Happy Birthday to me

I am not big on birthdays. In fact most times when someone asks when my day of birth is I usually answer that I was not born but rather hatched out of a test tube in a laboratory. Fun fact I once had somebody buy this story. I still have conflicting emotions about this. On one hand it makes me laugh endlessly that they would buy it and makes me believe that I could win big in Vegas because of my poker face. But then it also makes me incredibly anxious because if Michael Jackson is right and this child is my future then I am screwed. But I digress.
Yesterday was  in fact the day that I made my entrance into this world. As such I was lucky enough to receive a beautiful bouquet from my person in Boise which was incredibly sweet of her. I don't know which was more exciting the gift or the opening of the gift. They came from an online floral company and it was the most thorough and well planned out system I have ever seen. After following a few instructions I ended up with an arrangement that looked like it was straight out of a magazine instead of the pile of floral mess which is what I would have created as a half trained chimp, it was simply amazing.

Old man Myers also was able to keep a gift a secret all the way to the end. This is more astounding if you realize that my super sleuthing plus incredible powers of deduction have always thwarted his plans for every holiday. That was a lie. Really it is because he has an awful poker face and therefore I am able to guess every gift he buys. He is most definitely not invited on my excursion to Vegas.

Little did I know though that the real gift would come courtesy of my boys.
Thing 2 is obsessed with the bean boozeled game from Jelly Belly. I however am not into it for a number of reasons. First off I watched a documentary all about aforementioned and it angered me so for moral reasons I refuse to buy Jelly Belly's. This self righteous stance is only solidified by my cheapness. I am not sure if the fine folks of the bean world realize that charging six million dollars a pound for jelly beans is criminal but I am here to tell you it is. So even though he has begged and pleaded for months to allow me to buy him this silly game I have refused. Today his luck changed and the video is reward enough.

Again follow the link to the You Tube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEl1UlnKrYA
If this is how year 35 starts out I think it will be a good one. Fingers crossed!

Welp this is a little bit awkward. I meant to write a post all about Thing One turning eleven but then I almost died. I got the influenza. Not the pretend kind that people always claim to have when they puke and feel tired. The real kind that takes a cotton swab up your nose that they shove up there until it is  brushing your brain and eliminates happy memories to diagnose kind. I contracted said illness on his actual birthday which meant that I had to buy him a store bought cake. Out of sympathy and massive amounts of love his Grandparents took him to the movies and to dinner salvaging his birthday. I did manage to hang five streamers and make three panda balloons which felt more like completing the Boston marathon by hopping it instead of running it. Then I found out I had giant papillary conjunctivitis. If you are feeling brave you should do a google image search on that crap. Let it be said thought that anytime the word giant is in the diagnosis it can't be a good thing. By the time I felt good enough to make him his make up birthday cake it felt too late to post about it. But in the name of science here are some pictures.

Thing One's cake

Lemon cake raspberry filling and a whipped cream and cream cheese icing

The steamers. If you look close you can see that I customized a few panda balloons because whilst they make cow balloons panda balloons are apparently not a thing.

Then Thing Two turned nine and I was healthy enough to make his birthday cake and create class treats that were way better then any of the lame ideas on pinterest.  I felt like writing a post all about his special day of birth and not his brothers would make it look like I loved him more and I didn't want that because let's face it I barely tolerate both of them equally. So I made a judgement call and did nothing. Here again are the belated photos.

Thing Two's  cake

Chocolate cake whipped peanut butter icing with chopped Reeses peanut butter cups between each layer

The classroom treat. Giant chocolate chip cookies.

So now here we are in April and I have decided that if I don't end this dry spell the next post will be about one of them graduating college or getting married.
Of course catching you up on old stuff feels a little like cheating so I have decided to give you a sneak peak into our latest adventure.
We have been throwing around the idea of finishing the basement and before I could formulate a comprehensive list with all the reasons why we shouldn't do it old Myers tricked me into signing my life away in the form of a HELOC.  He may or may not have screamed is that a baby wolf and while I was looking he finished the application process. At least I am  pretty sure that is  how it happened. We found a person to frame and dry wall and an electrician who informed me that none of the wiring downstairs is safe or legal and a person to sell us HVAC crap and we figured we were as good as gold. We were slated to start construction on Tuesday and the drywall guy came by on Friday to pick up half of his fee so we could start on time. Not ten minutes after he had the cash in hand he knocked on the door again and said hows about we start tomorrow instead. I being the lunatic that I am agreed and only after I shut the door did I realize that it meant that I had less then 24 hours to haul all the crap out of the basement.
By some miracle and a few bribes that consisted of clearance Easter candy we made it with 20 minutes to spare. So this morning my basement looked like this

But this evening it looked like this

 Two of the three  bedrooms all framed in

Standing in the Family room looking into the two bedrooms.

the room on the right with the bucket is the bathroom.

So what does this all mean? Why it means anytime you want to give up your wicked ways and come back to Idaho you can move in!

V is for very dumb ideas

Welp it is officially that time of year again when I spend weeks preparing at least six million valentines over the course of three weeks. The payoff of is that they are destroyed and forgotten exactly thirty two seconds after they have been received but those seconds in between are magical. I made the  mistake this year of watching videos on YouTube of people who are really really fast at their jobs. There was one woman who could wind spindles faster then a machine and another who could package playing cards at head spinning speeds. This led me to feel severely inadequate when it came time for me to fill bags with jelly beans. At one point I began to be discouraged over the thought that my slow tying skills would never be featured on a highlight real. After all who wants to watch a slightly advanced chimpanzee woman make valentines. It was then that I realized that I may have become a little delusional which is bound to happen when this is what you are looking at for hours on end.

That and my super incredible mother had just dropped off my super fancy table top that she refurbished out of wood she salvaged. I am still not exactly sure if it is even legal to take said wood but either way I got a new table. The varnish on it is still very fragrant so between the latex and the fumes  it is no wonder I had small visions of grandeur.
So even though I won't be featured in any videos any time soon I still finished these puppies up

It was only after amassing that giant pile above that I realized that perhaps giving a whoopee cushion to a grown adult who is in charge of educating my child was not going to win me any points so I spent a few more minutes creating special valentines for them.

I figured since I had won all sorts of mom points that I could do no wrong so today when the boys asked if they could get there bikes down to try them out I was like watch this not only am I going to create boss valentines I am also going to be a boss mom and allow it.
In my defense the snow has melted off the streets and has been replaced by puddles that are more akin to lake Wobegon then to snow waste and the wind advisory had been lifted. So away we went in thirty three degree weather. Things were going along just fine until we hit a bridge covered with slush and several inches of snow. I took the high road, literally,  the boy howdy's must have missed that little fact and before I knew it both of them were precariously navigating the obstacle. I would have like to have been a more attentive cheerleader but the aforementioned road was actually main street which has shrunk by a third by very ironical snow mounds so cars were whizzing by at incredibly close margins.

The crew, observe this stretch of road had zero snow, this is called vindication.

We made it to the grocer where I figured that I deserved some sort of reward for being a negligent mother and set out to buy some beloved Cadbury mini eggs. The only problem is they were asking way too much money and whilst I may not have been able to feel my face fingers or lower extremities I still have my principles so I left them on the shelf.
The ride home was pretty uneventful minus Myers almost catapulting over his handlebars when he got stuck between railroad tracks and severe mud. Thing One nearly lost control of his bike and carened into a snow bank at neck braking speeds which he later stated was the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to him. And Thing Two fish tailed into no less then 3 cars who luckily have more common sense then I have and were able to avoid him. Like I said uneventful.
It was only after we were safely tucked back into our neighborhood that I realized that the eggs were only fifty cents more then what they were on sale for. Turns out my logic is as good as my parenting skills.
Maybe I can find a few stray jelly beans. Fingers crossed.

Ice Cold

A few weeks ago we made a new addition to our house. After a whole lot of thought we decided that if we were ever going to increase our mileage the boys were going to need an upgrade in bikes. Especially since Thing One's upgrade was a massive mistake. We bought a K-mart mongoose which I believe is one of the fiercest animals in the wild kingdom. What we got was the fiercest piece of crap on the market.
So while other people were driving around with weather appropriate gear strapped to the tops of their roofs we were driving around with this.

I really thought that perhaps this was going to be the year that I would FINALLY be nominated for mother of the year but then I go ahead and buy bikes in the middle of the winter. The boys got to ride to the end of the parking lot and back and that was it. Thing Two got a little extra time whilst I was trying to coax my frozen fingers into actually tightening Thing One's down onto the racks which only broke his little boy heart wider open when he was forced to hand it over to me.
For a few days he kept asking if he could just put on his helmet and ride to the end of the driveway and back up but since out yard currently looks like this I was forced to say no.

To give you perspective that hill is taller then I am and I fear for our little sapling  in the spring since it has also almost been overtaken.
It is really difficult to try and rationalize with a daredevil and even harder to try to teach the principle of black ice which is what our entire driveway is.
There has been much weeping and wailing and every time we drive into the garage and see this there is more guilt lathered on in hopes that someday soon I will give in and just pay to have heads sewn shut.

The guilt is becoming so great that I am actually thinking about driving to Punxsutawney to punch stinking Phil in the face because punching a fictional rodent seems like the kind of rational decision I would make. You win winter you win.

Not smarter than a fifth grader

January is winding down which can only mean two things. One we are covered in at least six million inches of snow which is sucking my will to live and B it is time to cram and finish Thing Ones monthly book report. I recall being in the fifth grade and believe it or not book reports had in fact been invented by that point. I recall writing several compelling essays about the inner workings of the babysitters club. Even at that tender age I knew that  Kristy sounded like a real jerk. I remember things like this because after reading the stupid book I was required to write a synaopsis of the thing. Another booky word I learned from writing reports. Apparently there is a new consipacy a foot becuase now that my child is in the fifth grade writing a book report is not good enough. Nope now we have to spend an ungodly amount of time creating visual learning aids or some other pretend word that they use to trick me into believing that it is valid.
The process is always the same however.

• The genre  is issued at the first of the month and Thing One tries to convince both of us that instead of getting a grade appropriate book he is going to shoot for the moon and get a thousand pager. We have a minor melt down in the public library and try to avert prying eyes away from our circus. Do you know how hard it is to freak out in a quiet voice? Turns out it is impossible don't worry Thing one has demonstrated it month after month
• By the 5th of the month Myers is reminding Thing one to read. This leads to another melt down about how insert what ever subject matter is really stupid and he already knows everything about it blah blah blah
• The 15th comes and we again ask how the book reading is coming along. The response is equal in pain and punishment to chasing a badger down a hole. 

• The 27th rolls around and then it is crunch time. This usually results in the table being covered in all manor of craft supplies, thirteen emergency trips to the Walmart for some vague supply that we have to have, a lot of tears and door slamming and finally Myers and myself staying up way past our bedtimes to finish our Thing ones report. 

This months "report" was a five player game that did not include anything about the plot, theme or anything else that would elude to its purpose.
This is how Thing One handled it

This is what we were doing

After some inspired crafting on my end and a lot of erasing on Myers end we pulled it all off with exactly zero help from the student.

To add insult to injury when it was all said and done he came up to Myers and asked him the following question.
So Dad exactly when was it that you went through puberty?
I don't think he would have time to formulate these questions if he was instead focusing on subplot. Thanks for nothing fifth grade!

I am the whiz!

I am fully aware that I am not the best house keeper in the world. I have closets that could work as home security devices ifin' I could get the criminals to open them whilst robbing me since they are stacked so precariously. One of the items I don't skimp on however is bathroom cleaning. It takes me a good hour to scrub the boys bathroom and I use a toothbrush to ensure that no crevice is left unscrubbed. The last few weeks despite my best efforts there has been a constant stench of urine in their cave and it was driving me crazy!

My last cleaning  effort resulted in me using not one, not two, but three different chemicals and still the stupid thing reeked. I then removed the toliet seat from its home and great googly moogly I thought that I was going to retch. Still the smell persisted. I then had Myers reset the toilet and scraped the old silicone seal out and scrubbed under the throne and still the smell persisted. I was all set to pick out my suite at the loony bin when I noticed that the base board was warped so before Myers could tell me to be rational I wedged a screwdriver behind it and yanked it out. Then to verify my suspisions I sniffed the board and holy crow it was in fact the culprit. I felt vindicated until I realized that I now had expossed dry wall in my bathroom. It really squashed the mood so away I went to the home depot. After much debate I came up with the idea to install a tile wall that would look like a plank wall. Given that it was ceramic it would be impervious to the never ending weedle stream that the boy howdys create. Myers was not on board but no matter I went forward with my plans. While I was add it I decided to repaint and redecorate because why not.
I did get paint in my eye while painting the ceiling  and I did swear about it and it did result in me crying paint tears which was as  painful as it sounded but not as painful as the fact that I had to use the bathroom where Myers was eradicating his bowels to flush out my eye. But other than that it was pain free so without further ado here is our new bathroom!

I had to tape off the whole shower to do the ceiling. It is perhaps the best tape job ever and I am thinking about hiring out my skills

The bottom tiles wouldn't stick and we didn't have a jack so we used the shower curtain rod with the curtain still attached this is called classy resourcefulness

Myers setting the wall in place

The wall before we put the grout in

My mom who is the only reason this whole project got done suggested ripping the old Formica out

The tile finished

The finished room

I got rid of the towel bar and instead added personalized hooks

The wall in all its glory

So now when you stop by you can skip to the loo with out the smell of my boys. Winning!

And then there was one

Fun fact I am not dead all though my lack of posting would lead someone to believe the opposite. I may look like I have been drug in the dirt for no less then 50 miles and I am so tired I am thinking about asking Rip Van Winkle if I can become his adopted daughter but I am still kicking. I seem to forget every year how bad the holiday season really is and this year was no exception. But now that the turkeys have not only been stuffed and consumed and the stockings are all hanging with various amounts of care I am on the downhill slope and I can almost taste freedom.
I took a couple of pictures and someday I might post them but I am not even going to try to recap the various activities instead we will forge ahead to the real reason for this post.
Over Three years ago by some random fluke I was offered a job at a religious institution. I am still not sure if this was because the Good Lord was trying to save my soul or if I am just really good at interviewing. Either way I have had to learn how to cook without swearing and I have had to learn to tell clean jokes which ironically feels dirty to me. Along the way I was blessed with a crew that was second to none and today I said good bye to the last one.
First to go was Magic Mike who was in search of sunshine. We reminised about the guy and all his shenanigans for months. Our very favorite was the frosting debacle.

I was sad to see him go but I was more excited about all the adventures that that kid would have since I am always pro stories.
Redi took off next but not really since he just moved departments and managed to find his way back to the bakery everyday. I could count on his thick accent to tell me good bye forever like clock work and in fact started timing my breakfast around him but I missed him every time I wanted to race somebody since he was the only one who thought he could win then blame his loss on my giant hands, since that is somehow an advantage.

Old lady Jessica left us on Friday to actually serve Jesus and I am not going to lie I almost cried but then I remembered that my credibility would go right out the window so I held it together. We used to make her read the blog posts out loud because it instantly made it funnier since she could only read one word before melting into fits of laughter.  Now it looks like I am going to have to step up my game since now I am not going to be guaranteed laughter every time. Dang

Today was the hardest though because today I had to say goodbye to Minon who also is in search of the sun. Seriously California if you could stop your siren song that is seducing my people that would be great! He is the very one who pushed me to write this blog telling me all along that he would be the editor. He apparently is not completely sure what an editor does because he never actually reads the blog but that is a minor detail really. He and I spent all day everyday together and it will be so bizarre to walk into the shop tomorrow and not have him show up. He got me organized, never laughed at my jokes, and often told me my music was lame now that I think about it I am not sure why I will miss him....
But here I sit hovering between tears and total gratitude for the last three years with my peeps.  I always figured I would be the first to leave but sometimes life is a giant jerk and instead you get left behind. So tonight before my grinch heart kicks in I want to say thank you to everyone of them for everything. I am in fact the luckiest human being on the Earth.