Mister Personality

I'm not trying to be funny. I know he's not smiling in this picture. But when he puts that hat on, he became some sort of skater stereotype.

SuperSpy

He's got the goggles, the spy watch, the flashlight. And a pen. In case he needs to sign something.

Goldfish with Andy

Andy doesn't go to school every day. He only goes three days a week, and even then he's home by lunch. This means that, on many afternoons, he's left to himself while I do various things, such as clean the house, pay the bills, eat bon bons, and order expensive items from various catalogues. 

One of his favorite things to do is to take photos and make videos of himself. Here are a few films he put together while he was eating snack. You may think they are boring. I will understand this. He does work on a very deep and meaningful level, so you might just not get it. Or you might pick up on the humor. I was in stitches myself.

Evidence

He stole my camera to take this picture.

Nick 2013

Taking a Vote

OK, so for Mothers' Day I got a 5lb. bag of caramels.

I love caramels, but eating 5lbs. is NOT a good idea for any one person. Not even if she shares. Not even if she decides to try and eat just one caramel per day until they are gone. Which would bring us into February 2014.

So.

I've decided to make things with them. Things with caramel. I'm taking a vote. What do you think of these?

Salty Caramel Oat Bars

Samoa Bark

Salted Caramel Butter Bars

I've made these before but they were so good Caramel Stuffed Krispie Treats


I really really could us your opinions here. And yes, I also found apple caramel tarts and things like that. And yes, if you have other ides, let me know, just remember that I have actual caramels to use up and can't be bothered making sauces from sugar because even though I can do it that actually isn't the point to this exercise.

I kind of feel like making all four of these and then having a taste test, but I would need to know 20 people who would like to participate. Because I can't eat all that myself.

Happy Mothers' Day

Today is a day to celebrate mothering, from all kinds of mothers, my own included.

I love you Mom!

But today I'm sending a special shout-out to those who can decipher cards like the one from Nate. Which really has to do with a pair of googly eyes he got from school during his music concert, and absolutely nothing else. But still had be doubled up trying not to laugh.

Nate's Mothers' Day Card - 2013

We were on a break!

OK, I admit, I've been horrible at blogging. I mean, I promise I'll write every day, and for a week I almost do, and then I just kind of drop off the radar and I tell myself I'm collecting material, saving it up so I can have another really good week.

But then, at the end of the week, I still have nothing good to write about, and I haven't even taken any new pictures.

Ah, well.

I did begin this year saying I was going to post less, so it's not that, bad, right?

Cool People

There are all sorts of cool people in NY.

Nick & Stuart - April 2013

W/ Aunt Anne-E & Raluca - April 2013

Metamorphosis - May 1st

Everyone knows I love butterflies, right? And some Midge Flies.

Happy May Day, by the way!

Andy - Bronx Zoo - April 2013

Andy / Nate - Bronx Zoo - April 2013

Andy / Nick - Bronx Zoo - April 2013

Tea Time

Andy - Alice's Tea Cup, NY - April 2013

Nate - Alice's Tea Cup, NY - April 2013

Nick - Alice's Tea Cup, NY - April 2013

It Never Gets Old

We went to the Bronx Zoo.

Andy - Bronx Zoo - April 2013

Andy - Bronx Zoo - April 2013

We've been a couple of other times, but this time it was a bit different because it was rainy and cold.

OK, I'm being dramatic here. It wasn't raining the whole time. It was just raining while we were walking there from the subway. But it was kind of overcast and cold. It was too early for the elephants and the Wild Asia Monorail wasn't open for the season yet.

But the boys had fun. And my sister came with us, so she got to enjoy the following things with us:

A Tiger who was very busy eating grass.

A Gorilla who was sitting right next to the glass and who would wag his head comically side to side, and then puke into his hand. And then eat it. And then repeat. Over and over and over and over.

Feeding time for the vultures, who have a wing span of six feet (my estimation) and who look exactly like the cartoon hunchback drawings of themselves, only scarier, with heads approximately halfway down their bodies. Also, they are fed rozen dead white rabbit, much to Nick's dismay.

Bronx Zoo - April 2013

Rabbit Hole

Does this bring back memories?

The answer is: Yes.

Boys In Central Park - April 2013

NY, NY

The boys love it in NY. 

Nate in Central Park - April 2013

Pardon Our Appearance

And by "Our Appearance" I really mean "The lack of Blog Posts On This Blog." I actually like the look it has right now, and until I get irritated or board by it, I refuse to apologize for that.

Masks - April 2013

 I did, however, mean to post a few things ahead of time before I left for New York. Yet I did not.

For this, we are truly sorry.

Masks - April 2013

More Andy Art

I usually clean the house on Wednesdays, when Andy is at school.

Only this past Wednesday Nate has his school concert a 10am, then Nick had his at 1pm, and in between we had to grab Andy and grab lunch and find someplace to park since they placed the 'temporary' classroom portables on one of the parking lots and built the kindergarten wing on the other parking lot and have twenty remaining parking spots for the parents of the 500 students in first and second grade.

What was I talking about?

Oh, yes, cleaning the house.

So I had to clean the house on Thursday instead. Which ment that Andy was left to entertain himself. Which he did with my computer and the photo booth app. He was kind enough to leave a bunch of photos on my desktop. Like this one.

Andy's Computer Creation - April 2013

And then, and then.... this video. Which apparently he took while running to use the restroom, yelling all the while so we didn't miss anything.

Tournament

The boys had their first karate tournament the other day.

I have to admit, I was apprehensive. The boys are young, they don't really compete in things.

But they all did very well! The only drawback was that they were all separated by rank and age, so Andy was bowing out when Nate was doing his Kata.

Also, I forgot my camera, so I had to take all the pictures with my phone. For some reason my phone's camera is not so great. And the only picture of Nate I got was too blurry to even post.

But Andy for a medal for participating in his category. Nick and Nate got participation medals for kata, Nick got third place for sparring and Nate got second place for sparring.

Karate Tournament April 2013 - Andy in center

Nick - Karate tournament April 2013

Nick's Biography Report

He worked really hard on it.

Nick working on Biography, April 2013

Feeling Lucky

So one morning last week I came upstairs from running on the treadmill to find this:

Playing Go Fish For Cash - 2013

The boys had playing cards clutched in their hands, and yes, that is a pile of dollar bills in the middle of the table.

I was still a bit dizzy from running, so for a moment we all just stared at each other.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"We're playing Go Fish for cash," Nick said.

He said it with a completely straight face.

Steve and I don't play cards. We don't even play poker. The only people I think they might have seen play cards for money is Steve's family. Sometimes they play for nickels and dimes.

But apparently they felt they needed to win some cash for the Book Fair, and so convinced Andy to put his dollar bills on the table. That's right, Andy was the only one with the cash to play.

I gave all the money back to Andy and told the boys they needed to play with pennies from now on.

I'm Here!

So, I forgot to post for a week.

It's just that things got kind of busy. I usually post on Saturday mornings, only one Saturday we went to the Museum of Science instead of karate, and so everything got put off. And then the next Saturday we had an actual Karate tournament, so things got bumped back again.

The other thing is, I've been sick. I caught a cold and the cold travelled from my throat to my nose and them settled in my sinuses. My face hurts. Seriously, my actual face hurts. And I'm either cranky all the time because of that, or I'm loopy on cold meds and prone to just falling asleep.

And... that's about it on excuses. Real post tomorrow.

-K

Pink

I did some online shopping.

It's just so much easier than dragging all three boys around the mall, or the outlets. As long as I know what I'm looking for, the sizes, I can add things to my basket with a click.

I was shopping for summer clothes, and I let the boys pick out a pair of summer PJs so that they could have at least one nice pair.

Andy chose a cute pair with sharks. Nate chose bugs. Nick chose the pink stripes.

Yes, the pink stripes. I tried explaining that they were supposed to be for girls. "Are you sure sure sure?" I asked. But yes, he was sure sure sure. He wanted pink, and the pink ones were right there, and why couldn't he just get the pink ones?

He used the same excuse when he was getting sandals. He had wanted the pink ones but I said no. I pictured him wearing them to school once, getting made fun of on the bus, and him never wanting to put them on his feet again. And you think I'm over reacting but seriously all three of these kids have sneakers which they refuse to wear, meanwhile they're putting on worn  merrell slip ons day after day, ones with hols in them that now smell really really not so great...

where was I?

Oh, yes. So I told Nick no pink sandas. He got upset because he has a friend who gets to wer pink sandals. I reminded him that this friend has a younger sister to inherit discarded clothing and here no one else would get to wear them. So we settled on Light Blue sandals. They are stil clearly a "girl" color, but then again, I hate the whole girl color thing, so, you know. Whatever.

Anyway, Nick loves his new Pajamas.

Andy and Nick - March 2013

Then I Made These

I don't want this to become a food blog. I have no business food blogging because I have trouble following a recipe and have to look up how to spell "recipe" each time I write the word. (Recipie? Recepie? I really want that "i" at the end.)

But I love looking up other people's recipes. And trying to make things myself. Sometimes these things are kinds of chicken or avacado enchilladas. And sometimes... sometimes they are these.

Caramel Stuffed Krispie Bars. I found the link on Greens and Chocolate.

I tried making Rice Krispie bars once when I was a teenager and for some reason the treats hardened halfway into the pan, so I got this really hard three dimensional krispie creation that was really too hard to even chew.

But these... the caramel... it just looked so good.

So I gave it a try.

Caramel stuffed Krispie Bars 2013

I did a little research and found out that I had probably overcooked the marshmallows, turning it all into hard candy when it cooled.

This time I had the advantage of a microwave (remember when we used to not have one?) and it made the process a little easier.

I won't lie. These were really really sweet. And I cut them too big. the kids weren't able to finish theirs. Steve didn't even want one. But hey... if you're looking for a real treat... this could be it. All I need is a way to package them individually and I have take-away treat for a party or a special teacher gift.

Caramel Stuffed Krispie Bars 2013

Biography

Nick has to do a biography project for school.

The second phase of the project was to build a "bottle person" of the subject. Here is Nick's bottle person. Can you guess who his subject is?

Nick's Biography Project Bottle Person - 2013

No, not George Washington. Think. This is Nicholas we're talking about.

You are correct! Nick chose to do his project on J.K. Rowling. And yes, I did explain that she was an author, and not actually a student or teacher at Hogwarts, but Nick still chose the robes.

The first part of the project was to gather information on the subject. I went to the library and got out a book on J.K. Rowling, one which was written just before the Half Blood Price was printed. I skimmed it, leafing over the pages, and suggested to Nick that he read it. He looked at the cover and glanced at some of the photographs, then asked if we could look her up online.

So we looked her up online. I tried explaining that the internet is full of information and not all of it is correct. "You should make sure you find your information in two or three places if you're going to write about it," I said.

"Whatever," Nick said.

So I read Nick what we found online.

I could go into detail here about filling out the sheet of paper and the interactions that followed, but I won't. Instead, I'll just say that I now know a lot about J.K. Rowling. I know more than Nick, apparently, who doesn't seem to have retained any of the information he wrote down on his biography sheet.

Which is really too bad, because phase 3 of this biography project is an oral report. He has to stand in front of the class and talk about this person and what this person did. He also has to chose how to present using a trifold poster, a poem or song, a powerpoint presentation, a quilt, a timeline, or a trading card. Nick is choosing the trading card.

FYI, he also has to dress up as this person when he gives his presentation.

Now, I know Nick has spent hours dressed up as Harry Potter. He actually still wears the glasses around for looks, like other people wear hats or shoes. When I told his he had to dress as J.K. Rowling he had a moment of "No Way!" but the next time I brought it up he mentioned getting a wig. So... I'll take pictures.

Logic

Andy had a sore toe.

I knew he'd hurt it, and I'd put a band-aid on it a few days earlier, but I suddenly got a good look at it when his brothers were in karate and eww... it was so gross. The toenail looked ingrown, but there was a cut and the whole thing was swollen. No further detail. Just trust me, it was gross.

I was concerned enough to take immediate action, so I told Andy we were going right to CVS to get bactine, neosporin, and some band-aids.

"You get to pick whichever band-aids you want," I said.

"Yes," said Andy, playing into this as only he can. "And then I get to dump them all out and pick the one I want on my toe."

"Why do you need to dump them out?" I asked. "Then we have to get all the others back into the box. Why can't you just look into the box and take out the one you want?"

"I can't do that. My eyes are too short."

Andy, examining his dinner, March 2013

Bad Piggies

You may have heard of a game called Angry Birds. If you can read about them in This Post I wrote a couple of years ago.

The boys still love Angry Birds. And now they have Angry Birds in space, which whirls you around planets in smaller and smaller circles until gravity pulls you into the atmosphere and you plummet to the ground. (And so we plummet, and we plummet.... )

More recently, the boys discovered a game calle Bad Piggies. Well, I actually discovered the free demo version and got that to entertain the boys. I let them play the ipad on certain occasions, such as when they practice piano 5 times in a week, or when they've been really really good but we need to wait for a brother to get out of a karate class, or when I need to go vote and there are 5 pages of ballots about zoning preferences with a tiny little detail about the schools in there somewhere.

One day, while synching my ipad, I noticed some weird photos being downloaded to my computer. This is odd because I have a first generation ipad. It does not have a camera. So I shouldn't have any new photos from the ipad.  I clicked on it to take a closer look, and found a screen shot of a pig. A GREEN Pig.

It turns out that this game has a "photo" button which will take a screen shot and save it to my photos. Each time I'd go and try to sync my music, my books, my calendar, the ipad would try to transfer 36 screen shots of bad piggies trying to defend their stolen eggs with oddly constructed vehicles.

Happy Easter!

Easter Eggs 2013

I love Easter because it means there will be spring. When I was a kid we'd go hunting for eggs among actual daffodils, and these days it always seems to be thirty degrees and clumps of snow all over the ground, but still...  It's a time of rebirth, renewal of life, new hope. Spring is here. Also, chocolate.

Easter Eggs 2013

This year we didn't manage to do pysanky.  Those are the eggs done with beeswax and layers of dye. The past couple of years I've taken the boys aside one by one and helped them heat the wax, draw on the eggs, and scrape off the wax once the egg was done. But this year I have been trying to simplify and breathe more, and I didn't think the boys would notice.

Oh, but they did.

It's OK, though. They did regular eggs dyed with food coloring, and all turned out well. They had fun. I let them decorate with crayons and stickers and glitter glue. We'll go back to the fancy eggs next year.

Easter Eggs 2013

Stand Here For A Picture

Stand here for a picture and try not to kill each other.

Andy, Nick, Nate - March 2013

Lavender Town (Internet Part 2)

So the other day Nick asked me to look up "Lavender Town" on the internet.

Go ahead. Look it up. It will save me the time and energy of explaining. It will save me from figuring out how to explain this... thing.

OK, fine, I'll just start type-talking.

Nick's friend on the bus (see previous post) told him about this thing in this one Pokemon video game. Apparently there is this one part, the friend said, where you end up in a graveyard and there is all sorts of scary screechy music. And all of the pokemon there are dead! And you have to battle this one really scary pokemon who is also dead. And it's scary. And, according to Nick, you heard this from his friend, it gives kids really bad headaches and nightmares and stuff.

I told Nick his friend might be confused. I remembered some episodes of Pokemon, the TV show, which used a lot of flashing, and a few kids in Japan were had seizures. It was a thing for awhile. Maybe his friend was confused?

No, it was this town in this game.

I went ahead and looked it up. We listened to some bad, high pitched music. We watched a clip of someone actually playing the video game - apparently there is some hidden level where you do actually battle a very hard pokemon who keeps threatening to take your soul.

And then I read some of the stuff that was written, and apparently there was some rumor going around that, after playing this game, a number of children, ages 10 to teens, actually committed suicide.

Which is when I turned it off. I wasn't afraid my kids were going to suddenly want to end their lives, like some strange version of "The Ring" brought to life. No, I was just so angry about the whole perpetuation of stupid rumors, and video games screeching... And why does Nick have to hear a stupid twisted rumor like that? How do you even try to address it. I said it was time for something besides video games.

I was less happy when Andy, who had overheard all of this, had bad dreams at night and climbed into my bed. Because he then decided to sleep sideways and kicked me in the ribs all night long.

I hate video games. I hate the internet.

Pop Tart Cat (internet Pt. 1)

A few weeks ago, Nick asked me to look something up on the internet.

"Could you look up Nyan Cat?" he asked me.

I rolled my eyes - his friend down the street is allowed to bring his DS on the school bus, and every morning they watch videos and play games while my innocent son has his mind infested with all sorts of information this other kid has picked up from his four older brothers and sisters.

So I typed in "NION CAT" and a bunch of links pop up for Nyan Cat.

Most lead to this video right here. If you watch it for 20 seconds, you've got the gist of it. Nothing else happens. There is no surprise ending, no change os music, animation, background, anything. Just the same thing for 3 minutes and 37 seconds.

"He kind of looks like a pop tart," I said. I didn't realize this cat was also known as "Pop Tart Cat."


Anyway, Nick has begun making things out of paper. I'll turn around and suddenly the kitchen table (and floor) is full of little bits of shredded paper and glue and markers. Nick will hold up a bunch of paper and say "I made a book!" or "I made a pig!" or "Look at my new cell phone!" and then the next fifteen minutes he spends telling me how it works. Then I ask him to clean up the mess and he forgets how to speak English and suddenly remembers something he left in the bathroom upstairs.



The other day he went to school and I walked into the living room to find this:

Nick's Cat March 2013

What is this? I go to take a closer look. Yup. It's a cat. Nick's very own Pop Tart Cat. Complete with legs and a tail.

Nick's Cat March 2013

But I don't need to worry. Nick has taken care of him and fed him before he left for school.

Nick's Cat March 2013

Needless to say I left him there.

Table Manners

Learning how to use a knife and fork is harder than you would think.

Andy - March 2013

Overtime for the Tooth Fairy

What is it about front teeth? Why do they always seem to come out in pairs?

Nate, after losing his front tooth - March 2013

Is it so that, for a few short days, we can remember what is was like to have toothless gummy babies? You have to admit, there is something adorable about that front gap.

Nate,  after losing his other front tooth - March 2013

Why I do Things

So, last weekend I found myself sitting behind a bake sale table.

And Nick, who was standing right next to me, was all winey, asking me at least half a dozen times if he could have a third brownie, and finally turning to me and in that nasally complainy voice said "why are we even HERE?"

I haven't done anything like a bake sale since High School, which was the last time I'd done anything related to a bake sale at all. I think it was for the international club? But here I was, in the hall outside the gym at the Middle School, while various kids of all ages popped in and out changing costumes and talking about points.

See, back in the fall, Nick came home from school saying he wanted to do something called "D.I."
"What is it?" I asked.
"You build stuff," Nick said. "I know some friends that do it."

I asked a parent who coached a team the year before. "It's good!" she said. "Sometimes they have to build things, sometimes they do a play or a performance. You'll see, it's fun!"

In order to join a team, the boys had to do a challenge. (Nate had quickly decided he wanted to do this, too.) They chose to build things out of paper. I was not allowed to help them at all. I helped Nate anyway. Then I showed up at the try out and brought the paper products.

There are one other parent there. She also had two kids who wanted to do DI. At the end of the little meeting, the teacher turned to us and said they were looking for a couple of people to coach.

I tried explaining I was the worst person in the world for this job. I tried explaining that I had a hard time not writing out Nick's math answers for him, or just rewriting the occasional word he had misspelled. I would never be able to get a group of boys to create anything without sticking my hand in.

No one listened.

So the other mom and I ended up coaching this DI team. Lucky for us, at this level we do not have to compete.

Unluckily for us, they did not give us a choice as to what challenge we'd get.

We were told all teams at this level had to do a play about Roy G. Biv's Birthday Party. You know Roy, right? The colorful rainbow guy? No? Look it up. The topic is rainbow birthday party. The team: Ten boys in first and second grade who think farts are the height of humor.

No one wanted to to a rainbow play.

After weeks and weeks of getting the kids to come up with some ideas, think about colors, etc. the other mom finally got them to settle on an outline for the play. Somehow, the part with the graffiti, the part where Roy G Biv is a bear, and the part where Roy G. Biv was suspended from a bungee cord from the ceiling didn't make it into the play.

The problem was, the boys had no concept of what a stage was - their play took them all over the classroom, out into the hall, etc. They also had no concept of an audience, and would turn their backs to the audience and, as I mentioned before, sometimes wander into the restroom and do parts of the show in there. Finally, they couldn't settle on who talks when. Three boys would commonly be talking at once, one saying his line about liking green grapes, one talking about farting on Roy G Biv's carpet, and one pretending to spray paint all over Mr. Yellow.

Then, finally, came the day of the town performance. Like a dress rehearsal before the actual competition.

I got chewed out because one of the appraisers caught me tying a balloon for the kids and I was supposed to make them do it ALL THEMSELVES. I told her if we'd done that she'd be listening to burps and farts for 8 minutes. (I might have been a little nervous.)

So then the boys began their play.

And it was silence.

Not only were there no fart jokes and no playing around in the background, but the boys didn't even say the lines they'd been practicing. Nothing. There was complete silence as the boys filed in and went through all the actions they were supposed to do. They silently played hide and seek, silently ate food and birthday cake. It was like they'd had a secret meeting and decided to do the whole thing in mime.

Finally the other mom and I broke down and said, from the bleachers in the gym " say something!" And a few of the boys started saying their lines a couple looked like they couldn't remember what they were supposed to say. Nick said something about his food, looking at the picture and saying "I love purple squash!" (it was an eggplant.)

Afterwards I was a bit nervous because it seemed we had so much to do. We watched a couple of other performances and then I wandered out to the bake sale table because we were supposed to have gotten team parents to sign up to staff the tables, and of course we didn't, we were too busy trying to fit in tie-dying the costumes between snow days.

And I sat there behind a table of muffins and rolo bars I made, none of which people were buying, which is when Nick turned to me and asked me his question: Why are we even HERE?

For you, Nick. I'm doing this for you.

And Then I Made These

I follow this Greens & Chocolate blog.

And not too long ago I followed a link from there to this place right here. 

And then I made them. Rolo Bars.

Because when I think "Sweetened Condensed Milk" I automatically want to add sugar and butter. And then pour it over rolos. Placed on chocolate shortbread. And cover it with more melted chocolate.

Apparently I want to die early. From a sweet induced coma.

If I learned one thing making these, other than the fact that a food can make you sick thinking about what's in it and yet be so good you can't stop eating it, it's that you shouldn't scrape off the hot caramel sauce with your finger.

And when you do, you shouldn't try to cool the burn by placing that caramel coated finger in your mouth.

It's twice the burn.

A photograph of rolos. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

Last Bit of Winter

These are actually a few photos from a trip we took a couple of weeks ago, at the beginning of March. It was to a lodge a little upstate, where there is plenty of hiking and in the winter people snowshoe and go cross country skiing.

We don't do those things, mostly because the boys start complaining three minutes into any walk we take. But we did go sledding.

The sledding hill was a little walk from the lodge. And getting to the top of the hill took a lot of work. Also, we could have kept going, but it got SO steep that I told Nate we had to stop.

I went down the hill twice. Which was brave of me. As it turns out, I don't like speeding down mountains, I much prefer sipping cocoa and doing puzzles.

walking to the sledding hill, Cardigan, March 2013

View from the top of the sledding hill. That dot on the right is Nate . Cardigan, March 2013

This was a small river we passed. I like how the snow tries to cover it up.
Cardigan, March 2013

The Hours

There was an argument about a watch.

Nate had found one that belonged to Nick, and had been carrying it around, loving it. When Nick saw this, he immediately proclaimed himself rightful owner of the watch, and an argument ensued. The court of parental law declared Nick the winner, and Nate was heartbroken.

Until I reminded him that he had birthday money in his wallet, and could afford to purchase his very own watch.

Of course he wanted to do this right away.

It was 8am, I was still in my workout clothes. There was no school, but the day was jam packed with homework assignments, piano classes, karate classes, a trip to the library to return overdue books, and the giant task of making our way to the high school to fill out four double sided sheets of very important issues pertaining to our town (everything I voted for lost, and I'm still ranting and raving about the fact that as 7th graders the boys will be learning science crowded around a single bunsen burner set up in a stairwell, taught by an underpaid teacher, but whatever. At least we won't have to pay an extra $10 in taxes.)

Ahem.

So Nate was trying to convince me to swing by Target. A trip to Target is 20 minutes each way, not to mention the time it takes to convince me to let them spend all their cash on Pokemon Cards. So I said no, we didn't have time.

"What else do we have to do today?" Nate asked. "What is taking up all of the time?"

And so I listed all of the activities we had on our schedule.

His eyes lit up when I mentioned Karate.

"Mom! We can go to Hours when we go to Karate!"

... ?

My mind was a blank. What was he talking about?

"You know, Hours. I'm pretty sure they sell watches there. It's right next to Karate."

It took a moment.

See, the karate place is next to an orthodontist. But in between is a Mental Health Counselor.

Her door is a plain door with nothing on it but in huge letters: HOURS.

Underneath, in much smaller lettering: by appointment.

It's Snowing Again

I was done with winter. All done. So were the tulips that are already peeping their green tips out of my flower bed.
But the universe decided we needed more snow. And so now the tips of the flowers are covered in at least 6 inches of white. Schools are closed. Again. And I've frantically checking the internet, trying to determine if the play we were seeing tonight (a kid's version of Seussical!) is on or off.

So...

Here are some photos from last month's snow. I never got around to posting these. And yes, there is an extra boy in these pictures. In case you were interested, they were playing zombies in the snow. Fitting, considering the crazed Jack Nicholson like maniacs we all become when cooped up one time too many.

On the bright side, we now have time to practice piano, and to finish the Great Toy Room Project! Mean, mean Mommy. Always has a backup plan.

Feb. 2013

Feb. 2013

Feb. 2013

Mixed Up Fantasy

I am listening to the boys not get ready for school.

Instead, they are upstairs, playing a game made up of every story they like right now.

One of these things are the daleks from Dr. Who, which I began watching because do many people were making Dr. Who references, and I was feeling lost. So I went to watch. I wasn't missing too much, but it's a fun show with time travelly timey wimey plots.

The boys watched a few episodes with me, and I would point out certain actors if they happened to be ones from a certain movie series they know very well. (Harry Potter.)

It turns out they got a kick out of it. They like the idea of the Tardis (blue police box space / time travel machine) and the Timelords and the Daleks.

"Exterminate!" Andy tries to yell. Only he never gets all four syllables, so it's more like "Extermate! Externiate! Expelliarmus!"

Take A Picture

I have grapes in my mouth.

Andy, with grapes in his mouth. Feb. 2013