Mother Hen Portrait

One of the very best parts of parenthood, in my humble opinion, is the artwork that takes place right around 3 years of age. Lily announced she had drawn a picture of me yesterday and held up her doodle thingamajig. (I'm sure that's how they advertise these things too!) The similarities between her drawing and my self are simply amazing....really....my arms and legs do come straight out of my head, just like that! And yes, I do have a halo around my entire body, in case you were wondering.



(Obviously, she gets this talent from her father as I was never able to draw with such artistic prowess....hee hee hee....)

Chicken-for-All

Here in Eden Prairie, the local food shelf offers a program called Fare-For-All. Once a month, you can stop in to the site and pick up a few boxes of fresh vegetables, frozen meats, bread and other whole grains etc. for a super low price. The idea is that everyone should be able to afford to feed their families good, healthy food. Today was the day. But we missed it. Again....

You see, today was also the first day of first grade for Aidan. In order to celebrate, we gave him the option of going to Dairy Queen (oh, please pick Dairy Queen, PLEEEEEASE!) picking up a cake or other assorted treat at Costco (oh, oh, oh....if not Dairy Queen, go for Costco, pleeeease, pick Costco!) or we could make a batch of cookies or cake at home (please, whatever you do, don't pick the cake.....pleeeease choose cookies! Come on, go for the cookies!)

He chose homemade cake. Now, you may ask why that was even an option. I have asked myself the same question over and over but alas, I have no good answer other than chalking it up to another momentary lapse of good judgement....which seems to not be so momentary, having started last week when I told the kids they could choose to play with whatever they wanted while I ran on the treadmill and about 10 minutes in Madeline came to tell me Lily needed help with the glue bottle, because it was empty now....and I soon discovered that in that very brief time, she had managed to empty an entire new bottle of white school glue all over two bookshelves stacked with giant legos in between...."Look mom, we made a lego sandwich!" After cleaning up, I told them to choose something for which they would NOT get in trouble and after 5 more minutes, Aidan came running in covered head-to-toe in the entire box of band-aids we had just bought at the store....."Mom, I'm a mummy," he says, as if this would be a get-in-trouble-free-activity. So you see, this lapse of judgement thing is apparently chronic....and a wee bit genetic...

At any rate, Kurt had come home early this afternoon with fever and chills and so I was able to set off for the store leaving Aidan behind, playing computer games and keeping watch of Lily, who, having lost all access to the art room FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE due to her stylish wall and furniture artwork earlier in the day, was bound to abide by house rules the rest of the day. (I said it was chronic did I not?)

At the store, Madeline became uncharacteristically devilish, biting or pinching Liam every time I turned around, apparently thrilled at her new found power. (How exciting to get THAT kind of reaction from such a tiny creature!) After threatening to shave off her hair, force her to grow long, curling fingernails (like those in the Guiness Book of Records which she is certain to have nightmares about tonight), and worse yet, refusing to let her eat any of the cake if she touched him again, we finally had everything we needed. At that point, I turned around and saw the boxed cake mixes on sale for $1. As a veteran mom, I knew the best thing to do for myself and my family was to put everything back and grab a box. But no. I was now a mom on a mission to bake the perfect 1st-day-of-school-cake from scratch....with 4 kids...and a sick husband....at dinnertime.

We arrived back home at 4:15. This is the normal time for me to prepare dinner so that we can eat around 5. Since Kurt was not feeling well, I decided to forgo making the terriyaki fish over rice with the side of vegetable egg rolls that was on the menu. Given that, I saw no problem with squeezing in the baking of the cake. After all, while it was in the oven, I would have plenty of time to put together the homemade buttercream frosting and still get dinner made while waiting for the cake to cool down before the decorating....right?

It was about the time I got the first phone call from Kurt, who was down in the basement and needed me to bring him more covers ("Karen, I feel like it is 10 degrees down here!"....um, because it is about that down there....) that I knew things might not go as planned. And then, when I started making the frosting and realized my box of powdered sugar was all but empty and the cake was cooking too fast on the top, and Lily came running over asking me to help her "scrape off the black stuff from the house" (not a promising sentence really); and after turning off the blender and taking the sizzling chicken off the stove, I followed her over to find that she and Liam had been digging in our potted hibiscus tree and Liam was eating the soil from the pile he was sitting in on the hardwood floor, and as I was cleaning it up, my self-proclaimed fifth child called to ask if the cake was ready yet, and would I mind bringing him something to eat and some hot tea and...oh shoot, the cake!...AHHHHHHHHHHH!

But I learned some very important lessons today. I found out you can make your own powdered sugar by blending it for a very long time. But no matter how long you blend it, it is still TOO gritty for frosting...but if you add an entire pint of whipping cream, you can kind of fix the texture....but then it doesn't quite taste right....at all....and the fat kind of sticks to the roof of your mouth indefinitely... And I also learned that you can't really fix a cake that gets crusted on top and bottom because the oven cooks too hot...and too long because of the baby eating soil. And that my kids would have been perfectly happy just squeezing big clumps of blue store-bought decorating icing over their ice cream, skipping the spongy, yet crusted, cake altogether. And that two boneless, skinless chicken tenders is enough chicken for all four kids, plus some, when they know they are getting cake later.

And even though it was pretty much a travesty of a cake, they actually ate it....Madeline said she loved everything but the crust, and shoot, Lily went as far as licking the frosting off the floor after having accidentally dropped her entire plateful of cake....when falling out of her chair, that came down on top of her....you know, because that's what kids do.

And as for Aidan, he had seconds...of the ice cream anyway...and I think, when my back was turned of course, he may have finished up the entire bottle of blue decorating icing. So, he might find out tomorrow just what blue food coloring can do to a person...which will make his second day of school just as memorable as the first. Hee hee hee!

Weekday Humor

Madeline came running upstairs today screaming and crying, followed by a smugly walking yet quiet Aidan.

"Aidan HIT me!" she shrieked in-between gasping breaths.

"Aidan, it is not okay to hit your sister," I said, calmly, not even bothering to turn around. (Been here, done this...) Madeline immediately stopped her fit and ran back to play with Lily.

"But she wouldn't do what I told her to do," he complained (for the sake of argument).

"Well Aidan, that is not a good reason to hit your sister," I replied.

After a few seconds of silent contemplation Aidan asked: "Well Mom, what would be a good reason to hit my sister?"

Doh.

FL pictures, Week 2

First up, GiGi's house

My grandma and I with the kids

A happy Great-Grandma!

DiDi (my Aunt Diane) singing and dancing with Liam



We stopped for special yogurt treats in Orlando with my cousin Warren and his wife Karly


Next up: JoJo's house

Left to Right: Caroline, Madeline, Aidan, Lily, Jonathan and Jordan

My cousin Johanna and me

Sour Grapes: A visit to a Florida vineyard


The man with the plan: my father carries all the grapes we picked. He grew up thinking these scuppernong grapes were a real treat. Although I have to admit, they will not be making it into our shopping cart any time soon (or, um, EVER), at the very least, picking them was pretty cool. Of course, after our friend's warning ("Watch where the kids stand. We've had a real fire ant problem this year.") the image of Eddie Murphy doing his First Black President skit kept dancing through my head as I kept reminding the kids to keep their little feet moving.

A rare sighting: Kurt OUTSIDE in the Florida heat (taken right before he retreated back to the air conditioned car)

Although we were at a the vineyard to pick grapes, the kids found the Tilapia (and mosquito breeding) pond far more interesting. Here they are looking for tadpoles and other such things with Grandma.

Lily, looking a wee bit lost on the other side of the pond



Ahhh, cooling off with Uncle Wesley again



Jonathan and Lily showing their moves (they started struttin' their stuff while watching the movie Eloise)


Kurt and my brother Wes sit for one last photo shoot before we have to say our good-byes


And thus we come to the end of this year's Florida visit. Though I'll admit we complained too much about the FL heat, we are truly fortunate to have experienced it since currently MN temperatures are topping out in the 60s! (Yes, in AUGUST!) We will look back even more fondly come January...at which point we will wonder why we ever left.

FL Trip, in Pictures, Week One

Florida Fun

Lily next to Aunt Jill

Madeline

Liam

Aidan

(Ok, not so much fun this round....he jumped in face first and came up with a bloody nose but he had a great time otherwise!)

Aidan with Ian (cousin)

Jonathan (cousin) complete with waterproof cast

Our only trip to the beach, which ended after about 15 minutes due to a 6 year old who couldn't handle salt-water in his wound...and his mother who had a random visual disturbance....Short and sweet, just the way a beach day ought to be!

Shoes make any amount of sand in the sun bearable! (Also why I can NEVER find my shoes where I left them!)

"Hmmm, what would make an inner tube around the body even better?...."

"Well duh, SHOES of course!"

Seen in grandma's backyard....

Kidding of course! This baby was sunbathing securely behind a big fence at the Melbourne Zoo. But it is why Madeline started having nightmares about alligators eating her arms off....(Of course I probably didn't need to pretend to eat her with one of Jonathan's model gators later the same day....my bad! Who'd've known it would have such an effect though, really!)


Liam trying to pet the bird on Grandma's shoulder


Jonathan and Aidan feed the friendly birds in the atrium


The overly friendly bird surprising Aidan with a little visit to the shoulder during feeding time

Aidan feeding the bird (after recovering from his shock!)

Grandma and Liam at the splash pool (still at the Melbourne Zoo)

What better way to cool off after the Zoo then to swim with Uncle Wesley!

The Cousins after a fun-filled day
Left to right: Liam, Lily, Evelyn, Madeline, Jonathan; In front: Ian and Aidan

What could be better than one person (my sister-in-law Jill) standing on someone's (my brother Andrew) shoulders?....

....Two people on his shoulders! (I'm smiling because I am so happy to be the one on top!)

One of the half dozen or so lizards I caught for the kids....or, as Lily calls them: "Grandma's pets"

Another fun day was had by all!

FL Recap

Random Fact: There is a town in Alaska named Chicken (named this because of the abundance of ptarmigan and after much disagreement on how to officially spell that, they settled on Chicken, to avoid embarrassment....because, living in Chicken, Alaska is much less embarrassing!) It has a population of 17. And each year, for the past three years, they have held the Chickenstock Music Festival. (Hey, I am not making this up!) And one day, if my kids stay on track, I may just ship them all there!

We are back in Minnesota after two and a half weeks in Florida visiting friends and family. We are happy to be back in the 70-degree and practically mosquito-less weather (this has been a very mild summer here in MN to say the least!) and I will very quickly recap our trip for my avid readers.

1. We arrived.

2. We sweated, a lot.

3. We got eaten by mosquitoes big enough to be living in a zoo.

4. We swam, and swam, and swam.

5. We sweated some more, which made our bites itch.

6. We complained about our skin melting, as we watched the peahens and peacocks walk through the grass and noted the cactus wall growing in the yard across the street.

7. We visited with old friends and family while scratching and melting.

8. We swam some more.

9. We watched some crabs succumb to their death in a pot of boiling water. The kids ate them with ketchup.

10. We left.

It was a very uneventful trip actually but there were a couple conversations that I feel are blog-worthy.

One day after Kurt arrived, we decided to take all the kids out to breakfast at the Blueberry Muffin (a personal favorite.) Kurt and I sat with Lily while my parents had Aidan, Madeline, Lily and cousin Jonathan at their table. In the course of the breakfast, Kurt started asking the kids about their favorite players on the Steelers.

Aidan knew right away: "Troy Polamalu!" he said excitedly.

"And there's Hines Ward and Ben Roethlisberger and Santonio Holmes and..." we went on.

Lily chimed in: "And there's Turkey."

Um, sure Lily. Whatever you say. We just laughed. So then Kurt starts telling Lily all the various nicknames on the team.

"They call Polamalu the Tasmanian Devil, and Roethlisberger is called Big Ben because he is so tall and when Jerome Bettis played, they called him The Bus and..."

"Well, what is Turkey's nickname?" Lily asked.

"Uh, isn't it just Turkey?"

"No. It's Chickenwing," she assured us.

You just wait and see. The Steeler known as Turkey (but called Chickenwing) is VERY intimidating!

***

The other conversation took place in the car. The kids were talking about what they wanted to be when they grow up.

"Mom, can we be two things when we are adults?" Madeline asked.

"Sure, Madeline," I said.

"Then I'm going to be a princess and a ballerina," Madeline said.

"And I'm going to be a fireman, or a police car, or a dump truck," Jonathan said.

"Well, I'm going to be a princess and a Transformer," Lily said.

"Lily, you can't be a Transformer," Aidan, our know-it-all, chimed in. "Transformers are not even real."

Because, you know, you can be a dump truck.

(Stay tuned for the trip recapped in pictures.)

Florida 2009

I have been asked recently why there is a silence on the blog. The short answer is that we are in Florida. And nothing noteworthy has happened, well, unless you count the stomach bug following us here with my mother and brother sick for the first several days (picture me on my knees praying incessantly that this is OUR friendly virus, whom we love and hold dear, and not some new virus that we will have the honor of entertaining); oh and my nephew breaking his arm in two places within the first 24 hours of rough-housing with Aidan and my brother. But really, you can rest assured that I will write when the story presents itself as I am sure it will. It always does. (Especially in Florida....)