Last Night's Legos

Brett and I are always lamenting over the number of Legos littering the basement floor. I always swear that I will never buy another Lego present again, but when that is all they have on their list for Christmas and birthdays I cave in and the basement fills with more of the teeny tiny pieces that pierce feet and jam the vacuum.

Curse you Lego Factory!!!!

Whatever happened to the good old days when Legos were a decent size, had a reasonable chance of staying together and could not disappear in the carpet to be sucked up by the vacuum to be forever lost? Who is the brain child behind today's Legos?

Well, last night we decided to turn a negative into a positive and have a Family Home Evening competition... I mean activity with Legos.

Each of us took a turn as the judge and choose a category. Some of the categories chosen were house, robot, vegetable, jet, and pizza. The person who chose the category was the judge and the rest were given 3 minutes to build with the Legos in the center of the table. May I say that 3 minutes was not enough (for me that is.)

Here are some of the results from last night:

In the vegetable category:

My lettuce..

no... I did not win.

Wannabe's vegetable garden (note that it has a spy camera)

In the pizza category:

Brett's pizza is being eaten by a creature who is in turn being eaten by Brett.

My pizza... (also pretty sad)

Smiley's pizza...

In the jet category:

Brett's jet...

My jet (I was pretty proud of this one as I managed to score a windshield and a creepy skeleton pilot... until Smiley pointed out that my jet element was on backwards making my jet go in reverse... not so cool)

In the robot category:

Wannabe's robot...

Sheriff's robot...

In the boat category:

Giggles' boat..

Brett's boat...

Judging was very hard as is evidenced by the look on Giggles' face...

It was a great activity and I ALMOST like Legos now. Unfortunately we had to send them back downstairs afterwards where I know they will soon litter the basement floor again. -sigh-

Thankful

I'm not always thankful for the things my boys do.

Like when my younger boys come down the stairs every morning already arguing, "stop looking at me," "well you stop looking at me!" And then continue at the breakfast counter, "you're chewing too loud and it's annoying," "no it's not," "yes, it is!"

I wish I could say this was an infrequent occurrence. But it is not.

I hear it every day.

Then there is the basement covered in Legos, dirty socks, light sabers, video games not put away and Pokemon cards scattered around the room.

I could also mention the boys poking each other in the car.

But I won't.

Or the rock throwing in the back yard.

But I won't bring that up either.

No, I'm not always thankful for the naughty things my boys do but without the arguing, scattered toys, stinky socks, poking and rock throwing - what would I have?

A house without boys.

And that would be unbearable.

Reflections

Yes, it is that time of year again. Time for the annual Reflections contest. The theme this year is Diversity is...

My oldest son has opted out which makes me sad because I love seeing the pictures that he takes every year. But there is still a week and a half for me to try and strong arm him into it. :)

My younger boys usually draw something but this year they have discovered the magic of playing with cameras and have each acquired their own camera. I wish I could say that it has something to do with their mother taking thousands of pictures every year but actually I believe it has more to do with Sheriff's inane silliness with the video feature on his camera. Thanks to the magic of garage sales this summer each boy has his own camera to play with.

Giggles was the last to take his picture for Reflections so we now have all three entry photos to prepare...

This is Smiley's:

Wannabe's:

and Giggle's:

If only the theme was based on Roblox, then I KNOW Sheriff would participate!

Project 52 Week 25

Normally I am the one who whips out the camera when I see a photo op. On Father's Day, however, it was my husband who insisted I take this picture. We had just finished having the great breakfast that I had made for Brett for Father's Day which took longer than I expected and we were running behind on time. We rushed the kids off to get ready for 9:00 o'clock church. Wannabe came up from his room to get our stamp of approval on his church clothes and this is what we saw...

Brett laughed and said to him,"look at your pants! Those can't possibly be yours... they are practically at your knees."

"But they were in my laundry pile," he replied. As if that should justify him wearing them to church.

Brett tried again, "When you put them on couldn't you tell they were too short?"

"But they were in my laundry pile," Wannabe said again. Like don't you get it dad? If something is in your laundry pile it means it is YOURS. Duh!

I told him to take the pants off and check the tag for the size. He took them off and saw that they were 5T. Wannabe wears size 8. "ohhhhhhh," he said. "Giggles must have put them in my pile when he folded laundry. They WERE really tight in the waist."

Kids.

Sleeping with Dinosaurs

Not long ago we had a family council to choose some fun family activities. One of the things that I found out about was actually an activity for Brett and the older boys. It was a sleepover at a local dinosaur museum. Apparently the museum does this once a month and the evening is filled with all kinds of activities for the kids.

They made fossils, filled dinosaur molds, took a tour of the museum, did a scavenger hunt and met a real live palentologist! (as opposed to a dead one) :)

They then got to chose which dinosaur they wanted to sleep under. I was surprised by the choice that my boys made and relieved that I sent Brett with them. I figured for sure they would choose a T-Rex. Oh no!!! It was the megaladon:

I'm most afraid of spiders, sharks and puking (in no particular order).

In the morning they did some more fun activities, watched a movie on the mammoth screen (Brett took in some zzzzz's) and had some waffles for breakfast.

All in all they had a great time and can't wait to go back again.

Mother of the Year Again???

The title of this blog could also read "The non-toy toy sale." But I didn't want people accidently surfing into my site thinking there was an actual toy sale much like they drove into my neighborhood the other Saturday following the toy sale sign at the end of the road leading to our yard thinking there was an actual toy sale. They, too, were fooled. Most just drove around in a circle and drove away but a couple got out to glance and then got back in their cars and drove away. One kind family in a van actually bought lemonade and chips from the boys because really.... there weren't very many toys.

Why the title of "Mother of the Year Again??? The day before I spent hours going through the toys to get potential toys to sell. I had quite a pile. I even got a container out of the garage of toys that the boys hadn't missed for months ("extra toys" they were labeled) and thought this would be a great time to get rid of them....wrong. "I couldn't sell this"... "that is too special"... and so on and so forth. They wanted to sell lemonade. O.K. We went to the store and bought lemonade, chips, popsicles and suckers.

Saturday dawned and after setting up and sitting out with them in the heat for 45 minutes and no one coming (we live at the end of the neighborhood) the boys were complaining that not a single sale was made (I was relieved that no one was showing up to the paltry "sale" so I was saved some embarassment... I know... don't pass the halo yet.) After seeing their distress increase I just couldn't stand their suffering any longer. "I suppose.... " I hesitate "if we made a sign" I can't believe the words come out of my mouth...

So we make a sign and draw unsuspecting victims to the non-toy toy sale. Suckers! Well, maybe it won't get me mother of the year again but what mother isn't a sucker sometimes for situations like these? They were so excited to have customers.

Time to Play

My boys have bemoaned the loss of friends and the big backyard since moving to our new home. They love the fact that they don't have to share rooms with each other any more but they miss their friends and basketball court (so do I).

We have wanted to get a decent playset in our backyard for them as the old metal one was basically in pieces... no surprise when you have 4 boys who break everything (the latest target is the airconditioner... it has a moving fan and kids love to throw sticks into it...the airconditioner is still working though thank goodness). My mother-in-law waited until her boys were grown before getting nice things but they still ended up busting her stuff as grown men so I guess I shouldn't invest in anything really expensive as far as decorations go- EVER.

Wannabe was baptized on Saturday and Brett was ambitious enough to get the playset in before the big event. He even scheduled knee surgery in as well to increase the challenge. He theorized it would only take one night to prep the yard for the playset - that's if you don't have knee surgery and a million yards of bark to move.

Thank goodness for the help of family...


Despite the stress of the playset - and discovering I'm allergic to the bark (what are the chances???) It was barely finished in time for all the kids to play on. And believe me... the kids are playing on it!!! Not just our kids... but other kids are showing up on my doorstep everyday to play.




I wonder if I could charge an admission fee....

Down but not Out

My body may be 40 but my mind just can't seem to accept it. Brett kept hounding me for months about what to do for my 40th and I kept saying nothing because I thought if I denied it, it wouldn't happened. A few days before, however, I realized that it was going to come whether I accepted it or not. So I decided that if I was going to turn 40 anyways I might as well invite some of my friends over. They might as well be family because just like my family they teased me about turning 40. They even gave me gifts to show that I am officially old ... medication

and reading glasses.

Thanks for a great time guys!

I may be down but at least I'm not out like the poor coyote below...

Brett and boys went on a father/son camp out and came across a headless coyote strung up as a no trespass warning (creepy by the way). It was also a warning to them that the camp out was cursed. They tried to set up the tent and the wind took Sheriff off of his feet. They tried again and the wind tore the tent apart and bent the poles. Brett decided it was the devil's campground, threw the broken tent in the back of the truck and headed off to find a hotel for the night. no kidding. They stayed in a hotel (they were 2 hours away from home) ate a great continental breakfast, played a round of bowling and then came home. They had more fun than the others who stayed at the camp (especially the coyote).

ah memories.

Up Up and Away

Today was kite day at school and the boys took their kites to school. Their experiences varied. A couple of my boys said they had a great time but Giggles when asked if he had fun said "NOOOOOO!" His kite flew for a little while but it was so windy today that his kite soon broke. Giggles was NOT giggling.

When the boys came home from school the only kite still intact was Sheriff's because it is made of nylon instead of plastic. He and Wannabe went out to the backyard to fly it.
They met with minor success because the wind was swirling rather than blowing in one direction. They still had fun and Wannabe felt like the shark was attacking him.


It was fun to watch them get so excited over flying the kites. I'll have to replace the broken ones so we can have another kite day while we are off-track.

What do you do in the Wintertime

Oh what do you do in the wintertime,
When all the world is white,
Do you sleep in a boat?
Wear an extra winter coat?
Because it's so cold outside??????
Is that what you do?????
Not I!!!!!!!

But my crazy boys do!!!!

Last weekend they thought it would be a great idea to camp out in the boat, watch movies, eat popcorn and sleep in it:


In the early hours of the morning I heard them come in the house amidst whispering and Brett shushing them. When I didn't hear the cereal bowls clinking I wondered what they were doing. I came out to find out what was going on and discovered them in these positions....


warming themselves up on the heaters!!! hahaha!!! I wasn't so crazy after all for staying inside in my warm and cozy bed.

April Fools Day

I'm not normally one to pull pranks on people so I usually prefer to let April Fools Day pass quietly by and also hope that no one pulls any pranks on me. However, for some reason I was thinking about some of my friends who have done some great April Fools tricks in the past and I figured I might just pull a simple prank on my kids.

The results were varied.

The prank... a single serving box of cereal with the cereal removed and replaced with nuts to give the box some weight and cause confusion when opened. I opened the boxes from the bottom and sealed them back up with tape when I was done. Each boy was called in individually to breakfast.

Sheriff was first and groggily came in and sat down. He opened his box and when he saw the nuts he looked confused and I said April Fool's whereupon he started crying. Yep... crying. Not the reaction I was looking for. As I quickly hugged him and asked him why he was crying he said "I didn't know it was April Fools". I calmed him down and rather nervously called son #2.

In came Wannabe. He opened his box... saw the nuts... smiled at me and gave me his "you are a silly mom" look. Disaster averted I felt a little more confident as I called my youngest in to open his box. (Giggles was not eating breakfast because he eats his at school).

In came Smiley and plopped himself down at the table. He needed some help opening his box and by this time Sheriff had recovered from the trauma and was Smiley's helper. Smiley pulled the nuts out of the box and with excitement said "NUTS!!!" The three of us tried to explain to Smiley that it was an April Fools joke but Smiley was so excited to have nuts for breakfast that we sounded like the fools trying to explain the joke. He looked disappointed when I took the nuts away to get his cereal.

Three boys... three different reactions. Go figure.

Grandma C's

I love going to Grandma C's for dinner.  The food is always great and from the moment I met Grandma and Grandpa C. I was immediately welcomed into the family and wrapped in arms of love.  It was no surprise to me when we adopted the boys that those arms of love were extended to Wannabe, Giggles and Smiley.  So when I tell them that we have a dinner invitation to Grandma C's they are jumping up and down with excitement.

I also love taking pictures at their home.  This past Sunday was a cold day though so it had to be super fast!  Apparently Grandma saw me out the window and was laughing as I ran the boys from place to place before we froze to death.  

We love you Grandma and Grandpa!!!