A great asset

Last night Logan was sprawled out on the kitchen floor trying to shoot people with a nerf gun. I said LOGAN, not Christian. Logan is about 5'10" and ... well, I wouldn't want anyone posting my #'s anywhere, but let's just say, he played lineman on the football team, and people were very afraid...

So he's sprawled on the floor and I'm trying to walk around and do stuff, tripping over him. I asked him if it was really necessary to be on the kitchen floor. He said, "I'm an asset!" I said, "You're at least half of that word." He said, "Yep, I'm set." I just laughed.

About an hour later, he said "Hey...... I get what you meant about half of that word. That's mean!"

I had no idea!

It involved one of my favorite white tops, a parade, a long walk, and a soggy taco from Taco Bell.

Long story short: blue Dawn completely took out the stain all over the white top.

Way better than Shout or whatever oxy stuff I had ever used before. Amazing! Note though, that it has to be the blue colored Dawn. I don't know why, and I don't really care. All I know is that it WORKED!

The Drive Home

I'm still cracking up as I write this.....


Samy: "Mom, in my school, there are kids who have crazy issues, but their parents still want them to learn, so they go to my school. Well, today I was doing the monkey bars and a girl with crazy issues came over and kicked me."


Me: "Samy, it's called DIS-A-BIL-ITIES. The kids have mental and/or physical disabilities. We shouldn't call it 'crazy issues'."


(But I'm for sure going to adopt that term for personal use.)


Sorry, but that was too good not to share. Have a good day.

Reason #164...

... that I love a smart phone:

Standing in the checkout line at the Children's Place today. Watching the lady in front of me hand over her coupon to the clerk, thinking to myself that I should have gotten a coupon before I left home. Then, wait a minute... I swipe out my phone, google 'Children's Place coupon', and voila! 20% off my entire purchase!

I showed clerk-lady the coupon on my phone like it had been there all along and I had come in planning on using it.

I felt so smart! (doesn't happen often, so I have to applaud myself when it does...)

This is ART

I found this picture. No idea when it was drawn. Can you tell what it is?





It's the Star Wars (Return of the Jedi) scene where Lea is tethered to Jaba the Hut as his slave. Isn't that Awesome! My family is a little obsessed with Star Wars right now -- thank you Christian. The artist of this work is none other than Samantha! I love Princess Lea's bikini top and C-3P0. Not sure what the thing is in between Jaba and C-3P0, but we won't get into that..... We'll just leave that one alone.

Doings and Findings of late

Clicked into photos on my iPad and found these gems...

Other things we've been doing:

Went to the Grand Canyon (and Zion and Bryce canyons) this summer. So. INCREDIBLE.

Met up with some of the family in Utah. So. FUN.

Eric slept.

Hung over the side of a cliff at the Grand Canyon to get a shot down. Little scary.

One turned ...

Another turned (Darth Vader is hiding a candle)

That was summer. Now we're a couple months into school. Good times... good times....

Night and Day

I make quite a few observations with the amount of laundry that is turned around in our household. One of my latest is this:

Two teen-aged boys. One young man, in a five day period, regardless of how much prodding, reminding and pleading from a mother, can go through three to five pair of underwear. The second young man within that same five day period, all on his own, will go through anywhere between six to ten pair of underwear.



It's difficult to see in the picture, but the taller stack of underwear (belonging to teen-ager "B" consists of 9 pair. The smaller stack, that of teen-ager "A", is three pair. This is about four days since the last washing where underwear were involved.
The craziest of all is that Teen B (clean underwear guy) has a room that looks like a rabid dog attacked it, whereas Teen A (foul underwear guy) will frequently clean his room just because he feels like it.

What does one do with that? How does this even happen, and is there a point where it will equal out a bit?
Nice, huh.

Competition Complete

Since October (2010) Maren has been rehearsing/practicing (I don't know what the official dance word is) for her team dance competition. She is in a group of four girls and they have worked really, really hard to prepare for these competitions. Today was the last one that they had entered into.

Well done girls!

(Someone always suggests a silly face picture)

When we signed up to compete, we weren't aware that competitions could be on Sundays. (I guess I'm naive) Our Director/Studio Owner has been really great about requesting that we compete on Saturday, and it worked for the first competitions, but not this one. So, we took Christian and Samantha with us to watch Maren for church today. We made Eric and Logan stay home and get a ride from friends. I thought it would not be the best to let the teen-aged boys not only skip church, but sit through dance after dance of scantily-clad, gyrating young girls on stage in front of them in stead.

Fun, fun. I love watching Maren dance. Beautiful!

A mother's love

That's a Storm Trooper action figure.

Let's zoom out......








Yep, there's poop under there. It's in the "sanitary cycle" as we speak (the Storm Trooper, not the poop).

I used a disposable spoon and bowl to "fish". They are now disposed of.

On the bright side: Potty Training is WAY mastered!

genius

Every now and again, I'll go through the kid's phone text messages just to make sure everything's on the up and up. This morning, I read through a string between Logan and a friend of his. Can't tell if she likes him or not, but if she does, she has got to be so totally frustrated with his oblivion! But then again, maybe she's not the sharpest tool in the shed, considering some of her comments, like how she said she had to ask her younger brother how to spell squirrel. My most favorite exerpt is as follows:

Friend: hi logan wat ru doin?
Logan: homework
F: done with mine what subjct?
L: algebra have a test tomorrow studying
F: o can i help, im good at science
L: umm, algebra is math

Yeah, she's probably not clued into the fact that he's oblivious. It's all fine.

Saturday is s special day

So stinking fun!!! What a great day! Samy cracks me up because she is a scrawny little string bean, but man, can she take it (and give it) on the soccer field! She just started her second season with the team. This week was the toughest game yet. The opposing team towered over just about every one of our kids. And they were good. Real good. And dirty. Every time you looked at number 6 he had his foot stuck out tripping someone, or an arm out elbowing someone. At one point, he and Samy collided and took each other down. Bless her little skinny heart, she got right up and kept going. After that, she was elbowing right back! I gave her a tiny pep talk during the next break. I said: "don't ever hit push first, but if someone pushes, hits or trips you, you do it right back to them! Don't take it." Good girl listened to Mommy. After Samy's game, Maren and I came home and dolled her all up for her first dance competition. She entered into a team competition where her and three other girls are performing a lyrical dance. They've worked really long and hard. Today was the first of four competitions that the group has entered. They did such a good job. The only down side is that she was starving and I kind of forgot to feed her lunch because we were a little late. So imagine how much better she can do when she's not famished!

I couldn't take pictures of the performance because it's illegal, but they really did do a great job. So beautiful.

Fun, fun special Saturday.

Ghetto

So, it's been five months since I've been here. The three months have sped by, and during that time, I have every so often thought about something I wanted to get on her and post about. Then, something would distract me and another few weeks went by and I had forgotten what it was I wanted to post about.

Well here's one that I couldn't let get forgotten:

Third day of school. Junior High. Logan is offered drugs. On school property. Nice. Here's how it "went down":

Thug: "You want some O.J.?
Logan: "NO"
Thug: "Do you even know what it is?"
Logan: "No. And that's exactly why I don't want any of it."

Logan's a rock star.




Eric was offered drugs at the end of last school year. He was walking home when a car pulled up with a group of .. um .. "urban" ... young men in it, and they asked him if he wanted any. He said "huh?" then they drove away. He told us that they probably thought he was already stoned because of the way he answered.

On a cool note: for scripture reading this morning, we read about "not touching things that are unclean". How appropriate. So neat how that works.

Another note about school, since we're on the subject: Logan likes his teachers who have already showed their talents for sarcasm. I'm worried that he may make better friends with the teachers then the students.

And one more: High School Freshman "Fish" (they call them that here - weird, huh?) Eric, went to Health class on the first day. The teacher walked into the class and the first thing she said was: "Okay, so I know you are all sexually active ..."

What the heck!?! This infuriates me on many levels. 1) I feel like that statement just gave permission or the okay, for everyone who may be on the fence about doing it, or who may become on the fence, that they may as well do it because they are different if they aren't doing it. 2) It most likely makes those who are not active and choose not to be, feel like they are on the outside and there is something wrong with them. 3) I seriously doubt that everyone in that class (and all health classes that she made that statement to that day) are active. Give me a break. I know it's bad now days, and that it is probably way worse than it was when I was in High School, but come on. It bugs me that she qualified that statement with "all of you". Annoying. Anyway, that was a fun ride home from school.

It sounds like we live in the ghetto. But really it is a very nice community. Great schools, great everything else. Small town feel, etc. I just don't think that you can get away from all this stuff. I don't think there is anywhere we could move where we wouldn't run into these or similar issues. I do have to say, though, that I am proud of my kids for knowing what to say without any hesitation, or being able to talk to me about all this stuff. Hopefully this will last. (The communication, not the drug offers and such.)

Six-Year-Samy

Sweet Samy turned six!

Six things about Samantha:

1) This year she has lost four teeth (two are "found").


2) She has become a brave little trooper going off to school every day like a champ.


3) She has learned to read independently and above grade level.


4) She is tall and thin (downright boney!) but can pack in about as much bacon and/or in one sitting as a big, fat man!


5) She loves to wright books (she illustrates too!)


6) Her big brown eyes melt my heart on a daily basis.

I love you to the moon and back, Samy!

Here's some of the par-tay fun:

Kids Nowadays

Totally out of the blue today we're driving home and Logan says: "A girl asked me to go out today."
Me: Go out where? You don't have a car or any money in fifth grade.
L: I don't know. Just go out.
M: Who was she?
L: A girl named Summer. I don't really know her.
M: Who's class is she in?
L: I don't know.
M: If you don't know her, why would she want you to be her boyfriend?
L: I don't know. Ryan said I could say yes just to be nice, then break up with her in two days.
M: Oh yeah, "going out" means you're boyfriend and girlfriend! What'd you say?
L: I told her no then ran away.
M: Why did you run away, were you scared or embarrassed?
L: No, because Jared was coming and he was 'IT'.

Public Information - Spotlight#1

"That's my boy!"

Click on the link:

Public Information - Spotlight#1

Open mouth...

... insert feet. Not foot, FEET!

I've had a gaff-tastic couple days.

Yesterday, in the grocery store, a guy passes by, we make eye contact, say hello, and move on. The guy was my next door neighbor. Ends up we are checking out at the same time in lines next to each other. We chat while we are waiting our turn. I say: "So, the neighbors said that Leah's car broke down. Did you end up getting a new one?" He looks confused and says, "Who's car?" I say, "Your wife, Leah." He says, "What are you talking ab --. You don't know who I am, do you?" Then it dawns on me that this is not next door neighbor. This is guy from the kids school. HU. MIL. I. ATED. So I fumble around and ramble on and on about how he looks so much like my neighbor and once I registered neighbor in my head.....

Every time I thought of it yesterday, I cracked up while at the same time feeling that embarrassed, helpless feeling. The more I played the scene over in my head, the more I think I looked like a complete lunatic. So awesome. The worse part of all is that the guy is a black man. You know how they say that white people think all "person's of color" (I think that is the new politically correct term) look alike. I swear I don't. I don't even focus on color. Really, truly. But, boy, I sure looked like I proved that in the grocery store. So embarrassing. And I'm going to have to go through years running into this guy at school events and stuff. Years!

I'll get over it.

So today (here's the other foot), my friend calls to ask the name of my living room paint color so they can get it. I tell her I will call her back because I have to go in the garage and dig and I need two hands to do that. Friend says, "Hey, don't be making excuses about needing two hands!" Crap. Friend was born without one hand.

She is a good sport. I then yelled at her for making jokes like that and she said "Hey, if you can't laugh about it, you cry." Good girl.

I am so awesome. I'm giving Joe "Gaffe" Biden a run for his money.

On the other hand, when I'm on, I'm good. For example:

A while back, Eric asked me to take him to get some jeans. We went into American Eagle. An employee greeted us as we walked in and asked if we needed help. Eric said we were looking for some jeans. The guy said there are several styles, what are we looking for. I said; "The kind that are real baggy and hang down so that everyone can see your underwear."

The guy looked a little like a dear in the headlights combined with an I'm-so-glad-that-is-not-my-mom look. Eric turned a few shades of red. That was one of my better one's as of late.

Oh hush! Eric is a good sport (or at least used to this stuff) and the store was mostly empty with no one around us.

Are you so glad that you aren't around me that much -- or one of my children? I ROCK!

I'm developing a bit of a complex

For the last few days, Christian keeps coming up to me, poking my stomach and saying "baby?" I say, no baby. Then he pokes it again and says, "Jesus?"

So anyway, it's only a bit of a complex I'm developing. Not anything big enough to anything crazy like diet or something. Besides, on the bright side, it sounds as if he's learning about good things in his Church class, and perhaps he's learned the true meaning of Christmas!

Happy new year.

FYI

Here's a tip:

If you're the home teacher, don't come visit on Christmas Day.

If you're the home teacher and do come to visit on Christmas Day, and notice that there is a houseful of visiting family, don 't stay for an hour.

If you are going to visit on Christmas Day and stay for an hour despite the houseful of out of town guests, don't sit with several moments of uncomfortable silence - fake some conversation.

Get in, get out, and get on your way if you must come visit on Christmas Day at all.

It wasn't that big of a deal. It's just that there were people sitting on all of the couches and it's not very polite to stretch out and read a book when there is company. But the new Dan Brown novel is pretty entertaining....

Hey Home Teacher, there are still six days left in the month. Merry Christmas. Love, nic

Merry Vacation

We came to Virginia for Christmas vacation this year. We came to enjoy the holiday with Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt S. It's a good vacation. Just before we got into the state, there was a giant snowstorm that blanketed most of the state with several feet of snow. The kids have quickly taken to the sport of snow-sledding. They are in absolute heaven. Geoff is enjoying his sister and parents' company, as am I. It's been a delightful and slow-paced few days. The kids highlights have been sledding, the Mennonite country-side, shoveling snow off the deck (obviously snow is not a common thing for us, or this would be a chore, not a highlight!), making sugar cookies from scratch with Grandma, and staying up late watching Christmas movies.

Here's how I am enjoying my VACATION:

• 9 loads of laundry
• 24 sandwiches for lunches
• 2 trips to the grocery store
• 3 trips to Target
• 1 bed washed after an "accident"
• 6 loads of clothes dried after snow play

We'll be here for another five days. It can only get better!

As I was moving yet another load from the washer to the dryer, Mom-in-law says to me: "Boy, you have been doing laundry since you got here. Does it ever stop? This isn't normal, is it?" I said, "No, this is extra special, because I'm ON VACATION!"

It's all good. And to all a good night...

Walking on egg shells

Kindergarten started off great. Really, it did. Then a couple weeks into it, everything spiraled downward. Samy got sick with Strep Throat, then at the tail end of that, Geoff and I went out of town for an extended weekend. Since then, she has cried on the short drive to school almost every day. She says that when she goes to school, she misses me. It's very sweet and nice and all, but the child has to go to school. So, I printed up a picture of me to put in her backpack so that she could have me with her all the time. I thought it might help to go have lunch with her. When lunch was rapping up, she started to tear up and say that her throat hurt. So I explained that I couldn't come have lunch with her any more if it was going to make her sad. (Not to mention make her lie, because her throat DID NOT hurt.) The picture worked well for a while, then she said she still missed me. So we read "The Kissing Hand" book and went out and bought a heart stamp so I could put a heart on her hand every morning before school. That worked for a while, then wore off, so she started wearing a necklace with a heart locket containing a tiny picture of my face and her face. The good thing is if there is an extra hectic morning and we forget the stamp, lets say, then we have the locket and picture for backups. The kid is being sent to school with a whole lot of gear!

So the other morning, she started getting "the look" in her eyes as we were getting ready to head out the door. I couldn't take it any more. I said, "you've got your necklace, your stamp, and your picture. I just don't know what more I can do for you. You have to do your job and go to school so that I can do my job and all the things I need to while I don't have all the kids at home." I asked her if she was worried that I wouldn't be there when she was done with school and that is why she didn't want to go. She said no. I asked if there was anyone at school that bothered her and that is why she didn't want to go. No. She just misses me. Heaven help us. Samy, really, I'm not all that!!! She cowboyed up and got in the car and went. But it breaks my heart. This tiny, scrawny little girl with the quivering lip and big sad brown eyes.

To make matters worse, a couple weeks ago, at church they changed the Primary Presidency and so I will no longer be with the children. I've been in there for over 4 years. Me being in the back of the Primary room is all Samy and Maren (maybe even Logan!) have ever known. So, the first week after I was released, Samy started the sobbing during the closing song in Sacrament Meeting and pretty much refused to go to Primary. (She didn't so much as refuse as I couldn't bring myself to send the sobbing sack of bones in there.) The next week - this past Sunday, she was assigned to give the talk in Primary, so I went in with her. She asked her teacher, Gayelyn (my good friend) to help her with the talk. I think she couldn't bear to have me next to her. So Gayelyn helped her say the words she didn't know and I watched my poor little girl with the quivering lip and shaky voice. She almost lost it when she had to say the word mom. What is the deal here? I've never had a child like this. No idea what I've done or how to work through it! She was able to stay in primary as I snuck out the back door when she wasn't looking. It's killing me!



Not every day is a tragedy going to school, but I have to be very careful to keep everything in the morning on the "up and up". I make sure to talk about her friends and fun things that happen at school. Talk about the upcoming Christmas party or the Polar Express Pajama day or anything I can think of that will get her mind on something fun and not home and mom. It's crazy!

Yesterday, she had chapped lips, so I gave her my tube of lip balm to take in her backpack. We pulled up to the carpool line and she started to break down realizing that she had left the tube on the bathroom counter. I calmed her down telling her that I would bring it to her in a couple hours. I said I'd leave it in the office and they would call her down to get it. She asked if I could just bring it to her class. NO WAY! Last time I went to her Thanksgiving Feast, she started crying when we were clearing plates in anticipation of me leaving and her missing me and I had her home the rest of the day. I left the chap stick in the office.

Bless her little heart. For a split second (and only that long before it was dismissed) I wondered if I should home school her. NO WAY! That could do nothing but make this all worse and prolonged. In the meantime, I am keeping conversation light and happy and walking on egg shells so as to not unintentionally start the water-works!