Like sand through the hour glass

Eleven years ago today I was scheduled to go to Jackson Hole Wyoming with my best friend. I was a fairly fresh culinary graduate living on the other side of the country and was on an errand to procure sour dough pancake starter for my head chef.

Eleven years ago today Mother Nature decided to be a butt hole and dumped 12 inches of fresh powder in three hours which rendered the pass closed

Eleven years ago today I was sitting in my parents living room bummed out about the fact that I had failed to complete my mission

Eleven years ago today my sister got a wicked craving for skittles and beef jerky and corn nuts and had to go the only place that sold such a random crappy list of foods

Eleven years ago today there was a casual encounter at the Broulim’s which sent a friend over to my parents’ house that I had not seen in four years

Eleven years ago today I accidentally stumbled on to the path that would result in hours of laughing in a bowling alley, using 5000 cell phone minutes in a month, staying up until all hours of the night to use said cell phone minutes all of which would culminate in me turning down my dream job in New York.

Eleven years ago today I met Brice.

Eleven years later I am sitting in another freak snow storm only this time I am grateful for the moodiness of Mother Nature because this time around I belong to Brice.

Mary had a little lamb

As you know I am trying my hardest to become a converted pinterest mom. This year I stumbled across an advent calander that uses scriptures that revolve around Jesus to help to bring focus onto the true meaning of the season. Since I normally despise all things Christmas I decided to give it a whack so I diligenttly cut out these prescribed versuses and then stuck them in adorable numbered matchbooks. I figured that I was already winning christmas.

 Thing two decided to go first and he boldly read us Isaiah 7:14. It reads Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Thing two read it as a virgin shall conceive a bear. I almost died. Try keeping a straight face through that one! All though truth be told his version sounds way more exciting. Heck for all we know Chewbacca could have been the Christ child if that had been the case. Or smokey the bear, or Yogi or Fozzie. Shoot think of the possibilities. Thanks for nothing pinterest!

Not so super Mario!

So it turns out that you have discovered my little secret. I am a flake and I often forget about obligations that I should probably make a priority. This is why I am personally responsible for the death of several poor helpless house plants. Truth be told if my children did not make copious amounts of noise they too would probably suffer from the same fate. I could pretend that I am going to play catch up on all that you missed which means that you were not paying attention six seconds ago?  So onward and upward mmkay mmkay.

This weekend I had to leave town for some good old training for my other job. You know the one that makes me a complete hypocrite. Because you know lots of people make desserts for a living and then earn extra spending cash by telling people how to live a lifestyle that promotes weight loss. This meant that Myers was at home with the boys for a whole Saturday and bless his little heart if he did not make every little boy wish come true in one day. Sugar for breakfast absolutely. Burritos and soda for lunch you betcha! Sledding until you no longer remember what color you should be why not! Video games and trash food until the wee hours of the night check. Ok in fairness wee hours of the night means 8:15 to me because I am that awesome. In order to fulfill the final request he was forced to take them to the nerd cave in order to fix the Mario Kart that was long ago scratched until it resembled the record that inspired the hit song two turn tables and a microphone.  This in itself was like winning the lottery since my level of amazingness makes it impossible for me to enter that store. This is also a lie. It is really the snake that they keep on the counter. Seriously though, do the boys that frequent a video game slash LAM party headquarters think that it is wise to also invest in a reptile that repeals the female species even more than their awkwardness a good idea? But I digress. Our disc was so scratched it took 20 spins through the machine to get it to work again but thank Stan Lee that it did! The boys came home and played until their eyes started to dry out and their fingers looked like those of the men who work on crabbing boats.

This as it turns out produces unwanted side effects that manifest themselves as two boys who are completely and totally out of control. So the next day Brice had to inform them that he was going to take the cord to the WII away so that they would be encouraged to head back out in the daylight. This resulted in an epic meltdown which I will give you the highlights of.

• ·         The boys immediately start to  emit a cry that sounds less like a whimper and more like a siren that would notify a patron of such catastrophic events as Chernobyl imploding

• ·         The crying gives way to flailing on the floor and announcing how unfair life is

• ·         When the use of the word life is used suddenly they realize that they were mistaken life is not unfair it is ruined

• ·         Update on the life situation it is actually over

• ·         Now I am hearing an itemized list of why parents suck or are dumb or something along those lines

• ·         When they realize that I am not actually buying that I suck they begin to make ideal threats which include I am not going to ever do my homework again, I am not going to brush my teeth, I am not going to eat blah blah blah

• ·         At this point they have now been corralled into their bedrooms so now Thing one is making a bed in the corner since he is going to teach me a lesson by not sleeping in his comfortable bed

• ·         Thing two is not really into solidarity so rather than sleep on the floor he is choosing to continue on with the high pitch wail. In truth I am shocked that you didn’t call to ask what was wrong along with half of the free world who I am sure heard said fiasco

• ·          As a last ditch effort they begin to plead and bargain. I was offered the following- their DS for a whole month, all of their toys, all of their allowance, complete obedience for the rest of their lives. In hindsight I should have opted for the last one and gotten it in writing.

• ·         Speaking of writing Thing 1 also asked if he could write a paper in which he would try to persuade me to allow him to continue the use of the WII. Those were his exact words BTW

• ·         Thing 2 was sick and Myers needed to check his temperature and could not find the thermometer. Thing 1 insisted that he knew where it was and was never going to tell him where it was and then started to announce that if they were playing hot or cold he would be ice cold. Then for the next ten minutes would randomly scream out you are freezing up! I am not ever going to tell you where it is until you let me play video games! Joke was on him it was on my nightstand and nowhere near where he just knew it was.

Eventually I turned the lights off and they went to bed. Remember how I told you that I am kind of a flake? Well it turns out the boys have figured this out to and the very next day they were back to the WII on account of Myers not taking the power cord with them. Why do I bring this up you might ask. Well because this is the how the second day of playing went.

After fifteen minutes thing 2 screams down the stairs MOM ETHAN IS SAYING THE F WORD! I thought to myself surely this is not the F word. So I ask which one to which he spells back the F dash dash dash word and it wasn’t fudge! It was in fact the mother of all swear words. For a split second I thought I should be proud of his spelling but then remembered the real issue.

So what have we learned from this very long story?

Nerds are ruining my life and ruining my shot of mother of the year- POOP!

This post brought to you by the letter S

So you may or may not have noticed that I took a little break. It was not intentional but rather forced. Our laptop broke and even though Myers thought he could fix it he could not. Right now I am hunkered down on the floor like a Neanderthal using his mcguyvered version which btw is really just throwing a sack of baby carrots on top of the power source so as to now allow it to wiggle too much whilst holding my mouth very still and not exhaling to heavily causing said bag of carrots to flop out of the way. It is uber classy and may or may not have led to several lost documents and or crazy outbursts full of swears.

So onward and upward .

We have been ground zero for boogers and snot the last three weeks. It started with thing one and trickled through all  the other three leggereds in our family. I figured that it had skipped me on account of my female status, read I am not gross and do not revel in all things of the vile variety- except gas cause let’s face it rouge farts are pretty funny. I watched as our tissues and Sudafed use went through the roof. At one point I was a little worried that someone might think that we had a very tiny meth lab in our basement. I did my best to be supportive while keeping all of my loved ones at arm’s length. I even considered singing the boys their night time song over a walkie talkie but since I lost the charger changed my mind. Brice was the last to get it and I thought we were all home free but alas I counted my mucus free chickens a little too early. I woke up last Tuesday a little congested and a lot uncomfortable but joined the Sudafed train and went to work. Every day it got a little worse but I denied being sick because If you say it aloud then you know it is true. Friday night I started losing my voice and by Saturday I sounded like a honking chicken but I still held out hope I was not sick. Then Sunday morning when I recreated a scene from the gremlins in my bathroom sink I knew there was no denying it and reluctantly went to the doctor. Luckily for us we have a clinic that is open on Sunday so while the boys went to find Jesus I went to find out that I had pneumonia. Just for fun I contracted a form that is not quite identifiable. It could be viral or it could be bacterial but it was defiantly pneumonia. The doc said that if it was viral it would be combated by zinc and then go away but if it was the other kind I would need to go on antibiotics so he gave me a scrip for that and some cough syrup and sent me on my way.

So there I was in the Walgreens croaking along like Kermit trying to give the pharmacist my current dets.  When we got over the Q and A’s she informed me that the cough syrup prescribed was not covered by my health insurance because it used to be over the counter. She then tried to bilk me for 19 bucks for this crap. Mind you I am sick as a dog and can barely breathe but you better believe I used all my strength to inform her that was crazy and that I did not need the cough syrup that badly. Turns out that the only thing stronger than pneumonia is cheapness.  I asked for directions to the zinc lozenges and walked away. It was like insult to injury when I got there because those stupid cough drops were 6 dollars for 18 of them. For that kind of money I could buy some really great chocolate and cross my fingers that this thing is cured by the cacao bean.  I bought the things popped one in my mouth and slinked home. Halfway home my mouth stated to taste like a gnome had died up in there and so I did the only rational thing I could think of. I chewed that bugger and chased it with lots and lots of water. Twenty minutes later I was nauseous and sweating and it was then that Brice discovered that I had broken all rules of zinc consumption. Who knew there were rules for these things?  

So let’s recap, if you admit you are sick you will have to pay a whole lot of money to take things that taste gross and make you sicker. But on the upside you will get to watch a lot of really crappy fox TV.  Wait crap that is also a punishment. Sickness- helping no one ever.

Oh brother

I have been watching this little face with nostalgia for the past couple of weeks.

 He is after all my baby who is not so babyish anymore. My mom heart aches to know that eventually he will figure out that it is not called OPmeal but rather oatmeal and that usually does not have a hard k sound anywhere in it. All too soon he will figure out that the majority of the things I say are neither cool nor funny to anyone other than myself. Even worse he will trade in his bright green helmet and huffy bike for a real set of wheels that take him to far away places with ease. I was getting pretty bummed out by these facts until this week.

We went out on a family bike ride and halfway through Thing 1 started lamenting about the fact that he wished that we had never switched schools because he was so far behind. I kept trying to tell him that there are state standards and that every teacher is required to teach the exact same thing at every school. I figured that my use of big words like curriculum would satiate his complaints but he just kept on poking the bear. He kept telling me that there were are least two big things that Thing 2 knew that he was never ever taught. His insistence grew and soon he was near hysterics. I finally asked him what knowledge had been bestowed upon his younger brother and not to him that was rocking his world to its core. The answer- Space time continuum. Yep my youngest child had convinced my oldest child that he was being taught this nerdy topic at school and that because he had yet to learn it was going to fail at life. I am not sure why he knows about this concept and I find it oddly amusing that he was wielding it like a weapon of worth but he does and he did.

Then today we had our annual eye exams. I knew that we would not have time to do homework before we left so I grabbed two clip boards and a couple of pencils and gave each child their respective work to do whilst I drove us all to the optometrist. He worked quickly and diligently and when we arrived at the office I checked his work. Things all looked pretty normal; math facts check, deductive reasoning and comprehension check, vowel sounds check. Then I found this…

I don’t even have words or an explanation. I really did think about letting him turn it in. I mean I would laugh if I read this but then I decided that perhaps his teacher does not suffer from the same malady that I do. You know the one where I am a fourteen year old boy stuck in this mid-thirties body. So I made him erase it and put a real answer. I do feel a little ashamed for conforming to the man but what are you going to do?

So now you see the predicament that I am in.  Blue eyes sent from heaven, and a sense of humor that is sick and twisted like his mothers.  Even after all of this I still have a silent prayer in my heart and it goes like this.

Oh sweet boy please stop growing- amen

Baked and perhaps a little fried

I have failed to take a single picture this entire week. Truth be told I have failed to do much more than simply breathe in and out. It is back to school on campus which means that I am personally responsible for the death of hundreds maybe even thousands of chickens. I have caused cows to lactate until all hours of the night so I could plunder their spoils in the forms of butter, cream and milk. And I have probaly caused a famine in some parts of the world with the amount of wheat I have taken out of the free market.  Lets not get started on the sugar- sweet mother of Mary the volume is staggering. The majority of the chaos is over. Our plated function for 1250 is over and the other various parties with numbers in the hundreds have ended as well. All that is left is 3150 sandwiches and cookies and then maybe I will buy milk to put in my own fridge that is if there is any left.
Dang it feels good to be a baker-

These are the days of our lives

I found out that there is this thing called wordless Wednesday that I thought about participating in it this week. Then I realized that my collection of pictures would be so random that it might be considered to be one of those trendy art pieces and or cause panic that I was suffering a stroke so I let wordless Wednesday pass me by.  Now here we are at Friday and I started thinking well crap I better post something so crap it will be!

It has been wicked rainy around here lately. For a while I thought I was living in Washington again but the severe lack of ethnic diversity, hipsters and mobile homes transformed into coffee stands told me I was in fact still in Idaho- (drat) Apparently the inordinate amount of moisture is good for two things mold and moths libidos.We have been overrun by these flying pests.  So much so that they randomly fly out of the air vents when we drive. At first I thought that it was because our cars are always strewn with an unspeakable amount of boy trash. I was starting to get a complex but while I was running an errand at work a moth flew out of the air duct of the company van. Luckily I was in a fifteen passenger so there was plenty of room for the two of us. I can handle them in the car because you roll down a window and their tiny little bodies get sucked right out. This phenomenon is known as science.  However things got a little personal when they decided to stroll on into the house. The kids left the doors open and approximately nine thousand of those buggers came in. I am sure that they sent out evites which explains why the turn out to the party was so good.  There was no way that any human could sleep in these conditions so I turned Myers loose to fix the problem. This is what we got.

OK in fairness I did suggest the vacuum but in my defense any idea sounds amazing inside your head when there are creepy bugs playing the role of a kamikaze in your general area.

The following day I decided that we should do something together as a family and since I was becoming one with mother earth I deiced to embrace it and we hiked R Mountain again. This time we made it all the way to the top. Last year we tried and failed. We actually found out that we gave up twenty feet from the top. This immediately made me feel like a super winner. There were no incidents which I have to admit I was kind of bummed out by so I found last year’s recap and I will give it its own post. I did catch this pretty epic picture so here it is.

Along with moths we have been blessed with wind. I know that you all claim that the winds come sweeping down the plains in Oklahoma but I think I have you beat on this one. This happened-

That its right our trampoline full on flipped upside down in the wind. I did not witness this so I suppose that it could have been some random gnome union angry over my horrible lawn mowing skills but I doubt it.

Finally to round out this really random post I upped the ante on awesome parent of the year award. I got a call from thing ones school. They told me that he had had a playground accident and that he had blood all over his shirt and that I needed to bring him a new one. I am sure that if I had taken that helicopter parenting class I would have learned that the proper thing to do would be to stop my current task and run to his aid. Well this chump didn’t take that class so instead I finished up my task at work then went to pick him up. They told me that he had bit his tongue and I did feel bad for the poor kid  but figured that sitting on the sick bed would be fine for ten minutes. Of course my task took about twenty times longer than I had thought it would and when I got there and looked at the injury I felt horrible.

He stuck his tooth clean through his tongue! And yep I picked up and delivered 200 pounds of bread flour instead of flipping the truck around and racing to him in his hour of need. I felt HORRIBLE! When I asked him if he wanted to come home he shrugged his shoulders and said I don’t know how I am going to eat my celery but what do you think I should do?  Again I think the right thing to have done would be to swoop up my towering boy giant take him to get a Slurpee and cuddle and watch movies. Instead I told him he could choose and choose he did- to stay at school.  It was another serving of mom guilt when he got home and told me he couldn’t eat his lunch. At least I think that is what he said, his tongue was pretty swollen by this point and he could have been singing the lyrics to 99 luft balloons and I would  not have known the difference. Either way don’t get hurt on my watch clearly I am not fit to handle it.

So to recap- living in Idaho is pretty much like living out a plague, my boys are super tough and I make really awesome decisions, pretty much.