one week from today

One week from today Neil and I will be here. . .





Long Island, NY (AKA the Hamptons)attending a wedding of Neil's friend from middle school. It is kind of a 10th anniversary trip too since we spent our anniversary in a hotel room with all 3 kids on the way home from or family vacation! I am sure I will have lots of pictures to share when we return!

breakfast gone wrong

We usually cook breakfast on the rare Saturday mornings that Neil is not working. Neil just quit his weekend job this month so he was home with us. We set out to make breakfast. We tried to make it low key - biscuits with butter and jelly and bacon. I had to make the bisuits because we had no "can o' biscuits". Then Mark thought it would be fun to cut them into shapes instead of circles. Cool idea. We chose footballs and helmets to celebrate the opening of OU football and a car, dino, and duck. We decided to cook the bacon in the microwave to keep it low key clean up as well. This all sounds very fine and dandy doesn't it? Here are the things that went wrong. The first batch of dough only made 6 biscuits so we had to make a second batch. I did not follow the recipe the second time and made the dough too wet so I had to have Neil add extra flour about 3 times while I kneaded the sticky mess. I finally got the biscuits in the oven and went to get Megan out of bed who had been crying for 10 min. Neil was in charge of the bacon. About 15 minutes and 15 paper towels later, the bacon was still very pink looking. I refused to eat it raw looking, so Neil kept cooking it. The biscuits were done and came out of the oven looking about as thick and fluffy as sugar cookies-they were more like glorified crackers. Neil's family makes this yummy chocolate gravy to put over biscuits, so while he was crisping the bacon I set out to make the chocolate. It turned out bad. I guess I cooked it too long. It cooled too quickly on the biscuits and left these lumps of dark chocolate on our plates that looked like something I should not mention. We started cooking at 8:20 and at 10:00 we sat down to a breakfast of chewy bacon, cracker biscuits, and crusty chocolate gravy that dried like icing on the biscuits. We were barely able to split the biscuits open to butter them, and after the chocolate gravy congealed into an icing consistency, we were able to pick the biscuits up and eat them like cookies! Yuu-uum! Oh I almost forgot two other highlights! As soon as we sat down Mark shoved a full piece of bacon into his mouth and could not chew it up and started gagging. The chewed bacon (and other stuff) ended up back on his plate! He did this twice! Neil put a really thick layer of jelly on two halves of Mark's biscuit and Mark slammed both pieces together to make a drippy jelly biscuit sandwich mess. (Do all men put too much jelly on toast and sandwiches? Neil says to much jelly is subjective!) Here are the pics! Enjoy! We sure did!

last swim of the summer

We took our last swim at Mrs. Lisa's pool this week. We invited Michael and Conor to swim and enjoy a quick picnic lunch before heading off to PM Kindergarten. It was a busy and fun day. We had a hard time getting the boys out of the pool to go to school!

The first day of the rest of your life

Read that title with all the sarcasm and complaining tone you can! Mitchell started the big K this week! He seems to be doing fine. I don't get much info from him! Men children! He liked the story they read on the first day about Mrs. Tendergarden getting ready for Kindergarden. He sits at a desk with 3 other kids, two girls and a boy. He does not know their names. He gets to hang his bag on whatever hook he wants. They went outside and exercised, and then colored a picture of Mrs. Tendergarden. That's all the info I got! Here are the pictures! I wish I had 100 pictures, enough to match how important the event felt to me. I only have about 8.

Here is a neat little story. We went to McDonald's to eat lunch before the first day to take away some of the jitters and give us something fun to do, and because Mitchell is obsessed with Star Wars and they have Star Wars happy meals right now. Anyway! A kid and his mom arrived at the same time we did. He looked Mitchell's age and she was wearing a Chisholm shirt. Mitchell, Mark and the boy all huddled around the toy display, and I timidly asked the mom if they were starting school today. They were. Kindergarden in fact. They had the other teacher. We got our food. They sat right behind us. The kids talked during lunch. Noah ended up coming to our booth to sit and play for a while. The mom and I talked. I was so glad to have made a new friend. I felt like I was sending my kid out into this huge new place where he did not know a single person and God showed us a new friend just in the nick of time. God is so good. He knows just what we need exactly when we need it.

Here are some pictures of the last playgroup of the year at Bouncin'Craze.

telemarketer intervention

I have decided there are not enough funny stories on our blog so here goes...

Mitchell has started answering our telephone. We have not really reviewed phone etiquite with him though. If a family member or friend happens to call things usually go fine. Last night and today I noticed he had replied "I think you have the wrong number," to a few calls. I asked him who they had asked for. He said "Jennifer?"



Random thoughts
(Maybe this can count for my tagging from Gina?)

-Will the rain ever stop?
-We are taking it easy for today and tomorrow morning to prepare for the start of Kindergarten.
-I cried this morning when I read Jessica H's blog about the start of school. I wondered if I have taught him enough to enter the school world.
-Today we had pigs in a blanket for lunch. (Hotdogs rolled up in biscuits.) We added pepperoni to spice it up a little! I made one with only pepperoni and stirng cheese. I thought it would be really cheesy and yummy. Nope! Really salty instead!
-Today I am trying not to yell or spank. Laura W. and I discussed how we feel that we yell at our kids too much over lunch yesterday (I mean lunch in the car, in the rain, outside of bouncin craze, with 3 kids crawling/eating in the back of the explorer. "Discussed over lunch" sounds so much more peaceful and sophisticated.
-Mark has been to time-out twice today, but has not been yelled at or spanked!
-Mark climbed up Megan's dresser and it fell over today. OK, yes I did yell then (I forgot). I had asked him to take some clothes to Megan's room and he was trying to put the clothes away in the right place. He started crying that he did not know the right place to put the clothes. I was angry and sad at the same time. He was fine. The dresser fell beside him not on him thank goodness. I was able to put the dresser back together which I was worried about since it was made of "really expensive pressed board and laminate".
-I watched the movie Atonement on Sunday afternoon and can't stop thinking about how depressing it was. Now I want to watch Definitely Maybe in hopes of cheering me up a little.
- I need to cut the boys' hair today so they don't look scraggly before school starts.
- I am starting a new job in September that I am both nervous and excited about. I am going to be the new music teacher at Sonshine School. Sada did such a good job and the kids loved her. I am not sure I can fill her shoes. I think as long as I have a little music note stamp to give them at the end of the class they will like me.
-My kids (Yes, all 3 of then) are playing amazingly well today without me! That is a first because Mark is ususlly glued to my side. That is how I have been able to post so much!
-Mark is wearing underwear today and has not had any accidents. Actually both boys are only wearing underwear today.
- I read the thing about pictures on Dustin's blog and watched the video and did not understand a single part of it! I feel kind of stupid.
- I told Mark something he did today was stupid and Mitchell heard me and repeated it!
- I got up early (before my kids dragged me out of bed) this morning and cleaned my closet (put away clean laundry, sorted out the dirty laundry, re-stacked some things, and sorted out donatable clothes) before they woke up.
- The cleaning led to laundry, which is in the dryer, that I was intending to watch closely and remove while it was still hot because it is all dress clothes and I did not want to iron it! I guess I will be ironing because it finished drying about 2 hours ago! Oops! I guess I will go now and get to that laundry!


Well, that is all the rambling I will do today! I feel so much lighter having unburdened myself to all of you out there in blog land! Thanks for listening Seattle.


-Update - Mark is currently in time-out for the third time now today! He and Mitchell were going to do stamps. I thought what a great idea you can continue playing well together without me! My first clue to remove myself from the computer was, "Mommy we can't find the ink pad". They got markers instead to color the stamps and then stamp them. A fine idea. The real sentence that made me get up from the computer, "Mommy, It is an emergency! (It is always an emergency.) Mark colored on himself and the couch!" Yes he did, and it won't come out! Ugh! All this while I was typing the bit about the laundry and signing off! Amazing how fast things change! I think he may have even just wet his pants in time-out! Cool!

room makeover

We have been waiting for two years to tackle the huge job of painting the kitchen, dining room, and den! The day the boys left for TX, I went straight to the store and bought paint. Neil came home to see all the furniture pulled out and draped and some practice spots painted on the wall! His responce, "I guess we are painting tonight?" Yup, and for the next four days! We finally finished on Sunday evening.

Train Ride

Last weekend the boys went to Texas to visit Neil's parents. They rode a train for the first time. Mom-mom had been staying with us the week before, and they all took the train back with her to spend the weekend and a few days. They had a blast riding the train. Mark said they had "pickles" for breakfast while on the train. Mitchell translated that for us to be bagles! Since there were three of them and the seats were in twos, the boys got to sit by themselves for a while. It think that was Mitchell's favorite part! While they were gone Neil and I got busy with a little painting project. I will post pics of that later.