Bodily Fluids

It was "bodily fluids night" tonight at Pioneer Girls.

First, the people at my Save-the-Day-Cafe table started talking about childhood bed wetting while we ate supper.  I added something like, "Hey, when you guys were kids did you ever dream that you were in a bathroom, and then accidentally wet the bed?"  Several people confessed that they had, and then one woman, a friend of mine, said, "Shoot, I did that as an adult!  And not that long ago, either!"  It was so unexpected and weird and honest that we all just laughed.

During Pioneer Girls itself one of the girls in my group started holding a napkin up to her ear.  When I asked what was wrong she said that her ear had been plugged earlier in the evening, so her mom put some drops in it.  I guess the drops suddenly started working, because she was leaking ear wax like a sieve.  Then every once in awhile she would lay the napkin down on the table, all covered in streaks of yellowish-brown, while she ate her cookie during snack time or whatever.

The whole evening was kinda surreal.

Pets and Stuff

Homestretch

Yesterday Zach wrote his support letter (with a little help from me in the form of stuff like, "I really don't think you should use the phrase 'embark on this journey,' Zach.  It kinda makes it sound like you're about to leave on the Starship Enterprise.")  The youth group has already done a lot toward earning the money they'll need to go to Puerto Rico.  They've had bake sales and auctions, and they've also paid for some of it out-of-pocket.  Now they each have to raise $400 through these letters.  Please pray for Zach and the whole youth group as they prepare for this ministry adventure.

Ugh

Yesterday Drew looked in his lizard's cage and realized that a good piece of Rex's tail is gone.  There was blood and even a bit of bone poking out.  Which, okay, lizards sometimes lose their tail and then they grow a new one.  It's a defense mechanism, which we read all about when we researched anoles. But blood and bone?  Oh my gosh, I'm gonna be sick.  I asked Drew what happened and he said he had no idea, so I steeled myself and went to check out the situation.  That's when I noticed the piece of tail hanging from under the lid of the cage.  I guess when Drew fed the lizard last he didn't realize that part of its tail was draped outside the aquarium, and when he put the cover back he trapped it.  Here's the yucky part that came off.  It smelled bad.

Cat on Quilt

On the bright side, Cooper still has his tail!

Gives You Wings

Yesterday afternoon Drew looked out the window and said, "There's a giant energy drink in our front yard."  Only half paying attention, I replied with something like, "Okay," and made a mental note to have one of the kids go pick it up and throw it in the garbage next time they were outside.  Drew continued, though, with, "I mean, it's really, really big.  You should see this."

Haha!  It was attached to a smart car, and for some reason it was parked right on the other side of our fence.

School Today

More Molds and Casts

We're lucky, because Drew's great-grandpa (Mike's grandpa) was a rock hound.  When he died the boys inherited a lot of his cool finds, including some mold and cast fossils.  They've been a great addition to this science unit.

Baylee's First Ever Song

From John Thompson's Modern Course for the Piano, the First Grade Book.  It's called "Music Land."

Not bad for week one!  (PS:  She's wearing a down vest under that fleece shirt, which is why she looks a little thick through the torso.  lol)

Forgiveness

It was one of those mornings.  I yelled at Drew, just totally lost my temper with him, and made him cry.  I had reason to be angry.  He and Baylee got into an argument and in the course of it a mug of tea was spilled all over Baylee's math book.  I'm still trying to dry it out, but I don't have high hopes.  Anyway, he screwed up, but then I did, too, in how I responded.  I sent him to finish reading his Washington State history assignment on his bed (instead of on the couch where he had been reading) in order to give myself a chance to relax, clean up the mess, and get some perspective.  About 10 minutes later I went to him.  Immediately when I entered the room he said, "It was an accident!" I think he thought I was there to do more battle.  Instead I went over to him and simply said that I was sorry, that I never should've treated him that way, and I asked for his forgiveness.  He teared up a bit, but offered it readily, because he's like that.  Then we talked a little about what happened, I gave him a hug, and now it's over.  I hope when he grows up he remembers not that he ruined a schoolbook or that mom freaked out, but that apologies and forgiveness and love are a natural part of relationships...a good, healing part.

Fossil Molds and Casts

Drew had another fun, geology-related science experiment today.  He got to make a mold and cast of his foot.

First we made our own play-doh, because I'm cheap.

Then Drew rubbed the bottom of his foot with Vaseline to keep it from sticking to the play-doh.  The dog kept licking his foot, making this difficult.

Finally, Drew stepped on the play-doh, making a nice footprint called a "mold."  In real life, fossil molds occur when something (like a seashell, plant, foot, etc.) gets pressed into mud or clay and leaves an impression, then the mud or clay dries and hardens before the impression is washed away.

We went one step further.  (Heh.  Little footprint humor.)  We wanted more than just a mold; we wanted a cast.  A cast happens when a mold is filled in with sediment or perhaps lava, which leaves a three-dimensional impression when it hardens.  Of course, we didn't use sediment or lava.  We used Plaster of Paris.  (By the way, I'm getting to be a Plaster-of-Paris pro.  Look how smooth that is!)

 

About 30 minutes later...

Very cool!

Lately

All dressed up for a children's choir performance.

This girl's mother really should've put her hair back.  It's in her face!

Working on graphing consistent, inconsistent, and dependent equations.  Doesn't he look thrilled?

Reserved for F. Gregory

For as long as we've been going to our church, and for probably years before that, there's been a sign next to one of the prime spots in the parking lot.  The sign reads "Reserved for F. Gregory."  Here's the weird part:  In all the years we've been attending, we have yet to meet anyone named F. Gregory.  What makes it even more of a mystery is that nobody EVER parks in that spot...including F. Gregory.  It's almost like a strange, unspoken social experiment.  "Hey, guys, I have an idea!  If we put up a sign which says to save a parking space for an imaginary person, how long do you think it will be before anyone catches on?"

A long time, apparently.


Edited to Add:  I just looked in the directory.  I think F. Gregory is a very elderly woman named Florence.  Now I feel a little sheepish.

Saturday

Wow, we managed to cram a lot into this really long day.

• Zach and Mike had to be at church at 9AM to help set up for a fund raiser.
• We cleaned the house.
•  Both boys got haircuts.  Zach has outgrown my abilities, so he gets his done by a barber, but I did Drew's this afternoon. Unfortunately, the clippers broke after I'd only done about half his head.  After much gnashing of teeth (on my part), Mike came to the rescue and fixed whatever was broken, so Drew doesn't look any weirder than usual.
• Mike took Zach out to buy black dress pants and a white dress shirt.
• I took Baylee to buy new white tights and church ballet flats.  She needs them because she's singing in the children's choir tomorrow and I realized that she wrecked her old church shoes by playing outside repeatedly in them.
• I sat with Baylee while she practiced her piano lesson for probably a half hour or maybe a little more.  I realize now we were really lucky when Drew started guitar.  Somehow we just never had to pay much attention to him at all, as he seemed to always know what he was doing.  Or maybe it's just that's how it is with the guitar.  With Baylee (and also with Zach when he took a year of piano lessons at 9 years old) it's different.  I can tell it wouldn't be wise to leave her to her own devices.  Oh well.  I'll just consider it another one of her subjects and schedule it into the school day.

• Mike and I went to a dinner/dessert auction thingie tonight at church, featuring talent by kids in the youth group.  It was to raise money for the Puerto Rico trip.  It was fun!  Our table won a red velvet cake in the "dessert dash."  Zach didn't get up on stage, but he was a really good, cute waiter. 

Almost the Weekend!

We had a good day!  We finished another day of school and Baylee started piano lessons.  I think she's really going to enjoy learning how to play an instrument.  On top of all that, the weather is gorgeous.  I took this picture of the budding magnolia tree in our front yard around noon.  Beautiful, huh?

In other news, yesterday I organized and redid all our school stuff...gave it its own bookcase in the living room.  It's the diagonal one in the corner.  It all looks much better now.

And that's about it.

Poor Drew

He gets sinus headaches on these days with big temperature shifts, so he's not feeling all that great today.  This was him this morning when we first started school.  He's the lump on the couch.  Baylee felt sorry for him and covered him with a throw blanket from her bedroom.

He rallied, though, and went on to start and finish his school day, including two tests.  Because I felt a little bad for him, I let him take part of his science test orally.  Here he is answering some questions about geology.  I think he did really well!

Starting on Daddy's Scarf

Thanks, Baby

She gave me the scarf she's been working on for months and months.  She finished it tonight and presented it to me as an "early birthday present."  Guess what.  I don't care that it's spring.  I'm wearing it!

Bits and Pieces

This morning one of the smoke alarms was chirping that it had a low battery, but figuring out which one was making the sound turned out to be an undertaking.  Mike ended up dismantling four of them before he found the right one.  What is it about that particular noise that makes it so you can't pinpoint where it's coming from?  It's like those people that throw their voices.  Anyway, we now have a bunch of alarms that are officially tested, and one bathroom fan that's been vacuumed and cleaned (since he was looking up and noticed the dust).

Drew finished Career Studies awhile back, but can't start the Washington state history course I bought because it's back ordered.  In the meantime, I've been having him read history-related library books.  He just finished this book, which was really good:

 
And now he's reading a book about Washington.  Did you know our state gem is petrified wood?

I got two packages in the mail today from my mom, packed to the brim with mementos from my grandma's home.  Some of them are Grandma's things, like an old, favorite cookbook, filled with her writing in the margins.  ("Never make this again.  It's terrible!")  And some of them are actually my things from when I was in high school.  They were found, I think, up in the farmhouse attic.  There were old letters written to me by my friend who was sent to a boarding school in Africa called Rift Valley Academy.  There were dusty awards I won and even my high school cap and gown.  Anyhow, it was fun to get the mail today!  Now I just have to figure out what I'm gonna do with all this stuff.

Spring is finally here, I think!  It's warmish out and sunny.  I'm starting to get that urge to bike.  My new picture up on top makes me feel all confined...like I need to break free and ride.

The Kids

Zach is sick now with the stomach flu.  Blah.  He seems to be bouncing back fairly quickly, though, and after getting through a bad night and then sleeping until noon, he's up and about and wanting food.  Specifically, he wants pea soup and applesauce.  Weird.

Today in school I was trying to explain to Baylee that the next book she's going to read, Choice Stories for Children, was written about 100 years ago, so she might find it hard at first to get used to the  old-fashioned language.  "Oh," she replied, "you mean it says stuff like, 'They tittered unexpectedly?'"  It was so off-the-wall that it made me...

And here's a random picture of Drew I took one day last week.

Chameleon

Considering that this past weekend consisted of puking, sleeping, and reading books about the English countryside (I still heart you, Miss Read!), I can't make any promises about the quality of this post.  You've been warned.

Oh, I've got a topic.  Last Wednesday I went to Pioneer Girls, where I had to do that campfire devo, which was supposed to be about "going to camp."  First off, do you know how hard that is?  How do you do a talk about "going to camp" that's somehow also a devotion?  I knew my skinny dipping story was out.  (Just kidding!)  In the end I chose to do it on friendship and had a fun object lesson using string.  That's not really what I wanted to tell you, though.  I want to talk about this:

This picture doesn't do it justice at all.  Stupid cell phone camera.  On Wednesday, before Pioneer Girls even started, I was at our church's little restaurant, Save the Day Cafe, and this guy, Steve, was standing alone, minding his own business and eating his sloppy joe.  Suddenly I realized he was almost perfectly camouflaged against the wall of the church.  He had on the exact same shade of gray shirt as the paint, the same shade of blue pants as the weird carpeted bottom half of the wall, and his body was the exact right height for the division.  The only thing that could've made it better was if he was wearing a brown belt to match the wood trim.  The whole thing was a lot like this.

-----------------------------------

I just got back from my Weight Watcher meeting.  I lost seven and a half pounds this week.  Woo hoo!  Alright, stomach flu!

I Feel Like I'm Coming Back from the Dead

Like that one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Buffy returns to the living, but they've already had the funeral service and now she's in a casket 6-feet under.  She had to dig her way out.

I've had the flu for the past 24 hours.  It was, I'm pretty sure, the sickest I've ever been in my entire life.  I won't go into the details, except to say it involved everything you can imagine.  I just woke up at 10:30PM in a pool of sweat, though, after sleeping the entire day, and I feel markedly better.

Baylee had it, too, just as bad as I did, poor baby.  She missed her first piano lesson.

One Day

and maybe close to a hundred times later...

 

Oh, that reminds me!  Baylee starts piano lessons on Friday.  She's pretty darn excited.

School Today

Baylee recently read the biography of a woman named Ann Judson in a book called Children's Missionary Library.  Ann was married to Adoniram Judson, and together they were missionaries to Burma in the early 1800s.  Today Baylee wrote this letter as part of a school assignment:

Dear Mrs. Judson,


I think that you were very brave to go to Burma.  What was it like there?  Are the people nice?  Is it pretty?  Who was the first person you met?  How much did the people appreciate your work?  I think you were very independent when your husband went to jail.  I cried at that part.


Yours Truly,
Baylee

Today during his guitar lesson Drew told his teacher, "Teach me a really, really hard song," and this is what his teacher came up with.  Well, this is the introduction, anyway.  His teacher said it's meant to be played on a banjo, which is why it only uses the bottom four strings.   In this clip Drew plays what he learned today 3 times, because he messes up the first couple.  If facial expressions mean anything, I think this might fit the bill of being a "really, really hard song!"

Happy Birthday, Mike!

We had cake and ice cream and he got a card, but the real birthday celebration will come later this week when we go out for dinner sans kids.

Song Writing and the Dog

About a minute of Drew trying to play me a song he's making up, in spite of the dog's best efforts to distract.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Rainy

I laid in bed last night with the lights out, not sleeping or even trying to sleep, but listening to my audio book.  It's so good that when I take the headphones off I feel like I'm coming back from a journey.  Anyway, that combined with daylight savings = tired today.

At church I was asked to the be the female reader for the Tenebrae service in April.  There's two readers, a man and a woman, who sort of act as narrators between songs sung by the choir.  In the meantime, it's dark in the auditorium, with light only coming from candles that are lit during certain parts and extinguished during others.  The whole program comes together to tell the story of Christ's death, burial, and resurection in a very moving way.  I'm excited to take part...and a little nervous.

It's been a quiet, rainy day here.  Not much has gone on since we got home from church, except that Baylee had a friend over for the afternoon...a new girl from church named Katie.  Her mom died recently (I went to school with her mom.  I knew her, but not well.), so I'm so glad that Baylee is reaching out.

I think that about covers it.

Edited to Add

I just realized in that last post I said football, but I meant basketball.  Oops.  Whatever.  LOL

Quiet Saturday

Mike and the boys left this afternoon to watch football and have dinner with his dad, Danny, on the penninsula.  That means Baylee and I have had the house to ourselves for hours.  It's been heavenly!  It's been quiet.

Why is it that when men give directions it doesn't translate into something a woman can understand?  Today I was looking for a specific store, which Mike told me is "behind Sears," so I literally went behind Sears expecting to find it.  Then I called him.  "Mike, I'm in back of Sears and I'm looking everywhere, but there's no Marshall's.  There are only dumpsters."  Then he said something like, "Honey, there's a road back there!  You have to follow it down around the little hill and Marshall's is right there!"  Sigh.  What, I can read minds now?  How was I supposed to know that's what he meant?

Yesterday I took Baylee to the library, and while I was there I decided that there might be something to these MP3 player audio books.  After all, Baylee seemed to really enjoy the one she got out last time.  I checked out two stories I thought I might like.  Oh my.  Where have audio books been all my life???  Listening to a book has revolutionized housework.  It made it fly by!  Seriously, I'm loving it.

{This Moment}

 

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Family

Yesterday at my Weight Watchers meeting one of women in the group said something like, "We just need to love ourselves exactly where we are right now.  I heard that somewhere, but I can't remember where."

I think I know where she heard it.

"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it!  People like me!"

Now on a totally different note, since I haven't shown old pics of my mom and dad here yet (still loving my scanner!) this was taken when my mom was in college...maybe?  I think it was before I came along, in any case.  Isn't she pretty?  She had red hair.

 

And these are with me.

And here's my dad.  It was hard to find pictures of my dad where his eyes weren't shut or some other thing wasn't going wrong.  My dad is known for taking really bad pictures.  lol  This first one is of the two of us when I was 7 years old.  Incidentally, I don't remember the '70s being quite so yellowish-orange.

And this one was taken when I was in college.  I had a part in a play that night, and my family came to see me.  The guy with the "graying temples" is Mike.  He was in the play, too!  My dad is on the end, and next to me are my brother and sister.

I haven't shown much of my sister, Lindsey, yet, either.  Here she is as a baby that I'm feeding.  You see that end table in the background?  When I was around the age I am in this picture I wanted to get back at my brother for something, so I carved his name in the wood of the tabletop.  I made it really small and I dumbed down my handwriting so that my parents would think he did it, and sure enough a few days later when my mom discovered it all heck broke loose on my poor brother.  I never came out with the truth, either, so that makes this my public disclosure.  There.  I feel better now.  Confession is good for the soul!

 

And here's Lin a little older.  She was a cutie!

Okay, I think I've covered everybody!

What Mike Doesn't Know...

...about what we did to the lawn today can't hurt him!

Drew did a science experiment this morning on erosion.  The pics and video speak for themselves, except I will add that we replaced the grass when we finished.

And here's a 1-minute video of what happens to dirt with and without sod.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Brain Dump

I've got two things I've been meaning to tell you.

1. You remember that owl I saw at the Valero?  Well, come to find out it's a fake, plastic owl.  I figured it out when I went back days later and it was still there.  And then it was there the time after that, too.  I think it's meant to discourage birds from building nests under the rafters.  Would it help to mention that it was dark and raining during the first encounter, or do I just look like a goofus no matter what?     
2.  Baylee and Drew both won awards for basketball.  Baylee got "Team Spirit" and Drew got "Most Improved" for their respective teams.  It was fun, but I'm glad it's done! 

Spiritual Gifts

Today I had to attend another one of those 4 hour meetings for a mission trip this summer.  I mentioned it before, but in case you're not making copious notes of everything I say, this trip is to a sister church up in the mountains.  Several adults and junior highers are going over there for a week to help them put on a VBS for the kids in their church and community.  Anyway, now that I'm aware of what's expected in these meetings and not blindsided by how long they are, it's better.  The time went by pretty quickly and, in fact, the groups I was in charge of didn't get everything done that I would've liked.  Oh well.  We'll get plenty more chances.  We're meeting once a month through May, I think.

One of things we all did during our time together today was take a "spiritual gifts" assessment.  It was mostly for the benefit of the junior high kids, but it was interesting even for the adults.  We had to answer several questions, each worth a certain amount of points, then we had to calculate everything.  Out of a possible 15, I scored a 2 in hospitality.  I think that's about as low as you can get without being Boo Radley.  The little score key down at the bottom of the page said, "You have spiritual gifts, but this isn't one of them."  On the bright side, I scored pretty high in generosity and mercy.  I guess that means if you need something I'd be happy to give it to you.  Just don't come to my house to pick it up.

Innocence Lost

In my lifetime I've been told two horrifying stories.  The first one was related to me many years ago by my aunt.  She said she was sitting in a McDonald's and at a table nearby was an elderly gentleman eating a hamburger.  When he finished his burger my aunt watched him take out his dentures, then methodically lick them clean groove by groove.

I thought that was the most disgusting thing ever...until today.  Today my friend Candace told me something that tops it.  In fact, when I heard this story I think a little piece of my soul went into shock.  Or maybe my psyche was sprained.  No!  I know what happened!  My inner eye was partially blinded.  All I'm saying is after hearing this story a part of me will never be the same.  Here it is: 

One evening about two weeks ago my friend Candace and her daughter Michaela were sitting at their kitchen table, talking quietly together.  Their dog, Breve, was lying on the floor nearby.  Suddenly they heard a very distinct squeaking sound coming from the direction of the dog.  Candace said it sounded like a rodent.  Candace and Michaela both looked over that way, and even the dog half sat up and looked around.  Not seeing anything, though, they went back to talking and the dog laid back down.  Pretty soon it happened again.  "Squeak!" This time it sounded very much like it was actually coming from underneath Breve. They told Breve to get up, thinking maybe she was on top something, but no, she wasn't.  Then they looked all over the room and found nothing there, either.  Finally they made the dog go outside and eventually they forgot all about the invisible mouse.

Today Candace's son Rory finally got around to his cleaning-up-the-dog-poop-in-the-backyard job, and you'll never believe what he discovered.  He found dog poop with an entire mouse skeleton embedded in it.  Their dog had eaten a mouse ALIVE.  And on that night two weeks ago?  They were hearing the mouse squeaking from inside the dog's body.

I feel like I should end this post with, "Now you know the rest of the story."

Because I Can

More old pics.  (I waited a couple days!)  There's no rhyme, reason, or order to these, except they're some favorites from years ago.

3 year old Drew

My brother Eric with newborn Baylee

 

My grandpa

and grandma.  She's 18 years old here.  Isn't she beautiful?

 6 year old Zach and brand new Baylee

 

and 7 year old Zach playing with cars.

brothers

 

This one might be risque.  If so...sorry about that!  I was pregnant with Baylee, and the boys were pretending to be my doctors.

 

Finally, these are pictures I took of Baylee at 3 months old.  I knew I wanted "professional" type pictures, but I thought I could do a better job than Sears.