Busy summer

Life has been busy this summer.
We've done:

Parkour day camp
Boy Scout camp
Youth Conference
Summer school
Goofing off
A visit to the frozen yogurt place - YUM
Hikes in the local national forest
Tons of laundry
Monkee Marathon
Visits to many local playgrounds
Improv classes and a performance
Computer game playing
Writing (me) lots and lots of writing
Reading
Working at the parks
A birthday party
Caught a cough
Two 1000 piece puzzles
A trip to the pool
Sewed a purse
Kindergarten registration
Shopping at new malls
School supply shopping (cries)
4th of July BBQ
Went to see fireworks
Watched movies
Jumped on the trampoline
Canned salsa, tomato sauce and ketchup
Grew tomatoes, cucumbers, cherry peppers, 1 squash, 5 kinds of mint, and a few strawberries
Built a small chicken coop
Started collecting eggs from our chickens (hooray!)
Baked cookies, cupcakes and brownies

It's been a very busy summer and lots of fun!  School starts in 3 weeks and we all have mixed emotions.  Some of us are very excited and some of us not so much.  The Kindergartener is crazy excited!

Wonder what else we'll squeeze in these last few weeks.

Growing up

My kids are growing.  I keep telling them to stop growing up, but just like I ask them to keep their rooms clean, they are not doing what I've asked.  They continue to grow.

I like to hear my four and seven year olds have conversations.  They can be each others worse enemy, but they can also be the best of playmates.

For years, my seven year old has been wearing the same clothes.  Really, there are pictures of him when he was 4 and 5 and he is wearing the same clothes he is in today.  He has grown very little.  Last month, we realized his diet was mostly cereal and bread.  He dislikes most everything else.  There was very little protein going into his tiny body.  We started buying him those Boost shakes.  I noticed this week that the pants I bought him at the beginning of the school year are too short.  He's actually grown!  Still, I don't want him to grow up.

My twelve year old has reached my height.  He wasn't allowed to get taller than me!

I'm glad they aren't little anymore, though.  I like this age we are in now.  My oldest is a teen, but he can't drive yet.  My youngest isn't in school yet, but she's not a diaper-wearing toddler.  The others are nicely in between.  It's fun.  They are great.  I'm glad they are growing.

Dreaded birthday parties

I'm not a fan of birthday parties.  Never really have been.  Oh, I've done a few, especially when my first two children were small, but now, we hardly ever have them.  (This is one of those sad cases where my first children got special things like birthday parties and kids number 4 and 5 are lucky to get a frosted cake.)

My kids come home from school periodically with birthday party invitations.  If we're lucky, we've got something else going that day and they can't go.  Occasionally I'll "loose" the invitation or as I have with the last two parties, "forget" to RSVP.  I feel bad about doing that.  I really do, but the truth is, I hate taking my kids to birthday parties!

I hate shopping for a kid I've never met (as is the case with 90% of the invites that come home from school.)  Then, for the actual party, I either have to drop them off and remember to pick them up two hours later (yes, I forgot to pick up a kid once) or interrupt other activities with the other kids or family because it's time to go pick up the party kid.  OR, worse, I have to stay at the party, sitting with a paper cup of lemonade while a bunch of kids and parents I don't know run around like crazy.

Then, there are those parties where an event center is rented.  The food is good pizza, sodas and a huge hand-made fondant cake.  The mom looks calm and happy and is easily directing kids to various games and activities.  She never breaks a sweat as she hands out homemade designer cookies and goodie bags to make the Academy Award winners jealous.  You know the kind.

I am not one of those moms.  My kids laugh because for the last three years, or so, any and all attempts I've made at decorating a cake have been disastrous.  Really.  I tell them to quit complaining.  The cake might be ugly, but it tastes good.  So eat it!  One year, when my youngest son turned 5, I couldn't find any birthday cake candles.  I was sure I had some, but I could not find them.  Determined that he would blow out five candles on his cake, I got five red taper candles.  They put some massive holes in the already pathetically decorated cake, but he got to blow out his candles and make his wish.

Somehow, I think his wish was that I not make him a birthday cake in the future.

I never put pictures of my kids on my blog, but oh, if you could see my son's face in this picture....  He was not happy about this cake.

This past year I got smart with his birthday.  I bought him a cake!  Yes, one chocolate supermarket cake that cost $15.  I could have made him one for less than $4, but it wouldn't have been so beautifully decorated. I also made sure I had nice, little, normal birthday candles.  He was thrilled.

I got a little off topic, birthday parties.  I don't like them!  I don't do them for my kids, I probably won't attend the one for yours.  Don't take it personally.  It's not you, it's me.

Birthday cake disasters

I've got many friends who, on their blogs or Facebook page, post pictures of these amazing cakes that they made for their children's birthdays or a friend's birthday.  It is simply incredible and some of them are a work of art.

Then, there are my poor cake decorated deprived children.  They have a mom who is seriously handicapped at cake decorating.  Seriously!!!  It wasn't always this bad, but it seems each cake I make just gets worse and worse.  Here is the most recent cake disaster:

Yeah, I know.  That's bad.  I don't even want to tell you what it makes me think of.  So, I made the cake, like normal.  After it was completely cooled, I took it out of the pan.  Well, it broke into about three pieces when I took it out of the pan.  Then I tried to ice it.  It just crumbled.  I've never had a cake do that.  NEVER!

Thankfully my son was very amused and forgiving of his mom's incredible lack of decorating talent.

This was my daughter's cake last year.  The two round cakes didn't sit well on top of each other and the top of the cake kind of slid off the bottom of the cake.  It was a mess.  She was forgiving as well.

Hey, my cakes may be ugly, but they are tasty.  There is nothing wrong with the way the cake tastes and that's the most important part.  Right? 

My husband an two older sons don't even bother asking for a cake, they want cheesecake and I can make some killer cheesecakes.  They are yummy!  This year, after seeing her brother's cake disaster, my daughter asked for ice cream instead of a cake.  Smart girl.





Birthdays, discos, and not freaking out (yet)

In the last six days, we've had two birthdays in our house.  The oldest daughter is 8 now and the youngest son is 6.  It's hard to believe.  I love that they are getting older.

Last night we had a disco dance.  Now years and years ago, disco night in our house was a regular event.  We probably had a disco two or three times a month.  Our disco ball hung from the ceiling in the living room. We would turn on the spotlight, crank up the disco music and dance.  It was great fun.  Last night we turned off all the lights in the house and turned on the strobe light.  Then we danced.  It was so funny.  I wish I could explain everything that the kids did.  My youngest daughter, who is 3, had this strut she would do and she probably had the best moves of anyone else in the family.  They all had fantastic moves.  It was very funny and I'm a little jealous of their dance skills.

(Actually, my youngest just came up to me and told me she wants to do a disco dance again.)

As we will be moving soon, you can imagine it is on our minds a lot.  I hope each day when Hubby comes home from work, he will know where we are going and when we are going.  It makes moving easier to plan when you have those two vital bits of information.  While I'm sad to say good-bye to good friends, I view each move as an exciting adventure.  I'm not stressing over anything yet because there is nothing I can do about anything just yet.  Hubby told me I had a good attitude about this move.  (We've moved at least 9 times over the course of our marriage.)  I told him if my attitude was annoying him, I could totally freak out over it.  He declined my offer.

This move should be so easy compared to the last one.  Last time we were trying to sell a house and I had six month old to deal with (along with the other 4 kids) and Hubby left for his new job about a month before I could leave to join him, so I was all alone.  This time, it's a rental house, the kids are older and can help more.  I'll stress out when we get close to the actual move.  So, Molly-freaking-out will appear in about a month.  Keep an eye out for the entertaining show that is to come.

The Whirlwind

My three year old is a whirlwind.  She’s as sweet as they come, but a complete whirlwind. 

Each day for the last few weeks, she has taken to sorting through all of our movies.  She pulls each one out and asks me what it is.  Aside from watching a lot of Blues Clues lately, she has also been into watching The NeverEnding Story, Mr. Bean, The Berenstain Bears and Baby Einstien.  The problem is she doesn’t put any of the movies back.  I find them all over the floor.

She does the same with all of the kid books.  This last week, we’ve read Fancy Nancy’s Halloween many times.  There have been a lot of other books we’ve read, too.  They are all over the floor.

She loves to wear shoes that are not her own.  So, all over the living room and dining room I’ll find everyone’s shoes.  Then, when we need to go somewhere, I can’t find her shoes because she took them off in some odd place so she could put on her brother’s shoes.

She can make a mess of toys in her room faster than a desert dust devil.  It’s a talent.

She loves to tell knock, knock jokes.  Some of them are quite funny.  Most of them don’t make sense, but you laugh anyway because her delivery of the joke is fantastic.

She cut some of her hair this week.  It’s never good when a three year old cuts their own hair, but she didn’t do a bad job, surprisingly.  They are almost like bangs.  I don’t mind bangs, but when the rest of her hair reaches the middle of her back, a small section of above the eyebrow bangs is very short.

She thinks that she is going to grow up into a baby.  Nothing you can say will change her mind on this.  She often tells me that when she grows up into a baby, she will have a bottle, wear baby clothes, and play with baby toys.  You just have to agree with her.  She can’t be swayed in her idea.

She climbed into some of the cupboards recently to get food coloring.  She applied it very well and didn’t make a mess of it.  I just wish she had not done that.

My little Peanut, what a gal.

more scrat attack

Here are more of my daughter's amazing scrat creations!

Army Scrat

(don't you love his camo helmet?)

Ballerina Scrat

So lovely on her tippy toes.

Howday y'all, it's Cowboy Scrat.

"This acron is highly illogical," says the Vulcan Scrat.

Stay out of his way, young whippersnappers, it's Grandpa Scrat.

Scrat Attack

Have you ever seen the movie(s) Ice Age?  If so, you are familiar with the little character known only as "Scrat".

There he is.  Well, several months ago, my 7 year old daughter saw a short episode about how to draw Scrat.  She developed and perfected her own version of Scrat.  I would like to present, for your enjoyment, several of her Scrat characters.

Sherlock Holmes Scrat

Mummy Scrat

The Pink Panther Scrat

Indiana Jones Scrat

Then, today I found one more page of her scrat drawings.  We are Whose Line is it Anyway? fans.  So, finding this page was too funny.  Among the Whose Line Scrats, you can see:

Ryan, who is often seen drinking his glass of water through out the show.

Colin with his amazing crazy shirts.

And Greg with his totally awesome hair.

This daughter has drawn so many of these fantastic scrat characters.  There are princess scrats, grandpa and grandma scrats, a Hobbit scrat, a Spock (Star Trek) scrat, a Sith Lord (Star Wars) scrat, a Boy Scout scrat and many more.  What talent. Who knows... maybe she will do art for animated movies when she grows up.  Until then, she keeps us very entertained with all her many scrats.

(Picture of Ice Age Scrat from http://desktopia.net/cartoons/cute-scrat-ice-age-desktop-wallpaper)

Jokes, Hair and Shirts

All from this morning:

Presenting for your entertainment and confusion, a knock knock joke from my 5 year old.

Knock knock
Who's there?
School
School who?
Who!

Get it?  School Who!  He laughed and laughed over that one.  I stood still; stunned in my confusion.  What?

As 11 year old son gets ready to head out the door for school, I noticed he was wearing the shirt he wore yesterday.  Go Change!  He changes shirts and I notice his hair.  It's looking slightly wet, like he wiped a wet washcloth over his head.  Did you brush you hair?  Nope, he just wet down his hands and used the palms of his hands to flatten his hair.  Go Brush!

I'm driving 13 year old son to school this morning.  I check the rear view mirror and notice son sitting in the back of the van.  His hair is sticking up in the back with bad bed head.  Did you brush your hair this morning?  No?  Well, it's too late now.

Why is it every morning I have to remind my two sons to brush their hair and change their shirts?  They have been doing the same routine every school morning for many years and yet every single day I have to remind them to change their shirts and brush their hair.

I'm sorry to their future wives.  I tried to teach them.  Maybe you will have better luck.

My kids, keeping me laughing

Kids are funny creatures.

Have I mentioned recently how funny my kids are?  They keep me laughing.  I have, over the years, loved to watch each of my children's personalities develop and with that, their sense of humor.  We have some very different personalities in this family.  They are all wonderful.  This summer has been an especially funny one with my kids and I'll share a few examples of why.

My three year old.  She is mature beyond her age in many ways.  I guess that's what happens when you are child #5.  Her ability to communicate is incredible and she has the most interesting things to say.  One new phrase from this summer has been, "That was suppose to be funny."  She uses it when she says something that she thinks we should be laughing at and we don't give her the kind of response she wants.  She will tell us that it was suppose to be funny.   That is funny to hear her say, so  we laugh and she is happy with us.

The five year old son.  This guy is sweet and quiet.   He loves physical comedy.  He doesn't often get word jokes and when he tries to tell jokes, you just have to laugh because they make no sense at all. 
Here is an example:  Why did the chicken cross the road?  To go find the boss (a bad guy in his favorite computer games.)  Yep, not at all funny and yet, hilarious!

The seven year old daughter.  She is a smart, chatty, creative girl.  In the last few months, I started playing some improv acting games with the kids.  They love it.  How often does mom encourage them to be totally goofy? (OK, I admit, these games are so I can be completely goofy.)  The games have really been an eye opener for me, though, and I continue to learn more about the personal character of each of my children through the acting characters they create.  That in itself is a whole other burrito, though.  So, the other day we were playing one of our games.  I let the kids pick any kind of character they want, but if they have trouble coming up with ideas, I have a bowl with strips of paper with ideas, a cowboy, a pirate and such.  So the other day, this daughter started doing her character and we just couldn't figure out what she was doing.  We tried to play along, but finally we asked what she was doing.  She told us she was being her dad when he was a little boy.  We were befuddled at this so she showed us her suggestion: Really Old Person.  Apparently to this 7 year old, my 36 year old Hubby is an incredibly old person.  I about fell to the floor with laughter.  Poor Hubby.  He didn't find it quite as amusing.

The 11 year old son.  Here is another quiet guy.  He doesn't often have much to say, but when he does, he can be quite funny.  He can also pull the funniest faces.  Yesterday, we were at a big shopping center.  He was waiting for a haircut and I was waiting just outside with the little kids hanging out in the shopping basket.  I look over at this son and he peeks around the corner and pulls one of his funny faces.  Of course, that gets me laughing.  So, he does it over and over again, each time with a different face.  I'm laughing and I'm sure everyone around me was thinking that lady is crazy.

The 13 year old boy.  Here is a natural ham if ever I saw one.  Not only is he quick with a joke, he is quick to laugh and I LOVE to make him laugh because his laugh is so funny.  He and I have a few running jokes and more than once, I'm proud to say, I've made him snort his drink through his nose. I would love to tell some of the jokes we have going, but the set up would take so long to write down.  He is just a funny kid and his current lankiness that being a teen in a tall body that he can't seem to control makes him even funnier.  When I did my theater in June, I convinced him to do a pre-show act for me.  Ok, I practically begged.  He finally agreed to do one.  Well, I have to say, he stole the show.  I need to send him to his two uncles, my brothers.  Hams all around.

I could go on and on about the funny things that go on in this house.  I just need to write it all down, then someday I'll have enough material for an awesome humor book.  Then I'll make millions!
Evil laugh: Mwuhaha!!!

Those crazy kids and their music!

Permit me a little rant here, OK?

The kids have been home for the summer for the last two months.  We've had a lot of fun, but there are a few things that go on each summer that kind of bug me. 

Cue old lady voice: Back when I was young, I respected my elders!

Well, to really know the truth, you would have to ask my mother...
When I was 11 years old, the Monkees were in their 20 year reunion.  I loved watching the show on TV, everyday.  I got the cassette tapes of their albums and listen to and sang along with all the songs.  My parents really didn't like the Monkees.  Wrong generation, I guess.  They were fine with me watching the TV show and listening to the music, but I knew that they didn't like them.  I tried to be considerate of this and I only listened to the music in my room.  I never watched the TV show when they were around and I tried not to talk about them much when my parents were around.

Now, we move ahead 25 years and I've got my own kids.  They have their own music that they like.  I don't like everything they do, but that's OK.  However! They play their music on my computer in the living room, very, very loudly.  Some of the music, I like, but even then, I get tired of it blasting in the living room.  They have music players in their room that they can use, but I guess they just love the sound of the music in the front room.  They know I don't like a lot of their music, but they play it anyway.  The front room opens to the kitchen, so I hear it when I'm in the kitchen.  My loom is in the front room...  You get the idea.  I knew my parents didn't like the Monkees and I respected that.  My kids don't respect the fact that I can't stand most of their music.

Am I sounding old???
Yep, I guess I am.  Old lady voice again: Them youngens and their music.  I just don't understand what those whippersnappers hear in all that noise. 

Alright, rant over.  Thank you for your patience.  Time to go watch some Monkees.

Last week teenage free

When my first son was born, I didn't realize what I was getting myself into.

It wasn't that I had just had a baby.  Babies stay babies for such a short time.  I had had a kid.  Kids remain kids for a much, much longer time.

Everyone told me to enjoy him as a baby because it would go by so fast.  The first time someone told me that, Son was 2 weeks old.  I groaned inwardly.  If the rest of his life went by as slow as those first two weeks did....... 

The first couple of years were long ones too.  I guess because I didn't have anything else in my life, just him. When Son was 10 months old, Hubby joined the Army.  We didn't see him for 2 1/2 months.  It was just my son and I.  Then, Hubby went to training and Son and I followed.  Son and I lived in a little apartment together close to the base, where Hubby lived.  We only saw Hubby on weekends. There was nothing for me to do during the day time except be with Son.  We played, we read, we went on walks.  Hubby went away to Korea for a year.  By that time I was pregnant again, but for six months after Hubby left, it was still just Son and I.  Nothing to do but be together.

Time started to accelerate after the second son was born.  From there, time has picked up at an alarming rate.  I remember one day, when Son was four year old, looking at him and wondering where my son was.  Standing before me was not a baby, or a toddler, but a kid - a full blown kid!

Now, the years have sped by and my oldest child turns 13 next week.  He will be in the 8th grade this coming school year.  When did this happen?

I'm in the last of an era for me.  Several months ago, when my youngest turned 3, I said goodbye to the baby/toddler stage.  Now, I'm in my last week of having only kids, because I'm about to say a big hello to the teen years.  These years of having a teen in the house are going to last a really long time.  How long?  Well, I'll be teenage free in April 2028!!  That is when the youngest turns twenty.  That's only seventeen years.  Will I survive?  Will my kids survive me?  Ask me again in 2028.