Haircuts, Neuro-Dog, B-ball, and Cold Snaps

My hair is cut, my laundry is being worked on, my house isn't as bad as it seemed, my shoe at least stays on my foot, my ear has been hurting a few times the last few days from talking to everyone on the phone so long, I got a nap this afternoon, and I've decided (with no guilt, well maybe a little) that my boys are having school lunches this week while I get caught up and have appointments for myself and Bee. Thanks for all the encouragement.

I got my haircut yesterday afternoon and I really like how it turned out. I also enjoyed the conversation while she cut it. It's always relaxing to have someone wash your hair and then style it. She only charged me $17 too... that's the cheapest haircut I've had for a long time.

We are "babysitting" Jessie the neurotic black lab that belongs to my parents. They are having an early birthday weekend for my mom in Indi. She has a baby due around her b-day later in the month and can't leave then. Mom and Dad stayed over last night and went to Prophet's basketball game this morning. When we left the game, they left for Indi and we went home.... to find that Jessie had peed twice in my house and had eaten an entire loaf of whole wheat bread. It's a good thing I love her. She's so funny. At mom and dad's house she knows she's not allowed on the furniture. At our house, Bowzer's not allowed on the furniture. But Jessie has decided that it's okay to sleep on the chair in our living room. She got up there and just spread out everywhere. Oh well, at least she feels at home!!

Bee continues her new teenage venacular. She keeps saying things like... "Mommy, this shirt sooooo needs to go in the Libby (my cousins baby) stuff, it's sooooo small on me," and "I'm sooooo totally tired of this cold, I soooo want to move back to AL." I think I've figured out that it's coming from all the teeny-bopper shows on Disney. Yes, she watches them. The boys never did at her age, but they do now. They have to have something to watch and the preschool shows don't cut it now that they're in 2nd grade. Since they watch them, so does she. We only watch Disney though, Nickolodeon is, in my opinion, horrible once the preschool stuff ends in the afternoon. Yesterday when we picked up the boys from school, one of them asked her a question and her answer was.... "absolutely". I couldn't believe it when I heard my not yet four year old child say "absolutely". It was hilarious.

Prophet got to play in his basketball game this morning. They all played their little bahooney's off, but in the end they lost 28 - 20 in the last 3 minutes. He coughed a little, but really did pretty good. He loves to play. If you've never seen a bunch of K-2 graders play b-ball, I just have to say that it's entertaining to say the least. What they don't have in skill, they make up for in humor. They'll carry the ball half-way down the court and then realize they need to be dribbling. They'll shoot and completely miss even the backboard. There's always someone on the floor. Prophet's team coach seems like really nice guy. He had three of his kids with him on the sidelines today. His daughter in on the team. Then he had a 3 or 4 year old boy, and a 6 month or so baby with him. He coached most of the game holding the baby on one arm while he (the baby) grinned at everyone over the sock he was chewing on. He was encouraging to the kids. He'd put an arm on their shoulders to give advice or encouragement with one arm and hold the baby with the other. Who said men can't multitask. He was doing a better job at it than Lauren or I could have. I was impressed.

This cold is getting old REALLY fast. It's currently 15 degrees with a wind chill of 0 degrees. During the night the wind chill is supposed to get down to 15 below. Tomorrow's wind chill is supposed to be 20 - 30 below. The high on Monday and Tuesday is supposed to be around 5 degrees. One of the school systems not too far from here has already delayed for Monday and Tuesday morning. It was the headline article yesterday because they did it sooooooo early they were getting alot of slack for it. The super. just simply said that no one could fault him for putting the welfare of the kids first and he wanted parents to have time to make arrangements for their kids. I don't think he's crazy. That's simply too cold for kids to be walking to the bus stops and standing there. They're saying that frost bite can set in in less than 10 mintes when the wind chill is that cold. Many of those kids are out longer than that between the walk and the wait. My hands get painful just walking out to the car with gloves on right now.

Well, I gotta go!! I love you guys and miss our daily chats horribly. I'm trying to talk Smart Guy into borrowing a computer from the youth room until we get a new one... we'll see if it works!!

Another "Two" Bite the Dust

I went to the visitation for the gentleman who died over the weekend this evening. We stood in line for 45 minutes. He was a very loved man and there were many, many people who showed up for his wife and kids. When I hugged his wife I told her I was so sorry and her response was "It was fun... it was short, but it was fun." The strength she showed tonight amazed me. When I told her that Smart Guy wanted to be there but couldn't because all three kids were sick, her response was, "Everyone else's world doesn't come to a stop because my life has a blip in it." I love this woman. She's a wonderful example of a woman of integrity. I admire her strength and courage.

So yes you read that right... ALL THREE OF MY CHILDREN ARE NOW SICK!! Everyone is coughing and running fevers. D.K. joined Prophet this morning with a 100.4 temp and Bee joined them this evening just as I was leaving for the funeral home with a 101.6 temp. As I was walking out the door, I told Smart Guy to give her one teaspoon of nighttime cold and cough triaminic and one teaspoon of motrin. When I left for the funeral home, I left a very lethargic, hot, grumpy, and coughing Bee. When I came home however, she came bounding down the steps laughing her head off like a wild woman. I asked Smart Guy what he had given her and her said "Robitussin". NOOOOOOOO!! I told him to give her Triaminic nighttime, not Robitussin. That stuff makes my kids and myself bounce like Tigger. He gave it to her at 7:30, it lasts four hours. She just fell asleep since I started typing this. It lasted almost exactly four hours. I've got the alarm clock set for 1:30 so I can get up and give everyone another dose of medicine to keep their temps down and keep their coughs under control so they can sleep. I'm not worried about Bee and D.K., their little bodies get over things pretty easy. Prophet is another story. With his rough beginnings, he has always gotten sicker and stayed sicker longer than normal. Hopefully tomorrow will be the last day of being truly sick for him... we'll see. So, anyway, one more day of everyone home from school. Bee's gonna be ripped when she realizes that she's missed the pizza shop field trip that she's supposed to go on tomorrow. She so excited about it, but she has no concept of time yet and thinks it next week. I haven't wanted a meltdown, so I haven't told her any different as she talked about it this evening while high from her Robitussin. I'll break it to her gently next week sometime.... maybe she'll forget about it... hmmmm doubt it!!

Ruby and Miss HDYST are home from the hospital. The baby was sleeping while we talked and Missy Moo Moo was wanting to love on her. She's seriously intrigued with this new little person. I can't wait to see pictures of her. Ruby says she looks like Missy Moo Moo did when she was a baby. She was adorable. By the time she was about three months old, she had rolls on her rolls... all from momma's milk...nothing else. It was awesome!! Of course I was impressed, all of my babies have always been skinny things from birth on. They all eat like horses, they just stay skinny!! I'm trying to come up with a cheap and quick way to get out there to see them for a couple of days without any of my children. Wish me luck!! BTW, Mr. Debonair actually has six weeks of PAID paternity leave. Isn't that amazing? We certainly never had that. Smart Guy was back at work within a couple of days with each one. Churches just don't do the paid paternity leave thing!! I'm glad for Ruby, it'll be nice having him home for awhile!!

Well, it's late and I have to dose medicine in about an hour and a half, so now I must sleep!! Goodnight everyone!! Tomorrow!!

We Are Bad Parents

Well, we broke a major parenting law tonight... at least one in our house. If you are too sick to go to school, if you live in our house that means you are too sick to do anything in the evening. Unfortunately this evening was Prophet's first basketball practice of the "season" (6 games). I told him this morning that if he stayed in bed all day under the vaporizer and if he was feeling better, that we'd let him go to practice. So he did, and we did. We all went along to cheer him on.

He's actually playing in the 6, 7, and 8 year old league. The next league up goes from 9-12. He's actually 9, but he's only in second grade and he's the size of most first graders, so they're letting him play with kids in his grade. I'm glad they let us do it. He at least has a chance with these kids. Not only would he have not been able to keep up with the older group, he also would have gotten seriously hurt. Even in this younger group, there's still bigger kids out there playing.

He's such a fun and happy kid. It's very hard to get him down. He got hit in the head with a stray ball three times tonight and then hit the gym floor at least three times and always smiled afterwards. He's a tough little turkey. I guess if your brain can take a grade 3 hemorrhage and hydrocephalus, heal itself with no intervention other than therapy, and still come out relatively okay, a simple knock to the skull with a basketball is nothing.

Anyway, he played his bahooney off and didn't really cough all that much, which really shocked me. He started dragging the last 10 minutes, but never came off the floor. I had told him that if he got too tired, he could come sit with us for awhile. He never did. He was too excited. It's been a long time since last years season ended.

We ate a late dinner at 7:00 or so. Then everyone headed upstairs to get on jammies, read books, pray, get doped up with nighttime cough meds, and go to sleep. Hopefully he doesn't cough all night. Last night, D.K. ended up on our floor because Prophet was keeping him awake coughing. Sometime during the night Bee also joined the party in our bedroom. Poor Prophet was the only one of the six of us, not in our bedroom by this morning. Anyway, Smart Guy is downstairs watching the State of the Union. Or to be more exact, rolling his eyes at most everything that comes out of the man's mouth. I was watching it, but after the third time I was about to hurl all over myself, I decided to come upstairs. I'll watch the stuff afterwards to hear what he said. Even if I don't agree with it, I can handle it better from someone else's mouth. Just looking at Bush is too much!!

Well, goodnight everyone!! Love to you all and lots of cyber hugs!!

Another Invention

The boys have come up with a new invention to make their jobs of protecting the girls from the other boys at recess just a little easier. They have decided that they need a contraption that flies around the playground. It will hang over the front of their chests with a pair of night vision goggles (just in case the sun is badly blocked while they're at school) and the back originally was supposed to contain a jet pack. After much discussion between the two of them, they decided it would be better to use a helicopter blade up above them so they wouldn't catch the playground mulch on fire with the jet pack flame. From the sides will come pinchers to reach out and grab the boys that are chasing the girls and keep them away.

Sounds great huh!! I wish I'd had a couple boys that were so dedicated to the cause of protecting the girls when I was in 2nd grade!!

My Boys Are Growing Up

We took Prophet and D.K.'s bunk beds apart this evening. The only other time they've been apart was after the wreck when Prophet couldn't climb the ladder because his arm was in a sling. They have now decided that they want separate beds and are willing to give up the floor space to have them that way. There room looks so different. I've gotten so used to having that tall piece of furniture on one wall and now it looks so bare on their walls!! This also means that the dinosaur costume that's been hanging on the end of the bed for the last three years (long since been outgrown by the giant that is D.K.) has now been relocated to his new home on a hanger in the closet. This is indeed a sad moment for this mama. D.K. has, however, refused to give up any of the 28 animals that presently share his bed with him... yes I meant to write 28, I just went in there and counted them as he slept. Prophet is having a hard time falling asleep tonight. He's been in bed since 8:00 and he still hasn't fallen asleep, it's now 10:55. Could be that's he too close to the floor, or I guess it could be the Robitussin I gave him for his horribly runny nose before he went to bed. That stuff always keeps me awake, it must be doing the same thing to him. So he's awake, but on the bright side, his nose finally quit dripping!!

Mopping, Cooking, Laundry

What a weekend!! Saturday I finished up my cleaning to get my 15 hours in even though we had been gone on our trip most of the week. Our church has never had someone "official" clean the kitchen. It's always been left up to whom ever was the last one to use it. Ha! Ha! Anyone who's ever used a church kitchen knows that they are almost never truly clean... ours is no exception. When I started cooking dinner for the youth every Sunday night back in September, I realized then that no one really cleaned it completely when they were done. The floors and the walls behind the work tables and next to the stove were the worst, but not any more. I spent about 6 hours in there between Friday and Saturday getting it somewhat caught up to where it should be. It shouldn't take me as long to clean it each week now that I spent an hour with a magic eraser scrubbing the grease off the wall beside the stove and another 3 hours scrubbing the entire, very large, floor. It still looks bad, but I know it's clean.

Saturday evening we all came home from the church, had bacon and eggs for dinner and everyone crashed in our room for the night!!

Sunday mornings are always fun in our house...Smart Guy always leaves about 40 minutes before first service starts at 8:15 and there is no way I'm getting up that early on a weekend. So that means that I'm left to get everyone up and ready for church by myself. If I get it together and get everyone's clothes out on Saturday night, we usually make it to Sunday School. If I don't, then we don't make it until the 11:00 service. Considering the fact that I was still washing clothes for everyone to wear to church at 10:00 on Saturday night, we didn't make it to church until the 11:00 service. We went home, had a quick (read easy to clean up) lunch, rested until 2:00 or so and headed back to the church to make dinner for the teens. Last night's menu was salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, greens beans, corn, and apple crisp with ice cream for dessert. We cleaned up from that, went home where I promptly laid down on the couch, was quickly joined by Bee under my blanket, and we were both out cold and oblivious to the world in about 5 minutes. We stayed there nice and toasty warm and drowsy until about 11:00 and then we went and climbed into our cold beds upstairs.

Today has been a wonderful day of staying at home all day long. We sorted laundry... well actually my children sorted laundry while I took a shower at 2:00 this afternoon. I started to do this monumental task when I suddenly had a thought... this is a kid proof job. I transferred Mt. St. Laundry from our closet to the middle of our bedroom floor and then put things into each pile that would be necessary to sort all of it. It took all three of them about 30 minutes to sort it all... pathetic I know. Here's the funny part... I went and took my shower while they worked.

For those of you that don't know, I'm a big chicken little. I'm not as bad as I used to be but I still have everyone sleep downstairs when Smart Guy is out of town just in case there's fire or someone breaks in it would be easier for me to get everyone out by myself. I know, I think too much... that's just who I am. Anyway, one of the things I started doing way back along time ago when I first starting staying home with Prophet and would usually get my shower when Smart Guy wasn't at home was to turn on the hallway light and turn off the bathroom light while I showered. My thinking was that if someone walked into the hallway with the light on, I'd see the shadow because the bathroom light was off. Fortunately I never got a chance to test this theory. After awhile I just began enjoying the peacefulness of taking my shower in the dark, especially now when I get up first thing in the morning and have to get ready immediately, it's a good way to relax for just a few more minutes. So today while the kids sorted the laundry I closed the door to the bathroom all but a small crack for light enough to see if I was washing or conditioning my hair and jumped into a very hot shower with full intentions of staying there until it was no longer hot water (which means a very long shower in this house with our huge hot what heater. At our family reunion I think we took about 10 showers back to back, a few going on in two different bathrooms at the same time, and still didn't use all the hot water up). As I'm standing there enjoying the water, the door opens and the light comes on and someone asks "what pile does this go in", I answer, the door closes, with the light on. Same thing again, except this time, the light gets turned out and the door left wide open. Same thing again, except this time the light is left on and the door closed. And again, but this time, the light is turned off and the door is pulled completely shut, leaving this mama in the complete blackness of a bathroom without a window. After a few seconds when my eyes adjusted I decided it wasn't worth the cold air to get out and open the door a crack knowing that one of them would be back in a minute or so anyway to turn the light on.

So now, I have at least 13 loads of laundry still waiting to be done and I've already done about 6. Isn't there a saying that says something to the effect that there are two things for certain in life... death and taxes... I think I could add laundry to that for it never goes away!!!

All three kids go back to school tomorrow morning and I'm gonna work six hours while Bee spends the day with her daddy!!

Bad Weeds and Beautiful Flowers

Hey guys!! I just have to say that I have sore muscles that I didn't even know exsisted!! My shoulders hurt, my arms hurt, my shins hurt, my back hurts, my ankles hurt, shoot, my butt even hurts!! I'm such a weenie, I know!! Hopefully in a couple weeks I'll get used to it and it won't hurt anymore!! Inkling by the time you see me again, I'm gonna look like a female body-builder!!

Well, we have a saying in this house that goes like this... "D.K. grows like a bad weed, and Prophet grows like a beautiful flower." D.K. is a giant. He won't be eight until next month and he's already up to my chin. Now, for those of you that know me in real life, you know that's not really saying much (I'm about 5 foot 2 inches), but for a seven year old that's over the 100th percentile. I'd say that by the next time he sees his Sara Orange he's gonna almost be looking her in the eyes... she's kind of a shorty ya know!! (but she's our shorty and we love her) So anyway, Prophet has always been a slow grower. He started small and everyone kept saying, "Oh don't worry, he'll catch up". He hasn't and that's okay, it's part of who he is.

For awhile I tried to avoid any talk about the size difference when the boys were around and hated it when some big mouth would make a big deal out of the height difference between them. Then one day I heard them plotting to do something when they didn't know I was listening. Prophet told D.K. that he needed to do it because he was bigger and could do it easier. Okay, so Prophet knew that his little brother was bigger than him and not only was he was okay with it but he was using it to his advantage to get his little brother into trouble. Prophet is a very confident guy and not the least bit upset about his shortness.

At this point I'd say there's about a five inch height difference between them with D.K. (the "little" brother) being the taller one. He is now the one who gets the new clothes and then passes them on to his big brother... which brings me to the entire reason for this post... I just put on a load of pants and jeans for the boys and EVERY pair of D.K.'s pants have holes in the knees. Did I mention that all of these pants were just bought back in September because he had outgrown everything from last year? Prophet on the other hand has been wearing three pairs of his pants for three winters now, and they just now are starting to get some wear, not holes, in the knees. I would really like to know what on earth D.K. does to cause this to happen.

Oh well, he's already outgrown the length anyway. I was just putting off the inevitable of having to buy him two complete sets of pants in one winter, now I really don't have a choice. I'm gonna take him out next Saturday to get new pants, after my first paycheck. I think I'm gonna buy some of those iron on patches and iron them onto the inside of his pants where they always get the holes to see if that prolongs their life. I guess D.K.'s gonna have a couple pairs of cutoffs to wear next summer seeing how they still fit his skinny butt perfectly!

Bibles, Fighters, and Lasers

My boys have always enjoyed imagining what they're gonna do with their lives. They've planned their academic careers by planning to attend the same college. They've planned to live in a camper and be poor while digging for dinaosaur bones for D.K. They've planned to go to Africa and hunt wild animals. The other night they announced their plans to play college basketball. So, they're newest pursuit for their future shouldn't have suprised me, but it was hilarious.

Yesterday in the car, Prophet was reading his Bible when he asked me if there were any cities in America where it was against the law to read your Bible. I said, "No, as long as your in America you can always read your Bible." He was content for a minute and then asked where it was against the law, apparently having heard this somewhere. Off the top of my head, I told him China was one of the places where you weren't allowed to be a Christian or read your Bible. He asked "Well, what if you want to be a Christian and tell people about Jesus there." I said "Well, you have to decide if Jesus is worth going to jail for."

At this point D.K. pipes in and says "Well, I'm not going to jail," I took this to mean that he wouldn't be sharing his faith with another living soul if it meant a jail sentence, but then he said... "it's a good thing I'm a good fighter, I've been practicing, I can run real fast and get away from them before they can put me in jail."

So, the rest of the drive to Mom and Dad's house was spent listening to the boys figure out how they would escape from jail after they had told everyone in China about Jesus. They have decided that they are going to invent a very small laser to carry with them so they can cut thru the cell bars, escape, and then tell everyone about Jesus again. Inkling says we should probably tell them about the strip search they'll have to endure and that their laser will probably be discovered then... maybe we should tell them, it could make for some great entertainment.

Finally!!

Well, here I am!! I've made my appearance in the world of blogdom. My best friend, Inkling, has been telling me I should for ages. She laughs at me when I say, "If I had a blog, I'd write about that." I can't wait to see if I actually come up with things to post about now that I've got my own place to do so. Of course, my family should provide me with some interesting stories. Prophet is 9 years old and so fair-minded. Drama King is 7 and just that. He causes me to revisit the story of the boy who cried wolf a couple dozen times a month. Bee is three and a fun combo of girly-girl and up and coming tomboy. They're all Y.P.K. s( that's youth pastor's kids ) so they have not a single shy bone in their bodies.
The person who gives them their Y.P.K. status is my wonderful husband. We'll call him Smart Guy!! I've always said that between him and my dad, I can get any question answered. Who needs the internet. He was once told by a principal he'd never amount to anything. Can you believe that? If she could only see him now!! Three college degrees later and I think he needs to find her and make her eat here words!!
Oh yah, there's the dog... we'll call him Bowzer...uhhhh well because that's his name and it so fits him!!! He's been mistaken for a pony in the back yard. If you ever walked thru my backyard when it's been a week or so since "poop patrol" was done, you'd swear there was a moose livin' back there, but since that would probably be illegal, I promise, it's just a dog. A very large, 130 pound, brown beast that we all love incredibly. ( Inkling has issues with my dog. She says it's just allergy issues...yah whatever...I just don't get it.)