The church glare

It's funny how different people react to different things.

My kids are wiggly in church. They are very busy people under normal circumstances, always doing something to play or move or manipulate objects. Church is hard for them and getting them to sit still is a constant work in progress. Of course they'll get there. But I feel their pain. After being in nursery or dealing with young children for so long my own attention span has waned over the years until a normal meeting where I don't have kids to shush feels painfully long. Man isn't much help since he deals with his boredom by playing with them. They do different high five games (up in space -- in your face; cut the pickle -- tickle tickle tickle!), he pokes them, or whatever it takes to keep them both happy. I often feel as if I have an extra kid to shush. He used to just snooze through the meeting and I'd elbow him and he'd say he was just closing his eyes to listen or some crap like that.

This past Sunday was Stake Conference. It's a 2 hour sermon, instead of a 1 hour sacrament meeting broken up by songs with 2 addition classes afterward. Those two hours are very long to little people. We sat in the second row back, right in sight of the Mission President's Wife (which I think is an official title in some circles). It seemed that she was of the philosophy that young children should sit still as mold during Important Gospel Instruction even though most of it is over the heads of the 3 year olds we were sitting among. She glared at us every time Frieda squawked, glared at us when Tag laughed at Man, glared at us when Princess forgot to use a total whisper voice. Is seems that she was so distracted by us that she rarely got any Important Gospel Instruction of her own unless she was giving her own talk about compassion and heeding the directions of the Spirit. It may not have helped that I didn't look very miserable with my brood teeming about me, my eyes fixed either on the speaker or on the Dot Game Tag made up for my edification and delight (with occasional glances to see if her penciled eyebrows would disappear entirely in her scowl).

The elderly lady sitting behind us just smiled and told me I had beautiful kids.

I smiled back, because I know they're beautiful, and just as imperfect as I am. Who wants perfect kids? Booooo-ooooring.

Last night we watched an episode of House. A guy in an airplane (SPOILER!!!) was diagnosed with the bends when someone pushed on his joints, which eased the pain he was in. Afterward the kids and I talked about how deep in the water someone might dive, and how heavy water is when you go deep.

Me: He might go down so deep that 15 houses stacked on top of each other would barely poke out of the water.

Princess: on their sides, or just top to bottom?

Me: Top to bottom.

Tag: Well, what if he used toy houses? Then he wouldn't hurt so much.

Me: [pause] Um, they don't actually use houses to measure how deep they go.

Tag: I know, but toy houses is shorter. He should only go down toy houses.

Princess: If you soaked the houses in water, would they fall apart?

Me: [sigh] Parts of them would, maybe.

Today was day two of circuit training. Man, stetching afterward might have made this past weekend far less painful. Back we go again tomorrow for cardio. Today I was able to run for a bit without hurting too badly. Slow progress is my friend.

Pictures

Tag: Will Oma be surprised at how big I'm getting?
Me: Always. Just like me.


Tag wanted to be in the pic by himself. Pebbles wanted to join in. This is Tag, fed up with his sister.


These two look so related to me.


Man, what a hunk!


This is a fairly typical look on his face. He pulls off "lost orphan" pretty well except in real life he's so full of happy energy.


And there's my goofy girl.

What to write about

Pebbles says Hi! while trying to hide some fluff in her hand. The fluff is from our bagless vacuum. She was twisting it into yarn, like mommy.

Wow, things havn't gotten less busy since the kids went to school. I'm now going to the gym at least 4 days out of the week (the goal is 5, but you know life), and generally being more involved with local activities, like dinners and church activities.

Today was my first day of working with Jo, my friend who is, in every way, an athlete. This woman plays soccer, runs 10k races, and has tons of experience with trainers and B12 shots and all kinds of hard core stuff that I've only ever heard about. She set up several stations around our gym and for 30 mins we puffed, grunted, and heaved air through clenched teeth while listening to Coldplay and The History Channel. After that I did 30 mins of lighter cardio while the other ladies continued their various methods of sucking oxygen into their straining bodies. But Jo was cool as a cuke. She not only did planks, she did funky one-armed planks. She not only did lunges, she did lunges with weights and turns and maybe even a few disco moves while I wasn't looking.

Pebbles tries to keep a straight face. She's actually pretty good at it
when she's trying very hard.

This Sunday our little family has been invited to join a larger choir made of families to perform for Stake Conference. We'd be privileged to sit in the front row and stand and sing at the beginning and end. I had issues with this arrangement at first, knowing what I know about my wiggly kids and a standard one hour meeting. Two hours is going to be brutal. What sort of big guns should I bring out for this event? They didn't really want to practice the songs (I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus and It Shouldn't Be Hard to Sit Very Still <-- I'm still giggling over the irony of that one) until I told them that to celebrate all of our hard work at practicing and a job well done in church, we're going to have a water balloon party for family home evening. That perked their interest with haste. I didn't call it a bribe to their faces, but isn't that what it comes down to? Let's call it a reward. :)

Pebbles -- losing the stoney face a bit. With prompting. ;)

Remember my sexy shelves? Now there is one that is indeed MY sexy shelf.

It doesn't look as sexy in this pic as it does it real life. Flash isn't flattering on anyone. Also, notice how I didn't really read the directions that told me to put the bar with the Shelf Reliance logo in the top-front position. Oh well! My shelf, my mistake, but no problem at all.

I havn't filled it yet but soon, yes soon. There was a case lot sale on post recently wherein I secured two cases of mushroom pieces for 34 cents a can, which is just a little over half the normal price. A few other great deals landed us a substantial increase in our planned food storage. I'm not sure that we're at a place in life where we can really pull together a year's worth of food (huge potential for moving still -- I've told Man that he needs to get promoted at least twice before the next time we move so our weight limit increases, or the first things to go will start with G and end with AMES) but I think a 3 month supply is exceedingly doable.

A few things on the top shelf. Man was digging the corned beef hash at the case lot sale. So he got that, and I got a case of PopTarts.

And example of how versatile they are. Canned chicken on one end, lemonade on the other. #10 cans are on the bottom.

Pebbles was really into the photo shoot.

Princess at school

I'm loving some of the writing assignments Princess brings how nowadays. Here are a couple of samples:

The Wise Monkey (A Story Review)

I like the part when the monkey eats all the cheese because it is funny and mean. Me and my sisters love cheese. I think the monkey is weird and not wise. Instead I think the monkey is a weirdo.


Here is an adlib sort of story she wrote:

One dark morning I woke up and found that I had been turned into a baby. I was very tiny. I had tattoos all over my body. They were itchy and gold. At home, my fish gave me a spanking and told me to eat my cereal. But I wanted a flower instead. At school, my principal was laughing and I had to sit in a locker. Finally, they called a magician and I was soon back to being myself. Everyone said "what!!" and I agreed with them!

(she says to tell you all that the "what" part was a mess up. It should have been "what a day!")

We had some really great laughs over this, and now I simply MUST get some real adlibs for this child.

pics

She's getting so big. :(

Wheat Grinder Giveaway

I've never participated in a web giveaway before, but this one looked interesting.

Remember those shelves I told you about? The website you can buy them from has a blog and a weekly giveaway, located here. Go check it out!

I figure most of the stuff you can sign up for online ends up being so much attention-grabbing garbage to begin with, but from a place that made this sexy thing:


I shall trust that the giveaway will be good. :) (Doesn't her left hand say it all? she can't keep her hands off this pillar of perfection.) (disclaimer, I did not take this photo and couldn't figure out who did.)

New snack

I have a new snack I love: green olives stuffed with feta.

YUM!

Sleep walking??

I think Princess sleep walks. I remember in CA she came out of her room at night a couple of times, wouldn't respond to questions, and talked nonsense.

She just came out of her room, came and sat in the seat next to be at the computer, and gibbered about getting a picture. Then she got a drink of water and headed to bed. I said "goodnight" at her, and she didn't even flinch in response. She never remembers these things the next day.

Is that sleep walking??

How are things going?

Today was the first day of school!! A bullet list is all I'm about to manage here, friends.

- Wake up early, rouse the younglings. Had to steal Tag's blanket to get him up.

- They managed to do all of their morning chores with almost an hour to spare! I told them that as long as they had at least a little time left over after dressing, putting dishes away, and eating breakfast, they could sleep in later than this morning.

-Walk them to school. Tons of parents waited with their kids. I waited until they were both safely engaged in conversation with friends and then...

- Had a chat with the nurse. Yep, gotta keep track of the meds.

- Went home to print out a map of the mall. I went on Sat and bought some clothes at Lane Bryant (shirts!! I have shirts!!) but they neglected to take the ink bomb off of my new pants. So, back we went to remove said ink bomb.

- Then we watched a friend's child until we had to go drop off Tag's meds and med permissions, and get him out of school to go to an ophthalmology appt. (yes, I spelled ophthalmology from memory, I'm sooo proud of myself) It took an hour to drive there and I was having mild panic attacks by the time we found a parking space on level P4.

- Thank goodness we got there in time to wait an hour for his appt.

- Then the sewer backed up in that building, so we got to enjoy that for a while as well.

-Nice dr though, even if he forgot to put Tag's PD on the rx (not the first time I've had to measure at home).

-Dr dangled the words "eye surgery" but didn't discuss too much, since it's a "we'll have to see" thing. I told him about my dear friend who found out about her child's brain tumor following an eye's nose-ward meander. He assured me that Tag had no sign of that whatsoever.

- We take off to the parking garage and I simultaneously return a call to the school nurse, and then we headed home.

- After beginning to drive, I notice that I'm not going to get home in time to let Princess in the house, or even tell her to walk home without Tag. ooooooo, bad feeling.

- We got on the beltway (which happens almost immediately after leaving the hospital) so I handed the phone to Tag.

M: When you hear someone say hello, ask for Sgt S.

T: Oh, ok. Can I talk to Brother S? Hi, this is Tag. Mom, whaddaya want?

M: Tell him to call Sister J and ask if she can see if Princess is at our house, because we won't be there when she gets home.

T: can you call Sister J and get Princess because we won't be back before school's over. [pause] He says ok.

M: Sweet! Don't have to worry about that anymore.

- We get home and drive straight to Sister J's house. But the little boy who answered the door says that Princess never showed up.

-Speed drive the van the halfablock home, burst inside with heart pounding to find Princess reading a book in a recliner. Man got home early and let her in.

-Man said that Sgt S called him up and said:

SS: Your son called me at work and asked me to call Sis J, but I can't tell what for. Do you have any idea what's going on?

Man: [with his incredible powers of deduction] I think I need to go home early, because my wife won't be home in time to let my daughter in the house. [well, it's either deduction, or he wanted to go home early]

-I'm so grateful for slow cookers. I have stroganoff scenting the house, just waiting for a pot of noodles to snuggle up to.


Oh, and I applied for college. I don't think I did it in time to get in thise semester, but things are at least set in motion for Spring.

ACK!!!

I've felt a little nauseous all day long from all of this but HEY! It didn't kill me and I'm still smiling. And I love stroganoff.

Overheard

Tag loves being a brother. Pebbles was in the bath and Princess was playing with/supervising her. The door was locked so Tag decided to torment them.

Tag: [knock, knock, knock]

Princess: who is it? [knowing precisely who it is]

Tag: It's Freida... I mean, googoo, gaagaa. [uncontrollable giggling]

Princess: No it isn't!

Tag: Meh, moo mee, mlet mlee mliiiiiiin, googoo. [more giggling]

Anyway, it didn't work. He cackled gleefully as he escaped the playful wrath of his older sister, whose humor is in taking things literally.