On any Sunday Reflections 9/30/2012

If you're like me, unversed in motorcross lore, the title of this post has no meaning to you.  But, if you love motorcycles and Steve McQueen then you'll appreciate the classic nature of this shot. 

http://www.sportsflicks.com/products/On-any-Sunday-DVD.html?gclid=CI2_0uvs3bICFYZaMgodOSAAlw

Of course, maybe ours should be titled On Any Saturday for obvious reasons.  One day when Ben and Jordan turn out to be mega superstar motocross/movie stars, like Steve McQueen, you can say you knew them when.

The motorcycle track will be sorely missed when we leave here.

Riley, age 7

Loves to: ride motorcycles, watch TV, play video games, listen to Kenzie read a book, wrestle and swim.

Hates: Scary movies about Africa.  He swears he'll never visit there due to his great fear (thank you Brad) of getting eaten by a tsavo lion.  I tell him never say never...just watch him be asked to serve a mission in Africa :). 

Is always: eating cereal (no wonder I can't seem to put any meat on his bones), building with legos, or playing with Ben.  They're experts at getting the most fun out of the tire swing. 

 

 

 

 

  

Must:  always come in first...He's VERY competitive. 

Wishes: he had a million dollars (me too), had a slinky that never could get tangled up, and that I would give him gum morning, day and night.

Thinks:  Jake can be annoying and bossy sometimes.  (I still think he has a little residual jealousy that Jake took his spot as the youngest.)

Wants to be: a dentist

Has: a great smile that is almost always on his face (Smiley Riley), a kind heart and an ability to get along with everyone.  He's the peacemaker of all my kids.



Sunday Reflections 9/23/2012

With everyone home, there seems to be a lot more messes than usual.  Here's a small sample of ONE day's messes.  See if you can match the messmaker with the mess.

The messes:

#1

#2

#3

#4

The messmakers:

 

A:  Kenzie
 

 

B:  Jake



C:  The Bradinator

D.  Our friendly neighborhood bear

And the answers are (drumroll please)

#1.  B.  Jake is a watermelon fiend.  Jake emptied an entire cookie sheet full of watermelon, by himself, within minutes of waking up that Monday morning.

#2.  C.  Brad working on a little project in the garage.  Never putting his tools away until the end of the job, when one is found missing at some crucial juncture, yells, screams, curses, blaming it always on the children.  Although in his defense they are occassionally found in the yard or on top of his truck.  Yes, Jake does have an afinity for hiding Brad's favorite phillips screw driver from Riley (don't know why) on the top of the cab of his truck.  Luckily, it usually rolls off the cab into the bed of his truck with a loud thump while he drives down the road so he knows Jake has been stashing tools again.

#3  D.  Our friendly, neighborhood black bear working over the garbage can, AGAIN.  This has become a great annoyance for Brad because the garbage cans now live in the garage, which Brad views as an encroachment of his personal garage space.

#4.  A.  Kenzie.  Five minutes after cleaning the watermelon mess, Hurricane McKenzie passes through leaving a path of destruction; crumbs, bananas and peanut butter, strewn all over the kitchen counter.  Brad claims that making the bed in the morning is a waste of time because it only gets messed up again at night.  Maybe he is right and I should apply this philosophy to my kitchen.  The kids mess it up faster than I can clean it.  So why bother?  Oh yeah, the mice.

We celebrated Riley's 7th birthday this last week.  Trying to be frugal, not much was spent on the birthday budget.  The kids, wanting to do their part, created their own gifts for Riley.

From Jake, a favorite toy was selected from his hoard and gifted to his older brother.

Kenzie got creative with a craft book making this:

It's a sea serpent suspended with wire (taken without permission from her father's wire stash in the garage) so that when you move the box, the serpent appears to be swimming. 

Jordan carved Riley a coyote out of wood, fashioned him a belt out of an old bicycle chain and gave him an old multi-tool to go with the cool motorcyle-esque belt.

All impressive gifts.

However, my personal favorite gifts came from Ben.   Our best little builder insists on crafting everything out of wood.  EVERYTHING.

Hieroglyphic interpretation:  Ben + Riley, (BFF painted on the back)  Not sure what purpose he intended for the block other than a written monument of his devotion.  Maybe it could be used as a paperweight?

But wait, that's not all...Oh, no.

That's a bat (he thought it would be wise to label it) and a ball to play baseball with.  A wooden bat (of course) and a ball.  A WOODEN ball, as in a piece of wood carved round and painted white to serve as the other half of the bat and ball set.  Ben has a masterful ability to craft anything he can imagine out of wood scrounged from the yard. 

As for the cake...well, I had some techinical difficulties.  After three tries I finally created this masterpiece:

Just to have this happen five minutes after I took it out of the freezer:  

I served it up before it it split in two potentially swallowing one of the pirates into its icing depths.  Though the fault line down the middle was an eyesore it still tasted great and Riley didn't even notice.

Sunday Reflections 9/16/2012

I made a to do list yesterday.  It makes me laugh to look at the items on the list.  They really give a lot of insight into my life and state of mind currently.  Here's the list:

1.  Empty garbage.

We've had a nightly bear visitor lately.  I haven't seem him (thank goodness!), but I've seen evidence of him.  He leaves a big pile of waste (bear waste that is) to greet us every morning.  He's here for the garbages and the food he can scavenge from them.  I've decided that we must stop feeding him and so, emptying my outside garbages daily has become a necessary daily routine.

2.  Clean cupboards in kitchen

My cupboards are greatly suffering.  I've been letting them go because I keep thinking that any day I will have to pack up and move.  They are so unorganized now that I have no idea what they hold.  I attacked my pantry Friday and my kitchen cupboards today.  I wish I had some before shots, but here are a few of my after shot.  The transformation is amazing.

I feel so much better now that it is done.

3.  Laundry. 

No need for explanations here.  I went into too much depth on that last week.

4.  Take a walk.

The weather has been so nice here.  The sunshine, the crisp air and the cool breeze makes me want to spend my whole day outside but, as there are chores to be done, a walk has to be scheduled.  It's my favorite time of day and the only alone time Brad and I get.

5.  Do my hair and makeup.

You may laugh that this has to be on my to do list, but it is something that needs to be there.  Let me tell you how my day usually goes.  I wake up at 7, exercise for about an hour and quickly take a shower.  By the time I am out of the shower(between 8:30 and 9) my children have started their school day and I am needed at one computer or the other until about 3.  By this time in the day my hair has dried from the shower without having been combed and there's no hope for it but to put it in a braid or pony tail, like this:

I'm glad that I have long hair and can at least do this quick fix me up.  Makeup, at this time of day, seems useless because I'm not going out in public, Brad has been looking at me all day without it and dinner has to be made soon.  So, by the time the weekend rolls around I want to spend more than five minutes combing my hair. 

6.  Read scriptures.

Sometimes it's just a rote read and other times I get more out of the scriptures, but my day always seems to go better when I can find a few minutes to read them and think about Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the plan of salvation.  While I can't claim that reading them has produced great miracles, I can say that when I read them I find that I yell less at my kids and I'm kinder to my husband.  I am more patient with our current situation and I'm reminded of God's love for all mankind.

7.  Make a cheesecake.

I'm having my roommate from college, Kirsten, and her family over for dinner today.  I've lived here almost 19 months and this is the first time I've had the whole family over for dinner.  It should have been done much sooner, but, for some reason, since we've moved here, I've invited very few people over for dinner.  That's what the moving over the past 8 years has done to me.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm glad I get to share a cheesecake.  Friendship always makes things better.

8.  Change dustmop/double edge light saber back to dustmop. 

See the long lightsaber?  That's my dustmop turned light saber.

Nope, I couldn't do it.  Could you?  It's too much fun for my children.  I guess I'll have to do without for...well, maybe forever.  I think I'll work on getting my bedsheets back first.

Sunday Reflections 9/9/2012

The bane of my existance as a mother is laundry.  It is true.  I loathe it.  I can never say it is finished because as soon as I am done, I always have more to do that night. 

The numbers of my laundry perplex me...especially Ben's laundry.  Let me tell you why by giving you a simple mathematical story problem to work out. 

Chelsey does the laundry 3 times a week.  On Tuesday (laundry day1), as she's folding clothes, she notices that Ben's pile has 10 pair of shorts, 4 pairs of jeans, five shirts and several underwear and socks.  On Thursday (laundry day 2), as she's folding clothes, she notices that Ben's pile has 6 pair of shorts, 2 pair of jeans, 20 shirts, 1 sweatshirt and several underwear and socks.  On Saturday (laundry day 3), as she's folding clothes, she notices that Ben's pile has 12 pair of shorts, 4 jeans and 12 shirts along with several socks and underwear.  If we assume all of the clothes that are put through the laundry were dirty upon entering the washing machine, what is the average number of pair of shorts, jeans and shirts Ben wears per day?

Well, we know there are only 7 days in a week.  We know for the week the number of shorts washed for Ben were 28, the number of jeans washed for Ben were 10 and the number of shirts washed for Ben were 37.  That's 4 pairs of shorts per day, 1 3/7 pair of jeans per day, and 5 2/7 shirts worn per day.

I wonder as I'm doing laundry is he really wearing that much clothing per day or is he just dumping out clean clothes onto his floor as he searches for his favorite shirt to wear, leaving those clean clothes there on the floor and then putting every piece of clothing into the laundry when I ask him to pick his room up nightly?  My recent observations of his clothing trends tend to lead me to believe the latter. 

On a separate note I fixed my dishwasher.  I feel like supermom when I do things like this.  It was making a grinding noise when it was supposed to drain.  Brad wasn't home to fix it and I can't live without my dishwasher, so I got online, googled my question and found the solution.  It was the impeller wheel (I bet you don't even know what an impeller wheel is) giving me all the trouble.  It had something stuck in it.  Guess what it was?  Oh yes, a lego.  *sigh*  No wonder it was grinding.

I had to play the organ in sacrament meeting this week.  Yes, I kind of know how to play.  I got roped into it years ago when our ward didn't have an organist and I was one of two who played the piano.  Anyhow it's been years since I've played the organ and I had to practice a lot.  The keys are so much more sensitive than the piano and the sound so much louder.  Any little bump and the organ let's out a big honk.  Fingering is so important and I practiced and practiced and practiced.  I practiced so much that my thumbs, from perching (that's a fancy word for putting your thumbs on their side that I recently learned from teaching my kids piano), are sore. 

And, finally, it's invasion of the dolls at our house.  They've taken over the guest bathroom as their headquarters.  They're grooming; you know, bathing, washing their hair, changing clothes.  Ocassionally there's been attacks from outsiders and they've had to rally together to fight off the enemy.  No barbie likes to lose a head.

Sunday Reflections 9/2/2012

As the majority of our week now revolves around the online schooling process taking place in our home I figured today's post would be the perfect time to present to you the Pros and Cons of online schooling:

Cons:

• It takes much more of my time than I expected it to.  To be fair, it would be much easier if I only had one or two enrolled in the program.  I don't.  I have four.  Riley needs me most of the time he is doing his school work.  Kenzie and Ben sometimes need me for their schoolwork.  Jordan would need me very little, except that he has decided that the way I present his pre-algebra is much more easy to understand than the computer.  So, I do teach him his pre-algebra daily.  I guess that's what I get for majoring in math.  So, when all is said and done, I am spending the whole day helping one child or another.  I feel like I have a full-time job again...albeit better than a full time teaching job because I don't have 30+ papers to grade when I get home and I can leave school behind when it is finished because I don't have to plan the next day's, week's or month's lessons.  Yet, on the other hand, the students do come home with me..... 
• As a result of all that is written in the above point, I don't have near enough time to spend with Jake.  Luckily, for now, we have our daddy home and he is making up for some of that.
• None of us like being on the computer as long as we are.  It makes us feel like zombies and I, when I have to be on it a lot with them, get VERY GROUCHY.  That's why I forewent last week's posting, my tolerance for the computer was non-existant by Sunday.
• My kids all miss their social circles. 

 Pros:

• There is no homework, ever.  Maybe I should say that it's all homework.  I guess that could be a pro or con depending if you're a glass half-empty person or a glass half-full.
• My kids start at 9 and are usually done by 2 every day.  Sometimes, we do take a little longer, but we have never exceeded the hours that they spend in school on a daily basis when they are actually in school.
• I'm learning along with them.  It's amazing how much we forget as we get older.
• We can pace ourselves.  If we want to go ahead a lesson to get more time for the next day we can.  Both Ben and Jordan were able to go on a dirtbike ride with their dad this week because they were able to work a day ahead.  That's pretty cool.
• I can work on the little things that I feel they need to improve on whether it's handwriting, or reading aloud, or neatly organizing your math paper so your teacher can read and follow what you've done.
• My kids are actually bonding. 

Onto other random topics:

LEGOS! I find them everywhere. This one below was found in my dryer. I don't know why I took a picture of it, but I did and so I'm putting it in my post.  I've mentioned my love/hate relationship with legos before but every time I clean the house I swear I won't buy another set...and yet, guess what I bought for Riley's birthday coming up?

Jacob has invisible shoes, or so he informs me.  He wears them almost every day outside because he can't ever find a pair of his 5 pairs of shoes that he owns.

 If I insist that the shoes must be seen to allow him out of the house he usually comes to me with one of his sibling's shoes on. This day the shoes on his feet just happened to be his sisters.  In footwear, I think he's going for the batman look here.

And finally, just how far do we go to catch and eradicate mice from our vehicles?

As far as necessary.  We're serious about the business of catching mice here.  No car shall remain intact if one has been found to be roaming within.  Now, if only these two can remember how to put the puzzle pieces back together.... 

And yes, Brad is going for the Chuck Norris look.