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.

Favorite Memory

It is the last day of January and of course it is snowing again. I had to laugh yesterday when Smiley said on the way to church, "it is spring!" I WISH. I had to burst his bubble when I told him it was still winter and would be for some time yet. I am freezing and even as I sit at the computer typing this I must pause to get another hoodie on ... that's better. Sorry cute turquoise sweater but warmth over fashion wins. Of course now my outfit doesn't match... dang! No wonder my family makes fun of me. Oh well.

A cold day like today takes me back to our family trip to Hawaii a few years back. You probably got green with envy the second you read the word Hawaii right? Am I right? Who wouldn't? Any time I heard someone say Hawaii that was my reaction. Of course that was before I found out about weather in Hawaii in December. I didn't know that Hawaii had a RAINY season. I should have suspected that because there is a rain curse in our family. I am starting to suspect that I may have inherited it from my father. He has a rain curse. When he takes holidays it rains. True story. Our next-door neighbors would even ask my dad when he was taking vacation so that they wouldn't take theirs at the same time because they didn't want it to rain during their summer vacation. Honest. One time my dad took an unexpected vacation day and didn't tell our neighbor. It rained. Our neighbor called up because he had also taken a vacation day that day and said, "Bill, did you take a holiday today and didn't tell me???" When my sister got married in Arizona they had been experiencing a drought. My parents when down for the wedding and it rained so hard it flooded.

So we went to Hawaii and it rained every day except for one day. The one day it DIDN'T rain they had wind so bad that it blew the shingles off of the roofs. We went to a popular beach to swim and couldn't because the wind blew in the man 'o war which made it too dangerous to swim there. After the first few days of rain we decided we would just have to make the best of things and go sight seeing in the rain. We went to various waterfalls and the rain made the waterfalls full and beautiful.

One waterfall was very difficult to get to however and required going down a very muddy trail on which we slipped and fell many times.
We tried to keep the boys as clean as possible but it really was mission impossible. By the time we got back to the rental van they were covered in mud. Thank goodness for the 24 pack of bottled water in the back of the van! We had a lot of fun slipping and sliding and at the end of the hike I shot what has turned out to be one of my favorite pictures of my boys:


If only winter could be a little warmer...

Taking the Challenge...Maybe

I looked up Project 52 to see what this week's challenge was.... or maybe I am off a week and I actually did last week's challenge come to think of it. My brain kind of work's that way now I realize. I don't pay attention to the details anymore. I sort of scan stuff now and that gets me into trouble. I scan and assume and then I read it closer later and go, "oh CRAP!" I should have read that more carefully because I got it all wrong! hahaha!!! That's me now.... 40 and getting it all wrong. Oh well. Take me as I am I guess. Or don't.

So this week or last week's challenge depending on how you carefully you read it, is Dirty. So I was watching my little fostergirl eat her sandwich and this is about as dirty as she gets:


As soon as she gets anything on the table or herself she wants it washed off so for her, this is "dirty".

Brotherly Love

Brotherly love is a beautiful thing and it warms my heart when I see it....because most of my day is filled with phrases like "please use your words"  "please don't hurt your brother" "how do you think your brother felt when you did that?" "can you please share?" "can your brother please have a turn when you are done?" "I'm sorry but you need to take your mad to your room and calm down".  That's what happens in a house with four boys (five really when you include their dad who teaches them even more things that I have to "unteach"). 

So I love moments like these:

But I still laugh when a brother TRIES to teach another brother something like riding a two-wheeler and he has good intentions... but the other brother's frustration gets the best of him...

First comes the instructions...

and more instructions...

he makes an attempt and fails...

watch me do it again... as big brother executes a perfect circle around the basketball court...

and yet more instructions...

some more demonstrations while little brother looks on, his frustration building...

"G. you are not teaching me properly!!!!"

and then mom is busted by the next-door neighbor "Robin why are taking pictures of your kids in the doorway? why don't you go outside??"  I'm caught!!!

You have no idea how many times a day I see this look on my four-year-old's face and I caught it on camera just at that moment.