Wendi Lou Lee

It’s Thursday morning, we leave for Santa Barbara today so Josh is home. We gave Nani the morning off, so we are taking the kids to school.  I’m up typing around 6am … unbelievably this is not the typical school morning for me. I’m usually scrambling like crazy… Lunches, homework, breakfast and those shorts you wanted to wear but I didn’t get put in the dryer like I promised I’d do before hitting the hay last night… That’s me friends.  Then the constant, “what else needs to be done before you start goofing around?” And “Raegan stay focused only 8 minutes until carpool with.” So yea me sitting at the computer on a school morning, like that has never happened, ever!

The house begins to rouse … I mean erupts because Tobey our son lives in two volumes… Asleep and ear shattering!  I try to quiet him, ordering him back to his room so Dad can sleep … he wakes near 5am, out the door by 5:30 Monday-Thursday mornings so this could be a great chance to give him some extra energy for this long weekend ahead. I’m sure he is going to need it. Well that kinda works, because T is T.  I jump into Raegan’s warm bed for just a minute and scratch her back, her favorite, and give her a few more moments to wake. Then over to Tobey’s room to do the same, chat in his crazy full bed where he already has the whole day, the whole weekend planned! He is just bursting with intensity. I’m laying there for just a few seconds and I realize… I have never woken them like this before, except for maybe when it is their birthdays. So calm, so loving, so interested in how they slept and what they dreamed and what they are excited about for the day… It’s beautiful and purposeful and I want to do this every school morning for the rest of their school days… Could I do it?  Normally I am in too much of a hurry, never even a spare minute!

So we get it moving … My one request they make tea, so they run outside to the lemon trees, leaving the door wide open “Hello, it’s cold out there!” And “Propane costs money” flashes through my mind. They return with these huge lemons, convinced they are going to be so perfect. Tobey started this tea-making thing about two weeks ago when he started wanting to help mom feel better. In our house when someone has a cold, we make lemon tea. I’m kinda picky, I like to make my own tea…but for the last few weeks I’ve let Tobey take over the tea-making duties. I remind him that one ice cube is really perfect for me and he gets to work. I must say he makes a good cup of lemon tea! The rest of everything is happening and I wake up Dad and we have 10 minutes before we need to get to the car.

I have one request…Colton’s carpool cd that Heidi made for super fun rides to school where is it? “In the car Mom of course” is the response I get. Carpooling with Heidi our neighbor and landlord is like the most genius thing, it feels like I’m hardly at school, making the mornings so much easier. But this morning we are going separate, giving us family time in the car, she is so sensitive, so helpful. As we are driving the cd goes in, mostly crazy pump up songs from Kidsbop, and then a few others. But my favorite on the lineup is T. Swift’s Shake It Off.  We started our crank it up, Shake It Off mornings maybe a few months ago when the kids told me that Heidi lets them blast it when she’s driving… She is so fun and I have learned to relax by watching her have so much fun with her kiddos.

We start through the Village and get it going, we know every word and the motions and we just laugh at some of the lines, Dad’s kinda amazed and he keeps trying to turn it down a little, wouldn’t want to blow the speakers or  something!  The song is almost over and it gets to Tobey and I’s favorite line, we have to look at each other as we say it with this smirk on our faces “This Sick Beat!” We laugh because as we park near the crosswalk, we see Heidi and Colton, we end up all walking in together anyway. We get to the edge of the playground fence, gives hugs and kisses and see you Monday and have so much fun and they just run off. No tears or being scared for me, they are just amazing, stable, confident children. As we walk back to the car, feeling that was way easier than I thought it might be, Josh tells me that they were singing “Shake It Off” in the kitchen during breakfast… Their line was “shake that tumor off…shake it off”, between giggles.  I always have known that my kids are awesome and I’m so blessed but it’s so easy to forget and so easy to not see it, even when they are staring right back at you.

So many of you have asked what are the kids doing this weekend during surgery, are the kids okay? The plan for them this morning was school, Raegan didn’t want to miss her field trip and Tobey always has something in mind with his two best buddies Nigel and Lucas. After school we arranged a special play date for each of them, thinking they would need a distraction after school. Tobey to Nigel’s, Raegan to Kaelyn’s … they have been talking about it all week! You see we don’t do play dates on school days usually, it just gets too crazy for me to juggle it all or keep track.

T&R will be dropped off at Nani and Papa’s house where Auntie Kate, Josh’s sister will be waiting for them. Auntie Kate is the most fun aunt ever, she will do things with them I would never dream of doing. She swims in the freezing pool water in Tahoe every summer, let’s them climb, pull and batter her, which usually ends in Auntie Kate getting hurt in some way… they just aren’t really gentle.  Sorry Kate!! Then there’s the big one in Tobey’s book…Auntie Kate will play video games with him. That is their special thing… I don’t hate many things but I hate video games, I have no desire to ever even attempt to try. Maybe it’s because we never had them growing up and I lost too many times at Mario Brothers when we would play at friends houses. I just tended to run off the walkway straight into the fire every time, all I had to do was slow up.

So this weekend is going to be party central at Nani and Papa’s with Auntie Kate as the main stage entertainment.  They are so stoked, except that 2 year old cousin Jack stayed home, their most bragged up cousin of all time.  They talk about him constantly and Face Time him for hours every week.  They will be talking randomly and them it explodes into this Jack story and Tobey will say how he is the cutest, most adorable thing on the planet. All their friends and parents have heard about Jack. This weekend Auntie Kate decided to make it  more about T&R, maybe she could relax a little too … or at least sleep in.

So that’s the kids, we asked if they wanted to come see me in the hospital. Tobey’s response was “I think I’d like to see a hospital, but I don’t want to see you mom.  If I see part of your brain I’ll probably throw up.”  Raegan is just so concerned that they will shave all my hair off and that would be so scary and weird to see me without hair.   So the plan is to see them hopefully Monday when I get to come home, with just a bandage on my head and long hair still.  A few hours to get packed up and we are ready to “Shake It Off.”