Later On The Same Day

The J-Bird Strikes Again

I ask you, where was this child's mother when he was off pulling this shenanigan?! Well, I'll tell you. She was in the other room. Yes, I heard the water running, but I assumed he had climbed up there and was getting a drink. He climbs up there all of the time and will get a drink or play in the water, and I'll stop him after a minute or two. It's no big deal, the sink isn't usually plugged. Well, apparently it's fun to plug the sink and then fill it to overflowing, flooding the whole kitchen, making a puddle on the floor that's about 8x4 feet. I don't know if you can tell, but there is standing water covering the whole porcelain area, and then running out onto the floor and onto the counter tops. After I unplugged it, he immediately put the plug back in and was trying to do it again. This was deliberate!

Here is the stream running down my hallway.
Here is the silverware drawer full of water.
This pot was in the basement (next to the clean cloths-now taking turns in the dryer) catching drips. It's full.

The Half-Max

Bruce and his dad, Terry did a half-max over the weekend. That is half of the iron man distance triathlon. The half-max is a little over a mile swim in open water, 56 mile bike, and a 13.1 mile run. It's just crazy! These half & full max people are a completely different kind of animal. They both finished, but it was extreemly tough. It took them approx. 7 hours. I did the run part with Bruce. Well, I say run, but he only actually ran 8 of the 13 miles. At this point of the race, most of the contestants were completely exhausted and most of them had to walk a good portion. I, not having just swam/biked for several hours, was fresh of course and could run just fine (but of course, I went at Bruce's exhausted pace). At about mile 7 or 8, we were coming up on a porta-potty next to a water station. I needed to use the facilities, so I told Bruce that I was going to run ahead, use the potty, and then catch up with him. I tore off at a sprint and ran right past the workers of the water station. I used the potty as fast as I could and then burst out and sprinted on down the path after Bruce. Those workers looked at me so funny! Nobody had legs at this point in the run, and here I am running like the devil is after me to the potty and then out again. Anyway, it was a good time for me at least. You'll have to ask Bruce if he enjoyed it. When we were out on the course, he said "Why did I want to do this? Oh, yeah, it's a cool thing to have done, but not to be doing."

Long Awaited Gospel Answers

For all you Mormon kids who, like me, wondered what a shimino is (~By this shimino, ye are my disciples~), here, at long last is the answer: http://www.hunting-fishing-gear.com/review-display/269.html
I guess He really is the ultimate fisherman!

ARGH!

Within the last hour, my youngest son has gotten into my canisters again and dumped out sugar and flour all over the place, poured about a gallon of his bathwater onto the floor, peed on my bed, broken a large glass pumpkin decoration, and dumped out the dog food all over the floor. Additionally the following crises were averted: He was getting into the oven (it wasn't turned on), I saved the eggs from his hands, and he was carrying the paint cans around the house and standing on them (luckily they didn't come open). All this within an hours time.

Oh, by the way! This is my 100th post on this blog! Happy 100th to me! What do you, my wonderful readers think? Am I doing good? Is this the most wonderful blog that you've ever read? Am I fishing for a compliment? Am I a dork?

Field Trip To The Butterfly House

I got to go on Ross's class field trip to the Butterfly House.

We had perfect weather for a great day!

A Couple Of Housewifery Things That Are Working For Me

It's been about 6 months now since I instituted the laundry system at my house. You may have read about it earlier. I wish to report that I haven't been stressed out about the laundry once since then. This used to be a MAJOR problem at our house. I'd wash the laundry, but I never ever could keep up with the folding/putting away. My husband would get mad at me and throw the pile (which was usually about three or four feet across and reaching the ceiling in the laundry room. No exaggeration.) all over the floor, looking for his cloths, and just leave it there. This would tick me off in turn. I used to spend about a half an hour searching through the mess each morning trying to find cloths for the kids to wear to school. This is what I did: I went to the store and got everyone their own tub. Now when I'm taking it out of the dryer, I just sort it into the tubs. The children are all responsible for folding their own laundry. No, we don't always all have clean cloths in our drawers now, but everyone can easily find their own stuff.

Another thing is dinner. My life is crazy once the kids get home from school. We have 2 extras for an hour or two after school each day. I usually spend an hour or two getting the kids through their homework each night. The last thing I want to do is to cook dinner! Unfortunately, we do need to eat. Then there is the mess to clean up after dinner! I'm usually nigh unto death by that time of day! The solution, cook at noon or before. I'm doing crock pot stuff a lot. Also make ahead things are good. I find that I don't mind to cook in the morning. So, I've just made it a routine to cook dinner right after I'm done cleaning up breakfast. It's not so bad, I have one of my books on tape going, and I'm not tired then. Another plus is this: There aren't a lot of pots and pans to clean up after dinner. I do a lot of all in one pot meals. Ahh, happiness! Here is a web-site that I get a lot of recipes from: http://allrecipes.com/Recipes/Main.aspx I like it because it's got a recipe for what ever you could possibly want to make. You can also do ingredient searches, so you can cook with whatever you have there. Also, there are helpful comments by others.

Now lest any of you deranged people get the MUCH mistaken idea that I have it all together, let me remind you that I've got a stupid remodeling project going on in my living room that we started back in February. It's still not done. Someday we'll move back in. Eventually. Love you all!

Family Fun

Well, we had another great vacation to Branson with Bruce's family. We did Silver Dollar City and went to the Dixie Stampede, and Lambert's Cafe, and we went to the fish hatchery. We had a great time. I brought my camera to pretty much everything, but I forgot to take any pictures until we were on the way home and we stopped at the Bass Pro Shop (Bruce's favorite place in the world.) It was great fun, but I'm glad to be home. When Justice was done with his breakfast this morning, I was very happy to be able to just take him out of his high-chair and let him go. We'd been eating in restraunts while we were gone, so when we were waiting for our food, and then again when we were done, I had to fight him to keep him from running all over the restraunt. I was getting really tired of fighting him. We were either out in the open where he could run away, or he was in a car or a high-chair. It's nice to be home where I can let him go a bit. It was really a fun vacation. Bruce's family is great.

I was making salsa the day before we left. After doing about 60 jars of green beans, and about 60 jars of salsa, I am very relieved to say that I'm probably done with canning for the year! I might do some more still, but at least I don't feel obligated to do any more. Whew! I lived through the canning season.

Here are a couple of funny things that have happened recently:

Ross, for some unknown reason, doesn't like our upstairs bathroom. I think he's afraid of it, why, I don't know, but he practically refuses to use it. The other day, the kids came home from school and Ross & Lydia both needed to use the bathroom. Lydia beat him to the main floor bathroom. Ross was doing the pee pee dance in the hallway outside the bathroom door. I said "Ross, just go upstairs." He prefered doing the frantic pee pee dance. "Whatever" said I. A minute later I looked out the front window to see him peeing behind a tree our front yard. What a goofy kid! He went outside to go pee, rather than using the perfectly good upstairs bathroom. I should have given him the what-for, but I was too busy laughing at him.

Today, while I was unpacking, Justice was left to his own divices for a while. This often turns out bad for me. I discovered him on the counter top covered in flower, sugar and dishwashing liquid. He got into my cannisters and made a huge mess with the three afore mentioned items. He had opened a couple of drawers and gotten the mixture all in them too. All over the counter, the floor, in the drawers. It took me an hour to clean it up. But, I am proud to say, I didn't even get upset! I just said oh well, and cleaned it up. See, I am getting better. Okay, I've got to run! See you!

Can Anyone Stand Another Picture Of My Youngest?

I'm going to have to make a more concentrated effort to get pictures of my other children. This seems like some sort of favoritism. The truth is that he just has more picture taking moments at this phase in his life, than the others do. On that top picture there, he and Chloe were actually eating out of the same bowl, but I failed to get a picture that captured that. By the way, he said his first official sentence today. It was: "I want Daddy." I'm sure this makes Bruce very happy.

A Couple Of Things That Made Me Laugh

John & Liz came down for a short visit this weekend. Liz pulled off a great hoax in John's behalf. She had secretly bought tickets for the Rush concert (one of John's fav. bands), and talked to John's boss so that he could leave work early. She called John at work yesterday and told him that we had had a house fire and immediately needed help cleaning up. Anyhoo, that was a good one.

Shortly after they got here, we heard banging coming from the living room. I ran in to see what was going on, and I discovered Justice and Erik (both 1 1/2 years old) banging on the hard wood floors with a hammer a piece. I wish I could have gotten a picture, but I had to stop the damage before it got too far. Justice was banging with the claw end of the hammer.

Another funny thing was this: John, Todd, Bruce & I went running at the watershed trails today. This is a nice place for running/biking/walking, so you will always see other people out on the trail. We decided that it would be funny to act silly whenever we saw other people. We all switched from running to skipping when a guy rode past on his bike. There was also galloping like on a horse, while whooping and swinging a pretend lasso overhead. The Monty-Python horse trot thing, Bruce's over done swishy gay guy run. I was laughing so hard I couldn't run. We only actually did these things to two passersby. It was too hot and too hard to run today, so after a couple we just ran normal. We'll have to do that again.