One thing I'm not

So I'm working with a group of nursing students last week and before getting busy we were making small talk.  What was your previous job, where do you live, and so on.  I mention that we live a few miles from Verizon near Noblesville.  This peaks one guy's attention.  He says that he used to go up  there for a few days at a time...loved it...had a good time.  When people say they come to Verizon for a few days at a time they're generally talking about Dave Matthews, Phish, or the Grateful Dead.  Another guy mentions that he can't believe it's been six years since Jerry Garcia died.  Without missing a beat, it just spills out of my mouth that it was actually August 1995.  I impressed even myself.  The first guy looks a little confused, but I proceed to explain.  "Yeah, I was camping with a girl who was absolutely heartbroken."  Now he looks even more confused.  He says, "I would have never pegged you for a deadhead."  It sounded...well, something...when I told him that I wasn't a deadhead.  It was cross country camp.

Distractions

So while I'm supposed to be reading, I'm doing a better job of watching Jon & Kate Plus 8.  They say there's a marathon on Labor Day weekend.  That should be fun for our girls because they'll see all the little Gosselins wearing "big rose dresses".  The last marathon preview has those girls wearing the same dresses that are hanging in our girls' closet upstairs.  I sense this will be a big deal.

Call Pat and Vanna

Samuel has a new favorite dessert.  He just loves the "corn on the cobbler" that we had tonight!  With much chuckling, we finally got him to at least identify it as "peach on the cobbler".  I think it would make a good Before & After puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.

Lost in Translation

Tonight Anna was working on her Bible verse for her soccer team.  Perhaps you've not yet heard this version.

"John 14:6.  Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth and the Life.  No one gets close to my father except for me."

Simple addition

Adding up the pages of reading for the upcoming semester (minus four textbooks that i don't yet have), I have 10,709 pages to conquer.

What a croc!

After a nice visit with my sisters this week in northern Indiana, the kids and I ventured home today.  We made an impromptu stop at "The Pickin Patch" so that the kids could have their first experience picking blueberries.  Success!  Samuel sang the whole time about the exciting party we were having.  Anna monitored all the buckets (even as she picked into her own) to make sure that we were not picking any berries that were blue.  McKenna ate.  She ate a lot.  The first time I checked her bucket she only had three blueberries.  We didn't stay long, but it was fun.  

The trip home continued until we stopped for gas (maybe 35 miles later?) at which point McKenna asks me to get her crocs for her.  Sure, but I can only find one.  "Oh.  That's because the other one fell off my foot at the blueberry place.  It was under the van when we left.  I forgot to tell you.  Sorry."  Seriously?  You forgot to tell me?  Only McKenna could forget something in the present.  She's a lucky girl.  My parents were headed up to Michigan for a wedding and were able to stop and get the missing croc.  I wasn't about to turn around, so seriously, she's just a lucky girl.  

While in South Bend we found a great chinese place for dinner.  On the way there, we looked back and somehow Samuel is happily working on a tootsie pop.  Shocked, I asked him where he got it.  He didn't quite answer the question, but his answer was classic...  "I needed it.  I was thirsty and I needed food."  My little guy is quite the schemer when it comes to suckers.  He's probably got a stash hidden somewhere...

Piling Up

Things that I need to jot down are piling up around here.  I didn't realize this until talking with my sisters tonight.  So, since my sisters constitute half my readers, this is mostly for my sake so that I can remember some funny things our kids have said lately.

*McKenna recently learned Tai Chi (as only our McKenna could do it), only she calls it Chai Tea.

*McKenna thinks that the Disney Store is Disneyworld.  This could  be quite a savings for our checkbook if we can keep this idea going...

*I drove the girls to church the other night in my mom's car.  I'm still evidently not proficient at driving a manual because I squealed the tires more often than  not and the ride wasn't exactly smooth.  The girls thought that I was doing that because I loved them.  They were having a grand time.  When relaying the story to Chris, they said it was fun because we went bumpity bumpity bump!  And, according to Anna, it's much more fun for me to drive than Pops because he doesn't make the loud noise (squeal) and make it bump.  

*McAllister's is better known as Miss Allister's.  She makes a mean grilled cheese.

*What's cool and what's awesome?  Say one or the other and Samuel will either agree or correct you.  "Yeah, dat's awesome" or "No dat awesome, dat cooooool."

Oh, gotta go.  Olympics are back on!

It's growing on me

AFTER

BEFORE

Pardon the unconventional order of things.

Buyer's Remorse

I guess that's what you'd call it.  Is there a different term for not being happy with a haircut?  Not mine.  Sam's.  We took little Samuel today for his first hair cut.  We'd put it off long enough, or so I thought.  We should have put it off longer or asked for a trim.  Although it was a compromise cut (Chris voted "buzz it"), it's so severe!  Pictures might be coming later.  I've got to come to terms with the fact that all that's left of Samuel's curls are in a small ziplock bag on my dresser.  I could kick myself...

Once was lost, now is found

The case of the missing tapes has been solved!  After two years of combing the house for all the family movies that led up to Anna's second birthday, the search is over!  All along they were in a box in the closet.  Silly me.  Too bad I missed them in that box the first six times I looked there! 

The bad, the good, and the cute

I had the opportunity this weekend to attend a women's conference with a couple of good friends.  The time with friends was incredibly sweet.  The conference, however, was an extreme let down.  Too much fluff and humanistic babble (merely) laced with Christian truth.  I wanted the meat.  The truth.  Something solid to stand on.  I think it's sad that so many opinions get preached as truth.  Not just sad, but scary both now and in eternity.

What did I miss at home?  Evidently McKenna learned to read while I was gone.  I know she's been looking in when Anna has been working on her reading, but tonight she read me the third book in the little BOB books series, rattling off "The dog has on a rag hat".  She's never read this book!  With Samuel taking care of the potty training by himself essentially and now this, it's tempting to think parenting is easy and that the kids can figure out things by themselves.  It's just not that easy, even on the best of days.  But boy is it fun to parent these kids!

Samuel's new cute-ism about it getting dark:  "It's darking!  It's darking!"  Oh, and today we ditched the pacifier.  He's not happy, but he's asleep.

Multitude

1.  Toilet paper should be strong enough to not tear when coming off of a huge, industrial size roll.  I'm just saying.

2.  Anna came running to me the other day in the yard--middle of the day--saying that she saw a bat fly across the yard and land on the porch.  The heat must have gotten to her, right?  I checked it out and yes, a bat was hanging above the dining room window on the porch.  Anna's response was, "How unusual!"  She also spent a good bit of the day reminding everyone that bats are good because they eat mosquitoes (2-4k, we've heard) and wondering if we'd "learned our lesson about bats".  

3.  I can't remember the other things that I was going to mention.  My multitude just became a couple.  Rats.