It Rubs The Lotion On Its Skin

My hen, Broody, is still perched upon her clutch of eggs.  I am unclear how many days we are into this now but I am surprised she has stuck it out.  It is hot and she is a new hen.  She is one of the ones the Craigslist guy left on my doorstep last December.  I was shocked to see that every time she does venture off the eggs quickly to get a drink of water or some food, the older hens attack her.  How's that for gratitude?  She's laying on their eggs, 24/7, and they won't even let her eat.  Do you suppose they'll attack and kill the chicks, too?  I bet I'll have to take the chicks and put them in the brooder, won't I?

I got news for the old hens who only spit out one egg a week, while hogging all the food.  There is no retirement plan on Michele's farm.  When my new chicks all start laying, they will be going to the big chicken coop in the sky. 

In other news, my favorite Eskimo blogger, Finnskimo, saw my post about making strawberry jam and wants to trade.  She said if I send her strawberry jam, she'll send me tundra blueberry jam.  She doesn't know this yet, but I'm making peach jam this weekend, so I'm going to sweeten the pot by adding peaches to her package.  She said they cost $4 EACH. 

Are any of you guys friends with her on Facebook?  Being friends with Maija, is like having Jeffrey Dahmer popping up in your news feeds.  She TAGGED me in this photo a couple weeks ago.

Apparently she was eating beluga whale, seal, blubber, intestines, and who knows what else for lunch.  HURL!  She boiled all that in a pot of water, then ate it with mustard.  That girls needs her some peaches.  All I've got to say about this picture is dog pot. 

Changing subjects entirely, did anyone read about the government-funded preschool in Sweden that is not allowing children to have genders?  There are no "boys" or "girls" in this school.  Everyone is referred to as "friends".  They don't teach the children "she" or "he" either.  In Swedish, she and he is "han" and "hon", so they made up the word "hen" so the kids won't know what they are. 

It rubs the lotion on its skin.  Is the preschool called, Silence Of The Lambs Preschool?

All I've got to say about that, having had three children of both sexes, born at the exact same time, and given the exact same toys in sets of three for the first three years of their lives, is that boys come out as boys, and girls come out as girls, and there's nary a thing you can do to change that.  And why would you want to? 

Gregory had figured out a way to make weapons out of sticks and rocks by the time he turned three, while the girls would be picking flowers and gathering them in baskets.  Gregory started scaling the blinds when was 9 months old! 

In fact, Andi and I were talking about how different the boys and girls are the other day at the pool.  I spend a lot of time hanging out with Andi, who is a married lesbian with three girls, and one of the topics we talk about is how she is up to her eyeballs in girl drama and her girls are only four.  While we were talking, my boys were shooting a bunch of other boys in the pool with water guns, while my girls were holding pretend swim classes with Andi's girls.  You can't fake this stuff.  Girls and boys are different.  We aren't born as hermaphrodites.  Even if you are gay, gay men and lesbians are totally different. 

So, anway, I read that article and thought, "I wonder how that social experiment is going to work out in about 10 years for those kids, when they figure out the wee wee goes in the who haw?"

The Generation Gap

The girls had their "performance" yesterday.  By performance, I mean they had to pick a song, choose a costume, and come up with steps for their dance, and dance in front of their classmates and their parents and random strangers pulled in from the gym and meandering through the hallways of the community center.

I would like to preface this post by saying I did not choose their songs.  They knew what they wanted before we were in the car.  Not only did I end up not choosing their songs, I also ended up not helping them with any dance steps or choreography because I can't dance and they wouldn't let me help them anyway because they are total control freaks.  I have no idea where they get that from.  It must be Greg.   

So the only contribution I made to this entire thing was combing their summer rat's nests of hair, burning their songs to a CD, and driving them back to class.  This was only their fourth class.  Somehow we got in on the tail end of a session or something.  The class is for five to eight year olds.  

The first little girl who danced was either five or six.  She was a tiny little peanut.  I thought she was dancing to a song called "Gettin' Up.".  Like getting up to stand from a chair.  I had a hard time making out the lyrics.  It wasn't until we were in the car that Greg voiced his utter shock and disdain for the parental music choice.  

"Why?  What was the song?", I inquired.

Here it is.  I won't even say it on my blog because I don't want any creeps Googling that and ending up here.

So it was not, gettin' up?  Call me an old geezer along with all the other names, because why on earth would a parent LET their child choose that song, or worse yet, choose it for them?  WOW!  Am I like so 1950s Mrs.June Cleaver that I've lost touch with everyone else parenting young girls?  Maybe I'm just middle-aged and out of touch?  In what bizzarro world would that be an appropriate song for 5-8 year olds?

Thank God I'm hard of hearing these days.

Here's Sarah dancing to the 1930s Judy Garland's, Somewhere Over The Rainbow. I imagine this will be interesting to Greg's mom and possibly my friend Leslie because I watch her daughter chanting in Hawaiian, so she owes me.



Here's Amanda dancing to the 1960s song, Me Old Bamboo, from the beloved Dick Van Dyke.




We had a discussion on Facebook last night and none of my fake triplet mom friends under 30 know who Dick Van Dyke is.  They have never seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or Mary Poppins, or Bedknobs And Broomsticks.

Is there anyone even reading this blog under 85? 

Where I Turncoat So Fast, Your Heads Spin Off And All You Have Left Is A Bloody Stump

The most amazing thing happened to me yesterday.  After spending several months of my time writing to the legislature, calling my representatives, hounding my school board trustee, going to meetings, and writing blog posts in support of getting funding increased for education, the teachers in a group I was part of turned on me to the point of seeking me out to bash me, calling me a Nazi, and saying what I thought "sickened" them.

So I must have done something super horrible to garner such vitriol, RIGHT?

What I said is that if after getting the budget cuts reduced by 75 percent, saving thousands of teacher's jobs and saving important programs, if the hardline of the teachers is to not accept ANY concessions, even one as small as a 2 percent pay cut, then I could no longer support their cause.  Laying off 800 teachers was not the point of my lobbying efforts.  When we went into the legislative session, we were looking at more than a $400 million dollar deficit, 3500 job losses, and gutting our educational system.   As far as I am concerned, getting the governor to renew the sunsetting taxes and ending up with only a 150 million dollar hole was a victory.

Nobody is ever going to get everything they want.    Suck it up and accept that there has to be some "shared sacrifice".   Don't you love that buzzword to the point of vomiting until your intestines fall out?

For that opinion, I was thrown under the bus, along with the 800 teachers who might get laid off, and vilified, which makes me wonder what I was fighting for in the first place?  Was it ever really about the CHILDREN?    I have run into some nasty hags on the internet, believe you me.  I've been called every name in the book.  I can now say that the nastiest group I have ever belonged to was a group of teachers. 

The most amazing thing I learned along the way is that the biggest whiners are the teachers who don't pay their union dues.  They are by far the biggest crybabies, yet they don't even contribute to their own cause.  Did you know in the Clark County School District only 60 percent of its membership belong to the teacher's union?  I was taken aback by that number.  It doesn't take long to figure out why Big Money was able to come in here during this last legislative session and get what they want.

Meanwhile, in the private sector, we are getting slammed monthly with higher health insurance costs.  My sister got notified that her insurance was going up $167 a month.  Her insurance company gave her a 30 day notice.  I, personally, have had my health insurance raised more than $200 in a single month for doing nothing more than turning 40.  So as far as I am concerned, teachers need to realize that they are getting older, fatter, and sicker, and it's costing more to insure them, and they may need to contribute more to their benefits this year to maintain the level of care they are receiving.  That is the REALITY of our economy right now.

If that makes me a NAZI, then so be it.  The focus of my lobbying efforts was to maintain classroom sizes and prevent a reduction in force.  I am a hundred percent behind funding education, but the funding part of the deal is done.  We know what we have now and the rest has to be hammered out in negotiations and arbitration.  You should see the teachers turning on each other.  They remind me of my chickens.  I think they may have started eating each other in the teacher's coop. 

On that note, I realize not all teachers are nasty hags, so keep up the good fight.  I love all your hearts.

Some I just like boiled with some fava beans.

The Days Of Summer

Today marks the start of the third week of summer.  So far, so good.  We went to a barbecue at my friend Laura's house last night.  Laura always makes Pioneer Woman's bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapeño thingies.  They are my favorite.  Austin was wolfing them down, too, and they are pretty darn hot.  Laura used her own jalapeños from her own garden.  Yeah, Laura.

When Laura and Don and their triplet boys were over at our house for Austin's birthday, Don told Greg that they really needed a slide into their pool for the boys because it would add a time-sucking amount of entertainment to swimming.

Do you know how many unused slides are hanging around my house?  This one was Greg's brother's children's slide from their old playset.  Greg was going to use it to make a fort exit -- five years ago.  We have neither a fort, nor an exit, so Greg gave Don the slide and he fashioned a platform and those kids slid down the slide for 3 hours yesterday.  We call it the Ghetto Slide.  Hey.  If it keeps the kids entertained, we'll pretty much do anything.

I've been doing an enormous amount of canning over the past two weeks.  Greg came home with 12 pounds of strawberries.  If anyone is interested, Smart and Final has them on sale this week - 4 pounds for $3.99.  I think I'll have enough strawberry jam to make it to pomegranate season.  I've also been canning tomato sauce.  Thanks to the advice of my friend Laraine and my friend Leslie, I went out and bought one of those hand-held stick blenders and that changed my life.

So instead of trying to transfer boiling hot tomatoes into a blender or food processor, I just blend the tomatoes right in the crockpot.  Talk about a timesaver!!!  What would I do without you guys?????

The kids came home with this much school work for summer, so in addition to frolicking at The Club and canning, we've been doing school lessons.  My routine is for them to do one lesson in Ticket To Read, one lesson in IXL.com, then we work on some things in this pile.  When they came home with that stuff, it was in four different backpacks, in four giant piles of haphazard papers.  You wouldn't have believed it.  It took me 2 hours to take it all out and make piles to get it in some sort of order.  Sarah is reading a book in the Boxcar Children series, Gregory is reading a Horrible Harry, and as I stated before, Amanda is reading about Kit Kittredge.  I'm still working with Austin in the Scholastic phonic's readers.

In addition to all that, they are addicted to CoolMath.com and I have to limit their time on there or they'd be on that all day.

We also got Netflix and the kids have been watching all the National Geographic movies.  We've been watching just about every type of documentary you can think of - volcanos, American Revolution, snakes, wild cats, alligators, etc., etc.

I don't want to freak anyone out, but I also have started working out at The Club.  It took me three weeks before I would even look at the gym.  I met a twin mom at the pool.  She has 3.5 year old twins and she said she had been there a month and had yet to workout and had actually gained weight, since during her two hours of allotted daycare, she isn't chasing her kids.  We laughed hysterically when I told her I had been dropping mine off and sitting on a couch and reading the paper, before I had to go back and get them and take them to the pool.

She said, "ME, TOO!"

Okay.  So this is how I am managing my 14 hours a day of non-stop children.  Does anyone get that, really?  FOURTEEN HOURS a day they are going non-stop and I can't just throw them outside, lest they become sundried.  I imagine I'll burn out right around the middle of July and start sending out S.O.S signals.

Throwing A Crackwhore In The Crackhouse

Las Vegas skyline, by Sarah

I was in a PTA Leadership conference all day yesterday.  Unlike last year, when I went alone, this year a group of four of us attended and I wasn't forced to blend in with my friend Misti's school and pretend I had friends.

I took an advocacy workshop, which I have to say is right up my alley.  In fact, putting me in an advocacy workshop is like throwing a crackwhore right into the crackhouse.  I got a lot of useful information and be prepared for my level of craziness to go up even higher next school year.  For instance, I learned that our school actually gained Title 1 status last year and that we've been receiving federal money, and that there is supposed to be parents on the committee that decides how the money is spent.

Nobody informed me about a committee and when I asked my friend Misti about it, she said they usually put stooges for the principal on it.  Riiiiiiggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhttt.  I gotcha.

How do I look?

Anyway, I am not unhappy with how he's been spending the money, but I'd like to see the budget, how much we are getting, and I want him to make full day kindergarten available for our ELL students.  The kids with limited or no English skills need to be in kindergarten all day.  In my two years of kindergarten experience, 2.5 hours a day of hearing English is not enough.  They need to be fluent in English BEFORE they start first grade.  This is my pet project for next year.  Note that I gain nothing from this since my kids are no longer in kindergarten.

While I was gone the entire day, Greg and the kids went on some crazy adventure.  When they walked in from it, they were covered in dirt, sunburned, and had slushies all over their clothing.

"Where did you guys go today?", I asked them.

"We went to Hoover Dam and walked all the way across the bridge, then we hiked up a mountain and went inside a cave with a flashlight and Austin was scared.  We ate hot wings, and juice, and hot dogs, and slushies.", Sarah said.

"It was the best day of my life.", Gregory said.

Austin Is A Neuro-Rockstar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I took this picture four years ago in the neurosurgeon's office.

Here we are now!!!!  After four long, long, long years, Austin's tumor has not grown even a smidgen and our neurosurgeon said that he is comfortable with the fact it never will and he doesn't want to see us again for 2 YEARS.

In fact, he said we could choose to do another MRI in two years, but it would be more about our comfort level, than the need to actually look at the tumor because it is not going to grow.

So his tumor, a tectalglioma, is right there in the middle of his brain on the tectum.  You may notice it is oblong and a lighter color.  It was blocking the aquaduct of sylvius, a narrow canal in the brain and causing obstructive hydrocephalus, because it was preventing the circulation of cerebral/spinal fluid.

I'm going to put some keywords in here, in case some other poor mother is up all night Googling frantically.

This was his brain in 2007.  The black stuff in the middle is cerebral/spinal fluid and his ventricles were extremely enlarged.  Instead of getting a shunt to drain the fluid, he had an endoscopic third ventriculostomy, where a hole was drilled into the floor of his third ventricle, allowing the CSF to drain naturally through the hole, reabsorbing in the subarachnoid space.

Here is his brain and ventricles, four years later.

He will always carry slightly more CSF in his brain than the rest of us, be he no longer presents with any hydrocephalus at all.

ETVs typically fail in the first two years if they are going to, so now that we are four years out from this, the doctor said it will never fail.  He'll never need external hardware and he'll never have to have another surgery. He will never have any restrictions on him in any sports.  He can live his life as a completely normal person.

So as you can imagine, we are THRILLED.

As someone said on my Facebook last night, Austin is a neuro rockstar!!!

We Are Living It

The girls have been having a blast bossing Bitch's puppies around.  They are only six weeks old and already attack each other and try and pull each other's ears off, so the girls reprimand them and tell them to play nicely and pull them apart.

Obviously we won't be taking one of these home since I'm fond of my children's faces and limbs, but they sure have been fun for the kids.

It's a good thing I know what they turn into or I might just die from the cuteness and cave and take these two.

Amanda has been reading a book that came with her Kit Kittredge American Doll.

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with Kit, who grows up in the Great Depression and tries to earn money to keep her house from going into foreclosure.  Amanda is so into this book, she wants to talk about every detail.

"Mooooooooooommmm.  Did you know that if you borrow money from the bank, and then you lose your job and can't pay the bank back, they can kick you out of your home?", she asked.

"Yes, I did.", I replied.

"Are you and Dad paying for our house?", she asked in her customary accusatory style.

"Nope."

"WHAT?", she screeched.

"Our house is paid for.  We don't owe the bank any money.", I told her.

This dump is all ours, girlie.  I'm fairly certain she went into detail about this with Andi when we were at the pool.  I think she's going to be a tight-fisted one, like her father and her Uncle Rob.  It must be genetic.    

Speaking of our dump, it dropped $40,000 in value in one week, according to Zillow.  We had another foreclosure sell in our neighborhood at the jaw-dropping price of $149,000 and that dumped all our values by $40,000 in one day.  So we are barely above what we paid for our house in 1996.  The only consolation is that we haven't been paying interest for 15 years, so I guess paying off our mortgage six months after we took it out was still a smart move.  We had so many people tell us that was the dumbest move ever when we did it.

Everyone said, "Put it in the market.  Put it in the market!!!"

Five crashes later, I sure am glad we didn't put it in the market.  People gave my sister the same grief when she paid her house off.  It's like people in my generation can't wrap their heads around not being in debt or staying in the same place for a couple decades.

I was at my triplet mom dinner last month and three of us have our houses paid for and have lost our proverbial ass in this market.  But our consensus is if you don't move, you haven't lost anything.   It's not like we can "walk away".  It's OUR money.  So we will just continue living in our dwellings, while the world crashes down around us, and we will fake smile about it.

It's funny that Amanda is learning about the Great Depression in a book, when we are actually living in it in Las Vegas.

I Need A Piece Of Bamboo

The kids had swim lessons yesterday at The Club, so I packed enough food to feed a small army and we hung out at the pool all afternoon, giving me a good chance to see how the natural sunscreen, Tropical Sands, held up.  It was 109 yesterday and we were in the sun from noon until 3pm.

First of all, it has a funky smell that I am gradually getting used to.  I put it on all four of mine and my friend Andi's triplet girls.  It leaves a pretty white coating after application, so you can really tell where it's on and where it isn't.  I slathered it up my on arms and shoulders and chest, too.  My kids did not get any color at all, except right underneath their eyeballs, in that crease before your cheeks start.  I clearly failed to get enough on in the crease, so I will work on that next time.

Someone should video me trying to put sunscreen on seven children and the ensuing chaos that occurs during sunscreen application time to understand that perfect coverage on all participants is a fantasy.  During the 20 minute process, Austin accidentally dumped an entire bowl of salsa on the ground.   Has your mother ever forced you to stay still while she applies sunscreen with her hands covered in jalapeno juice?  Mine have!

So Andi's girls got red.  They got red with California Baby, too.  I think hers get red because 1) they are fairer than mine 2) they spend way, way, way more time dunking themselves in and out of the water and I think that their sunscreen washes off.  I think, in theory, she needs to reapply every 30 minutes or so.  All I can say to that is GOOD LUCK!

All in all, I am very, very happy with the sunscreen and I think I easily have enough to last us until next year.  Truly.  It goes that far during application!

On another note, the girls have been given dance homework since we started dance class, which is really something I never envisioned.  AT ALL.  We had to go buy and decorate binders.

We have dance vocabulary that we have to learn every week.

This week the girls must pick individual songs and I am supposed to help them choreograph those songs and help them design costumes for their numbers.  WHOA.  You guys, I cannot even do the Electric Slide.  The only reason I put them in dance was so they would never experience the extreme mortification of being unable to do the Cotton Eye Joe someday when they are in a bar in college!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Amanda has already decided she wants to dance Dick Van Dyke's part in Me Ole Bamboo from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

That should be easy!!!

Meanwhile all the other moms at this dance class are Russian and were probably born dancing.  What's an uncoordinated mom to do?



Surely Mary Poppins will fly in with her umbrella and help me figure out Dick Van Dyke's part, then we'll all jump into tiny little pictures and go riding on fake horses. Oops. Wrong movie.

I Spend My Days Frolicking

When Greg and I were out touring the country in an RV after we sold our insurance agency, we happened upon a U-pick tomato farm in Florida.

Greg asked the guy if he had tomatoes, and he slapped his leg and laughed and said, "We got 'maters, glory be!"

That's one of our lines now.

I've got 'maters, glory be, over on the urban ranch and I'm in a frenzy to not waste one single one of them.  We've been eating salsa and bruschetta and Caprese salads nearly every day.  The bulk of my crop is coming in right now and my plants are already starting to die because of the heat.

And the weirdest thing has happened.  The children are sleeping in now between 8 and 8:30.  I started making homemade spaghetti sauce before they even woke up.  I cored my tomatoes.

Then I boiled them for about 30 seconds.

Then I dunked them in ice water and the skins rolled right off.  I rolled mine right off into a bowl for the chickens.  I used half Roma tomatoes and half all the other varieties I have except for cherry tomatoes.

Once the skin was off, I quartered them and took out all the seeds.  Then I put them in a colander and squeezed the excess juice off.

Then I put them in the crockpot and let them simmer for seven hours.  When the kids and I came back from The Club, I put them in the blender until I had a smooth, thick sauce.  Then I chopped up onion, garlic, basil, oregano, and thyme and sauteed then in olive oil, added them to my sauce, and simmered it for another hour.

It was so thick and delicious and it tasted just like the sauce at Nora's Wine Bar, if you guys are locals.  OHMYGOSH, I did not plant enough plants.  I am kicking myself.

I also made zucchini bread after I put the tomatoes in the crockpot, and before I made salsa, which I forgot to photograph and document.

I am using my sister-in-laws zucchini bread recipe and it makes two loaves.

Auntie Jill's Zucchini Bread


3 eggs
1 cup of oil
1 2/3 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini
3 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3 tsps cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts


Beat eggs until light and fluffy.  Add next 5 ingredients and mix lightly.  Add flour mixture and blend.  And nuts.  Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour or until done in greased loaf pans.  

The kids and I stopped by Whole Foods and got fresh pasta to go with our fresh sauce and when dinner was over and I spent an hour cleaning the kitchen, Greg said, "So you spend all day frolicking around at the gym while the kids are in daycare there?"

SMACK!

Yep.  I am a frolicker.

I Am Tongue-Tied

Three days ago, my Turken hen went broody and she is now sitting on a clutch of six eggs.  Going broody means she is going to incubate those eggs, come hell or highwater.  I actually thought she was dead because she hadn't moved for 2 days and I went and got Bob to move her dead body out of the nest.  I figured she had gotten egg bound and died trying to lay an egg.  It's happened to us twice before.

Bob went out and nudged her and she ran out of the nest and we realized she was sitting on three white eggs and three brown ones.  It takes 21 days to hatch an egg and it is supposed to be 108 on Thursday and she is not moving.   I've been bringing her food and water so she doesn't die in that heat box.  

"What should we do?", Bob asked.

"I think we should let God take care of this one.", I told him.

I figure she instinctively knows what she is doing so we'll have a chicken watch in 18-19 days, if the eggs don't hardboil by then.

In other news, I've been harping on Greg to get the kids in for a dental appointment because he bartered dental work for taking care of his dentist's rental properties and we all had free cleanings and xrays.   He finally called the dentist yesterday and she told him to bring the kids right over.

As in, right over.  So I loaded the boys up and the girls went to work with Greg and I drove right over.  I did pause at the fact she had openings available at that VERY MOMENT.

So, anyway, I walked in and the receptionist said, "Your Greg's wife?  I did not picture him with a pretty wife or cute kids."

I am not even making that up.  I'm going to wear a housecoat and curlers the next time I go there.

It was a very nice office and they charge five times more than my Discount Dental Plan Dentist or the Dentist Who Smoked In His Office.

No wonder they are empty.

Two of the fillings Gregory got in 2008 from the Second Dentist Who Is Now Out Of Business  fell out and now need to be replaced.

The dentist also looked in Austin's mouth and said, "Did you know he's tongue-tied?"

Which just left me utterly tongue-tied.  I cannot believe after seeing a pediatrician, an ENT, three different speech therapists through Early Intervention, Child Find, and private insurance, and being to God only knows how many dentists, nobody has ever mentioned that.  Even when he couldn't breastfeed or drink a bottle or a sippy cup and I was hounding people about it.  How many posts did I write about how he could not even suck out of a damn sippy cup?  Did I not go buy every single sippy cup manufactured to try and get him drinking fluids only to give up and give him open cups at 16 months old?

So I immediately called Greg and told him the dentist could do a frenectomy and did he want that done?

That caused a major freakout.

"WHAT?  Nobody is SNIPPING ANYTHING until we've seen a SURGEON.", he was bellowing at me in the phone.

Being married to Greg is like being married to a caveman.  So I grunted back and made an appointment to see our pediatrician and get a referral.  I'll follow up on this through our insurance and get a second opinion.

Then I took the boys home, fed everyone, got the girls, dropped the boys off at our neighbor's, and went back with the girls.  I literally spent the entire day at the dentist.  Amanda and Gregory both have a cavity in the exact same tooth in the exact same spot.  How weird is that?  Anyway, we learned the kids are doing a piss poor job at brushing and they all got a tutorial and when we got home, Amanda and Sarah made their own dental charts and began drilling on their stuffed animals, which I just noticed are in the middle of the backyard, soaking wet from the sprinklers and obviously dead from tooth decay.  

According to Greg's dentist, the children need $2000 in dental work, which includes replacing Gregory's fillings, filling his and Amanda's cavities, and sealing all 12 of their six year old molars.  Obviously I'll be heading back to the Discount Dental Plan Dentist or driving to Mexico.

Unless Greg wants to barter his lung or a kidney.  Having four kids and going to the dentist is a surreal experience.  I almost feel like I should just open my wallet and say, "Take what you need."

My Brain Is Not On A Continuous Thought Pattern

Greg's mom told me a couple days ago that she never knows what in the heck is going to be on my blog from day to day because I do not tell a story in a continuous fashion. I told her that my brain is already completely on to something else so I can't help it. If I ever begin thinking in a continuous pattern, you should become worried for me because I may have become possessed by demons or something.

We got the all natural half gallon of sunscreen on Friday!  Can you believe it?  I ordered it on Wednesday and I got it on Friday!  So I give two thumbs up for superior customer service.  My neighbor was over at Austin's party and he said they use this exact jug at the YMCA for all the kids in summer camp.  It definitely has a smell to it.  It has eucalyptus oil in it and that smells a little funky to me, but I'm sure we'll get used to it.  It spreads on very easily.  It goes on really white, so you can definitely see if you missed anywhere on the kids.  I'm going to put it in little bottles to take with me when we are out and about.  I will continue on with how it holds up in the sun as soon as we are out in the sun all day.

We also got 39 barrettes in the mail on Friday.  My Aunt Pam made and sent us 39 barrettes.

She makes stuff for fun because she is a serious crafter.  She sews.  She quilts.  She makes adorable little barrettes.

Amanda almost swooned and fainted from happiness.

Greg had a very nice, quiet and relaxing Father's Day.  I took the kids to The Club in the afternoon to get out of his hair so he could have some quiet time.  He deserved it.  I spent some time while we were there reflecting on the fact he is such a good father that it makes it so painfully obvious what a shitty father I had as a child.  Greg does everything with the kids.  My own father would never even spend a single weekend with us, thus the reason we were shipped off to my grandmother's house on Fridays, and dropped off at home after church on Sundays.

Can you imagine that?  Every once in awhile that thought hits me so hard, I can hardly believe it because when I was growing up, I was completely happy with that arrangement.  My grandmother and my Aunt Ellie spoiled us so rotten, it never occurred to me that it was weird that I spent every weekend with them until I had my own children.  Can you guys imagine working all week, therefore only seeing your children for a couple hours in the evening, then sending them to your parent's house on Friday night and not seeing them until Sunday afternoon every single weekend of their entire lives?

I'd ship mine off right this second for one weekend, but can you imagine that we never spent ANY weekends with our own parents?  If I talked to my dad right now, which I don't, I'd say, "Really, Dad?  You couldn't be a parent for ONE WEEKEND A MONTH?"

If my mom was still alive, I would love to know how he talked her into that arrangement and what conspired between the two of them to decide not being around their own children was normal?  If any of you lurker relatives want to chime in on that arrangement and leave an anonymous comment, go for it!  Nobody is alive for me to ask so if you know why that happened, share the information.

On the flip side, I had three retired people doting on me and my sister every single waking moment and their entire worlds revolved around us, so I'm certain we were better off.   But still, Father's Day is a day for reflection and I'm grateful not to have to go peruse the card shelves to find the most generic card I can find to mail out anymore.  I used to look at a card and it would say, "You were the greatest dad ever!" and I'd put it back.  Then I'd pick up another one and it would say, "Thanks for all the memories!" and I'd put it back.  Then I'd finally find one that said, "Happy Father's Day!" only and I'd pick that one up.

Anyway, this was not on my continuous thought pattern, it was just swirling around in my brain and now I've purged it.  I'll be on to something completely different tomorrow.

The Neverending Party

What a day yesterday! The kids slept in until 9:00am this morning, which means Greg and I got to drink coffee and read the paper and have SILENCE on Father's Day morning. It was wonderful!

We will continue the non-stop partying with Father's Day once we get moving........tomorrow....or maybe Tuesday or next month when we've recovered from all the adult beverages.

Happy Father's Day to all two of my Man Readers! You both rock!

Just A Bump In The Road

It's hard to believe yesterday morning started out with Austin in an MRI machine.  If any of you in Vegas have kids who need MRIs, I cannot recommend Nevada Imaging on Rainbow enough.  They are so kid-friendly.  The nurse is an incredibly friendly LDS gal and she just loves children and she might even be related to Mary Poppins.  She made Austin feel right at home.  I found out she was Mormon when she was trying to figure out if I was Mormon.  It happens to me all the time.  I was never mistaken for being Mormon before I gave birth to a primary class, but now it happens to me at least once a week.

She gave Austin a stuffed animal to keep and the anesthesiologist is the same one he's had since he was two years old.  He has six year old twins and a singleton 16 months younger, so we have a bond.  I also ran into the husband of a twin mom I know from my multiple's club.  He works there.  It was a giant lovefest and I'm sure the familiarity made Austin feel at ease.  

He did not even cry at all when he got his IV.  He made it halfway through the 30 minute process and then he just couldn't hold still, so they had to put him under.  He woke up and insisted on trying to stand up and wouldn't sit in Amanda's booster seat in the first row of seats in our van, because her booster is pink.  Then he wouldn't let me buckle him and then he wouldn't let me help him out of the car to pick his donut out at Krispy Kreme.  He was staggering through the store like a drunkard.  He was all sorts of belligerent.

It reminded me of Greg back in the day.  I can remember leaving Greg passed out on the lawn when he was drunk because there was no way I was going to bother trying to get his sorry butt in the house.  He woke up when the sprinklers went off and I am actually still laughing about it 18 years later.

Anyway, our tradition is to get a donut after the MRI and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the sign in the window saying they were giving one free donut for every A on your report card.  I never mentioned it, but Gregory's final grades ended up being all straight As, even after his one trimester B.  So after we went home and Austin woke up, I loaded up my straight A students and went and picked up two more straight A students and we went to get our 30 FREE donuts.

Greg, the master of working all things free, said to me, "Don't you think that's abusing the system?"

Cough.  Cough.  Cough.  Said the pot to the kettle.

Hey, dude.  Don't hate the player.  HATE THE GAME.  I didn't make the rules.  I'm pretty sure Mr. Krispy Kreme did some sort of statistical analysis of the number of children who get As in our school district before offering up such a deal.

We wiped out the available glazed donut inventory.  After I posted it on Facebook, everyone was like, "Why didn't you tell US?  Our kids all have straight As, too."

Which means I live in the smartest neighborhood in the Clark County School District, or maybe everyone gets As.  WHO KNOWS?  All I know, is it was sure a great way to forget about the MRI.

Then the boys started a basketball class in the afternoon and for the first time ever, Austin is better than Gregory at something. Watch this.



My little man swooshes the net nearly every time.  He is so good at basketball, which makes up for how horrible he was at soccer.  He cried about how bad he was at soccer.  I am thrilled for him.  I am thrilled for ME, because basketball is inside and is climate controlled and nobody is bouncing balls off my child's head.   I could do basketball all day and night!!!!  The girls were SO UPSET that they weren't in the class.  Good grief.  I cannot win because the class is full and they are just going to have to sit this one out.

Look!  The baby Cujos are out of their bitch lair!

I don't even think Austin remembers that he had an MRI to be honest.  It was just a small bump in the road.  We see the neurosurgeon next Friday.  I'm just going to stay busy and not think about it.  Much.

Here We Go Again

The kids have been choosing to have fun over standing in the corner the last two days, so we cruised over to the gigantic supermercado, Cardenas, to pick out a Mexican-made piñata yesterday for Austin's Saturday birthday bash.  Get a load of this beast!

I couldn't get it in the car!!!!

A nice gentleman helped me shove it in the front seat so I didn't have to jettison the children.  Holy cow, I guess I need to invite more kids now.  I was trying to keep this party small because we tend to get things out of hand and before you know it, people are bashing people with bats.

T Rex was hanging right in between the Corona and Tecate piñatas.  Is he awesome, or what?   Austin was so thrilled.

Then we cruised over to Trader's, which was our second trip there this week if anyone is keeping tabs.  Unfortunately I do not have any space in my freezer for bread because I have 15 chickens in there now, so I need to make biweekly bread runs.  I was overwhelmed with how clever the sample display was with the watermelon rind.

Someday when I clone myself and get a decent knife and some artistic ability, I am totally going to do this!  TOTALLY.  Isn't that insanely clever??????!!!

Austin has his MRI today at 9am.  I am praying that he will have an easy IV and it will go right in and they won't have to poke him and poke him and poke him.  As you can imagine, I am a jumbled mess and he is old enough this year that he wants to know exactly why we are going there.  So I have to explain it to him and I really hate this.  I hate it.  I hate that I don't even know how many MRIs he's had and I hate that we are injecting him with contrast yet again.  Greg and I are sick over it.  It's like if his tumor doesn't turn cancerous, he'll end up with cancer from the contrast, which makes us both so upset we can hardly talk about it.

So if you are the praying sort, pray that Austin has an easy go of it this morning.  We've got a dinosaur to kill tomorrow, so we don't want anything getting in our way.

Edited to add:  Austin did great!  He's an old pro at the tender age of six, as scary as that is.  Thanks so much for all your prayers today!