life interrupted

Why not end a long silence on the blog with an awkward selfie?  Okay, now that that is taken care of...let's do a little catch up.

There is no way to organize the craziness that has been the last few months so I will attempt some sort of bullet point strategy to hobble along.

• Roanin LOVES his school.  Like, really, really loves it.  Two situations to prove it: the other day he remarked on the way to school (this is like 8 in the morning people...so you know it was not based on something that had just happened) that he wanted to go to this school until he dies.  My heart and body did a little dance right then and there while others drivers stared and judged.  Also, last week I attempted to surprise Roanin by bringing Rex and picking him up 30 minutes early from school so that we could go to the last day of the Dinosaurs Alive! display at the museum.  I emailed his teacher and then waited at the school office at a couple of minutes before 3:00.  At 3:01 I heard his little sneakers squeaking down the hall so Rex and I popped out of the office and said, "Surprise!" only to realize that he had a look of pure hurt and frustration on his poor little face and I could tell was fighting back the tears to prove it.  When I asked what was wrong, they spilled out while he exclaimed, "WHY DID YOU GET ME OUT EARLY?!?!?! MY SCHOOL DAY IS NOT FINISHED AND YOU ARE MAKING ME MISS STORYTIME AND SLOAN'S GRANDMA IS READING A BOOK ABOUT DOLPHINS AND SHE BROUGHT SPECIAL COOKIES WITH M&M's IN THEM AND ..." I made a feeble attempt at describing the dinosaur exhibit but am not sure he even heard through the continued laundry list of things he would be missing out on.  I had to make a tough parenting call and decided to deal with the consequence of Rex's disappointment of missing the exhibit later and told Roanin he could go back to class to finish out the day if he wanted to.  He turned on his heel and literally ran back to his little first grade class before I could even finish my sentence.  That makes me so happy.  
• We got a puppy.  And OMG why did no one warn me that having a puppy is exactly like having a newborn?!?!?!  They should totally advertise that somewhere, although I'm pretty sure puppy sales might plummet...unless they look like this:

His name is Woodrow and he is such a smooshy faced doll baby.  Although he looks just like Professor, he reminds me so much of our Dalmatian, Ickabod, who we had to have put to sleep about 5 years ago.  He is a total momma's boy and is getting the hang of things slowly but surely.  After a frighting (both emotionally and financially) battle with Parvo, he is healthy as a horse and we have the dog food bill to prove it.  

• In other animal news, we got two new bunnies who are pretty adorable and relatively low maintenance but added to the growing zoo we are accumulating...makes for A LOT of animals.  Their names are Stormy and Sunshine.  They live outside, although Stormy is litter box trained and loves to come inside.  They boys love them, and I am pretty sure the feeling is mutual. 
  
• Shawn turned 40 in August.  FORTY! 
  

 I have a little post all its own I want to do for that in the future, but I thought it was worth noting.  He is such an amazing man.  My bff, my baby-daddy, and pretty easy on the eyes.  He was in Chicago for a 100 mile bike race with his buddies for the big day, but we didn't let him off too easy here it home when he got back.  We like a good celebration now and then.  

• I'm struggling a little bit with figuring out how to soak up my last year with Rexy at home in the afternoons, maintaining things at home, being present in Roanin's new school, dealing with the herd of animals we have roaming around the house, figuring out which dreams I feel daring enough to chase and how that will fit into an already tight schedule and overall just figuring myself out.  I feel like I am continuing to make progress on becoming New Sarah, and am making great strides in my healing process but I know I still have work to do.  More to come.  
• Let's just end on a few million pictures, shall we?

Thanks for stopping by.

Professor

We have a silly little neighborhood magazine here that asked me to write a little story.  The following is what I submitted.  Thought you would be entertained...

          

  We brought a Blue-Tick Coonhound with us from our little house on acreage in Texas when we moved to Omaha two years ago.  His name is Professor.  He is a hunter by nature, but poor old dog is confined to our yard and does the best he can with any little creature stupid enough to wander in.

            It was a normal Wednesday, and my full day of staying at home with the two little boys had me feeling beyond done for the day.  My husband, Shawn, had offered to take this evening as his turn to wrangle the boys down for bed and I had quickly taken him up on it.  Before sitting down to a little wine and some worthless reality tv, I decided to take the trash out.  It was completely dark outside and as I opened the back door, Professor bolted out and immediately began letting out his classic hound dog bark upon reaching the grass.  I didn’t think much of it, however, because the bark that traditionally means he has found something stopped as quickly as it had began.  I threw out the garbage and began calling his name as I walked across the porch toward the door.  I saw Professor’s silhouette as he came trotting out of the darkness and I didn’t give him a second look as I opened the door for him to come in for the night.  As he passed me onto the rug in the dining room, that is when I noticed it.  The dog had something in his mouth, and it wasn’t little.

            Professor proudly strutted across the hardwood to the middle of the room and set down the fruit of his labor…the biggest opossum I have ever seen.  He looked up at me with eyes that begged for recognition of the job that was clearly well done.  We did, after all, have a dead opossum in our house before the end of the day. 

            My choices at this point boiled down to one of two things: I could either scream for Shawn to come and help and then take over bedtime routine with the two kids that resemble wild animals or I could simply remove the actual wild animal from the dining room myself.  And of course I picked the easier of the two…I would remove the opossum from the dining room. 

            Despite being larger than I could have ever imagined an opossum to be, the thing was dead so I figured this couldn’t be too hard.  I grabbed an empty plastic Hy-Vee bag and put my hands inside to use as a kind of buffer when I made my attempt to pick it up.  There was no blood, so I thought this should be fairly easy and not too far away from some of the jobs I am used to raising two small boys.  You see, Coonhounds are not killers by nature.  They are finders.  They will only fight something until it surrenders, or dies, so that the dog can bring it back to their owner.  We have seen this time and again with various raccoons, squirrels and bunnies in our yard.  Professor manhandles them enough to get them to stop moving and then guards their corpses all day in the yard, proud as he can be. 

            As I got down on one knee to scoop up the latest victim and got my plastic bag laden hands under his meaty little large body, I giggled a little to myself about how ugly and fierce this little creature looked and how if it were alive I would probably be freaking out.  And then it happened.  That opossum opened his beady little eyes and locked with mine, which suddenly were filled with terror.  It turns out that the whole “playing dead” thing is a real opossum strategy…one that had clearly fooled the dog and his owner.

            The opossum began hissing while showing his mouth full of sharp teeth.  It was when he reared back to try to bite me that I dropped him like a hot potato, back onto the hardwood floor of the dining room.  He didn’t run, he didn’t squirm…he just lay there.  I looked over at Professor, and he simply looked at me like, “ummm…I did my job.  This part is ALL YOU.” 

            Once again I found myself faced with the same two options I had grappled with just a few minutes prior: yell for Shawn and take over bedtime or handle this animal.  The stakes were a little higher this time, of course.  It was apparent that the animal was indeed not dead at this point, which made me lean toward bringing in the husband recruit.  However, I knew that I didn’t have much time before this critter decided the hardwood wasn’t the most comfortable spot and relocated somewhere even more problematic like anywhere else in the house.  I had to act fast.

            So I did what any normal housewife living in Fairacres would do.  I ran like a bolt of lightning to the garage and grabbed a snow shovel and proceeded to use my tennis shoe clad foot to hoist that opossum up into the snow shovel as best I could while avoiding his snarling and biting which were back with a vengeance.  As soon as I had him leveled out on the shovel, I shuffled as quickly as one possibly can while simultaneously holding a giant possum at the end of a shovel as far away from her body as humanly possible all the way to the back door.  Once open, I transformed into an Olympic javelin hopeful and threw not only the creature, but also the entire shovel as far as I could out onto the back deck.  Perhaps it was shock, or possibly just another round of “guess whether I am alive or not,” but that opossum laid completely still after landing with the shovel at his side.

            Back inside, I paced around the kitchen replaying the last ten minutes over and over in my brain.  I heard Shawn walking down the stairs, probably anticipating finding me curled up on the couch with my red wine and a tv show.  I met him halfway with a crazed look in my eye.

            “There was just a live possum in the dining room.”

            *long pause*

            “I don’t even know what that means.”

            I took him by the hand and led him to the back porch to show him the evidence, and all that was left was the shovel.  

my little animals in the zoo

On our first trip to Omaha, when we were trying to decide if this would indeed be home, we made a stop at the zoo.  I'm not saying it was the only thing that totally sold us on the town...but it sure did help.  The boys and I have had a love affair with it ever since.  

 We loved our zoo back in Waco, but this one takes the prize.  We haven't been able to cover every exhibit on one visit, which only means we are repeat offenders.  There is a newly remodeled aquarium that is ahhmazing.  

There is a working train, some ski-lift type thing that gives you the bird's eye view of baby rhinos and giraffes, a carousel, a petting zoo, and an IMAX.  About a year ago I took Roanin to the IMAX on a special date, and we saw a movie about chimps.  He was thrilled.  The film was 3D, his first ever, and about 20 minutes in I looked over at him and with the most gigantic smile possible, he had his little right hand out in front of him trying to touch the monkeys.  It was kinda the cutest thing ever.

The boys ask me if they can get this type of glass ceiling in their room every time we come.  My answer is always the same: maybe.

Chasing/harassing the peacocks is actually not part of what the zoo had in mind as an activity, but I like to think of my boys as innovators who think outside the box.

The last time we went it was unusually cold for a spring day, and so desperate times called for desperate measures and I had to hijack a spare pair of the boys' gloves that were in the bottom of our stroller.  Just keepin' it classy.

The cat complex is pretty intense, especially when you see them consuming raw meat (incidentally...this made me kind of sad.  this poor girl probably wants to run and chase something and actually kill it instead of licking ground beef off the floor, but my guess is mauling doesn't really sell memberships so we'll take what we can get.) and has been super fun this spring because one of the mommas recently had 5 cubs.

They were so cute I contemplated asking a staff member if I could switch two of the cubs for my two boys.  I figured the damage to the house would end up being about the same.

This zoo is providing such good memories for us.  I feel so lucky to be here.  Just one more reason I love me some Omaha.

Holiday - Part 2

Yep, we made it to Christmas Day.  And it just kept getting better and better.  

I gotta say...I know what people are talking about when they suggest having a happy holiday.  With nothing to really do but be together and just hang, we ended up doing just that.  And it was wonderful.  I kinda cringe when I think about going back to real life.  Even more cringe-producing is the thought of actually cleaning this place up after all this.