Early Morning Seminary is GREAT, Even for Me!

This is going to sound crazy, but after fretting about the impending early morning seminary for the past couple of years, I'm actually REALLY loving this! I made my mind up years ago that my kids would attend early morning seminary (yes here in the mid-west, seminary is at 6:00 a.m., 20 minutes away from my house), no matter the sacrifice. But as long as I can afford the gas (the Lord will provide, somehow right.), I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this. I have been going to the opposite side of the building, and practicing my piano for an hour every morning. 30 minutes of ghastly scales, but I'm DOING it! I'm actually going to miss EMS on my Tuesday / Thursday mornings that I run with my group, and someone else drives. I love music a million times more than even running or biking. It's nuts!

Mwhahah!

Okay, I've never heard this before! (And I've had 5 kids.) The 1 year old that I babysit is in my kitchen doing what I can only describe as a for real, maniacal laugh. Do I really want to know what THAT means?

Annoying School Outreach Program

Is it just me, or do any of you other folks get a little tired of the School Outreach phone calls 500 times a day.

"Hello Parents!

This is Mr. Fill In the Blank, Principal at Fill in the Blank School. It's been a wonderful day here at ______! Today was the second day, and boy was it a GREAT one! We celebrated back to school by having PIZZA in the cafeteria, and by making everyone smiley face

badges!

I just wanted to remind everyone about the Parent/Teacher night tonight at 6:00 pm. 50 fliers were sent home in your child's folders, but I wanted to make sure that you knew about this wonderful opportunity to become acquainted with our curriculum, and the many school rules.

Speaking of which, I wanted to remind all the parents out there that parking on the roof of the gymnasium is strictly prohibited. Also I wanted to ask you to not moon kids at the morning drop off.

Also I need to remind you that any parents wanting to pick up your child prior to the end of the school day will need to submit to a DNA test. Please allow 60 minutes for the results.

I look forward to a great year here at _________ Elementary! I can't WAIT to meet you all at the Parent/Teacher night HERE TONIGHT at 6:00 p.m. Please remember to bring your wallet and be prepared to pay copious extra fees!

Thank you so much!

Fun With a Hose

Apparently the activity of choice once the tv goes off (and Mom goes out to the back yard) is to spray a hose into Mom's piano room through the window. I've never been so close to murdering a couple of six year-olds before in my life. Water pouring through the floor into the basement. Luckily my piano seems to have somehow miraculously escaped the majority of the water. Only my sheet music appears to be damaged. Give me a year, and if my piano survives, I'll probably laugh.

 It is amazing how after screaming and yelling, and spanking and banishing kids to their rooms, and crying and fuming, once I surveyed the damage, forgave the little bugers, hugged them until they stopped crying, and told them that I love them, it's amazing how much better it feels to forgive than to fume.

Nightmare Conference Call

You can only laugh at these things!  Oh the mortification!  So a little background information here:  I have a small at home job working for a court reporting company, in which I print, bind, and bill for depositions.  I work AT HOME, with five kids, a husband and a dog.  This is usually no big deal.  I do all my work on the computer via email and the post office.  I don't see or talk to any of our lawyer customers - EVER.  Until today.

Also of note is that about a week ago, Ross, my 12 year old son, changed my outgoing voicemail message to something like this:

"Hello? ...  Hello? ... What? ...What? ... I can't hear you... Oh wait!  I'm not HERE!  Please call back when I am."

I thought it was funny, and since pretty much nobody but my family ever calls me, it's no big deal.  It's not like any employer type people are going to be calling me, right?  I actually thought those words.

So one of the main law firms that we work for is changing their billing system.  In order to be able to submit bills I would need to attend an online class today to learn how it all is to work.  So at the appointed time, I followed the links to direct me to the said webinar.  I've never attended anything of the sort, so I didn't really know what to expect.  As it turns out, it was a giant conference call on the phone, and a shared computer screen.  I went to the website, and called the number that I was directed to call.  Easy.  I am immediately put into a conference call with about 20 different law firms all learning the new system.  Instead of seeing what they are talking about on my screen though, I see a pop-up window telling me to enter my phone number.  Thinking this is someway that I'm supposed to log on, I enter my phone number.  Now in addition to hearing (and being a part of the conversation), I am hearing their system calling my phone.  It doesn't really register what is happening until I can hear my own voicemail message through my phone.  "Hello?   .... Hello?  What?  What?...etc."  To my horror, I realize that all of these other professional type people are hearing my voicemail right along with me.  Horrified, I hang up.  I proceeded to call back and enter back into the conversation a minute later, only to realize that at my house, this is NOT going to work.

"Mom, can I have some ice cream?"

 "MOM!  He's using my toothbrush!"

"Mom, can I get on the computer after you?"

 knock at the door "WOOF WOOF!"   

'Oh crap!  Renae mute the phone, quick!'  I'm thinking.  Unfortunately, I don't actually know how to use that particular function.  I've only done it on accident a few times.  In my frenzied frame of mind, I push the button that I THINK makes the phone mute, only to realize that I was wrong.  I press another button.  Wrong again.  I am screaming at myself in my head, 'RENAE!!  They can HEAR you pressing these random buttons!'  Panicked, I hang up again.  Bruce suggested that I use his phone, since he knows how to mute his. Then ensues a frantic search for Bruce's phone, in which Bruce has to remind me that I can just call it to locate the thing.  (I was in such a frantic frame of mind by now, that it actually didn't occur to me.)  Just as I found his phone, I realized how to mute my own, but by the time I got back into the call, I had missed over half of the instructions, and was completely lost.  Fortunately I have written instructions, which I think will be just fine.  Sheesh!  What a morning.  LOL!!!

Clayton's Big Idea of the Day

Clayton: Mom, can we put Ally (dog) in the washing machine and shrink her back to a little doggie? Can we, pleeeaase?

Me: Um, no. That won't work.

Clayton: But I want to see Ally as a little puppy again, can we please put her in the washing machine?

Boys

I love this kiddo!

Clayton (4 yr old) to Dog

Pointing at our cat, Nemesis:  "Place!  Place! PLACE!!"  (Don't ask me what "place" is supposed to mean.)

"Okay, I'll give you one chance to eat that cat.  Now GO!  GO AND DO YOUR DUTIES!!"

Why?  Because the cat was trying to help him finish his eggs?  It's a mystery.

Life With the Herdmans

Justice (6 year old) has been complaining of a hurt tooth.  The gums around one of his teeth are swollen, and don't look right.  I took him to the dentist, and they took x-rays, and were kind of puzzled.  The dentist says it looks to be just irritated because it needs to come out.  Anyway part of what convinced me to take the kid to the dentist was as I was checking on our browser's history, you know to see what web pages my kids had been visiting, I noticed several entries where Justice had googled "hrt teeth"  "hert tooth"  "hurt tuth"  etc.  I figured if he was really that concerned that he was googling it, maybe I should pay attention.  Funny kid.

Since we were discussing doctors and such.  Lydia had a scary episode with some major allergy / asthma type of thing.  None of my kids have ever had anything of the sort, so I just thought she had some kind of bug.  She sure was coughing a lot, but I just figured she was sick.  When she asked to go to the doctor, I nearly said "No, lets give it a day or two to give your body a chance to fight it off."  But then I realized that she's has NEVER asked to go to a doctor before, and really doctor visits are not the favorite things of modest 14 year old girls.  So I listened and made the appointment for that afternoon.  Good thing too.  The doctor calmly told us that she needed a breathing treatment, and then walked out of the room.  I heard her in the hallway saying "We DEFINITELY need a 125 in here!"  Now, I'm not sure what '125' refers to, but her tone made me take things a bit more seriously.  After 2 more breathing treatments and a bit of steroids, the doctor told us that she wasn't breathing well enough for her to let us go home.  I was informed that she would have to be taken by ambulance to Children's hospital 45 minutes away, where she would spend the night, and likely a day or two.  She was then wheeled over to the hospital next door, and put in the care of the E.R. doctors there.  After a complete work up, another breathing treatment, and a total of 6 hours worth of doctors, they said that she was doing well enough to go home.  YAY!  She is on three different kinds of medicine, but doing fine.  I hope that is the end of that.

 So back to the lighter side of life.  Yesterday we took our annual family trip to the cemetery where Bruce's grandparents, and a few other relatives are buried.   As we were getting out of the van, I told Bruce that he should give the kids a review on cemetery etiquette.   (I know this is hard to believe, but sometimes my boys are a bit rowdy.  On a side note, my brother John once brought out his copy of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" and showed me this illustration on the Herdmans, and told me that it reminded him of my kids.  Yeah, it is pretty funny, but I'm not sure if I should be insulted or not.  I know I'm going to sound like every other stupid parent out there, but really and truly, my kids are generally well behaved, good kids.  Rowdy, yes, but GOOD kids.  Their teachers all tell me so. (Well, Justice did get into trouble several times for "being silly" in class, but on the whole, he really is a good kid.  I SWEAR IT! )  Okay, back to the cemetery:  I told Bruce that he should remind the boys of proper cemetery etiquette (i.e. no climbing on headstones, jumping on graves, etc.)  At the time, Justice and Clayton were a couple of graves away, examining a headstone, and Bruce must have had something in his tone as he called them over, because Justice replied with "What? We aren't peeing on it!"  (They weren't, I could see them perfectly well the whole time.)

On the way home from the cemetery, Justice and Clayton had the following conversation:

Justice (6yr old):  Jesus is dead.

Clayton (3 yr old):  No he isn't.

Justice:  Yes.  He DIED.

Clayton:  NO!  He used magic and powered up!

Maybe we need to go over a few essentials again.

One way that we survive sacrament meeting at church is to bring lots of paper and pencils.  As long as the boys can draw, we get through without too much incident.  Their drawings sometimes tickle me.  Here is a sort of random sampling, pulled out of my church binder.

 I don't know who did this one.

 I think this ninja one is Mark's.  This is our family as ninjas.  See how well we hide.  Bruce is apparently the best ninja, because he is invisible.

 This one is Ross'.  Something about his dream land?

This one was passed from Ross to me during sacrament meeting today, folded up.  As I often get folded up little valentine-like notes from my kids, I was expecting something like "I love you Mom."  I was wrong.















This one was done by Justice today.  I think he gets bored and draws things he imagines would be funny to happen?  Last week he did a drawing labeled "Cherch" with a guy screaming madly from the pulpit, and someone in the back of the room shooting the speaker.  I couldn't find that one to include.  (and no, LDS speakers do not scream from the pulpit.)  This one is kind of light, so I'll explain.  Here you find a spring loaded pew, and a guy shooting out of the seat, smacking his head on the ceiling, and falling head over heals onto the pews in front of him, smacking head and groin in turn.

And just to prove that we aren't complete heathens, here is a picture that I found in my binder of Jesus being tempted to jump off the temple.  (I'm not sure who did this one, but I think it's Marks.)



















The most hilarious one ever, I'm not allowed to share.  The illustrator is just too embarrassed.  It's been a year or two, so maybe I'll be able to convince him to let me share sometime.  I nearly busted a gut right there in church.  But alas, I can't share. 

Happy Mother's Day to Me

You might be a mother if you slept on the couch, because one child took your spot in your bed, and you woke up with one kiddo at your feet, one kiddo snuggled to your belly, and one kiddo's feet on your head, feeling lucky, because at least this time, you didn't get peed on.