Can you float a paper boat?

...and just a tad of tinfoil!


Sunday was a rainy day. The perfect day for crafts! Cherub 2 starting making a paper boat. Cherub's 1& 3 quickly joined in the fun. (Craft family central over here.) I told them...design your boat and we'll have our own little science experiment to see who could design a boat that floats the longest. At first they looked at me like 'who took our real mother?' and then cheered! They had so much fun making them and a blast getting all wet in the bathroom during the floating contest.

And the winner was...

Cherub 1!


Runner up goes to cherub 2(with a little help from Daddy)!


Have no fear, cherub 2's quick re-design got him right back into the race after taking on a little water. He is quick on his feet and very creative.

All the designs were different and all amazing!

All d' Man

Happy Hubby. He was all the man on Saturday. Burning permit in pocket, he cut down branches and burned brush from his spring cleanup all day ...to his hearts content.

Train them Early

Saturday night:
Friends over. Everyone brought their kids. I am not sure who was louder, the adults over the wine, margarita's and beer that was flowing or the kids running amuck and playing tag in the house. All the adults were chatting, giggling, swapping stories about our week until cherub 2 sauntered through the room with a cup of water and exclaimed, "I am drinking a beer!" You could hear a pindrop after that for a few seconds, we all looked at each other and then we all started howling. Clearly he is catching on to what the adults do during our 'get togethers'.

Tonight:
After a long day of over-tired parents and children (remember, we were all up late either drinking beer/wine or pretending to), hubby suggested after dinner we play the name game. So there we were teaching our kids how to play the name game (minus the alcoholic beverages we used to play with in college). Yes, we are training them early. They will succeed both academically and socially. I am so proud.

Honestly Speaking

I love kids pure, unaltered, honesty. Here's the good and the bad news from my little honest engines:

Cooking Dinner. Front yard, check on my little bike riders, back yard, check burgers on grill, repeat. Eating Dinner. Cherub 2, while scoffing down my homemade, slightly overcooked cheeseburger last night laughed and told me, "Mom, you don't cook cheeseburgers that good."

Helping cherub 1 clean her room yesterday I asked her if she thought keeping her room looking like a tornado had it was the way it ought to be and her answer was, "Your room is messy too." Ouch.

Earlier this week, cherub 3 bounced off the bus and asked if he could stay to play with his friends (at his normal daycare). I cheerfully tried to spin going home with me to have "Mommy/Cherub3 Day". Expecting sulking, I was floored as he cheered, "YEAH! I love those!" My cup runneth over.

Testosterone

Testosterone. Too much of it. That is how it has been since we came home from Disney. Three days of this. Cherub's 2&3 beating each other up, chasing each other, playing football, pushing, LOUDNESS, roughness, etc.

Cherub 1 had choir practice this afternoon at church. The boys and I brought her in. I was chatting with a friend when I HEAR the boys stamping footsteps as they are GALLOPING and RUNNING throughout the pews of the church. I couldn't believe it. I asked them to stop FOUR times.

Consequences? Usually, an empty threat or two. Not tonight. What? YOU CAN'T RUN IN CHURCH! Hello? So...I was REALLY MEAN. They lost their pizza gathering with friends tonight and had to go to bed a 1/2 hour early too.

Have got to reel them back in to listening to mommy mode. Ugh. My wine in my new Mickey Mouse wine glass tastes GOOD right now.

Strummin on my Banjo

I can't believe I didn't record it...if I am lucky enough there will be a next time.

This morning, cherub 2 was SINGING really loudly in the shower. He was so hysterical and it sounded like a crazy country song. I popped in the bathroom to see if there was any actual washing going along WITH the singing...he simply strummed in the air he exclaimed:

"Mom, I am singing the yuke-a-laly (sp) song playing my banjo!"

Not Above a Good Bribe

Upon returning from vacation, the cherubs had three days of school. On Wed we found out that for cherub 2 (first grader) that meant throwing him into the fire with his unit spelling test. I know you are thinking, big deal, it's a spelling test.

No ordinary test. Their unit spelling tests consist of a test on thur of 50 words (current unit words) and on fri with 122 words (that they have learned all year). The unit test week always takes us the full four nights to prepare for (usually with some tears). He is always a trooper and tries SO hard.

So...we had ONE night to study Wed nt for the 50 word test. So...the bribe.

Spell a word, eat an M&M. Yup, this bribed kicked in 1/4 the way through so he probably had about 40 or so M&M's.

Not above a good bribe.

Whatever gets you through the day.

Begging for NICENESS

Dear MEAN people,

Get a new job. It is NOT my fault you are having a bad day or hate your career. You do not earn the right to be mean to me, the polite customer, because the last person you waited on was mean to you.

I visited your post office this morning and called your doctor's office this afternoon and was jolted by the rudeness you both exuded. What is your problem? I used to be in the service industry and even as a teacher now, I would NEVER be rude to my customers (aka students/families). Never, ever.

Sometimes I wonder if people in New England are just rude in general. We just came back from FL where EVERYONE was nice and polite to us. What is up with this area? It is like everyone is in a perpetual bad mood. Is it the lack of sun in the winter?

Maybe you need to be told you are RUDE, RUDE, RUDE. Maybe you need a happy pill. Maybe you need to reevaluate your life and decide if you need to do something else to make you attain inner peace so you can EXUDE happiness!

Cheer up, it can't be that bad.

Warmly,
Your customer

Sneak Preview...

Vacation was AWESOME!



Stay tuned...



Updates soon!

Mickey here we come!

We are off to FL...to visit with Mickey, Grammy & Grampy. Can't wait for some sun!! Check back in next Tue...

Time Check

So, it was daylight savings this Sat night. Unfortunately, Hubby & I live in basically LA LA LAND so on Sunday when hubby tried to take cherubs 2& 3 to their LAST hockey practice/game of the season, it was OVER. This did not sit well with cherub 2...who LIVES FOR HOCKEY. Yes, mommy & daddy are LOSERS.

Every Monday, cherub 2 writes his "Weekend News" as his morning work at school. It came home today for us to read. It starts off, "Me and my Dad went to hockey but we were too late. We were sad to miss hockey."

Guilt much? Yes, I realize that the teachers know that we are LOSERS too.

Thank you for checking on us!

Thank you to my RLF's that called to make sure we were ok. Cherub 3 was a total trooper at the hospital on Friday. I apologize for my late post. I will update this post with a picture soon The hospital was amazing...relaxing him prior to his tests with books, vidoes, toys, Nintendo DS, etc. The nurses were amazing! Most importantly they did not find anything during the endoscopy. They took biopsies that will tell the whole story...but the doc is again leaning toward reflux. No obstructions, redness, ulcers or inflammation. Phew. We can breathe again.

What's left to scrub?

So. Tomorrow is the day for the dreaded upper-endoscopy for cherub 3. Hubby & I were actually relieved a month ago when we had to postpone the original date because cherub 3 had a bad cold. We are off to the hospital at 5am. Thank you BabySis for coming to bring the other cherubs to school!

So. You know the stress/worry level is bad when you find yourself cleaning at 9pm.
10pm.
11pm.

So. I haven't slept all week. I have been having nightmares & have woken up at 12pm.
2pm.
4pm.

With not much else to clean (who am I kidding, I could clean here forever and barely make a dent), I cracked open a cold beer to take the 'edge' off. Great. I went from ocd cleaning issue to drinking issue. No worries. I don't have an issue. Just trying to relax and convince myself that everything will be fine and that letting my FIVE year old "go under" for a procedure is perfectly normal. They do it everyday. Right?

There must be something else I can go scrub.

Take a deep breath, then respond.

One of my closest friends recently got married. When I received her wedding invite, I noticed that it had the wrong date on it. It had Saturday with Sunday's date. Seriously, as a former bride I fell into the instant sweat for my friend. Oh crap, all her people received the wrong date! What to do? I thought about how I could tell her without sending her into Bridemania mode.

In the end I called her and left her a very nice message. She called me back the next day laughing because she said out of the all the invites that went out she received two calls. My really nice message and a really sarcastic "I love to be the bearer of bad news" message from another friend. Which in this case, she laughed about because our messages were clearly our personalities.

Same message, two ways of delivering it. WHY AM I TELLING YOU THIS STORY? I do have a point.

I am a Girl Scout leader. This is a totally volunteer job that I love but sometimes when it comes to the administration side of it...I could use a break. I recently sent out an email listing the remaining meeting dates and times to all parents. I forgot that one of the dates was a 1/2 days of school so my email had the wrong meeting time. I very quickly received back many emails. In some I could literally hear the HA HA, YOU MADE A BOO BOO while others were just very polite 'clarifications requests'.

So hear is the life long question:
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE FEEL THAT TWINGE OF POWER WHEN OTHERS MAKE MISTAKES? Do they get a thrill of pointing out when others are wrong? (You are wrong, na,na,na,na,na,na! Member that from 1st 2nd grade?)

Lesson to my kids:
It is ALL IN THE PACKAGING PEOPLE. I always say this to my friends and try to teach it to my kids. There are always two ways of saying something. Say it how you would like someone to say it to you. ;o)

As a mom and teacher, I have learned to form a thicker skin. There are inevitably conflicts that arise and sticky situations in life. However, this was not one of them. This is not a conflict. It is barely a blip...that is why I needed to vent. This was just a dumb email where I made a small mistake. NOT heart surgery my friends. The earth will NOT fall off it's axis. So...

I would love it if people would TAKE A DEEP BREATH, then respond.

When does THAT stage end?

After a full day at work, grocery shopping, home activities (dinner, laundry, homework, etc) I fell asleep on the couch tonight, I think right after the American Idol credits rolled. Didn't see any of Lie to Me, which was the plan. I woke up to cherub 2 whispering in my ear, "Mom, I am cold (a.k.a. WET)."

Ughh.

I slept through the wake everyone up before I go to bed window of time. Two of three beds, wet.

We have followed the rules, kept our hands in the windows at all times. Yet still, the ride is not over. We keep looking for the sign that "thanks us for coming to the bed wetters" stage, and welcomes us to the next adventure.

BabySis's Bday Weekend FRIDAY

BabySis turned 30! We took her away for a surprise weekend in the city...as tradition in our family any bday adventures are fully noted in poem form (written by me). The honoree learns of their adventures as the poems unfold clues. Enjoy our recap!

FRIDAY~ start of weekend, night before BIG surprise event:

The silver limo will arrive
BigSis, much to your relief will drive
1st stop to Sis C's we will coast
Next on to Sis C (2nd) for a quick toast
Ah, the limo will take us right on time
After the 1st leg of the trip tonight you'll feel just fine
They'll be no stress, just giggles, oh what a pity
1st stop~ a spa in your choice of a city
So take a deep breath, relax every muscle
A massage and soem other fancy fussle
Some food, some drink~you'll be our Irish queen
Crashing at the Hilton~just like a dream
You'll get more info tomorrow about your next steps
On a need to know basis~secrets we have kept
Happy START to your birthday, BabySis dear girl
We can't wait for your weekend whirl!

(coasting in silver limo aka= minivan)

(champagne toast at RLF,C's house)

(Our "off we go" pic...)

This pic is not in poem but must be duely noted. NOBODY PUTS BABY IN THE CORNER! Upon arriving at the hotel we found we were put in a regular room instead of the suite we reserved. With 5 of us for the weekend we decided we probably should call to check. We girls have too much luggage...we didn't think the cot would fit! We tried to test the area in the corner to see if it would even be big enough for a cot first. Nope, BabySis can't even lie down, need the suite. BabySis & I COWERED in the corner as RLF,C responded quite efficiently to the rude front desk lady by demanding the manager and a suite. She could rule the world! In a suite within 5 min of speaking with the manager. Off to the spa!

(RLF C,C, BigSis at Spa)

(Bday girl, BabySis after her massage, feelin full of peace)

(RLF, C & BabySis gettin all fancied up at spa)

(Dinner & Martini's at the cutest place after spa)

(Where they served cute little foods like this burga)

(Late night after spa, dinner & drinks, BabySis dances in hotel and opens presents!)

Will post SATURDAY's adventure soon!