Just Pics

The proud Webelo recieving his awards.

A naked love of literature.

Proof they do quit loving the camera.

I Wanna Talk About Me

Since my kids all took nasty pills and I can't find much uplifting to discuss, I wasted time creating a quiz instead of improving the emotional tenor of my home.
Take my Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com!

Four Days, Five Nights

As usual when the kids are home, time flew by. The time included:

One feast.
One Hangin of the Greens.
One Yoga class.
Two Movies: (Go see Harry Potter and Pride and Prejudice. I enjoyed both.)
Two meals consisting of ice cream.
Three Basketball Practices.
Three coat purchases.
Four Days of washing F's Incredibles sweats so he could keep wearing them. (He's got to get tired of them soon, right?)

And NO CHRISTMAS SHOPPING! Bad mommy!

Gave Thanks

Things that made me thankful:

1) We had a really pleasant dinner. Food was good, company was pleasant, children played outside in the really frightful
weather and seemed to enjoy it.
2) No one was offended when I and the three oldest left Thanksgiving (we did stay 3 1/2 hours). Dh and the other kids
ended up staying for another two.
3) There was no crowd at the theater and the movie was very good. I probably should be ashamed however, that I agreed
with E that many of the young (illegally young for me) actors are turning out quite nicely.
4) We came home to a fire built by dh.
5) My children are quite happy with a bowl of ice cream for dinner. Who would want to cook after a relaxing day.
6) I've updated my sidebar and the blog still works. It's always a near thing. I can't get rid of the wonky spacing, but oh
well.

Lalalalalala

Turkey's decorations should not be showcased by snow. I'm putting my fingers in my ears and covering my eyes...lalalalalala.

Rant

I was annoyed when the stores put out the Christmas trees next to the Halloween costumes, but I can respect a capitalist desire to cash in big. What I am flumoxbogulated ( a kid word meaning totally bemused) by is why you would have your Christmas tree and house lights up and on already! Why?? Are we really such a microwave, drive-thru society that we can't even wait one more week to start the excess? I feel like Linus, except instead of waiting for the Great Pumpkin I'm holding on to the Terrific Turkey. I like Thanksgiving. A quiet day. No heavy duty expectations. Sure there is the possibility of family dysfunction and wine working synergistically to make the carving knife look inviting, but overall it's a pleasant holiday.
I'm quaking that the day is coming that we will simply have one long holiday from Labor Day to New Years with a conglomeration of cook outs, pumpkins, turkeys and lights accompanied by far to much food and sugar. Then they could add year round school so we have constant back to school sales. Oh, that will be great. Ok, slinking back to my little hole now, but I feel much better, really. Hey, pass some of that wine, would ya'.

Proof Again

Maybe I wasn't the best person to be entrusted with these six little, semi-malleable persons.

1) It is obviously my fault dd is second string on the BB team, and why don't I get her into the varsity camp at the high school, on Sunday afternoons, 18 mile away, in winter when the weather will be lovely, around holiday time. Ummm, I don't think so.

2) I obviously warped ds since his only reading material that could even be loosely termed literature is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

3) Dear Mrs. S--Please review F's letters with him. He didn't know them at pre-school. Gasp! My FOUR YEAR OLD doesn't know his letters. Won't have to worry about him reading tripe though, will I.

4) Dear Mrs. S--Tests show C is ready for algebra. We cannot offer him suitable enrichment. Please seek outside sources of math enrichment for him. Or I could just let him play game cube. He could use triangulation to shoot his enemies.

5) What kind of mother would plan on skipping out of Thanksgiving a little early, to take three kids to see a stupid movie about an adolescent wizard? One who wants to see the movie, that's what kind.

It Was A Dark and Stormy Night

with apologies Bulwer Lytton. The weather last night was abominable. It blew, and blew and blew. I had dropped ds at a Boy Scout meeting and went on to dd's first basketball game. Two minutes into the second quarter everyone was herded into the locker rooms because of a tornado warning. I wondered to myself if wind borne lockers would be any safer than wind borne bleachers, but in deference to my rule abiding daughter, I kept quiet. We waited 45 minutes and then the warning was over and they called off the game. It was pouring buckets when we left the gym and dd refused to go start the van and drive it up (all that rule following again) so I got soaked getting the van. My hair of course did it's best to create an Orphan Annie look due to it's dousing. It continued to blow and blow all night. This morning we have someones shingles in our yard and we appear to be minus a couple soccer balls. Dh called to say someones trampoline was in the ditch, luckily not ours. There must have been a power outage at some point because the clock was blinking this morning, or rather, the hundreds of clocks on all the appliances were blinking. (Just an aside, do people really need a clock on everything but their underwear?) Our 2-year old alarm clock of course awakened us at 5am per usual so dh made it up to go to work on time.

Hectic Days

I'm sure it's obvious I've been busy. My little digital world suffers when that pesky reality gets in the way. Thursday I waited while they worked on dh's car. Always fun. Enough said. Friday I put on a suit and acted like a professional. I went to a conference that pretty much confirmed I'd been right about how to feed kids all along ;-). It was nice, especially the part where when I came home after dinner and little people ran to greet me. Usually dh gets that treatment and I, who have cleaned their messes, tended their boo-boos, and prepared those above nourishing meals , get treated like yesterday's eggs. Saturday was a killer yoga class in the morning and then dh and I took the four little kids (the oldest two having made escapes to friends houses) to a long afternoon at the park with hot cocoa provided by moi. After church Sunday, E stayed for youth group. S stayed the night with his friend. I took L to Brownies and C, F and A and I killed time at the park. The 40mph winds made it much less pleasant than the day before, at least it did for me. I didn't notice that it visibly bothered those who are closer to the ground. This week pretty much is filled already. Monday night-Cub Scouts and basketball practice. Tuesday-Boy Scouts and E;s first school basketball game. Wednesday-bb practice and Kid's Klub at church, etc. etc. It makes it a little hectic but at least they aren't bumps on a log, right? Right? Right, damn it!

Chronological Advancement

Chris at The Big Yellow House had a post of 40 things she wants to do before she's forty. It meshed nicely with thoughts I've been having lately. My oldest dd is 13. She was horrified Sunday when I tried on thigh high, spike heel, black boots. She also cringes if I comment that I think someone looks hot. I try to remember what I would have thought when I was 13. Undoubtedly the same thing she's thinking. Of course, she is probably more sedate than I ever was. She declined my chaperonage on her class trip, not because she thought I'd cramp her style, but because she feared I'd get us in trouble and thrown off of the trip. Well, yeah, that is a possibility, but geesh! So, now that I'm past forty,( and not about to create a list of fifty things to do before my next decade) I've been trying to think of what there is left that I'd like to do. The answer is scary. I think I've done about everything I really, really want to do. Oh, seeing the pyriamids would be nice, but it's not a must do. I guess I'm just hoping to get in trouble in the nursing home and have them call home to my kids to straighten me out.

Food Drive

A warm Saturday, a charitable undertaking, small town sidewalks covered in colorful leaves.... five 9yo boys...that sent a discordant clang through the idyllic image didn't it.

A long four hours but we did collect 1400 cans of food. Not bad for a town of 1200.

My Own Words

I made the mistake of expressing disappointment that there was only one biscuit left for breakfast. F quoted me "You get what you get and you don't have a fit." Humph!

The Ghosties With the Mosties

After much scrounging in the dress up box this is what we came up with.

Mel-tiger, S-a thief (don't see it myself, but that's what he said), C-race car driver (left off the helmet for the pic), L-princess
F-army guy, E-a dippy hippy
I wanted to wrap my bottle of Jack in a brown paper sack and go as a wino. I figured I would need the fortification. Wise acre 11yo of course had to point out the object is to appear DIFFERENT from usual.
We had some disension when F kept changing his mind about what to be. He had on in succession, a pumpking (a pumpkin outfit with a crown), a dinosaur, a lovely yellow flowered number from one of his sister's dance recitals and finally an army guy. I began to lose patience and thought again about taking that Jack Daniels.
Extreme cuteness

More napping of course