Wall-E is appropriate for all ages. It’s old school cartoon cuteness with Pixar’s eye candy visuals. It’s also completely lacking in subtlety about the message. If you are uptight, looking for something to complain about, don’t believe in global warming and are unconcerned about how humans destroy the Earth, don’t go see Wall-E. Everyone else, take the family and feel the warm fuzzies you felt when Lady and Tramp shared spaghetti. When the camera pans the trash piles, pay close attention to what you see. There are Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. items in the piles and in Wall-E’s collection. I wonder if Michael Crawford knew he was going to have a major role in this movie?

Get Smart surprised me. I expected non-stop stupidity. I thought the main character would be a doofus. The movie was actually laugh out loud funny. The tv series is everywhere in the new movie, but most of it blends so seamlessly that people who never saw Don Adams will not even notice it. The characters are likable and the age difference between the leads is completely forgivable because of the background stories. Steve Carell is easy to love, but when he smiles at a potential dance partner and tells her it will be fun, he won the heart of every woman in the audience. I liked this one so much that I’m sending Tommy and his grandfather to watch it. They are going to looove it. The very best lines in the movie come from Alan Arkin, especially after a car chase and a close encounter with a swordfish. Go see Get Smart and frolic in the silliness.

Prince Caspian was good, but it felt like a children’s movie when it could have been so much more. It’s too scary for small children and too bland for older children. The 15-y-o’s in our group all thought the centaurs were silly, but they liked watching Ben Barnes. Wait for the DVD on this one.

If Turkey Creek had been designed to be walkable, they would not have the hordes of spoiled, thug wanna-be teenagers take over the property for drag races late at night. I am a Turkey Creek fan. I love to go there and people watch. I have just never understood why it wasn’t designed more intelligently. People should park their cars and walk everywhere in the complex. The people who approved the strip malls on either side of a highway design deserve to have the late night races all over their landscaped retail world.

I want to say kids will be kids. I want to say live and let live. I just can’t. This bothers me as a parent. The idea of unsupervised drag racing makes my mom alarms flash and ring. I don’t deny that my worry is fueled by the presence of two permit holders in our house. The awareness that all of my children’s peers are also permit holders has me dreaming of a large empty parking lot converted into an obstacle course for safe learning. My teens and their friends probably dream of joining in the late night races at Turkey Creek. I am acutely aware that we shun teens and deny them places to interact. I just don’t think that nitrous cars are a good way to socialize and impress. Turkey Creek needs to tear up that drag strip and replace it with a row of small shops and SIDEWALKS.

Sarah mocked my pre-sleepover lecture by summarizing it on a chalkboard.

While I listen to the middle school principal rant about the evils of technology year after year, I actively encourage my children to embrace technology and blogging. For children, blogging starts out as an online diary. It is a place where they can record their feelings at that moment in time. If they ever posted anything threatening to themselves or others, we would immediately intervene and get professional help. We wouldn’t just tell them to delete it and deny their feelings. That scenario hasn’t come up yet, but my children do sometimes make posts with words I don’t like them using. I allow it. Sometimes they whine and complain. I allow it. I don’t have to agree with them. They are allowed to have their own emotions, ideas and opinions. I think it’s much better that they be allowed to sort it all out in a blog post than forced to be keep everything unexpressed. I don’t want my children to go through life with a big blank smile on their faces, saying “everything is fine” when life is all about highs and lows. It is the lows that make the highs that much sweeter. As adults, we learn to filter who we share details of life with, but even as adults, we recognize the big, fat liars who are more superficial than a department store mannequin. Teenagers have enough problems without adults denying their feelings. If one of my children says they had a really cruddy day, they need a hug. They don’t need me telling them that their day doesn’t matter or that they are wrong. Their blog is their therapy couch. It’s where they get to let it all out. Validation is much more important than keeping up appearances.

It had been a long time since I took a vacation, but as a child we used to visit the beach every other year. I would always sit on the shore and collect shells. Piles and piles of shells that I would then reduce to one small bucket of favorites. Last week, I sat in the sand and collected shells. I have been to many of the tiny coastal islands, but I have never seen the beach shells look quite like they did where we stayed. At least 80 percent of the shells were huge chunks of oyster shells. The spiral shells that look like ornate ice cream cones were almost non-existent. There were huge, intact conch shells being found by people all around me. In our family alone, two were found. Most striking to me, huge gelatinous jellies were dead everywhere. The beach looked like someone had picked up a reef, crumbled it and dropped it along the shore. I questioned someone about the odd shell mixture and they explained why things seemed odd. The island had been ravaged by recent storms and they pumped in tons of sand from the ocean to try and slow down the destruction. A lot of deep sea sand dwellers came to the shores with the sand. He suggested that we visit the end of the island.One of the roads was completely unreachable as all the houses had been condemned. Once we did get to the beach, we walked past mountains of sandbags that were almost completely underwater. The first line of defense seemed to have failed. Remnants of the bags floated in and out with every wave. Some of the pieces were tiny, but others were large and resembled bodies. People stood and stared at the disturbing sight. The next thing that we saw were mountains of fresh sandbags piled around houses that survived and houses that didn’t. It was like a ghost town. Construction workers were busy breaking up the remnants of what used to be a road and large chunks of cement and asphalt covered the ocean floor. Large cables remained where houses used to be. Did the people whose property used to be a block away from the beach rejoice when they got a phone call telling them that their property is now ocean view? It was all very sad and more than a little bit scary. We built expensive homes on a sandbar. Storms destroyed them and we responded by destroying part of the ocean floor. What chain of dominos did we knock down when we responded as we did? We came back to Knoxville to hear stories of bears running through our part of town. Now, there’s a bear loose in Oak Ridge. No matter what Colbert thinks about bears, this is not normal bear behavior. Something is wrong when bears venture out of their territory and into the dangerous land of suburbia. If a nobody like me can see that things are going wrong, why can’t the experts see it? I understand that humans are at the top of the food chain, but with that privilege comes responsibility. Irresponsible, egocentric behavior has made us parasites upon this Earth. Shouldn’t we be loving caretakers instead?

I will miss many things about Kindergarten, but carpool is not one of them. If you get there half an hour early, there will still be two cars in line ahead of you. If you get there five minutes before the bell, you will be in line a block away from the school. If you leave the car running, you are destroying the environment. Turn the engine off and you freeze or melt. It interrupts baby nap time as evidenced by the tiny wails of misery coming from the other cars. Toddlers express their frustration at having to be strapped into a non-moving vehicle. Nobody likes carpool. It works as efficiently as possible because everyone follows the rules. Well, almost everyone. We have one parent at our elementary school who jumps to the front of the line and gets out of their car to claim their child the minute they arrive instead of waiting in their cars in the line like everyone else. This parent is not a doctor, nurse, police officer or fire fighter. If it it was, everyone would understand the inability to wait. This parent is one of the people who ended up on Gilligan’s island. You know the song, “With Gilligan, the Skipper too, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor and Mary Ann, here on Gilligan’s Isle.” This parent has the kind of job that would allow them to show up two hours late for a meeting and people would all smile and claim that the person was right on time. There are parents and grandparents in the carpool line who are using their entire lunch hour to pick their child up and drop them off somewhere before they rush back to work. They follow the rules and wait their turn. Why couldn’t this parent? I know that the impatient parent was aware that they were annoying people. I watched other parents giving this person the stink eye day after day. At class parties and on field trips, this person’s carpool behavior ALWAYS came up in discussions. Ironically, this person is thought of very highly thought of in our community. Anyone in their neighborhood would have carpooled with them. They just aren’t making any friends in the carpool line. Does this parent not realize that they are setting a bad example for their own child? I am thrilled that I won’t have elementary school carpool next year. Hopefully, the impatient parent will have gained patience over the summer.

Year after year, I read everyone’s accounts of their travels and adventures and thought I was fine in my happy little corner of the world. I still love where I am, but vacations are wonderful! From Evan’s first timid steps on the sand to his out of the blue declaration, “I am happy” midweek, this was a great week. It overshadowed his giant sand vomit in the bed and his impulsive assault on his sister’s shoulder with a large rock. He spent the week shrieking in terror every time anyone tried to apply sunscreen to his delicate white skin. As a result, he has some small pink splotches, but fared much better than I had imagined. Amy’s surprise that the ocean is salty and her inexhaustable play with the water splashing on the sand were entertaining enough to excuse her beach obsession with the body’s waste products. “Is that fish poop?” I wonder how many times I can retell the story of Amy squatting in the sand and peeing while she loudly informed everyone on the beach that “Uncle Dean said it’s okay to pee in the ocean” before she gets annoyed with me.

The sun touches Noah and he immediately turns brown. He paired off with other tweens on the beach and they ventured farther into the ocean than I was comfortable with them doing. By the end of the week, he was exhausted and eager to crawl back into his digital entertainment world. I’m giving him a few days of electronic abuse before I shove him back outside. Sarah started the week by wearing her clothes into the ocean. By Friday she was running all over the island, comfortable in only a bikini. As a result, she attracted some attention (and new facebook friends). The highlight of her week was a flight above the island as a special gift for being so helpful with her younger siblings. Tommy was a wild card. I didn’t know if the beach would be too much of everything for his senses. Allowed to self regulate, he did wonderfully. He loved the floating sensation in the ocean, but spent very little time relaxing on the beach. He declared the ocean exercise and the pool relaxation. He and Noah abused their indulgent Uncle with the dragons that lurk on the beach at night. Aunt Jeni and Uncle Dean were playmates for all of the children. Although Jeni and I shouldn’t be allowed to sit across from each other at meals because we misbehave when together, I think we agree that having a once a year trip for the entire family at which we celebrate ALL of the holidays and birthdays of the past year together would be perfect.

If I could change anything about the week, it would be having a giant tube slide from the chalet to the beach. How much fun would it be to toss yourself and your basket of towels down the slide and instantly be at the beach instead of trudging down several flights of stairs with 50 pounds of equipment every morning? Some sort of Swiss Family Robinson lift for getting the equipment back upstairs would be helpful. Also, I would have no televisions in the chalet. If we ever go again, I will absolutely be bringing a clothesline. The teeny-tiny washer and dryer combo in the chalet held about two beach towels per load. I would have had to spend the entire trip doing laundry if I hadn’t packed plenty of clothes for everyone. If I could have one thing different, it would be not ending the vacation with the scrubbing of two toilets and their respective bathrooms. Cleaning is the exact opposite of relaxing. I know that because I am now looking at a mountain of sandy clothes and shoes. I don’t care though. It was totally worth it. The neighbors enjoyed our vacation too. “It was soooo quiet in the cove last week.”

Our vacation pictures.
Jeni & Dean’s vacation pictures.