Out came the sun and dried up all the rain ...

The weather finally cooperated for the installation of our long-awaited pool. We had dry, breezy, sunny weather for 2-1/2 days which is what we needed to dry up the soggy excavation site. The pool is up, it's about half-way filled after running 2 hoses almost all day, and it's just a beautiful thing. No lounging around the pool yet, though. Now the projects begin: drainage pipe because of the slope of our yard, backfilling with topsoil, moving mountains of excavated clay, lots of lawn repair, landscaping around the pool, electrical and deck dudes, yadda yadda yadda. Our neighbors have a pool and he told Jim tonight that the first year of pool ownership is the worst for the work. Goody.

Putting up the sides ... putting in the liner ...

... installing the top rails ... fill with water!

Voila, I can't believe it's actually here.

Helaina was so funny this morning. I think she gave up on seeing the "big pool" in our backyard because every time we'd tell her it was coming, it would rain and had to be cancelled. This morning after she woke up she asked me the same question she asks EVERY morning: "Where my Daddy?" I told her that Daddy was downstairs but we had a surprise for her. I told her to head to our bathroom where I had the window open with the stepstool right under it. She walked down the hallway looking so cute in her jammies with her hair all tossled dragging her pillow, Suri and Chiwawawee behind her. I helped her climb on the stool and watched for her reaction as she saw the pool going up in the backyard. She got a huge smile on her face, pounded her little fist on the window ledge several times and said "Yes, yes, yes!" She's so very excited about the pool. Hopefully we'll all take our first dip soon.

Exhaustion

All 3 of us are exhausted. Jim and I were up at 5:55 this morning to be ready when the pool dudes arrived at our house (more on that later, groan). Helaina woke up at 6:30 which is about an hour earlier than she should have, saying "I so excited bout the Dragon Boat Festibal." She did have a blast at the festival. Here she's pictured with one of her buddy's Maddie, while waiting for the parade to start. I recycled last year's boat by covering it in new red wrapping paper. I had stickers and Asian-themed pictures to glue on it but Helaina wanted "just plain red", and since it was her dragon boat we left it plain.

Waiting for the race for 4-year olds & under to begin. Notice that Jim is holding on to Helaina (she was SO excited to run). There was a "false start" the first time around when about 5 of the kids started running to the finish line before the ready-set-go. Hmmmmm, do you think Helaina was one of them? Yup!

Ready, set, go and she was off like a greyhound out of the starting gate - strong little legs running, piggy tails flopping and tongue sticking out of her mouth - so happy.

Running to Mommy. And in case you're wondering, she was the first one to cross the finish line.

Waiting with Cecelia for the water balloon toss to begin. Helaina's adorable orange shirt says "happy to be Me" - ain't it the truth.

With encouragement from Jim, she was running toward me to throw the balloons at me.

Earlier in the day we were at Helaina's school for an end-of-the-year party. There was cotton candy ...

... games and face painting ...

... a family photo (yellow from the gymnasium lighting) ...

and more games. Helaina's a blur because she jumped so high in the air to toss the hoola hoop over Winnie the Pooh.

Central Freakin' New York Weather, Part 2 - a/k/a when will we ever get our pool completely installed?
Well, the pool site is excavated and there's a mountain of clay, dirt, rocks and grass to show for it. The filter is set up and the circular pool doo-hickey is in the ground, and that's about it. The alarm woke us up this morning to dark cloudy skies and thunder - NOT what the weathermen predicted, BIG surprise huh, that the weathermen were wrong. Five minutes after our contractor started excavating there was a lightning strike and the rain began. They did what they could then had to quit before putting up the sides of the pool and spreading the sand because the ground was too wet, muddy and puddled with water. Thanks to the rain we've got giant ruts in the lawn from the bobcat and a giant pile of sand in our front yard waiting to be spread on the excavation site - as soon as it dries out - and still no pool. Frustrating. Here's a picture of Helaina watching the bobcat from our bedroom window. Hopefully one of these days (soon, I pray) I'll post a photo of our COMPLETED pool.

Yup, it was a very busy Saturday and we are a very tired family. Hopefully we'll all sleep in tomorrow for a lazy, leisurly Sunday morning.

Corn...dog

Ahhh, my sweet Heidi Doodle, I miss her so much. We had corn on the cob tonight with our dinner and every time we have it I think of Heidi. She loved chewing on the corn cob and smacking the butter.

At dinner I reminded Helaina how much Heidi liked corn and this was the conversation that followed:
Helaina: Can we go get 1,000 Heidi's?
Me: I don't know. Let's ask Daddy.
Helaina: Daddy, can we go get 1,000 Heidi's?
Jim: One Heidi was enough.
What a party pooper.

Well, let's see how many things we can cram into one Saturday.

1) Pool installation at 6:30am tomorrow morning (yup, you read that right). After Wednesday's rain delay and Thursday's equipment breakdown (can you believe that one) our contractor is working this weekend to catch up on pool installations. I called Jim at work and told him that we were on for 6:30 tomorrow morning and do you know what he said? "Do we have to be up when he's here?" Our installer swears he'll be done in time for us to go to all our events - fat chance, I mean we'll see. Nothing ever goes smoothly with me. With my luck when they start excavating they'll probably find an ancient sacred burial ground in our backyard.

2) Family Fun Festival at Helaina's school: From 11am-2pm and we were initially hoping to attend for about 45 minutes, but we'll see how the pool adventure goes in the wee hours of our Saturday.

3) Families with Children from China Dragon Boat Festival: noon-3pm, always a good time and Helaina has a blast with all her little buddies, balloons, face painting, fingernail polishing, bubble blowing, water balloon toss, hula hoop competition, barbeque and of course, the Dragon Boat race and parade.

4) A clambake for Daddy: noon-5pm. Hopefully we'll leave the Dragon Boat Festival a bit early so we can be back in time for Jim to head over the the clambake for a few dozen steamers.

Let's see by this time tomorrow night how many things were accomplished and how exhausted we are.

Central Freakin' New York Weather ... aaarrrggghh

Like our pool? Yah, looks inviting, doesn't it. When we decided to get a pool this year I joked with Jim that when installation time came around, it would probably snow. I wasn't too far off. It's freezing today, windy, wet and was raining too much to excavate. The crew brought everything into the backyard, assembled the ladder & steps and the filter then left. They'll be back tomorrow afternoon to excavate, weather permitting, and hopefully finish up tomorrow or Friday. So our one-day 4-hour pool installation will be dragged out to 2 or 3 days thanks to Central New York weather. After the installation the electrician has to do his work, then the electrical inspector, then our deck contractor and finally the town inspector. At this rate we'll be swimming who-knows-when. Grrrrrrr.

The temperature in the house is 64 degrees. I'm about to click the thermostat from a/c to heat and run it to get the chill out of the house. We've got sweatshirts on now that we had to pull out of our winter boxes that we just put away. Helaina came downstairs from her nap today, looked out the back window and said "Where the big pool?" Annoying.

Funny Helaina:
A few days ago Helaina was being naughty and I asked her to stop it - about 5 times. Finally I said to her "Why do I have to ask you 5 times to stop doing something? Her response: "Let me think about that." I had to turn my head so she wouldn't see me laughing!

Time marches on ...

I find it hard to believe that Helaina has only 2 more weeks left of pre-school. It seems like just yesterday we were dropping her off for the first time and had to leave her kicking, screaming and crying in the teaching assistant's arms. Oh my, how far she's come, our smart & sassy little gal! Here's the announcement for the "moving up" party for her class.


Here's Helaina's first official school photo taken just a few months after school started.

Time to take down Helaina's school artwork to make room for the last few weeks' worth of masterpieces. My favorite out of this batch is the letter "H", which she's already mastered. "Big line, big line, little line!" she says as she's writing the letter. I also like the house with the red tissue paper "flames" coming out of the roof from their unit on safety and fires, I cracked up when I saw that one in her backpack.

One of our Target purchases the other day was a shoe rack for Helaina. I got tired of tripping over them every time I walked in the front door. The shoes Jim and I have fit on one rack about half the size of this one - not good.

Our backyard - grass today, pool tomorrow!!!

I expect there will be snow on the ground tomorrow morning.

Weekend fun

Saturday morning wasn't fun, nope. I was determined to finish swapping out my closet and Helaina's closet from winter to summer (although ironically today I ended up digging out sweatshirts that I had put away because it was cold, windy and rainy - go figure). I started with the clothing bins stored in our basement laundry room and made 4 piles - keep, donate, toss and rags. It was so much fun (ha) that Jim got into it too. He ended up with enough shirts in his donate pile so that every homeless man in the county could be outfitted. When all was said and done we had 6 garbage bags stuffed full of clothing for the Rescue Mission. Jim thought I was joking when I said I was getting rid of my work clothes - dresses, skirts - told him that my new job didn't require me to wear dresses. He still holds out hope that some day I'll return to the workforce outside of our home. Let the man dream, I say.

This was only a small part of the organizational disaster area our basement turned into Saturday morning. Note that Helaina was taking a break on the couch with Suri as she watched a TV show. She was a big help, uh huh. This was right before she climbed into her pup-tent ball crawl and tossed 50 small balls all over the room. We should donate that thing to the Rescue Mission.


More entertaining weekend activities included a trip to McD's for breakfast. "We go to the McDonald's with the playground?" Helaina asked. Sure, why not. Egg McMuffins and climbing through a dirty, germ-infested playground - sounds good to our daughter.

Climbing up the pole that has a huge sign next to it that says "no climbing". Good thing 4-year olds can't read.

A trip to Target scored Helaina a few goodies like a new water bucket, an Abby Cadabby cereal bowl and a box of Kai-lan bandages. Of course when we got home there was a boo-boo that needed bandaging.

A coupon for a buy one/get one free dinner salad took us to Friendly's one night (combined with the fact that I didn't feel like cooking). Their entree salads are good - my Asian Chicken Salad with sesame ginger dressing was yummy. Helaina had strawberry milk, chicken fingers and ...

... since the kid's meals come with dessert, a Cone Head ice cream sundae. "Where my ice cream? Where my ice cream? What taking SO long?" Gadz, the child is impatient. She dove into this before the waitress had even set it down completely on the table.

We also hit the playground at Onondaga Lake Saturday morning where Helaina went crazy on the swings & slides, rode her bike for a bit and then we had a picnic lunch. Sunday evening Jim said to Helaina "You sure had a good weekend." My response: yah, she always has a good weekend. And her weekdays aren't so bad either.

Gweenie with clam sauce

Helaina's been asking for linguini with clam sauce for the last few nights - well, actually begging for it. It's been too hot recently to boil a cauldron of water for macaroni so I've been telling her no. We were in the grocyer store the other day and I told Helaina that we had to get hamburger rolls because we were having gardenburgers for dinner. She protested "No, I want gweenie with clam sauce for dinner!" The woman pushing her cart right next to us stopped and said to me "Did she just say she wanted linguini with clam sauce?" I told her yes and that it was one of her favorites. She couldn't stop laughing. The heat wave finally broke so Helaina got her "gweenie" with clam sauce topped with lots of parmesean cheese, just the way she likes it. "More, please." Our little Italian!

I was cutting vegetables in the kitchen for dinner tonight and Josh & Helaina were outside doing Lord knows what. I thought I heard Helaina screaming and Joshua yelling "Mom!", so I had a mini-panic attack (about the 600th one since we brought Helaina home), dropped my knife and ran outside expecting to see Joshua carrying Helaina to the house all bloodied. Instead I saw this ... whizzing down the street, Helaina screaming (with delight) and Joshua yelling "Ahhhhh!" (not Mom). Skateboards with daredevil children - bah, humbug.

"When dat big pool coming?" Not soon enough.

Funny Helaina:

Helaina picked out some new Disney Princess & the Frog summer jammies the other day and she loves them, won't sleep in anything else at the moment. When I dropped her off at school the other day she ran up to her teacher and said "I got new Disney Princess jammies! We got them at Walmart!"