Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Nearly Perfect Day


17 September 2005

We’ve been focusing the last few weeks on getting the girls ready to leave home. In the midst of this Mike turned to me one day and asked, “Why are we working so hard to make something we don’t want to happen – happen?” Good question. As the last week dawned we turned our attention to making pleasant memories in an attempt to stave off the onset of emotions…..we refused to spend our last week in tears. Saturday, 17 September was a “nearly perfect day”. We had been unable to celebrate the girl’s birthdays this year due to our PCS move. We decided to have a big birthday/farewell party on Saturday.

Our perfect day got off to a slow start when we needed to go make a duplicate key for the girls’ Honda. We had tried this earlier but were told that there was a chip in the key and we’d have to go to the dealer. Imagine our sticker shock when ONE key was $43. Mike and I staggered from the dealers and headed for Wal-mart. We picked up a card and flowers and headed for the hospital to visit a Chaplains’ wife who had been blessed with a new baby. While we had been running errands, the boys told the girls to disappear and had decorated the house. We had balloons, streamers, bright colors, home made signs “happy birthday ya’ all” and “wellllll…..so long”. Bre has made signs for each of our celebrations for years. We needed some signs but none of us have the “touch” that Bre does. Josiah just made these in a giant font with no graphics and we had another laugh. We chose a Care Bear theme for the party and the girls immediately understood why we’d done that. 20 years ago we had decorated their nursery with Care Bears….guess I should have held onto those wall hangings. With everything on our daily list accomplished we switched to the party mode.

We had been blessed by the Solomon family with a very generous baby gift – a nice gift certificate to the Italian restaurant in town - Johnny Carrinos. I met this family “online” through the homeschool email list that I co-own. They had gone to the trouble to contact another member who lives here to find out what restaurant I may be interested in. Janet had visited Stacia and I in the hospital and I had told her I was craving Italian and asked if there was an Italian restaurant in town….the two of them joined up resources…the manager drove over and delivered the gift card. Wow….what a blessing. It was enough to feed our entire family a very nice dinner. We loved the meal, the atmosphere and the staff. They had one table big enough for all of us….up front and center. I was worried about Zander and Stacia but both behaved very well. We had a great time laughing, talking and enjoying a very good meal – with no clean up. At one point Arielle cracked up the waitress, our table and a nice elderly couple by an “Arielle exchange”. She had ordered cheese pizza and evidently thought the wait was a bit long. She popped up with, “I’m getting the idea that you don’t just take the pizza out of the freezer and pop it in the oven here?”

Back at home we passed around gifts. The birthday gifts were great. “THE” gift of the day however was a charm bracelet for each of them that we had been secretly working on for weeks. This was PART of their farewell gift. We couldn’t finish the other part while they were here because they were always underfoot. We told them we’d mail it to WA. Each family member had chosen a charm for each girl’s bracelet. It was touching to listen and watch as each explained why they’d chosen the particular charm for the recipient. “She always reads bed time stories to me”, “She taught me how to sew”, “She always helped me with math”, “We learned to fly together”, “She always put me to bed each night”, “She got me kicked out of the pool” “she hates outhouses and tent camping”, “My heart is going with you”….the girls loved the bracelets. We were thrilled to have been able to surprise them.

No party would be complete without party games and so we played pin the tail on the donkey. The younger ones had never done that and were totally impressed. Krista cracked us all up by heading for the photographer (Josiah) with the tail. The piñata was next and provided enough sugar to keep us all going through our difficult leave taking week. Ice cream cake completed our party.

Our nearly perfect day ended with another chapter out of the Hobbit during our family reading time. As I watched Bre embroider on the Thanksgiving Tablecloth and Krista rock and soothe Stacia, I wondered when the next nearly perfect day would come around. I’m learning so very much in this one short week....understanding “older” Moms so much more…like WHY do they count the days until Christmas, why do they clear the calendar of fluff when the older kids visit, why do they send packages of cookies that the child could easily buy to college, why do they say “they grow up so fast” every time the see a baby and why do they say “I love you” so often to the kids remaining at home? I’m gaining a new perspective. It was sad to realize that we’d finish the Hobbit without Bre and Krista – but they will be enjoying some incredible new adventures at Master Commission. We’ll get to enjoy those along with them – from a bit of a distance. I’m suspecting the next nearly perfect day will arrive for our family in December when we make a visit to the local airport.