Our Baby Girl Turns 8!

Eight years ago, I gave birth for the fourth and final time to our sweet little caboose.

What a beautiful gift.

Our lives have never been the same.

On Sunday night (the night before her birthday), I told her I wanted one last picture of her as a 7 year old and this is the pose I got.  Goodnight my 7 year old girl....

And Good Morning 8-year-old girl!

She requested breakfast in bed with a strawberry donut with sprinkles from Donut shack, "Marshmallow cereal" and water.

Then she had virtual school all day, but we tried to make it special by tying her birthday balloons to her chair and letting her have a fellow classmate come over at lunch time (and got her Subway per her request!) and let her classmate stay and do virtual school with her for the afternoon.  She was thrilled! And her teacher and classmates sang Happy Birthday to her through the computer, so that made her happy too.

That night, we had Chick-Fil-A for dinner (again, per her request) with Nana's homemade apple pie for dessert and opened a few gifts.

Dave had no idea I took this picture and will no doubt make fun of me when he sees this blog post.  But the night of her birthday (Monday the 25th), also happened to be trash night and Dave announced he was going to throw away the double stroller that was taking up space in our garage and we were no longer using and he said really wasn't in good enough condition to give away.  I watched him pull it out to the curb.  Then I saw it start to sleet and rain and a few snow flurries fall down.  And then, as I celebrated by baby turning EIGHT (!!), I looked back out at the curb, and started remember every moment spent pushing that stroller full of babies.  We got this stroller in 2008, twelve years ago, when Tanner was born.  I pushed Lacey and Tanner around everywhere in it right up until Riley was born.  Then it became Tanner and Riley's stroller and I pushed them everywhere in it right up until Ella was born.  And then it became Riley and Ella's stroller.  So many memories.  It's like a piece of my soul is seeped into the fabric.  I guess it was fitting that the stroller left the same day my baby 7 year old became eight.

So many things are still closed here, almost a year into the pandemic.  But gyms are open (at 25% capacity) and Benfield Sports Center falls under that umbrella.  Ella is my sports nut.  She is super athletic and loves all sports.  Basketball was canceled this winter and she was very sad about that. So I rented a sport court for an hour and a half, kept the group size to 10 and we wore masks the whole time.

And they had a great time!!

Happy birthday to my sporty baby girl!

Then we came home and opened presents.

And to add icing to the (birthday) cake (😜), she also passed her belt advancement test in TKD and is now and ORANGE belt!

Ella bella boo, you are sweet and sassy, spirited, opinionated, cuddly, competitive and there is absolutely no doubt that our family would not have been complete without you!

Happy Birthday to my Lacey Bella!

Fourteen years ago today,  Dave and I became parents for the first time.  I became a mama to this sweet little girl.  She's not little any more, I suppose, but she is still sweet!

As per tradition, I served her breakfast in bed.  She requested a croissant and strawberry milk and I added a little cinnamon roll and some orange slices for good measure ;)

And then we looked outside to find this!  Lacey's YW leader from church does these signs as her job and so she came over during the middle of the night and put this in our yard so that Lacey would be surprised when she woke up.  So fun!

The big 1-4

That seven pound baby that made me a mother 14 years ago is now as tall as I am!

For her birthday this year, I took her to get her ears pierced.

I never imagined I'd be spending my daughter's 14 year old birthday with her at a tattoo parlor, but alas, that's exactly what I did!  I heard this was the best place to get ears pierced, so that's where we went!

She was nervous, so she brought her friend Audrey for moral support.

Gearing up.

She's ready!

And it's done.  Pretty little sparkly studs in those cute little ears.

When we came home, Nana and Grandpa were waiting for us to wish her a Happy Birthday.

And Nana gave Lacey a family heirloom.  She gave her a sweet little gold ring that belonged to her Maternal Grandmother.

Dave brought her flowers on the way home from work.

Happy birthday, Lacey!

Lacey really wanted to spend her birthday with her friends, but due to COVID, I told her we needed to keep it small and to only invite four friends.  So, she invited her four friends from her church youth group Lucy, Elise, Kateri and Audrey.

After her friends left, she opened a few family gifts and we all took turns sharing something we like about Lacey or a favorite memory we have of Lacey.  The perfect ending to a full day of celebrating the first Strom sibling! 🎉

Fighting to Get Our Kids in School!

 

It has become my mission to give my kids the education they deserve.  The education they have NOT been getting for the past year.  We were told in March of 2020 that our kids would be out of school for TWO WEEKS.  That timeline has extended time and time again to the point that our kids have now been out of school for almost a FULL YEAR with no end in sight.  There is a powerful teacher's union fighting to keep kids home.  In the meantime, everyone else is back to in-person working and our kids are being left alone to fend for themselves.  They have become isolated and withdrawn.  They are spending WAY too much time in front of a screen and very little time interacting with  peers, teachers or people in general.  Classes have been cut, curriculum has been shortened, criteria compromised.  And yet, I have sat here and watched virtually every single person I know throughout the entire country send their kids back to in-person school (many of them have been in person since the start of the school year).  They are all back in school because research has consistently shown that schools are not a source of significant spread of the virus.  Research has shown teachers and staff are NOT getting sick from their students.  Research shows that it IS SAFE for kids to go to school.  The American Academy of Pediatrics has consistently supported the importance and safety of in-person learning.

So....I'm going to bat for my kids!  My mission has become getting my kids the education they deserve.  I can't afford to quit my job so I can't homeschool them.  I can't afford to send them to private school ($60,000 a year for all four of them - I looked into it), so that's off the table too.  SO..... I am doing everything in my power to get the schools to open its doors to students and I guess I feel it's important to document that so that one day my kids will know how hard I fought for them.  I've written multiple letters to all the members of the BOE (I wrote another one tonight), joined a Facebook group group dedicated to the opening of Anne Arundel County schools (and not only have I joined, I have been very actively involved, making posts, commenting on posts, reading everything, responding to calls to action, etc) and I even volunteered to speak at the BOE meeting three days ago, which is the video attached to this post.

Every once in a while the Mama Bear in me emerges and she is here!  So on behalf of my four little cubs and the countless other cubs out there that have no say and are feeling isolated and withdrawn and struggling..... all my time and energy right now is focused on you!

Vaccinated!

 

We returned from Florida last Saturday night and the very next morning, as per the Department of Health Guidelines and Governor's orders, the whole family had appointments at one of the local urgent care centers for Covid tests.

Lacey getting swabbed....

Followed by Tanner...

Then Riley....

And finally Ella!

And while they were all quarantining and awaiting their results (which all came back negative 😊), I got vaccinated!!  Health care workers are first in line for the vaccination, so last Tuesday, my manager sent me to get my shot.

Hoping every shot in every arm is one step closer to gettin kids back to school!

Shot #1 is in the books.... Shot #2 scheduled for 1/26/21.

Let's all do our part to get rid of this virus and back to our lives! 🤞

Starting the Year at the Happiest Place on Earth

We figured we would have the Grand Finale of our Strom Family trip be for all 16 of us to go to Disney's Magic Kingdom together for our final day.  Unfortunately, Grandpa wasn't feeling well, so he stayed home, but the rest of us headed to the Happiest Place on Earth!  It was still all decked out for the holidays, so that was fun.

This picture was taken at 8am and I am very proud of that fact because we all stayed up until midnight the night before to ring in the new year, so get all 15 of us up at 6:30am the following day to be out the door by 7am to be parked and shuttled to the park by 8am was no easy feat!

But it was worth it because, after stopping to admire some uncrowded views of the iconic castle.....

We b-lined it to Space Mountain and got on without any line!

Next, we took Ella on Dumbo.  

The great thing about the Magic Kingdom is that, unlike most amusement parks, they are ALL kid-friendly, so Ella was willing to go on every single ride with us today.  But she still enjoyed her go-to kiddie rides as well!  And lucky for her, she has a big brother that takes her.

Ella and Tanner.

Flyin' high.

Next, we all headed to the Seven Dwarf's Mine Train.

Whee!🎢💎

And then we decided to do Splash Mountain  🌊 because by then it was warm enough that we didn't mind getting a little wet, but early enough in the day that the line wasn't too bad (~35 minutes) and we figured it would only go up from there (and we were right!)

Chillin' in line.

Riley and I co-piloting our log with Anne, Mike, Becky and Jordan behind us.

Ahhhhhh!!!!

Time to get a little dizzy on the tea cups!

Lacey, Riley and I cozied up in our clam shell in Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid.

And then we took off for the race track! 🏁

And yes, that is Ella on the back of her cousin Becky.  She may be 7 years old, but she is the baby on the Strom side of the family (her five cousins on this side are ages 19-24) so she gets toted around and spoiled rotten and loves every second of it!

Becky and Ella drove together.

And I had foreshadowings of teaching Riley J how to drive in 6 years!

Tanner drove around with cousin Lexi.

And Lacey and Jacque teamed up.

By this point we were hungry, so we stopped to eat.  And the nice thing about that is we were able to take off our masks for a bit.

Cute little Minnie Mouses Jacque and Lacey.

Masks back on!

And then we headed to Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin.

Jacque and Ella shooting away.

Dave and Riley.

Dave killed it with over 300,000 points - nice! 🥇

Lacey and I very intent to get some points!

If you're wondering about character greetings and interactions during the times of COVID, well this is how it's done.  1) You never know when the characters will be out and about because they don't want crowds to collect, 2) The characters are inaccessible - they are behind a chain (like Cinderella's step sisters shown here) or up on a rooftop waving to you or...

Up on  stage or platform like Stitch shown here.

Stitch has special meaning to Tanner because when he was 4 years old (the first time he was here), we did a Strom family trip to Disney and he was dying to go on Space Mountain with his cousins.  We decided to make it our "last hurrah" and the final ride of the night before the park closed and we were heading home the following morning.  He was barely tall enough to ride it, but the person at the front of the line measured him and gave him the "thumbs up" to go on the ride.  He was SO excited!  We got all the way to the front of the line and were about to get on the ride when the employee loading us onto the ride measured him and declared him a fraction of an inch too short and wouldn't let him ride.  He burst into tears.  So, I took him to the gift shop next door while everyone else was riding and let him pick out a souvenir and he chose a stuffed animal of Stitch.  And still has it to this day 8 years later!

Also, they don't have parades or announced shows or entertainment in order to avoid the gathering of crowds, but every once in a while a single float with a few characters will go by.  It's only for a few minutes, so that as the crowds inevitably do gather to see the float/characters, they disperse within just a few minutes instead of lingering together for a long period of time.

Time for a Dole Whip break! 🍍

Ella trying her hand at pulling out the Sword in the Stone with Riley looking on.

While Dave and I have been here several times throughout our lives (Dave as recently as last year on a work trip), this is our third time here as a family.  We average about once every four years.  We first came in 2012 when Lacey was 5, Tanner 4, Riley 2 and I was pregnant with Ella.  We came again in Sept. 2016 when Lacey was 9, Tanner 8, Riley 5 and Ella 3 (that was seriously one of my all time favorite trips!!!  The kids were perfect ages and we dressed them up in Disney costumes, ate at the themed restaurants, met the characters, etc and they were all SO into it!!) and now again on the first day of 2021- 4 years and 4 months since we were last here, this time without costumes (aside from a few mouse ears 😊) and our faces covered in surgical masks.  Not what we expected for our next Disney trip, but grateful that Disney has found a safe way to be open during this crazy, unprecedented time and that we were able to start this year with a little bit of magic and hope for a better year for everyone!

My two Princes.

After going on Space Mountain, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, The Magic Carpets of Aladdin, Dumbo, Buzz Lightyear, Pirates of the Caribbean, Peter Pan's Flight, Haunted Mansion, Under the Sea, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Mad Tea Party, Carousel of Progress and Tomorrowland Speedway, we decided to call it a day and picked up this delectable Micky Caramel/chocolate apple to share while we waited for the sun to go down.....

And we could see the enchanting castle and park all lit up.

So despite the masks (which were strictly enforced to be worn at ALL times) and the cancellation of shows and fireworks and parades and such.....

With those adjusted expectations in mind and knowing the times in which we are living, I would declare the day, in the words of Mary Poppins, "practically perfect in every way!"

Here's hoping for a bright and beautiful tomorrow!

Happy 2021!