The Year of 2005 in Review

I hardly ever write these things, but here goes one attempt...(plus, this is also going into my blog, so it's going to be looooonnnnngg.

2005 for the Mankeys

Poppy in the hospital 5 times this year...2nd broken hip, 2 bouts of pneumonia, 2 UTIs. He'll be 83 in March...right now he's very lonely, but grateful every time he sees "the babies"--his granchildren (Sarah and Emily are his only grandchildren). He misses mom, but never misses a chance to flirt with nurses and other women he meets. You'll never get the sailor out of him!

Sarah the Dec Babe--Did well in Soccer, gave up on Tennis, but wants to retry it. Straight "A"s on her first report card...brought me breakfast in bed twice when she knew I wasn't feeling well. She's enthusiastic, a great studier...has learned very good study habits (with NO help from me--I only made the rule that homework and piano practice comes before anything after school, and if her room isn't neat she can't play with any friends). She still has events where if she doesn't get something she wants, she gets this unbearable whine with tears that escalates until you think she's going to have to be institutionalized...and if not her, then surely I will need it...but we're getting through these and they are happening less and less often. She's done so much this year--with soccer, swim camp, tennis, piano, more homework than I think a 3rd grader needs, Brownies, and helping me a lot more than she ever has. Sarah knows some Spanish, greetings and courtesies in French and a few phrases in Italian. Her French accent is pretty good, too! We haven't really celebrated her 9th (!!!) birthday yet--she wants to take a friend to Disneyland instead of having a party. I don't understand that--we go to D'land so often and rarely have parties, but that's great for me...I won't have to clean the house for a party! And D'land is free for us! It's all good.

Emily is -- well, she's our Emily--She tells great, imaginative stories, and loves to play a "what if" game--like what if everyone in our family was named Emily...what if our house was just a playground--the swimming pool in the master bedroom with a slide from upstairs to come down and splash into the pool...the current playroom could turn into the game room, their bedroom could have a permanent jungle gym...the kitchen could be a play kitchen where anyone who wants to bake with the EasyBake equipment, and the children's recipe books that we have...the family room would be the Home Theatre (duh), the front room would be sort of a library for crafts and reading...upstairs we'd have our bedrooms and kitchen and maybe a bathroom...the two bathrooms downstairs would remain bathrooms for all the kids to use...to get upstairs we'd have a "lifty thingy" and to get downstairs we'd have a firefighters' pole.
All these ideas came out of Emily's head!

She's had some great stories, too about her "real" family--they live in a yellow house (she's pointed it out to me) down the road; when we visited Paris, her parents were robots that lived at the top of the Eiffel Tower and they owned all the pigeons in Paris. She is tall for her age; she's growing up too fast of course. She constantly surprises us with her jokes and stories, and does all kinds of things to make me laugh. If it works the first time, she'll continue doing it until I can't take it anymore. She has a favorite bear, Beary from that horrid money grabbing place the Build-A-Bear workshop. I have successfully avoided going back into that place since Sarah's 7th birthday. I think if we get invited to another b'day party there, I'll unregretfully decline, and not tell the girls they were invited (well, not really, but it is so d*m* expensive!!). Off the tangent now... It amazes Scott and I both that in just 5 months, she'll be 5 yrs old!! She's bright, funny, and adorable, still has blonde-ish hair and two dimples. She has been quite loving with her Poppy--she climbs onto his bed and gives him great big hugs and kisses. She remembers her Nonni--sometimes says she misses her a lot. Sarah says that about her Nonni, too.

Kerri's right--Love doesn't divide--it multiplies--but it intensifies, too. Sometimes I think my children define love for me. I never knew how deep love could go until I became a parent.

I'm embarrassed to say that Scott and I have now had ten years to lose enough weight to be healthy, and have we?? nope. We weigh enough to have another adult in the house and still have some weight to lose. Yuck. Since we got married, he has gained 140 lbs, and I have gained 70 and I wasn't a skinny chicklet then, either! SH**! That's two healthy adults we could lose!! oh boy.

Scott, our Daddy, DH, other DH, continues to like his job at Disney--rolled off Chicken Little earlier this year to work on Meet the Robinsons coming out at the end of next year, we think. He thinks Robinsons will be a great feature...he loves the story and really likes how they are making it. He's actually had some challenges, and has learned some new skills to add to his repertoire/reel. He's got at least another year there, which we need in order to pay off his car and a few other things.

Not much to say about me, still fat and sassy, the heart problems seem to have been resolved, yet I do not like taking so much medication. I take a lot of meds for pain already (arthritis in my neck, fibromyalgia, nerve damage in my hands and occipital neuralgia--all fancy terms for pain in the neck, butt, knees and ankles). When it rains my neck stiffens so much I have trouble looking right to left without some more pain. But the pain meds help all that. Other than that, my health has been great! Really! Not very many colds since discovering Zicam and Airborne--Airborne tastes better, but produces a lot of gas--the fizzing like an Alka Seltzer--Zicam has these meltaways that aren't too terrible--don't get the chewables in the strawberry flavor tho; they taste so horrid that I'd rather have the cold! I got my Honda Odessey, a used 2002 with low mileage and I love it! We've travelled with it and it's fairly comfortable, plus the gas mileage is livable for now. On trips the gas mileage is nearly 30 mpg--in town, it's only about 18 on good days without the air conditioner and a lot of "baggage." I passed the CBEST test, and have considered substitute teaching, but it seems not do-able right now, since Emily doesn't go to preschool for long enough hours to justify me being away...However, I'll apply soon to see if maybe it would work out when Emily is in Kindergarten. I did get hired as a tutor; I signed a contract and everything, but haven't heard from them yet. That would be great fun, I think, but it's a little tiny bet unnerving knowing I'll have to go into strangers' houses to do the tutoring. The hours are great--I'm supposed to be able to choose what hours I can work, and mostly evenings/afternoons and weekends, so childcare costs would be at a minimum. Enough about me.

Our family has gone on a few trips this year. The biggy was to Paris. We stayed at Disney Paris, and toured both the park, the city and London in 8 days. We didn't lose the children, and I was able to communicate to both the Parisians and the Brits in their own languages (kidding!). I did ok in French--hadn't spoken any in 15 years, and I understood the British people much easier than Scott and the girls, for whom I always seemed to be "translating." While in Paris, and looking for the train station that would take us to London, our "guide" walked up to a group of men standing outside a middle eastern travel agency and asked them, in her perfect Californian English, where such and such train station was...most of the men looked at each other, and one man looked at her saying "what is it you want" in French. I couldn't take it anymore. I was frustrated that we were told to blend in as much as possible and not blatantly look so American, and she goes up to these terrorist looking guys to ask for directions in US English! So, I walked up to them, and excused myself in French, asking in FRENCH where the station was, and he was very happy to help us and point out the way to the station. IN FRENCH. I was very pleased and proud of myself that because of my halting knowledge of French, we were able to find the station after that. Ok, ok, off the "try to learn some of the language of the country you visit" pedestal. We all had a wondrous time in France and England. We made a Scavenger hunt of sorts for Sarah for a Brownie badge where she checked of landmarks in London and Paris that she saw and wrote a report about them for her class. I loved seeing the cities through the eyes of my children, and a marriage-long dream has now been accomplished: I have seen Paris and London with my husband. Not quite as romantic as I had dreamed, but we've done it!

Thanksgiving took us to our dear Lake Cachuma with a rented RV that I did not drive this year (last year I um, took out part of the side of our rented RV at a gas station, and have since decided that RV driving is not for me!). We had a lovely fresh air weekend with good friends, great food, great games, long walks, lots and lots of stars, good wine, big huge hot fires.

No trips are really planned for this next year, except for the December Mom's 10-year reunion. I'm hoping to plan it so we can take extra time and go down to Washington DC to see the Smithsonian and White House, etc. Sarah will be in the 4th grade next year, so in the fall we may have to visit a California Mission so she can complete her mission project. I hope to incorporate that into the Lake Cachuma trip at Thanksgiving. Santa Barbara has a beautiful mission that would provide lots of data for her report and project.

And now to Christmas, the inspiration of this update (Thanks Sandra Griffin--I think this update might be long enough to get it's own digest!):

This Christmas/holiday (Chrismahanakwanzaka) has been a nice relaxed couple of weeks. The shopping got done in November, the wrapping got mostly done the 2nd week of December, the shipping got done mostly the same week, so I for the first time had time to enjoy the time with the family.

The girls and I did a little baking, and two batches of fudge: one to eat and one to give away...we saw Narnia, both girls really enjoyed it...the battle scenes didn't seem to bother them at all. Got to go to the Disney Family night at Disneyland--that was really fun--Santa was there with his reindeer (real ones!)...then a few nights later, we attended the Animation Studio Holiday party...They provided real snow and discs and the girls had a terrific time sliding down the hill that the coordinators had built in the parking lot. Plus there was a snowboard simulator...Sarah did fairly well on this, and Emily, while very determined, did ok for a 4 yr-old. We had Christmas dinner on our new Christmas plates at our home in our dining room with just our 4-member family (Poppy was in the hospital--we visited him that evening). I actually made a turkey!! Quite an accomplishment for me, since I had vowed never to make one since a catering fiasco about 20 years ago. Scott helped, and it was fun working together in the kitchen with him! He and the girls did most of the decorating of the house; I brought down the linens and decorated the girls' dressers, the tables, the kitchen and the bathroom, and was proud to put our newish Christmas quilt on our bed. Next Christmas I hope to have Christmas quilts for the girls beds. (Story for another time.) Sarah's b'day is the 24th so we let her pick what she wanted to do, and the four of us went to our favorite smokehouse/bbq restaurant Lucille's for dinner after seeing Narnia. That was a great afternoon/evening. We had a small ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins for dessert and she opened her b'day prezzies. She begged us to let us each open one Christmas present ( I was all for it, but Scott wasn't very enthused, but Sarah, Emily and I won--hee hee).

Of course, I may have relaxed a little too much, because our Holiday letter might get to our friends and family after all the other letters have been put away/trashed. Maybe it will be a good time to send a letter, since after all the letters and cards coming every day for a month, nothing but bills in January can be depressing. I will think that way, and get them out in tomorrow's evening mail, and hope our friends and family members feel the same about the issue.

I've been sitting way too long at this pc, and the girls are bored--(for the first time during the holiday fortnight--we did good that they only have a few days left and this is the first time they are bored!), so I'd better end this and go on with the laundry, ironing, and vacuuming that needs to be done now that the decorations and tree have come down.

Happy New Year, again, too all, and to all a good afternoon! I do hope that this year we can have love for each other, good health, and can attain peace some how.

Love and hugs,
Charmaine