Tuckela and the bee

(Tucker is not going to be amused that I used the title my friend Jen assigned to his adventures in the Spelling Bee finals as my blog post title, but I thought it was pretty funny. :)

Tucker took second place in the Fourth grade spelling bee this past Friday night. He misspelled the word, "manicure." We were right proud he didn't know how to spell such a girly word. No 9-year-old boy should know things like that!! The prize was a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble. I feel a mother/son date night coming on...

We're proud of our Tucker. He's a great kid!

Riding in cars with children

I am the mother of four mid-agers, referring to children who are post-diaper/imaginary friend stage and pre-mustache/armpit hair/"can I have the keys?" stage.

Due to what I can only attribute to be the increased size of their craniums and the mounting need to fill those orbs with busyness, the activities my children currently participate in have increased to an alarming number. (It has been scientifically proven that children's brains do grow proportionate to the size of their bodies, even if they sometimes act like their brains have shrunk to the size of a dehydrated blueberry.) We have two in baseball, one in kid cardio, two in Scouts, one in Young Women's, three with paper routes, one in yearbook, one in piano, another in guitar...you get the gist.

A word in my defense: I didn't ask for this lunacy. I typically encourage our children to participate in a minimal number of extra-curricular activities because I am a borderline slacker teetering on the edge of slothfulness myself. And yet they insist on having their own interests, propagating a new vocation for me: Taxi Mom.

I know this description usually incites a shudder in mommies everywhere, but take courage! I have found the proverbial silver-stitching in my cabby's hat. While perpetually driving these busy little people to and fro, I have found many an opportunity to not only hear what's clattering around in those growing skulls, but to be thoroughly entertained by the creativity drawn out by sheer in-car boredom.

Once again, to illustrate my point, I rely on a harvest of photos taken with my pocket-size Sony cyber-shot. While the quality is debatable at best, I do get shots that would otherwise have been lost while prepping my more laborious Canon.

Katelyn took this shot of four Toyota Siennas lined up in a local parking lot. Her reaction to this strange occurrence was one of amazement; a humble reminder to me to look around a little more and find wonder in life's inconsistencies.

I drive middle school carpool in the afternoon once a week and every time we drop Abby off, Katelyn looks longingly at her neighbor's mini kiddie-coaster perched on the sidewalk. One day Kate ordered me to pull over. She sprang from the car and gave it a whirl. I caught the faintest glimpse of my tiny Kate on her four-wheeled plastic ride toy screaming down the hill in front of our home almost a decade ago. I love that Kate's girlish zeal is still fully intact, even if it is encased in a larger body.

Tucker takes guitar lessons every Friday afternoon. While he has his lesson, I sit in the car and chill with whatever offspring happens to be along. On this particular day it happened to be Kalli and her cousin, Macy. Finding themselves imprisoned in a Sequoia with nothing but a change of Tanner's clothing and a dog to entertain themselves (I was off-duty in the front seat, thrust into a pivotal chapter in my book), they went to work. It took quite a bit of teamwork to restrain the dog long enough to fully clothe him, but here is the result, beanie hat and all. (Let it be noted that the green and white shorts under the red shirt are Tanner's boxers.)

Sometimes its the actual act of getting INTO the car that can be humorous. Like when we're about to leave and Katelyn notices that someone's hair is unfit for social presentation. She has been known to attack a male sibling spontaneously from behind and work quick magic with a spray bottle and comb. The male sibling is rarely amused. However, I give Kate silent kudos for taking care of an unpleasant task I'd otherwise be responsible for.

Wednesdays are the craziest. I literally and without exaggeration pulled in and back out of my driveway nine times last Wednesday. While waiting for Katelyn (and Kalli and her little friend who pitched in to help) to complete her paper route, I sat in the car and stared glassy-eyed out the window at this beautiful little piece of real estate. I had a mommy fantasy: I was lying on a soft blanket under the little tree reading a great book and eating dark chocolate covered pomegranate seeds. And then a wayward rolled newspaper hit the windshield, jarring me back to reality.

I call this one, "Why wait until we get home when there's nothing better to do in the car?" After hitting Petsmart for yet another doggy toothbrush and toothpaste, Katelyn saw fit to brush the dog's teeth in the car so that I could experience, up close, how fresh his breath was after brushing.

The same trip to Petsmart yielded a new fishbowl for Katelyn's new goldfish. The previous goldfish lasted an entire 10 days. And yet here she is, back in the ring for another round of aquatic life and death. Her new fish, named Gumbo, was securely seat-belted in his plastic baggy in the back seat thanks to Tucker and Kalli. Katelyn opted to use the fishbowl as an acoustic device into which she sang loudly most of the way home. Because hey, why not?

I recently read that the Chinese pictograph for "busyness" is translated as "heart killing." Disturbing, isn't it? I do believe we can "busy" ourselves right out of really living and into simply existing.

And yet, short of boarding up the house and dashing for the Montana mountains to live out life in a simpler fashion, I don't see much slowing down for our family.

So my objective is this: to find my happiness amidst the busyness. Because, truth be told, I'd rather be sitting in my car chatting with my kids and plotting my next taxi run and tomorrow's crockpot dinner than laying under that tree reading a book all by myself.

What I love

In the bizarre mix of life, often a potpourri of illustrations surpasses mundane explanation.

Here are a few of the quirky things I love:

#1: I love the chaotic combo of kids and cameras. Invariably, after photographing everything from knee caps to raw blue sky, they turn the camera on themselves. The resulting spontaneous self-portraits are often better at catching a child's true character than the keen eye of a master photographer.

Andrew Lewis hamming it up with Tanner in the background.

Katelyn's self-portrait, taken while modeling the boys' new baseball helmet. Look at those eyes...

Kalli (with tongue in deep-concentration mode), a camera, a mirror and fingers in a peace sign. Enough said.

#2: I love the perpetual motion of small bodies (okay, I love it before 8pm. After that it drives me to expose my mommy claws).

Kalli, Cassidy and Erin rocking out in swimsuits and pj bottoms.

#3: I love little bodies that are still young enough to freeze when an adult, in an authoritative voice, yells "FREEZE!"

#4: I love being on the "adult side" of a middle school science project. I offered many words of encouragement but zero help. Sweet justice. I hated middle school science.

Poor Johanna was going nuts. Hence the crazy shaking.

A short break from the insanity of science for another self portrait. Or is that "selfs" portrait?

#5: I love a boy who weighs only slightly more than the pack he is carrying for his first Boy Scout campout.

That's first Boy Scout campout. Cub Scouts was soooo last year.


#6: I love that my kids are not too old for slides...

...or too old to take a shortcut back up to the top!

#7: I love that Kalli made the family wait to start the game until she was ready. By ready I assume she meant cranally swathed in bubble wrap, a towel and a piece of curling ribbon.

#8: I love that to kids, most everything is multi-purpose. Bubble wrap indeed does makes an excellent (and audible) kitchen rug.

#9: I love that I spontaneously checked the odometer at just the right moment. I have eagerly been anticipating the 100,000 mile mark on my Sequoia for weeks!

#10: I love that there is no law stating that you have to buy the generic pictures taken of every team in every sports league your child will ever play in. I love that you can line the team up yourself against a wall and ask them to be themselves and the result is 100 times more authentic.

Tucker's 4th grade basketball team, with Coach Dad.


#11: I love that my son will still smile at me upon request, even when I'm holding a camera and even when his friends are watching.

#12: I love that the very first thing my kids wanted to do when we returned from Germany was have their dad open his birthday gifts that they had bought for him.

#13: I love the freckle on the tippy-top of Tucker's left ear. I stared at it with laser focus while trying to not barf as the doctor stitched up the wound incurred by a random windowsill in the boys' bedroom.

We've decided as a family that there is a reason we do not wrestle past the hour of 9pm. Late night emergency room visits make for uncomfortable stitches and sleepyheads the next morning.


#14: I love that my kids can stand entranced for ten minutes while watching a gorilla eat it's excrement but cannot stand for ten seconds while I do their hair.

#15: I love Tanner's love of maps.

#16: I love Tucker and Kalli's love of small spaces. And dirt. And bugs.

#17: I love random nature humor. Like this river otter smashing face first into the glass partition. I love even more that Katelyn caught it on camera.

#18: I love wide-eyed wonder. Like when you get to be a human bird feeder and a bird actually lands on you.

#19: I love that the smallest things can give children the greatest joy. Tanner literally can't wait for summer 2010, because that's when the meerkats make their debut at Woodland Park Zoo.

#20: I love that God has given us the gift of love, with all it's many amazing applications.

Die Deutsche Diary -- All the other days

Checkpoint Charlie, the Allied Forces checkpoint for crossing back and forth between East and West Berlin between 1945 and 1989.

Sean and I and a really tall soldier at Checkpoint Charlie. He's no longer needed for military purposes, of course, and is used solely for decoration. If you look closely at the sign on his coat, it says "Pictures - 1 EU." Yes, we paid to stand there and take our own picture. Capitalism at its finest.

I know it's hard to see, but this is a picture of an aerial shot of Berlin just after the end of WWII. The city was 70% destroyed.
















Back in the '90's, the following phrase was a common one on Saturday Night Live: "And that just goes to show, Germans love David Hasselhoff." NOW I understand what they were talking about. He single-handedly helped dismantle the Berlin Wall!

I know, I know. It's crass. We don't even use the word "fart" in the Sundwall house. But some things are just funnier in a foreign language. :)

It became very obvious early in our trip that everyone has a German Twin. I saw Heather Mather's twin, Deborah Barnard's twin, Drew Barrymore's twin, and here, in all it's bronze glory, is Joseph Smith's twin. Seriously, isn't the resemblance uncanny?! (I think this guy's name is Heinrich Heine. He was a Jewish scholar of some sort.)

Sean and the hot dog. He was so excited to find a 5-foot tall smiling replica of his favorite processed meat product.

Me in front of the palace of Sophie Charlotta. It was amazingly beautiful, but cameras were prohibited inside so you're only getting the exterior flavor.

The Holocaust Memorial takes up an entire city block in downtown Berlin. There are hundreds of these solid concrete coffin-shaped pillars, some tall, some short. It's very humbling.

The Russian Memorial for all Russian soldiers who died during WWII. Although 3,000 of those soldiers died trying to raise the Russian flag atop the ruins of the Reichstag building per Stalin's orders. Great guy, that Stalin. A real humanitarian leader.

The rebuilt Reichstag. Hitler "accidentally" burned down the original. Everything in Berlin is "rebuilt."

The largest remaining remnant of the Berlin Wall. I was surprised by how short it was. This portion is on the site of what is called, "The Topography of Terror," which includes the remains of the Gestapo and SS Headquarters (really nothing more than the basement cells; everything else has been destroyed). The site is something of an outdoor museum, a walkway with huge placards describing in detail the key players and events that were associated with the Gestapo and SS.

The basement cells of the Gestapo. Used primarily for solitary confinement, torture and intimidation of anyone resisting the Nazi regime.

This is an amazing story. Near the end of the Jewish roundups in 1944, two thousand half-Jewish men and Aryan men who were married to Jewish women were rounded up and taken to a recreation center on this site with the purpose of being deported to concentration camps for annihilation. The wives and children of these men, who'd had enough of the Nazi's reign of terror, gathered at the site where the men had been detained and beat with pots, pans and various other items on the walls and doors of the center, demanding that their men be returned. The SS, who were at this point in the war somewhat concerned about turning public opinion against them, released the men to their wives and children. This memorial is a depiction of the women and children demanding the freedom of their men. The fearless, fed-up reaction of these women and children serves as a profound reminder of why it is so important to never give up or give in.

This is the exterior of the Pergamon Museum. It's stuffed with countless antiquities from the Pergamon Era, which I believe was set in Turkey somewhere. Anyway, if you're into Greek Gods and Myths, this is a definite must-see in Berlin. A few too many naked statues for my liking, but hey, it's history. :)

A chunk of one of the walls of the Pergamon. I got in trouble several times by museum security for touching stuff. It's easy when you play the roll of Stupid American Tourist. But it was worth it; I'm very tactile!!

Sean on the steps of the Pergamon. I call this one, "Small man on big stairs."

This is a coffin with the story of Medea and Jason etched on it. If you're ever feeling like a bad mom, look up the story of the Greek Goddess Medea. She was a very bad mommy.

Seriously. Can you imagine being the poor sucker who had to pose for this piece?

This was perhaps one of the most touching sites we visited. Inside a huge mausoleum-like building sat this statue of a grieving mother and her dead soldier son. The Soldier Memorial was built in remembrance of all those who died serving Germany. That it is covered in snow added to the solemnity and sadness.

The Maserati Begatti. Mmmmm. I was itchin' to test-drive this puppy on the Autobahn. Sadly our only Autobahn experience was in a double-decker tour bus on icy roads going speeds that would have been illegal in any other country. :) And I lived to tell the tale. A miracle.

I have one post left regarding our Germany trip, a recap of sorts, and then I'll return to my normal posts of quirky children and housewife lamentations. Bye!