Let's Cut to the Chase

Last night there was about an hour's gap of time between when Steve left for work and when I arrived home to find GG freaking out. She and S3 had been fighting again. I thought I'd calmed the situation so I went upstairs to shower. I didn't even have the water turned on when GG pounded on the door freaking out about S3 again. I told her just to avoid him until I finished my shower and I'd deal with everyone then.

About twenty minutes later, I had everyone turn off the computers, play stations, and television and gather in the living room. Ty told me his version of events, S3 & Ev concurred and GG added a little more detail, but pretty much everyone told the same story.

For the next half hour or so, Ty, S3, GG and I discussed how things could have been done differently to avoid the arguing and crying and finally everyone was calm so I dismissed them all from the "meeting." Ev turns to me and says, "So basically I didn't really need to be here."

Nature or Nurture?

My husband, for those who don't know him, is a very literal man. I call him Mr. Literal. It's really annoying. He says exactly what he means and he will do exactly what you ask him to do. We try not to say, "Throw that [fill in the blank] over here," unless you really want him to throw it at you.

A little while ago, I was in the basement folding laundry, and had the kids come down to bring their piles up to put away. I handed Ty his pile, which was rather large and had a pair of underpants on top. In order to balance his pile, he ended up using his face. I said, "Ty are you ok? 'Cuz you've got undies in your face..."

As he was walking away and up the stairs he said, "Well technically they're not IN my face. They're NEXT TO my face but not in my face. If they were in my face, that would be weird."

Mr. Literal, Jr.

Special Talents

Tonight in the car, E asked me why we don't have a "family job." After some confusion, Ty translated that for me into, "Why doesn't our family own our own business?" I asked E what she thought we would do if we opened our own business. There were a lot of restaurant ideas coming from the back seat when S3 chimed in, "Let's see... What are our skill sets? Hmmm.... there's Tattling..."

Soccer Weekend

Note: videos are less than 30 seconds long.

Did you guys get all that rain on Friday? It POURED it's brains out here. And since there was no lightning, all games were on! Ty's team went first and won 3 - 0. He's #20. Can you see all the rain? It was really pouring.



Look how wet G got:



I didn't grab any stills of S3 - just video. We were creaming the other team 7 - 1 before the half so the coach took out all his juniors and seniors and put in the freshmen. The other team got frustrated and started playing really rough. There was this huge guy - and I mean not just tall but big and bulky - who had it out for my kid. I got a clip of him (below) taking him out at the ankles but what I didn't catch was later in the game when S3 manuvered around him with the ball, the kid pulled S3 down by his shoulders and when he was on the ground this huge kid stomped S3 on the hip. He's still limping a little today.



But the best of the weekend was G. She had a game in Hockessin, DE. Watch the video. Bri sends the ball in to G who is in position to score. G flubbs and sends the ball back out to Bri who sends it in to G for a second chance to shoot on goal. G shoots and....

Renovation Update

Despite what you see in the pictures, I'm basically doing this alone so it's taken me two weeks to get the living room painted and the flooring ripped up. This week I'm starting in on the dining room. I really want to have this done by Steve and E's birthday (4/4). Here's my "befores" - sorry they're all just old pics. I didn't bother taking any before I started in on the painting.



E wanted to help SO badly. She sanded and helped paint primer. It wasn't until I got to the actual painting that she decided it wasn't that much fun anymore.




Wiping the ceiling down to get it ready to paint:




Pulling the staples out of the padding (there were like 3,000,000 of 'em)




Scrubbing up dirt and stuck-on carpet padding:


You can see what the floor looks like without carpeting. It needs refinished. We're hoping sometime this summer...

Bring Out Your Dead! But I'm Not Dead Yet!

Wow, talk about the plague. Between pink eye and the stomach flu, I don't think I'm ever going to get to leave this house ever again. So far E and G have been home with pink eye and the day after E went back to school from that, she came home with the stomach flu. Now Ty is home with it. Thankfully Steve came home from Missouri yesterday and I got to slip out to the library for a half an hour. I was running low on reading material.

Not much else to say here. It's been a heck of a week.

Learned Something New Today

After church I needed groceries so the kids and I quickly changed and headed out to Sam's Club. We were all in a pretty good mood; our bellies were filled with cheeseburgers and iced tea and we were ready to shop.

As we walked in the front door we saw this cool game set up called Rock Band complete with two guitars, a drum set and a microphone. Steve is in Missouri and since we didn't have to rush through shopping and we didn't have anywhere we needed to be, I gave my go-ahead to the kids to check the game set up a little closer. Ty immediately sat down at the drums, G grabbed a guitar and E gravitated toward the microphone. I cajoled S3 into picking up the second guitar telling him it would be fun.

So it seems like Ty on the drums is in control of the selections - music and etc. - so he starts trying to figure out what pad to bang on to get the result he wants (the next screen) and every time he manages to figure it out, G would push a button on her guitar and send them all back to the main screen. Rinse and repeat about five times until finally I said, "G! Do NOT TOUCH another button on that guitar until I say so."

Ty gets to the next screen (finally!) and now the instruments have to pick their level of play. Two of them choose "easy" and S3 is trying to figure out how to be a bass instead of a guitar when G pressed that button again and sent them all back to the beginning. Rinse and repeat about five more times until finally I got Ty to just push everyone through that screen and the music finally started.

Well they must have picked the hardest song ever to try to play and besides that, both the girls just stood there dumbfounded, not understanding the point of the game at all and very quickly they all four failed to perform and the game was done. All of this took about 15 minutes or so and it looked as though other people would like a chance to try to fail so I declared our time with the game to be at an end.

G and E cried and whined. Ty was just about pulling his hair out in frustration - over the game set-up, over failing at the game, and worst of all over his older brother who was having himself a FAN-tastic 13 year old pissy moment (silent mind you. It's all in the body language).

"So what did I learn today?" you may be asking. I learned why Steve always says, "No."

{GULP} Happy Birthday?

Saturday was G's 9th birthday and boy was she ever excited. She talked about her birthday every day from the moment the calendar page turned to February. On the Friday before the big day the kids and I were driving to a basketball game and once again G brought up her birthday the next day.

Ty, having had enough of the birthday reminders, decided to put G in her place by saying, "Technically your birthday was nine months ago."

{Gulp} Eh, er, um, oooookaaaaay.... I guess now we're going to have a family discussion about conception.

Hi. Didja Miss Me?

Don't even ask where I've been. Lazy I guess. I just haven't blogged. I was surprised to see it's been since December 5th though. I thought I'd blogged at least once in January. I'll try to give you a quick update.

- Steve is still hard at work. They found some way to do a remote start-up with one of their factories so thank you God, he's been home these last two months and not in Korea.

- S3 is finishing up a looooong, boring basketball season. Basketball is not my favorite sport nor is he exceptionally good at it. He is athletic so he does well but it's not like watching him play soccer or baseball where he's usually one of the best players.

- Ty is a reading machine. I'd have never guessed he'd be my reader but let me just say I'm so glad we re-found the library. Does anyone know of any good youth stories about spies? Spy stories are his favorite.

- G is still playing soccer. She's finally on a team of girls her own age (rather than one and two years older!) and she's regaining her confidence. It's good to see. She's growing her hair back out so it's kinda scraggly right now but it grows fast.

- E cut her hair for LoL also (I don't think I ever told you guys that) and at first I was upset we'd cut off all her beautiful curls but it's so cute, it's ok. She's doing great in kindergarten and all my worries about her motion sickness and the school bus seem to be for naught, thank goodness.

- I am hunting for a new job. I've been working at the facility for 2.5 years now and I'm getting worn out. I wanted to be able to help and to give care and I feel like I'm so rushed and stretched now that I barely have time to do the minimum for my residents. I'm now looking for home health. I think I'll like the one-on-one much better and I'm hoping to time it right that I'll still be able to study and watch the kids' sports games.

I think that's about it. It's good to be back :)

Future Engineer

Ty made this while he was waiting for the bus this morning. Right now only it's arms move but he told me his next goal is to get it's jaw to be mobile.

Oops, He Did It Again

Remember when Ty was in first grade and he went camping with his grandparents? He fell off that piece of playground equipment and broke his left arm. My FIL captured it all on his camera.

Well as you may have guessed by the title of this post, he did it again. Similar piece of playground equipment but this time it was his right arm. Luckily for us they casted it very well and he's still able to write. And I paid the little bit extra to have the waterproof Gore-Tex in there this time so at least the five weeks of cast time won't be as painful as the last time.

Two Quick Stories

I gotta run to a doctor's appointment in a minute but I have to tell you these two quick stories first.

Last night S3 had left for puppet practice (VBS this week at our church), the girls were at the table doing crafts and Ty was supposed to be doing some dishes in the kitchen. I was reading a book. At some point a hissing noise pierced my concentration on the book but it sounded to me like Ty was playing with the sink hose or something and I didn't think much of it. A few moments later G said, "What is that?!?" which completely pierced my concentration so I looked up. Oddly enough there was a flashing light accompanying the hissing noise in the kitchen. The girls and I went to investigate and found Ty quickly throwing a cup of water on something on the other side of the bar.

I looked down and there was a tiny blackened plastic cup and a huge puddle of water. I looked at Ty and said, "Ty did you set off a firework in my kitchen?"

Now mind you, the smoke in the kitchen is so thick I can hardly see him. The smell was overwhelming. There was a blackened cup sitting in a puddle of water on the counter and do you know what that child said to me?

"Sorta."

He sorta set off fireworks in my kitchen. Sorta.

-------------------------

Story two:
Last night after VBS the boys were really wound up so they were wrestling on my living room floor while E danced around them, giggling. At one point S3 had pinned Ty down and he called to E, "Give him a wedgie! Give him a wedgie!"

E turns to S3 and in a disgusted voice says, "Ewwww! I'm not touching his underwear!!!"

Summer is Kicking My Butt

Where have I been? I honestly don't know. Maybe it'll get better for a little bit now that baseball is done. S3's team ended their season 1 and 21. Yes, you read that right. One win, twenty-one losses. It was a looooooooong season. I have to say that it was the first year Exeter had a Prep Legion team and it was the first year our coaches have ever coached and it was a fact that we were not provided with a field to practice on but really this was a little ridiculous.

At first I didn't really have a problem with the way things were going. I fully expected our boys to pull together and improve; after all they are some of the best players in the area. But there was a distinct lack of morale which I think can be directly blamed on the coaches.

Baseballs sometimes come in large buckets. Our team had two such baseball buckets upon which our coaches perched through the entire game. Toward the end of the season the parental grumbling got louder and louder and I heard the phrases, "Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dumb" and "Frogs on Lilly Pads" and my personal favorite, "The Bucket Boys." We were informed about a fall league and I heard parents say their sons would not be playing if the same guys were going to be coaching. It was bad.

Anyway, Steve was home for a week and now he's gone again. I think he'll be home every other week now through August. I miss him but I'll be glad to hog all the pillows to myself. He had the most amazing compliment from one of the head-honchos at the place where he's been working. I would share more but I don't know how much is sensitive (large corporations can get touchy sometimes) but you gotta trust me on this one. I don't know that he's ever received such a compliment and he's gotten a lot of accolades over the years.

S3 went to camp two weeks ago and last week Ty and G went for a week. It was the first time any of them spent more than a night or two apart from me. Funny enough, I didn't really miss them too much and I don't think they missed me at all. They had a blast and they're looking forward to going again next year. I think that's a good sign.

Steve's grandmother's family had a reunion this past weekend. Although I've been married to this man for nearly 14 years and although I mail out Christmas cards to these folks semi-regularly, I've never actually met most of them. It was interesting. They were all very nice (it's obvious if you know Steve's grandmother at all that her family would be wonderful) but still I hid in the side yard with the kids and my BIL most of the day. I'm not as good in a crowd as I used to be.

What else have we done this summer? Hmmm. Well my BIL has nearly finished fixing up my back yard for me and I must say it looks gorgeous. He put in a teared veggie garden, did some major flower bed reconstruction, tore down my old fencing and put new up, made a bunny pen, mulched and even mowed a couple of times. He's wonderful. I've had Steve's sister and her family over for a few barbeque's to enjoy all their hard work but I don't think I'll ever be able to convey my gratitude properly. It's such a relief to have a beautiful haven in my back yard.

Speaking of bunnies, soon it'll be bunny shaving time. My sister's friend has angora clippers and she's said she'd come over and help me de-hair the hare. Being crazy spinner/weaver types they're both excited for the fiber. Mel had me laughing one of the last times she was over. Beck had shed a big clump of hair on my shirt and she was all excited about how well it {insert spinning/weaving term that I can't remember here} and then she started to twist and show me how strong the fibers are. We've decided she'll spin me some yarn and I'll crochet a scarf. Then I can really be the crazy bunny lady.

Ok I've babbled enough. Maybe I'll manage to post again but sooner than a month from now.

Day 5

Our last day to enjoy the parks... The kids wanted to go to Downtown Disney one last time so we did that in the morning. Steve spoiled them with fudge and chocolate covered marshmallows.


And then we skipped back over to MGM. This time we got a better hang of how to manage the crowds and use the fast pass to our greatest advantage and we got to see a couple of cool stunt shows and a couple of 3D shows.

I thought this was the coolest illusion. The buildings in the background are just painted.


Herbie was there!

We all got in line for a quick ride before we saw the car stunt show and just as we were getting ready to get on, E decided nature was calling and she couldn't ignore the phone so she and I skipped out to find a bathroom. When she discovered everyone had gotten on the ride without her, she bawled. She was inconsolable.

Steve and the kids got off the ride and met us for the stunt show and E promptly did this:

That explained all the crying. Poor Steve had to carry her up a million stairs... really, I wish I'd taken a picture of the stands. It was a lot to climb with an extra 50 lbs to carry. He was understandably a little hot by the time we got to our seats.


Maybe you can tell how high up it was by looking at the stage we were watching:


Anyway, after MGM we went back to the hotel for one last swim and to pack up. The next morning we headed out early for the airport. I think we all needed a week of sleep to catch up with all the sleep we gave up to play while we were there.


Hope you enjoyed our vacation! I know I sure did LOL!

Day 4

I'm sorry for the long delay between days. We got home and Steve left right away again and I'd been uploading pics to his laptop.

Friday we started out in MGM trying to take advantage of the EMH (extra magic hours) in the morning but other than the Tower of Terror, a Star Wars Parade and the High School Musical pep rally, we didn't get much done. It was hot and it was crowded. I think it was the hardest morning of our vacation.

We had reservations for lunch in Epcot with the Princesses so the girls got all dolled up and ready for their date.

Then it was off to MGM for a few hours. Now you might think I'm nuts for letting my baby ride the Tower of Terror but she did really well on Big Thunder Mountain and she really wanted to ride it so she did. Steve said she was fine when they dropped her the first time but then the ride goes back up and opens the doors so you can look out over all of MGM. He said she looked out those doors and it was like, "Ok, this is serious!" She cried when the ride was over and the entire rest of the vacation if anyone said, "Tower of Terror" she would go, "I don't want to ride the Tower of Terror! It was really scary!"


It was Star Wars Weekend in MGM so we were treated to a lot of Star Wars stuff, including a parade with storm troopers and Jedi Micki. Steve is a big Star Wars fan so he was thrilled.

This picture is for my sister. She knows why.

This was the worst moment of the vacation. I'm sure the girls loved it but it was HOT and it was PACKED with people. I didn't wear much makeup on vacation but by the end of this show what little bit I had on, melted off my face. Literally. It was HOT.

They invited the kids up to dance with the cast and I think E was the first one out of her seat.
Our Princess lunch was in Epcot so we gave up on MGM and hopped a bus on over there.


I don't remember what E was pouting about but I've titled this picture, "The saddest little princess in the land."


We had some time before lunch so we hit a few countries. The boys are watching a glass blower in Mexico.

We parted ways - the boys were off to find more adventurous rides - and sat down to wait for our lunch. They were running about a half hour behind in their reservations and while we waited, E fell asleep sitting completely upright. I pulled her down on my lap and she slept until our name was called.
At the table, waiting for the princesses to appear.

All the princesses were there. We saw Belle, Jasmine, Ariel, Aurora, Cinderella and Snow White. I won't bore you with all the pics we took but Cinderella is our favorite and Snow White was the best Snow White I've ever seen. She even sounded like the girl in the movie.



After that we went to the hotel for a couple of hours and then hit Magic Kingdom to take advantage of the EMH there. We saw the electric light parade and the fireworks and then we rode a bunch of rides until about two in the morning. Yes, you read that right. Two A.M. It was awesome because during the day you'd stand in lines and even with the fast passes you'd maybe only get three or four rides in but at night the crowds are down by probably 3/4 of what they were during the day and there isn't a single thing we waited longer than ten or twenty minutes to ride.

Day 3

This one has to be fast because I don't want to miss the fireworks tonight.

We went to Magic Kingdom yesterday which was fantastic. Because we're staying on Disney property we can take advantage of extra Magic hours. MK was open early and Epcot was open late and we took advantage of the lack of crowds to do most of our riding then with a short break in between for naps and a dip at the resort pool. Here're the pics:






Ok, wait, I gotta tell you this story. We went to Ariel's Grotto to see Ariel and get her autograph which the boys were not all that crazy about doing. In fact, look at Ty's face in this pic. He SO didn't want to sit there and I made it worse by asking Ariel if she'd kiss him. LOL!



Anyway, while we were standing in line there were these little water things the kids could play with and E, G, Ty and Steve (to chaperone) ran off to mess around. S3 stayed behind in line with me and made snide comments about the little kids and about his brother being this little kid. After about 10 minutes of watching them play, he said to me, "I'm going to go over to Dad." I watched him. He didn't end up anywere near his father.



Some things you just gotta do. For us it was the Tea Cups, the Pirates of the Caribbean and eating Mouse ice cream.







Met Jasmine, Aladdin and the Genie.



I think Ty's highlight of the day was watching this bird catch and eat this little frog.



E went on her first rollercoaster (I'll edit the pic when I get home so you can see the family better)



And her reaction???



We hopped over to Epcot to do the extra magic hours and ended up riding different rides until Midnight. They tricked me into riding Test Track which now, a day later, I can admit was pretty cool although I'll never ride it again but last night... well let's just say I didn't react to my ride on a quasi coaster quite as well as E reacted to her full coaster.