What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

This is our omen for good luck for the New Year. A heron friend came to visit. He was looking for fish in our big pond, but satisfied himself with a few geckos instead before moving on.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! We had a wonderful one here with my Mom and Dad visiting and lots of cousins here, too. It was just fun. This week, we have been hanging out at home and quiet. I began a Tom Clancey book, Executive Orders, at the end of summer. I am generally a fast reader and love reading, but this book was not really capturing me. I am also a bit persistent, and would not give up on reading it, even though I was not enjoying it. By the beginning of this vacation, I was only half way through. Finally, I decided to read something else...although Tom's snore still sits on my nightstand. I read Janet Evanovich's Lean Mean Thirteen. I love those Stephanie Plum books. They are quick, fun reads that make me laugh out loud. Then I read a T. Jefferson Parker mystery. Now I am reading The Other Boleyn Girl. That is great, too. Who knows if I will every go back to Tom. Will I be able to remove it from the nightstand without finishing? I just don't know.

We will be playing games this New Year's Eve after going out for dinner. Lydia made an African mask to scare away the evil spirits for next year. We will celebrate the New Year on east coast time (9:00pm here). That way my Dad will make it to bring in the New Year!

Following are a few Christmas pictures. Lydia was worried that the adults hadn't been very good this year because we didn't have much in our stockings. The kids were cute as could be and lots of fun. It was a wonderful and blessed day. Ryan is Superman Power Ranger in the picture, if you are wondering!

Cookies and milk for Santa!


Big brother Ron and Dad.

Nephew Ronny and Mom.

Happy New Year to All!!

'Tis the Season to be Jolly

We are very busy here preparing for Christmas. The above picture is indicative of the energy level and excitement of the kids. We went to see The Grinch at the Old Globe yesterday. We sat front row center and it was great! The kids loved it and were quiet and a good audience, thank goodness. Unlike the child behind us who screamed and cried every time the mean Grinch came out, all the while clutching his Grinch doll. When his Mom finally decided to take him out, it was at a time that the Grinch also left through the audience. She was about half way up when he came running up behind them. I think the child may be traumatized for life.

Ryan wouldn't let me take his picture before the play, but below is Lydia who auditioned for The Grinch this year. She had just turned 6 the day before the auditions and the age range was 6-14. She is so little, she could only play Cindy Lou, which is a large part. The children who played her this year were 8 & 10. But...Lydia did very well at the audition. She was so excited. Afterward, someone from the production staff called us and told us she was just too young, but that we had to promise to bring her next year. That was very kind of them.

Lydia has been a bit of funny trouble lately. She came home from school and told me that Mckenzie was going to "ditch" her. I asked her what that meant and she said Mckenzie owed her $2 and she didn't think she was going to pay. I asked why a child would owe her money. She explained that her white Cheezit snack is very popular and she was selling it. I explained that she could not sell things at school and that it was against school rules to take money from other kids at school. She came home the next day and said Mckenzie would mail it to her. Lydia was not very happy when I said we would have to mail it right back. On Lydia's letter to Santa this year she asked for a reindeer fur coat. Hmmm. I had to explain that you had to kill the animals to get the fur. She thought maybe Santa could just trim some fur and make it into a coat.

Ryan is his normal fun self. We built Gingerbread houses and Ryan had a lot of fun and it looked very sweet, but then he constructed this skinny thing that stuck out of the roof. When I asked him what that was, he said it was the shooter in case the wolf or fox came after the gingerbread man. Our non-violent household hasn't affected his excitement for guns and swords at all. He constructs them out of gingerbread.

Enchanted

We saw Enchanted today. It was so much fun. It left me feeling much better than all of the depressing but well done movies I've been seeing like Gone Baby Gone. I also enjoy THIS!

Note for you East Coasters

I was at Lydia's school on Friday and I heard a teacher saying, "No running in the halls." This may seem like a perfectly normal statement to all, but to me it always seems funny here on the west coast. You see, all of the "halls" are sidewalks. All of the classrooms here have a door that is outside. The schools are generally not buildings with halls, so if a student is going to another class or part of the school, they walk outside to wherever they might be going. They also eat lunch outside. On the rare occasions that it rains, they may have a covered outside area where they will eat, bring tables into an auditorium, or just eat in the classrooms depending on the school. It seems funny to me that they call the sidewalks "halls", but they do.

Halloween

Lydia wanted to be scary and Ryan stuck with the Superhero theme. They were cute and a lot of fun. Lydia is protective of her candy and counted it the minute she got home. Ryan has only eaten one piece, although we have given him many opportunities. His parents, on the other hand, have enjoyed it immensely.

We have reached the end of Lydia's soccer season. She was a big scorer on her team this year. Her biggest assett, though, was her crazed obsession with protecting the goal. As soon as any member of the other team got the ball, she ran as fast as she could back to the goal to stand in front of it. They don't have goalies on the little teams yet, but next year, I'm thinking she might be a natural.

Au revoir!

Birthdays

Before I can address Halloween, I must post some birthday pictures. Lydia's 6th was a double party with a friend who has a similar birthday at a Horse ranch. It was great fun.




Ryan's 4th was at everyone's favorite, Chuck E. Cheese. I never let Lydia have her party there, and I gave in with Ryan. It was easy and the kids had a blast, so I'm glad I relented.

Also posted is Lydia's 1st day of 1st Grade. It was a very exciting day. I think the boys have cooties.

I now feel a little caught up. Maybe by Christmas, I'll tell you about Halloween.

Wildfires

Hello to all. The Schmidt Family is fine here in San Diego. The fires did not come too close to our home, and all immediate friends and family in the area are fine. We went to LA for 2 days and 1 night for a couple of auditions for Joel and Lydia and to get out of the ash. It's a sad day when you go to Los Angeles for better air quality. We had fun, though, playing at parks, swimming and seeing a movie that cost us $50 for a family of four.

The fires here have been horrible, but for the damage they have done, there has been little life lost. Most are 50% contained now. The schools have been cancelled all week, and the high school around the corner from us has been an evacuation center which is closing today. Today the skies are blue, but you can see the smoke in the periphery. There is also not so much ash swirling around. We were just in a cloud of smoke and ash before. It was like you were sitting on the wrong side of the campfire. The pictures are from the back yard the morning after the ash started falling. It got worse after this. The last are the tracks from the pool cleaning up ash and some leaves because it was very windy. There is usually nothing on the bottom of the pool, so that is mostly ash. We are very lucky to just have ash, and to have clearer skies today.

Driving back from LA, we saw a couple of fires on Camp Pendelton. The flames were high and moving. It was a little frightening to all except for Ryan who has wanted to be a firefighter and said, "At last, I get to see the fires." The next morning, he came to me with his gardening gloves on and said, "I think firefighting is boring. I want to be a trash man." I would like to post a picture of our trash man right now wearing Lydia's dance costume from last year, but I'm afraid it would become an internet sensation and he may never live it down.

Interesting

Try this!

Which way did you see it?

I never really was into Shaun or David Cassidy, but I loved The DeFrancos. They made Tiger Beat worth reading.

I Was a Brady in Another Life

Fun!

Grand Nieces!

Regular nieces...

We also have a new Grand Nephew. I must get permission to post a photo! Should I start giving everyone waivers and photo releases to sign? I can eliminate the use of names to protect the young and innocent. My new Blog name will be Adventures of Joan and Clan featuring family members Jonah, Lilia, and Ryder.

My Very Original List of 9 Things I Love

1. Family...All of them!

2. Summer

3. Children in general...all of them most of the time.

4. The water...lakes, ocean, pools. Everything but swamps.

5. Eating out. So nice. No cooking or cleaning up, no disaster on the floor from Ryan...or at least no disaster on my floor.

6. Finishing a project. As a procrastinator, this usually happens around midnight. It is such a relief.

7. Water skiing. I'm getting worse and worse as I get older, but I still love it.

8. Reading. I can get lost in a book. I'd like to have a quiet week where I could just read anytime I wanted. I used to love plane flights because it was uninterrupted reading time. Then I had kids. Did I ever blog about the time that Ryan kept throwing everything I gave him (toy, food, book) at the angry man in front of us who then decided to keep the toy as punishment? Nightmare flight for all. No reading.

9. Games. I love a good game. I'm pretty competitive, but can contain my competitiveness as an adult. If you ever saw Monica on Friends during a game...that is really what I'm holding in.

Oh Boy!

Now, when you don't post in forever, you just get months and months behind in news. I'll just say we are busy. I'm back in school teaching and taking a class, and in our crazy world, the kids haven't gone back to school yet. This causes a child care nightmare. Sometimes Joel is home, and sometimes he is not. His schedule is erratic and unpredictable. We are making do, though. Lydia starts first grade on Wednesday and Ryan starts preschool again Sept. 10. Things seem to be working out.




My cousin Jon very kindly sent pictures from our time in MN to me. We always have a wonderful family fun time in MN and a huge thank you to the MN family for welcoming us year after year. Today is my Aunt Beth's 80th birthday, and I'm sending out lots of hugs to her especially.


Below, Ben and I are helping out with fishing. I believe that neither Ben nor I are really fisherpeople. Ryan spent his entire first day doing nothing but fishing. That means that someone had to constantly put a worm on his hook and untangle his line. Thanks to all who helped.



Below is Cindy getting out a splinter. Her audience got larger and larger as she worked. It was quite the enterprise. She soon had the group you see above gathered around all with those concerned looks.

AND Happy Birthday to the beautiful "Cousin Karen" as we call her around here. Happy Birthday Wendy, and tomorrow is Lydia's Birthday, too! Congratulations to Erica and Chong for the birth of their handsome, healthy son...Evan! So many exciting August birthdays and births.

Ahhhg!

Summer is coming to an end. This is awful. I start back at school August 15. I started painting in the house and I still have rooms to go. I know if I don't get it done before the end of summer it will never happen. I'm not sure about the colors, but I'm just going to go for it. People keep telling me, just paint over it if you don't like it. I didn't paint for 7 years, do they really think I'll paint again so soon?! I'm just going to be stuck with whatever I put up, at least for a year. I really hope I like it. Everything sure does look fresh with a new coat of paint!

Ryan did summer preschool...camp we called it to make it seem special. Lydia did Dancin' Feet camp and then Soccer Camp run by an Irish group that comes here. The soccer camp was amazing. 9-2 and she came home filthy and exhausted. Now that's a good camp.

The kids have been swimming a lot. Ryan is starting to get braver and actually swim around. He kept telling me he couldn't swim, but the thing is...he could if you made him. He was just afraid. Finally, desire to play with the others has overcome the fear. It is funny, because he is extremely cautious about some things and ridiculously reckless with others, such as walking under this horse he is brushing.
So, I never updated about other events, such as our visit with Uncle Ron, Dance recital and MN trip. I have no new pictures because I dropped my camera in the lake in MN, so it is better to stick with past events after all. The visit with Uncle Ron was a lot of fun because Ron is always fun, and he now has a couple of horses to add to the fun. How exactly he has acquired these horses, I'm not sure. He cut up tons of apples and carrots for the horses, which Ryan also enjoyed. The kids, my Mom, Ron and I all rode the horses around the corral. Before this, Ron fed us sausages and then when we got back to his house he made us some delicious pancakes. He is quite the pancake chef. It was a grand time, and the kids really wanted to spend the night.

Lydia's dance recital was very interesting. This is the first year that she took from this teacher. I did not watch the classes, so the recital was my first real look at the program (through our city's parks and rec.). Oh my goodness, some of these poor girls had been taking 8 years, and someone forgot to tell them to point their toes. The ballerinas were flopping around like they had flippers on. I couldn't take my eyes off their feet, but when I did, I saw flopping arms. I'm not much of a dancer, but I watched with my mouth open aghast through the recital. Lydia's group, being 4-5 year olds, was adorable, but we are quickly finding a new dance class. The poor older girls. Didn't anyone notice that they weren't improving? It would be better to not take any classes at all, because the kids thought they could dance.

Oh, and just as much fun, was being stage mom backstage for the second performance and a little girl started vomiting after her number. She was in a different group from ours, so another mom held her and soothed her (and we all walked around the vomit on carpet covered with paper towels). But then I guess they thought she was OK, so they led her on stage for the curtain call, for which she vomited all over the stage. Poor thing. All the girls around her just stepped out of the way while she was led out. Not one, ooh or ick.

Summer Days

We have just returned from our glorious yearly family reunion at Gull Lake, MN. But before I post about that, I must update you on other summer events. We began our summer with Ben Ruemke graduating from UCLA. You heard that right. We were all so proud. This is us looking proud.

I learned that UCLA is the most applied to school in the nation. Ben majored in history as did the graduation speakers, UCLA graduates Kareem Abdul Jabar and LA Mayor Villaragosa. I am not so sure of the spellings of the names, but isn't it enough that I am posting? I've got no time to research name spellings and my spellcheck doesn't do it for me. While I apologize for mispellings, I will also say that I like to start sentences with "But" and end them in prepositions without an object. Please note that I recognize problems in my writing, but I just trudge along.

Back to the graduation...Ben lived in Inglewood while at UCLA and decided that he didn't love living in LA. He is now thinking of going to law school and is looking at interning in DC next year, possibly at the DC public defender's office. That sounds a lot like living in Inglewood to me. Will it be the law offices of Ruemke & Ruemke? We shall see. Oh how time flies. It seems like just yesterday that Ben was Tiny Tim with his "crunch" (AKA crutch) in Christmas Carol or pivoting on the "A" tables at the West End during Oliver. Some things never change, though, Ben is still always ready with a smile and a big hug. Congratulations, Ben!

TAKE A STAND
by Geoffrey Canada

Maybe before we didn't know,
That Corey is afraid to go
To school, the store, to rollerskate.
He cries a lot for a boy of eight.
But now we know each day it's true
That other girls and boys cry too.
They cry for us to lend a hand.
Time for us to take a stand.

And little Maria's window screens
Keeps out flies and other things.
But she knows to duck her head,
When she prays each night 'fore bed.
Because in the window comes some things
That shatter little children-dreams.
For some, the hourglass is out of sand.
Time for us to take a stand.

And Charlie's deepest, secret wishes,
Is someone to smother him with kisses
And squeeze and hug him tight, so tight,
While he pretends to put up a fight.
Or at least someone to be at home,
Who misses him, he's so alone.
Who allowed this child-forsaken land?
Look in the mirror, take a stand.

And on the Sabbath, when we pray,
To our God we often say,
"Oh Jesus, Mohammed, Abraham,
I come to better understand,
How to learn to love and give,
And live the life you taught to live.
In faith we must join hand in hand,
Suffer the children? Take a stand!

And tonight, some child will go to bed,
No food, no place to lay their head.
No hand to hold, no lap to sit,
To give slobbery kisses, from slobbery lips.
So you and I we must succeed
In this crusade, this holy deed,
To say to the children of this land:
Have hope. We're here. We Take A Stand

Summer Fun

I do love summer. I have always loved it, even when I didn't have summer vacation. Somehow, I always resented working in the summer, though. We are having a wonderful time swimming, going to the beach and playing with friends (my friends included). Sometimes here in coastal SoCal we have what they call May Gray and June Gloom, but it has really been beautiful here this year.

The end of the year was crazy. Lydia had three performances of "The Kindergartner of Oz" and her Dance Recital in the same week. The next week was the end of school for all of us. Cleaning out my room at school was a big undertaking because it hadn't been done for years and closets and shelves were full. I started late in the year and was the new person, so I didn't go through all the junk and purge, but I felt that I could by the end of the year. We had file cabinets full of the old carbon copied worksheets in no specific order as well as a large amount of collected stuff like 7 umbrellas, piles of baskets, shelves of curriculum in Spanish that we are no longer allowed to teach, broken games, puzzles labeled "pieces missing," and piles of dust. Crazy.

The Kindergartner of Oz was another fun and crazy event. A mom from Lydia's class adapted this play and directed it. She included all 120 Kindergarten students and volunteer moms did the costumes, sets, etc. I helped with costumes and did the program which ended up to be a lot of work. All of the costumes were spectacular, but the mom who did the monkeys and lions was very talented and created as if the kids were going on Broadway. She also insisted on makeup, and of course we all helped her because she was otherwise going to do all the kids herself. The director did a marvelous job, teachers guided the cast, and the kids were marvelous. We ended up having to do a bit of fundraising to pay for the Broadway costumes, but it all worked out in the end.

Lydia was cute as can be as Dorothy and sang "Somewhere in the First Grade" solo. At the first performance, things were kind of rushed and crazy getting so many kids into costume and makeup. While I was putting on Lydia's makeup, I realized that I had a bad color of lipstick and then I accidentally went outside her lips, so I just kept making them larger and larger. I didn't want to make her self conscious about her clown lips, so I didn't say anything. I'm sure all the parents were wondering why I did that to her lips, and I keep getting pictures from other families of Lydia and her big lips! She was still beautiful.


Now, I still have to catch everyone up on the Dance recital, Ben's big graduation from UCLA, and much more. Grandma has gone back to MS and Grandpa Ed leaves on Friday. It was great to have them here for all of the fun, and they were a big help, too. Happy Summer Fun to all!