Author: Robin Chartier

Fancy Dress

We have a friend here with a beautiful British accent who we often laugh with about the differences between British and American English. One of the strangest terms is if you are invited to a “fancy dress party” in the UK, you better put on a costume as if it were Halloween. Not a costume party — “fancy dress.” Add in the news that what we call a swimsuit they call a “swimming costume” and I’m guessing that the Brits don’t understand what a costume is? Oh, and when they say “pants,” it actually means underwear and a “vest” is one of our white undershirt tank tops. Things get confusing pretty quickly. 
Anyway, in the US when we say fancy dress we mean formalwear so I teased Ashley that we were going to our version of a fancy dress party when we went to the Marine Corps ball last week. I was in a costume kind of mood so I went with a Downton Abby inspired headband to go with my short black dress. 

She loves it when I dress up and she can put makeup on too.

Almost 20 years in and I still struggle with the fastener at the neck of his uniform. 

Caleb told me that my headband looked like headgear. Really, kid? I don’t look like I have braces. Then he clarified: “Not that kind of headgear. The tape that rugby players wrap around their heads to protect their ears.” Oh, awesome. Thanks. No more Rugby World Cup for you! 
Then he told me that I looked funny because I was all dressed up, but have a big bruise on my shin (from CrossFit). Josh tried to explain to him that someday when he has a girlfriend or a wife he will need to choose his words carefully and be complementary. He asked, “So I shouldn’t tell the truth?” Oh goodness. Yes, lie like a rug. It will make your wife (and life) much happier.

We had a fun night out. It’s hard to believe that next year might be our last ball since Josh intends to retire October of 2017. 

A week later, it was Calvin’s turn to dress up for the Homecoming dance.

Girlie is enamored with the idea that Calvin has a girlfriend and goes on dates.

While we were waiting for his date to arrive, she was dancing around the living room with the corsage.

Off to the dance!

Since Josh and I were driving home at the end of the night we decided to go have dinner at the hotel where the dance was being held. They have a Thursday night version of Friday brunch — a 4 hour buffet with fancy food, drink and entertainment.

The theme was Hollywood night so the background music was movie soundtracks. The food was divine. This was just from the first pass: Ceviche, shrimp cocktail, lobster salad, and corn chowder. Between the sushi, peking duck, ribeye steak, grilled fennel, fancy cheese, and prosciutto we were stuffed, but still had to explore the dessert table. 
A little creme brûlée, cheesecake with chocolate crust, and why not have Baked Alaska with a firework exploding out of the top? Calvin had a great time at Homecoming and we lived it up while waiting to drive him home. Win. Win. 

eye contact

In a culture that practices regular segregation of the sexes, general advice is for women to avoid eye contact with men when walking on the street. A bit difficult for this Californian who comes from a culture where a smile and a “Hi!” are an automatic greeting for everyone, but I’ve adapted. The reasoning for the instruction is because a smile could be construed as an invitation and generate unwanted sexual advances. I’ve never experienced any harassment personally, but it does happen on occasion.

What I’ve noticed about myself is that not making eye contact with people allows me to not treat them like people. I start forgetting that individuals are human, and start viewing them as obstacles. I realized this yesterday while I was driving. When I drive, my personal rule is eyes straight forward, no hesitation, no eye contact, no merging. It’s easy to wall out a vehicle when it’s an inanimate object. It’s not so easy when you see the human behind the wheel, make eye contact with them and connect with them on a personal level. Being impersonal is easy. Letting other people interrupt your life is inconvenient and takes more mental and physical energy. 
I don’t have a ton of extra mental energy these days, but I’m going to try and be a more conscious/compassionate driver. Wish me luck! 
What is it that takes up all my mental energy? These little people.  

Carter and Caleb both had volleyball tournaments this week to end their season. That means a few extra hours on the road and even more hours in the gym.

In-between sets, listening to the call to prayer. I never get tired of hearing it, especially when the singing comes from multiple mosques and the voices all layer together into one haunting piece of music. 
This week was also the end of the school’s first quarter. Normally that shouldn’t have anything to do with me, but these days when all the boys’ grades are online and there’s even an app to track their progress, it turns into me looking at their progress out of curiosity and then getting sucked into “conversations” like this: Why do you have 3 missing assignments in English??!!? You’re getting a D in Arabic??! Do you even want to go to college someday? And then threatening to abolish all electronics and sports from our household if they can’t get their academic lives straightened out. 
I’m sure it’s a great thing that all that information is accessible online, but it feels like one more responsibility that I don’t want to take on. I’m so far from being a helicopter parent that I’d more accurately be called a “dock parent.” I stay in one place and the kids come in and out as needed for supplies and repairs. But this dumb online grade thing spins me up and makes me shriek things like “you will never play sports again if you can’t be bothered to turn in your homework!” 

That’s how I felt at the end of this week. Tomorrow is day 1 of the new term and I feel like I’ve gotten a reprieve. As of this moment, everyone has a clean slate and no missing assignments. Let’s see how long that lasts . . .
Our other big event this week was our Very Last First Lost Tooth. 

Most kids are excited about losing teeth, right? Leave it to my girl to find something else to be nervous about. She was excited for the first half a second and then she asked, “Is it bleeding?” and a very helpful brother mistook her pink gum for blood and told her it was and then the tears started. Meanwhile, I’m driving and she’s crying in the back seat of the car and I’m trying to reassure her without taking my eyes off the road by telling her, “No, it’s not bleeding. There is no blood,” hoping that I’m not lying through my teeth and ruining any chance of her ever trusting me again.

We got home and I finally coaxed a smile out of her. (But only after I took care of the cat on lizard violence that was taking place in the living room when we walked in the front door. Zeki was batting the lifeless corpse all over my Persian carpet which caused another flood of tears. Yuck.) She finally believed me that she wasn’t hemorrhaging to death after I took these photos and showed her that indeed, there was no blood. 
All ready for the tooth fairy! (The Tooth Fairy brings 1BD, or $2.65 in case you were wondering.)

Halloween Horrors

If you remember my Halloween post from last year, you’ll understand the smile that spread across my face when I asked Camille what she wanted to be for Halloween this year and she replied, “Um . . . I think I want to be Anna.”

Ah, the bliss of my girlie wanting to dress up as the funny sister rather than the princess. 

So on the night of the base festivities, she got all dressed up, hair braided and we headed to base, full of excitement.

And then she fell apart as soon as we arrived. I know a panic attack when I see one and she was feeling the fear. Mama Nutter has produced a baby nutter — poor girl. 

I would blame the scary costumes that other people were wearing, but truthfully it started before she saw any of that. As we began the walk from the parking lot, her mind remembered it as a scary event from last year and she started to freak out. 
I had one sobbing child clinging to my leg while trying to locate other kids to hand off their costumes and then I found out that Josh had to work late. Yay! I don’t enjoy Halloween much as it is, but doing it with a panicky child who is wailing, “I wanna go home!” was really not how I wanted to spend my evening. 

At least my Survivor was having a good time. 

I set Caleb free to run and collect candy and sat at the picnic tables on the fringe of the action, talking my scaredy-cat down off the ledge. Calvin was volunteering with the Marines at their booth, Carter was in Germany, and Josh was working so 50% of the family was having a good night. 

After about 45 minutes of skeptically eyeballing the action and realizing that nothing bad was happening, she accepted some candy that Caleb brought back for her. The magic of sweets. 

Best friends from school, unplanned matching costumes. Anna and Elsa together!

Josh finally got done with work so he and Camille ran the gauntlet. The only way she’d leave the safety of the table was to burry her face in Josh’s back so she didn’t have to see anything.  The worst part was if she did see a scary costume she’d start screaming, be unable to look away, and start clawing Josh’s neck like a feral cat. Josh laughed and said, “She’s so much like you” about 10 different times. Thanks babe. Love you too. 

Caleb in the costume contest. This survivor didn’t win. When I asked Caleb who the winners were he said, “Oh, one of them was the kid in the Army costume (you can see it in the photo above).” Um, baby? That’s a Marine. Don’t let your dad know that you can’t identify the uniform! (Though it has been about 8 years since we’ve been stationed at a Marine base.)

Calvin at work — the Marines put on a small haunted house that was so scary Caleb ran out in tears and was speechless and shaking for about 10 minutes. 
The night ended up being a good time — just more work than I had hoped. 

A few days later Camille had a special Halloween morning with her kindergarten class. Since the Anna costume was too hot, she opted for a cooler, breezier Elsa dress for trick or treating around the school. 

A sweet tradition. The kindergartners have a “parade” where they walk around the school to various classrooms and trick or treat. My favorite part was that they go to some of the Middle School and High School classes and as they walk through, the big kids ooh and ah over the costumes and drop candy into their bags. Camille stopped and gave Cater a hug as they walked through his science class, but was moving too fast for me to get a photo of them together.  

All done with big bags of candy to show for the effort! If you zoom in you can see that Camille’s teacher was dressed as the Boom Chicka Boom Boom tree from the famous children’s book. Her costume was perfect. Camille’s costume choice was very wise — it was so hot, we were all dripping and fanning ourselves. It’s always hot on Halloween here. 

Next up was a morning of Halloween games, crafts, snacks and other fun. 

Working on her bat. Yay for a tear-free Halloween celebration. 
Our third and final Halloween was the big party that takes place at school every year: Spooktacular. After her experience on Spine Street (the base party) Camille was dreading this one days in advance. The afternoon of, she was begging me to stay home, pleading, “My heart is beating!!” Sorry girlie, I know how uncomfortable a pounding heart feels. 
I was more than happy to stay home, but I also didn’t want her fears to keep her from having fun. I told her that she didn’t have to wear a costume and we didn’t have to stay long, but we were going to go in and see all the work the volunteers had done and to visit her brother, who was working in the Not So Haunted House with some other High School students. 

Calvin is behind the big ID, holding it in place. They work on this project to get credit for their required volunteer hours. They had set up 4 different stations with games where the kids could win tickets to get prizes at the end. They did a really good job making a fun, non-scary place for the littles (and Caleb) to enjoy. 

All smiles!

Once she’d seen the “man behind the curtain” and knew that Calvin was part of the event, none of the rest of it bothered her. She pronounced, “I’m not scared anymore!” which was exactly what I was hoping for. Baby steps. 
One last thing. On Halloween, Caleb talked me into going out to the base Zombie run. It’s a 3K race where the participants wear flag football type flags and then have to dodge the zombies (volunteers in makeup) who try to steal the flags. 

It takes place at night in the dark so there was lots of screaming as the zombies jumped out from behind light posts or behind buildings as we ran through base. I didn’t escape the zombies, but it was fun running from them!

hoosiers

This past Saturday we finished up our first basketball season with all 4 players on the court. Thankfully, the age group divisions allowed for them to be grouped on 3 teams so I didn’t have 4 practices and 4 games each week to manage. Even though I love it, 3 hours of games every Saturday is my max.

Watching Camille play was hilarious — she was very particular about her pre-game hair. Usually braids, occasionally pigtails. And we had a few meltdowns on game days when the only shorts I could find were navy because the uniform was supposed to be black shorts. These things are important when you are 5.

before her first game

learning how to play defense — arms up!

 getting extra coaching from her brothers

gotta work on getting the ball out, not just up . . .

good game, good game, good game . . .

time for post-game snacks! 
This is going to sound crazy, but seeing her out on the court is like seeing my mom as a 5 year old girl. Her mannerisms, her expressions when she’s uncertain of herself, the way she pushes back her hair, and the way she runs is all Pam. I love it. 

End of season trophy with her coaches. She didn’t score any points, or even take any shots during the games, but she learned how to dribble (and she did make a few baskets during practice). 
Caleb and Carter had a good season — I love seeing the brothers work together on the court. I didn’t take any photos because they move too fast for them to show up as anything but green blurs. Carter moved around great on the court, but had an off shooting year. I’m sure it’s because he hasn’t adjusted to his new hight. He’s having to relearn all of his techniques using longer arms and longer legs. Caleb was the youngest on his team, but he played just as well as kids 2 years older than him. 
Even though I didn’t get any photos of their games, Carter and Calvin were part of a 3 on 3 basketball tournament last week and someone got a few good photos of them. (Carter above)
Calvin (under the basket — black sleeve on his arm)
Calvin has been getting really good — he grew a few inches over the summer and was lifting weights so he’s able to muscle around on the court better. But he is having to make the choice this year between varsity basketball and soccer and is going to choose soccer. He’s been playing with the Marine intramural team on base so he’ll be all ready when the season rolls around in January. 

As much as I love watching him play basketball, this sight of dad and son warming up before the game is pretty great. (Josh has been playing too).

Cross country finishes this week, Middle School volleyball ends next week, flag football starts next week, Middle School soccer starts the week after that . . . one season rolling into the next, all year long.

Glory days

We’ve sweated through our 6 months of purgatory and are finally reaping the rewards for perseverance. This weekend Fall arrived, which means it now feels like California summer. 
The kids have 2 days off of school this week for Ashora, the final offering in our Optional School October, so why not head to the pool on this 90 degree day? 
Carter returned from Germany yesterday, full of stories, but empty handed. Their group’s luggage didn’t make the connection in Istanbul so we’ll go pick it up today. I’m sure he’s happy that he gets a day off from studying Arabic since he’s doing so poorly in the class we made him take his book along to study if he had any free time (he didn’t — shocker). 
He said they would wake up at 6:30 every morning and go do a physical activity as a group: swim, run, a game, etc. After breakfast they would break into groups to work on projects or learn a new skill. Carter’s teachers said he was great in their GPS skills class, which didn’t surprise me a bit since he’s more reliable than my phone’s GPS when I need to get somewhere. 
Games, skits, group projects, presentations, a scavenger hunt, a visit to the castle, a dance, a Volksmarch (a German walking thing), and other activities with 152 other middle schoolers made for a busy and fun week. 
Working hard at something! (He doesn’t remember what)
Group photo at the castle. Carter is in the middle if you zoom in. He said the girls outnumbered the boys 2 to 1.
Heading home! Happy to have him back because we had a lot of this while he was away:
Yes, actual tears because she missed her brother. Daily, she would sigh, “I miss Carter.” How nice that she loves her brother that much. I hope they always feel that way about each other.