Arg Matey

The Boy and Ms Thang wish you Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!!

More odds and ends

I like the list posts. I have 1000 things bouncing around in my head to blog about but none of them ever get fleshed out into real posts. So you all get pictures and lists :)

Ms Thang's face is better. Thanks all for the concern. It is scabbed over but not looking so raw and painful. She did ask to wear her sunglasses to the park so no one would see it.

We had a playdate at the park. I left feeling kind of icky. It made me sad.

At the park, we ran into J and his mom. I chatted with her for a bit while the boys played. They did a great job not being brats!

After the park we went to Mejier to buy The Boy a new pair of sandles because his broke. I wasn't going to do it since it is the end of summer and he could just make do with his flip flops and crocs, but since we are going on vacation next week, I decided to go ahead. Neither of his other shoes are good for walking or for moving rides. He needed something that would stay on his feet.

I like the new Kid Rock Song "All Summer Long"


I also think it is a little bit awesome that he Boycotts iTunes. Not that anything is wrong with iTunes but he has a valid point about record companies.

My fruit leather has partially failed. The strawberry, 24 hours later, was still almost totally liquid and there were little fuzzy blossoms on it tonight :( the cherry and blueberry look like they are almost done and nothing fuzzy on them. Not something I will likely try again.

I feel a little bit bad that I bailed on my conversation with Rogers last night, telling her I was going to bed because I was tired. I always read while I floss before bed and I got sucked in, hard core last night. Instead of going to bed because I was exhausted, I stayed up reading until after 1, so that I could finish the book. Sorry Rogers :(

My house is really dirty. We have no plans tomorrow so we are going to stay home and clean it up.

Ms Thang doesn't want to go to preschool. She says "they will oppress me at that school, if you make me go, I will be oppressed" I'm fairly certain she means "depress", however it is really funny to think about "the man" keeping her down while at school LOL. Anything school related stresses her out right now.

We have taken The Boy to get hit with a Jesus stick (for you Lost fans out there, that is a reference to Charlie's conversation with Mr. Echo about his "Jesus stick" having blood on it in season 2). We go to the First Christian Church on a fairly regular basis to play at their FANTASTIC indoor playground. For months, they have had signs up, promoting vacation bible school. They all show science-y stuff and TB was enthralled. He begged to be allowed to go so I signed them both up for it. It started Sunday, which is a dumb day to start VBS, but whatever. We missed day one because of the afformentioned dumb day but I went ahead to take them last night. After her day (no nap, busted face, etc), when she begged me not to make her go, I decided not to push it. Turned out to be a good thing since when I stopped in her room to tell her teachers that she wouldn't be coming after all, I saw a little boy that we know in there that she has a "personality conflict" with (which is a nice way of saying he is a bully and she doesn't let him get away with any crap and he whines and cries about it). TB loves VBS and asks every day if he will be allowed to go back the next day. He is gonna be upset when he finds out it is only a week long.

We got caught in the crazy ass downpour that hit town while we were picking TB up from VBS. It was raining so hard I could barely see. It looked like they were evacuating the classes when we got there. I ran back out to get the van to pull up under the over hang to get everyone loaded. The water, although it didn't look that deep, was to the middle of my calf. Too bad I wore my leather sandles out there :(

Personally, I'm opposed to being hit with a Jesus stick but I found that out for myself and my kids deserve the same chance. He can decide if he wants to do something more with it as he gets older. I will absolutely take hm to church, should he choose that route.

Speaking of school, Tb has such different interests from me, it just boggles my mind. I'm all about books and reading and English (which could explain why a large portion of my friends are English majors) and he is so into science and little math. He is forever asking what numbers added together are and has started talking about subtraction. Heaven help me when he gets much older. I could barely pass basic algebra and had to take remeidial math in college (which I never did pass, preschool teachers really only have to be able to count to 10 so it isn't that big of a deal LOL). There is no way I'll be able to help him at all once he is past the ad subtract multiply and divide stage.


The Boy has decided to start doing chores again. For the last half of the school year, he had chores that he got paid a dollar a day to do. We had a good routine but once school got out, it all went to hell! He didn't do any the entire month of June and now most of July. Then suddenly, out of the blue, he promised Ms Thang he would buy her a Barbie doll. When pressed on the subject, he said that he wanted to buy her one because she deserved it for being good. News to me, but ok. I told him he needed to get back on doing his chores so he could earn some money to fulfill his promise. He started by putting away all his laundry yesterday. Today was crazy busy (park, Meijer, McDonalds, rest, pool, VBS, dinner, bed) so he didn't have time to vacuum, but I'm going to make him earn it tomorrow! :)

Halloween: Parties, trick or treating and pumpkins

Yesterday was C's "fall party". They couldn't call it a Halloween party because the one person who doesn't celebrate it might be offended, gag (this is no offense intended to anyone who doesn't celebrate, I don't think that it is fair for a very small minority to take a fun celebration away from the majority). I'm the room parent liason (RPL) so I get to plan all the parties for the class. To do this, I sent home letters asking parents to donate food and supplies, volunteer in the classroom and plan an activity for the class to do. The notes trickled in slowly but eventually I got enough stuff that we could have a party. I never did get a parent to plan activities and none of them could volunteer in the classroom. J's mom is a superstar and basically told me "put me where you need me and I'll be there for the party" We got together and planned some activities that the kids would enjoy. Late last week, I dropped C off at school and was presented with a Walmart sack with a mixed bag of candy and some goodie bags. The parent that signed up for them didn't make them, so I had to assemble them all. When it was all said and done, each kid ended up with about 6 pieces of gross stuff together candy. My mom had some fruit snacks that my kids don't like so I threw those in, which helped fill up the bags some. Yesterday morning when I dropped C off, someone had brought in pencils so I tossed those in the bags as well. The same mom who lamed out on the goodie bags also signed up for our one allowed "sweet treat" (cookies, cupcakes, whatever). Unfortunately, she lamed out on that do and didn't bother to bring them. At the last minute, another mom decided to bring a fruit tray so our party snack ended up being apple slices, grapes, and apple sauce. A mom brought some microwave popcorn, but we had no way to pop it, so it got left. Fortunately, the juice, napkins, and cups came through so at least we had those. We played "bozo buckets" with ToT pumpkins and had the kids draw a farm mural with markers and make stamp animals with the stamp pads. They had a really good time and the mural came out great. :) I intend to be more clear in my future letters to parents about what is expected for party participation. I'll also be sending out reminders ahead of time so hopefully, we'll have all of our stuff.

We went ToTing last night around a friend's neighborhood. Generally, we go up one side, down the other and then head home. The weather was SO nice that we decided to extend the route and go around the block. Both kids got way more than too much candy. Lizzie had so much by the end of the night that she couldn't carry her bag anymore because it was so heavy :) They were both super cute. Lizzie figured out by the second house that if she said "trick or treat" people would give her "shocklot" It took her a couple more houses to figure out "thank you" and one or two more to figure out "Happy halloween" After they gave her the candy, she would look in her bag, get all wide eyed and turn around and yell at my mom, who waited on the sidewalk while I walked up to the houses with them, "I got CANDY!"

They have already decided that what they want to be for next year (him a ninja and her a pirate) so I went to Target today to look for 50% off halloween stuff. I said I wasn't going to buy her a girl pirate costume (or more specifically a "wench" costume because they are trashy) and I wouldn't buy her a Pirates of the Caribbean costume because they are so over done and I saw probably 20 Jack Sparrow's out there. Orginal is better (homemade is best, but I'm lame and don't think my kids should be punished for my lack of creativity). I found him a ninja costume with in like 5 minutes. There were a ton. I also found them both several halloween shirts (her's have a skull and cross bones wearing a crown, one says little devil, and one says princess with a crown. his has a camo skull and cross bones and one says something about "trick or treat, I also accept cash" LOL) and got her some candy corn leggings. I couldn't find any pirate costumes with all the other costumes so we headed over to look at the Xmas stuff. Over there we found several more costumes including the pirates. I looked at the general pirate costumes but then I saw the ultimate pirate costume. I found an "Elizabeth's costume" from POTC. It had long pants and a long sleeve shirt instead of the short sleeves and half pants of the other. It was also a thicker fabric (the general one was a thin polyester). I know, "No POTC because they are over done" but really, for Lizzie the Pirate, could I pass up Elizabeth's costume? No I really could not. I also found an LED pirate ship that was $15. (would you have ever guessed that we have a thing for pirates around here). I heart Target! :)

We did fun pumpkins this year as well. We bought a super hero carving books and a princess carving book. C wanted Wolverine on his pumpkin so I did the best I could on it. When I was punching the pattern, the pumpkin was oozing and it ended up ruining the paper so I couldn't see the pattern anymore. I did the best I could, but a lot of the details were lost in the middle because I couldn't see the paper and there were too many dots. We did Cinderella's castle for Lizzie. It was better because it was less small details. Unfortunately, the turret part broke off when I was trying to take the piece out. You could see the big one, but the little ones all broke :( You couldn't tell once it was done though so it was ok.

I'm pretty disappointed in the pumpkins we got though. We got them 2 weeks ago and didn't carve them until last weekend. I went to put the light in the princess one last night and there was standing liquid in the bottom. It had rotted so much that that is had liqufied in 3 days time!! All the other ones had mold spots and were all sunken in :( I have never had pumpkins go so bad so fast and it was gross (although, when we dumped the goo out the the princess pumpkin, it looked like it was puking and that was funny)