Calling It In

Three day weekends!  Three days of glorious nothingness.  An extra day in your weekend to relax and recoup.  Who am I kidding!?!  The kids are out of school and I've taken the day off for child care duties and catching up on all the other stuff I never seem to have time for.

And I should admit that I cheated a little bit, because I sent Benjamin to preschool and just have Frances and Henry home today.  So far we've doanted old tennis shoes to the PE teacher at school, dropped off three bags of clothes to Goodwill and cleaned out a bin of junk in the living room.  I promised the kids that if they helped with a chore they could earn a TV break.

We've got a lot of other stuff to get taken care of because some nincompoop (me) invited Frances' teacher over for dinner tonight and now I've got to make the house presentable.  Even better: Henry told me this morning that he had a dream that his teacher came over for dinner, so I guess I'll be extending that invitation sometime soon!

I am hoping to balance the work and the relaxation today and get my house and my head in order.  If you don't see a post from me tomorrow, though, please send help! I'm likely to be buried under a pile of laundry in the living room!

Happy Monday!! Oh, Wait! It's Tuesday!

Don't get me wrong; I love holiday weekends, but they throw me off!  Normally Ken has a truck to meet early on Tuesday mornings, but he took today off, so now I'll be even more confused!  He told me to make sure he doesn't set his watch alarm tonight and try to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning (thinking it's Tuesday)!  You can be sure I won't let that happen!

We had a weekend that was just busy enough.  That's my favorite kind!  On Saturday we got up early and went out to pick strawberries.  Life has been busy lately, and we almost missed this fun tradition!  We caught what was probably the tail end of the season. We got there around 7:45 and they were picked out for the day by the time we left. 

Ken, Frances, and I did most of the picking while the boys just ate berries.  We still got enough that I made a bunch of freezer jam and I put some whole strawberries in the freezer.  I plan on putting the rest through the food dehydrator tonight.

Saturday afternoon Ken had to work. The kids and I had a picnic outside in the sun and then Benjamin and I took naps while Frances and Henry played in the sandbox.  I took my nap outside in the sunshine which was quite nice. 

Sunday was for church and grocery shopping as usual and then Monday we had a {chilly} play date at the park and then took it easy the rest of the day.  I grilled BBQ chicken for dinner last night and for my second attempt on the grill, I think it turned out quite good.

Have a great week, friends!

The Day I Willingly Borrowed an Extra Kid

We had a pretty good weekend 'round these parts.  Henry had his last regular soccer game of the season. I'm not sorry to see this season end. It has been a pretty rotten one in my opinion.  I'm sad because the other two seasons we played, the parents were fun and friendly and I had a good time going to games and chatting with people.  This season, two of the parents in particular have been real jerks to Ken; and otherwise we've had about a 60% attendance rate at the games.  When there are only 6 kids on the team to begin with (and one of them has a broken arm) playing games with only three or four kids is hard.  They don't have the endurance to play that long without getting tired and cranky.

After the game, we headed home for a quick second and then headed back out again. My friend Julie was helping with the school carnival where she teaches and her sister was babysitting her two little ones.  We didn't go to our school carnival, so I thought "What the heck, let's go to this one!" I also thought it would be fun for Julie's daughter to get to go to the carnival too. L is 4 and would certainly enjoy something like that! He little brother is too young and I am not that crazy!

We drove out to Julie's house and picked up L.  I tried to leave Julie's subdivision and got lost twice! Apparently I navigate the place better in the dark.  We managed to make it to the school for the carnival and after working out a buddy system, we headed in.

First things first, we had to find Julie so L could say "hi."  Then we had some lunch and explored what was going on in the cafeteria.  The art teacher had drawn up a big mosaic mural on a piece of cardboard and the kids were helping to fill it in using different colored plastic lids. 

 The mural ended up being two snails and some flowers. You can sort of see one snail's head in the top right corner of the picture above.

They had some games in the cafeteria too.  One where you could pick a duck out of a pond and you got a prize based on the colored dot on the bottom of the duck.  The other game was a big sand box filled with plastic bugs. You could dig through the sand and pick out a bug to keep. 

 Outside they had a petting zoo set up with some chickens, a horse, a sheep, and a cow.  This girl told my kids that the rooster in this picture would start laying eggs soon!?!?  Frances was very confused by that statement!!

 As we walked around, I would occasionally call out "buddy check" and Henry and L would run to each other and hold hands. No matter what else I told him, Benjamin thought I was his buddy, so he ran to me and scowled at Frances every time.  She was fine with that and didn't get her feelings hurt. 

 Out on the blacktop they had a dunk tank and a bounce house set up.  Benjamin survived his first foray into a bounce house!  He fell down a lot, but it didn't seem to faze him.  The kids also enjoyed playing hopscotch while they were waiting for Frances to finish her turn in the bounce house.

 The highlight of the day (for Frances) was the pony cart ride.  I asked the kids if they wanted a turn, but they little ones all wanted to play on the playground.  So Frances went and stood in line by herself (I could still see her) for about 20 minutes to wait her turn for the pony ride.  We ended up heading over that way just before her turn and Henry was mad at me because I told him he couldn't have a turn. The line was outrageous and I knew there would be no way to keep a three year old, and four year old occupied for another half an hour waiting in line.

We had a really good time at the carnival and I'm glad we went.  L wouldn't have had a chance otherwise and she had a great time too.  In some ways, four kids was easier that three. I think mainly because Henry and Benjamin fight over me a lot, but I had told Henry that his job was to take care of L and he loved that job!

They were plenty worn out afterwards, but they still let me take a trip to Target to pick up some stuff for the summer.  We went home for leftovers and TV time and everyone was happy!

"Why is There a Lawnmower in the Bathroom?" and Other Crazy Things I Said this Weekend

I usually write a weekend recap on Mondays, but this week I thought I'd try something a little different.  These are things I actually said this weekend:

"Why is there a lawnmower in the bathroom?"  Benjamin likes to run his toy "mow grass" all over the house. This weekend he decided to park it in the bathroom.  I almost walked into it in the middle of the night.

"Come back over here and eat these mints before you eat more chips!" We went to a Confirmation party for Michael on Saturday and his mom had little bowls of dinner mints set out.  She had a nice lunch layed out as well, but my kids were only interested in the mints and the bags of Cheetos. I figured for a party it really wasn't worth my time and effort to keep them away from the junk, so they ate plenty of it. But I didn't want them to be wasteful on top of that, so I made Benjamin finish the handful of dinner mints he had grabbed before he ate another bag of chips.

"Please don't sit on your brother!" I probably don't really need to explain this one.  I wish I was lying when I say this phrase probably came out of my mouth at least 10 times over the entire weekend.

"I have feet in my chest! Oh no!!" Benjamin was playing with the doctor's kit last night and using the x-ray machine. It has two fake x-rays to examine; one of them being a chest x-ray and one of them being two feet.  Ben put in the feet picture and held it over my chest.  When I exclaimed that I had feet in my chest, the kids all dissolved into laughter. That phrase was repeated frequently by all three children the rest of the evening.

"Reasons my son is crying: I parked in the wrong spot." Have you seen this tumblr?  It hits way too close to home as someone chronicles all the reasons that toddlers cry.  I have texted a few of my own to friends and this is one I sent over the weekend.  (And then he was mad that I was trying to take his picture.)

"Could you please go haunt someone else? I'm trying to make dinner."  Benjamin and Henry came shuffling into the kitchen under a blanket making ghostly moaning noises and trying to scare me.  I had to ask them to leave because I was in the middle of making dinner, but not before I captured the specter on my camera.

"Dear Frances, I love you." This one was a text message I sent myself while Frances was playing on my iPad.  It took a while to come through, but I was watching her when the little alert popped up on her screen.  The smile I got was well worth the wait.


Did you say anything crazy this weekend?  Sadly, these kids of things are fairly typical around our house!

Weekend Recap

I had a hard time dragging myself out of bed this morning, that's for sure!! i know it's Monday and everyone hates Mondays, blah, blah, blah. But I honestly don't usually mind them that much.  I enjoy my job, so I'm not dreading coming in to work.  I just had too much fun over the weekend and could have used an extra bit of sleep.

So what did we do this weekend?  I'll tell ya!

We had donuts with our breakfast Saturday morning.

We tried to remove the pedals and associated pieces to turn this bike into a balance bike.

We went for a ride, scoot, push together.

We made up stories at the podiums in the cemetery.

I laughed at the memory of my mother making me mow around all the wildflowers in the back yard.

We watched Dr. Who with daddy on Sunday morning.

Got carried into the grocery store by a daddy who was showing off and being silly.

Jumped so much at the birthday party that his arms got blurry!

Got lots of bling in the goodie buckets at L's birthday party.

Had an epic sword fight in the front yard with a bunch of neighbor kids.

Survived several hundred "fatal" stab wounds.

How was your weekend?

Four Day Weekend Recap

Part of me wanted to write out separate posts for all the things that have been going on over the last few days, but the sane (haha), rational part of me took over to write an update all in one post!

The kids were out of school on Friday for a teacher workday at the end of the grading period.  I dropped Benjamin off at his preschool because I thought it would be nice for the big kids to have a day that wasn't tied to a naptime for once.  Frances' friend from school, Robert, came over to play and we went to the Children's Museum.I love this museum and I really wish we took advantage of it more often.  The kids were pretending that they lived on a farm and had to do their farm chores before they went to work at their other jobs.  So they "woke up" and milked the cows, mowed the grass, and groomed the horse. They also did some work in the garden.

 According to Frances and Robert, their real jobs are as doctors.  They went to take care of a patient in the ambulance and hone their surgery skills.

 Then they took a break and went to produce a play for the theater. Starring: Spiderman, Spider Girl, and Spider Kid.

After a great time at the museum we went home to have lunch and Robert's mom came to pick him up.

Saturday morning, the big kids' after-school program had a pancake fundraiser at Applebee's.  For $5 you could have all the pancakes you cared to eat served by some rather delightful 5th and 6th graders in the program.  Ken didn't have to work until the afternoon, so all five of us got to go.  We had a lot of fun and raised almost $1000!

My friend Julie came too and she sat behind us so the kids talked over the top of the booth the whole time we were waiting.  Then she took her kids to gymnastics and we headed home.  She texted me in the middle of the day to see if we were up for a dinner get-together, so we said sure and headed over to her place after naptime.  We made personal pizzas and the kids played and ran around (literally "ran" as in Henry had an asthma attack from being so wound up!!)

Benjamin stalking the pizzas!

Sunday we went to church and did our weekly shopping trip and hung around the house.  Ken had the day off Sunday, so it was nice to have him home for a change.

Monday I had the day off from work, but the kids had school.  I'm not going to lie and try and say I was productive, but I did fold some laundry while I continued my Buffy/Angel marathon on Netflix.  I also went to school to have lunch with the kids.  I commented later that it will not be too far in the future when my kids will not hold my hand in the hallway or sit on my lap in the cafeteria, so for now I will really treasure it.  I love it when I walk in the classrooms and all the other kids start yelling, "Henry! It's your mommy!!"  or "Frances, your mommy's here!"  And they all call me "Frances' mommy" or "Henry's mommy."  I had five or six kids ask me if they could sit next to me, but of course I only have two sides and one of them is for my own kid.  It seems to make my kids feel so special and I love doing it.  I really need to make a point to go more often.