An Adventure Without Pics

Last weekend we did go on an adventure, but I forgot the camera. The way our adventures pop up these days I should just store the camera in my purse. We drove up to Poulsbo WA--- a lovely little historic town with obvious Norwegian roots. The town architechture and decor is modeled after a Norwegian village and the waterfront area is so picturesque. We ate a good lunch at a place with terribly slow service and then walked the shops in town including a yummy bakery which had "elephant ears". They are a thin crisp sugary cinnamon pastry which melts in your mouth. I remember getting them as a child and seeing them there in the bakery (and eating two the next morning for breakfast) took me back to my childhood. E was not a fan, G and M loved them, and D devoured one by himself (usually not a big fan of the sweets). Pic of G eating his "elephant ear" on sunday morn(not a good pic, but a pic nonetheless).

Sunday D and I went out on an afternoon date and the twin 14 yr-old boys next door came over to babysit our 3 little boys. We had fun and it was good to get away on our own for a little while and the best part was we came back to our home(still in one piece) and 3 very happy little boys. Nice!

Sunday evening D and I attacked putting the china (which has been in boxes for almost a year) into the newly refinished hutch. I have my grandmother's set of china which is a never ending set. After unloading two of three boxes D looked at what was laid out and asked

"How many plates are there??!!??!!"

Well, it is a pastels set with four colors, four place settings ( approx.) per color and plates are a large component with dinner, lunch,dessert, and bread as the varieties. That does not count saucers for seemingly endless coffee/tea cups. He had never seen the whole set laid out together and he was a bit taken aback. M had the time of his life burrowing into the paper and crawling into his box cave. Pic of M playing and china in the hutch.

I put baby latches inside the doors to keep children out as well as hoping to keep china inside in case of an earthquake. Yes, I am super nervous about earthquakes--- once we have one maybe I will get used to them.

I promise to bring my camera for our next adventure.

love and hugs and be prepared-- you never know when an adventure will happen,

B

Two in One Day

Two posts in one day--- it's amazing!!! No, actually it is the kindness of a neighbor who invited the older two over to play.

Just wanted to show the hutch that we just had refinished. I started stripping it in the garage in May, but then the kids got out of school for the summer and I found it had seven layers of paint instead of the four we thought were on it. And the bottom was a stain that had been on from the beginning of time. No, really.... Noah applied it right after that flood thing happened.

This shows the top(glass doors) and bottom of the hutch after one round of stripper. The white at the top of the glass doors is the color the whole thing was painted.

These pics are after about five rounds of stripping the whole thing. The darkest color you see is the original stain. What you can't see is that beyond stripping the thing there was a lot of fix up work to be done. So I gave up and called in the professionals. They took it in July and I visited at the end of September after they stripped it as far as it would go.

They sanded the rest off and painted it for me. It turned out beautifully. Everyone should be surprised I did not go with a super neutral color. It is close to one of the colors of paint that was on it somewhere during its history. Now, I wish it could talk and tell me exactly where it came from and where it has been. I will probably print a copy of this blog to attach to it somewhere so when the boys are preparing to junk it after my demise they might be convinced to save it.

love and hugs and think before you slap another coat of paint on that furniture; someday some will be trying to remove that paint,

B

NaBloPoMo

WOW! If you don't know what that means it means you have a real life outside your computer. Apparently it is National Blog Posting Month. I (as a blogging person) am supposed to blog every day for this month. That is not working for me. I guess they didn't figure in the volunteering in classrooms, taking care of a house, taking care of kids, cooking, shopping for food to cook, having friends, knitting, neighborhood and church things....... Oh well. Sorry if you are disappointed not to see postings every day. If you follow any other blogs you may have experienced day 20 of NaBloPoMo as rather bleek when people are posting simply to say they have nothing to post.

I do have news: I can take my continued education classes through the University of Phoenix online so I can have six weeks of hard work rather than total upheaval of the house for a couple of semesters.
Also, D and I have a babysitter scheduled for Sunday afternoon so we can go out for a bit without the kids. This probably means that the flu will hit our house full force on Saturday and all will be cancelled. It is almost the 15th anniversary of our first date.

love and hugs and sorry so short
B

Up on the Soapbox

This small rant could also be titled :Entitlement.... this is where it starts or Eyes on the Prize ... how long do you want your kids to live with you?

I overheard a mom at the Y talking to another mom about chores, her four-year-old boy was sitting next to her? She was chatting away about cleaning her house and sarcastically said "Maybe he could dust for me". Now, I ask you--- why not? She really acted like she was never going to tell him to help or that he wouldn't be able. If the kid can take a swimming lesson, the kid can dust a room. More and more when I talk about the boys doing chores parents will ask what they do. Is no one out there giving the children chores to do? Am I a slave driver of a parent? How many parents do not include children in helping around the house? I think this is training them in for living their own lives when they grow up. Maybe that is why so many twenty-somethings end up back at home: they can't take care of themselves or simply don't want to and know that Mommy and Daddy will just do it for them. What message does that send? you're so stupid you can't even dust, I'll just do it for you. Maybe the kids have it right. Who wouldn't want to live where clean laundry simply appears in the drawers and home cooked meals materialize on the table every night as if by magic? I do realize they are children, but keep your eyes on the prize. What is the end goal for them? D and I agree that we want our kids to grow up and be independent. We want them to establish their own households and understand the work that goes into living on your own, owning a house, and having kids. They need to realize that there is not an immediate reward for every task (lollipop, sticker, gameboy) and that sometimes the reward is simply having a clean shirt to wear or a kitchen where your feet don't stick to the floor. I hope the method to our madness works and that over many years of teaching they will understand. I believe it has got to be easier than a big crash course when the "child" is thirty-four and you are sick of doing their laundry. Maybe I should see the parents who are "doing it all" as SuperParents; perhaps they see me as lazy and pushing off work on the kids.
E has to do chores and homework before he plays after school. Not unreasonable seeing that he is home and awake for 2 and a half hours before he even leaves for school and homework assignments for the week are given on Mondays and due Friday. Chores for him include anything from vacuuming the van or parts of the house to dusting baseboards to wiping cabinets in bathrooms or kitchen or cleaning windows. He has 7-10 chores per week that are assigned and then 2 optional chores that he can get paid for.
G has a chart of 10 things he has to complete during the week: sweeping under the table after dinner, changing laundry from washer to dryer(thank goodness for front loaders) or unloading clean laundry into the basket, folding clean towels, cleaning the shoe/coat area of the laundry room, clearing debris out of the van, etc. When I come across something he can do, but it is not on his chart he can earn coins for it.
M helps sort silverware into the drawer and helps G or me change laundry from washer to dryer or gets dry laundry out into the basket.
Chores do not include the basics of making your own bed, putting clean laundry away when it is on your dresser or packing your own lunch/snack/backpack for school. M is obviously just learning his basics (but he can sort silverware into the drawer like a pro). My end goal is by the time they are ready to be on their own they have tried every part of helping around the house.
All the kids have plenty of time to play every day (judging from the number of arguments and trouble they get into, maybe too much time to play). So are we mean? I worry not so much that we are mean, but that we are creating kids so different from their peers that they won't fit in. From what I see of some of their peers I don't want them to fit in.
Sorry, I was thinking about this all week and finally had to rant a bit.
ALSO, I am not saying we have it all together: just watch me cut my seven year old's meat as I fix plates for dinner each night and you will notice there are glaring descrepancies in how responsible we expect them to be in some areas. That I am serving his meal at all is a bit odd.
love and hugs and get your chores done,B

Non-knitters, hang with me today and you may see the point of this long knitting story.

Let me give you a hint what I have been doing: knit,knit,knit,knit,knit. I have gone into full force knitting. It is fun, but I don't use patterns so I tend to make plenty of mistakes. This week's mistake was a scarf. Here's how the voices in my head talked me through the process....

Knit, knit.... 4 inches into the scarf: This looks a bit wide for a scarf. It will make sense when it gets more length.

Knit, knit, knit....8 inches later: This still looks really wide. I will just keeping working.

Knit, knit, knit....5 inches later: This is crazy way too wide for a scarf. But if I stop now it is wasted.

Knit, knit, knit....2 inches later: TOO WIDE. OH NO!!

Knit, knit, knit...1 inch later: STOP!! TOO WIDE!!!

Knit, knit, knit... 1 inch later: WHY ARE YOU STILL KNITTING!!?? IT IS HORRRIBLE!! STOP KNITTING!!!

Knit, knit, knit.... 1 inch later: STOP KNITTING!! This is never going to look right. You are driving yourself crazy knitting something that looks so stupid.

At this point I stopped knitting. Finally. I finished both ends and took a look at the piece I had. 12 inches wide and 24 inches long. As it turns out I had looked at hand knit bags last time in my knitting shop. If you fold that piece just right it makes a lovely little purse.

If there is a moral to the story, it could be: listen to the crazy voices in your head.

Perhaps the moral is: there are no mistakes.

Perhaps: see the glass as half full instead of half empty-- in this case look past the weird scarf to the pretty hand knit bag.

D is one week into growing a beard. No comment.

Today G and I found a "big leaf tree" near our house. The size of these leaves is really funny because they don't even look real. The stems of the leaves look like small branches. Enclosing a pick of G and M playing peek-a-boo with some big leaves.

love and hugs and Happy Fall to All,

B

More on the Birthday Boy

Well the afternoon seemed to be downhill from the balloons. (see post earlier same day). M was a little off his game and clingy all afternoon which I chalked up to all the excitement. After D came home we opened gifts and four out of five of us ate dinner.

M was not into it; not even butternut squash which is a favorite. I gave him an alternate dinner which he ate a bit of. By the time cake rolled around he had his head on the table. We pressed on and he never really got into it or threw a fit. When he didn't eat his cake I checked for a temperature--- I think he must be getting teeth (temp, no appetite,drool, runny nose); of course when I tell this to the doctor tomorrow at his check up I will hear for the three billionth time that those symptoms aren't really teething. Yes, all my children have coincidentally gotten a short virus with each tooth that has broken through-- those symptoms which mothers have reported with teething throughout time are all imaginary. I did get a few pics of M with his cake.

If you are considering making a cake which requires red (super red) icing like sweet little Elmo here you may want to consider a couple of things like the age of your audience, how well you like the clothes they are wearing, and how they eat cake (silverware VS hands). It turned out OK for us since M ended up not really eating cake. As I mixed the frosting and it took half a container of concentrated red frosting dye and additional red food coloring to get it 'red enough' I thought I was creating a big problem. My fingers are still kind of pink from the experience. Also, the nose was a coup-- walking through the store hunting for something orange that was the right size we happened upon dried apricots. Perfect! I am a bit nutty about the cakes. Sorry for being OCB (obsessive compulsive baker)

One last note: I have been finding pillows propped against the coffee table after the kids watch TV and could not figure out who was doing it(pillows tossed on the floor make me nuts). Well I got a picture of the very comfortable culprit tonight. Guess who? What am I going to do with him?

love and hugs,

B

PS My apologies for the camera tonight; everyone looks a bit blurry.

Quick Video

Just a quick video of M. We cut his hair this morning since there is no chance of sunburn here for the next eight to ten months. I will blog the birthday more later.

Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween was had by all! G had a big day Thursday with the party at preschool and fun with friends after school; Thursday evening as I am trying to put dinner together he comes in the kitchen crying and latches on to my leg "This has been the best day ever and I don't want it to end!"

Well, Friday he was in for a big treat--- he and M partied at Moms Morning Out, we had special lunch, Dad came home early from work, we went to the harbor for trick-or-treating, home for dinner and then trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. WOW! No wonder he fell asleep on the couch. Trick-or-treating in the harbor was fun. The kids liked it and the weather cooperated too well by clearing off and becoming warm. G was miserable with a shirt on under his elephant costume so midway through we stripped the shirt off and put him back together. After dinner D took the kids trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. It is very dark here at night (boy, does that sound obvious) It was foggy and very Halloween-ish. One thing I don't like about our nieghborhood is that it is one of the few high concentration areas of houses without a gate so we got lots of people coming through. Bad: when you are giving candy to teenagers without costumes carrying their own babies around (teen pregnancy here is alarming) and cars are parked on your grass. Good: I got rid of the majority of the kids take from earlier in the day. No, I am not a grinch; my monsters could never eat 40 pounds of candy even if I gave them the chance. Their treat jar is still filled with the stuff.

love and hugs and don't eat too much candy,B