Gravity

Oh my word.  This A to Z challenge is making me do things I never thought possible.  Or necessary.

People, I wrote a poem.

Oh get up off the floor.  It's not that big of a deal.  It's just an acrostic.  I'm not even rhyming or anything.

I shall dedicate my poem to my two boys who have the darndest time making it through a meal without literally falling out of their chairs.  Turken will be sitting across from me when, mid-sentence, he simply disappears.  Star has fallen out of his chair more times than Taylor Swift has fallen out of love.  It really is ridiculous.

This acrostic is for them.

Gabbing with my family and
Relishing Mom's meal when
An invisible monster
Very handily
Isaac Newtons me
To the ground.
Youch.

Have a lovely day!

Frustration

can be defined as...

*  Easter basket grass.  Period. 

*  Not realizing until after the washing machine has filled with sudsy water that you have mistakenly put the newly washed and dried clothes you just took out of the dryer into the washing machine instead of the dirty clothes piled at your feet.

*  After getting in the shower, realizing you forgot to put a new bar of soap in the shower, again, so there isn't even a sliver with which to clean yourself.

*  Thinking of a great idea for a post while in the shower, then completely forgetting what it was when you go to write it down.

*  While unpacking $50 worth of groceries, realizing you forgot to buy the one thing you went to the store to purchase in the first place.

*  Spending 30 minutes cutting and organizing coupons to coordinate with a detailed shopping list, then forgetting the whole kit and caboodle on the kitchen counter.

*  Making the conscious decision for the first time in 2013 to skip the shower and stay in PJs all day, then having that be the one day your sister (who lives 2 hours away) shows up at your door unannounced with her co-worker in tow.

*  Having something hilarious happen to you, but then can't get a hold of anyone in order to tell the story.

*  (After your husband gets home)Realizing that the hilarious happening was completely situational and not nearly as funny in the retelling.

*  Playing "Sorry" and not getting a one or two or Sorry card after going through the entire deck twice.

*  Playing "Sorry" with a three year old who doesn't draw a one or two in 5 turns.

*  Patiently waiting for five minutes while a child decides which piece of sports equipment he wants out of the back of the van so I can lock the doors and keep my purse safe while we play at the park, then 35 minutes later returning to the van to find we had left the side van door open the entire time.

*  Run-on sentences.

Have a lovely day!

Elated About Easter

After months and months and months of cold, snowy weather, we finally hit the spring jackpot over Easter weekend. 

Sunny and 60 degrees leads to:

Blooming crocuses,

laundry on the (zip) line,



barn roof tennis,

fun on the rope swing,

lettuce seeds in the garden,

toys in the yard,

long walks down the driveway,

and Peep roasts.

Always the Peep roasts.

Need more E adjectives to describe our Easter weekend?

Exciting.  Euphoric.  Enthusiastic.  Exhilarating.  Energetic.  Ecstatic.

Yup.  It was a good weekend.

Have a lovely day!

Alice the Camel Has...

We purchased our current home almost eight years ago, completely unfamiliar with the area in which it sits.  In those early days between buying it and moving in, we would take drives around to get a feel for the lay of the land.  During the drives, we would discuss our new house, the chickens that came with it, and what our life would be like once we moved in.

On one of these meandering trips, we asked the kids which animals they thought we should get for the farm.

One of the kids yelled from the backseat, "I want one of those!"

We looked out the window, and there, in a field a mile from our new home, was a zebra.

A flippin' zebra!

Just so happens we have an adventurous vet around the corner from us.  Over the years he has had all sorts of interesting animals.

These days, he has three of these:

While it may look like there is an obese panda in the background, it isn't.  I don't think.  I may have to go back to make sure.

How do you know which breed of camels they are?

Count the humps.

If a camel is bihumpal (Hubby's word), it is called a Bactrian Camel.

If it is unihumpal (my word), as these two are, it is called a...

Dromedary.

Bam!  D word done.

Have a lovely day!

Cut-Out Cookies with Children

Since our kitchen was all torn up through the entire month of December, we didn't get to make any Christmas cookies. 

Very sad, I know.

So, the kids and I decided to buy some new cookie cutters and make some festive Easter cookies.

If you would ever be so "lucky" as to make cut-out cookies with six children, I have some tips for you.  I did not include a recipe, because honestly, there have got to be better ones out in the land of allrecipe and pinterest. 

The italics portions are the kids' two cents.

1.  Make the dough without them.  The cutting, baking, and decorating will be more than enough together time.  Don't feel guilty about starting the process without them.  We don't mind that you made the dough without us, but was it really necessary to lock us out of the house in order to do so? 
Yes.  Yes it was.

2.  When the dough is ready, gather all of your materials before you call the kids into the kitchen.  Make sure you divide the dough into equal parts, one for each child, then get a "station" ready for each of them.  You may want to invest in more than one rolling pin.  Or not.  It's called "learning patience".

3.  Let the kids do the work.  Demonstrate how to roll out the dough, then hand over the rolling pin.  You might want to make sure they have a sufficient amount of flour, seeing as how the dough sticks to everything.  We had to start over 5 times before we could get the cut cookies off of the counter intact.  I think that has more to do with the lack of attention to the demonstration than the lack of flour. 

Like I said, let the kids do the work.  They'll figure it out.

4.  After you make (or open the can of) frosting, separate the white icing into separate bowls to mix up a variety of colors.  Make sure you have one color for each child.  It's helpful to also make frosting in colors that match your shapes.  If you give us a cookie in the shape of a carrot, we'd appreciate it if you had some orange frosting available.   Well, that wouldn't be very creative, now would it?  (I did whip up some orange.  They were about to mutiny.)

5.  Demonstrate how to frost a cookie.  I would highly suggest keeping the cookies on the counter/table while being frosted.  There will be a much better chance of keeping the cookie intact.

6.  If you're feeling really adventurous, give them some sprinkles to add a little bling to their cookies.

7.  Leave the kids alone.  It is hard sometimes, but don't touch and don't give opinions.  Let them create all on their very own.

If the kids are in the kitchen, your goal cannot be to create perfection.  The goal is to give the kids a chance to have fun, learn some new skills, and gain some self-confidence.  They can't do that if you're hanging over their shoulders telling them what to do.

Just go into the experience knowing there will be a big mess and knowing the rabbit will probably not look like a rabbit.  It's all good.  Don't eat Cuckoo's cookies.

Agreed.

Three letters down, 23 to go!

Not a C word, but I just found out my story is part of a series called HerStories.  It is a series Jessica Smock and Stephanie Sprenger have started, and they have found some wonderful contributors.  I'm honored to be featured today at School of Smock, where I tell the story of my very best friendship of my life. 

Have a lovely day!

B Is For Braces

Despite the love my parents showed me while I was growing up, I believe there was a small part of them that hated me.  It is the only explanation I have for one big decision they made which traumatized me for life.

They chose a man who was professionally trained in torture techniques to be my orthodontist.

(OK, that probably isn't true.  He probably took some correspondence course, which, now that I think about it, is much more feasible.  Professionals wouldn't have been so sloppy.)

Well, there is one other explanation.  Either they hated me or they were ridiculously frugal and found the guy's name and number on an ad on a corkboard at the grocery store that read, "Cheapest Braces In Town!"  They just tore the tag off and made an appointment.

Either way, their choice in orthodontist sucked.



Before
 

How 'bout we bullet point the ways in which this man traumatized me?

* To prepare for braces, I underwent surgery to have eight teeth pulled, four of which were adult teeth.  I was knocked out, and when I awoke I had 12 teeth left.  I basically had to learn how to gum my food at the age of 10. 

* At one of my first ortho appointments, a mold was taken of my teeth.  The assistant wasn't very good at it and gagged me, which caused me to throw up all over myself.  Did she take the mold thing out so I could puke in peace?  No.  She put me in a chokehold so I couldn't move and waited the three (or was it a million?) minutes for the mold to set.

*  To add insult to injury, she then wrote on my chart that I am a "gagger".  That moniker stuck with me for years and years.  As an adult, I went to a new dentist in a new city, and one of the first things the hygienist said was, "Oh, I see you're a gagger." 

*  Two days before my braces were to be put on, I fell on the playground.  My bucky-beaver tooth went right into my bottom lip, and I had to get three stitches in it.  The orthodontist decided I was to keep my appointment.  My mom agreed.
 
*  Paying zero attention to my still-swollen, stitched-up lip, the ortho yanked my gerbil-sized mouth open to get a good look at my horse-sized teeth.  The pain.  Oh, mercy, the pain.

*  After I screamed, the orthodontist left the room, then came back with a spray can.  He sprayed my entire face.  It was some sort of numbing concoction, which he probably got on the black market.  My entire face went numb.  Sure, I couldn't feel him pulling my stitches to their breaking point, but I couldn't feel my eyelids, either.  All I could think was, "Am I blinking?  For the love, tell me if I'm blinking!" 

*  My orthodontist had Parkinson's.  No joke.  While I have nothing against people with this disease, and in fact have much compassion for them, this man was dangerous.  He would accidentally pinch me with the utensils, leaving me with blood blisters on my lip.  (Yes, the very same lip that had previously been stitched.)

During
 

*  I had the old-fashioned kind of braces, of course, that completely encircled every tooth and were put on with an unbelievable amount of cement. There was a wire that went through itty bitty holes in the front of each band.  It wasn't until the wire was in that he could tell if the wire was too long.  Instead of taking the wire out, he would put the metal sander in my mouth.  The sander would be spinning at lightening speed, when he shoved it aaaaaaaall the way to the back of my mouth in order to sand the wire down.  Smoke and metal dust actually poured out of my mouth.  One false Parkinson's twitch, and my cheek would have been sliced open. 

I have never been so terrified as those days when the wire needed to be changed.

After
Really, what's the point of fixing the teeth when you are walking around with such horrible clothes and hair?

This torture went on every three weeks for two years.  Two very long years.

So, when our dentist told me that Phoenix needed to see an orthodontist, I broke out in a cold sweat.  My poor baby will NOT be treated in such a manner!  I don't care how often he annoys me by not brushing his hair or goofing off at the store, my son will have the best orthodontia money can buy!

Sure, we won't be able to afford pants to fit the boy who never stops growing, and he'll have to go around wearing floods and/or capris for a couple of years, but God as my witness, he will have a youngish, compassionate, healthy, steady-handed orthodontist!

Day 2.  B word.  Check.

Have a lovely day!

Antenna Artistry

If you remember from last week, our satellite went out and wouldn't be fixed for 3-5 days, if we were lucky.  With a house full of boys who sleep with their brackets and talk about nothing except who is ahead in those brackets, this was a big problem.

On Thursday, I left the house to simply take Phoenix to practice.  I left specific directions on what to do with the dinner that was five minutes from being done. 

I got home twenty minutes later to find everyone happily dishing out the meal I had prepared. 

Dishing out?  But shouldn't they be well into eating by now?  And what was that sound?

I rounded the corner to find:

 

 

Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that jazz.

Later that night, when Phoenix got home from practice and laid eyes on that bit of Daddy Ingenuity, I do believe I saw a happy tear in his eye.

And then Kansas lost.

Those tears were for real.

Hope your brackets are doing better than ours.

Happy birthday to the A to Z Challenge founder, Lee!

Have a lovely day!