Happy Holy-Days

Well, I'm not even going to waste time with excuses why my blog is so hit-and-miss.  Whatever.  It is what it is.  I have big news, though!  We are going to be moving (again, for those of you who know us) to a rockin' farm house in the Maple School District.  We are excited and have convinced the kids to be, also!  They will be switching schools first thing in January.  Unfortunately, our zip code is now going to end in "63".  You know what I mean...

A couple cool short stories since last I wrote:
My Mom, Bauer, and I were on our way to Bakersfield one afternoon.  We hear this "ugh" from the backseat and shortly thereafter, something in the air took me back to this Indian restaurant Ed and I ate at in Seattle...I looked back to see that Bauer had opened one of my mom's spice jars--left in the backseat without too much foresight, oh well--and there was curry powder all over his lap.  Nice.  Then, I was trying to open my mom's moon roof to let the smell out, but it took me awhile since I'm unfamiliar with her car.  We get to Shafter a few minutes later, and at a stop light this weirdo keeps waving.  I finally realize that I had opened the trunk.  I am so cool.

Since the beginning of football season, Farmer has been absolutely OBSESSED with the game.  This isn't really a story, but please continue reading.  Last Christmas he received a Bengals football uniform from my parents.  If I had to estimate, I would say that in the last month, he has worn that uniform about 250 hours.  He takes it off to go to school, but that's about it.  As soon as we are in the door, he puts that thing on.  The pants were white; they are now somewhere between brown and vaccuum bag contents.  What's the best is that he can play football all by himself.  He grabs a small IKEA plastic cup (the green one), and over and over again throws it up in the air right in front of himself.  Sometimes he catches it, and he falls down and says "Touchdown!"  And lots of times he misses and says "Not like that".

Claire story...hmmm...Claire now has an avatar on WeeWorld named Jessica.

Archer: He fell off the bed at my mom's house, and ever since, if he is alone on the bed and wakes up, he gets right up to the edge and lets his arms dangle off, but he doesn't go any farther.  Just confirmation that he is indeed human, even if he doesn't seem like it at 4 AM.

Long Time, No Post

I'm back!  It's been almost a month since my last post, and it's for good reason: I am a football widow.  Not that I NEVER see my husband, but, well, I can't exactly get online and opine for 20 minutes while my four children run amuck.  This is why at this moment, I am blogging at work.  This is inherently wrong, and is known as time theft.

So I'm going to keep it short.  I do have a few pictures, thanks to Annie.  :-)

Mom's 58th (!) Birthday!

Archer Dean!  I don't know what everyone else thinks, but I think he looks a LOT like Bauer.

I L-IKEA

(pictures coming!)  In a brief reprieve from the craziness on Alpine Meadow Ct., I made my first ever trip to the IKEA store in Burbank. SO COOL. First of all, you know a store is huge when they have their own cafeteria (Looks like we’ll be here awhile, Toots!). I would like to know why the Swedes can feed a person breakfast for 99 cents per plate (eggs, potatoes, and your choice of bacon or sausage), yet we still have tons of starving people in the US? But I digress…I wanted to get there early, so I suggested we leave at 7:00 AM. My mom and sister Betsy were like, OOOOOOOOKKKKKKKK. We made great time, and got there at 9:25, and the store WASN’T OPEN. And my mom was like, Yeah, they don’t open until 10. I said, WHAT?!? I thought they opened at 8:00! I could’ve slept another hour! ARGH.


Luckily, the cafeteria was open for breakfast already, so we went up there and sampled the cheap food. It wasn’t too bad! Then we entered THE STORE. This place is huge—and there’s like this yellow brick road that you follow through the whole place so you don’t miss anything! It’s actually a gray linoleum road. Once you’ve seen all of the staged areas, you head into the self-serve warehouse area. They seriously have a very streamlined system going.

I came away with kid’s cups/bowls in rainbow colors, two pillows for the couch, a rug for the boys’ room that has roads and buildings printed on it, a scrub brush, a stool for my kitchen counter eating area, a high chair ($20!), a baby toy for Archer, dish towels, and I can’t remember what else. I could’ve gotten the kitchen sink, too, but there was no room in the van.

Can I Lick It?

Cool story: today my mom and I took my brood to Costco.  It went well, without incident.  We decided that cheap hot dogs and soda at Costco would do nicely for dinner, so mom got the food, and I got the table.  Those hot dogs are BOMB by the way.  Of course, one kid likes only ketchup, one kid likes only mustard, and one kids likes both.  How do they figure this out...anyway, I didn't get my own hot dog, but decided to take a few bites of theirs.  I took one especially unfortunate bite of Claire's dog, and wouldn't you know, the mustard AND ketchup dripped down onto the hem of my shirt.  It was gross.  I wiped it off with a napkin while the kids commented on it.  Claire says, "That's what you get for biting my dog!"  Farmer says, "That looks like Archer's poop!"  Bauer says, "Can I lick it?"  Yes, in that order.

Am I Bad?

So, this morning, I had a near-trekkie experience. Our school librarian is an interesting cat, and a borderline trekkie himself, so we get to talking about Wil Wheaton (did I just hear your heart skip a beat?) If you don’t remember Wil Wheaton, check it out. He was one of my first hearth-throb posters. I think he was on the wall next to my shrine of Johnny Depp of the 21 Jumpstreet era. Anyway, we got to talking about the merits of the different Star Trek movies, and it reminded me that I was considering dressing up my three oldest children as Spock, Kirk, and Uhura. Is that bad?