Kids Say the Darndest Things

Abby and Nolan each have good stories this week. First, Abby. We were walking through WalMart and she, for whatever reason, was singing the Jimmy Buffett song "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know where I'm a-gonna go When the volcano blows." And after she sang that, she looked and me and said "I think he should go home when the volcano blows." Indeed!

And then there's Nolan. I was driving, my mom was in the passenger seat, Nolan in his seat behind us, Abby in the way back and we just pulled into a parking spot at Applebees and Nolan was talking about the letter he just wrote. He knows most letters, but sometimes has to describe them. Well, it seems he wrote, you know, that letter that looks like a P, except it has a penis. What?? Yup, it's a P with a penis. You mean an R? Yeah that's the one. Um, Nolan, that would be a P with a tail! (But really, tell a kid a p with a tail and you're just asking for trouble.)

Anyway, I haven't posted for awhile so I thought I'd share what we've been up to.

Here's an advent wreath I made with Nolan the other day, trying to decide if my K4/K5 church kids could make this. I determined if I couldn't get the candles to stay straight, they couldn't either. But it was fun when it lasted, and Nolan likes taping on the paper flames we cut out for it, too.


And here's the makings of the millions of feet of paper chains that the kids made to adorn our tree (picture to come!).


Turkey hats...

Aren't we just creative?

It's snowing again tonight, and we're supposed to get 8 inches by morning and there's already a snowman out front. I'm wondering about a snow day on December 1? That would have to be some record. But, it snowed here last Monday, too, and the kids had a ball sledding down the hill. I'm glad Dave was there to catch them!

Even Max really, really seems to enjoy the snow. And it tires him out! :)

Us just goofing around... Clearly I'm their favorite toy!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

I'm going to eat what? Max was all about helping Dave with the turkey!

I missed the picture of Nolan digging out the turkey neck this year, but here he is injecting the bird with a big needle. Dave got a new charcoal convection cooker to try instead of deep frying it so he could inject it and give it a rub. (Hey, whatever makes you happy!)

The turkey done. Dave says it looks dry in this picture, but it was really incredible. Just fell off the bone. Yum!

The day was nice because the kids are getting older and are more self-sufficient! They played downstairs most of the day, and when it came to eating, they even had a kids' table. I could get used to this!

And here's the grown-up table.

Gram and the boys watching Polar Express

And Abby (who was happy to have a girl around!) and Erin watching the movie, too. I wonder if Erin wonders what's wrong with Abby--those gigantic front teeth and crazy hair (she's trying to grow her bangs out).

Gram and Grumpy and all six grandkids. Things to be thankful for for sure!

And tradition is that day after Thanksgiving, we haul out the Christmas stuff and get ready! It was really fun with Max this year. Everything was new to him, and he was cute, if I do say so myself!

Are they naughty or nice? They sure look nice, but I'm not sure...

Where's Max?

It's a family event! Check out those paper chains.

Abby putting the star on top.

And then, all relaxed and watched Rudolph!

I wish Abby had three-day school weeks every week! I'm not sure I'll feel that way when both Nolan and Abby are in school, but right now, it's really a lot of fun to have her home. And of course, having gram and grumpy here was fun, and getting together with Jen and family was fun, and all the great holiday stuff we do. Today was a good relaxer day, and at one point, Abby, Nolan, Dave and I were all playing a board game together while Max napped. Ahhh, this is the life! December will pass by quickly with visits, Christmas parties, hotel stays and family Christmas celebrations, and January will probably be quite a long month, but it's just one day at a time around here.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday!

Pot roast, vagisil, and other spectacular things

If you had told me a year ago that I would have made pot roast for a Tuesday night meal, so we could all have a family dinner before I went to volunteer at the school book fair, I would have looked at you, laughed out loud and driven you to the nearest mental hospital to get you checked out. I mean, pot roast? I've never made one of those in my life. Yes, seriously, in my life. I would have suspected McDonald's or some other dinner plan would have been my go-to meal. And volunteering at the book fair? Please! While I love books, volunteering is just something that I never had time for. It's nice to be able to have pot roast done when Dave gets home, eat a peaceful meal (even with Abby screaming in the background that she doesn't like carrots, potatoes and pot roast) as a family and still have energy to run out the door for volunteer work. One thing though... don't tell Dave that my pot roast was with cream of mushroom soup and onion soup mix. He thinks it had flour, gravy, rosemary... whatever! I may be becoming a house wife, but I'm still all about simple.

I was up putting clean clothes away today (wow, I'm domestic... yesterday I spent hours in the bathroom cleaning the hair and yucks off the baseboards and using toilet bowl cleaner and a toothbrush to get the yucks out of the jets in the bathtub) ANYWAY, I was putting clean clothes away when Max handed me a toothbrush and a tube of vagisil. The vagisil, which is kept with Abby's stuff in her bathroom drawer for no other reason than that girl is itchier than you can believe, apparently looks like toothpaste to Max. I just laughed. And now you know how it really goes around here during the day.

And, finally, last weekend I took the kiddos to Radio City Music Hall's Christmas Spectacular. And by kiddos, I mean Abby and Nolan because no way was I taking Max! Anyway, we went downtown and it was so much fun. The kids really loved it, and so did I. We went to Applebees for dinner (without Max, it's a rare treat these days) and just had a really good time. My only wish was that the show was about a month later since it's a little early for the Christmas spirit. Oh well... Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! (Which it did on Monday... traffic was already horrible and people in the ditch!)

Here's a blurry picture of the kiddos in front of the sign...

And a picture in front of the stage...

And finally one of Nolan smiling. Must be all those legs!

And afterwards we walked through the lit-up park...

On Sunday we had our "old" neighbors over for a Packer party. And by "old" I mean those neighbors we used to live next to in Mayville. Although, we did celebrate Bob's birthday, too, so I guess maybe age is appropriate, too!

While I go out with Jenny from Mayville somewhat regularly, we don't often get to see families. It's events like these that make you go wow, how fast time flies. When we met them, Nathan was 4, and was going to marry me for the first year we lived there. Now he's 10, and expert fisher, and so, so very polite and well-behaved (as were all four of her boys--great job Jenny and Marc!). And her other boys... Tyler was just 2 when we moved in and Adam and Sam weren't even born. Come to think of it, Sam wasn't even born when we moved out! And then there's Beth and Bob with Mike and Sara... Mike was only 12 and Sara was 8. Now they're planning a graduation party for Mike and Sara's in high school. It's just crazy! It was a houseful on Sunday, but all the kids were really great. The only person that needed to be watched was Marc, Jenny's husband, who apparently didn't hear the no throwing in the house rule and threw a ball at Nathan, and, when Nathan ducked, hit a picture and broke the glass! It was quite funny that will all the kids, the mess came from him.

Abby will be home soon, so off I go. Hope everyone's having a great week!

There's just no reasoning with them

I volunteered to work at the book fair at school tonight, while Dave's parents watched the kids for me. They took them to McDonalds, ran around, had a good time. I got home around 7:45, and the kids were clearly tired. Abby got a diary from the book fair, lock and all, and was trying to get her diary locked. The lock and key is so little, though, that between her six year old fingers and the fact that she was super tired, she couldn't get it locked. I showed her how, and then she wanted to do it herself but couldn't. Frustration was rising. Didn't want help, couldn't do it herself, wanted it locked before bed. By the time I made them go brush their teeth, she was in tears, sobbing the entire time. She asked me if she could try again, and considering her sobbing was getting worse and worse, I said no, she could try again in the morning. More sobs. I put Nolan to bed then came in her room to say goodnight and asked for hugs and kisses and she just sat there. I said what, no hugs and kisses? And she sobbed "It's just that I think you love Nolan more than me!" I had to stop myself from laughing outloud. Oh my, just a little drama! After assuring her of my love (still through her sobs) I said goodnight and went to put my pjs on. When I listened outside her door, she was still sobbing. I hate to have her go to bed like that, but I knew no words would calm her down. So, I stood outside her door until it was quiet, and then snuck in to give her a kiss where she was already fast asleep.

The dreaded report card

Abby came home with her first quarter, first grade report card tonight. When I saw it, I wasn't really worried about it. Her teacher, Mrs. Pelky has told me she enjoys having Abby in class, I've seen her do her homework every night and she does it well, and, while I may be biased, she's generally a good kid. So, when I opened her report card, I wasn't surprised by the many S's she got (for Satisfactory, the highest rating) in such things like Completes Tasks on Time, Displays Adequate Attention Span, Creates or Produces Writing to Communicate with Different Audiences for a Variety of Purposes, or any of the other 40 things she got S's on. She did have one N (for Needs Improvement) for Writing Conventions--Uses Correct Grammar, Capitalization and Puctuation, but I figured that was ok at six years old. So, after looking at it, I put it on the table and didn't think more of it.

Since Dave's parents are here visiting for a few days, Abby did her homework tonight with Grandma and Grandpa--math, reading, spelling. After she was done and put it away, she saw her report card and sat down to look at it with Dave. She came in the kitchen and boasted that she got a lot of S's. Not even thinking about it I told her yup, she did, and she got one N (for Needs Improvement). She looked at me and went back to where she was sitting with Dave. After awhile, Dave came in and said Abby was upset. I asked why and he said because it was because of the ONE N on her report card. Seriously? So I went in to talk to her, and she just broke down in tears for about 20 minutes. I told her she did a great job, and she told me she knows punctuation and capitalization and she should have gotten and S. She didn't deserve an N. I asked her why exactly she was upset, and she said "I'm just disappointed in myself because I know it."

Ugh. Some people get their dad's eyes and their mom's nose. Or dad's height and mom's hair. Abby seems to have gotten Dave's need for perfection and my need to always be right. The poor girl. There's an awful lot of report cards between now and May of 2020!

Pierogies, anyone?

On Friday, I got an email from Dave asking me if he thought it would be fun to let the kids make pierogies on Saturday. You know, let even Max get into it, rolling the dough out, filling them, boiling them. Yeah, sure. Sounds like fun. The last time we made pierogies was before we were married, and we were in our tiny kitchen in our condo and it took hours and hours. Sounds like fun! But, I had to go to the meeting on Saturday morning, and by the time I got back home, the kitchen already looked like this:


I honestly have no idea why the kids have bears belted to them. But whatever. They looked like this from the front:


The dough was all ready to go, it just needed to rise a little. Let's have at it! It was cold, rainy and a good day to be inside. Let's make pierogies!

Even Max helped, dumping the sour cream in the dough.


Soon after this, we dropped the bears.

All the kids rolled out the dough, improvising for rolling pins when necessary...

When in doubt, use a wine bottle!

Don't worry. Once we got to this part, we didn't use Max's dough anymore! It was quite flung about.

We improvised on the cookie cutters, too. Mixed drink, anyone? (Who knew our liquor accessories would be so handy?)

Dave, showing Abby how to fill them and fold them and seal them. To which Abby exclaimed "It's just like an uncrustable!" Yup, it really is.

"Now Nolan, you have to get them pressed tightly."

And Max just continued to fling his on the floor.

Such concentration!

We should do this more often!

Boiling to perfection.

Messy kitchen, three happy campers, and Max in bed!

And then there was one... Dave finished the rest

While the kids watched a movie.

The finished product. Just fry them in some butter, and YUM! We had 72 pierogies. That's a lot of pierogi!

When Max woke up, he thought he was pretty cool.

And I had to give Dave credit. The day was really fun, the pierogies were really good, and everyone had a great time. What you can't see in these pictures is the Christmas music we played in the background the whole time. A little Johnny Mathis to get you in the pierogi making mood! It might be a tad early, but with the weather and the cooking, I couldn't resist. We decided that this should be a tradition every year. I mean, who needs Christmas cookies? When we started talking about making it a tradition I just looked at Dave and said "Ya know, before we know it, they'll be able to do this by themselves, and then we'll blink again and it'll just be me and him, making pierogies together." He looked at me like I'm crazy. And I am, but whatever.

And one final picture of us venturing outside today. I really don't know if they were bundled enough it was so cold. We lasted about 15 minutes, and then decided to have a Wii tournament instead. Ahhh, the heat!

Hope everyone else had a great weekend, too!

Just be nice

The theme in our house lately is just be nice to each other. It doesn't seem like such a hard concept. I mean, nice. Not nice because mom said nice. Not nice because someone's looking nice. Although, I would take either of those some days too. JUST BE NICE! Some days are better than others in that area, and today, for Nolan, it was a not so good day. He just couldn't seem to grasp the concept and talked not so nice to neighbor Cody, ripped Abby's ladybug she was making, and was just all around not nice. Don't get me wrong, both Abby and Cody have their moments too, but this morning it was all Nolan. I stopped all three of them, gave them a lecture about liking each other, made them all say "Treat others like you would want to be treated" and they all went along happily. Except Nolan. Who wouldn't say it, wouldn't pay attention to me, laughed and mocked me. Ugh! But then it all seemed ok and off we went to walk to school. And then it all broke down when Cody asked for a drink of Nolan's water, Nolan pitched a fit, and I wasn't going to stand for it. So, instead of taking Nolan and Max to the park after we dropped off Abby and Cody like I planned, I took the boys home. This was after I told Nolan we were going to go to the park before he behaved this way but now we weren't (hey, I gotta be a little mean sometimes, too!), and he better not be mean the rest of the day or he'll be spending a lot of time in his room.

When we got home, Nolan wanted to do chalk in the driveway, and I agreed, but made him write what I wanted him to.


Here it is a little darkened, but you probably still can't see it.


It says "Treat others like you want to be treated." Nothing like learning your letters and a life lesson at the same time!