Randy and Shari's World

This post is dedicated to my good friend Trish, who recently had the nerve to move all the way to Texas and leave us all sad and weepy here without her.  She wants to know what is going on in my life, and since I am so horrible at keeping up with my blog, and am slow to cave (though there is some hope I feel) and sign onto Facebook, she has to resort to the good old telephone to figure out if I'm still alive and stuff.  So I will try my best to write something now.  (But already my youngest charge, Elias – formerly known as Pierogie, is demanding my attention…).

Quick updates of random things, before I bring up something that I learned about from a handout I received at Micah's Kindergarten (sniff, sniff) orientation this morning:

*Elias is 9 weeks old now and he's really cute and smiley.  He also likes to eat rather often, even and sometimes especially during the time that grown people call "night" and like to sleep.  So, we're pretty exhausted these days (and nights).  But the Little Dude is getting chubbier by the minute, and who doesn't love to squeeze and kiss chubby baby thighs??

*We just got back from a week-long roadtrip in Newton.  Newton is our Dodge "Graham CrackerVan" according to Serena.  He also contains cheerios and all sorts of other crumbs from our trip that we have not yet taken out of him.  Anyway, so we packed up a 5 yr old, a 2 1/2 yr old, and a 2 month old and went on a trip that Google Maps said would take "1 day, 9 hours."  Even we began to doubt our sanity in selecting such an adventure for this summer.   But we wanted to visit Randy's 3 brothers and their families and they don't happen to live next door.  So we packed lots of diapers and lots of snacks, and made sure we used plenty of both to ensure a nice drive.  We also made sure we didn't get them mixed up, because no one wants a onesie full of soggy pretzels, now do they?  But it really was a nice trip and our kids did rather well for all the driving we did.  Of course we did try to make it extra exciting by leaving at 4:40 AM for the first leg of the trip and 2:40 AM on the fifth and final leg.  I mean, 3 out of 5 of us were up anyway, so why not just go?

*Micah starts Kindergarten next Wednesday.  He is very excited, and he does realize (I think) that it involves more than just riding a school bus. 

We got this 3 page handout at orientation this morning, all about the bus.  And no, it was not the lyrics to "The Wheels on the Bus" though that would have been more interesting than most of the 21 "Frequently Asked Questions."  But question 18 more than makes up for the other boring ones.  So much so that I got my lazy bones up off of the couch to get a highlighter from the desk to mark the finer points of interest.

The question reads: "Why are 39" seats in school buses rated for three children when they only will accommodate two?"

Part of the answer states that "In determining seating capacity of a bus, an allowable average rump width standard was established."  Yes, an AARWS!  And it goes on to say that "13" of rump width was suggested when a 3-3 seating plan was used".  Who figures this stuff out?  I'm half tempted to measure the rump widths in our family and see what combination of us could fit on the bus.  Or maybe I could ask Randy to make a pie chart of them somehow (not an actual pie, of course, because then the measurements would need to be altered a bit). 

Anyway, I just had to share that inspiring phrase.  I felt as though the handout morphed from a letter from the school district into a Dave Barry article on the joys of airline travel or something.