Bullet Points, No Pictures

I took not one picture this week.  Well, ok, one, but it was already posted on the other blog.  Luckily, I remember bits and pieces of this week without any digital help.

• I finished interviewing my step-grandma for her personal history.  Now I just have to type it, edit it, compile it in some kind of logical order, add pictures and journal quotes, and have it printed into ten books.  Before Christmas.  Oh crap.
• I am now only eight books away from making my goal of 60 by year's end.  I have eight weeks to finish, and it will become obvious in a few more bullet points why that will be nearly impossible to complete.  (Not to mention the one above.)
• I am still sick.  I keep having re-lapses, except they aren't relapses, it's more like I feel fine for a day or so, except for becoming easily exhausted, and then develop a new symptom.  It's just too much fun!  So I finally relented to see a doctor tomorrow.  I'm sure he'll tell me I have a cold and to quit being a pansy.  But if that's the case, then this is The Mutant Cold From Hell, because it's been more than a month now, and as of tonight, I feel almost as crappy as I did on day four.
• Everyone else is just now catching that Mutant Cold from me.  Why did it take so long?
• We got Cameron's glasses fixed.  Andrew had a moment of brilliance after the second pair busted.  He suggested we take the lenses out of the frame from the first pair and have them put in new frames.  Duh.  Ten bucks and done.
• We decided to take that job in Oregon.  We'll find out tomorrow when we're moving.  It'll be sometime between Thanksgiving and New Years.  Oh, the joy.  Nothing like making an 800 mile trip in a moving truck in the dead of winter.  There are some good points to this move, too, but I'm too tired to go into it tonight, and they aren't nearly as interesting as my complaining certainly is.
• It's one in the morning, and past my bedtime.  (Stupid Avatar)  Good night, All.  Have a happy week!

Week In Review: November 1st, 2010

Just so everyone knows, I no longer remember what it feels like to not be sick.  Please pity me.  Thank you.

This week was a blur, as usual.  One day I'll get sick of saying that and quit adding it into every weekly review.  

Andrew is still waiting to hear about that job.  We're on pins and needles, unable to sleep, and like to discuss the possibilities endlessly.  Hopefully we'll know one way or the other sometime tomorrow.

Cameron and Ethan are plugging away at school.  We almost have Ethan's addition facts passed off in two minutes.  On Saturday he nailed them all in 2:01.  He said that he almost peed his pants from the anxiety of it.  Heh.  That was funny.  Cameron has the basics of division down, but we need to really beat those multiplication facts into his head to make it easier.  This week they will be learning about dinosaurs, (their pick, not mine...I'm going to have to load up on caffeine so I don't fall asleep), and they will begin keeping daily gratitude journals in honor of Thanksgiving.

Drew and Trent play marvelously well together until Bryan comes on Wednesday through Friday, and then Drew and Bryan do everything in their power to keep Trent out of the playroom while they enjoy the toys all to themselves.  Poor, poor Trent.  Trent is also starting to worry me in the speech department.  He has never enjoyed speaking English, and whenever we ask him to say something, he responds with a look that says, "I am not your puppet," and then he ignores us like only Trent can.

Anywho, I'm rambling.  Blame the illness.  Whatever it is.  

So Halloween was just peachy.  We went to our ward's Trunk or Treat.  There were literally a million people there.  We shamefully ran out of candy and had to leave early.  Other people ran out, too.  The lady who was proudly handing out Twinkies in the beginning was later diminished to passing out the Starbursts that the lady next to her was willing to share.  

Cameron went as a skeleton.  Again.  Maybe next year we'll feel like getting more creative.  

Ethan was a Ring Wraith from Lord of the Rings. That meant painting his face black, covering him with a black hooded robe, and giving him a sword.  Yey, Ethan!  Good pick!

Drew was Wolverine.  Thank goodness for Kid to Kid and their second-hand costumes.

Trent was a pirate who would not wear his hat.

I put some cuts on my face so I could claim participation, and called it good.

It rained all night, which means my hair goes to Ultra Frizz Mode.  Remind me to add that to the Moving to Washington Con List.

Today was Andrew's day off.  We meant to do yard work and clean and junk like that, but it was such a gorgeous day that we decided to hit the Glennwood Cemetery in Park City instead.   I've been wanting to go for a while now.  I love cemeteries.  For more on that, you'll have to read my other blog.  I haven't written the post yet, but by the time you read this, I'm sure I will have.  Here's a picture to hold you over...

Until next week...

Week In Review - Oct. 24th, 2010

I know my posting here has been spotty, so I've added an e-mail subscription form so that you can get e-mail updates when I do post.  It's there if you want it.

So - this last week.  Sigh...I have been sick with the cold from hell for going on...something like ten or twelve days now.  And it's not just the slight cough that takes a while to go away - this is the full blown throat on fire, cough 'til my brain explodes out of my forehead, snot farm in the throat, can't take a shower because it wipes me out so badly kind of cold.  For all ten or twelve days.  I might die before it goes away.  

In other news - The kids had their Halloween Party last Friday.  And because they are homeschooled, it was a really good opportunity for them to interact with kids they don't get to see at school anymore.  Most of them are really good kids, and it was nice to have them around again for a while.

We started the party off with dinner.  We served Roasted Bat Wings, Monster Fingers, Pumpkin Grins, Bloody Bones and Blood Punch with Wormy Ice.  Come to think of it, I still have two ice trays full of cubes with gummy worms in them.  Need to get rid of those.  

The Monster Fingers and Bloody Bones were my favorite.  Here's some close-ups:

After dinner the kids went outside to play hide-and-seek in the dark.  Silly me sent them out without any direction and they ended up beating the tar out of each other with random weapons found around the yard instead, but oh well.  They had fun.  And glow-sticks make everything more fun.  Lots and lots of glow-sticks.

When it got to be a little too intense outside, we brought the kids in for some cookie decorating.  Pumpkins and ghosts galore.  They all tried to get as much candy on their cookie as possible.  Makes me a little sick just thinking about it.  (I have pictures of this, but can't post them because other people's kids are in them.  Safety first, you know.)

Then we told a ghost story and touched the remains of a witch, followed by Pass the Pumpkin (similar to Hot Potato, but to the tune of Michael Jackson's Thriller), and watched a scary movie with some of the best popcorn I've had in a long time.  One of the kids we invited has a movie theater popcorn popper at his house and his mom brought over a huge batch of the stuff fried up in something like 100% trans-fat oil.  It was good.

So - party a success.  Glad we did it, glad it's over.

The kids carved pumpkins on Sunday evening.  Some of them in their underwear because despite the chill in the air, he can't seem to find a love of being dressed.  Trent was confined to the high chair because he kept trying (succeeding) to steal the knives and cut random things with them.

Cameron's second pair of glasses broke this week, and so we'll be taking the lenses in from the first pair to be put in a new set of frames.  You'd think that with kids being rough and careless as they are, glasses for children would be made of something like titanium.  But no.  They are fragile as a sheet of tin foil.

Andrew flew to Spokane on Monday morning at crack o'dark A.M.  He'll be back tonight, and I'm not expecting any grand news.  But life goes on.  Until next week, Y'All.

Stubborn Trent

Trent really is the most stubborn child ever born.

He's a diva, too.  Whenever he gets upset he storms down the hallway with a vicious screech that turns into wailing sobs, chooses a bedroom, any bedroom, proceeds inside and slams the door.  Then he bawls and screams at the top of his lungs for as long as it takes for one of us to go back and get him.  Except, if the person who goes to retrieve him is the same person who ticked him off to begin with, (most often me), then the wailing and screaming starts all over again at an even louder pitch.  

So usually I send Cameron back to coax Trent out because Trent likes Cameron.  Cameron is the giver of piggy-back rides.  (How he manages that, I will never know, because Trent weighs the same as a baby elephant.)

More evidence that Trent is a major diva - today he was drinking Ethan's milk from a mug that Ethan left on the table.  When it was all gone, Trent brought the mug to me and grunted for a refill.  Instead, I handed him the sippy cup of milk that I had poured for him not half an hour ago, but he chucked it across the room and shoved the mug into my thigh.  OK, so the kid doesn't like sippy cups anymore.  I collected the sippy cup and poured it's contents into the mug and handed it to Trent.  He muttered a "da-da-da", which means "Thank you" in I'mTooStubbornToMimicWhatYouSay, and took a sip.  Then he looked at me with a scowl and tipped that mug of milk upside down, spilling the contents onto the kitchen floor.

I think he was unsatisfied with the temperature of his beverage.

Diva.

So now I'm rethinking his Halloween costume.

Anyway, back to the stubborn.

Today, Trent threw one of hits fits, slamming the door and screeching like a banshee.  He picked my room this time, and I'm fine with that as long as he stays out of my jewelry box.  And I think it's ok for him to go off on his own and vent his frustrations, so I left him in there for a while before attempting to get him to come out.  I went back once and knew it was a job for Cameron.

Cameron went back, followed by Drew, and emerged without a chunky toddler, but Drew came out crying with a three inch scratch on his back.  Don't mess with Trent.  Actually, it was my dresser that scratched him, but anyway...  

When we finally got the little turd to come out and stop crying over the injustice that was me not carrying him all the way down the hallway when I got him up from his nap, he sat on my lap and glared at anyone who came near.  But Drew, always helpful, decided to brighten Trent's mood with a Goldfish cracker.  He held it up to Trent, but Trent was not going to take it.  He wanted it, but he wasn't going to give in.  So Drew held it up to Trent's mouth and gently shoved it between Trent's lips.  And there it sat.  Trent wasn't going to spit it out, because he wanted it, but he wasn't going to comply with the Good Spirits Campaign that Drew was waging, either, so he couldn't bring it all the way into his mouth on his own.  

We let it sit there for a while.  Trent scowled and didn't budge.  We giggled and Trent didn't so much as crack a smile.  Finally, when drool started to run down Trent's neck, Drew pushed the cracker the rest of the way into Trent's mouth, and we had success.  A smile!

Stubborn little diva.

Week In Review: October 18th, 2010

Happy Birthday to Andrew's Daddy.  He misses him every day.  

I'm really starting to wonder about my memory.  I can recall none of the past week except for today.  So today I shall share...

Mondays, as you know, are Andrew's day off.  Today he took the older boys fishing while I stayed home and cleaned bits and pieces of the house with Trent. Fun, no?

I'm a new contributing writer for OurMommyhood.com, so I'll be writing a monthly article for them.  I spent some time today fruitlessly promoting my piece there.  If you haven't read it, by the way, it can be found here.  Comments are appreciated.  I so badly want it to appear that people actually bothered to read it.  Not my best piece, but there ya go.  Which reminds me...deadline coming up this week.  I really should come up with an idea.

Anyway...

After lunch we went for a drive and ended up doing a spontaneous photo shoot in the mountains.  It was torturous fun, if that makes any sense.  Trent hates to have his picture taken.  We ended up giving him a sucker and not caring that it was in the photos.  We're thinking some of these pics might end up being Christmas gifts or something.  But given the spontaneous nature, we're not sure.  Here's some of my favorites...

 

This Friday we're having a Halloween party with seven additional boys...so our next update will surely be interesting.  Until next week then...