Summer Fun

Our summer rocks! Just sayin'.

Mom decided to go to the drive-in for her birthday and see Karate Kid. (Way more awesome than the original, by the way.) The drive-in is one of my favorite places ever. It's just cool.




My mom's a pretty hot 52 year old, huh? And speaking of hot...






Payback. You know what they say.




This is after four sodas, popcorn, licorice, blow pops, skittles and strawberry shortcake. Sugar is bad. But it's fun!




We've spent many a day at Lagoon, too. Buying those season passes was a really, really good idea. Whenever we're bored we just load up the car, drive for five minutes, and ride roller coasters until we puke.

I love Andrew's face in this one.


I love the names of these rides. I wish that was my job - Amusement Park Ride Namer. I would rock it! However, someone is doing a fairly decent job. Above, we have The OdySea, then below are the Jumping Dragon, Turn of the Century, and Tidal Wave - my favorite from my childhood. Hope you and yours are making some awesome memories this summer, too!

Mom, I'm Bored!

I took some of my own advice, added some from this blog, and created the Boredom Jar today. I didn't decorate mine, cause I have boys and they don't give a damn if there's ribbon on it.

So our rules are that if you complain of boredom, you can draw a slip of paper from the jar, but once you commit to being so bored that you have to have help to pull yourself out of the pending doom of depression, you have to do whatever is on the slip of paper. Even if it says that you have to clean a toilet. Yes, there are chores in the jar. (But not many - I'm not 100% mean.)

The boys were excited to try it, so I let them pull a paper this morning. The slip they chose was perfect. It said to visit someone. We all threw our shoes on and went down the street to see the baby chickens that a sweet little grandma had invited us to see last Sunday at church.

The boys had a ball! They saw the chicks, even got to pet one, fed the hens some scratch, learned how the chickens are taught where to lay their eggs...it was fun and educational! The sweet couple who hosted us were really good with the little kids and I am so glad we went.

On the way home, Cameron said, "All this excitement is making me want to be a farmer!"

Lessons At The Berry Farm

I have fond memories of berry picking with my mom and siblings every summer. We went to blueberry farms and plucked dozens of pounds of fruit from the heavy branches. Those outings were always one of my favorite parts of summer; I felt peaceful and happy.

Yesterday I took my boys plus Bryan to a local farm to pick strawberries in hopes that they would find the same simple joy in filling buckets that I had found in the task when I was young.

It almost went well.



I hadn't really taken into account that I was making this journey on my own with two one-year-olds, one three-year-old, and two school-age kids who were so anxious to fill their containers that they didn't bother to check that the berries were ripe before they plucked them from the vine. Grrr...



Add to that the babies who were stepping on the plants, taking bites out of green strawberries and then throwing them, and Drew who ... well, he pretty much did the same thing as the babes. There wasn't enough of me to keep up with them.



Then the wind kicked in and began to blow dirt into all of our eyes. My contacts were screaming in rebellion, while tears streamed down my cheeks.



I completely lost my cool and was chewing kids out for wandering off, picking unripe berries, and everything in between. I felt really bad for turning our outing into an unpleasant experience, but I decided to just fill the stinking boxes as fast as I could and get everyone back in the car before my eyes turned all that dirt to mud.



The day was not a total loss. I learned to never take toddlers to a u-pick berry farm without reinforcements, stay home if it's windy, and that no amount of squashed fruit or sticky hands is worth me becoming the uptight mom who rains on the parade. The kids still had fun, and we used those berries to make some killer smoothies.

Like Christmas, except in January and just for me.

I have no shame. We've all seen it before, and the following will be another example.

I wish to tell you of my three purchases tonight. They are three things that I have been waiting to buy for longer than any normal person would wait.

A bra.

A baby gate.

A vacuum.

I think they all warrant their own story.

Once upon a time, like back in 2000, I had a respectable amount of breast tissue. Nothing to brag about, but enough that no one questioned my gender. Then I had Cameron and lost a little. Then I had Ethan and lost a little more. Then I had Drew and lost the little bit that I had left. Then I had Trent and became concave.

Padded bras have been my curse for going on nine years now, and not just a little padding. There's enough there to unroll and sleep on when I go camping. And under wire is an absolute must - without it, there's no point.

And speaking of no point, I decided several weeks ago that there was no reason for me to strap on an ill-fitting, sweat producing padded bra, when I could just go without. My chest looks like that of a pre-pubescent girl, so why bother?

I know that a lot of you are thinking at this point that I just need to go get a professional bra fitting. You're wrong. I measured myself, and the measurement of my bust at the fullest point is actually only a little less than an inch bigger than my measurement just below the bust. I am officially a double A. 34AA. (I apologize to all the men who are reading this and cringing at my "overshare".) But I just don't care anymore. There are worse things than being flat-chested.

So I've known for a while now that I really need to find myself a training bra. (You know - for the cold days.) Because no one actually makes AA bras.

Tonight I was at Target, crossing from one end of the store to the other, and I happened to wind my way through the little girl's department. I walked straight into the bra section, saw a ridiculously multi-colored thing that looked like it belonged on a Miley Cyrus fan, and what do you know - it was on clearance for a buck seventy-five. I grabbed the thing and headed for the front of the store with my head held high. It is a lucky girl who gets to buy her non-padded, (finally!), under wire bra for less than two dollars. Take that you voluptuous vixens!

Cameron and Ethan happened to be with me, and were not quite as thrilled as I was. They asked me who it was for, as though they knew that such a silly thing could not be for a grown woman, and I told them it was for them. They both flushed red and sweat bullets all the way to the car.

So there you have it, I am a nearly thirty-year-old woman in a training bra. At least I won't have to worry about being saggy.


So, the baby gate. I have safety locks on all of my cabinet doors, except for two. Those are the two that Drew broke about a year ago when he learned that if he just yanked hard enough over and over, the lock would eventually snap and the cabinet door would open. He got away with that twice, and then he got what was coming to him and never did it again.

Enter Trent and Bryan.

Trent and Bryan have two things, and only two things, that they like to do during the day. The first is to follow me around and cry/whine/unfold the clothes I just folded. The second is to empty all the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. There are child-proof latches on them, again, except for the two that Drew got to, but their arms are just flexible enough to reach into the little space provided before the lock kicks in, and pull out anything that their chubby hands can grab at that weird angle. I have spent a lot of time re-washing measuring cups and bottle nipples and cooking utensils that were clean before they were sucked on by drooling toddlers. And then there is the cereal cabinet. Lots and lots of cereal scattered on the floor. And finally, today, the container of cookies dumped and tediously sampled, one by one.

I'd had my fill after the loss of all those chocolate chip cookies. So tonight, I bought a baby gate and giggled and grinned while I installed it. Then Andrew and I took turns impersonating the reactions we are expecting from Drew, Trent, and Bryan in the morning when they find that they can no longer watch me splutter and turn purple in the face after they finish dismantling the order of the kitchen. I can't wait. I'm going to stand in the kitchen, stick out my tongue and give them the world's most grown-up "nee-ner, nee-ner, neeeee-ner!"

Lastly, this might shock you all, but our vacuum broke over three months ago, and I just replaced it tonight. When it broke, I thought, ah, well....I'll get a new one next time we have an extra fifty bucks. And in the mean time, we can play Redneck and use the shop-vac.

So I've been crawling around on my hands and knees for three months now, vacuuming the rug in the living room with the stupid little hose of the shop-vac, and completely ignoring the bedrooms because the three-pronged plug of the shop-vac didn't fit in the two-pronged outlet of the bedrooms. Sure, we have an extension cord, but that seemed like too much work to then have to crawl around with the hose and pretend that I was making a difference in the cleanliness of the carpet.

In case anyone didn't know, a vacuum hose does not do much for carpet. You really need that spinning brush to lift the fibers and comb out all the junk that 5 kids and one husband can make. (I counted Drew twice, because he's just that messy.) Also, our shop-vac is rather noisy. The first time I plugged it in to give the living room a crawl-over, all the residents of the cemetery down the street came knocking at my door to ask what the horrible noise was.

Every time an extra fifty dollars became available, (which I think happened just twice in those three months), it sounded like a lot more fun to go out to dinner or to a movie instead of buying a vacuum. So once we ate at Wingers - no regrets - and the other time... I don't remember what we did. But it was surely more exciting than a vacuum. This is called being poor and making choices.

Tonight, I buckled down and spent the stupid fifty dollars for a vacuum that will get the job done. My carpet is no longer matted, but back to being slightly shag-ish and soft. It was like all the strands stood up and said, "Well, hello again! It's nice to see you! Won't you please walk on us?" And I can't see anymore flecks of crushed Goldfish crackers scattered about the floor.

So excited was I by the clean living room floor, that at 11 PM I took the vacuum back to my bedroom, where two nights ago Drew ate microwave popcorn. The remnants of that popcorn are actually what put me over the edge and made me go get the vacuum. So I started vacuuming away, humming a happy tune, ducking under Andrew's video game controller cord as I tried not to get in the way of his game, and ran over the vacuum's cord. The stinking overzealous vacuum sucked up it's own cord and the motor instantly smelled like the aftermath of an atom bomb.

I have never, in all my years of vacuuming, seen a machine suck up it's own cord. All my previous models have been smart enough to know to stick to food particles and hair, and to leave the cord alone, should I happen to run over it.

Enough of the plastic coating was chewed off the cord that I now have to patch my new toy with electrical tape.

Or, I could use the cord to zap the first kid who decides to climb over the baby gate.

The new view from my kitchen window

Bryan, my nephew, has issues with his bowels. He is just over a year old and has never quite learned to consolidate his poop into one dirty diaper a day. He delights us all with his digestive efforts thrice a day, on average.

There was one day when he pooped 6 times, and my sister got here just in time to pick him up, because I was about 4 seconds from tying him in a plastic bag and putting him out at the curb.

So today, I congratulated him twice - once when I changed his diaper at 9:00 and again at 12:00, and found NO POOP! I was pretty ecstatic. But I paid for it later because he had apparently decided to save all of his normal BM shows for just the 3 o'clock curtain call. It was the kind of poop that clears a room and everyone shouts from the kitchen, "What did that kid eat?!", as their eyes water and they choke down the acidic remains of their lunch. It was so bad that I had a tough time mustering up the courage to actually release the tabs of his Huggies and unveil the dreaded contents. The entire house stunk by the time I decided that it could be put off no longer. Every time he moved someone would groan and pull their entire face inside their shirt.

When it came right down to it, it wasn't so bad. I was thankful for the clothespin I had on hand. And the kid really doesn't chew his vegetables very well. Andrew decided to be chivalrous and take the diaper right out to the trash can for me, so I bagged it with the kitchen trash and sent him outside.

And then, friends, I went to the kitchen sink to wash my hands, and I looked out the window, where my Garbage-Toting Knight was standing in the backyard, grinning at me and forming a giant, powdery snowball.

I thought, surely he wouldn't do that. There's no way he would be thick enough to throw a snowball at the flimsy glass window that's been in the frame since 1960?

He cocked his arm back, and with the inevitable catastrophe staring me in the face, I slowly smiled and watched the look on my dear husband's face as he broke the kitchen window.

He stood there in the yard wearing the most horrified look I have ever seen on him. It was the funniest thing I'd seen all day. And that includes Drew staring at some Christmas ornaments while walking through Wal-Mart with me and running smack into a display of candles.

It's unfortunate, my sweetheart's perfect aim and his lack of appreciation for his own strength, but I am easily able to laugh at the whole situation on account of there being two panes on the kitchen window and the extra hours Andrew's been working this weekend. Mostly I'm just glad it wasn't my fault.