worked- on us anyway.
While we were in Jerome we got two of my boys cap guns. The kind that look like little guns. They got caps of course too. Well the younger son managed to use all of his caps before we headed home from our vacation. So when it came time to pack the bags, I told both boys to be sure to pack their guns in their regular suitcases, NOT the carry on.

Fast forward to the airport. The Phoenix airport. The same Phoenix airport that was recently cited for allowing airport and airline personnel access to restricted areas without proper searches. The same one that tragically a woman, Carol Anne Gotbaum, mother of three young children, died at while in police custody.

Anyway, my husband dropped us off at the airport and proceeded to the car rental place, I could share a long story about the car rental place, but that will turn this half hour story into three quarters of an hour. So, here I am at the airport with six kids, a LARGE car seat for the baby, the stroller, eight bags to check, eight bags to carry on including (but not limited to[I love saying that]) an extra large bottom of the line commercial video camera in a water proof case that looks like it must be carrying arms.

We needed two carts to carry all our stuff into the airport. One cart is carrying our carry on baggage, the other is carrying our check in baggage. I am pushing one and oldest boy is pushing the other one.

Tune in next time to find out what happened to the rice milk.

5/17/07 A Collective Sigh of Relief for the End of the Year

I am sure that I am not the only parent who loves having their children home for the summer. I LOVE MY KIDS!! I am jealous of the time that my children spend with their teachers. Only once have I looked forward to them being in school and that was after the baby had been sick for six days, which took place less than a week after another had been sick for six days, and a third had missed a day of school before her eighth grade trip to D.C. The second youngest told me that he had a headache and asked if he could stay home and I said, "No! I need you to go to school today." Those six days that the baby was sick I spent doing almost nothing while she laid on my chest with a 103 fever. I really enjoyed that first day with everyone healthy and doing what they were supposed to be doing.

So, with summer starting less than a week away I am wondering what fun things we might do. The two boys will be playing some baseball, and my oldest will be working. I think I might try to get my youngest boy (7) into a really neat science camp at a local hands on science museum. It is a little pricey, but there would only be one doing it. He would have a blast. He also MUST learn to ride his bicycle. He just hasn't wanted to and I have not been able to convince him that it is worth it. This will be my goal this summer.

Oh yeah, we are going to Arizona for a week in June. That should be fun.