I am my own stalker

You may have noticed the traffic feed on the side of the blog at some point. It is just a fun snapshot of who is visiting your blog, and where they live. Or, it's a way to dog your good friends who never read it since you can see they are never on. In fact, I was recently doing this very thing to a few friends, and I mentioned that I even  have someone in Missouri, and a couple in Illinois, who I don't even KNOW, who are regular readers of the blog.

Well, fine readers, turns out those loyal readers, who I don't even know, and who always seem to know when I have just posted and log immediately on to devour my words of wisdom and inspiration, are.... ready for this.... yours truly.

I am my own stalker.

Apparently, when I am on my own blog, I register in as Macks Creek, Missouri, Sparland, Illinois, Carbondale, Illinois, and occasionally, Kokomo, Indiana. Aside from Kokomo, all of these are towns I have never even heard of and certainly none even in the right state for where I am actually logging in from.

So there you have it. Take the traffic meter with a grain of salt.

R.I.P. 1985 pj's

Rachel 1985-13th birthday

Age progession to 37 years old

Ok, so here's the deal.

I am a very practical person, and I have a hard time throwing things out that technically still 'work' fine. Like these pajamas. Somehow against all odds, these 1985 pj's from Sycamore still fit me. However, them there pj's ain't in the best shape anymore. I've got things goin' on like this:

Enormous armpit hole. Yup. They're koala bears.

and this:

Cool! See through pajamas! Can you see my hand?

I must resign myself to the fact they although they still 'work', they really don't work anymore.

So, fine pj's, as you move on to greener pastures of dustcloth or car rag, just remember, you were loved.

This is why....

... we moved to the country.

The sweaty woman with the plastic pool

This was me today.

First of all, I despise Wal Mart, but as I mentioned, we were spending some birthday money, and Jack had heard one of the DS games he wanted was at Wal Mart. Plus, I saw they had plastic pools, and wanted one. It was 95 degrees out after all. So, we find the most ginormous plastic pool they carry, and I carry it ALL THE WAY ACROSS the Super Wal Mart to the checkout, kids in tow. Did I mention it was 95 degrees? Did I mention I had to CARRY IT all the way across a SUPER WAL MART? Did anyone offer to help me? No. Did I get stared at a whole lot? And does Rachel like to have people staring at her? When she is carrying a large plastic swimming pool and herding kids? Is this not a recipe for a complete sweatfest?? Indeed.


So, being born with spatial and depth perception lack-itis, I load the kids up and drive up to the entrance to load the ginormous pool into the back of the van. Was there any chance this pool would fit? Absolutely not. Were more people staring at me wondering how I thought I would fit the pool that was about 4 foot too wide, into my van? Surely. Drive to parking spot, and unload kids again. Post candy bar just consumed in car. 95 degrees. You get it. Walk back into store. Adjust pool from one hand to the other in lobby of Wal Mart, hit woman just walking in with pool. I only know this because I heard a thump. I can't see anything. Yell "Oh, I'm sorry!" from behind pool. Woman hisses and rushes off. She probably was shaking her head too, I don't know. I couldn't see anything. Wal Mart greeter is yelling "Are you sure you can get that alone?" I ignore her and keep walking. Return ginormous pool that I just bought, buy medium size pool. Reload kids. This time drive around to garden center area to load pool directly into van. Load pool. Have employee staring down the sweaty deranged looking woman who just pulled up and loaded a pool into her van that she surely mustn’t have paid for. The nerve. Saw face of said woman and decided not to ask any questions.

Home again, home again, jiggedy jig.

Am I smarter than a first grader?

We were talking about how to spell a friend’s name, Isaiah, and how it was difficult to spell because it had so many vowels.


1.
"Jack, do you know what vowels are?"

"No."

"They are a,e, i, o and u."

I know that.

"Oh, ok. Well did you know that EVERY word has to have a vowel? Isn’t that interesting? Can you think of ANY word that doesn’t have a vowel?"

"Ah, yeah, 'why'. Like, Why are you doing that?"

"Uh,ahem, WOW Jack, you are right! The word why doesn’t have any of those letters in it! You are so smart!"

2.
"Jack, did you know tomorrow I have to buy new tires for the van? Do you know how much they are going to cost? $500!"

"Do you really want to spend that much money on those?"

"Well, no I don’t, but you know, you have to, for safety, because the old tires wear out."

"Oh, that sucks."

"Ah, ahem, Jack, you know, that really is sort of an ugly word. "

"Oh yeah, I meant to say, that’s a bummer!"

"Yeah, ahem, well, I know Mommy says that sometimes and I need to not do that because it really just isn’t a great word."

Funny how words we might throw around freely sound so much uglier coming out of a kids mouth. Or do they sound just as ugly in our mouths but we are just used to it?

3.
Discussion regarding giving away money, toys, candy, etc. to our friends. For some reason, this has become an appealing idea, to just give our money to our friends, soooooo we’ve had to have a big discussion about what friendship means, we don’t buy our friends, we don’t want them just to like us for our stuff, etc. For example, he recently said, "I'm thinking about giving Brooks $20, but I'm not sure yet." Ah, no, you are not doing that!
Apparently we are not the only ones going through this. Jack came home on Friday, throwing around "this was the best day EVER!" with $2 in his backpack that a friend had given him. Hmm. So, I tried to explain that he had to give it back, we don’t give each other money, etc. I decided to email the mom and just give her a heads up in case she didn’t know her son was doing this. (I would want to know, wouldn't you?!). Luckily, she was grateful and not annoyed. So then we are going to Wal Mart, with money given to Jack by grandparents, for his birthday. So he says, "So, Grandma, and Grandma and Pappy, and Grandpa and Donna, just GAVE me this money, right? So why can they do this, but I can’t? "

"Hmmm. Well, that’s complicated."

Luke: "What does complicated mean?"

"Well, it means it’s hard to explain."

Whew, well, look boys, we're at Wal Mart!

I’m off the hook to try to think up an explanation for that one. It's too hot and my brainpower has already melted for the day.

Garden and graduation

Luke had his graduation ceremony from preschool last night.

 

I'm sorry but there's something so damn cute about 4 year olds in a cap and gown.

Luke and his future wife friend Abry

******************************

In other news, I got my garden all planted this past weekend. I spent a backbreaking 6 hours finishing it up. I am sure my hobbly mc'hobblington foot did not speed things up. So, I now have expectations for.....drumroll please............

• Asparagus (look look!!! what I found popping out of the ground~ I had no idea it would look just like a stalk of asparagus sticking up! Only 2 of the 11 have sprung, but still!!!!!!!!!)   

• Potatoes....I am super excited to say I have 12 PLANTS through the ground. Even if nothing else succeeds, this was the one thing I look the most forward to harvesting. I have such great memories digging for potatoes in my grandparents' garden-it's like a treasure hunt.

• Onions
• Carrots
• Lettuce
• Green Beans
• Cucumbers
• Bell Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Corn
• Canteloupe
• Pumpkins
• Gourds
• Sunflowers
• Assorted herbs, including oregano, basil, dill, and mint

The herbs are guarantees since they are already plants....

So now, I sit back and continue to wait for good things to happen. And, I lied, if nothing but the potatoes succeed, I will be kind of pissed off.

Wish me luck.

The perils of a night out

We used another younger boy babysitter Saturday, for the first time. Like the other one we tried, he is a younger sibling who was offered up when the older sister wasn't available. We gave explicit instructions on bedtime, and that they could finish playing outside, and then come in and start getting ready for bed around 7:45 to be in bed by 8:00. We also asked for him to have Jack clean up his room before bed. Those were the instructions. Here's what really happened: they came in after we left, the babysitter started up The Incredible Hulk, rated PG-13, which we had on DVR, and they watched all of it and went to bed at 9:30, with Jack's room still a mess.

I was so mad!!

First of all, there was blatant disregard of the bedtime. Secondly, and most importantly, we don't have the kids watch PG-13 movies. We have never seen this ourselves, but I can assume it includes things I would not want a 4 and just turned 7 year old watching. UGH! I was mad about it all day on Sunday. It's like he didn't hear a single thing we said, or didn't care, because he wanted to watch a movie. Now, how do I deal with that? Never ask him again? Tell his mom about it when/if she asks me how it went? (She knew my hesitations about using 7th grade boys) What do I do when I call for the sister and she can't, but they offer him instead? I need to deal with it but do not love conflict. Wimpout answer would be not call for either sister or brother again so I don't have to deal with it, but then I lose a good babysitter. Dammit!