Misc. Stuff

I took this picture before the Tim Hawkins show started.  The kid on the end is Drew's friend, Ethan, who came with us.  Also in that same row with us, but unpictured, were several other church friends.  I think there were 10 or 11 of us altogether.

Yesterday Mike rented a machine and deep cleaned every carpet in the house as a birthday present to me, because it's what I wanted.  Is that a weird thing to want for my birthday?  *shrug*  For Mother's Day I'm gonna see if I can get the windows cleaned.  lol  Anyway, I've got a great husband.  I'm lucky. And here's a picture of Drew trying to find a dry place to sit when the carpets were all damp.

Finally, Baylee made this little video about what people think they look like when they dance, compared to what they really look like.

Tim Hawkins Show

Last night Mike, Zach, Drew, and I went to see a Tim Hawkins show.  It was great!  He was hilarious.

Of note:

There was a double complete rainbow exactly over the mega-church where we went to see Tim.  It was so vivid!  What does this mean?!  (Honestly, this still makes me laugh.  I think that might say something bad about me.)

Also, we sat in front of the most obnoxiously loud laugher/clapper in the history of Christianity.  Her laugh pierced eardrums and her clap was like a gunshot.  (Hey, I think I just came up with the perfect epitaph for her tombstone.)

This is Tim Hawkins, by the way.  He's a comedian.

Unsocialized Homeschooler and Favorite Songs

Last night at church Baylee got into a conversation about phones with another girl around her age.  Baylee said that she wished she had a phone, and the other girl replied, "Why?  You're homeschooled.  You don't have any friends to call anyway."  Ouch.  Baylee was able to laugh it off eventually, and when she got back home made this little video about it:

(It's a little hard to understand, but at the end she said, "Time to go back to playing Minecraft and watching Dr. Who!")

Does anyone else categorize their favorite songs as Favorite Right Now and Favorite of All Time?

Here's my favorite right now.  It's been out for more than a year, I think, but as usual I'm late to the party.  It makes me want to dance, and I don't dance.

And here's my favorite of all time.  The first time I ever heard it I cried.  I was in the car and tears were streaming down my face.  lol  I probably looked like a weirdie.  PS:  The whole song is great, but the best part starts at 2:45 and goes from there.

A Song and Some Whitewash

We got a new washing machine, which plays a cheerful little tune every time it finishes a load.  It's like living with Snow White!

In other news, lately Baylee's been having a lot of trouble with allergies, so she's been scratching her eyes quite a bit.  Yesterday she hurt one of her eyes somehow with all that scratching and had to splash cool water in it for awhile before it felt better.  It reminded me of something that happened to me a long time ago:

The summer before my freshman year of college I worked at a dairy farm.  It was a neat place, and I really enjoyed that job.  Mostly I worked outside cutting the grass, cleaning windows, working in the barn...whatever they needed.  At one point they had me whitewash the walls of the huge milking room.  Whitewash is made out of lime, which is a base, and water, and you really, really shouldn't get it in your eyes.  It's obvious what happened, right?  I was rolling this stuff onto the walls and a single drop flew off the roller and landed right on my eyeball.  I ended up having to go to the med center, because it was causing a chemical burn that hurt like crazy.  They made me lie down on a bed, facing up, then they had somebody hold my eye open while someone else ran a constant stream of water over it.  This lasted 20 minutes, AKA an eternity.  It was awful.  It was like Chinese water torture's slightly meaner cousin.   Then I had to wear a patch, like a doofus, for 24 hours, and put medicine drops in my eye several times a day for a week or so.  

On a slightly related note, one day while I was working at that farm I got to see a calf being born.    

Grouchy

I finally got around to my six-month checkup at the dentist today.  (I was supposed to go awhile back, but then I had the sinus thing, so I rescheduled.)  Here's what I was envisioning before I went:

Dentist:  Wow!!!  You've been flossing, haven't you?!
Me:  Yes, I have.  I've flossed [almost] every day for the past six months.
Dentist:  Well, that's obvious!  Your teeth look amazing!  In fact, you can go.  There's nothing we can do to improve what you've got going on in there.

That is so not what happened, though.  Instead, I had the most painful teeth-cleaning experience ever.  The hygienist who did it is bad at her job, I think.  Either that or she's a sadist, in which case she's really good at her job.  Oh!  And then, to top it off, I ended up having to get a couple little fillings.  I mean, what???  Why am I even bothering to floss???  It's obviously useless.

Potty Training

Zach and Drew had to be forced to potty train.  They didn't want to.  They were completely satisfied with their diapered selves and didn't see any need to change...so to speak.  Of the two boys, though, Zach was the more compliant when it came time to learn.  He had just turned three and had a large vocabulary, so I was able to explain to him plainly what I wanted.  I told him, "Okay, buddy, for the next couple of days you're going to wear a shirt, but no pants.  If you have to go potty, go here in the toilet.  I DON'T want my carpets getting dirty."  He did great.  I don't think he had a single accident.

Since the experience with Zach went well, I thought I'd try the same thing with Drew when he turned three.  I gave him my spiel about the carpets and assumed we were on the same wavelength.  I assumed wrong.  He proceeded to poop and pee with happy abandon all over the place.  Not only that, but he'd walk back through it afterward.  I put up with this less than a day before I stuck a diaper back on him, and I didn't even consider potty training again until several more months had gone by.  At first it seemed like it wasn't going to work any better than it had before, but then I got an idea.  I made two big, weird-looking eyes out of construction paper, and I taped them on the toilet seat, so that the hole in the seat looked like a huge, gaping mouth.  I told Drew, "Hey, this is the potty monster!  Guess what you get to do!  You get to feed him and give him drinks!"  (Don't judge.)  It worked like a charm, which was lucky, because Drew was already wearing the largest Pampers they made.  He would've had to move on to Depends.

Maybe you're thinking, okay, that didn't sound too bad, and you'd be right.  Training the boys was fairly painless and I thought I had it pretty good.  Then it was Baylee's turn and I learned what good really was.  Here's how it went down with her:

One day I dropped her and her diaper bag off in the church nursery.  After church I went to pick her up, and the nursery worker said, "We noticed you forgot to pack any underpants for her."

I was confused.  "What do you mean?  She wears diapers.  They're in the bag."

"She's not potty trained?"

"No..."

Then the worker explained what happened.  Apparently Baylee wandered into the bathroom and watched another toddler using the tiny toilet they had in there.  When the other child was finished Baylee took her own diaper off, threw it in the garbage, sat down on the toilet herself, and acted like an old pro.  She looked so natural that the worker assumed she'd been doing it for ages.  And that was that.  She had trained herself.

I could end with, "And that, in a nutshell, is the difference between boys and girls," but I won't.

(It kind of is, though.)

Weekend

We had the type of busy weekend that was mostly fun.  Here's a lot of what happened in bullets:

• The boys studied for and took a few tests, because I have to send in grades and work for the 3rd quarter to the school today. 
• The boys had Kian over for an anime marathon.
• Baylee had a swimming lesson.
• Baylee went a friend's house, and they surprised her by taking her to an indoor fun center with rides and games.
• Baylee was unexpectedly invited to see a high school production of Grease with a neighbor down the road.  She's a mom and a high school Spanish teacher, and their family really likes Baylee.  (Of course, she gave Baylee the 3rd degree about homeschooling on the ride over and back.  lol  Sigh.  ["But what about standardized testing??"]  I have to look at it this way:  If it has to keep happening, I'm glad it happens mostly to Baylee.  She's a great little homeschooling ambassador.)
•  Drew was spur-of-the-moment invited to go see Divergent with his friend Nick.  He hadn't even showered yet from his anime marathon, so I heard him talking to Nick on the phone and saying, "Hold on!  Just let me stick my head under the sink and get cleaned up!  I'll be ready by the time you get here!"
• Baylee and I taught the 4's and 5's at church.  Incidentally, this conversation happened between two of the little girls in the class:

1st girl:  I'm five and a half.
2nd girl:  Me, too.
1st girl:  I think I'm still older than you. How many days have you been five and a half?
2nd girl:  A hundred and twenty.
1st girl:  I've been five and a half for one hundred and seventy days.
2nd girl:  Well, I've been five and a half for two years!

• I finally watched Frozen on DVD.

What We're Reading in School Lately

We're in the middle of a few good books in our school lately.  Baylee is reading two books right now for her history class, both of them about the Civil War.

This one takes place during the war...

And this one is set in that time right after the war, when things were still very emotionally painful for both sides...

On Friday Drew finished The Hiding Place.  Of all the books they've had to read and study as part of their high school English classes, this was the favorite of both of the boys.  It's riveting.  If you've never read it, you should.

And on Monday Zach will start Silas Marner for his British Lit course.  I read it in high school myself, and I remember enjoying it, but I'm hazy about the details.  It must not be a very long book, because Zach's class has him getting through it in about a week.

  

Saturday

I had the weirdest thing happen at the grocery store today.  I was walking down an aisle and there was an elderly woman in one of those motorized carts coming from the other direction.  I smiled at her, she smiled back, and then she said something to me.  I thought maybe she wanted me to get an item off one of the shelves for her, so I stopped, kinda bent down, and said, "What was that?"  She beamed at me, repeated herself, kissed her finger, and then...wait for it...planted her finger right on my lips!  I did not see that coming.  It was wet and lipsticky, too.  I still didn't know what she said or wanted, but I was like, "Okay...well...good then!  You have a nice day, too!" and I hightailed it out of there.

A Book Recommendation

Recently I was thinking about how crazy I was when I first had Zach.  I don't know how else to put it, except to say that having a newborn baby really threw me for a loop for awhile.  It wasn't postpartum depression or anything; it was more just a terrifying realization of responsibility.  I remember lying in bed on that first night after we brought him home and thinking, "What have we done???  Now we have to try to keep this child alive for the next eighteen years!"  To that end, I did some really wacky things, like checking on him every two seconds.  If he made a sound, I checked him.  If he didn't make a sound, I checked him. I even had a flashlight to help me with all my checking duties.  Basically, those first weeks were a long drive through Kooksville, and I lost a lot of sleep...even more than normal new parents do.  That's when I first started getting gray hairs, too. 

During that time (well, at the very beginning of it, anyway) I was also trying to nurse.  Can you guess how that went?  Yeah.  It was a huge fail.  In my defense it wasn't totally my fault.  I tried.  I went to a class while I was still pregnant, and I walked out of there as ignorant as when I went in.  I also tried to get assistance from the nurses while I was in the hospital after giving birth.  They were not helpful.  All they ever said was that I needed to try the football hold.  If there was a Football Hold Club, they'd be VIP members.  If there was a cartel, they'd be lords.  "Try the football hold!  Have you tried the football hold?!  You need to try the football hold!"  The football hold didn't work any better than any other kind of hold, and I ended up giving Zach a bottle within a week.

When I was pregnant with my second baby I was on a mission:  learn to nurse.  There was no way I wanted us to have to pay $8 every three days for a canister of formula again.  One day I was wandering through a used bookstore, and I happened upon an old La Leche League book with a 70s-era orange cover and the dumbest name ever.  In fact, looking back, I'm surprised the name wasn't an automatic deal breaker.  It was called The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding.  Ack, right?  Despite that I bought it, read it, and realized it was the answer.  There were diagrams!  There were step-by-step instructions!  It made me believe I could do it.

And I did do it.  I had no trouble nursing both Drew and Baylee from each of their first days on.  I even got good at helping other new moms learn to nurse their babies.  In fact, I can still, years later, explain breastfeeding in a way anyone can understand.  It's almost like one of my spiritual gifts now.

Incidentally, there are three things in life I'm freakishly good at teaching people:

• how to ride a bike
• how to swim
• how to breastfeed

So if anyone ever needs advice on any of those, say the word.  I'm your woman.  Or, if you prefer, you can just read The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, although that won't do much for you in terms of bike riding or swimming.  Also, don't ask me how to do the football hold, because I never did get the hang of it.

Cats

Last night two cats got into a fight in our front yard.  (Thankfully neither of them was Cooper, as I'm very sick of paying vet bills.  Plus I like Cooper and don't want him to get hurt.)  I looked out the window and saw this confrontation while it was still at the let's-circle-each-other-and-make-weird-noises stage, so I was watching when the cats first attacked.  You know that saying, "Fur was flying?"  Well, come to find out, that can actually happen.  As soon as the cats made contact fur flew in a big puff and landed in clumps on the deck.  That's when I called Zach to help me.  I held Gibbs back, since he was freaking completely out, and Zach opened the door and scared the cats away.  This morning there's still fur on the deck:

Speaking of cats, I took these pictures of Cooper the other day when he was relaxing on Baylee's mattress.  He didn't seem to mind that all her bedding was in the process of being changed.

In other news, look how nice the weather was when I went out to take the picture of the cat fur!

 (That didn't last, though.  Soon it became cold and rainy again.)

Finally, on a completely unrelated note, I've lost 5 pounds so far with Nutrisystem:  3 the first week and 2 this past week.

#I'veBeenHit #GoOnWithoutMe

 Dear Blog,

Today one of the boys was being the class clown during geometry.  (I won't say which one, but he's 15.)  Basically, he made a nuisance of himself, despite getting into trouble, until finally the unthinkable happened:

He laughed one more time, and something flew out of his head.  For real.  I'm not trying to be figurative.  Something actually came out of his face, shot across the table like a missile, and landed in my hair.  I screamed and ran to the kitchen to grab a washcloth and scrub myself.  Meanwhile, the boys calmly sat and enjoyed the break from polygons.

"Wow," Zach mused.  "The worst part is that I saw the entire thing happen.  I watched that spit fly all the way over."

"No, that's not the worst part," replied Drew.  "The worst part is that it didn't come out of my mouth.  It came out of my nose."

Signed,
Booger in My Hair

PS:  Is caning still a thing?

Monday

I wasn't exactly hiding it from her, but I also didn't tell Baylee that she's behind in a few different subjects.  My reasoning was that she's not behind in the things that matter most for end-of-year standardized testing, and we can use the summer to finish the rest.  Well, she figured it out today, and she's not having any of that plan.  Instead, she's mapped out her own plan to get everything done on time.  I should've just let her know sooner and counted on her (somewhat OCD-ish) self-motivation to deal with it.  lol

So far today we had bright sunshine streaming through the windows, then we had hail, and now it's pouring rain.  What's next?

(One time we got a car from some friends.  They sold it to us because they weren't using it.  In fact, it had been parked under an oak tree in their yard with its windows partially cracked for a long time.  The first time Mike drove it he experienced several seasons in a row coming out of the heater vents:  First dry leaf pieces started flying everywhere [fall], then wet, dead leaves and a few dead bees sputtered out [winter], finally warm air blew [summer].)

Conversation between Zach, Drew, and me...

Zach:  Dogs come with three traits:  intelligence, obedience, and good looks.  When you pick a dog, you can't expect to get all three in one dog.  You can really only expect to get two.
Drew:  Which two does Gibbs have?
Zach, Drew, and Me:  [staring at each other, not saying a word]
Me:  Wait a minute...Gibbs only has one!  We got robbed!

Last night at youth group the kids played kickball.  One of the rules was that it was an automatic home run if you could kick the ball through the basket of the basketball hoop on the other side of the gym.  Drew did it, which is crazy and not something he could probably ever duplicate.  Besides the home run, he was given this crown.  It says "Bank-Shot-a-Palooza," because the ball banked off the backboard before it went through the hoop.  (Another kid did it once, and that time it was all net.  His crown said "Swish-a-Palooza.")

Dream

Disclaimer:  Mike and I have been married for 20 years, and we're at the point where we don't really argue.  We get irritated sometimes and maybe say a couple things, but that's about it.   

Last night I had a dream that Mike and I got into an argument while we were in bed, and I was so furious that I decided to sleep on the floor next to the bed.  Later, but still during the night, I woke up.  My first thought was, "Am I on the floor?"  When I figured out I wasn't, my second thought was, "WAS I on the floor, and did I get back in bed?"  Finally I decided it was all a dream.

Just to the sure, though, during church today I texted Mike, who was back in the sound booth:

I had the weirdest dream last night that we got in a fight, and I moved onto the floor to sleep because I was so mad.  That didn't really happen, did it?

He said he didn't think so.

Well, good.  That's settled then.

Bullets

• Baylee started swimming lessons back up again after a 9-month break.  She was very nervous, because she was afraid she wouldn't be able to keep up, stamina-wise.  Those high level swimming classes are nonstop.  She did okay, though.  She was totally exhausted by the end, but she managed.
• I still have this weird, awful pain in my mouth.  I don't think I mentioned here that I'm pretty sure it is related to sinuses like the dentist suspected.  (When she first told me that, I admit, I had thoughts of "Okay, quack, whatever you say" going through my head.)  I've been taking a lot of Sudafed and Ibuprofen, and that helps, but I have a bad feeling that the only thing that will solve it is antibiotics.  I hate taking antibiotics, though, because I have such a bad reaction to them.  Depending on the family of drugs, I either get a terrible rash or I get sick.
• This is probably way TMI, but one time, after I took antibiotics for 10 days, I...actually...never mind.  My filter just blinked on.
• It was Mike's birthday yesterday!  We're going out on a date tonight to celebrate.
• I'm half-heartedly looking at curriculum for next year, mostly because homeschool catalogs are starting to arrive in the mail.  I'm actually really happy with what we're doing and can't imagine changing course.
• There are so many I's in this.  I this and I that.  Yuck.  But I'm tired and don't feel like going back and making better, less me-centered sentences, so you'll have to deal with it.

{This Moment}

{this moment}

A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

 (The "This Moment" theme comes from Soulemama's blog.  Check her out!)

Censored

Baylee is studying American history this year, and part of that is learning a bunch of songs about our country.  Some of them are classics like "America, the Beautiful" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and some are fun little folk songs.  Today Baylee and I were talking, and she casually mentioned that one of those folk songs has a swear word in it.

"Really?  Which one?" I asked.

"Old Paint."

"How does it go?"

"It says, 'I ride an old paint, I lead an old damn.  I'm going to Montana to throw the hoolihan."

I went and looked it up, of course, just out of curiosity.  "Baylee!  This doesn't say 'old damn!'
It says 'old Dan!'  He's a cowboy.  That's the name of his horse."

Baylee was relieved.  "Ooooooh!  You mean I've been singing 'I lead an old dang' all this time for nothing?"

Fun Improv

Tonight Drew and I were doing some English...diagramming sentences with gerunds...and the exact second we were finished he was out of his seat and off like a shot.  He couldn't leave fast enough.  (Weird, right?  Who doesn't love diagramming???)  Pretty soon I heard him in his room playing something kinda cool, so I went in there and found him messing around with something he discovered online recently:  backing tracks.  They're just rhythm guitar and drums, played in a certain style, that you can add your own part on top of.  Here he is improvising with a track called "Heavy Metal Backing Track in E Minor."

 

 

School Today

More than ever lately homeschooling has been the top priority of my day.  Sometimes I go through spells where, once in awhile, I let other things come first...things like special events, volunteer opportunities, or just plain fun.  That's okay.  One of the great things about homeschooling is the flexibility.  We're coming up on the home stretch of this school year, though, the final marking period, and everything must be completed...at least for Zach.  (For the other two kids it's not quite as important, since they can finish up over the summer.)  Because school such a big priority, sometimes it can be stressful.  Today started out stressful.

Two different kids bugged the crud out of me:  Zach, for insisting on his own timetable, and Baylee, for having an I-know-everything attitude.  I admit, I got my freak on more than once.   Around 11:00, though, Zach and I sat down at the dining room table together and I read aloud The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  Have you ever read it?  It's a poem and it's LONG.  It took about an hour to get through the whole thing and for us to talk about it.  You know what, though?  Weirdly, that turned the entire day around for me.  The poem itself is interesting, and spending that time learning something new with Zach was enjoyable.  If you've never read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I recommend it.  It's strange, it has a moral, and it includes zombies.  Oh, and it's free on Kindle.

The Splits

Baylee is teaching herself how to do the splits.  Why?  Just because.  To that end, she found a video on YouTube which has her doing about 10 minutes of specific stretches, and she does it every night.

She's been taking her own progess pictures, by the way, so this is where so was when she started about two weeks ago:

And here's where she is now:

 

She's getting there!

Monday

 I went to the dentist this morning to see about this pain, and I found out it's...drumroll...nothing.  Or, at least, it's nothing they can see on an x-ray.  The dentist said it might be sinus trouble.  Sigh.  I don't know what to think about that, because, in the meantime, I'm still in a ton of pain.  I can't bite down on that side at all anymore and cold/hot kills.   I guess I'll just wait and see if it goes away.

I'm so happy with how school went today!  In fact, I'm really pleased with how it's been going lately in general.  One thing that's making it much nicer is that I decided to combine the boys for geometry.  For a long, long time I didn't think that was a very good idea, but finally I broke down.  Having to teach it twice a day...every day...day after day...month after month...pretty much sucked my will to live.  We started combining about a week ago, and come to find out it works beautifully!  And just that one change cuts about forty-five minutes to an hour out of my work day.

Drew taught himself how to play the theme song to the show King of the Hill.  Have you seen this show?  Both Zach and Drew love it, and they've seen every episode more than once.  In fact, Zach can do a perfect Hank Hill impression.

But the really big news is that Baylee finally memorized the section of the "I Have a Dream" speech that I assigned to her!  Here she is saying it, with just a couple little bobbles...

Sunday

Well, I'm definitely going to have to call the dentist's office tomorrow morning, instead of waiting until my regular check-up on Tuesday.  I'm just hurting too much.  Eating and drinking is the absolute worst.  The hot or the cold of it makes that whole side of my head...tooth, ear, even neck...miserable.  I think this might need a root canal.

Did I ever tell you about the only other time I had to get a root canal?  Actually, I think it was the exact same tooth, but on the other side.  Anyway, I had the root canal, but it didn't work.  Did you know that was even a possibility?  Well, it is.  I ended up having to go back for oral surgery.  Beforehand they gave me literature on what they'd be doing, complete with diagrams, and I'm pretty much scarred to this day from looking at those.  To give you an idea of what those pictures showed:  They go in by opening up and peeling back the gums and dealing with the roots of the tooth through there.  You're welcome.

Alright, I'm off.  I've got to get this house cleaned and help Baylee with a history lesson.

Saturday

I've had a toothache for a few days, but now it's really starting to hurt.  Ugh.  It's even more of a bummer than usual, because, since my last dentist's check-up, I've been religious about flossing.  That should earn me a get-out-of-cavity-free card, don't you think?  Luckily my next 6-month appointment happens to be on Tuesday, so I'll hang in there until then.

Today at the grocery store I heard, "Hi!" from behind me, I turned around, and there was a family that I knew I should recognize, but didn't.  So what did I do?  I said, "Hi!  Out getting your grocery shopping done?"  Wow.  What kind of a stupid question was that?

They replied, "Yup!"

And then I said, "Yeah, me, too!"  [face palm]

It's a good thing Baylee was with me, because after they were out of earshot she let me know that they're people who live in our neighborhood.  We've had their daughter over to play, as a matter of fact.  Sigh.

I kept meaning to mention here that one evening a couple weeks ago a terrible thing happened right outside the door of the SofR.  Some teenaged kid tried to steal the cell phone of a middle-aged man (neither of these people had anything to do with the SoR, by the way.  They just happened to be right in that area.), and the middle-aged man refused.  Then, when the teen started to walk away, the man called 911 on that cell phone.  The teen turned back around, saw that the man was calling the police, and he shot him.  The man, while still on the phone with 911, collapsed about 20 feet away from the SofR door.  The teenager ran off.  Scotty, who runs the front office, and a dad of a student immediately went out there.  They were the first on the scene, in fact, but the man was already dead.

It's been such a sad and shocking thing for everyone involved in the SofR, because the man died, but also because it happened in what's actually a really nice part of Seattle.  It brings home the fact that crime can happen anywhere.  One neat thing:  The school had a big rehearsal that night, but for some reason they let the kids out ten minutes early.  (They never do that.  In all the time we've been there, it's never happened even one time.)  If it wasn't for that, the kids would've been pouring out the doors right as the man was getting shot.  I was talking to Scotty about it the other day, and he called it "serendipitous."  I guess that's one way to put it.  I think I'd call it God's intervention.

PS:  Drew wasn't there that night.  This was a rehearsal for a different show.

PPS:  The police caught the teen.

Friday

A couple days ago Baylee went out into our yard and took these pictures.  Spring is here!

In other news, I got the frozen food part of my Nutrisystem order today.

The frozen stuff is supposed to be really good, but I've actually enjoyed even the nonfrozen food I've had so far.  I'm halfway through day 3, and it's been pretty easy.  The only thing that's taken some getting used to is the smaller portion sizes.

The frozen food comes in a cooler with dry ice, so, of course, the kids had to play with it.  (They were safe.  They handled it with tongs.)

Happy Friday!

Makes Me Laugh and Nutrisystem Day 1

Genius #1...

Genius #2...

And this...

Okay, as far as Nutrisystem Day 1...and by the way, I won't be talking about it every day, don't worry...it's going well!  The program is really simple.  Every day you eat a Nutrisystem breakfast, lunch, supper, and dessert.  To breakfast you add a power fuel.  That's a fancy way of saying a protein.  Between breakfast and lunch you have a mid-morning snack, made up of another power fuel.  Then you have lunch.  Around mid-afternoon you have a snack made of a power fuel and a smart carb.  (That means a healthy carbohydrate.)  Then there are dinner and dessert.  Somewhere in the day you need to fit in at least 4 vegetable servings and 8 cups of water.  You're also supposed to exercise.   To make it easy, they give you list of all the power fuels and smart carbs you can choose from, and there are several.  They also tell you the PF and SC serving sizes.

They want you to track what you're doing, so here's my day.  I've already filled it all out, but so far I've only gotten through lunch.

Breakfast:  double chocolate muffin; 1/2 cup cottage cheese; tea
Snack:  hard-boiled egg
Lunch:   loaded baked potato; 1 cup steamed cauliflower  (1 cup of cooked veggies counts as 2 vegetable servings)
Snack:  1 stick of string cheese and 2 really small oranges
Dinner:  chicken tortilla soup; 1 cup steamed snap peas
Dessert:  pound cake

That means that as of right now I've had the double chocolate muffin and the loaded baked potato.  Both were delicious.  For real. 

Dentist and Diet

I had to get up at 5:30 this morning (i.e. the middle of the night) in order to have the boys at the dentist at 7:00.  When I picture places I'd like to be at 7AM, the dentist's waiting room isn't on the list.  In fact, it's on a whole different list.

Zach went first, and while he was being worked on Drew fell sound asleep sitting in the chair across from me.  *snicker*

The whole thing took an hour and a half (ugh), but on the bright side both boys are cavity-free.

I got my Nutrisystem food this afternoon!...all but the frozen stuff, that is.  That gets shipped separately, in a cooler-type thing with dry ice.  It should be here in the next couple days.  Here's what came today...

I'm on the plan that lets you make all your own choices, so my diet is heavy on chocolate.

And here it all is after I put it away.  My stuff is on the left side.  I used a couple of the partitions from the box to keep the breakfasts and desserts in, because they don't stack as well as the lunches and dinners.

I can start even without the frozen foods, so I'll do that tomorrow.  (I'm still freakishly excited!)

Sunday

At the basketball banquet last night Baylee ended up getting "Most Super Improved Player," which she was really happy with.  Rachel got the "Not-in-My-House Defense Award," and she loved that.  Both girls are bummed that the season is over.

On my mind:  I may have the loudest house around.  It's just always noisy over here.  People are on computers, they're watching the TV or the iPad, or they're talking or singing or playing the guitar.  Most of the time I don't even hear it all anymore, but sometimes it's a bit too much and my ears kinda hurt.  #HavingAnEarsHurtMoment

Did I mention that my Nutrisystem food arrives on Tuesday?!  I've already done the grocery shopping I need to do to supplement the program (fresh fruits and vegetables, some low-fat dairy) and at some point I'll have to clear out a bit of cupboard and freezer space.  Then I'll be all ready to start on Wednesday.  Yay!

 

Saturday

Today the girls played their last basketball game, and tonight...in just a little while...we're going to an award banquet.  Baylee is sure she's going to get "Best Team Spirit," which, she says, is the award they give the worst person on each team.  LOL  We'll see what happens.

I was up until 2:30 watching a documentary/reality series about a boarding school in Oregon for kids who are trying to become elite and/or professional snowboarders, skiiers, and skateboarders.  (It's actually a "boarding" school in the sense that the kids live there.  It's not just because they skateboard and stuff.)  After watching what I've watched so far, I'm convinced that, even if we did have a kid with talent in that area, and even if we did have a ton of money, I'd never send him or her to that school.  In every episode someone gets really hurt.  So far there's been a broken collarbone, a concussion where the girl was completely knocked out, and tons of little spills.  I mean, what in the world?