Kid Quote

G reciting his memory work of the 2nd Article of the Apostles' Creed last night ... "I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the version Mary ..."

Happy 85th birthday today to Josh's grandpa!

Quoting G

Today when we were at Menards, G came out with this:

It's called 'Menards', not 'Womenards'. It's only for men, not women. Women have to get their own 'nards'.

Super-Glued Kiss

After kissing S, who then proceeded to wipe the kiss off, I told him, "You can't do that! I super-glued it on!"

To which S replied, "I super, super wipe it off!"

Kid Quotes and Stuff

Me: Oh, S, what are we going to do with you?!

S: Keep me!

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As if there weren't enough Star Wars characters, my kids have created new ones. Apparently there is now Jedi Bob and his Padwan Larry. Sounds like a good Veggie Tales movie. Atleast they have "normal" names!

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Happy 6th birthday to our nephew E!

I'll Be So Glad When This Weekend is Over!

Okay, okay, I know the weekend has barely started. It's only Friday! And I'm usually one who looks forward to the weekend, but these past two weeks have been crazy with all the musical practices and performances (E missed school again yesterday due to another performance for area gradeschoolers.), teachers' conferences, parent teacher conferences which means a half day of school yesterday and none today, and cheerleading and basketball parents' meetings. This weekend promises more of the same with all of the public musical performances (tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday) and striking the set (Sunday).

But today the kids and I had fun!

As I said, they didn't have school today, but I had to go in to work for a few hours and get some things finished before Sunday. We were at church about 3 hrs. The kids played in the gym, outside, and colored and made things with paper in the workroom while I did my work.

Then we headed to the public library, and after that I surprised the kids with lunch at their favorite McDonald's, the one with the HUGE playplace! I let them play for about half an hour after we ate our lunch before we headed off to get groceries from Aldi and Wal-mart.

I'd hoped to hit Piggly Wiggly for a couple of great deals before heading back home, but E had to be at the high school to get ready for tonight's performance by 4:30, and we weren't going to have enough time. So we took her home first so that she could eat an early supper while the rest of the kids and I unloaded groceries (except for S who fell asleep in the van), I put them away, and then E went to the high school while the other kids and I made a quick trip to the Pig.

Josh managed to call home in the small window of time before we left again and asked about supper. I told him we were having wafflewiches, so if he could start making waffles and bacon if he got home before we did, that'd be great!

He was making the bacon and waffles when we got home and got one set made before the waffle iron decided to quit working. (It was my mom's waffle iron that we used when I was little, so it's old ... not that I'm saying I'm old!) Josh is going to see if he can fix it, but he didn't have the time right then since he also had to get over to the high school for the performances, so I watered down the waffle batter and made it into pancakes, and we had "pancakewiches" instead. It worked alright, but they taste better when made with waffles.

E and Josh have two more performances of The King and I after tonight. I know E has had fun doing it, but she's ready to be done.

S said a couple of times today, "I miss Daddy and E." :(

So, after Sunday we should have Josh and E back ... but then cheerleading and basketball practices start. Who knew having and upper grader would make life so much busier?!

Today's Quotes

After giving S a bunch of kisses and seeing him wipe them off ...

Me: Hey! You can't wipe off my kisses!

S: Yes, I can. I have a force field!

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F: "Nein" is "no" in German. "Seven" is "yes".

The "Too Eventful" Day

Sunday started by seeing this hot air balloon being deflated in a corner of our church's lawn when we got to church ... Kind of neat.

(Day 234 of 365)

Afterward, when we were back home and getting ready to get lunch made, Josh and I were talking in the kitchen. In fact, we were all in the kitchen except for S, when all of a sudden, there was an awful scream and cry that didn't stop. We rushed into the living room to find S screaming and crying with a mouth FULL of blood.

My kids have hurt their mouths before, and I know cuts in the mouth and on the head bleed a lot, but this was the most blood I've ever seen in one of the kids' mouths before. At first we couldn't tell where all the blood was coming from because there was so much, but finally, we got the blood to stop.

S's gums on his top front teeth got pushed up a bit and it seems that the gums above those teeth are what was bleeding. We tried to put some ice on them and gave S some Tylenol. There didn't seem to be anything that was an open cut though or anything to warrant stitches.

The story we finally got out of S was that he was running and somehow fell and hit the piano bench, apparently with his mouth.

E's memorable quote amidst all this was, "That's why God gave us extra blood!"

After lunch we all went to Josh's work with him. The kids watched a Diego DVD on the projection screen in one of the rooms while Josh worked in his office and I helped him by going around the building hooking up computers to the network and upgrading the memory in them. (Josh told me and showed me exactly what to do; otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue.) I finished upgrading the memory in all but 6 computers that needed it. When the kids' movie was done, they helped Josh with some stuff, too. We were there all afternoon.

As a thank you to the kids and me for all the help they'd been to him at work this summer and I'd done that day, Josh decided we should all go out to Culver's for supper. We didn't get any custard there though because after eating we headed over to the kids' school for the annual start-of-the-school year ice cream social where the school kids take all their school supplies to their classrooms and get their stuff put away so they don't have to do it the first day of school and then have ice cream.

When we got to the school, Josh went upstairs with J and G to help them in their classrooms, E went by herself (downstairs), and I went with F and S to their classrooms (downstairs). After helping F and S, we headed over to E's room to see how she was doing. She told me she needed a band-aid for her toe, and when I looked down at it, she had blood all over her toe and sandal! She'd cut her toe on the door when she tried to hold it open with her foot. I guess she thought she had too much extra blood, too!

I took E into the office and got out the first-aid kit and washed and bandaged her toe and asked her why she didn't come find me. She said she'd tried, but she didn't see me in either F's or S's rooms, so she went back to her own?!?! I asked her why she didn't tell Mr. B (her teacher), but she didn't want to ... so instead, she let her toe continue to bleed freely while she put her books in her desk! I'm surprised she wasn't crying or panicking since she'd taken a nice chunk of skin off. At any rate, I got her bandaged up, and we went back into her classroom where she could finish arranging her things before we headed to the gym for ice cream.

While we were having ice cream, Josh mentioned (which I had forgotten) that one of the other moms was a dental hygenist and that maybe I could ask her about S's mouth and teeth. I explained to her what had happened, and she looked at S's mouth.

One of his top front teeth is a little bit loose, but she said that we should only give him soft foods for 2 weeks to let the tooth rest and get firmly reattached. If it starts to change colors, then we should take him to the dentist. She said his gums will grow back fine but it will take a while, maybe a month, give him Tylenol for a couple of days, and lots of cold, soft, foods.

Now that it's a day later, looking at S, you can't tell that anything happened. He maybe has a slight bluish tinge to his skin between his nose and mouth, but if so, it's very faint. You can't see anything out of the ordinary when he talks or smiles either, but if you lift up his upper lip, you can see more of his 2 top front teeth than before, and the gums above them are practically black from all of the blood and bruising. I could take a picture, but it makes me cringe and hurt for him just thinking about what it looks like. Thankfully it doesn't seem to be hurting him though, so that's good. I pray he heals quickly and doesn't have any lasting effects.

Dear God, could I please order some very boring, uneventful, non-bloody days for a while?!

Revisiting My Childhood

Why haven't I posted lately? We've been on vacation, but we're back home now, safe and sound. I'm going to try and get my blog up to date over the next couple of days. I've got lots of pics to share and fun times to recount!

We left on our vacation on the 30th. We headed to MN to go camping with my brother and his family and then spend a few days at their house. The road we needed to take to MN passed only a few miles from the house I grew up in. We rarely drive this way anymore and it had been years since I'd seen my old house, so we decided to make a detour.

When we turned off the main road, the kids asked where we were going. Josh told them, "Off the beaten path." The kids had never heard that expression before and kept asking, "What's the beaten path? Are we off the beaten path now? Is this the beaten road?"

The house I grew up in was next to a church and school, both of which I attended. The school is now used as a daycare. Since it was a weekday, the daycare was open, so we walked in. I told them who I was, and they let me look around. The house I lived in is now part of the daycare, too, and the workers even let us go into my old house and show it to Josh and the kids. It was interesting to see the changes and how it was all being used now. I even got to see my old room. The trees are bigger, but why does everything else look so much smaller than I remember?!

Here's my childhood home. The two upstairs windows that you see were my bedroom windows.

This is a view of the hill across the road. The hill used to be called "Old Baldy" because it was the only hill around that had very few trees on it while all the others were covered. I wonder if the people who live in the area still call it by the same name.

After we finished walking around by my house, we drove into town, planning to stop and say hi to a family friend. I had her address, but didn't know where the street was since she'd moved since we lived there. However, I knew that one of her daughters lived in their old house with her family, so we stopped there to see if she could tell us where her mom's house was. Unfortunately she said her mom was out of town, but another of the daughters happened to be at the old house, so we got to see both of them.

After a brief visit, we got back on the "beaten path" and headed into MN. More to come ...

(Day 180 of 365)

Where?!

Conversation at our house yesterday ...

Josh: S, where do you live?

S: Mika-dona's (McDonald's)!

Huh? We don't even go there very often!

Then we kept asking S again where he lived, coaching him to say the name of our town, but he kept saying, "No. Mika-dona's!" He was very insistent!

Day 62 of 365 and a Quote

G showing the K'nex man he built

This is the same funny child who, last night after finishing his piece of birthday cake, asked for another. When Josh told G he only got one that night, G replied, "I have an attitude of hunger! I can turn it on!"

To which Josh added, "And off ... like when we have food you don't like."

Kid Quote

Last night at suppertime E was telling us how the K through 4th graders are working together on building a snow fort outside at school. Apparently they've organized it so that each grade has something specific they're doing. The funniest part was when she said, "First graders make good pack mules!"

"Sick Hamster"

Our hamper for dirty clothes tends to fill up rather quickly. I'm not always the best at keeping on top of the laundry, so sometimes the clothes spill out of the hamper onto the floor. This was the case yesterday evening when Josh came home from work.

After Josh changed his clothes, he asked F to feed his socks to the "hamster".

She put them in the hamper, and then went back and told him, "I think it has a tummy ache!"

Kid Stuff

Yesterday F kept complaining about her boots hurting when we went to pick up one of my childcare kids from school. It was the first time she'd said anything about it, and since we'd be right back home, I told her she'd be okay. She complained pretty much the whole time til we got back home ... and then I checked the size of her boots ... 11. I checked the size of her shoes ... 12 1/2! Oops! Bad mom! No wonder she was complaining they hurt! I'm just surprised she didn't say anything sooner!

Today I put some socks with zebras on them on S's feet. (He only wore them when he wore boots when we took F to school. None of our kids keep socks on their feet when they're at home, but that's a story for another day.) I showed him the zebras and told him they said "neigh." (Close enough!) Then S kept repeating, "Beeza say 'neigh'! Beeza say 'neigh'!" When we came home and he wanted the socks off, he told me, "Beeza off! Beeza off!" I tried to get him to say "zebra" correctly, but he wouldn't, and I though "beeza" was so cute!

Sibling Tips

Yesterday on the way to school F was telling me about her classmate whose mom is expecting. Right now that classmate is an only child. F suggested, "Maybe I can teach her some tips!" (on being an older sibling) :)

Termites on the Ark

The other day while riding in the van J asked, "If Noah had to bring 2 of every animal on the ark, why didn't the ark sink because of the termites he brought since termites eat wood?"

"Um ... that's a good question, J," I replied.

Josh answered, "Termites don't eat wood that fast."

Why didn't I think of that?!

Liquid-less Soup

J isn't a fan of soup. He likes it better if much of the liquid is drained off, leaving the veggies, meat, noodles, whatever. We will often do this for him.

The other day E was picking out what she wanted to eat for her birthday supper. She said she wanted tomato soup, after which J asked, "Can you drain the liquid off when we have it?"

Um ... what would be left then since it's tomato soup?!