Happy Halloween is over!!! Now I have twelve waking hours to get packed and clean house…then it’s a ROAD TRIP!!!!  I’m so excited. I love road trips. I have before and after hair cut and Halloween pics that I will upload later tonight. Hope you all had a really good time.

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Parades went well, made it out alive…that’s important.The kids all looked great and were having good fun.

 Decided to subject myself to more misery and took Cooper to get his hair cut…He walked in with long blonde tresses and came out looking like a boy… If I didn’t know he was mine I wouldn’t recognize him. The woman at the barber shop who cut his hair…yes it is a barber shop, but it is odd that there is only one male barber there.

Anyhow the woman who cut his hair said he looks great with a caesar cut you should put some product in it and mess it up, he’ll look cool. I thought product in a two year olds hair, hey what a great idea! He gets his hands sticky with candy and juice all the time, I’ll just tell him to run those through his hair and call it good.lol

I didn’t tell her that though. It was the first thing she’d said the whole haircut. This was the poor things first day on the job and in walks us to sit in her chair. If I had know believe me I would have waited for the old man… who is quite cool, but he pointed us towards her and she didn’t let us know till ten minutes into the screaming. I told Joe he was just mean… Any way she had a trial by fire and I gave her a big fat tip. I hope it helped, Nothing I can do for the hearing loss though.

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More Halloween hoopla. Today is the last of it. I have the costume parade and room parties this morning and then trick or treating tonight. We will probably do a firestation, and then I’m all done.

One last minute alteration to a costume charlie decided that he wanted to be a flaming ninja instead of a balrog so a tshirt was found and given a new life as a face mask. 

You know I remember a time when Halloween was fun. Making costumes was fun. This year just felt like a whole lotta work. I think next year I need to make sure one of the parties is a party for ME!

 I’m off to the parade… Ang

Little kid in toy isle: Look Mommy balls!!

mom: Oh yeah balls! Mommy likes balls.

Breakfast at the school cafeteria with the kids this morning.

Kid at table behind us… Man this is a REALLY big sausage…

I know my immaturity level is shining through, I’m working on a  theory that this will keep me young. Hopefully there will be more to come, look for updates. I love to laugh. Ang

Just got back from church today and let me tell you the natives were restless. I am a primary/sunday school teacher at our church. The kids I have are seven and eight year olds. Usually it’s not so bad we go to class have a lesson and then all the kids, about fifty of them meet in the general area for song time. Today though we were practicing for the church program so there was no class, just an hour and a half of sitting in rows and listening to kids stumble through program parts and try to sing songs that they don’t fully know. By the end the kids were getting very antsy, turning around in their seats, talking and bugging each other.Even I was tempted to smack the person in front of me just for fun. I didn’t.

I must not have had enough caffeine before I went because I was very irritable. There was a kid next to me who kept picking his nose. I sent him to the bathroom twice to get tissue and wash his hands, but he just wouldn’t stop. Finally I told him to stop or I would cut the finger off and then what would he do. He just gave me a look and said MAMA… I so need to get a recording of that, it makes me want to harass him just so I can hear him do that. I was serious about that finger thing though. Ang

Our city reads book this year is Barefoot Heart. The author was being interviewed on NPR tonight. Yes, I was listening to NPR surprise, surprise… She was talking about her father, who is a large part of the book, her mother, who apparently looms in the foreground and how in life she was much closer to her mother then her father. This surprised the interviewer. When asked why the book then included more of her father she gave a response that just made me sit up and say I so get that!

She said something like this. The feelings that she had for her mother were the easy feelings, Love and comfort, the feelings she had for her father were ones of fear and respect.

Okay, I realize that these feelings aren’t easy for everyone. Some people do have to work at love, comfort, and trust. But to me these thing have always come easy. How lucky am I. Pretty darn I’d say.

I’m not sure fear is ever hard, but how to handle it now that’s another thing all together. Respect for me is hard and even though I said it, trust isn’t something I’m always great at either. I wasn’t born in Missouri but I’m definitely all about the show me or prove it state of mind. That’s me. 

Feelings that come easy to us aren’t always that memorable, sometimes its the ones we have to really work at that stand out. Yes we all remember love, how it feels from someone in our life. As children we love our parents and it is character forming, But isn’t it the love you have to work at the one that sticks with you and sees you through life or changes you.

The love of a parent or spouse now that’s hard. To allow your heart to walk around all day. To wonder if it’s eating enough, is it learning a lot, are the other kids playing nice with it.  Or in the case of a spouse… Is it being true, is it thinking of me, does it love me too… 

Now no one get their panties in a bunch. I love my parents. My respect and appreciation for them and what they have done for me grows daily. I’m just saying that children have an innocence that allows them to love without considering consequence that makes it easy.

I’m looking forward to this book. I’m done with my DEEP THOUGHTS BY ISN”T SHE HANDY…

Yeah right… Hey I’m posting, what do you want from me.  Ang

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Okay, this is my pathetic attempt at purging. I must not have been pleased with the first part of this post, because it is now 3:00 in the morning and I have been dreaming about posting since 1:30.

I believe this is all the direct result of my weak attempt at a joke. Earlier as I went to bed I left my computer on the kitchen counter downstairs and pointed out to my husband that “See, I’m not that bad. I’ll leave my computer down here on the counter tonight, I don’t need it.”

 Now it is three in the morning and he was laughing at me when I asked him to bring it up to me when he was  making a trip downstairs. So I have my appendage with me again. If you would all kindly get out of my head I would like to resume my sleep. I’m snug as a bug in my nice cozy bed and I like you people but I do not want you in bed with me so GET OUT!!!     

ANG

I was just sitting here smelling my wonderful dinner, chicken and saffron rice, and wishing I could send the smell through the computer to all of you. It  smells so good. 

 Maybe someday that will be possible. A scent chip could be installed standard in all computers. You  push a key and send a smell out to  the world. Then I started thinking about the implications of such a thing. Lets just say I wouldn’t want to make any one mad, I could come home and my computer would be wafting eau de skunk or worse…Smelly bodily functions that could be coordinated with a sound key. ewww… 

Let’s just say dinner smells good and leave it at that. Somehow it doesn’t smell as good anymore. Ang

Let the festivities begin! We had our church trick or treat tonight so the kids got to wear their costumes in public. This year our house has a Balrog, a cobra ninja and a camouflage gorilla…

Have any of you ever tried to make a flaming demon? Let me tell ya it ain’t easy. First I found some large rubber wings. those are cool, then I got the black sweat suit and took orange and red netting and pinned it under the wings so that it would look like flames, and last we took the helmet with horns from last years viking knight costume to top it off. Charlie really liked it for an hour as he tested it around the house and then he decided that he felt like a horned ballerina.  So I started with should we paint it? No that would look to flat he says… Well, I told him to come up with something or we could just take the net off  and he could be a regular demon because short of setting him on fire I was out of ideas… He decided he liked the netting. I know bad Mommy.

 I’m sure we’ll come up with something. We have a few days. Isabelle was in heaven with her costume. She is such a tom boy, I love it. She said that next year she really wants me to make her the pink eyeball  monster though, Well, I’ll worry about that one next year.

Cooper freaked a bit when he saw all the costumes, so we spent a lot of time sitting in the hall way. He did play bobbing for apples though. He spent two minutes standing watching a teen chase an apple around with his teeth not being able to get it. Cooper finally pushed the boys face out of the way, grabbed the apple and gave the kid the dirtiest look you ever saw. It said see you dumby you pick it up! Then he took a big bite and toddled away. 

I guess that’s enough babbling for now. Here’s to surviving the rest of the Halloween hoopla!  Ang

Ever feel like you just can’t get a break?

I like to think of myself as a fun loving optimistic person. Right now I’m having trouble being either.

It’s not fun when the only toilet in the house is not working and you have to drive to the gas station to take a leak, or pee outside for all the world to see, which I am not willing to do. Yeah yeah yeah, I’ve heard it’s a real freeing experience, That’s hard to imagine. What I imagine is getting my ass wet and accidentally mooning the neighbors.

It’s hard to be optimistic when the problem is most likely more then the toilet. It’s probably a root that has broken into one of the pipes that runs out of the house. And because of it we might have to cut down my huge gorgeous maple tree that I love, that is right out side my sun room where the kids and I watch birds land on it, where the kids climb into it’s large crooks and sit and wave to me, where our hammock hangs in the summer and we can stare up through the leaves and the branches at the beautiful blue sky or at night we can play peekaboo with the stars.

So lets see, I have to leave the house to pee, I might lose my tree, and I haven’t even gotten into the possible work and expense it is going to take to fix.

I feel like swearing, but the way my luck is running, Cooper would hear and decide he has some new favorite words that he can’t wait to show off at nursery in church. Yup that would happen to me.

I’m climbing into bed to cover my head now…I’m even scared to drink my one solace Mt. Dew, then I might have to pee. But then I could buy more when I went to the gas station to pee. See I just can’t help it, optimism runs thick through me I guess. Let’s hope it’s the only thing running through me. Ang

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The pipes are fixed!!! Yeah, I can pee, not that I couldn’t before, but now I can do it in the house. I know TMI

It was another tree branch, in the new section of pipe that we had replaced a few years ago. We won’t lose the tree, But the copper sulfate we have to start dumping in the tank won’t do it a whole lot of good either. Well I’ll explain things to it and hopefully it will understand it was this or the burn barrel.

Here’s to happy plumbing!!!!!

I’m almost done with Charlie and Cooper’s reptile room. The floor is done, Ben is putting up molding now and I need to paint the dragons. Here is Koopa to sing a little song in honor of the occasion and how I feel… hope your Sundays are all great. Ang

Lying, we all do it. Someone told my husband today that he believed that you shouldn’t lie at all unless a life was at stake. To which my husband composed a nicely worded response that essentially said bulls**t in a very nice way.

We all do it. Mommy is there a Santa Claus? tooth fairy? Easter Bunny?  I remember the day I totally blew the Easter Bunny thing for my kids, it was awful. I convinced them that Aunt D still believed in the Bunny so we shouldn’t blow it for her. Charlie was okay with that and then he said “Well okay there’s no Easter Bunny, but Santa is real right?”

What else do we lie about? Do I look fat? Of course but am I going to tell you, no. Everyone looks skinny to me so this one isn’t a problem to me. We lie to be polite. How was the dinner I made for you with my own little hands and put my heart and effort into? It was great, wonderful. In truth it may have tasted like card board, but do we say that, no.

I think that it is impossible to navigate  our society without lying a little bit. It must be in our general programming.

My friend Ruby wrote a great post today about the lies she has told her children. (I wish I could link it, but I’m not that great yet, she’s on my sub list) I used to tell my children that when they told a lie I could tell because a little red dot appeared on their forehead. This only worked until Charlie caught me in a lie. Then he said “Mom I know for a fact that your lying and there’s no dot, so you were LYING.” They forgive me for this, who knows why. Kids are mailable.

I know lying=bad. We shouldn’t do it, and it is all around easier not to. We should try to live as honestly as we can.But is it really possible to live without lying at all? Something to think about.

I’m not sure I would want to. I never want to hear ‘Yes’ from my husband on the fat question. Of course I would never ask him that either. He might just decide he wanted to be honest.  You know what else, it’s fun to lie to my children, there are just some things I’m not willing to give up yet, like Santa and the tooth fairy. I’m really bad at her though, she was supposed to come and she got delayed several times for various reasons. She had a family emergency once, she couldn’t cross the bedroom floor she was afraid she would break her neck, and once she got arrested by accident because it was halloween and the police thought she was a regular person trying to break into someones house, this one Isabelle came up with. All I said was that must be it. Those things are much more soothing then Mommy accidentally fell asleep because she was exhausted and forgot…

Then there are some lies that are just for your childrens’ own protection. My parents used to shut their bed room door and balance the check book…actually that wasn’t a lie, that’s what they were doing really. Please God that has to be what they were doing!

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OOPS… MAILABLE KIDS, was Aaron the only one who caught that or were the rest of you just being to polite to point it out?

If you did see it and you didn’t say anything, that is a LIE of omission!!!! So see! Ang