Super Weekend

What a weekend S had this past weekend, it was every little, car loving boys dream.

He went to the Indy Car time trials with his dad and grandpa. On Saturday morning the boys left at 8am, which I found unbelievable, I didn’t know that the two big boys knew there was an 8 in the morning. I mean they only get up that early if they have to go to work.

They left with just a loose plan of spending as much time at the race as S could take. I mean when you are dealing with a 5year old everything is a crap shoot. If he isn’t feeling good or if the event is too loud he may end up asking to come home early…..as it turns out he LOVED it, and so did Dad and Grandpa.

They stayed there for almost 5 hours. As it turns out, they watched a bunch of time trials, had snacks, had lunch and then walked the exhibit area at least three times.

They came back with over 65 pictures. Which about ½ of which are of blurry little cars zooming by on the big black track. Grandpa even bought cute little Danica Patrick (he has a little crush on her) lanyards for all their ticket stubs and stuff.

My husband took several (I mean SEVERAL) pictures of Danica’s car, truck, full size poster for Grandpa. S came back with oodles and oodles of memorabilia pins, stubs, posters, stickers you name it he got it. It was the perfect birthday present for him.

The girls weren’t left out. N got to spend the day with Grandma. It was extra special because she got to ride in Grandma’s car in the booster seat. She looked so grown up; I thought grandma was going to cry.

Poor A, she spent the day with me…I didn’t really have anything amazing for us to do; luckily A had a birthday party to attend later that day. Otherwise, she might have been in a terrible funk.

I did break out the booster seat and let A ride up front, for our errands, which is a very big deal. If N would have got to ride up front with Grandma while A was relegated to the backseat with me, would have caused a big kerfluffle.

We went shopping for the birthday gift, had lunch and then went to the library. After lunch A had left over pizza and wanted to know if she could eat it up front…why yes I said and she said “oh right I can eat up front cuz I’m not driving”-she is so weird.

We even stopped at a rummage sale and A bought a new package of water paints. Still when we got home and the other kids weren’t home yet, A got pretty mopey.

It was hard for her to get excited about her upcoming party, it just seemed to far off.

Eventually, everyone came home. You could tell it was a little hard for A to see all the goodies the other kids brought home. N had bought a stuffed mouse, and she went out for lunch and gelato, S had all his race goodies.

A handled it pretty good, but she did step up her “is it time for the party yet campaign”

Finally, it was time for A to go to her party. It was a gymnastics party and she got a HUGE goodie bag, so that made up for the rather mundane day she spent with me.

The appointment

Well, my little blonde haired daughter needs eye surgery. The specialist confirmed what the optometrist said; her oblique muscle in her left eye is very weak.

Luckily, the appointment was not 2 hours long, like admittance paperwork suggested. I couldn’t imagine being held captive at a Drs office for that long. We had her pack a snack and a stack of books, just in case.

We even left her brother and sister with their grandma. Which thrilled her sibs, they considered it a date with grandma. In fact, I think N felt a little cheated that she had to go to a dr appointment and everyone else got to play with grandma.

We picked up all the little kids early from school. It made sense why send grandma to wait in line for them? I can’t see my mom having the patience to sit in line waiting for the kids. The kids were so excited to have the excuse notes to hand to the teachers and spent a lot of time giggling and talking about leaving early.

Of course, no one was ready when we got there to pick them up, we had to fetch them out of their classrooms. N really did well at the appointment, even when she got her eyes dilated, which I couldn’t watch. I don’t like when my eyes are dilated let alone my little peanuts eyes. When the kids were little and had bouts of pink eye, my husband did the eye drops.

The wait for her eyes to dilate was soooo long, and it was getting hot in the waiting room, I think we all were in danger of falling asleep. Her sibs were very jealous of her cool (not really) flimsy throwaway sunglasses she got after the appointment to protect her eyes in case her eyes were light sensitive. I think she kept them to use on her stuffed animals.

She has one more follow up in 2 months and then we will schedule the surgery. I don’t think she has any idea that she is getting an operation, I know she heard the words, but she doesn’t have any concept of an operation. The doctor made it sound simple and quick, keeping fingers crossed on that… two months is so long to wait.

Therefore, in that regard I am glad that N doesn’t seem to care/understand that she is getting surgery.

Girls in Glasses

Lately every once in awhile I would notice that N’s eye drifts down and she tilts her head to read. It usually only happens when she is tired-it is not consistent and it is easy to miss. It is very, very infrequent.

In fact, it was so infrequent that her Grandma never noticed it (and Grandma’s notice everything). Still was apparent that she needed her eyes examined.

So we made an appointment. N’s eye and the appointment became the only thing we talked about during the days leading up to the appointment.

These kids have a way of beating a subject to death.

The day of the appointment came and N was very excited!-I think it is just that she was getting special attention. You have to love kids at this age, things like the eye doctor are not a chore they are EXCITING!!

Her brother and sister packed big bags of stuff to do while N was being examined. We arrived and her brother and sister got all spread out and comfortable in the waiting room.

I was a little worried about leaving A & S alone in the waiting area, those two aren‘t know for getting along, but they surprised me, they were so good. Not to brag or anything (okay I’m bragging) but the staff commented on how well behaved the kids were….yes, I did think my real children had been replaced by pod children.

Anyway, we left A & S out front and N and I went into the exam room. It was so funny to see her climb into that big exam chair. It is like 3 times as big as she is.

She has such a tiny voice; you could barely here her as she dutifully answered all the Dr’s questions. At first, the even the doctor couldn’t tell that N had something wrong with her eye, but as the exam progressed she discovered that it was more then just a lazy eye.

It seems our little N has Amblyopia and Strabismus. Both fancy ways of saying that her eyes are misaligned and that one eye isn’t functioning properly (lazy).

Now, I went in there expecting glasses. Our whole family wears glasses there is no that our kids will escape having to wear glasses, I was even expecting and eye patch for the “lazy” eye….I wasn’t expecting the doctor to say Specialist and SURGERY.

Any parent, who has been in the exam room with a child and has heard the word surgery, knows that you immediately stop listening, because you are so completely focused on the fact that your little one may need surgery. Once, we got out of the exam, got pamphlets and other facts about the conditions, I am pretty sure that surgery wont be necessary….still it is a tiny possibility and it’s a little scary.

After the exam, N picked out her new glasses (purple Barbie frames). She has such a tiny little nose (really, she does) that you just aren’t sure it will support the glasses.

Okay, I for sure sound like a mom but DARN SHE LOOKS cute in her glasses. I tell you the kid tried on quite a few pairs and they all looked good (for the record she looks good in hats too).

She can’t wait to get her glasses; I think the whole school knows that she is getting glasses. What was really funny is that her sister (big nosy bear sister) made sure to tell everyone in her glass all about N’s appointment and the fact that N might get an eye patch and glasses. It’s like “ahem” miss A this is your sister’s thing not yours.

Mother’s Day Recap

We had an excellent Mother’s Day. Very low key we didn’t go out and didn’t do anything fancy, we just spent time together.

Spending time together is the best gift of all.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the kids didn’t get me gifts. They did, I got a bunch of great homemade (or made in school as the case maybe gifts).

My son made a cute little cookbook. All the Kindergartners were interviewed about their favorite meal. They were also asked to describe how their mom prepares the special meal. By reading all the little interviews it is apparent that little kids have NO idea how cooking works, but it is sweet.

It is also apparent that all moms shop at Wal-Mart, Target and Pick n Save (or local grocery that has a monopoly on the area) because every little kids “recipe” started with “First my mom buys the food at…..”

It also includes a very cute picture of the kids dressed as chefs.

N daughter wrote a lovely poem. It is her trademark I love you do you love me style. Yes, she actually ends the poem with do you love me.

A daughter made cookie mix in a jar.She added all the ingredients except the flour. She was very proud of her creation. She also wrote a top 10 reasons why she loves me list. Trust me I will treasure it. The teen years aren’t that far away.

I also got a set of silhouettes made by my mom.

They are traditional profile silhouettes done on black paper. She put a lot of time into them they are very very cool.

The silhouettes proved tricky to do, she tried to do them using the kids and tracing their profiles on the wall. That just didnt work.

So since, my mom wasn’t able to do them that way, she had to ask me for help and to provide her with photos.

This made A upset because then  my present wasn’t a surprise.She really has a thing for surprises.

She got further upset when the gift the kids bought for me with their dad wasn’t a complete surprise either.

I had to tell her that it is very hard to surprise a mom.

Even though they didn’t surprise me with it, I still love the mini fish tank and an Angel Fish that they got me. As usual, the kids were right there helping me set up the tank and monitoring the fish during his first afternoon in the tank.

Rain Rain Go AWAY

Rainy days and birthday parties just don’t mix. S had a birthday party to attend on Sunday, so he was super excited.

Usually, we go outside and DO things before the party to keep the “is it time to go yet” to a minimum. Unfortunately, this weekend was non-stop rain! It rained so much and so unpredictably that you couldn’t even send the kids outside to ride bicycles or scooters when it wasn’t raining.

That meant a whole lot of inside time for the kids. We did get out on Saturday to go run a few errands. A local party supply store was having a 21-year anniversary sale.

As you can imagine a party supply store knows how to throw an anniversary party. They had slushies, coffee, cookies and popcorn all the things kids like….well, maybe not the coffee.

Hey, it got us out of the house; the kids got snacks what could be better? We also hit the dollar store. The kids scrounged up a couple of bucks and each of them got something from the dollar store. N got a beautiful seashell necklace; she loves shells and jewelry so you would assume this was a win win situation.

Nope, you’d be wrong. See her sister got a word search book and magic dough (the dollar store equivalent of play do)….see the word search book has stuff you actually DO the jewelry just lays around your neck looking beautiful.

Kids don’t like when their “toy” doesn’t do anything and the other kids toy provides hours of fun. Naturally, N assumed that A would gladly share her magic dough and word searches with her, I mean they are TWINS after all.

Yeah, A wasn’t having any of that; she bought the stuff to play with too bad her sister bought stuff that just laid there. Much squabbling ensued. Finally,

A relented and allowed her sister to use the magic dough and to search for ONE word in the word search. Ahhhh sisterly love.

Bicycle

The Easter Bunny brought my son a bike for Easter.

He is thrilled! The girls have had their bikes for about 2.5 years now, and they have had the training wheels off since last summer.

This means S has been watching his sisters zoom around on their bikes, without a bike of his own for way to long (in his humble opinion). You can imagine the moping!

To make matters worse, before the girls had their training wheels off he practiced pedaling on their bikes. That stopped as soon as the training wheels came off.

No training wheels any practice for S, this is because the girls are never off their bikes. I swear they spent last summer glued to their bikes.You should see the calves on these kids.

I couldn’t wait to see how S was on a bike, mainly, because he completely skipped the tricycle. He went from learning to walk to riding a scooter.

He attempted to tricycle but he just didn’t have the patience for the pedaling. I think this was because by this time the girls had their bikes and scooters and the trike just wasn’t fast (or cool) enough.

On the trike, he was constantly reminded that he was LITTLE. On his scooter, he could pretend to be big. My son does have his own scooter, he can really motor on it, but there is no way it keeps up with a bike.

He gets exhausted and frustrated if he tries to ride around the block on his scooter and I hate carrying the scooter home.

Since the weather turned nice he has been watching his sisters riding endlessly up and down the street and he wants to join the fun. So finally, he can.

He got a very cool red and black bike the Easter bunny was extremely lucky and got us a fully assembled bike (yah go bunny).

This bike is very boy, with flames and what not all.

Unfortunately, the bunny didn’t include a helmet for him; he will have to live with a hand me down helmet.

Luckily, the helmet that A had isn’t to embarrassingly girl! It is purple and black…not to bad. N’s on the other hand is blue with flowers.

If that was our only choice, we might have had to resort to spray paint, to make it more macho.

For sure, he will get a very boy helmet for his birthday…, which is only a couple months away. So, now he is big man with his bike. After finding it where the Easter bunny hid it, he immediately hops on and pedals away! He was all impressed with himself until he started rolling back down the driveway.

He hasn’t mastered braking yet. He is surprisingly good at riding that bike. It is the stopping that he is finding a little difficult. He frequently allows himself to roll off the driveway onto the grass instead of braking.

He has the pedal brakes, just like his sisters. It takes a little practice to master those. He is slowly getting the hang of it. In all fairness, he is learning really quickly. I think the younger sibs always do, they are so eager to catch up with the older kids.

Our first ride around the neighborhood went well he pedaled his heart out. He was a little scared about going down hill. I stayed right by him and hung onto the collar of his shirt on the hills and reminded him when to start braking.

Crazy Egg Day

I have a piece of advice, if anyone suggests to you that you should do an outdoor egg hunt at 7am on Easter Sunday, you should immediately say no and run away.

What you shouldn’t do is say OK as I did. It sounded like a doable plan when my mom suggested it. She really, really wanted to do an egg hunt in the park by our house.

She had all the details down (I swear this woman was a five star general in a previous life). Her plan was to get to our house at 6:30am grab the eggs (which I had to leave outside in the car for her), hide them in the park and then return to our house, ring the doorbell and pick up the children.

Then off they would go to hunt eggs. Simple right? Very little involvement for me so I figured what the hey she is doing all the heavy lifting why not!! Come Sunday morning 6a the kids are up and bristling with excitement.

I am beginning to fear they will see their grandma drive up and spoil the surprise. I can hear them moving around in their room talking and giggling…I keep my fingers crossed that they don’t peek out the window.

I mean my kids are normally early risers, but 6a is even early for them, I know they were excited but they had a little help in the waking up from out animals. That is because the minute the cat and dog sense that my eyes have popped open they are right there in my face, meowing, hopping on and off the bed and generally making nuisances of themselves.

They feel that it is in their contract to eat breakfast at 7a come hell or high water. Even if that means pestering me from 6:01 to 6:59.

I tried valiantly to ignore everyone, the kids dancing round in their room, the cat meowing in my ear, the dog tap dancing by his food bowl, to no avail, I got up to feed the animals…I didn’t let the kids out of their room, because I didn’t know if grandma was done hiding the eggs.

At 6:40, the doorbell rings.

I am right in the middle of pouring out the dog’s food and the dog is so shocked that he doesn’t know if he should bark and make a fuss about the doorbell or eat his breakfast. He compromised and inhaled a mouthful of kibble and mumbled out a woof!

I open the door to Grandma all decked out in a homemade Easter hat. The hat was a remarkable sight bedecked with flowers and plastic eggs. Words cannot describe it.

Poor grandma was almost frozen to death the temperature was not quite 33 degrees. She had finished the egg hiding and couldn’t imagine waiting outside in the car until 7a she wanted to get the egg hunt started before she got hypothermia.

I got the kids up, stuffed them into their warmest clothes and sent them out to find eggs. After they disappeared down the driveway, I ran around hiding more eggs and toys in the backyard along with the bike the Easter bunny brought for my son.

By the time, the kids returned they were loaded down with eggs, cold but still willing to hung a little bit more. They were thrilled with the toys and bike.

The only glitch, we left out plastic eggs filled with candy and helpfully labeled Mr. Bunny & Mrs. Bunny. I forgot to scoop them up; the kids thought the Easter bunny didn’t like his present. After that, I was ready for the nap but the kids wanted to play with all their new toys!

Fantastic Flarp

I think this is the eternal question all parents face-what is it about farting that kids find so darn funny?

The little girls recently bought some flarp, which if you are unfamiliar with it, is a gooey substance that resembles the blob and makes grotesque farting noises.

The flarp was hiding in the dollar bin at Target. Some how N spotted it and naturally she had to buy it, what little kid can resist a product that claims to be a “noise putty”.

I really didn’t want the flarp, but since it was N’s own money, I had to let her buy it.

As soon as we got in the car, N was ripping the packaging off the flarp and massaging it around to get it to fart….and did it. The other little kids were watching and waiting for the noises to begin and begin they did!

The noises that emanate from this gelatinous blob are just amazing. With every little squeak and groan the putty made the kids burst into gales of laughter.

You couldn’t help but laugh along because they were enjoying it so much. Still, my kids are simply not content with playing with a toy in its intended way.

Once the kids got the flarp home they had to do more with it then just make noises. This meant they started rolling it out (with my rolling pin), cutting it into shapes and generally having a good time with it.

Of course, they had to go too far (don’t they always). It “somehow” was stuck on the ceiling….uh huh wonder how that happened. After I scraped it off the ceiling they stretched out to see how long they could make it, and did god knows what else with it.

They did enjoy running up and slapping the flarp on my hands (it is sooooo slimy feeling) so that they could hear me scream EWWWWW.

Naturally, they dropped it on the floor, where it became covered with dog hair. Therefore, N decided her flarp needed to be washed. She ran it under water….let me just say water and flarp don’t mix.

I got suspicious when I saw her slipping her hands into my yellow rubber kitchen gloves. I asked her what happened and she explained that she had washed the flarp.

The water turned it into a really disgusting squishy mess. There was no saving the flarp. Poor N, she was crushed!

A couple days later, we had to go back to Target (we always forget something) and she spent another dollar getting replacement flarp, and she convinced her sister to spend a dollar and get a tub of flarp for herself. So now, we have twice the flarp fun!

Smooth Talker

I am pretty sure my son is going to grow up to be one smooth talker.

He is the kind of little guy that notices when you have new earrings, compliments your outfit and remembers that you like certain things.

Now, he does this in a very nice manner, it is in no way ingratiating or smarmy. He is not a mini Eddie Haskell or anything he really is a natural.

He always has a compliment for his grandma when he sees her. And when I pick the kids up from school he is the only one that asks me what I did that day.

In terms of grandma, he is the first kid to notice if she is wearing a new pair of earrings.

Of course, not all of his compliments are super smooth, one time he told grandma that her Halloween top resembled the Halloween tablecloth she had (it did). She took it graciously.

This weekend at a Spring Fling (a ladies lunch) hosted by my mom, the little boy was in fine form. He wore his suit.

It is the typical little boy suit, pants, long sleeve button down, vest and tie (clip on). The girls were dressed in party dresses also, just for fun.

As S walked in one of the women said, he looked like a miniature Tom Jones.

S was a model boy, not one burp, fart or silly comment, and he is the king of these at home. Not that the girls don’t hold their own in ALL that stuff, they can burp and fart with the best of them.

So, during the luncheon, S is sitting next to one of the women and he asks her in his smoothest voice “so what are you doing this weekend”.

I thought my mom was going to fall over she was laughing so hard. The kid is a natural with women I tell ya!

Lucky Leprechauns

Ahh, that sneaky little leprechaun came last night and left gold foil wrapped chocolate coins all over the house again.

Some time ago, this became a tradition at our house. I think it started when the girls were in daycare.

Their teacher at the time sprinkled glitter all around the classroom and knocked toys and chairs over to show that the leprechaun had been there. I decided that having the leprechaun visit our house on St. Patrick’s Day and leave chocolate all around was a really good idea.

This year I was lucky to find the foil wrapped coins. A few times, I haven’t been able to find the coins and ended up using Rollo’s or Hershey Kisses.

The kids still remember the year they got up early and scared the “leprechaun” he was so surprised that he left behind his whole bag of chocolates.

Yes, the little wieners caught me red handed! Somehow, I managed to convince them that it wasn’t me hiding the chocolates. Never mind that I was standing their holding an open bag of candy. Luckily, kids are easily distracted. Yes, I am proud that I fooled a bunch of kids (I take it where I can get it).

The kids were up at 7 sharp this morning to hunt for the chocolate. They even had little brown paper bags with the initials on them set aside (this was A’s idea).

I am not sure how much chocolate they expected to find….. I hid three little packages worth, I made sure to hide them in easy to spot places, and it is no fun if the kids get frustrated. I always let them have a piece of chocolate with breakfast…really starts the day off right!

They were fascinated by the gold coins, which were printed to look like real money. After collecting all the coins, they spent a lot of time determining how much money they had (chocolate coin money). They were very happy with their haul.

ouch!

I just stapled my thumb. Yep, put a shiny green miniature staple right into my thumb. Super dumb right? I know, I know. How is it possible that I did this really stupid thing you ask? My only defense is I’m a mom. Here is what happened.

I was helping my son load his miniature stapler (which has to be the most evil creation ever) with the minuscule green staples. We just bought this totally useless but very charming to kids, contraption at the craft store. So here we are at home and the staples need to be loaded. Well, my son has no clue how to load a stapler (what do they teach kindergartners these days?). So he brings it over to me.

I struggled mightly to get it open and load these fantastically small (but still razor sharp) staples into the slot. So after employing a screwdriver and several muttered curses. I got it done. Thrilled to be rid of the stupid thing I closed it up with a mighty snap and ZING! 

You wouldn’t think there was enough force to send it into human flesh, but seems there was. I had to pry the staple out of my thumb, with the kids clucking sympathetically in my ear. After removing the staple it bled a pretty red out of two nearly invisible holes in my thumb. Sucker still stings!!!

N came over to examine it and she insisted that I needed a band-aid. She even went and got the band aid for me, opened it and everything. It was very sweet. I also got a kiss to make it all better.

On a less painful note, we finally got S a Halloween costume, I know, I know cutting it close, by next weekend the Halloween items will be relegated to the corner of the store, while the Christmas stuff is hogging front and center. I always feel sorry for thanksgiving poor holiday just gets ignored by the decorating industry. Still as much as I like decorating for the various holidays, I have to admit there are only so many pilgrims and Indians a person can have.

Anyway, originally my son wanted to be Handy Manny a cute new Disney character. We this costume at Target, it was reasonable priced, naturally at the time we saw it, I couldn’t afford to buy it, so he has had a week or two to think about being other things.

In the time he had to mull over the wide selection of costumes out there, he changed from Handy Manny to Batman, Superman, Spiderman….sensing a theme here?

My son is, in fact, obsessed with super heros. Which is why I was so surprised he chose Handy Manny in the first place. He adores all things Spiderman, he has the largest selection of spiderman underwear I have ever seen. He has Spiderman sheets, pillowcases etc. He even religiously checks out Spiderman books from the library. He is on occasion disloyal to Spidey and thinks about Batman. Today at the library we got several Batman books, along with the Spidey books.

Although, this summer he was obsessed with Wall-E after seeing the movie. He ran around talking like Wall-E and beeping like a robot for weeks. I should be thankful didn’t want to go dressed as WALL-E, of course, we didn’t see a Wall-E costume (amazingly enough), I bet if we would have he would have considered it.  As much as I liked that movie I don’t think I would have liked him dressed as Wall E.

There was the most adorable Target brand Vampire costume. It came with a snazzy red vest, black pants, cape and white shirt. I think (and so do his sisters) that my son would have made an AWESOME vampire. We just couldn’t talk him into it, and trust me his sisters tried very hard. I mean the girls and I waged a 2 day campaign to get him to buy the vampire costume, alas he held fast and is now the proud owner of a Spiderman (black/bad, but spiderman nonetheless).

The costume is so perfect for him, it is the kind that comes with faux muscles. So the boy looks all bulked up and tough. Without the mask on he looks like a combination between Peter Parker and Tobey MacGuire. I actually prefer him without the mask. The mask has little mesh eye areas, I am pretty sure we will have to cut those out so S can see where he is going otherwise I am afraid he may trip and fall.

Costume Parade

On Saturday we went to Ebert’s Greenhouse in Ixonia. They have an amazing assortment of fun fall activities all through the month of October. Last year we did the strawmound treasure hunt weekend. It was about 75 degrees that day, and we sweated in the greenhouse during the treasure hunt. I ended up covered in strawflakes, because I had to sweat through two different sessions of treasure hunting. Not to mentio, the bees were terrible due to the warm weather, sooooo this year we decided to go a weekend later.

This year we did the costume parade weekend. It turned out to be a gorgeous sunny, cool (thank goodness) fall day. A costume parade weekend seemed a great way to get one more use out of the kids costumes, especially because they have no costume parties at school (bummer I know-they have a come as your favorite book character instead)

So my little Spiderman, Pirate and Cowgirl Sheriff and I headed out to Ixonia.

First, we had to stop at Grandmas house to pick her up and wouldn’t you know the Great Pumpkin had visited her house. This is a tradition we started about 3 years ago. My mom and I devised the perfect way to add a little excitement (besides trick or treating to October), we invented the Great Pumpkin a mysterious figure that brought treats and gifts to little kids in October, no specific day. That is part of the fun you never know when the Great Pumpkin will arrive.

The first year, we had the little kids downstairs and their grandpa walked by the basement window wearing his orange hunting pants. We told the kids that this was the “Great Pumpkin” and he was leaving them treats-which he did. The girls though that was the most amazing thing they had ever seen, S was young enough to be a tiny bit frightened by the big orange legs.

Every year, since then we have had a visit from the Great Pumpkin. Never again have we spotted him tho’. One year he came to our house while we were gone, but usually he appears at Grandmas house and leaves gifts.

The kids are old enough now to know that there is no Great Pumpkin, but young enough to want to believe that there is…isn’t that the best? We love it, we do this with the Leprechaun at St. Pats day and with St. Nick and Santa, they are old enough to know that it is probably me or their grandma doing it, bu they choose to believe in the magical.

After eating lunchables and rummaging through their treat bags (for the record the Great Pumpkin always forgets me ) Plus, this year I had to buy lunch for Grandma, geez!! We headed off to Ixonia.

We got out to Ebert’s just in time to participate in the costume parade. I want to say that Eberts goes out of their way to provide a wonderful time for everyone. They have awesome decorations, snacks and fun activities. The parade went around the grounds, the kids got a few tiny candies from the stops they made-it was just perfect. Then we participated in the costume judging.

There are a lot of cute costumes out there and a lot of fun creative people. My son was up against a bunch of store costumes for his age group. I didn’t expect spidey to win (and he didn’t) but he did get a great consolation prize two tickets for the games. The games are fun and you always win, so he came home with some neat stuff.

The girls were up against one other girl in the homemade category for their age. We could hear the judges discussing who to pick as winner. They were having a hard time picking between the cowgirl and the pirate. The pirate had an edge she had her stuffed parrot (or para-keet as she calls him).

After much discussion, my little cowgirl won. She was THRILLED. As she is the shy one this is the first time she has won anything. My pirate is more outgoing and is always volunteering to go on stage, interact at the things we do, consequently my cowgirl often misses out, but not this time.

The gift basket was full of fun stuff, and the pirate didn’t pout for more then a minute. We finished the day off with games, face painting and picking the perfect pumpkin. My cowgirl managed to work into conversation that she won about 20 times, but that was it.

She shared her gift basket without prompting once we got home.

Balloon Hats

A piece of advice, if you go to a craft fair and their is a balloon artist, make sure to get the balloons AFTER you are done with the show. We went to the West Bend craft show this weekend, and I let the kids get balloon hats about midway through the show. Yes, I know what was I thinking???

The kids pretty much frog marched me around the show in search of the balloon artist clown. He has been at previous West Bend craft shows, and they were determined to see if he was there this time. It amazes me, they can’t remember when we ate lunch, or where they put their shoes, but they can remember the balloon artist from a craft show 6 months ago.

Anyway, we found the clown, they were dazzled by his array of face painting, but I nixed that I didn’t feel like standing their while the clown painted a mural on each kids face.

So balloon hats it was, I wanted them to pick the cute Halloween themed critters he had but, no, they each picked LARGE balloon items.

A picked a heart balloon hat that was about 2′ tall, N picked a balloon cowboy hat that was about 2′ wide and S, boy that he is picked a balloon sword. While we made everyone smile that we encountered as we walked down the aisles I decided we had better leave before KAPOW! A balloon popped.

We made it out to the car, even with a very fierce wind, and we made it home (a 30minute ride) without a balloon popping. Amaaaaazzzing. I made sure to take several pictures of the kids adorned in their balloon hats. A’s hat is not only tall but capped with a wobble pink heart at the top. The best part is when the clown told her he had to measure her head to get the size of the balloon just right. Oh yeah, the balloon hats were FREE!! yes, we tipped the clown generously but they were listed as FREE.

My mom was with us and she was in charge of tipping the clown. Well, she was wrestling some money out of her pocket, forgot she was holding a cup of coffee and splash managed to cover herself and the floor with coffee. She was not amused, I believe she some how blamed the clown for this (she really doesn’t like clowns).

The little kids did a cool (and also free) art project at the craft show. This show always has a free craft sponsored by the 4-h. This time it was a pumpkin (jack o lantern) made out of orange craft sticks, hot glue and foamies (for the eyes, nose and mouth). Very cool project. The 4-H kids who run the project are just the nicest kids.

After the craft fair we went on a quest to find footie pjs for the kids. They aren’t as easy to find as you would think. We found some at JC Penney, yeah, if you wanted to spend $30 on PJS NOT!!! We found cute and affordable PJS at SEARS. S was thrilled finally he had boy pjs, he has been wearing an old pair of his sisters footies, they are purple and not a dark manly purple, nope they are electric purple, he was not amused. So now he has lightening McQueen Pjs. Not to mention, in an amazing coincidence his other grandma got him a pair of Superman PJS, so he is all tricked out in boy pjs for the winter.

Happy Halloween

Tonight is trick or treat. Everyone is very excited. Surprisingly, they are not overly excited about it, meaning they are not asking me every 5minutes when we are going to Trick or Treat.

A very nice neighbor stopped over with little goodie bags for the kids. They were thrilled and immediately tore them open to count their loot. Then they proceeded to make little miniature candy bar towers with them and play candy store with them.

Their school did not have any “Halloween” parties. The kindergartner had a fall party. The girls-big second graders-had a book character party.

They had to come with a few (small) props that symbolized their favorite book character. They were not to wear any of the book character items to school and you couldn’t call them “costumes”. They did get to have snacks and they were able to give a small presentation about their favorite book.

Both girls went as fairies from the Rainbow Magic Series. Luckily, we have tons of glittery magic wands around the house. Hey, when you have two girls you accumulate MUCHO glitter wands, crowns, and sparkly jewels. They took a wand, N had her special My Little Pony light up rotating wand…oooh la la. A had a regular sparkly star wand.

At school on of A’s classmates commented on her wand and A informed her it wasn’t a REAL magic wand. Gotta love how literal the kid is.

I think S is a little nervous about trick or treat-because when I warned him that if he was sick he couldn’t go trick or treating, he shrugged and said okay. Then later he asked if we could do only 3 houses. He is a little shy, if he had to go alone I don’t think he would be able to go up to the door and say trick or treat, but since he will have his sisters along that wont be a problem.

I’m pretty sure A would be able to handle it without me. I see her as the kind of kid who would keep RINGING the doorbell, even when it is clear no one is coming to answer it, she just is a little over the top.

N is all excited because part of her costume is getting makeup. Just a tiny bit of lipstick and eyeshadow, but to N it is tres chic. Yesterday, the girls “did” each others hair. Uh huh, there was waaay too much hairspray in their hair. N’s hair wouldn’t  moved in a hurricane.  So you can sense my hesitation to let them apply their own lipstick.

What a Haul

Another trick or treat come and gone, I would say that this one was the best ever, for several reasons.

First, the weather was great we started off with sunshine and it didn’t get cold and windy until right at the end. Plus, I planned ahead and brought gloves for my chilly girl. I knew she would get cold hands before anyone else.

Second, several houses in the neighborhood had excellent decorations and were totally fun to visit. Several houses greeted us in costume and several had the most awesome decorations. I was totally jealous and planning to steal their ideas for next year.

And last, but most important EVERYONE one of the kids got into it this year.

Previous years, N has been nervous about ringing the doorbell or scared of the decorations. For the last couple years S has been whiny and moany groany about walking the route. Pretty much making the whole trip unpleasant.

None of that this year, which made it just a pleasant evening. The only bad part was A running ahead of the whole family. She sprinted to the door or each house and then ran back down the driveway before her siblings even got to the door. We had to talk to her several times about waiting for her brother and sister. N was kind and took S hand several times. As it got darker it was hard for little spiderman to see out of his mask. He ran into some bushes at the next to last house, luckily he thought it was hilarious.

I was worried that we would be the first people out trick or treating, I hate that, it is like being the first people at a party. Since, the kids favorite afternoon TV shows were on it wasn’t a problem we didn’t actually get dressed in the costumes until Trick or Treat officially started.

Of course, then I rushed everyone, because our neighborhood doesn’t have sidewalks, so I wanted us to be out mostly in the daylight. Everyones costumes looked fabulous. We added Tatters to the pirates pants, and I must say that completed the outfit.

We also took pillowcases as treat sacks, and a good thing we did, they got a ton of candy. I love that the first few houses that we did, the kids were giving me the candy update as they were walking away from the house. Yep, the thank you is still hanging in the air and they are running back to me shouting “Mom we got 3 pieces each”.

The kids were thrilled at the house that handed out bags of chips.  Several houses gave out neat little goodie bags, we also got a huge assortment of gummy teeth, fangs and bones/bugs (ewwww). The best house tho’ had a “buffet” set up, presided over by a witch. You had to say trick or treat politely and then you got a pencil, play do and then tons and tons of candy.

It is funny how at the beginning of trick or treat the kids are practically running from house to house, but as those sacks filled up, it became more of a trudge from house to house. Our neighborhood has long driveways and big yards, so it was quite a walk. Towards the very end the kids were carrying these stuffed sacks slung over their back and they were walking sloooowly.

They were very impressed that we were out walking after dark. They had their little flashing safety lights on and I had a flashlight. The kids thought it was the most awesome thing ever.

We got home and it was the big candy sort, we always look over all the candy first and pull out all the hard candy and anything like atomic fireballs. This year, there was not much hard candy-it was mostly chocolate. Their dad was thrilled, he loves candy as much as they do, we now have enough candy to last until Easter.

Fall Days

I think this month the kids are off school more then are in school. They were off this past Friday so that the teachers could prepare their report cards. Then lets see, they are off next Friday so we can meet with the teachers to discuss report cards.

 

The week after that unbelievably they have a completely uninterrupted week of school. Of course, the next week they start Thanksgiving vacation and our district starts it the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

 

Oh yeah, this past Thursday was an early release day, so they were home by 2p.

 

My kids are young enough to be disappointed about not having more school. I think it is adorable, I know it will most likely change but, right now it is so hilarious to hear them moan “ooooh no we don’t have school today”.

 

They are so happy to be in school that they love doing homework, yep, that’s right they are happy to pop open their folders and find pages and pages of homework.

 

Since Thursday was an early release, they got to enjoy one of the last days of nice fall weather. Therefore, while I was trapped at work, they got to spend a little alone time with their dad. He had them running round outside through the enormous piles of leaves that we have.

 

Despite leaf blowing, leaf bagging, and more trips to the recycling center then I can count our yard is still covered with leaves. The kids of course think this is the most awesome thing in the entire world. They play fort in the leaves, make piles, and jump into them with glee. Naturally, I feel less gleeful about them scattering my leaves all over the place.

 

I love when they come in from outside all rosy cheeked with leaves tangled in their hair.

Parrot Doctor

The cute little parrot that A had for her Halloween outfit has slowly been molting his feathers. There is nothing more pathetic then a half naked Styrofoam bird.

 

A has been keeping each and every feather as it fell out of the birds body. On Sunday, she decided that the bird needed to be fixed, so she took all the feathers and placed them in her little plastic lunch box.

 

She then asked me to be the “doctor that fixes animals” and presented me with the lunchbox. As I was asking so where is the parrot I opened the lunchbox up and there the parrot is lying toes up inside the lunchbox, nestled on a pile of feathers for a minute there I thought I was in a Monty Python skit.

 

Being a good mom I attempted to glue the feathers back on, unfortunately it is harder then it looks.

 

I started out using tacky glue; since the parrot is Styrofoam, I was worried the hot glue would melt the parrot.

 

Well, little miss know it all was hanging over my shoulder telling me the tacky glue wasn’t going to work and I should be using hot glue-Okay so the kid was right about that.

 

The worst part was trying to glue the feathers on with A standing over my should barking orders about the feather placement-“No mom this feather goes right here…..SEEEEEE”

 

It was quite comical. There is no way these feathers are ever going to look like they did fresh from the fake bird factory.

 

 Finally, I have all the feathers in place and I have just finished saying for the 100^th time that we need to leave the parrot dry, when she grabs him and smears all our hard work. So there he is as nakedy as when we started gluing. 

 

That kid is going to be the death of me!

Conferences

We had our first parent teacher conference on Friday.

Parent Teacher conferences are always a little hectic for us. To make it slightly easier on us I usually try to schedule all the meetings back to back. So this year, with S being in school we needed to be at school for an hour. So I had the kids pack some books and crayons so they could wait quietly (yeah right).

This year, the kids had this grand plan to visit the book fair while I was in the conferences. They spent a good amount of time discussing how they would shop while I was meeting. Right before the conferences they got worried they wouldn’t know where I am when I went from room to room , frankly I was worried about them rampaging around school unsupervised…I figured that would negate any good marks they got.

We comprimised, the kids would wait outside the first two conferences then at the last one they would go up to the book fair and I would meet them there (bearing money so they could pay).

Well, after eavesdropping through the first two conferences, in which, the teachers and I acted like we didn’t see them creeping into the room and every once in a while the teacher would look at them and they would slither back out of the room snickering and giggling. They had their chance to go to the fair and they decided not to because they werent comfortable going up the fair without me. What a bunch of goofballs.

I was a little apprehensive about what the teachers would have to say, see the report cards no longer use the ABCD method, oh no that would be to hard on a kids self esteem. They use Beginning, Developing, Proficient and Exceeding….So would developing be good or would it be bad? That was the problem I had reading the report cards. The girls had developing in a lot of subjects, yet for some of the subjects this would be the first time they had exposure to it…like adding/subtracting two digit numbers. In my opinion developing would be appropriate, especially since this is the first few weeks of school.

It is very interesting to meet with two different teachers in the same grade level. One teacher said that while developing was OK she would like to see it be more towards the proficient and that A could use a little extra attention in the developing areas. She also mentioned that A was rather chatty(not surpising) and had been reprimanded for writing notes (again not surprising).

On the other hand, Ns teacher said that Developing was perfectly fine and to be expected this time of year. She also said that N reminded her of a little fairy flitting around, can you say teachers pet?

Hmmm, very different indeed, One thing the teachers did agree on is that the kids were basically good kids.

S had the best review of all, his teacher called him the most compassionate caring kid she has seen. Apparently, S is willing to partner with the kid no one else wants to partner with and always is willing to help out and follow directions (yes, I wish he would do that at home). Seems the other kids are now following his example and being nicer to the kid no one wants to partner with…..very proud of my little guy. Hard to see that in him as he is hitting his sister over the head for a toy…but it is nice he demonstrates that in school.

For their good marks we went to see Madagascar 2. I had them buy their own tickets. It is a very big deal for them to walk up to the counter and ask for the ticket, pay and get change. We really enjoyed the movie. The kids were riveted to the screen the entire time.

Gimme Chocolate

The highlight of the Christmas season for the kids is the Advent Calendars. Especially, since I let them open them in the morning….ahhh chocolate for breakfast.

 

The kids get so excited about opening those little flaps, discovering what shape they have and eating the chocolate.

 

I don’t know what we were thinking this year we got mismatched calendars. Yes, the kids fight over something so trivial as what pattern is on the outside of the Advent Calendar.

 

What made it worse was instead of three different calendars we had two that matched and odd one. Now instead of assigning the calendars (which I will do next year) I let them pick, oh you cannot imagine how much trouble that caused. There was much fighting and negotiating in regards to who got what calendar.  At one point, A was in tears because she claimed that N had stolen her calendar….yeah that would be the two matching calendars.

 

Poor S his calendar (the odd one) must have been tossed around a lot in the hubbub because all his little chocolates are out of their holders. He is mighty disappointed that the chocolate that we fish out of the box doesn’t match the shape behind the door. He was also deeply, deeply disappointed that he couldn’t sit down and open each flap on December 1^st.

 

A made a new friend at school, a boy in another class. He likes her so much that he wrote her a little letter telling her all about himself. Now I am not sure if this letter was part of a class project or if he did it all by himself. He even asked that she meet him by the Tetherball.

 

She was very miffed that he didn’t show up by the tetherball….because naturally she did!

 

She also was very, very mad that another little boy was telling people that she kissed Tetherball boy. Which, she informed me is totally NOT true.  Last, I heard she was going to tell the teacher on Mr. Gossip boy. I think Mr. Gossip boy likes her and is jealous of Tetherball boy!

 

Last night, I heard no stories about Tetherball boy, so maybe she is done with him.

 

So far, N has no interested in boys. There is a little boy in her class that seems to like her, we have seen him a few mornings going into school and on one particularly cold and snowy morning, he stopped to warn her about a patch of ice. For some reason, that just struck me as so cute and sweet.

 

S is just thrilled to be going to school and interacting with kids that aren’t his sisters! Such a change from the shy little boy he was, it is so good to see interacting with others. Of course, last night at pickup he was so busy shouting Goodbye to his friends that he was holding up our departure.

 

 

Ewww

Part of being a mom is taking care of those icky things, the things that no one else in their right mind would have anything to do with, things like your kids are goofing around and a ( new )mini flashlight gets dropped in the toilet.

No I am not making this up. This weekend we had a flashlight land in the toilet.

The story the kids are sticking to goes like this, S was standing in the bathroom doorway talking to A. Which in itself is unusual, they don’t usually get along….they can barely play with each other for 10 minutes without a fight breaking out. So it is truly hard to believe that S was standing there chatting with A and casually twirling his flashlight and then ooops the strap breaks and it falls in the toilet. The toilet that A had just been using (for a very LOOOOONG time, if you get my drift).

While I harbor my suspicions about what they were doing with the flashlight it still doesn’t change that it ended up in the toilet.

Now, the kids of course, were in gales of laughter about the sunken flashlight. I mean really nothing is funnier then something in the potty to a kid.

I on the other hand was mad, very very mad.

For about 2 minutes I contemplated just flushing the toilet and being done with it, but since I could see this leading to an even bigger problem. With my luck it would have exploded the toilet or something. I just couldnt face telling my landlord (my grandparents) that I broke the toilet by flushing a rogue flashlight.

This left me only one choice,  I had to fish the damn thing out.

I first, had to lock the girls out of the bathroom. Otherwise they would have stood over my shoulder offering advice about the removal…yeah, I don’t think I need that…as it was they kept strolling (ever so casually) by the door to get a peek.

It took a fair amount of time to remove the flashlight but finally it was free.

Then I gave it a very good sterilizing…I really figured the damn thing would never work again. WRONG it fired right up. Now if this would have been a brand new cell phone the thing would have been un repairable, since it was a cheap flashlight it worked just fine after it’s little spin around the bowl.

Needless, to say I showered right after that, and the day went on pretty smoothly until A complained her stomach hurt.

Yep, by supper time she was throwing up…right as I was in the middle of making dinner. So, I had to stop that, clean her up-while keeping the animals and other children out of her mess and after tucking her in bed and finally clean up her mess. Which should have been easy but wasn’t the carpet is a wore out shag, things go in but they don’t like to come back out.

And for some reason, I couldn’t get the 409 rug cleaner to dispense properly, I ended up with foam everywhere but where I needed it.

She managed to miss the hardwood floor by just inches, the whole entire mess was on the carpet (can I get a big EWWW). To make matters even worse she missed the toilet bowl the second time she threw up…so I had that mess to clean up.

I tell ya anyone else would have quit this gig

Drama Llama

I have officially decided to rename my first-born daughter “Drama Llama”. This girl simply cannot do anything the easy way. Everything must be the hard way, mainly because she has to do everything her way. She does not take direction well.

She is smart, funny and a very cute kid, about 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time she is stubborn, contentious and down right surly.

Her surliness stems from when you try to convince her that even if her brother is calling her names, she can’t bop him on the head (or push him or poke him or any of the other myriad of things she does to the kid).

Now a word about her brother, he knows exactly how to push her buttons and he does it gleefully. He gets along just find with daughter #2 he rarely bugs her, but A he really gets her dander up….not sure why, it just is that way. Of course, she does tend to boss the poor guy around, how much can you expect him to take?

He especially tortures her with a rhyme he made up of her name, for whatever reason this particular rhyme drives her insane. It is his favorite weapon. He will just keep repeating the rhyme of her name while she just gets more and more mad.

Today, he was doing his usual brotherly thing, and she hit him in the head. Which earned her a time out and him a talking to…he isn’t just a victim here…he is an instigator…anyway they continued to tussle all morning.

Finally, as they were dressing to leave (thank god I had school to take them to) he bumps into the drama llama. I think he really accidentally on purpose bumped her, just a little shoulder to shoulder contact, but she is solid little girl and he bounced off her and kind of spun and hit her again (with his backpack).

Well, you woulda thought he body slammed her to the ground with the fuss she made about it. What made it so funny is she tried to use his bumping into her as an excuse not to finish getting dressed. That’s right she stopped putting on her boots because he bumped her.

I find her laying spread eagle faced DOWN on the floor. I ask what is going on and she informs me she cannot possibly finish getting ready and it is all her brothers fault.

Yes, of course, that makes perfect sense-NOT!!!! Luckily, I was able to help the little drama llama get her boots on and get out the door.

Boy Trouble II

Boy Trouble II Just a few months ago A had boy trouble. She made friends with a boy in a different class, this lead to the usually (although I think much too early) teasing about boyfriend/girlfriend, Kissy Kissy from some of her classmates. This did not set well with A, she is the kind of person who doesn’t like lies being told, unless, they suit her purposes and further her cause. If they are lies being told about her, such as that she kissed this boy, then watch out cuz, she gets mad. Anyway, that little storm blew over, amazing what kids will forget about over Christmas vacation. So now, my little N girl has found a boy that she likes. He is in her class and they just see to hit it off real well. Being a twin and from a family like ours, I think she is enjoying the personal attention this boy gives her. Of course, her classmates have noticed that N and this boy have been talking and hanging around together, so naturally they have begun to tease N. She flopped in the car on Monday pretty mad that they “are you his girlfriend” type teasing was going on. You couple that with the fact that she had a substitute teacher, made her one unhappy little girl on Monday. Once again, we talked about how there was not a whole lot to be done about the teasing and that these kids were morons and she should ignore them. I figured that ended that….. Wrong, on Tues she hopped in the car, not as mad but still annoyed, now the teasing was “did you kiss him at recess”. Somehow, I managed to control my motherly instinct to ask “you didn’t did you” and we just reaffirmed that the kids were idiots. While I was busy offering mom advice, A was kicking big sister attitude into high gear. Apparently, she went up to the one kid N had singled out as teasing her and confronted her about teasing her sister. As you can guess said confronted kid denied teasing N and told A that she must have her confused with someone else. Well, that really pissed A off she told me that she wanted to kick that little girl. Thankfully, she did not kick that little girl, but hells bells that kids something! Watch out world if you mess with any of A’s sibs.

Monkeying Around

I have noticed that one you get a cold snap, a really bad cold snap, the kind that keeps the kids home from school they lose all interest in playing outside.

It probably stems from the fact that during the cold snap your eyes frozen the minute you walked outside and you wouldn’t let the kids outside no matter how crazy they were making you.

Not to mention that kids have short attention spans and the snow is such old news now, plus, how much can you really do outside, when you are 5 and 7?

So, I can no longer convince my kids to go outside and play after school.

Moreover, I can’t even remember the last time they asked to play outside (or I let them) on a weekend.

That meant that on Monday, when we were faced with another, inexplicable day off from school I had to find something for us to do.

We need something to do that was a nice activity OUT of the house.

Preferably something, where the kids would run, jump and generally wear themselves out.

Ahhh, how about that new indoor play land Monkey Joe’s? That sounds just right for the kids. Never mind that it is pretty expensive, $8 a kid, I am willing at this point to pay anything to get us out of the house.

After I announced our impending trip to the Monkey house, N informed me that a classmate had went and gave it two thumbs up. N had even asked how much it cost….what a helpful kid.

We got there early, because I anticipated it being very full with other Cabin Fevered families, and it didn’t disappoint. We arrived 15 minutes after it was open and there was a line.

I will just say I never knew they made so many different inflatable things. Inflatable castles, sure…but inflatable obstacle courses?

We spent little over an hour there and the kids never stopped moving. They ran, climbed, slid and basically had a blast.

My mom came along, and we could have had conversation if we could have heard each other over the music and general din of the little monkeys. It was a pretty cool way to get out, get exercise and not get frostbite.

Report Cards

Report cards arrived home on Wednesday. The kids were shouting with glee that they had them in their backpacks.

I love that the school sends the report cards home in sealed envelopes. The school requests that you sign and return the empty envelope. I am sure this works well for the elementary students who aren’t that devious.

I doubt it works for the upper levels. My kids, love report card time, because it means MONEY. They get at least $2 from me and $2 from grandma….what a haul.

Once I hand over report card money, it will be burning a hole in their pockets. I foresee a trip to the toy store/craft store/Goodwill this weekend.

Anyway, while everyone got good report card, I would say that S got a fantastic report card for a Kindergartner.

He is proficient in everything except his fine motor skills. I attribute this to him keeping up with his sisters. He is right there calling out math facts and writing notes. His teacher had nice things to say about him (again). I get a kick out of seeing him through others eyes, it is such a nice break from seeing him as menacing baby brother.

A did let me know in the car that she expected to get an insufficient again in “self control”. The 1st quarter everyone got the insufficient because all of them very talkative in class.

A explained that it is because of one boy at the table. He is always talking so she has to tell him to stop talking. Boy, did I let her have it, I told her what that boy was doing was none of her business. She should not be telling him what to do (thus talking out of turn) this was the teacher’s job etc…

I really hoped she was wrong about getting the insufficient.

Nope. So here we are in 2nd quarter and Miss A still has an “I” in self-control, this time it includes a little note from the teacher. She needs to focus on her work and not talk when teacher is giving directions.

Yeah, that sounds like A. Why do I feel I will be getting notes like that home for the rest of her school career? Otherwise, she had really good marks. She just needs to keep her lip zipped.

Bowl Me Over

Is it bad when your 7 year olds and your 5-year-old can almost beat your score in bowling?

Sure, it was bumper bowling, but still they came damn close to beating my score.

Saturday was bowling day. We try to go bowling at least once with the kids in winter. The kids adore bowling and frankly, it is the only competitive sport my mom will play with them. She had a very bad miniature golf experience with them.

For some reason, they don’t get as competitive with bowling, maybe because it is so turn based and you get to go twice in one turn. Whatever the reason they don’t push, shove or fight. Sure, someone inevitably loses but all the kids are good sports about it.

In terms of scoring, I got a modest 99 (with bumpers); I couldn’t believe the kids were right behind me with 78, 76, and 72. I think those are pretty good scores for kids that can barely lift the ball.

Their grandpa worked with each little kid to find the perfect ball for them, as it turns out one ball (the lightest ball they had) worked for everyone.

N was determined to hold the ball properly. Enough of the two handed roll for her. She used the proper three-finger hold. Her fingers are so tiny and slender (this is a kid who gets tired holding a pencil), I can’t believe she was able to hold the ball with her teeny tiny fingers, I thought for sure the ball was just pop right off of those fingers and hit her foot.

Amazingly, the ball stayed on her fingers and she got it tossed down the alley. Unfortunately, the ball barely had any oomph. Several times, I thought the ball was just going to stop right in the middle of the lane.

She did manage to knock pins down each time; otherwise, there would have been hell to pay. Yet, you could see that she was disappointed at not getting a spare or the coveted strike.

A went with the two handed toss down the alley, hence the highest score of the little kids. The little booger even managed to get a spare. You could see N turning shades of green at that.

A is a little bit, shall we say, heftier then N, so her balls had a lot of pep.

S did awesome for a five year old, he got 72 points a very good score, although the lowest of the little kids.

He seemed most enamored of the Green Bay Packers towel that Grandpa used to buff the ball. I even got a picture of S holding the towel.

The whole day went very smooth, it could be that we plied the kids with candy from the vending machine, or the fact that the music was so loud the kids couldn’t hear each other to argue.

So everything went great, with the exception of one itsy bitsy little incident.

At one point, S had a tiny little problem with the ball. Okay, it escaped from his lane. It happened like this, he had a really good first roll, the ball hooked over and everything and it just needed a little more oomph to it.

Therefore, Grandpa got down with him and gave him advice on how to launch the ball. So S takes his ball to the lane and gives it a might heave (with a hook) and the ball promptly sails over the bumper, bounces on the next lane and rolls into that gutter. Where it rolls down the gutter, stops, reverses and rolls back towards us.

My mom and I were on the floor laughing, the kids were terrified they were going to get yelled at and Grandpa had to go get the lane guy to retrieve the ball. From then on Grandpa refrained from giving S advice, told him to keep doing what he was doing.

Ice Ice Baby

We took the wee ones to their first hockey game yesterday.

It was not without its difficulties still we had a blast. The most difficult part was getting the tickets.

See it was Family night, about the only night we can afford, so we needed a family fun pack….ah but those only come in 4 so we needed an extra ticket. Ticketmaster (or tixbastard) doesn’t allow you to buy a single and a family pack online.

Therefore, we go to the local outlet, which is located in Boston Store of all places.

Why you would put a ticket outlet in Boston Store has always blown my mind. Little old women work the service counter at Boston Store, they NEVER no how to operate the machine, never no what game/event you want…it is ALWAYS a cluster.

After dealing with the surliest woman ever, seriously this woman was so unpleasant that the woman waiting in line behind us just turned and left instead of dealing with her. We were informed that we couldn’t get the family packs at the outlets. May I ask WHY THE HELL NOT???

Fine, fine we ended up going to the Admirals Corp office, located in the bowels of the Milwaukee Theatre where the nicest man helped us.

He even gave the kids Admirals gloves, which made him thisclose to Jesus as far as the kids were concerned.

Of course, Hockey is not an easy sport to follow. The puck is constantly zipping around, and guys are slamming into the walls, etc. However, that turns out to be a good thing for the kids once they got used to watching the puck, they were pretty intense on following the action.

Time seems to fly as you are tracking that little puck. In addition, last night was Family Night. The Admirals (who are in 1st place in their division) do an excellent job of keeping the fans and kids engaged.

Let me just say who ever decided ringing a cowbell during the game was a good idea needs to be kicked in the nuts.

The kids were just amazed at the “human” puck at intermission. This involves an adult getting onto a saucer sled and being slingshot towards enormous bowling pins.

Let me tell you, you are cruising towards those pins. The contestants that were familiar with this game threw themselves off the saucer right after impact, those that were unfamiliar with crashed into back wall quite hard, even after being stopped, by some poor guy with an enormous catchers mitt.

I could just see my husbands eyes light up at the thought of screaming across the ice -honesty he was crushed that he wasn’t selected. He would have paid to do it, never mind doing it to win a prize.

The kids loved the little (okay not so little) blimp that zooms around dropping prizes. As is our luck, we didn’t win any prizes even though’ the blimp dropped prizes in our section each time. The kids especially loved when the blimp chased the maintenance guy from the ice.

The guy in charge of maintaining the net at intermission was quietly doing his job when the blimp floated up behind him, then proceeded to zip up behind the guy and bump him. After shooting the blimp a murderous look, the guy ran into the back net area and slammed the door shut! The kids were on the floor laughing.

Par for the course at the hockey game several fights broke out between players, I had a real hard time explaining that to the kids, I basically told the girls that they were boys “what do you expect”. It was toy mascot giveaway night. We made sure to get there early enough to get a toy.

The mascot is this furry orange guy named Roscoe. My kids can’t say Roscoe for the life of them. N keeps calling him Rospereaux and A just can’t remember the guy’s name. We are still debating exactly what Roscoe is, he is not a dog and he is not a pirate, he is just big orange and furry.

Heart Attack

Valentine week is upon us. Oh wait, you don’t consider Valentine’s Day a weeklong event?

Well, then you aren’t in elementary school are you? In my kids school Valentine’s Day is a weeklong celebration culminating with a Valentine Exchange and party on Friday.

First, you have to select the perfect Valentine’s, which is very, very hard. My kids puzzled over the Valentine selection for quite sometime. You have to decide do you want to hand out Valentine’s with stickers, tattoos, markers, oh the choices!

Alternatively, you could buy some type of candy to tape to the Valentine (except we don’t do that in this house to pricey). At our old school some kids (okay their moms) even made little Valentine favor bags.

Then you have to take them home and address them, which is a very long and involved process you have to select a Valentine that you think represents each child in your class. Naturally, you keep the biggest and best Valentine for your teacher.

The Valentines that include stickers or tattoos have these tiny, invisible to the naked eye slots to slide the sticker or tattoo in, so that it doesn’t slip out. Those things are the work of the devil. I spent more time trying to pop the slots then the kids did on the Valentines.

After all the Valentines have their sticker/tattoos in the slots then you fold them and attach a very teeny sticker to keep it closed.

Next comes the best part, decorating your “mailbox’ hopefully, you have enough boxes at home -I was almost short a box, but had just got something sent to me, so Voila I had another box.

We spent, oh I don’t know about ½ hour in the craft store selecting just the right tissue paper and just the right foamies to decorate the box.

Thank goodness, we had extra scotch tape leftover from Christmas. In the time, it took my husband to cover the boy’s box I had both girls’ boxes done. It was simply a case of my years of experience paying off. Sure, the girls’ boxes are not perfect they have a few lumps but the foamies and stickers disguise those.

Once the boxes were encased in tissue paper, we turned the kids loose with sparkly, glittery foam hearts to stick all over the box. The nerve-wracking part is transporting the boxes to school. It goes without saying that it was raining this morning and we had to hustle from home to car, car to school to prevent the boxes from getting soaked.

As we were walking in, I realized we had forgotten to put the kid’s names on the boxes D’oh.

Friday will be the big Vday party in each class with Cookies, Candy, Juice and what not all, the kids can’t wait!!

Nothing Says Love Like A Car Show

We had a fantastic Valentine’s weekend.

For Valentine’s Day, my little hearts wanted new Katie Kazoo books. Well, the little girls anyway, the boy wanted a new car or truck, or Spiderman or Batman…the list went on and on.

In fact, I had to warn the kids that V-day was a small gift-giving holiday. I made it clear that V-day is NOT Christmas, because they were giving me never ending lists of potential presents.

My son is the easiest to shop for he loves anything-super hero related and is always happy to get a new matchbox car. He received a HUGE (I mean ENORMOUS) hot wheels track set from his grandpa.

Interestingly enough the track set was Grandpas when he was a kid, in great shape even came with the original box from 1965. My mom was more then happy to take the hot wheels ramps from the basement in her house to my house.

It needs to be noted that those same hot wheels ramps used to reside in the basement of this house. I suspect my mom is on a mission to replace all the stuff that migrated from this house to her house back to this house.

Anyway, the girls had some valentine money burning a hole in their pocket so after having a nice lunch (okay a fast food lunch at Arby’s) with my mom, we went shopping.

Their chances to spend their money was slightly limited, we only went to Steins Garden and Gifts. Yet, they all found something to buy. More shells and a big pink sea horse for N and a cute bunny pin for A. S got a little toy ambulance.

Now all his rubber frogs, fish and penguins can ride in the ambulance. N was sure to tell her dad that the seahorse was on clearance with A chipping in that it was “non returnable”.

Sunday we took the kids to the World of Wheels show. This was more for the big kid in the family. My husband loves cars (see where the little boy gets it from) and he hasn’t been to a car show in ages.

The kids kind of got into it, although it is a whole lotta cars to look at, I am pretty sure the kids never want to see another car again for awhile. My husband snapped lots of pix to help in his model making.

My husband was CRUSHED that we wouldn’t get to see Adam “Batman” West. Well, who knew the line would be out the door? He did manage to get a shot of the Bat Mobile itself. After we came home, we had to turn on the Batman reruns in honor of Adam West.

Weekend

Poor N woke up with a fever on Saturday. She came into our room and her cheeks were flushed, she had her pajamas unzipped and she begged us to let her change her jammies because she was so hot.

I am not surprised she is sick. Last week she had at least 6 students out of her class with various illnesses. I was surprised that she wasn’t vomiting or anything else and eternally grateful!

Saturday we were supposed to see a play and go to a little kid’s carnival, but with the weather and N not feeling good we had to skip both. A was extremely disappointed to learn we wouldn’t be attending the play.

I wisely, had not told them about the kid’s carnival; it was going to be a surprise.

I knew N was really sick when she declined to come out and play in the snow. A and S got all suited up and went out to play, but N stayed all-cozy on the couch.

In fact, she fell back asleep. Anyone with kids knows that if they fall asleep during the day, then they must really be sick.

On Saturday, N played a little bit during the day with her sister, but mostly hung out on the couch.

I was really worried how A & S would get along. Those two rarely play alone together. Usually N is the one to play with S and A. She is very good to her little brother something that can’t be said about A.

I was very relieved that A and S decided to play nice together. Especially, when the cable went down and we couldn’t watch our favorite programs.

We did have a Muppet Show DVD so we could pop that in and have popcorn. N managed to consume a large amount of popcorn even though she was sick.

Sunday, did not see any great improvement in N, she was still very pale and listless, but she did eat a little breakfast and we did go out to do errands.

I was ready to call the errands off if she got sick or got whiny.

Being out and about seemed to perk her up. We even had McDonalds for lunch. That really perked her up.

Although, after lunch she ended up back on the couch and she stayed there all afternoon. Her brother and sister buzzed around her playing nice!

I am still in amazement that they played together all afternoon. I know I feel like it was my lucky day and I should have bought lottery tickets. When we were at Target each kid had to pick something from the dollar bin, (what parent doesn’t love the dollar bin??).

A chose a Spiderman secret codebook, complete with decoder, S chose a surprise ink Spiderman coloring book (no surprises there) and N chose one of those weird squishy balls kids love so much. T

he balls that look like puffer fish/sea urchins, I find them creepy the kids find them fascinating. Everyone had a blast using their new toys. That is until N fell asleep and her brother and sister got a hold of her squishy ball. It went from a friendly game of catch; into let’s make funny shapes with the ball, to OMG we tangled the ball up.

Yep, now the ball is no longer squishy and it resembles a deranged porcupine. Let’s just say N was not amused when she woke up and saw what A had done. I think if N had been feeling a little better, there would have been hell to pay.

Let’s hear it for Flubber

It was a weak moment when I said yes to helping out the Kindergarten class for Dr. Seuss day.

Naturally, I checked with my son to see if he thought it would be cool if I helped at school. He seemed rather lukewarm about it, but the girls were all excited.

Therefore, off I went yesterday to help four batches of five little kindergartners make flubber. Having never made flubber I didn’t know what to expect. I wondered if I should show up in a lab coat.

Also, having never worked with children (other then my own) I was rather apprehensive-what if the other kids were mean to me??

The green goo was a hands on project that segued from reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck. It was all part of the Read Across America celebration.

The teacher read the story and then we all made batches of Oobleck. After hearing the story four times, I gotta say it is a good story. One I had never heard before.

After doing Oobleck with me the kids also got to make paper fish for One fish, Two fish and Green Eggs and Ham for what else Green Eggs & Ham. Oobleck is nothing but Elmer’s glue, water and borax (with a little green dye thrown in).

While lacking complex ingredients it is super sticky stuff. I almost glued my finger together several times. My greatest fear was some kid getting it in their hair (worse mine).

It does make a pretty good skin peel. You remove several layers of skin as you scrape it off your hands.

After making 4 batches of Oobleck I think I could make it in the dark, with my hands tied behind my back. The kids seemed mildly impressed by the flubber.

Although, there was one little boy who out right refused to touch the flubber. No way, no how was he going to touch it.

While my flubber came out, I never quite got the hang of it. The teacher had a HUGE vat of flubber. Her kids repeatedly got to take home chunks of it the size of small boulders.

My kids were lucky to get a lump of coal-sized flubber from me. One little girl cried “is this all we get” as I handed her a chewing gum sized lump of flubber. Another little kid looked longingly at the table next to us, where the teacher had a flubber ball the size of my head.

I am pretty sure you could use flubber to hold the space shuttle together. We washed it down with soap and water and used cleaners on it, but it refused to let go! The teacher’s aide had to resort to scrapping it off the table with a spatula. She said she felt like she was working the griddle at a diner.

Right now, my son’s flubber is resting comfortably on our counter in a protective sandwich bag. I better dispose of it before someone uses it to glue the cat to the floor.

Splish Splash

I had an absolutely fantastic birthday weekend.

Of course, there were a few glitches. First, as I was taking my son to his classmate’s birthday party, the car died.

Yep, it just stopped working. It had given no indication earlier in the day that it was on the verge of failure.

Luckily, we were in the turn lane from hwy 18 (busy) to the not so busy Janacek Rd. We were due at the party in about 5 minutes, and I had no idea if I was turning the right way on Janacek or not.

Right as I turned the car it simply stopped working, no power = no steering…so I coasted the car into a parking lot. I sat there for a minute then praying to the god of cars I turned it over hoping I had just flooded it –or something!

Nope, wouldn’t go. The kids were very worried at that point. They didn’t want to be stranded and they didn’t want S to miss his party. As it turns out the parking lot was one block away from the party location. Thank goodness.

We hustled over to the party spot. Then I coordinated with my husband for the pickup of the stranded persons. He had to leave work to get us…he wasn’t happy about that.

He was even less happy that he couldn’t fix the car on the spot. I think all men harbor the belief that women have NO clue at all about cars and that some how we just screw them up.

I think he expected to ride in and immediately be able to fix it. Nope not this time. So, we had it towed to his work. At least, I know it is a reliable shop.

After we got that squared away, we took the girls for dinner, hit the grocery store for supplies for the next day and picked up my son.

Who was now suffering from a fever…..we found him huddled in his coat at the party complaining that he felt cold. UH OH! We came up with a plan for the next day in case he wasn’t recovered.

Everyone else would go to the pool and he and I would hang out together. Made sense since I don’t really “swim” (I know the person who doesn’t swim gets a waterpark bday go figure).

My son was puny the next day, but we loaded him up with fever reducer and set off for the waterpark. Along the way, we got the call the car needed a new fuel pump…several hundred dollars…bummer.

Still, we were going to be at the waterpark for the weekend, so why be gloomy. My son had really perked up by then and we spent the afternoon frolicking in the pool.

A the daredevil went down the slides by herself. N went down but only with her dad or her sister, never alone. I was so proud of S he played so nice all afternoon, sometimes he even played alone in the kiddie pool. It was awesome.

We finally wrapped it up when we were all pruny. We had McDonalds in the hotel room and then everyone collapsed into bed exhausted.

Thursday

Well, the smell of pool finally faded from the kids and they have finally recovered from our trip to the waterpark.

They were super tired on Sunday night. Monday morning S was complaining that his legs hurt, yes, that is to be expected after climbing up to the top of the slide so many times.

They had such a good time even after N fell off the lily pad walk and had to be yanked out by a lifeguard. She made it safely across the walk a couple times prior but this last time she slipped and fell in.

I was watching S and didn’t see her go in, so she had to be removed by a lifeguard.

Note: If the lifeguard has to hop into get your child, you have to answer several questions. No big deal, though’ just full name of you and the child and the kids age. I am sure they want to be covered in case the parent tries to blame the pool.

For a few minutes, after she was pulled out I thought she might want to give up playing in the pool. I told her that she didn’t do anything wrong and it was no big deal that she went under.

It is the first time she has ever slipped off something at the pool and got a big face full of water, it is no wonder that she was a little disorientated. I am pretty sure I would have to be helped out of the pool after going under.

She did recover and was zooming around the park again in no time. She and her sister did work with their dad on holding their breath under water and swimming in general.

He has to be the one to instruct them, I am not a swimmer I am a floater. I do not dislike water, in fact, I love it. I just can’t swim very well…I am an excellent floater tho J So the girls worked on holding their breath and opening their eyes underwater, something I am unable to do.

I know the girls can’t swim well, that is why recently I told A she couldn’t attend a classmates swimming party. It was at a regular pool, not even a waterpark with lower depth areas, it was a full size pool.

I figured A had too much confidence in her “swimming” (she really thinks she can swim) and it would not be safe for her to go to the pool. I think after this summer (and several more lessons) she will be ready to hit a real pool party.

PJ Day

We are having a PJ day today; well the kids are at least. While I don’t spend the day in my pajamas, the kids do. That’s right I let them spend the entire day in their pajamas. Pajamas are a perfect for a rainy gloomy day.

Although, I admit that sometimes we even have pj days on nice sunny days. We do it whenever the kids feel the need to spend the day doing nothing but playing and relaxing.

There is something about spending the entire day in your pajamas that is so decadent and fun for the kids.

Sometimes, in winter on pj days I let them go outside with their pjs on underneath all their winter clothes. I think they like it because they know that it means we will spend the whole day playing, no grocery shopping, no errands just playing.

Occasionally, the kids ask to change into their pjs right after school. Their dad just shakes his head when he finds them eating supper in their jammies.

Today is the perfect day to stay inside doing nothing but goofing around. It is rainy and cold and the entire yard is one big mud pit. So far, the kids have played 3 different board games, built one fort city and played several creative imaginative games all while wearing jammies.

I did notice that we are running low on milk, I suppose I could get everyone in shoes and run up to the gas station…the kids would think that was awesome taking a car ride in their pjs.

It’s in the details

Even though the girls are twins, they definitely have their very own personalities.

A is more outgoing, daring and artistic. N is quiet and rather shy, but she is the one you go to when you want to know what really happened. You cannot get a story from start to finish from A.

Her stories meander around from beginning, to the end then back to the middle. Occasionally, bits of other stories are mixed in to her narrative. I frequently find myself asking her “the point”.

In my defense, it does keep her on topic; otherwise, you would never get the story completed. Not only do her conversations wander, but also she frequently starts conversations apropos of nothing.

One minute we are discussing supper, and the next she is talking about something from TV about a week ago. She did that the other night at supper; we were all sitting, eating and talking about our day. All of a sudden she started commenting on something a kid in her class did a week ago. It took all of us about 5 minutes to figure out what she was talking about.

Seriously, we all paused and looked at her…for the record; her sister just shook her head.

A is a detail person through and through. She can get hung up in getting the spots on her purple dinosaur just right. If they aren’t just right, she will rip up the whole project and start again.

The big picture is never going to be her specialty.

The girls were taking a skills assessment test at school. The day they took the test N was confident that she did well; A was rather upset because there were a couple questions she couldn’t finish.

A portion of the test was determining what was wrong with the pictures. There were four animals and you had to mark which one was missing something.

A said she couldn’t answer that question because she couldn’t remember if tigers had whiskers or not. Her sister having taken the same test said to A “It was the elephant, his ears were missing”.

Yep, detail girl was so hung up on whether the tiger had whiskers or not she failed to see that the elephant was missing his ears. Priceless.