Hawaii, Baby!

All of the frequent flyer miles that I've racked up over the last four years of travel for work is about to pay off for us on a family vacation to Hawaii!!

We leave Sunday and are so excited! Volcanoes, beaches, rain forests, and our hotel looks like it kicks ASS.

Anna's a great traveler just like her parents!

Yay!

Take Me To Your Mother

We had the most fun time in March filming with Nickelodeon on site at NASA! They have a new show as part of a new nighttime adult programming line up on Nick Jr, called Take Me To Your Mother. It's a docu-comedy about Andrea Rosen (comedienne) who is a new mom and goes around asking moms how they do it. Some of the shows have been about Italian moms, nudist moms, spiritual moms, etc. They all have a light hearted comedic flavor and so I ended up being filmed in one of them for NASA moms along with Cady Coleman, Nicole Stott (astronauts), and Dana Weigel and Holly Riddings (flight directors). They filmed us for 2 days for a 20 minute show! Andrea was super fun in person, and witty, and her whole team was professional and respectful. We moms had a great time with it all and on July 1 we watched it on NickJr. Cady and Tami and Miranda came over so we all gathered around with snacks with Paul and Anna and had a super fun time watching how it all turned out as we Tweeted along with NickMom and Andrea. We hadn't even seen it so didn't know what to expect!!!



Anxiously awaiting the start of the program :)

Turns out they did a super great job with the show, and it was fun to watch my two favorite things right there on TV: my little family and my NASA family! 💜❤❤

Anna got a kick out of seeing her own pictures on TV too :) She has since watched it a few times.

What a great experience! I am so lucky!!!

Here's a link to the shows, and I'm sure they'll be posting this one online soon.

http://www.nickmom.com/tv/take-me-to-your-mother/

Thankful

Cuteness!!!

Tooth #3 down!

Our little lovely lost her third tooth Sunday night (6/23). She has 3 more loose (top 2 and 1 bottom). Busy toothless summer!

Last day of kindergarten

And just like that, I dropped off the kids for the last day of school today.

Holy cow, this is how you start to get old fast!





Last day of school!




Michaela and Elizah, their last hour as kindergarteners :)

She's grown 1.5 inches since April, and that's no lie! No wonder she's outgrown the clothes we just bought her in March, she's a bottomless pit, and has complaints of joint/leg pain sometimes. Good grief!

In a few hours we will have a first grader! ❤💜😁

Recital Day 2

She was amazing, but I cried through the whole thin in the audience so it was mostly a blur! I saw she was staring right at us the whole time with a smile and I wondered if she could tell I was crying. I don't think so! So proud! She said afterwards she wasn't as nervous like the first day. Nana showered her with pretty flowers both days...

Then she says she'd like "to try an experiment" to see what her glued up hair and makeup would do in the pool :)

Love her!

Nerves!

She did super great on stage :) Right after she got off she told me her legs felt like they were being all shaky and squiggly the whole time? Were my legs doing that, mommy?!?!

Ha I told her it didn't look like her legs were being all squiggly and that just means she was nervous and excited to be up on stage! We hadn't really talked to her about being nervous or stage fright, because we didn't want to plant any of that in her head. So she explained what she felt, which naturally was NERVOUS once up there! I can't blame her, I was watching from the side I the stage and when those big curtains go up like that, it's pretty dramatic, I have to say! But she followed all her steps and did great! I asked her what she thought about that nervous feeling and she said IT WAS SO FUN! And I told her that's why people do it :)

I'm in the audience today (stage mom helper yesterday).






Anna and Hannah

Dance, baby!

Today's her dance recital! The song is "Down In New Orleans" from the Princess and the Frog. Today I'm a backstage room mom, but tomorrow I'm in the audience. We weren't thrilled when she asked to take dance in Jan but she's had stuck with it and loves it! We may not exactly be dance parents but these kids sure learn a lot about self confidence so that's a bonus!







Heavy makeup is a requirement!

Summer's here!

And how is it they only have 3 weeks of school left?! Anna says she remembers the first day of school still :) I told her that each year you get older, time goes by quicker!





Her end of year program. Class of 2025!

Happy Mother's Day!

Spending a little mini-family vacation at Moody Gardens this weekend, complete with the hotel stay :) Having a great weekend and Anna is swimming like a fish already this season! It's so fun to watch her. We're at Palm Beach, it's too cold still for me, but thank goodness Paul's a cold water trooper daddy! I get to shoot water at them from the dry sidelines. Anna said this morning that she was bummed that she didn't get to "do anything" for me today since we are out on vacation but I told her not to worry, we will be home this evening in plenty of time :)

A little unexpected for the budget, but glad we did this. The memories are priceless!




Stuff Anna made for me for Mother's Day. They even walked to the mailbox as a class to mail the LOVE card, so I got to be surprised that it came in the mail :)




From my mom




3D glasses and pretend pout!



















View from our hotel room :)




All good, she tells me!





They're colder than they look.



Hey Anna, it's been a great 6 years being your mom!!! Love you soooooo much!

Spelling...

I love how at this age she spells out words the way they sound. It cracks us up every time we see it. I hope I never forget this phase...

I will make BETTER choices

Another straight face in her folder for goofing around in class. 20 times: I will make BETTER choices.

MS150: year...like...8?9?10?

We started this thing in 2002, swearing to never do it again...and in the meantime how did all this time go by? It's 2013 already. I still feel like we just got to Texas!








This year's ride wasn't the best and wasn't the worst. We had a tailwind most of the way, thankfully! And the weather couldn't have even been better except for the 43 degree start at 6:45am! Couldn't think of a better way to enjoy the weather all weekend!





A little cramping in the legs on the first day but none on the second. A broken spoke on Paul's tire meant a 4 mile can ride to the mechanic on day 2, and I got a flat on the last stretch to the finish line. The most notable pain for me this year was BUTT PAIN! Clearly thanks to the Insanity videos and spin class my muscles were ok but my butt had not seen enough time in the saddle! After 10 years I was forced to buy a dumb seat pad like a sissy at one of the rest stops on day 2. We were always told that didn't help but BOY WERE THEY WRONG. That was the best $25 spent on that bike! Sure made day 2 much more fun! Note to self: get a longer play list of music. JC!!!














Meanwhile Anna was with my mom all weekend, doing the usual butterfly festival and other requisite spoiling events...





So happy to see everyone at the finish line!

Waving at Anna just after we crossed:




Finish line support!









The best part: double sweetness!




And my friends and family raised over $500 towards Multiple Sclerosis! Thankful my body is healthy, and aware how others aren't so fortunate. thankful to be able to ride every year. We can't wait until Anna can join us, but that will be a long time from now!

Thanks to Wells Fargo again for treating us like VIPs the whole weekend. Such a great cycling team!!!!






Now to retire the bike to the garage for the rest of the year :) It's running season! After a rest week, that is....

Choices

Two straight faces in a row this week for messing around in class! "I will make good choices" written 20 times!




That child!

The end of a long road...

Well, at this point it's safe to say that I very likely have not made it to the final round of 50 finalists for the astronaut selection process. Darn it! I was so close, I just wanted to get to experience what it'd be like to be one of the final 50. They will spend a week going through more in depth interviews and medical exams. I think they're crazy for not calling me back! I still feel really good about how my initial interview went, which is the safety net for my self confidence that I'd hoped for :) It's hard to say why they didn't think I belonged in the top 50. I have a few thoughts of my own about it, but don't worry, none go back to the fact that "I'm not good enough." :) I know I was good enough to be there to begin with; perhaps those who were called back had just a little more, and that's OK too!

I know, I know, I'm as shocked as you ;) While I'm bummed, I'm not devastated, although I'd like to allow myself a few days of a healthy dose of depression (I'm still human!). Alas, I'm not alone. There are another 69 of us from the initial 120 having the same thoughts right about now. Here are a few things I keep thinking, starting from the beginning:

Considering I submitted my application in Jan 2012, this whole process has been very long. For over a year your mindset is about "still being in it" despite the inevitable end that will come for roughly 6,480 or so of us applicants, and that is a postcard from NASA saying "thanks anyway" AFTER the press release has gone out about the final 9-15 they have selected to be astronauts. In June of 2012 I learned I'd made the first cut (500 or so) and then in Nov 2012 I'd learned I'd made the next cut down to 120 that they wanted to interview (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!). And after that, the waiting game until the end of March, when I'm pretty sure they've made their last phone calls to invite the final 50. When you've been part of that waiting game for so long, there are a whole range of experiences...

You jump everytime your phone rings, starting in Feb 2012, hoping it's a NASA number that's NOT from your coworker. I was lucky enough to get one of those calls in November for the interview days I got to come in for in Jan, which only prolonged the phone hovering again until last week.

As you make it through each selection milestone, you feel like you've accomplished something major in your career, which gives you a year-long high. A very long time to be excited and hopeful, at the same time knowing not to get your hopes up. As you make it past one selection process milestone after the next, people start saying how great you are, coworkers start saying things like "what would we DO if you left us", and all of these niceties are something you probably wouldn't otherwise hear (when's the last time you have ever gone through a period of time when lots of coworkers told you how valued you are in the workplace?). Everyone should get the chance to hear talk like that.

As the word spreads as time goes on, people start looking at you a little differently. This could all just be in my mind, but have you ever had your dreams exposed in public, knowing full well that the potential outcome will be also be public (in my case, Nickelodeon public), and that that outcome has odds being in your favor of only something like 0.1%? Everyone knows that "astronaut" is truly challenging the odds, but when you're this far into the process, and you get closer and closer to the end, people start asking more questions. Regularly, and seriously. You get good at crafing a response that's deeply true yet hard to really commit to completely until you actually get the postcard, "No matter what happens next, I'm just so excited to have made it THIS far! It's all good." You start looking at the others around you and realize that some of them have made it this far too, in their past. In the same boat. And now they're NASA leaders. Great NASA leaders, but not astronauts. For varying reasons. And you deep inside you realize the odds are that you're going to be one of them. And it's not exactly bad. These are awesome people. They are just physical representation of The Odds.

Even though you recognize the odds are slim of getting selected as one of the 9-15 finalists, confronting your dreams this closely forces you to rethink a whole lot. Do I still want this astronaut thing? I'm a mom now, and this means something completely different. Can I still buy into the risk? How many people do you know have REALLY been confronted with their dreams? Say you've always loved to dance all your life...dance class, ballet, whatever... it's your passion, have you ever put yourself out there to be exposed and evaluated against really high competition? Have you been so close to it that you've had to reconsider how it might impact your life today (versus when you first created the dream)? The travel, the absence from the family, the time commitment to that passion. There's no laziness or complacency. Now add to that the risk of death being 1:60 (like the astronaut thing). How would you prepare your child, or your family for your own death or injury? How would you explain why it's important for you to be gone for long stretches at a time? I'm so grateful to have had the chance to stop and face all of these questions (and more) on a level I think not all parents may have the opportunity to think through. I'm able to answer these questions now, to myself, and to anyone who cares to ask, but most importantly, to our child.

This whole application process isn't exactly for the weak! Even for those of us who already have good, solid careers and fully know how this all could go. It gets the best of us ;) There's a whole lot about it all I'd like to get down into words but for a variety of reasons, this is about all I can get out :) This is probably as much as I'll put down about this whole awesome experience in "public" but I'm hoping I remember enough about it to convey it to Anna one day.

By the way, she's excited that I won't be leaving the planet for now ;)