This weekend I planned a really fun memorial weekend activity, shampooing the carpets. These dern carpets were SO disgusting; it’s just what happens when you have Honor living in your house for any amount of time. Luckily we only have carpet in the bedrooms and back hallway. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to do the whole house.

So we loaded every single My Little Pony and dump truck out of the playroom, all the kids furniture out of their bedroom (there were some My Little Ponies in there too) and some of the stuff out of our bedroom. We planned to leave our bed in there and just clean around it.

When we arrived at our house, carpet shampooer in tow, we decided that we should take our bed out of the room so we could get the carpet totally clean. The problem was that we had piled ALL sorts of things on top of the bed. We’re talking like four loads of clean laundry and just about everything else that was on the floor or side tables. I distinctly remember that my glasses and the remote control were on the bed as well. You know, it’s funny when Jim’s carpal tunnel kicks in; he informed me that he could NOT shampoo carpets, his poor wrists… So I started shampooing the carpets while Jim loaded everything out of our bedroom.

After a long day of shampooing and ice cream smearing (see previous post), we wanted to watch a little TV. We weren’t able to load anything but the beds back in the rooms because the carpet was still damp. We searched and SEARCHED for the remote control (and my glasses were missing too.) Jim didn’t remember seeing it on the bed, so we assumed that it must have gotten piled into the laundry basket will all the laundry. We dug around in the laundry and couldn’t find it anywhere so we resigned ourselves to watching TV in the living room. (Aren’t we so spoiled?)

The next day we loaded all the everything back into the rooms and folded all the laundry (it took stinking forever!) and STILL no remote or glasses. We searched the whole house, all the time Jim insisted that he never saw the remote or my glasses. But it turns out he did, in-fact, see the remote and glasses and even thought to store them in a “safe” place.

He stored them in the trash can.

monday
Green salad with grilled chicken and bow tie pasta

tuesday
Coconut chicken curry
I’m really, truly making it this time

wednesday
Some sort of healthy fast food, Jim’s on a diet ;)

thursday
Beef roast, potatoes, veggies, and chocolate ice cream at Jim’s dad’s house
weekend
I think we’ll go camping, so hot dogs! and maybe beef stew

We’ve been spending more time with Jim’s business partner and his family lately. They’ve got two boys relatively close to our kids ages and Eden especially has fun playing with their 3 year old, Christopher. (Don’t ask me why she gets along better with boys… Maybe it’s because they listen to her when she bosses them around.)

Last night we were over at their house for dinner. We had, among other things, watermelon and ice cream. Needless to say, The One Who Must Smear His Food was in true form. I don’t think Honor has made it one day in his life without making a BIG, HUGE mess of his meals. And if Honor is covered with food, that means that I am covered with his food too. He’s such a loving and sweet child, how could he not share the slimey love?

I noticed last night when I got home that I had chocolate ice cream smeared all over my face. (And those of you who know me and my family may attribute the chocolate ice cream on my face to the genetic love for ice cream that I am predisposed to by a certain member of my family. The same certain member who loves ice cream so much that she climbed across a table to eat ice cream out of somebody else’s bowl. But alas, I do not share that same earth shattering, to the core of oneself, LOVE for ice cream. This ice cream on my chin was wholly attributed to the Slimey Monster.)

So anyway, last night Eden and Christopher were playing “Mommy and Daddy” and Christopher was heading off to work. He said to Eden, “Oh, I need to give you a kiss before I go to work!” All eyes were on Jim, but luckily for Christopher, Jim didn’t hear it. He freaked out the other day when they were (very cutely) holding hands.

So, on our way home Jim felt the need to educate Eden on the perils of young boys.

Jim: Eden, we don’t kiss boys, they’re YUCKY; boys are SILMEY. Ok, Eden? We don’t kiss boys.
Eden: OK.

A few minutes later Jim wanted to review with her to make sure he made an impact.
Jim: Do we kiss boys?
Eden: No, we don’t kiss boys, they’re gross.
Me: Well, you can kiss mommy, daddy and Honor.
Eden: No we don’t kiss Honor, he’s slimey. He’s got slimey cheeks and slimey hands and and a slimey head and slimey LIPS. He is SOOOO slimey.

I foresee many a hosing down in the boys future.

This is what Eden said to me yesterday,

“Mom, you have a big, big BUTT.”

I’ve decided to make some Amish Friendship Bread. The recipe is here.

The ingredients for the starter

The starter day one

I remember making this when I was a kid. From what I remember it took forever for the starter to be ready. It’s only 10 days, ahhh, the timeline of kids.

*I am in love with this clutch. Isn’t it the coolest thing EVAR?? I don’t know why I’m even looking at clutches, since there’s no way I could carry one and hold the hands of two children. They’re cool though…

*And in honor of all things shrug, here is a PDF from interweave knits with several different shrug patterns.

PDF shrug patterns

I like the first one, it’s simple and has a cute 3/4 sleeve with a ruffled cuff.

Ahhh, I need to start knitting more. (She says as Jim scrambles to take away all methods in which to BUY MORE YARN. HA! Too late!)

*I recently discovered Blingo. It’s a new search engine, well not really new because they just use google results. But you can win all kinds of prizes just by searching. I have an online buddy who won a year of free blockbuster just the other day. I figure if I’m going to google anyway, I might as well win something. If you sign up under me, I win when you win. It’s kinda interesting…

*The kids are currently running through the house, Honor holding a cow flashlight and Eden has a big rubber alligator. Honor’s screaming, “AHHHH”. And Eden is behind him saying, “I’m going to det you mean cow!”

Yesterday while I was changing a particularly stinky diaper (Honor says “Poopoo, uuk”), Eden discovered the difference between girls and boys. She said, “Mom Honor has a sore” as she pointed to his penis.

This is where it gets kind of tricky. I don’t want my kids to be the ones who go around to all their friends and inform them of their body parts and their functions. But I also don’t want my kids to be learning about things of this nature from their friends. I guess the way I view it is that if I’m the one who wants to educate my kids, then I need to make sure I’m the first one on the job.

So I told her, “Girls and boys have different peepees. Honor has a penis.”
She said, “A penis?”
I replied, “Yes, and you have a vagina.”
Her response, “Oh.”

And that was that.

Camping was great fun. I didn’t realize how much easier it would be when Honor was able to walk. I think we all came away from it with a renewed desire to camp all summer long. Every where we go this is now the typical conversation with Eden,
“Are we at camping?”
“No, sweetie, we’re at ______.”
“Can we go at camping again?”
“We sure can.”

Honor ran right into the lake and then tripped and was floating face first. Jim was right there and rescued him. I think it gave him a new found (and needed) respect for water. I wasn’t there or I would have taken a picture of him. I know how you all love me to take photos rather than rescue him, so I made sure to take a picture of this.

Everyone waiting for breakfast.

My little camping buddy.

I’m going to sit down this week and plan out our whole summer. I’ve found that if we don’t plan it, we don’t end up doing anything. And Lord knows, we need to go “at camping” again.

We’re going camping tonight. I loooove camping. Eden is peeing her pants with excitement to camp. Probably because I bought her a Barbie camping chair. She’s already drug the thing all over the house. We had to get Honor’s chair out too so he could drag it around the house behind Eden dragging her chair around the house. Ahhh, sometimes they are so cute.

Speaking of camping chairs, I think it’s time that I write about The Time Jim Left Our Camping Chairs On The Side Of The Road. This wouldn’t have been such a huge event if it wouldn’t have closely coincided with The Throwing Away of the Bras (are we starting to see a pattern here?)

Every year the volunteer fire department in Glade Park (which is about a 45 minute drive from here) shows family movies on the back of the fire house to raise money. Everyone brings their lawn chair and sleeping bags and feasts on hot dogs and hamburgers and popcorn. (I wrote about our trip last year here.) They have hay rides for the kids and take donations for the $1 movie tickets.

Well, we were there watching Shrek when Eden was about a year old and she decided that she didn’t want to watch the movie. So we had to stealthily pack up all our gear and left in the middle of the movie. I was packing our Grumpy Pea into the car and Jim was loading up all our stuff when IT HAPPENED. He got everything else, the stroller, the blankets, the diaper bag, my purse, but he FORGOT THE CHAIRS. Even in the dark, how do you lose chairs? It’s not like they were small or anything. They were HUGE and GREEN and IN A NICE BAG WITH A SHOULDER STRAP and they had CUP HOLDERS and… now they’re gone.

Yet another thing to add to the list of The Things That I Will Never Let Jim Forget. Such is life.

Happy weekend, ours will be full of s’more covered children trying to share their sticky love.