The Ellis Family

I'm just saying!

2011-10-31T22:29:00.000-05:00

The following things bug me. Not a lot, but still.

1. When people type "WALA!" in an e-mail, when the word they actually mean to convey is "voilà." No wonder French people think we're stupid. (And cranky too, because we write "stuff that bugs me" lists for the world to see.)

2. Price increases of 100% or more in a sagging economy. I'm looking at you Netflix. And OPEC. And the healthcare industry. At least Krispy Kreme is just eliminating the free doughnut they used to give out to people in line, instead of raising menu prices to compensate. (That actually makes a lot of sense to me--I'm there to buy doughnuts, but after eating the one they give me in line and the one Mason got in line but doesn't want, I'm good. Once I get to the cashier, I think, "Now, what did I come in here for again?")

3. Getting a 3/4 full drink cup just because I asked for no ice. Really, Starbucks? The $4 you charge for a Trenta iced tea lemonade not profitable enough to get you to overlook the smidgen of extra tea I'm getting out of the deal?

4. The NBA lockout. It's time somebody caves so they can give me back my season. I've got a lot of yelling to do and no large scale arena to do it in. I guess I could pick another sport and yell at my TV, but it's not the same. Those pro-bowlers just don't inspire at-home cheering.

5. There is no #5 because I'm really very very happy and this list is just a silly waste of time :-)

I finally scrapped again!

2011-10-31T22:11:00.001-05:00

Finally, after a two month hiatus, I scrapped something. Just the one page, but still!

Cell Phone Photo Scrapbooking

2011-08-09T11:08:00.002-05:00

Unexpected surprise

2011-07-24T14:37:00.006-05:00

Monte and I have been married 20 years, and for the first nine we didn't have kids. Like a lot of dual income childless Americans, we spent a lot of those first years taking fun car trip vacations. Then, along came the babies, and long car rides stopped being fun and exciting, and started being a source of bottomless dread. Each time we scheduled a trip farther than the farm, my stomach would tighten in correlation with how close we were to departure.

In all fairness to my stomach, there was plenty of precedent to support such an over reaction. If we were lucky enough on these extended roller coaster rides to make it all the way to point B without anyone vomiting or pooping out of their pants, then there was the inevitable last third of the trip listening to the screaming and crying of people sick of their car seats and with nothing left to lose. Even recalling the memories makes me battle weary.

As you can imagine, when Monte suggested in June that we take a car trip vacation to Houston and San Antonio, I looked at him like he had lost his flipping mind. "We have children," I said, as if he had suggested we run to the local multiplex for an R-rated movie.

Those of you who know Monte, however, know that nine times out of ten given enough time to present a persuasive argument and gift me with several surprise iced tea lemonades from Starbucks, he will get his way. And so it was, that I found myself early this morning packing the car full of luggage and supplies for a dreaded car trip to Houston. Wet wipes? Check. Paper towels? Check. Snacks? Drinks? Antacids? Check. IPad, iPhones, PSPs? Check. Steel iron maternal will? Maybe we can get some on the way.

But we've been on the road now for five hours, and a strange and magical thing is happening. At the risk of jinxing myself, I can report no one in our van is fighting. No one is crying. No one is vomiting or pooping inappropriately. The only sounds are satellite radio Big 80s on 8 and quiet chatter about game scores. If it were December I'd call it a Christmas miracle, but since we're in the middle of a massive summer heat wave, I guess I will have to settle for calling it a regular miracle.

I know my children are getting older, and that car trips would eventually be pleasant again. It's just nice that someday decided to show up a little ahead of schedule.

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10 Things Right Now

2011-07-12T17:40:00.000-05:00

A Memory of my Dad

2011-06-30T15:18:00.007-05:00

The summer I turned 16 I worked at the McDonald's off 65 Highway in Marshall, MO. One morning early on, I was assigned to run the breakfast register. It was probably the second time I'd ever done so, and I was still getting used to where all the food picture buttons were located, which meant I was not the speediest or most accurate order taker in the world. And to make matters worse, these were the days before numbered meal options, which meant a 1986 McDonald's patron had to list each item he or she wanted to eat, making the odds of missing something on that list astronomical. It was the perfect storm to put me smack dab into full blown panic mode.

Thus was my state of mind when an older man walked up to the counter to get breakfast. "Gimme an egg mcmuffin," he said. I dutifully pressed the button for the sandwich, hit the total button and reported the price with tax. Money changed hands and I proceeded to fill the order.

When I handed him the sandwich, he barked, "Well? Where's my coffee and hashbrowns?!" At the time I was caught completely flat footed. How had I not heard two-thirds of this man's breakfast? (Looking back on it, I can't help but wonder why he wasn't suspicious that, if he'd ordered an egg mcmuffin, coffee and hashbrowns, how is it that his bill came to just over a dollar? No, this particular 'gentleman' didn't question the cost of his breakfast. Just the items included in it.)

"I wanted coffee and hashbrowns! You don't think I'm gonna just eat this sandwich without anything to drink?!"

"No, sir. But I didn't charge you for the coffee and hashbrowns."

"Well fine! Just give me the coffee and hashbrowns. This is ridiculous!"

"Yes sir. Here they are."

The old man mumbled "Terrible service!" and walked off with his food.

I didn't even look up at the next guy in line. I mumbled something like, "can I take your order" and stared down at the register keys hoping they would keep me from crying. And then I heard . . .

"You didn't charge him for coffee and a hashbrown, because he didn't order a coffee and a hashbrown."

I looked up and there, next in line, was my dad. Vindication is a very freeing thing, but it's even sweeter coming from a source you care about. All of a sudden I didn't feel like a failure. In fact, I felt like maybe I could do this job after all. Smiling, I looked up and said, "What do you want to eat, Dad?"

"Just coffee is fine. Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah. It's 59 cents." And I handed the best man in the world some hot McDonald's coffee.

"Thanks," he said, and off he went, back to his truck, to finish his drink and read his paper. Because that's what superman does. He saves the day and then he goes off somewhere to read the paper.

Forget 2012. The real year to fear is 2018.

2011-06-23T21:19:00.000-05:00

Mason mentioned to me at his 5th grade graduation that he is in the class of 2018. I said, "No honey, you're in the class of 2011." He shook his head and said, "Mommm! I meant high school! Sheesh!" Okay, he didn't really say sheesh, but I can't accurately encode into written language the meaningful noises that come from my eleven year old. Essentially, sound he made was meant to convey the fact that I'm hopelessly backward and unaware of some very basic facts. In effect, sheesh.

The far off pronouncement of a 2018 high school graduation wouldn't ordinarily be cause for alarm. It sounds like there's plenty of time between today and then. But I am not ordinary, and the truth is I can't remember what happened to the last eleven years and how I ended up here with this beta test man person who is nearly as tall as I am and who wears the same shoe size. It really seems to me that we ought to have just gotten to the year 2004. I would be totally comfortable writing 2004 on my checks, and checking my DSL e-mail connection. Although I'm a fraud, because when it actually was 2004, I remember wondering what happened to 1998. I also distinctly remember in 1992, after getting a notice from Sallie Mae that if I continued my school loan repayment plan as scheduled that my loan should be forgiven in 2002, thinking, "Wow. 2002. Will I even be alive then? That's so far away. Good grief we'll probably be traveling in flying cars by 2002." Now I'm beginning to wonder if 2002, and indeed the whole first decade of the present century wasn't secretly abbreviated by some shadowy government agency while we were all out watching Harry Potter films. Because it sure seems like it. Area 51, I'm looking at you. Not sure why, but I am!

Twenty-eighteen. Only seven more shopping years until my baby goes to college.

I am almost certainly not going to handle it well when 2018 comes about in real time, or in six months as it will seem to me. At least my student loan is paid off. Mason's wont be forgiven until 2032!

Homecomming

2011-06-23T21:17:00.001-05:00

Sydney Grace at Arrow Rock State Park, Arrow Rock, MO

You know you're old when . . .

2011-05-12T12:54:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, Monte decided after several months and one move to get the telescope out and aim it at the sky. We have a pretty nice telescope. I mean, it's not going to put Kitt Peak or Hubble out of business or anything, but it's something you assemble and can hook your computer up to for star location, so it's a little more involved than one of those pirate eye pieces you see on the television.

The kids were excited, because they were outside in the twilight in their pajamas trying to see well enough by the street light to make chalk drawings on the driveway or challenge each other to run the length of our sidewalk in their bare feet.

So when Monte called the boys over to take a detailed look at the moon's craters, there was a general reluctance from the under twelve set to quit what they were doing and go over and see. That's when I decided they needed to respect the effort it takes to put the silly telescope together, and be more appreciative and aware of the real reason they were outside past bedtime.

"Boys!" I said. "Get over here and look at this beautiful moon! You should be more thankful for the things daddy does for you. After all, when I was a little girl, we didn't have telescopes!"

Considering Galileo had one, that makes me really really old. Of course, then I had to backpedal and explain that I meant our family didn't own its own personal telescope, but by then the damage had been done and the the jokes were flying.

I think what I should have said was, when I was a little girl our school didn't have an astronomy department. Or computers.

Where were you when . . .

2011-05-02T10:36:00.004-05:00

Last night, as I was sitting alone in bed in a totally quiet house, I turned on the network news. At any other time these conditions would be so improbable they would approach the "never ever happens" category. Any other night Monte (who is presently Missouri for work) would be watching something Tivo-ed, or a live Thunder game, but he would not be watching the news. And when he's gone, which he sometimes is for work, the boys are usually running around resisting bedtime, which means I would not be watching the news. But the planets lined up, Monte was gone, the boys went to bed without much of a fight, and there I was, watching the news.

And at about the same time as the rest of the world, I found out Osama Bin Laden had been killed.

I was pretty shocked, because it was so unexpected. I mean after all, it has been 9 years, 7 months and 20 days since 9-11. I was so stunned I could hardly think of how to feel. Elated. Sad. Exhausted. All sorts of things rushed through me.

And then I remembered the first time a news story made me feel very small in a world so big and unpredictable.

It was March 21, 1981 in the afternoon, and I was riding a school bus home from the 6th grade. I got off the bus at my Grandma's house, which I didn't ordinarily do. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have watched the news. But she was watching the news, and pretty intently too, because President Regan had just been shot. I remember sitting beside her in Grandpa's chair, watching the world go crazy, and hearing the news men repeat the same facts over and over. Regan was waving to the crowd, when someone shot him. Other people were shot too. Mr. Regan was raced to the hospital. That's all we know at this time.

And then . . .

January 28, 1986. I was a junior in high school, on my way to third period. I think it was Journalism class, which if true is a bit ironic. I passed through a common area where some TVs were set up (unusual) and a newscaster was saying that after being in the air a little over a minute, the Space Shuttle Challenger carrying a teacher and some astronauts, blew up, killing everyone inside. Teachers, students, staff members, and the vice principal stood there and watched the coverage. The tardy bell rang, and still nobody moved. None of the adults told us to move. We just stood and stared and tried to wrap our minds around the words and pictures, while the TV reporter repeated, "That's all we know at this time."

April 19, 1995. I was in my office at Moberly Regional Medical Center at 9:15 when the phone rang. It was Monte, and he was frantic. There had been a bombing in downtown Oklahoma City. His mother, father and sister all worked downtown, and he hadn't been able to get through to them. I don't think they had cell phones at the time. I turned on a radio, and heard a report about the bombing, in which the report explained that, although a truck had exploded outside the Murrah building in an act of terrorism, they didn't really know more than that at the present time.

February 1, 2003. Monte and I were headed to St. Louis with our friends Michael and Alicia Moore. We were putting the babies in the car when Michael called out and told us to look at the television. The space shuttle Columbia had exploded while it was trying to reenter the earth's atmosphere to land. I said, "I'll never forget we were here at your house when this happened" and Michael (a psychologist) replied, "that phenomena is called 'snapshot memory.'" Of course, the TV in the background was again saying it had no more information to report, even as we stared at the screen, willing it to tell us why this thing had happened.

I can't imagine what it must have been like on November 22, 1963 when Kennedy was shot, or April 30, 1945 when Hitler committed suicide, or April 15, 1912 when the Titanic sank. Overwhelming.

I think for the rest of the day I will turn off the TV and hug my children. Seems like the right thing to do.

Absence makes the stomach grow fonder

2011-04-22T13:19:00.001-05:00

Monte and I are in Las Vegas. You may not know it, but we are a pair of Midwestern Christians who like our sleep, would rather stay in, who rarely if ever drink, and are too tight fisted to gamble. Also, we don't do a lot of "laying by a pool" since we both get too antsy without a book or free Internet access. So what are we doing in Vegas, for a whole week?

EATing!

We've had surf and turf, pub food, burgers on the strip, buffets and so on. We ate like kings.

But the truth is, the longer I'm here, the more I miss home. Even the food at home. Even the food located AT my home. Because nothing here can ever hold a deliciousness candle to my favorites back home. They're my favorites for a reason.

You gotta leave to remember what you love about where you live. At least I do.

And I miss the kids. Really.

Be home soon. Keep the chips and salsa fresh for me.

I love you, Nathan Fillion

2011-04-13T00:26:00.000-05:00

I've loved you since Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place. That is all.

Fun with fruit

2011-04-11T21:54:00.000-05:00

There are three things this photo taught me.

1. pinterest.com is a cool place to find silly stuff!
2. There's a Watermelon Advisory Board. Seriously. Move over, Got Milk people.
3. You can make this. Click here to see how.

Up in the Air

2011-03-29T09:34:00.000-05:00

Monte's work is sending him to Las Vegas in April, and I'm going with him. It will be one full week without the kids, in warm sunny Las Vegas in a hotel off the strip (that's a plus for me) and because he is attending a seminar, my days will be my own. I can do anything or nothing, as I please, and then at night I can spend time with my husband seeing the town. Or not, as we please. The description of this vacation, if I can spill SAHM secrets, is every wife and mother's dream. Really. No kids, part time husband, and an on demand pool? Think of it. I can watch anything I want on TV. Throw in a little shopping or something done at the spa, and there isn't anything a human female with children and a husband would not do to go on a vacation like this.

There's just one problem.

I have, over the last decade or so, developed a very real fear of flying. Not just a fear, but a gripping dread where I imagine this giant steel horizontal skyscraper falling out of the sky on a daily basis leading up to the actual event. There are several reasons for my relatively new phobia. 1. A little over 11 years ago, I became a mother. Suddenly, dying was a bigger deal, because I had this little baby bird to protect and partially ruin as I clumsily attempted to raise it. 2. The plane, as I have mentioned, is bigger than some homes I've seen, and made of some really heavy stuff. Like metal. Then, it's filled with fat lazy Americans and their ridiculous luggage who won't even be fully on board before they demand snacks, so a bunch of those are packed on as well. I'm just saying, an object that weighs the same as the Statue of Liberty really shouldn't remain airborne. She doesn't. And don't get me started on the laws of aerodynamics, because I have the law of gravity on my side, and basically, my law beats the crap out of whatever you throw at it. Or drop on it.

I know worry doesn't change the outcome of an event, and only compromises the health and well being of the worrier, but it just seems like I'm the only one who has noticed planes are flying coffins of death. Monte says car crashes occur everyday, but it doesn't stop me from loading up in my van and heading off to spend a bunch of money at Sam's. And he's right. On both counts. And perhaps if I flew everyday, and I had to fly or not shop at Sam's, I would become desensitized to the obvious risk of being up in the sky with no ground under me. Logic dictates that I must be more afraid of planes than cars, even though the risks are similar, because I only get on them once every couple of years or so. And even though I feel this way, it hasn't stopped me from buying my ticket or visiting other "plane only" destinations over the years. Really, all it does is make the three weeks leading up to the trip, psychologically draining. But I'd like to say one thing in my defense. If I die driving my car, it's because I screwed up. Who is this guy in a white faux military shirt working on six hours of sleep and eight cups of coffee, anyway? And how do I know the mechanic working on my plane isn't going through a painful divorce and has lost his attention to detail or will to do a good job? And what about the parts manufacturer? I mean really!!

Crap, that reminds me, I have got to update my Will, which should probably reflect all the children and debt I currently have, and make sure I still like the people I leave them, and it, to.

Details details.

Times, they ain't a-changin'

2011-01-29T11:31:00.004-06:00

My awkward phase continues.

In a tone that can only be described as glee, my dentist (now my orthodontist) told me on Friday that my teeth and jaws are catastrophically misaligned, any any further living without immediate treatment will contribute to a whole host of horrible outcomes like cracked molars or TMJ, and pretty much guarantee an early ticket to denturehood. I have to have braces, and I have to have them yesterday. In addition, I have a tongue thrust situation which will have to be corrected with behavior modification "barbs" on the inside of my teeth making it painful to put my tongue where it automatically wants to go. Further, my palette is too high, so I'll need an expander, and the kicker is I have to wear this stuff for two years, and then a retainer for the rest of my life. But the fun doesn't end there. I walked shell shocked from the diagnosis into what's called the "financing options" office, where I learned that my dental insurance covers braces only for individuals up to age 25 (probably because who needs them after that, right?) So I will be paying $5,000 of my own money to be transformed into an orthodontic cautionary tale.

I couldn't be more excited.

When I was 15 I had a flat chest, a face covered in acne and a giant head of frizzy hair. When these facts would bother me, I would console myself with two things: 1. At least I didn't have braces and 2. eventually I would reach adulthood and all those awful things would go away and I would emerge a beautiful grown up swan with her own car and bank account.

Well friends, fast forward to 2011, where I do indeed have my own car and bank account. I'm a 41 year old swan with persistent acne, a flat chest made even worse by several months of breastfeeding, stretch marks from pregnancy, wrinkles, and now the coup de grace, braces to keep from further damaging my precious calorie intake source. In one month I will have to learn to eat and talk with a Buick Le Sabre in my mouth, without slurring or slobbering on myself.

Mason, who just got all this junk off, is finding great joy in my present predicament, spending a lot of time educating me on what hurts the most and where food gets stuck. Most of the adults in my life are trying to keep from openly smirking. This leaves me with my my last (and frankly most desperate) effort at self consolation: at least I don't need glasses yet (my vision has always been pretty good), and I don't have to walk the Marshall Missouri high school halls while wearing enough metal to send the TSA into pat down mode. Oh yeah, and I can stay out at late as I want! (I can't stay awake as late as I want, but where I fall asleep is completely up to me!)

Peytie turns 3 on 1-23!

2011-01-25T22:42:00.003-06:00

And 3 is ridiculous!

Seriously?

2011-01-14T19:00:00.001-06:00

I'm a woman living in a house with four males. That means I'm rarely, if ever, listened to with anyone's full attention.

Take tonight. At dinner, I was telling my boys about two things that couldn't be effectively compared. I said, "I mean, it's like apples and oranges." Mason replied, "Why? They're both round, they're both fruit, how are they that different?" And Monte, joining the conversation for the first time, said, "What? Do we need to go to the store?"

I could be hiding state secrets for all these people know!

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Random Things

2011-01-13T21:43:00.001-06:00

Stuff buzzing around in my head:
1. Sometimes the past year seems so unreal, that I actually believe I'm walking around in the world's most vivid dream, and at some point I'll wake up in the Oak Cliff house back in Missouri with some serious bed hair. Of course I will have overslept in the worst way and it will be spring.
2. Stephen asked me to play air hockey tonight. I didn't want to but I did, because I kept thinking "cat's in the cradle" you know? So thanks to Cat Stevens or Ugly Kid Joe or whomever, I'm playing air hockey to the best of my ability when suddenly the score is 3 to 1 in Stephen's favor. And in the flattest monotone you've ever heard, he says, "I'm ahead. You need to try harder."
3. I've been cooking lately, but the only meal I make that my family likes is frozen pizza. I wonder if I can get on that show Wife Swap, and be sent to some Amish family that looks forward to green beans from a can because it's almost like ordering take out.
4. It's hard to get back into the exercise groove here because lots of the subdivisions are self-contained bits of land just off streets that would elsewhere be considered county highways. No sidewalks and random cars doing sixty in a forty. "How did she die?" "Well, it appears she had some winter weight on her and thought she could still cross a street." "We lose a lot of 'em thattaway."
5. Thanks Netflix for giving me back Mystery Science Theater, even if they're mostly Joel episodes.
6. We start bedtimes here at 8:30, but still can't get our kids in bed until 10. There's nothing odd or funny about that. It just is.

Are We There Yet?

2011-01-07T16:39:00.000-06:00

I'm an avid blog reader, if not a blog writer, and one of the blogs I try to keep up with (semi-successfully) is Jeni Allen's Peace and Carrots. It's a great way to see how big her kids have gotten, get tips, have something to read while waiting for my kids to get out of school and get into my car . . . anyway, her most recent post (as of this writing) referred to ways in which we gals with seasonal affective disorder (that's right, S.A.D., or as laymen--and me when I'm being real--refer to it, the blahs that occur when nature takes back all her sunlight) can effectively cope.

Specifically, I refer you to numero seis in the list: Explore! Get out of the house and go somewhere! Go to a different library, a different mall, a museum, a park. Take a drive to a part of town you haven't seen before and spend some time exploring. If your kids are older, they can help you plan your excursion and even map out your adventure!

We Ellis' did this not too long ago. It started with cupcakes. Seriously. Apparently the new thing in urban America is bakeries that sell upscale cupcakes and not much else to yuppies and ladies who lunch. OKC has five or eight of 'em, and, tired as I was of looking at the same four walls day in and day out with breaks only for church and school transportation, I said one Saturday, "Hey, we should go get some of those deliciously overpriced cupcakes, at one of those places. You know?" Monte did know, and didn't want to go which made it even more fun, but he didn't want to argue and the babies were already in the car, so away we went seeking the elusive Oklahoman overpriced cupcake. We were driving at the time, and nobody brought an iPad, so we didn't have an exact location. But we pretty much knew about where it was, so no problem.

Except we didn't know exactly where it was. And it turned out that each of the adults in charge of the route were talking about a different cupcake place (how can this be, since you each speak the same language, you may well scoff, but these situations happen and happen regularly when one of the adults in question patently refuses to learn the proper name for anything. For example he often asks his wife if she's seen that one show, with that one guy in it. You know the guy I mean.) So our exploration ended up in one crazy trip in and out and up and down and all over Oklahoma City with three screaming boys in the back. We finally found Pinkitzel (the cupcake place I was talking about) where the cupcakes were indeed overpriced and delicious. We bought six, and by the time three of them were eaten by the brothers, my van looked like a bakery crime scene. So for my trouble, I got very very lost, paid $28 in US dollars for six cupcakes (really), got my cupcakes eaten out from under me while trying to find my way home, and the rewarding job of wiping up icing and vacuuming crumbs out of the van I had just cleaned the day before.

You might believe that I'm about to say "So DON'T explore! It doesn't pay!" but I'm not, because for all the ridiculousness of that day, I will remember it fondly while picturing Stephen's face absolutely COVERED in icing. What's more, I'll probably suggest it again in the near future (maybe overpriced buffalo wings this time) because exploration is really the best and only way to have an adventure--even one that you don't want to repeat anytime soon. I guess the lesson I learned in all this is, exploration and spontaneity certainly go hand in hand, but not if you have to be somewhere in an hour. They'll also lead you in and out of Mordor and through Kevin Durant's living room, in search of a cupcake. It's just their nature.

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T18:55:00.001-06:00

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How ever it gets you there . . .

2010-12-16T12:49:00.000-06:00

Peyton was standing in front of my van in the garage, when he turned to Monte and said, "N, I, S, S, A, N. That spells car."

Yes it does, baby, yes it does.

Stop the presses

2010-12-06T18:03:00.000-06:00

Stephen presented me with this handwritten story this afternoon after school:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Attack of the Glowing Monsters, By Stephen Ellis

Hi, I'm Stephen Ellis. I'm in the agent BIXQ. We heard a loud beep. Mason is my friend. Beep means there is trouble in the world. There was a glowing monster in China, and off we went to defeat that glowing monster with the powers of the agents BIXQ, one of the most powerful agencies in the world. The glowing monster was smashing building after building. We finally made it there, and we were so so so hungry and so so so thirsty for a drink and snack. We're the lucky ones. Then we attacked the glowing monster but it is no use without the crystal of China, and we did not give up. They were trying but still no use, the crystal of China was in his hand, and then we got a hold of it, but they lost their grip and still no use, but they had a steel cannon and payed for it, and got the crystal of China and defeated the glowing monster and celebrated. It was very very very very fun and we had a drink and a snack. The agency BIXQ had saved the day. The end.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Agency was spelled agentse, snack was spelled snake, crystal was spelled cristel, and sometimes China was Chinea, but he got monster and powerful and smashing and hungry and glowing right, and the story has a fantastic beginning, middle and end (which I know even college students can't always pull off), and when I asked about BIXQ, he explained that was the agency's name and it was supposed to be like that, because the letters were other secret words. An acronym, people! And on top of it all, he saves the day with his brother!

What an effort from my little guy!

Makin his momma proud

2010-11-01T22:22:00.000-05:00

So we're sitting around the table at Monte's parents house with his nephew Jordan, who is a senior in high school this year. Last year Jordan went on a mission trip to El Salvador, and the topic under discussion was whether he would go on a second mission trip in the spring.

MONTE: "So, these mission trips . . . where all can ya go?"
JORDAN: "Well, there's El Salvador, Chile, Peru . . . "
MONTE: (with a silly smirk on his face) "Des Moines?"
JORDAN: "No, I don't think we go to Italy."

What makes this funnier is the kid is making reasonably good grades in school. Well, I would guess in everything but geography.

Things get serious

2010-10-13T22:47:00.000-05:00

We have a contract on our Missouri house, and another one on an Oklahoma house, and between working out all the details, having inspection after inspection, signing this and paying for that, moving and packing, I'm out of breath.

But if nothing falls through, I'll be out of my in-laws house and in our own digs by November, and that's worth smiling about.

I'm just amazed at how many boxes there are!

Say what?

2010-09-29T19:33:00.002-05:00

Mason brought home all A grades at mid-semester recently, and is generally regarded as a smart kid by one and all, but every so often he loses things in translation. In church Wednesday night he leaned over and whispered, "Mom, what does your shirt say?" I whispered back "It says, 'Authentic'." Then he said, "What does that mean?" I said "It means real . . . not a forgery." "Oh," he said. Then he whispered something I couldn't hear to Monte, and Monte started laughing. Then I heard Monte say, "No honey, you're thinking of 'Autistic'."

Not sure what's more disturbing, that my 5th grader didn't know the meaning of the word Authentic, or that he thought I would rock a shirt with the word 'Autistic' on it to church.

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They're Their There

2010-09-08T14:09:00.001-05:00

I don't know if it's Oklahoma, Fifth Grade, or what, but I have done more in the way of project homework help in the last two weeks than ever in the past decade of parenthood. Last week, we made an animal cell composed entirely of candy. Ever try to find a sugary treat that looks like mitochondria? I even drove all the way to Michael's (remember, this city is freakin' spread out) to get chocolate fondant for the cell itself, and pretty gel icing for the cell membrane. And it doesn't look like it's going to let up . . . this week Mason had to hand draw an island, complete with geographical, agricultural and industrial features. Big deal you say? No problem, you insist? Then I forgot the best part . . . for these fun projects, we get one to two days notice. Oh yeah, and Stephen has to read to me while I help Mason create these things, because he has homework too . . .

I was a much better parent before I had kids.

A Duck, from a Goose

2010-08-24T19:45:00.000-05:00

Stephen drew this for me. I asked for a chicken. He said what I really wanted was a duck. And he's right.

Old puppies, new tricks

2010-08-20T18:44:00.001-05:00

The babies started second and fifth grade in Oklahoma today, and both reported they had a pretty decent day except for the turkey corndogs at lunch. That was one new thing they didn't care for. New school, fine. New kids, no problem. New teachers, bring them on, but new corn dogs, hold on just a cotton picking minute. I have always subscribed to the "put enough mustard on a corn dog and the flavor of the corn dog becomes a moot point" rule, but apparently the rule's only exception is a corn dog composed entirely of turkey. And probably soy, but thank heavens we haven't had to deal with that yet.

Stephen said the corn dogs tasted vaguely of mint.

Makes you wonder what these Okies are feeding their poultry.

The Heat Is On

2010-08-11T19:29:00.001-05:00

Right now it's 100 degrees at 7 p.m. in Oklahoma City. That means 100 wasn't the high, it's the come down number. I used to love warm. The warmer the better. Bring the heat I would say. I'm so cold natured that at times in my life it has seemed I couldn't make my own body heat, and I had to depend on the sun or Monte to provide some warmth for my otherwise icy skin. Grocery stores, movie theaters, churches,all were places of freezing discomfort. I had to carry a sweater with me year round. No place was ever completely warm.

Until now.

Now I'm cured.

I'm finally aggressively fanning myself with all the other old ladies, with our floppy arm fat moving as fast as the paper fans we are cooling off with. I'm on the other side.

Dang it. Turns out the grass isn't greener over here. It is dry, brown and burnt!

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Core Philosophy

2010-08-01T11:04:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the glass is half full. Sometimes it's half empty. Sometimes the stupid thing is all the way empty, has a hole in the bottom and is made of uncoated tissue paper.

Consider the last few days. I was with the fam at Silver Dollar City, having a wonderful time. It was hot, sure, but there was plenty of lemonade and water to drink and fine misting fans at periodic intervals. And of course, we had the kids with us, and they have a tendancy to whine if things aren't spot on perfect, but we aren't new at this and so we pursued the policy of hanging in there and identifying lots of "teaching moments" while still enjoying the park. No problem, right? Manageable. Doable. Under control.

Until Friday morning.

Until 11 a.m., Central Standard Time, when I lost Monte's wallet with all our money, credit cards, season passes, IDs and the very first social security card he was ever issued, inside. He and the boys decided to beat the heat by going on a "soak ya through" water ride, so I put the wallet and his cell phone in my stretchy lightweight shallow pocketed workout capris and set off with Peyton for some quality sitting time. The only thing we did was buy a lemonade, locate a shady spot and sit in one place. That's it. I had the wallet when I bought the lemonade, but when I walked up the hill to meet Monte, I didn't have it anymore. I did everything one might do in that kind of stressful situation. I retraced my steps. I looked everywhere I had been. I asked vendors, people in the vicinity and the lost and found ladies if they had seen the wallet. I teared up. I panicked. And then, having no other options, I left the park with my family.

The first thing we did was cancel the credit card and debit card. Then we decided we needed IDs, which led us to drive an hour and a half acorss the Oklahoma border to the nearest tag agent, to get our driver's licenses replaced. Through the marvels of modern technology, the state of Oklahoma can replace your license with no other form of ID because they have your index fingerprints on file, and a scanner in every office. That's the good news. Unfortunately, what they can't do, is reprint the license using the picture you already took.

The picture you took when you were well rested, had on makeup, had your roots freshly done and hadn't just lost your husband's wallet.

The picture that didn't show someone who had been sweating in a theme park and then crying in a mini-van for three hours.

No sir. They take a brand new picture. A current picture. A picture of the right then and now.

So to make matters somewhere between worse and unbearable, I now have a government issued memento of one of the worst days of my life that I am, for the next six years, required to show clerks, ticket agents, policemen, anyone I need to prove my identity to. And I'm sure once they've seen it, they'll look at me and all ask the same thing.

"My goodness, what on earth happened here??!!"

Epilogue: They found the wallet at SDC, with the money in it and everything, the next day. It was Baptist days, so we probably have some nice Baptist to thank for being honest and giving us our life back, not to mention the license with the better picture. Also, one might say we were fortunate to have lost the wallet on a Friday when the tag agent was open, and that we were close enough to their location to get there during business hours and replace our IDs with no other proof of identity than our index fingers. Oh yeah, and cancelling the credit and debit cards were probably a good thing too, because both accounts been open for a long time with the same numbers and were probably more prone to identity theft than the newly issued cards.

Still.

Worst vacation ever.

How's that for how empty the glass is?

Cast off!

2010-07-13T09:24:00.000-05:00

Mason got his cast off yesterday. He's still getting used to flexing his wrist and moving his arm, but for the most part he's 100 percent. The doctor said no basketball until the bone, which has healed, "matures" but hey, a little shooting around can't hurt, right?

Right?

Maybe he can climb a fence while he's at it. :-)

New Normal

2010-06-29T16:44:00.000-05:00

We've officially been in Oklahoma for a week now, staying with the inlaws until our house sells, and although they've been nothing but nice in welcoming us to their home and making us feel comfortable, there's just so much privacy and control you can exercise while living under someone else's roof. I'm sure it's not a walk in the park for them either, having given up their right to peace and quiet while living with three small boys, but they've been really gracious and accomodating, and we are extremely grateful.

Still, moving is terrible. I had forgotten--mostly because the last time I did it I didn't even change school districts, and now we're in a whole different state. Sure, it's a state we are both familiar with, having visited for holiays and such, but living is a whole different kettle of fish from visiting. The grocery store is laid out all wrong. The streets are in the wrong places. There isn't any shade, or sidewalks, or frozen yogurt stores. July in Oklahoma is like July in Death Valley, without the charming name. There's no Starbucks for like, 8 miles from where we are living. Everything in Oklahoma City is so big and in your face, but at the same time it's all spread out, so you have to drive a long way to get to all the big in your face stuff. Nearby the new (temporary) address we have tag agents and nail salons, neither of which I need at the moment, but no really useful stuff like an Applebees or a Longhorn or a Cold Stone. (They think Braum's counts. It does not. At all.) I guess my old town was small, but it felt right sized. Not so big that you get lost and not so small that you didn't have options. And it had trees. Tall mature ones, with shade. I'm just saying.

But I'm coping. I'm finding I can walk indoors at the City Center, which is a membership based work out place, library and swimming pool complex not far from my inlaws house, and half an hour away there's an IMAX theater, so we were able to show the boys Toy Story 3 in really really really big 3D. And there will be other things, special unique things, as time goes on that will endear me to my new home.

It's not a bad place.

It's a very nice place actually.

I guess change is hard on everyone.

Rookie Blue

2010-06-13T21:22:00.000-05:00

Monte was upstairs watching "Cops" on the Tivo while giving Peyton and Stephen a bath. He went to get them out of the tub when his cell phone rang. Drying off two little wet boys takes all available focus so Monte let it go to voicemail. After he got the two monkeys dry and in PJs, he decided to check his messages.

The missed call was from the Columbia Police Department.

That got his attention.

It said "We have a message from one of your employees. He fears for your safety. Please call us at . . . " blah blah blah. So Monte calls back and assures the CPD that we are not in danger and are in fact freshly washed and in PJs, and then works with the officer to reconstruct whatever unfolded that got us here.

Apparently, before getting in the bath, Peyton played with Monte's iPhone and inadvertently called one of the IT guys at his work. Because nobody was actually talking to the IT guy, all he heard was "GET DOWN ON THE GROUND! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND" and then several beeping noises. What he thought he was hearing was some sort of terrible home invasion or something. What he didn't know was he was actually listening to Monte watch a policeman from "Cops" chase a perp, followed by the sound of fast forwarding through commercials. After Monte called his friend back, the guy said "I should have recognized the beeps. They're Tivo beeps."

Between my mom last summer and Monte's friend at work, the cops are starting to put a mark by our name that reads, "I know we're supposed to follow up, but somehow I know this is going to end up on somebody's blog."

Teepee Hee Hee

2010-06-10T17:05:00.001-05:00

Mason and Stephen went to my parents farm for a few days, because my mom has been wanting to build a teepee with them. Stephen's been pretty excited about it but we've had to wait for one or two days without rain to be able to get to the soggy farmland where the small trees are, to be able to cut the poles.

During the planning stages for the teepee, mom had this conversation with the boys:

GRANDMA: Okay, so all we need to do is go over to the Shepherd place and then Grandpa can use the chain saw to cut the little trees that we'll use for poles, and then we'll bring them back here and we can put the teepee together.
MASON: What is the Shepherd Place? Is it a store?
GRANDMA: (laughing) No, the Shepherd Place isn't a store. The old indians didn't go to the store when they needed to cut poles for their teepees, did they?
MASON: Well, did they use chain saws to cut the poles?

She could almost see him getting smarter than her right before her eyes.

They also used tarps instead of buffalo hides, so the most authentic thing about the whole process was the part where my boys got really muddy and then washed some of the mud off in the creek which probably just made them muddy and wet.

School's (almost) Out

2010-06-02T08:59:00.000-05:00

The boys are so ready for school to be out, and oddly enough, I am too. Ready for summer outings and trips to the zoo. (Probably because I've forgotten how much luggage and bother they require.)

Rite of passage

2010-05-16T09:36:00.000-05:00

Mason broke his arm Friday. It was the first time we'd been to the ER with one of our kids. Well, that's not technically true. I tried to go one other time when Stephen was have trouble breathing due to croup. I got there and the admission nurse sardonically said, "Yeah, the wait from this point is 4 hours." I said, "But that would be 4 a.m. and I can see my regular doctor at 8 a.m. and he's having trouble breathing NOW," which was the nicest thing I could say given that I was holding my sick baby in my arms. What I was thinking was, "It's not a theme park ride, it's an ER. Help the gasping baby, you complete idiot!!!" She was not swayed by my wheezing kid or the panic in my voice. "Yeah," she said, as if to say "your summary of the situation is accurate, and now I will go back and sit by some large desk filled with papers and files, and drink my extra large coffee and forget all about you." She turned and walked away, and in so doing forced me to see the futility of the situation . . . I figured I could go home and call 911 and get some nice EMT guy to help me, so I went home and crossed my fingers. Luckily, Stephen did okay during the night and we were able to see our regular doctor in her office first thing the next morning. Needless to say, we're not big on ERs.

So, Friday night mom offers to watch the kids at Brandon and Karen's while all the parents got a date night. We had just made it to the restaurant and gotten food when I decided to call and check on the kids. I dialed the phone and said "Hi, Mom, how are the . . . " and she interruped and said "MASON JUST BROKE HIS ARM IT WAS FINE UNTIL JUST NOW BUT NOW HE'S HURT HOW SOON CAN YOU GET HERE." I told her I'd be there immediately and hung up the phone. Monte didn't even eat. We left the food sitting there and sped off toward Mason's arm. Turns out he was throwing a football around and it went over the fence, and he climbed the fence to get it, lost his balance and crack, standard split fork forearm fracture.

We took one look at the arm and realized it was broken, because arms don't bend that way otherwise. We got him to the ER, and they took one look at the arm and ushered us right in. We filled out paperwork, and got X-rays with super speed. Unfortunately, pain meds took a LOT longer. Mason was sobbing and I was standing over the nurse asking again and again when the doctor would come in and sit in our room long enough for the state legislature to be satisfied that he was being cared for by someone wth a medical degree, so the nurse could finally give him the morphine she knows plenty about, can give in her sleep and had been holding in her hand for half an hour.

We finally got the morphine right around the time we got the bad news. The orthopedic surgeon can't set the arm because Mason had had dinner. (What kid in a family with any kind of positive cash flow doesn't have dinner?) But dinner was the deal breaker because they needed to knock him out in order to set the arm and he had to have an empty stomach. They wrapped the arm up and sent us home, with oral pain medication, and instructions to come back at 7 a.m. to get checked in to have the arm set at 8 a.m. So home we went, with ORAL pain meds. Remember now dear reader, in order for him to get a cast, we can't give him anything to eat or drink after midnight. Did I mention the only way I could manage his pain was with oral medication, because it turns out that counts toward the no eating and drinking. You see where I'm headed with this? Sometime around 2 a.m. he started hurting pretty badly, and by 5 a.m. he was sobbing. I had a pill that would fix it IN MY HAND, but I couldn't give it to him. What an awesome feeling that was. By 5:30 we were back in the ER begging for someone, oh please oh please oh please ANYONE, to give him a shot in his IV (which had stayed in his arm from the night before). Again, we waited and waited for someone with an advanced degree who wasn't the nurse holding the meds, to tell us he could stop hurting.

Ever sat next to a child in pain? Your own child in pain? It does things to your brain, heart and gut that I can't even put into words, and makes you want to recreate that Shirley MacLane scene in Terms of Endearment where she screams at the nurses station for someone to just give her daughter the morphine. Yes, Shirley MacLane nailed it. She might have even been a little held back.

He got his shot, felt better and then he got his splint and eventually once the risk of swelling goes down he'll get his cast. And he will never ever ever jump off a fence to get a football again.

Overheard at lunch

2010-05-14T13:03:00.001-05:00

Monte: "Great, thanks, Peyton. Now my pants smell like corn."

I'm betting his pants already smelled like corn, and he's just in denial.

Bye, Bye Bug!

2010-05-12T10:51:00.002-05:00

It's the end of an era. We sold the bug car. When we bought it back in ought 4, there were only four of us and Stephen was the same age Peyton is now . . . six years is a long time in the life of a bunch of kids.

We bought it for fun in simpler times, when thoughts like "someday there might be more of us," or "those of us already here might grow to huge porportions" didn't occur.

At first we had fun in the bug on sunny days with the top down driving around town listening to music and singing at the top of our lungs. But later, we had to listen to Stephen and Mason groan as their legs were getting too long to be comfortable in the back seat, or hear one of them whine about it being too windy or too sunny. (I know, right? Aren't wind and sun the point?) Yeah, the poor bug didn't have much of a chance as our family aged, and besides, it would have been a serious drag doing 60 or less all the way to Oklahoma when we do finally sell this house and move. No, bug is a Missouri car, and should stay here in her homeland, with people who love her and will care for her. We bid you a fond farewell, bug. You gave us many a pleasant afternoon on the way to get ice cream.

Kristi

P.S. That car was built in 1978 and marketed as a family friendly car, because four adults were supposed to fit comfortably in it. For long periods. Four adults. I can't even get Monte and the three boys in it anymore. I guess the projected height in 1978 for the average person achiving maturity was 5 foot 3 inches. Either that or we have a serious metric to traditional measuring system conversion snafu here. Good thing Americans have discovered carbohydrates and protein since then or we'd never be able to grow our kids into giants like I'm doing now! I've had near four footers since kindergarten, and Mason is tall enough to ride every ride in every theme park in the US at the tendar age of ten. My two year old is already three feet tall. Those poor late 70s European car manufacturers wouldn't know what hit them! In the end we were like clowns coming out of that car, and I don't mean just in the traditional sense.

Best day ever

2010-05-09T22:04:00.000-05:00

Mother's Day rocks. I was taken to Branson for the weekend, rode roller coasters and rides with my boys at Silver Dollar City, ate a ridiculous amount of really good food, and Monte even coached the kids to ask me, at different times of each day, "What would you like to do, Mom? Can we do something with you?" It was amazing. Any whining and eye rolling was down to a bare minimum and most of the time everyone laughed and joked and had a great time together. Tonight at dinner, Stephen said something out of the blue that nobody told him to say. He said, "Mom you're beautiful. I love you a really really lot. I love you, and also I love Jacqueline, but I love you the best."

Isn't he sweet. It's good to be the queen.

Wait . . . what? Jacqueline? Who's Jacqueline?

House selling is like a box of chocolates . . . that somebody bit into and put back.

2010-05-04T14:11:00.000-05:00

Selling a house is like the high school dating scene for an average looking girl. You work hard to create your best appearance and then you put yourself out there, advertizing (hopefully) without coming off desparate, which gets some vaguely interested looks but for the most part nobody wants to dance. So you go on feeling blue wondering when someone will notice all your effort while simultaneously looking past the giant zit on your forehead, and give it all a chance, so you don't have to spend your weekends eating six pounds of chocolate while watching Behind the Music marathons on VH1.

Crap.

Now I'm back in high school.

Finding Clarity

2010-04-25T12:20:00.001-05:00

Overheard at the lunch table:

Stephen: cough cough
Monte: Stephen, cover your mouth when you cough.
Stephen: cough cough
Monte: Stephen, cover your mouth, EFFECTIVELY, when you cough.

This parenting moment brought to you by allergy season, and my legalistic kids, who need all the loop holes closed.

And around, and around

2010-04-18T20:24:00.001-05:00

UPDATE:
You'll think I'm making this up, but the thief logged into the stolen PC again, this time TO PAY HIS CELL PHONE BILL. Now, let's think about this for a second, Zeke (may I call you Zeke? Great. Anyway . . .) You left the STOLEN computer on once before, and for your trouble you were rewarded by suddenly losing massive amounts of data. The sort of "thanks for playing" parting gift that should have been at the very least a cautionary tale, warning you to chunk the darn thing in a nearby ravine (admit it, you're surrounded by ravines) rather than risk being located through it. But Zeke, you believe in the inherant goodness of humanity (we all like that about you) and as such, you probably believed the worst was over. Right? Either that, or you don't understand the concept of the Internet as a vehicle for two way communication. Because, Zeke, when you pay your cell phone bill . . . you know, the one in your real name and with an accurate address on file, then you're just saying, "hey, Monte, here's the stuff you need to have me arrested. I ain't got me no silver platter or nothin' but we'll just consider it implied."

I'm sure when the cops arrived, Zeke was more than a little taken aback. I imagine him being handcuffed by the sherrif's deputy on the porch of his double wide, very near the ravine where he should have thrown the computer, saying, " Well played, Monte Ellis. Well played."

The moral? If you are a flippin' thief, and you steal one of Monte's PCs, for heaven sake, look into the cash only disposable cell phone option! (I like the fact that he pays his bills. You want thieves with senses of personal responsibility and accountability.)

Oh, and my apologies to Georgia. I was misinformed. It was Louisiana. However I'm sure Louisiana jails are just as lovely and accomodating as anything you'd find in Georgia, so no worries there.

Poor Zeke.

Goin' around and comin' around

2010-04-08T20:17:00.003-05:00

This is hilarious. As many of you know, Monte works for a storage company managing their data and computer systems. The company has stores all over the US and Canada, and four months ago in one particular store in Georgia, the store was robbed. The glass windows of the store were shattered in the middle of the night, and the site's computer was stolen. Now this sort of thing, unfortunate though it is, has been known to happen and it's usually just a matter of filing a police report and an insurance claim. For the most part that's the end of it--you never see the thieves or the hardware again. However, in those cases the thieves in question are smart enough not to plug the computer back in, turn it on and then leave it on for long periods. The Georgian thieves, bless their hearts, didn't suffer from the same burden of intelligence and/or a suspcious nature. Today, Monte noticed the computer from Georgia was turned on, logged in and ready for action somewhere in Texas. Now, you and I would simply notify the police, who would then say in a somewhat snarky voice, "where in Texas?" We'd reply "well, it doesn't work like that . . . we have a general idea, we don't have an exact location," and in response we'd get a very terse and abbreviated geography lesson involving the size of Texas, followed by a comparason of our problem to sewing implements and large amounts of piled fescue. The computer would sit in Texas and blink inquiringly but patiently at us, and not much else would go down.

Monte is not you and me.

Not even a little bit.

Monte, on the other hand, saw that the machine was turned on, and since he has a program that not only tells when company computers are on, but can also change things about those computers at his discretion, he did what Monte would do.

He started uninstalling stuff.

The thieves will discover upon their return that they have no more Microsoft Office among other things, and that he's looked at their e-mail, at their pictures (this is me-n-zeke robbin' a store, this is me-n-Zeke at Stone Mountain, etc.), portions of their drive are erased, and if they turn the machine on again he has other even more sinister ideas he's dying to try. I think one of them involves sending out an e-mail using the thieves own account to the people in their address book that reads, "Don't trust me, I'm a thief. I stole the computer that sent you this e-mail. If I were you, I'd rethink the life choices that brought you into contact with someone like me, who clearly experiences no moral or ethical delimma when it comes to comitting a freaking robbery!!! HELLO?!"

Wait, I'm being told it was burglary. They were burglars. That's not as cool. It makes them sound like that creepy cartoon dude painted next to the grimace in all McDonald's playlands. Still, can you imagine the burgular's dinnertime conversation tonight? "Dang it Zeke, I told you we was not supposed to turn it on and leave it on! We's been hacked! Now we caint use us that Excel spreadsheet you was workin' on to finish out our dang taxes Zeke!"

High in the middle and round at both ends

2010-04-04T13:08:00.000-05:00

We visited Ohio during spring break, while Monte was getting the house ready for the realtor. Mason and Shauna have this thing between them, where sometimes, I think they get each other on a very weird level :-) On the last night, M&S stayed up talking late into the night, and in the morning, Shauna had some very funny quotes:

MASON: "I used to tell people I was an alien, and to prove it, I would speak in alien and tell them my body was a costume and I had a zipper in the back."
SHAUNA: "And people would believe you?"
MASON: "I think I believed it myself."

That just goes to show, if you tell a lie often enough, grade school boys will eventually believe it.

Big Changes

2010-04-04T10:46:00.001-05:00

We put our house on the market on Friday, as the first step in our "moving to Oklahoma" master plan. Monte has wanted to move back for several years now, and finally it seemed like the right time even though I still have mixed emotions about it. I will miss the green mature trees and rolling hills of my childhood home, but to everything there is a season, and I believe there are great opportunities waiting for our family in Oklahoma. Plus the boys will get to spend real time with their grandparents which is the best of all reasons to be closer. So keep us all in your prayers as this thing gathers steam . . . and that the housing market cooperates!

In the paint

2010-03-21T14:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was our last basketball game of the season, and Mason scored 12 points. Last year I think he scored 4 points the entire season. One of the best shots he made was a snake-like move from right under the basket, much to the surprise of the kid who was guarding him. Points aside, he has really matured as a player in defense and overall awareness, and he seems to truly love the game. I enjoy watching him play so much, which surprises me, because I'm not a big sports person. But then my life seems to be conspiring against me there, especially with having three boys. Can't avoid ESPN forever, can I.

Looking for action(s)

2010-03-07T15:02:00.000-06:00

I've been having fun teaching myself Photoshop lately. It's such an involved program that I'm only able to learn bits and pieces here and there. However, lately the pieces are beginning to look like they fit together, which is a nice feeling. Some of the bits I enjoy using the most are Actions. These guys are like mini computer programs that run within Photoshop to make something happen without the end user needing to know all the steps. Basically, you find one that will do what you want, load it, select the layer (or thing) you want the action to change, and press play. Easy peasy and best of all there are some places you can download them for free (you have to google "photoshop actions" and then wade through a ton of sites to find things you want.) There are several scrapbooking type actions at Atomic Cupcake I've grown to love, and even though you pay for these (about $5 a piece) it's worth it, because I love the effects I get from them! I've attached a few examples below for your viewing pleasure!

I start with this simple text layer, pick the action I want and press play . . .

The pencil sketch action:

The puffy felt action:

The painted distressed chipboard action:

The inked edges action:

And the "make it look like torn cardboard" action:

Photoshop is magical! Now if it would only raise my kids and clean my house!!!

Peyton's Car Seat

2010-02-19T22:40:00.001-06:00

The latest offering in my battle with white space.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

2010-02-19T22:28:00.000-06:00

We saw these guys at Jesse Auditorium on Tuesday. I bought the CD in the lobby and now Peyton falls asleep to it every night--it's way better than the fisher price lullaby CD we used to use. Even the sad songs they sing are pretty enough you forget they're about sad things. LBM put on a show for 4th and 5th grade school kids the day after their concert that Mason got to go to, so he was able to see the show twice, once on the state's dime, and he liked it both times. Imagine, Mason enjoyed being exposed to new and different cultural things--what's next, a request for broccoli at dinner? If you get the chance and are bored at work, search You Tube for LBM and listen to some of their work. They don't need Paul Simon, he needs them!

In sickness and health

2010-02-12T09:54:00.001-06:00

If random sickness presents itself, Monte, Stephen and Peyton will get it. Mason and I seem to avoid most itinerate crud, with the last notable exception being the weekend of LTC in Kansas City last year. Mason did the whole day of speechmaking and puppeteering and dramatic interpretation, only to throw up in the back seat of the van on the way to our celebratory dinner.

But for the most part Mace and I escape while the other three succumb. In particular, Peyton gets everything but bounces back immediately while Stephen gets fewer things but his illnesses last longer than that ridiculous energizer bunny ad campaign. It's been 20 years people, give the rabbit a rest.

Right now he's upstairs in bed at his own request. Today at 2:45 p.m. his whole class will have a Valentine's party that would make some family Christmases pale in comparason. There will be candy, trinkets, books, festive craft creations and most probably the holy grail of all parties itself, RED koolaid, which you can never ever EVER have at home for fear of testing the limits of your resolve. (Yes, I mean both the carpet cleaner AND my ability to mentally deal with the stains.) Ahhh, red koolaid! Nectar of the gods. And my kid is missing it because he spent all day yesterday throwing up, and then a big portion of the night last night crying and throwing up. This morning when I went to wake him he said "Mom, I need to stay in bed please."

Wow. Ever had a seven year old offer to stay in bed? Even suggest it as a possiblity? How about on a party and video game day? You bet your bippy you haven't. It doesn't happen, ever, to anyone. Poor little guy.

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that Mason doesn't get sick before his basketball game on Saturday. Or during. Holy cow that would be worse than the van vomit, and it was MY van.

Oh how beautiful!

2010-01-30T11:59:00.001-06:00

If you are ever need proof humor is the underlying force driving the universe, feel free to recall my sister Shauna. This isn't the first time Shauna has proven the universe/humor theory, but since she's had twins the examples have become more, uh, pronounced. The other day she sent me this e-mail:

"My back was only turned for a second. I heard the bath water running so I ran upstairs to find Ben, fully clothed, in ice cold water having a blast! I turned to my right and there's Sydney in mama's makeup bag, putting eyeliner on her chin, saying, "Oh how beautiful!"

How beautiful, indeed.

Monte has a dream

2010-01-19T17:20:00.001-06:00

Many people dream. Monte does it with flourish. Today he announced, "I had a strange dream last night. I dreamt we were at home, in our house, except the inside of it was covered in ice, like the inside of one of those ice hotels on the travel channel, that nutty people visit. And it was cursed. Our house I mean, was cursed. And the only way to counteract the curse was to cut up cheese and put it on the floor. So in my dream you were shredding cheese and putting it on the floor, and I was scooping it up with a snow shovel, because there was a lot of it. Pretty weird, huh?"

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Monte Ellis, the funniest man alive.

Two tickets to paradise

2010-01-15T14:40:00.001-06:00

Twitter and Facebook are dumb. Not all human thought is valuable. Seriously people.

That being said, the one thought running though my brain over and over that I'm going to shout out to the ol' interweb is, "Praise the heavens, 56 degrees in Mid-Missouri in January! I feel like Kate Gosselin with a faithful and involved spouse. Somebody get me a fruity umbrella drink and a fan! I'm all in shirt sleeves and whatnot in January! My coat is unzipped and I'm not wearing gloves of any kind! Can I get an amen?" The midwest, and our lovely state in particular, just weathered (pun intended) ridiculous lows of -9 last week, and some of the time it was so cold I slept in my sweatshirt and jeans. You just can't get completely warm with that going on outside, and when I got my electric bill yesterday, I had to have the smelling salts handy. Baby, that cold snap cost me a small car. But that was then and this is now, and now is GORGEOUS. You wouldn't think 35 and 46 would feel like 68 and 74, but they do right after "this is how cold it is in deep space" negative 9.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go outside. In just a sweatshirt, in January. That's right. I said it. Jan. U. Ary. AMEN!

Something wickedly cute this way comes

2010-01-01T15:24:00.003-06:00

I'm an advertiser's dream because I'm usually very brand loyal. I like what I like and there are very few times when a substitute will suffice. Sometimes, though, I'm torn. For example, I like Coke AND Pepsi (I know, right?) I've voted for Democrats AND Republicans (and occasionally, Libertarians). I shop Target/Michael's AND Wal-Mart/Hobby Lobby, because T&M have higher end stuff, but W&HL are usually cheaper. Some days you just can't pick one over the other.

That's how I'm beginning to feel about digital scrapbook shops. There's Raspberry Road for all your vintage stuff, Designer Digitals for the basics, and the Sweet Shoppe for adorable kits like Monstrosity from Dani Mogstad, from which came this lovely offering . . .

I suppose we'll just all have to get along, because I can't commit to just one place to shop.

Kristi

PS I decided to scrap this photo because I think mothers tend to keep all the smiling baby pictures and get rid of the less perky ones, when constant perk is more the exception than the rule in small children. Time to get real people! Go forth and scrap the cranky! That is all.

We're never gonna make it to the lightening round

2009-12-30T21:27:00.000-06:00

Stephen: "Dad, I got a question. What is your favorite thing to do?"
Monte: "I dunno. Uh, maybe, watching College Basketball on TV?"
Stephen, making a loud buzzer sound: "INCORRECT! I'm sorry, but your favorite thing to do is play with me."
Monte: "Ah, I knew it was something like that!"

I'm dreaming of white space

2009-12-29T16:42:00.002-06:00

I enjoy scrapbooking. I enjoy looking at professionally designed scrapbook pages. I often am overheard saying to myself, "Why, the sample scrapbook page in this picture is beautiful. I can do that! I'll just copy what they did, and then I will have the very same page myself. Simple!"

That's pretty much the exact moment it all goes wrong.

I probably should mention I've never been to art school or design college or even drawn one of those mice out of the magazines that promise lessons by correspondence, but I do know a little about layout and design from reading up on the subject and spending 18 years in the home of an elementary school art teacher. Just enough knowledge to be dangerous, really. From this painfully limited amount of knowledge comes my understanding of the concept of white space. Although it seems counter intuitive (we'll get to that later) having a good deal of white space (or blank place) in your design is actually necessary in encouraging the viewer's eye to focus on the other part that isn't blank. The design part. White space is sort of a reverse eye magnet. It also works to frame the design, and makes the whole thing look clean and beautiful, not cluttered or busy. Logically I completely get it--white space is attractive and useful, and you'd think it would be simple to employ. Basically, you just have to leave a part of your page blank. I mean when you boil white space down to its most basic argument, what could be easier than not doing something?

Unfortunately when it comes to real life application, my brain gets a little fuzzy. I look at the page and I inexorably start throwing every element but the kitchen sink in there, because more is more is more, right? RIGHT? I let the wave of "extra pretties" wash over me like I've got some terrible addiction to 'one more brad, one more flower, one more sticker' and I only stop when I'm out of breath and the page is ruined.

Once I come down from the momentary high I step back and look at my well intentioned page now looking like a Hobby Lobby threw up on it and I think, "but my page is ugly. It doesn't look like the page in the picture. How can that be?" knowing full well it is because the lady who designed the original page didn't cover hers in $600 worth of ephemera.

The good news is since I'm leaning digitally right now, there's plenty of latitude in taking out the excess without having to completely start over. The bad news is, I'm me, and it take several efforts before I'm able to stop being me and control the crazy. The page below took three days to put together, and after eliminating half the original layers even I know it's still too full. The design I was attempting to copy mocks me with its vastly reduced clutter and conspicuous white space. That ever elusive white space. The holy white space grail. Someday I'll pull it off . . . maybe.Or probably I'll just start buying quick pages and have done with it!

Kristi

PS For those of you curious at home, there are nearly 40 layers in the CS2 version of this file. Somebody get me some help.

Merry Christmas from all the boys!

2009-12-28T11:27:00.001-06:00

Things we don't deserve

2009-12-17T11:35:00.002-06:00

Unless you're highly unlucky or have the personality of a pregnant yak, you have friends. Most of the time friendships are give and take, and if an accountant with a ton of time on his hands were to examine that give and take, he'd find it pretty balanced at the end of a lifetime.

Most of the time.

Then there are those people who just seem to give and give and give, and eventually it becomes apparent you are in a position where you'd have to have the resources of Warren Buffet and Mother Theresa to pay all the love, support, gifts and favors back.

We got us a couple of those.

First, there's Rickey and Susie. Rickey builds things like spare bedrooms, and fixes things like broken walls, on his own precious spare time (because he's got a day job too, like I don't have enough to feel guilty about). He always shows up when we're in a jam, like Batman or Iron Man--somebody who isn't just a superhero, but who brings his own tools. And he never says "you know, just once I'd like to be home watching HGTV and eating a chili cheese dog, instead of in your basement discovering which of my joints hurts worse when overworked." And Susie? She tells me I'm doing a good job and everything is going to work out splendidly, when anyone with eyes can see I'm not and it won't. And I always believe her--seriously, everyone needs someone who will lie to your face, and then help you clean up the mess. I can't tell you how much I love her and have grown to depend on her. Know what I do to earn all that? Yeah, I don't either.

Then, there's Michael and Alicia. They show up every Christmas without fail, with a beautiful tray of food you know they spent hours on, that I always hope I'm gonna get and am never worthy of. That food is like a Christmas bonus for stay at home "non-revenue generating" moms. It's a "job well done" platter. Know what I do in return? Eat it. Every year. Just consume it like I haven't eaten in a week. (This year was particularly yummy as you can see.)

So for those of you out there grappling with inequitable friendships this Christmas, I feel your pain. I guess it's the whole underlying theme of the season, isn't it? Gifts given, undeserved? I suppose the best we, the unworthy, can do is to be as ridiculously grateful as possible, and remind those people in our lives how much they mean to us every chance we get, because dang it, Christmas 2010 is only 13 months away, and we're about to be reminded once again how unfair it all is. As we stuff our mouths with delicious cookies.

Kristi

PS While I'm on the subject of being thankful, the funniest thank you card I ever saw was one of those Hallmark jobs that said "Muchas Gracias" on the front, and then inside, it read "That's Spanish for 'if I were any more thankful, I'd give you my car!'" I don't know why, but that always makes me laugh.

All aboard the Santa Train!

2009-12-16T18:38:00.001-06:00

The Kansas City Southern "Holiday Express" (better known to the locals as the Santa Train) was in Slater, MO yesterday. I grew up near there and my parents still live in the area, so they knew all about this wonderful event. I had never heard of it before yesterday at 10 a.m. Here's how the telephone call from my mom went:

MOM: "Hey, you should take the kids out of school, call Karen, and all of you should come to Slater and see the Santa Train. Elaine and Clyde are going."

ME: "Wait a minute. You want me to take the kids out of school, in the freezing cold, pick up my sister in law and her two kids, pack up the strollers, car seats, snacks, diaper bags and play station portables, drive an hour to Slater (which is a town of what, 200 people and no Starbucks,) to see a train? Really? A train that my 70 year old aunt and uncle find interesting enough to go to? Are you kidding me?"

MOM: "It's supposed to be really neat. You should come."

ME: "Are they giving away free televisions or babysitting services? Will Bono be there, or some form of massage therapy be offered?"

MOM: "Um, I think the kids will like it. They'll see Santa--wont that be nice?"

ME: "Fine, but there had better be irreplacable childhood memories I get out of this, that I can throw back at them when they tell me what a substandard parent I was."

MOM: "I'm sure there will be. It's the only reason your father and I took you kids to Disneyland."

The phone call didn't quite go like that, but the gist was that no, in fact, she was not kidding, and as an even bigger surprise, it turned out to be a great time. Those Slater people know what they're doing getting the Santa Train to come to their sleepy little burg whose only other claim to fame is being the boyhood home of Steve McQueen. (Seriously. There are signs everywhere. They're really proud of Steve. Uh, Mr. McQueen.) Once we arrived and secured a good parking space next to the Dollar General Store (in case of a snack or drink or diaper emergency) we swaddled the kids up in forty layers of clothing and stood in line outside to get into the train. The line moved pretty quickly and once inside the cars, we were treated to the heated and dazzlingly decorated interior looking for all the world like Macy's and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir had been shoved inside it. Apparently, the employees of Kansas City Southern Railroad donate their time to deck it out, and they do an incredible job. Every bit of wall and ceiling was ornamented. One of the train cars even had two model trains running inside it (trains within a train--cute, KCSI). The whole thing was well worth it, (don't tell my mom I said that) and as any good scrapbooker would, I got one or two decent shots for the books (more on the Holiday Express can be found here: http://www.kcsi.com/en-us/GeneralPublic/Pages/HolidayExpress.aspx and the actual Slater, MO stop is mentioned here: http://www.cityofslater.com/Santa%20Train%20-%20Holiday%20Express.html)

Here are some photos of our awesome train filled 22 degree, day:

Karen, Megan and Noah in front of the train engine. Noah refused to look anywhere but at the trains.

Once we got inside, the first thing you get to do is sit on Santa's lap. I thought Santa and Peyton made a cute couple, but he was more interested in what was coming in the next train car . . .

Where we got to see the model trains. He LOVES trains, and it was tough to get him away from the little one and out of the big one.

This shot doesn't do the model train justice--let's just say I was very impressed at the detail and effort that must have gone into this thing.

I suppose the moral of this story is, if your mother calls you on the phone and seems to be out of her mind and begins telling you to drive to Slater, MO to see a train in 22 degree weather with small children, you should do it, whether you suspect her to be completely unhinged or not. Merry Christmas everybody!

For the Love of all that is good and holy, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

2009-12-03T14:22:00.002-06:00

I just wish Ben would assert himself more. He's such a shrinking violet.

Maya Kisses, Benny and Sid-a-nee.

One drink, two straws

2009-11-17T17:10:00.001-06:00

Funny

2009-11-17T16:58:00.001-06:00

I turned around, and the boys had put on Monte's shirt, with Mason coming out of the left side and Stephen coming out of the right--they're the two headed Ellis! Hilarious, aren't they? It's all about the funny.

Monte-isms

2009-11-14T18:50:00.002-06:00

In our many years together, I've found there are very specific and misappropriated phrases Monte makes up that can only be described as Monte-isms. A Monte-ism is a phrase that doesn't make sense on its face, but when you delve deeper into the phrase and really look hard at the circumstances in which the phrase was used and the person making the phrase up, you are forced to admit that it still doesn't make sense.

Not sure what I mean? Need some examples? I thought you'd never ask.

I suggested Mason might like to go shopping with me. Monte said "Shopping?!? Enjoy shopping?!?! He doesn't enjoy doing stuff he LIKES!!!"

Or, there's the example from early on in our marriage when I asked if a particular activity was romantic or not. His reply? "Well it doesn't start the engine, but that doesn't meant it doesn't open the car door."

I don't think Monte is related to Yogi Berra, but I do think he is a great, albeit misunderstood, philosopher and someday, someone will discover a Rosetta stone that will translate all of these Monte-isms into phrases that we mere mortals can understand. Until then, I live lost in translation.

Sad News

2009-11-04T08:12:00.001-06:00

About six weeks ago, Stephen went through a period of desperately wanting a pet. We already had a dog we had to give away (nobody had time to play with her, and I'm not a dog person), and some goldfish that got flushed because, again, nobody really paid any attention to them. Clearly, we're not pet people.

I attribute some of my "pet desensitization" to growing up on a farm and watching pet after pet die under tractor wheels and inside farm machinery. Monte grew up with pets in the house, but they for the most part were cared for by his mom. Since I'm not so good in that role, the question of having a pet has rested largely in the "stalemate" pile. He wants them inside, I'll tolerate them outside, so nobody wins. This system of mutually assured destruction has worked for a long time for our family.

Over the last year or so though, Stephen has really pressed us hard to get a pet. I blame the public school system and their class turtles, guinea pigs, frogs, baby chicks and the like. Clearly, they are attempting to teach science with a little psychology thrown in, but I've been out of school for years, and I think I'm the only person this lesson is aimed at. So, after Stephen's repeated begging we got a guinea pig. She was a pretty little calico thing, and Stephen named her "Sam" although everyone called her "Puppy" because that's what Peyton called her. She was doing well and growing and things were looking good . . . for a while.

Then, once the honeymoon period was over, she didn't get a whole lot of attention. Nobody had much time for her and it looked like she was going to live the life of an island--solitude in the midst of activity. This time though there was a new wrinkle--after a week of acting lethargic and strange, Puppy died. She started her downward when we noticed she had stopped eating. Then came the lying very still, even when someone was near her cage, and finally, all she did was put her head down in the grass and breathe very fast, with a little whine thrown in. You don't have to grow up on a farm to know what was going down, but my country education didn't fail me. I figured we were headed for the big Timothy Hay pile in the sky.

What I didn't count on was Stephen's reaction. He cried and cried, and asked if we would see Puppy again in heaven, and why Puppy had to die and and so on. I was really surprised. Yesterday he didn't have time to play with Puppy, and today he was shocked and saddened to hear Puppy was gone. Monte decided we'd have a little funeral for Puppy and I was so touched when Stephen said a prayer over his pet's lifeless body, wishing her new happiness and health in heaven (we didn't argue with his theology). This scene moved even my dried up remote practical cranky heartless heart.

Monte is already saying we should wait at least a week before we get Puppy's replacement. I nearly choked on my shaken iced tea lemonade. We really don't deserve another pet, Stephen's big blue eyes notwithstanding.

Separated at egg, uh, birth

2009-10-27T19:40:00.005-05:00

Baby Ben got glasses, and it touched off a firestorm of controversy. IS he the true and uncontested twin brother, NOT of Sydney, but instead of Egghead Junior of the Warner Brothers Foghorn Leghorn cartoons? Perhaps of Chicken Little? You have the photographic evidence before you. You be the judge!

Freedom, baby

2009-10-07T22:02:00.005-05:00

Peyton has been developing such a funny little personality. He likes to say "Hi" to total strangers. We're a family of introverts, so this part is new to us. The thing is, he's choosy. He doesn't go after the grandmotherly types who fawn all over him, or even motherly types who tell him how cute he is. He likes a challenge. He only says "Hi" to the cranky man or woman with the downward gaze and averted eyes of a person on a mission of great importance for, let's say, the government. Or Gene Simmons (he strikes me as somebody you don't want to do a poor job for.) Know what I mean? The W.C. Fields types who have "I hate kids" tattooed on themselves somewhere, or who clearly think the effort of returning a 19 month old's "Hi" is beneath them. That's when P-dog goes to work. "Hi!" "Hi!" "Hi!" over and over, each greeting working harder than the last. (Yeah, that's right. W.C. Fields. I said it. Google him.)

I'm such a sap, because it always bothers me that the people he's "Hi"ing never ever turn around and throw him a bone. Ever. So I end up saying hi to him for them, as a sort of a "they suck, but don't worry, I'll always be here to say Hi to" consolation prize. I seriously doubt he notices the difference, but I'm in there, plugging away at the positive language reinforcement, so that I can regret it later when he turns 9 and recites for me all in one breath the entire L.A. Lakers roster, complete with alternates and coaching staff. (I have one of those already.)

He's also big into independence. This is fine for his overall development, but frankly it stinks when I have to go to the bathroom, or take groceries in, or pull the laundry out of the washer . . . basically when I have to do something that requires both hands, both eyes and most of my brain. It's a given these are things I can't hold a baby while doing, but things that I am negatively reinforced in if I put them off (see the bathroom entry). Again, this is when Peyton springs into action. Today, I had to bring in the groceries. I had frozen food in there, so I couldn't put it off. Peyton was in the yard in a safe location, next to the car, looking at a leaf.

See? There he is. Just fine. Enjoying nature. The kitchen is only about 20 steps away, to and from. I'll just take a bag of groceries in to the kitchen. I mean, it's not far at all. Ten seconds, tops. Maybe less at a light jog. He'll be just fine right where he is, long enough for me to get this bag of melting food inside.

Yeah, right.

When I came back out, he was past the circle drive and nearly three houses down, running at full crazy-happy-drunk toddler speed. This is a picture of him coming back after finally heeding my impassioned pleas, smiling all the way. "Looooookit me!"

Freedom, baby.

A Firm Foundation

2009-10-07T21:54:00.003-05:00

Monte's latest trick is turning carpet into hard wood flooring. We replaced our computer room floor, and although I was worried some or all of our crazy computer connections wouldn't go back, everything seems to be up and running.

The only drawback is, with carpet, the dust settles in it to be [eventually] vacuumed out. Hardwood says, "Hey, world, I'm dusty, and the people living here walk RIGHT over me and do nothing at all about it." Dang it, now I really really really need to mop more.

Captain Underpants

2009-09-22T18:13:00.004-05:00

For the last two weeks or so, Monte has been reading to Stephen at night to help fulfill a homework requirement. They started out with some Dr. Seuss stuff, and Junie B. books (which I personally loathe beyond all reasonable understanding), but lately, they've progressed into the "Captain Underpants" series by Dav Pilkey. At first it was just Monte and Stephen. But they laughed and laughed so much, it lured Mason in to the room to pile into the big purple chair with two other people just to see what all the hubbub was about. Now Mason reads with his dad and brother every night, even though Captain Underpants really isn't 4th grade reading material (it's more like 4th grade writing material! I kid, it's actually funny.)

So like moths to a flame, everyone wants to read with daddy now. Even Peyton stops by during his endless walkabouts around the house to find out why even the big guy is giggling.

He is giggling, because the name of the book is Captain UNDERPANTS! UNDERPANTS!!!!!!! Apparently, if you are a boy there is no law of diminishing comedic returns when it comes to saying the word underpants. It's funny every. single. time.

My Sweet Little Boy

2009-09-22T18:07:00.007-05:00

Stephen: "Mom, when can I marry you?"
Mom: "Marry me?"
Stephen: "Yeah, you know, when I get bigger."
Mom: "That sounds great, but you'll probably want to marry some other girl when you get bigger."
Stephen: "No I wont. I want to stay here and live with you when I get bigger. Me and daddy and Mason and Peyton should all stay here with you."

What started out as a cute and sweet mom and boy moment turned into visions of adult children living with me forever in my basement. Aaaaaaahhhhh!

Nah, it was still cute. Until some little girl flounces in and takes his heart away from me. Forever.

Waaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

Tasty Kitchen Indeed

2009-09-10T22:34:00.004-05:00

CLICK HERE --> Molten Chocolate Cake – Tasty Kitchen
Posted using ShareThis

Ree Drummond (a.k.a. Pioneer Woman) has just launched a recipe website called Tasty Kitchen. I know, right? With a billion recipe sharing websites out there (okay, maybe not that many, but there are several, trust me), why, oh why, does Pioneer Woman take time from her insanely busy life to start one?

Molten Chocolate Cake, baby, that's why. Apparently her deal with the devil that allows for raising and homeschooling four kids, participating in a working cattle ranch, taking pictures of everything that moves and some stuff that doesn't, and publishing her own cookbook available on Amazon, WITHOUT an Oprah sized team of underlings or super powers (that we've been able to detect) . . . also gives her inside access to recipe conveyed heaven like the one I've shared above.

It took me a couple of tries to get this Chocolate personification of pure joy to turn out okay, and even then I don't always do it just right, but seriously, they taste good enough I don't even care and I end up eating the over toasted ones. My sister had me make them three times for her while she was here, and my friend Susie said they were really good, and Susie knows her really good food, being married to and being herself also, an amazingly great cook.

If you're feeling blue, give these a shot. I swear after you eat one, whatever was bothering you will be shoved so far to the back of your mind you wont be able to find it again for at least an hour, maybe more.

Getting an Education

2009-08-25T22:41:00.006-05:00

When family comes to town, keeping up with your own life gets a little problematic. You want to put the rest of the world on pause so that you can focus on your guests, but unfortunately, the earth abjectly refuses to stop spinning. Case in point, the Fairview Elementary 2009 Back To School Night. It was scheduled for August 20, which was not only during my sister's visit, but also at a time when Monte would be in Arizona helping my sister's husband drive their two cars back to Missouri.

You wouldn't think Monte's absence from BTSN would matter much. I mean, after all, I didn't have to take Peyton, so each absence balances out the other, right? And I had prepared in advance. I filled out all the forms. I pre-ordered my school supplies from the school itself--no fighting the retail crowds on August 19 for this mom. But once I got there and cheerfully produced my paper work, it turned out each school age son had to have additional paper work filled out and turned in to their new teacher. Once I got to the room, new forms I had never seen before had to be carefully considered and completed, and the easy peasy school supplies, which again, were pre-ordered from the school itself back in May, had to be tracked down and placed in desks.

Big deal, right? Wrong. It suddenly became apparent Monte is not just a Peyton carrier at these kinds of events. He also fields questions from the audience while I concentrate on the information I'm providing. Mason and Stephen both had things they urgently needed to say to me at all times, which meant I couldn't really focus on meeting the teacher or her pesky forms. Confusion growing all around me, I finished the forms, grabbed the school supplies, dumped them out of the box into the desk and struggled to insure I had done enough of what I was supposed to do for the state to accept the children I ejected from my vehicle come Monday morning. I then fled the scene.

The first clue that I am not together as a single parent came Monday when the boys came home. Stephen said, "Mom, my desk was empty." I said, "What do you mean your desk was empty?" He said, "The school supplies weren't there." I called and left a voice message for his teacher, but it was pretty half hearted. After all, these are boys that call to me complaining they can't find their shirt or their backpack or their right foot, only to have me walk over and point out that the object in question is eighteen inches from their left foot. Surely the supplies were there. I put them there. Heck, I dumped them with extreme force there.

They weren't there. Naturally Stephen hadn't told his teacher, and I guess in all the craziness of the first few days of school she hadn't gotten my voice mail--so when I asked her about it she was completely baffled. After realizing that in my haste I didn't stop to label any of the supplies, we admitted that even with a crack CSI team and several days of leg work we were never going to know what happened to them. At the heart of the matter was the inescapable fact that Stephen still needed his stuff. So I resolved to go out after dinner and get him everything he needed. Again.

Remember the ten plagues in the bible? Famine, locusts, frogs, flies, and so on. There was a little known 11th one--the school supply availability plague. We had to go to four different stores in order to get glue, scissors, erasers, pencils, crayons, markers, notebooks, a pencil case, post it notes and plastic folders. Four stores. Wal-mart was out of erasers, but they had plastic folders. Target didn't have folders made of any material, but they did have post it notes. Nobody had pencil cases. We had to settle for a plastic box of approximately the same dimensions at Michael's, which by the way is the only place in town you can get those otherwise ubiquitous pink erasers on the second day of school. Oh, and you also have to crawl over cranky last minute college students and their frazzled parents just to get the stuff. At one point, Monte had to go around to the back of an aisle and reach over the top just to get to the plastic folders that were being blocked by an angry mother daughter team bent on denying access to anything that might hold paper.

I can't decide if I was overly dependent on my preparedness or underestimated the distractions my sons can be or if, baby, we just got robbed. I have learned one thing though. If I have to do another BTSN on my own, then it really will be on my own, because all the boys will be duct taped to chairs in my basement.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree

2009-08-24T15:20:00.003-05:00

When family comes to town, it's showoff time. See what new tricks the babies can do. Here is just a small sampling of how that went.

Mom: "Peyton, what does a doggie say?"
Peyton: "Moo"
Mom: "Noooo, a doggie says woof. What does a cat say?"
Peyton: "Moo"
Mom: "No, no, a cat says meow. What does a COW say?"
Peyton, sensing dinner time was near: "Chee?" (Which loosely translated means I'm hungry and I want six or eight pieces of cheese.)

So there you have it. Shauna's kids know all their letters, numbers, colors, algebraic equations and a little string theory. My kids are interested in the position of class clown, if they can get it. Nature, 1, Nurture, 0.

Been Farmin' Long?

2009-08-18T15:17:00.005-05:00

Peyton and new BFF Hunter rode Hunter's Peg Perego John Deere Gator all over Hunter's farm today. The property is pretty extensive. Three year old H-dog drove 20 month old P-dog over hills, up the sides of valleys, down into ravines and out again all without too many near misses. And nobody worried. All the adults stood around and laughed and laughed without a care in the world like it was 1973 and seatbelts, helmets and knee pads were still a pipe dream. We probably should have feigned some concern, but hey, my parents let me ride farm machinery and such at their ages, not to mention all my childhood winter sledding memories involve a 20 foot length of rope and an international pickup truck. It's a miracle I made it to 40!

Man Pretty

2009-08-15T19:56:00.003-05:00

I was making some bows for Sydney, and I needed to see if they looked okay. Sydney is at the farm, so I found some other, more convenient models.

Now before you judge, look at those eyes! He's a beautiful baby. He would have made such a cute little girl if the DNA wheel had gone the other way. He can't help it if he has beautiful eyes and sweet little lips . . . he's man pretty. I mean he's got a wii controller to balance it all out, right? Right?

Okay, okay, I was out of control, but aren't they cute? I think I read somewhere cinema tough guy Charles Bronson wore dresses when he was a baby and had ringlets until he was like three or something . . . Clint Eastwood did too probably. And look at those guys . . .

I think Sydney needs to come back.

Reunion

2009-08-15T10:56:00.003-05:00

There aren't words for how happy this picture makes me. These are some of the people I love best in the world, assembled together at my parent's farm. They were there to eat burgers and talk, and maybe ride the 4-wheeler. Nothing else. Just to be, and do it next to each other.

Some of the memories that keep me above water on a daily basis are of just hanging out with one or more of these guys. Doing stuff, or nothing, but having some sort of connection all the same. Really, if you get right down to it, the person I am is a direct result of the effect all the people in this picture have had on, well, the person I am. That was a bit circular, but you get the gist.

This post doesn't have a moral or a grand point or anything, but I would advise any reader who doesn't presently have a big extended family, to run out and get one right away. They're worth what they cost, every penny. But not this one, because it's mine, and I'm keeping it.

I love Cracker Barrel

2009-08-07T13:17:00.001-05:00

GeoTagged, [N38.96086, E92.28708]

Is it the sweet tea or the hashbrown casserole or the sweet potato casserole or the strawberry short cake that keeps me coming back time and again to my neighborhood Cracker Barrel? Is it the candle selection or the seasonal items or the old fashioned candy or the toys? Maybe it's the audiobooks or the bluegrass music? Nope. Those things are great, don't get me wrong, but I think its something else. The checkers. Yep, definately the checkers.

Trading Spaces

2009-08-05T09:27:00.005-05:00

It finally came down to the boys bathroom. We had avoided the boys bathroom for a time because, well, that's the bathroom the boys use and they need a space uninterrupted for bathing, teeth brushing and peeing near the toilet. But eventually all things change and so here we are with the BEFORE picture:

Another BEFORE with the happy home owner documenting his project. One backache, creaky knees and many nicks and cuts later . . .

Our AFTER picture. We've already moved the boys back in. They were peeing near the toilet in my bathroom, and that was not to be tolerated for long.

We have the painting left and then carpet and then we're done, and we can go back to watching TV and taking our ease. My Tivo will thank me. He's full and would like it very much if I'd watch some of those shows he's been good enough to record.

Comic Con

2009-08-03T15:43:00.004-05:00

This is a comic book store in Chandler, Arizona. In July 2006, my sister and her husband moved to Chandler (Phoenix) so that he could work at Intel. There was a 20+ hour road trip involving video cameras and small marital disagreements specific to traveling that were ironed out over large fries. Oh yeah, and me--I went too, to "help." (I basically helped myself to Chinese food, American food, fast food, etc.) My sister and her husband were beginning a new life, a new adventure, and I documented it all with a camera in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other. While they lived there, the Ellis family went to visit them a few times in the spirit of the "stay with relatives who live in paradise and save on hotel costs" vacation. We swam in their bathtub water warm pool, which was conveniently located adjacent to their palatial house and surrounded by beautiful plant life and a few dancing geckos. Unmitigated joy was to be had by all. Even the geckos.

Alas, it was not to be.

Fast forward to August 2009. My sister and her husband are moving away from Chandler to Dayton. Ohio. The Midwest. The heartland. Where people routinely carry guns and bibles under the seats of their cars (at least that's where I keep mine.) No red rocks, no sun worshipers, no new age anything. Just corn. Rows and rows and rows of it. And you know what? I'm thrilled. Phoenix was too dang far away and the plane rides too long and too expensive. And once you make it TO Phoenix, this idyllic place, this utopia known for shorts weather year round, reveals an underbelly of 115 degree in the shade summers and absolutely NO bakeries. None. Okay, maybe one, but you had to drive 20 miles in intense 115 degree traffic with your tires melting out from under you to get a tiny loaf of Ciabatta bread, for which you drove back thankfully and nibbled carefully, lest you have to get back out into flaming Hades to get another one. That, my friend, was NOT in the travel brochure.

But truthfully, they could build bakeries upon bakeries and it wouldn't matter. The simple fact is Phoenix is farther from Missouri than the moon, and finally, FINALLY, my sister is leaving there and moving to a state where her kids wont cry when it snows and start screaming "Mommy the sky is falling! Mommytheskyisfallinggggggggggggg!!!!"

So what does all that have to do with a comic book store in the middle of Chandler? When they first moved to paradise, I took this picture of Atomic Comics with my camera phone thinking that when I got back to the greater Phoenix area with one of my superhero worshiping boys, we'd go inside. But we never did. They were there three years and we never made it to the interior of the comic book store that was less than five minutes from their house. Sad, really.

Unless, maybe they have comic book stores in Dayton? Ha! Silver lining achieved!

Spy Kids

2009-07-29T15:15:00.004-05:00

Regardless of how tightly packed your summer is with camps, vacations, projects, activities and events, eventually the whole darn thing melts down into a stay at home mom with learned helplessness and children plugged into video games. So in order to stop the insanity (and the incessant discussion of various game levels and what was gained or lost on them) I ordered the boys to do something using ONLY their imaginations. This lasted eight seconds. They came up with a Spy scenario involving missions and such, but they needed gadgets. Absolutely required them, no getting around it. It started innocently enough, with a couple of paper towel rolls and the discussion of what spy telescopes should look like, but that snowballed into the need for electronic equipment--I mean what James Bond film depends utterly on cardboard? With the argument made and accepted, I agreed to get them walkie-talkies from Dick's Sporting Goods.

Rookie mistake.

Now, instead of hearing about video game levels, I'm stuck in one of those Verizon wireless commercials. Mason: "Stephen, can you hear me now? I'm on the stairs." Stephen: " I can hear you. Can you hear me? I am in the back yard." And on and on it goes. I'm not sure how the mission is going, but one thing is crystal clear. If the element of surprise is necessary to thwart the enemy, we'd better craft our little white flags now. Out of paper towels. Lots of them. How do you think I got to the rolls so quickly?

Home Improvement

2009-07-29T14:42:00.003-05:00

Monte is a mad genius. Just don't tell him I said so. In the 18 years we've been married, he's gone from this adorably geeky kid to a Renaissance man. In the home improvement category, he spent one weekend watching our uberbuilder friend Rickey tile the downstairs bathroom, and suddenly he not only had the urge to tile other bathrooms but he how has the wherewithal to do it all by himself. It's like watching the brain plug in scenes from the Matrix films. Can't tile? Wait a second, I watched somebody or asked a couple of questions or watched a video, plugged in my brain, had a little rapid eye movement and bippety-boppety-boo, I CAN tile. And fly helicopters. Ridiculous.

Here is evidence of some of his recent work. The tile you see here took him three days. (If I had done it, after the three days I would have had two pieces of tile glued to each other and the rest broken into little jagged pieces. You would then find me downstairs eating an entire chocolate cake and crying.)

The kitchen is still in progress. He's doing it at night after work. Well, ONE night after work. Night two is for grout, and presumably, for him to rest and survey his handiwork and call it "good."

Since none of the appliances have a home while the tiles goes up, Peyton got to examine my green mixer, that would have been red if I hadn't listened to my sister when I was ordering it from QVC in 2001. I doubt the red would have made the food taste like fine cuisine, but I would have liked looking at it better for the 100s of years I'll own the dumb thing. Stupid Kitchenaid and their Toyota like durability.

In the space of three seconds, he got the front circle part off (the part that, if I really could cook, would accommodate lovely life simplifying attachments) and was running down the hall with it. I finally pried it from his clenched fist, and then got front row seats to the most amazing tantrum you've ever seen.

Terrible twos, six months early. Ah well, at least I'll have several lovely tiled living spaces from which to watch the meltdowns. It's all about perspective.

Say cheese

2009-07-15T14:14:00.005-05:00

Ever eaten shredded cheese with a fork?

No?

It's probably just as well.

Have you seen this kid?

2009-07-05T22:30:00.002-05:00

We've had a wild few weeks. We got back from Cancun last Sunday, and by the time I had unpacked and washed everything it was time to take Mason to his first ever week of Ne-o-tez church camp. He looked pretty shy and quiet standing there with all the other boys who can't stand still (the girls were off in a group of their own, and it didn't look like they were quite ready to have anything to do with the boys. Lucky for me. I would hate to pick him up in a week and find out there's a . . . girlfriend. Ack.) Monte went back to check on him twice before he finally agreed to get in the car and go. He is worried Mason will not have the time of his life and that he might be sad for a week. I am worried his clothes will come back irrevokably stained and grimy. Monte is worried Mason wont get what he likes to eat at camp, and that he might be hungry. I am worried he wont brush his teeth all week long. Monte is worried his little boy will be lonely without his daddy. I am worried his mother will get used to peace and quiet and then be jolted violently back to reality when his mouth comes home.

I hope my little boy isn't lonely, and that he's having a good time. Goodnight sweet boy. We miss you terribly already, and it has only been six hours. Good grief!

Mason's Crazy Hair

2009-07-03T17:10:00.001-05:00

GeoTagged, [N38.93428, E92.38937]

Happy whateverth of July

2009-07-02T16:19:00.002-05:00

The problem with traditions are that you have to have the wherewithal and the focus to keep them in the same way every single year to have any lasting or meaningful effect on collective memory. Sometimes our little family of five celebrates American Independence by spending hundreds of dollars setting off fireworks at the farm. Sometimes we go and see someone else's fireworks (the upside here being that you save tons of money and (probably) eat someone else's food), and then sometimes we hit a movie or go to the store and skip fireworks altogether. And then there are my personal favorite years where Monte says, "When is the 4th anyway?" on the 5th. We just don't have the dedication to scheduling and planning that it takes to do the same thing at the same time every year except in very specific cases (Halloween trick or treating, and being home on Christmas day are the only two I can think of.) Frankly, tradition takes too much concentration, and besides, the little boy audience barely notices the holiday itself, except to be grateful for school cancellation. Maybe if I had daughters there would be some sort of expectation or something, but boys can't remember what they did yesterday--and unless it has to do with video game levels, they don't care.

So from our house to yours we extend our most sincere and happy non-traditional 4th of July wishes, complete with everything or nothing, as you choose to celebrate it, in your own way. Or not. Go Lakers!

It's Official

2009-06-28T20:16:00.002-05:00

Taken at Senior Frogs, Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Hence the balloon hat. (At least it's not red and purple yet!)

Circus People

2009-06-20T21:11:00.002-05:00

You guys HAVE to see this.

This is Ben, my sister Shauna's baby. He was 18 months when they shot this video. In my opinion, he is a freakin' genius!

I KNOW, right?

Less Trouble in Paradise

2009-06-20T20:04:00.005-05:00

Sometimes less is more. And sometimes the less that is more is bad.

We head out to Cancun on Monday. Peyton is spending the week with Grandma in Oklahoma City. We met the grandparents in Joplin and Peyton got in their car and left, with me standing there in the Bob Evans parking lot trying not to cry. Having never ever been away from him all night before, this evening has been a challenge. Monte kept bringing me chocolate and iced tea lemonades this week to soften the eventual blow, but I guess I'll have to work through tonight's bedtime all on my own.

There is an upside to having one less kid though. Suddenly, I feel like I can do anything. Really. Like, we went into a Best Buy just now and I actually shopped. I saw what they had in the way of retail merchandise, considered options and was able to thoughtfully select some items based on those options. My two older children played docilely in the video game aisle without moving from the general gaming vicinity, which was easily observable from most areas of the sales floor. I didn't need a cart, I didn't have to corral anyone, I was able to thoroughly consider what I was about to do before I did it, the whole time. I didn't have to talk over anyone, there was no yelling, I didn't have to wipe anyone, I didn't have to soothe or comfort anyone while trying to find someone else. And most of all, when I left, I knew what was in my bag and where my purse was. The amount of physical stress in my life if you're just going off today, has been greatly reduced. Emotional stress? Off the charts. We'll see what Monday and the airport brings.

(I'll bet that Michelle Duggar lady in Arkansas says stuff like that when she only has to look after six kids instead of 18. I'm such a wimp.)

Goodnight, punk-y punk, out there under the Oklahoma sky. I miss your little face so bad. Sleep well. Have good dreams. And tomorrow, go through all the kitchen drawers and find each and every one of grandma's measuring cups and big spoons, and spread them all over the living room and bathroom floors. Just to make it home.

Spanglish

2009-06-11T20:58:00.003-05:00

Aunt Shauna speaks Spanish. We're going to Cancun in a week and a half. You'd think this would be the ideal time for Shauna to teach us some of what she knows. You would be very very wrong. The following e-mail is what I got when I asked for some handy Spanish phrases for the monolingual traveler. Shauna clearly does not have our best interests at heart, although she did throw in phonetic phrasing so we'd be able to pronounce our doom clearly.
********************************************************
Handy Spanish Phrases

1. Get out of here! I’m watching TV! (Mason’s request)
Salga de aqui! Estoy mirando la tele! [Sal guh day ah key! Es toy meer ahn doe lah tay lay!]

2. Let’s go to the beach! Vamos a la playa! [Vah moes ah la plie ah!]

3. I think the maid stole my money. Creo que la criada me robo de mi dinero. [Cray oh kay la kree ah dah may row bow day me dee nare oh.]

4. That stuff looks cheap and I don’t want to buy it. Sus cosas se me parece barato y no quiero comprarlas. [Soose koe sahs say may pah ray say bah rah toe E no key air oh comb prahr lahs.]

5. Come on in. I’m naked in the shower. Usted puede entrar. Estoy desnudo/desnuda (depending on if you’re a boy or girl saying it—a for girl, o for boy) en la ducha. [Ooh stead pway day in trar. Es toy dace nood ah in la doocha.]

6. Where is the bathroom? The food was not very good. It’s an emergency! Donde esta el bano? La comida estaba mal. Es una emergencia! [Dohn day es tah el banyo? La coe mee dah ace tah bah mahl. Ace oonah ah mare hence E ah!]

7. I brought lots of money and I’m ready to spend it! Traje mucho dinero y estoy listo/lista (depending on boy or girl) para gastarlo! [Trah hay moo cho dee nare oh E es toy leese toe pah rah gas tar low!]

8. I’m an American. You should treat me like royalty! Estoy Americano/Americana (boy or girl). Debe tratarme como derechos. [Es toy Ah mare E kahn O. Day bay trah tar may coe moe day ray chos!]

9. I want another room. This one smells like a dead animal. Quiero otro cuarto. Este cuarto huele como un animal muerto. [Key air oh oh troh kwahr toe. Ace tay kwahr toe hway lay coe moe oon ahn E mahl mwair toe.]

10. I lost my wallet and I will do anything for 50 dollars. Se me perdio mi dinero y hare qualquier cosa para cincuenta dolares. [Say may pear dee oh me dee nair oh E R ay kwal key air coe suh pah rah sin kwin tah doe lair ace.]
*********************************************************************
The subject line in this e-mail said "Let me know if there are any others you want to know." Why yes, Shauna, how about, "My sister is a complete dork and gave me these phrases because she is secretly jealous of my brains and beauty. Also my sister is beginning to act just like her madre." Ha, that last one'll get her!

Camp Half-Mud

2009-06-11T20:11:00.005-05:00

This is beautiful Camp NeOTez in scenic DeSoto, Missouri. It's a picturesque setting with lovely accommodations, and the locals are all kinds of friendly. As it is the rainy season in beautiful DeSoto, each and every single thing within the confines of camp is covered in mud. This includes, but is not limited to, clothes, towels, shoes, children, motor vehicles and unused toothbrushes.
Speaking of the locals, here they are in all their finery. This is some sort of tribal custom called a camp sing a long. It is used to lull parents of small children into accepting offerings of hot dogs and punch, and to distract them from exclaiming "what have you done with my child, and what is that large mud covered thing you are giving me instead?!?!" Do not be alarmed. The mud covered thing is indeed your child.
This is Marco. I think he was the upper bunk to Stephen's lower bunk, although I'm not entirely sure. I'm not convinced they slept in their bunks, although the beds had mud in them, so I guess the children at least laid down. As I said, it was very stormy and muddy, and at one point all of the children were covered in shaving cream. And mud. There is still some mud on Stephen's face. You can see it in the photo. Marco's face is clean. Sigh.
These are the good natured counsellors at Camp NeOTez, cabin 4. Stephen got to know them very very well. They are blood brothers. One for all and all for one. If one is captured, the other one goes back for him, because you never leave a man behind, and so on. When I asked Stephen about this picture, he pointed to the kid behind him and said "That's uh, Jimmy." Then he pointed to the other guy and said "I don't remember his name." That's six year old loyalty for you.

I was worried when we dropped Stephen off Sunday night, he might get nervous or be concerned. This was his first overnight camp. He's only six. He was there for 48 whole hours. What if he got scared or needed his mom? After a tense three hour return drive down to pick him up I rushed up to him and said "Hey, little guy, with all that scary rain, did you miss me?" He said "Uh, yeah, I guess" and took off toward the ice cream sandwiches being served in the mess hall. Again, six year old loyalty. Absence makes the heart look instead, for ice cream sandwiches.

Mason will attend NeOTez in July. Hopefully they will have one or two dry days this time, during which they can wash off some of the mud.
*****************************
P.S. Sorry for the Percy Jackson and the Olympians rip off in the title post (Camp Half-Blood). We just finished book five (The Last Olympian), and they tell me there are to be no more. Curse you Rick Riordan, and J.K. Rowling before you for getting us all wrapped up in your characters and then deciding to stop writing about them. I guess we'll have to look elsewhere for entertainment. If you have a kid and would like to read to him and are interested even a little bit in Greek Mythology, pick up Riordan's work. It'll have you googling Hecate and Hephaestus in no time! www.rickriordan.com

Photoshop for (me) Dummies

2009-06-11T19:32:00.004-05:00

I took this with my point and shoot camera, and even though the noise (grain) is extremely high in the photograph, (flash didn't fire for some reason) I still liked the subject well enough to hang on to it. I decided it probably could use a few PS actions, just to jazz it up, although the resolution on the P&S isn't that high, and you have to have pretty high res images for most actions I've come across to work properly. Still I figured it didn't hurt to give a few of these lower ones a whirl, just to see.

The two actions I used are free and in my opinion, indispensable. The first, Touch of Light/Touch of Darkness, can be downloaded off Jodi Freedman's website, MCPActions.com, under the "Try It" section (you have to scroll down, but it's down there, trust me.) I ran TOLTOD, and then selected the paintbrush, and "painted" a touch of light on Stephen's face, to take out the shadow. I flattened the image by right clicking on it and selecting "flatten" (whoa, Kristi, slow down, you're too technical), and then ran Pioneer Woman's Define and Sharpen action, which can be downloaded from thepoineerwoman.com (just search her site). It brings out the color a bit better, improves clarity, etc.

Again, this shot would have been better with the 5D, but most pictures are better out of an SLR. However, gigantor and it's ridiculously phallic lens wont fit in my purse, and with the purse, baby, stroller, Starbucks Iced Tea Lemonade and diaper bag in my twelve hands I had to minimize something.

Yeah, yeah, I know the photo is still grainy, but I rather like the little guy in it. Sue me.

Lost in Translation

2009-06-06T14:12:00.001-05:00

Monte bought Stephen some new white shorts with sailboats on them. Not a look for everyone, but Stephen makes them work. On the way out of the house, Monte said, "What do you think of the shorts?" I said "Yeah, he really pulls them off." Monte said, "Oh? He did?" I clarified, "No, no, I mean they look nice." Monte said, "Oh good. For a second there, I thought you meant he was flashing the neighbors."

I'll bet parents of girls never EVER have this kind of misunderstanding.

It's not date night unless somebody calls the cops

2009-05-31T17:10:00.005-05:00

This weekend was our 18th anniversary (18 years is the Garnet anniversary--we looked it up. Apparently 11 years is Steel, and if you make it past that you start getting better symbols to work with.) We did the usual thing, got a sitter, went to see a movie, ate dinner.

Except.

Except my mom served as our babysitter. There are distinct differences in our lifestyle and hers, including the fact that we recycle, we have central heat and air, our TVs are controlled by Tivos, we have high speed internet, we live on a cul-de-sac with unique parking implications, and so on. Most of the time the differences in our lifestyles only end up in a diaper in the recycle bin or our neighbor asking us if we'd please move the extra car so he can back out of his driveway. But Saturday, the crazy good luck streak we were unaware we were in, flat ran out.

We left the boys with mom and went to eat at C.C.'s City Broiler. Midway though dinner, Mom called Monte, and after she asked a few questions, he asked to speak to Mason. He then explained to Mason how to put the DVD in the Tivo and watch it. Thinking "crisis averted" we finished our meal and went to see Star Trek. I had already seen it, so in the middle I decided to go to the bathroom. I told Monte that the part coming up was a big plot point, and many things would be explained, and that he should sit tight until I got back.

I came back from the bathroom and found him in the hallway talking on his cell phone. Puzzled, I said "you were supposed to stay in there. You're missing the plot . . . " He told me to "shhhh" and said "I'm on the phone with the Brinks Home Security people." Now, I can't imagine why he's on the phone with Brinks, since we didn't set the alarm before we left, what with four people running in and out of the place, unless maybe something caught fire. So I stand there freaking out, while he finishes his call, and he said "your mom hit the burglar alarm."

We have been using our attic fan because the days haven't been all that hot yet. Before we left on our date I turned on the air conditioning, but I guess it wasn't doing its job, because mom decided she was warm. She called dad, and told him she was warm, and he said "well, just hit the blue button." There were three things vitally wrong with his advice. One, our thermostat is upstairs between the bedrooms, and she was downstairs next to the front door. Two, we have a touch screen thermostat. No blue button. No buttons at all. Three, she had told him she wasn't wearing her glasses and she couldn't read the buttons she was pressing, so she missed the fact that the blue button she was hitting was actually a picture of a blue police shield and the keypad she was hitting it on was marked "Brinks Home Security."

The good news is, if you have a security alarm installed by Brinks, they do call each and every number in an effort to get hold of you, the cops do come right away and it all works just like its supposed to. The bad news is, we have to find a new babysitter option before our neighborhood association writes us a strongly worded letter about our excessive use of law enforcement.

Waiting for the tooth fairy

2009-05-28T22:50:00.004-05:00

Stephen lost his first tooth on Monday. We noticed it had gotten really loose over the weekend in Branson, and when we got home, Monte got a bit of string around it and, after three tries, got it out. It was great. Our six year old Kindergartner became a man. Or at least he joined the lost tooth club.

And then that night we forgot to put it under Stephen's pillow.

Utterly completely totally forgot. When Mason FINALLY lost his first tooth at age 8 last summer, you'd have thought we were celebrating his acceptance into Harvard or something. Speeches were made, backs were patted and a huge deal was made out of putting it under his pillow that night. The surprises left the next morning were a sight to behold. A few weeks later we had to come clean about certain facts regarding the Tooth Fairy, (he was about to enter the Third grade after all,) but for a brief moment, teeth were magical. Since then, however, the magic of lost teeth has tarnished a little. Gotten a tad stale. Poor Stephen just had the bad luck of not losing his first tooth before Mason, which frankly, Mason gave him more than ample time and opportunity to do. So anyway, after we completely forgot Stephen had lost his tooth and should get a visit from the TF, we did our best to make up for it the next night. Monte wrapped a pretend tooth in a bit of paper towel (the real tooth is already affixed on a scrapbook page downstairs--don't judge me) and put it carefully under Stephen's pillow, and in the morning, there was a little bucket with stuff to make s'mores in it. Quite a thing, right? Pageantry and all.

Except that he lost another tooth on Wednesday. And again, we forgot to put it under his pillow.

I know, right? Twice? Having three kids has kind of redefined our family limits, especially when it comes to making a big deal out of stuff the second and third time. Or frankly, just remembering it happened. But, after hanging our heads and explaining we could make it right because we have a hotline straight to the Tooth Fairy's booking agent (he's only six, so I have more time before some kid in his class contradicts my carefully constructed reality), we again wrapped a "tooth" in a paper towel, and put him to bed.

And then, around 11 p.m., plans were set in motion in to replace the paper towel with something more substantial. As the covers were lifted, a shaft of light from the hallway illuminated our sweet little spiderman boy . . . and he was clutching the tooth in his sleep.

It was so precious I can't even tell you. He probably wanted to catch the tooth fairy making the switch, so he could get a good look at her. Or him. Whatever, you know what I mean. So I took his picture, because these are the moments I live for, while I'm cleaning up dried urine from behind the back of the toilet.

Unfortunately, Stephen never got to catch the Tooth Fairy. He is afflicted with his mother's ability to sleep though gale force winds and category F5 tornadoes and nuclear testing and such. Tragic, really. Adorable, but tragic.

PS And his index finger isn't broken. It's double jointed. THAT he inherited from his dad's freaky side of the family.

Branson Landing

2009-05-26T16:50:00.002-05:00

We went down to Branson Landing on Saturday night, to eat at Shorty Smalls. There was a 30 minute wait, so we went down to look at the water, and as we did, fog rolled in. Like, within ten minutes, there was fog where there had been no fog before. Speedy acting insta-fog, the kind Americans would make if they commercially produced fog, and the kind Europeans would sneer at in some sort of accented snobbery, as if to say, "fog made zhat quickly is inferior! You ridiculous Americans and your microwaves and drive thrus and immediate fog. You know noth-zing. NOTH-ZING!"

Anyway.

It was cool. Neat foggy type fog, and it accented the area perfectly, and made for such a pretty picture, and it would all have been just right.

Except.

The water smelled really really fishy. Pee-yew!

Run out of town on a rail

2009-05-26T10:25:00.003-05:00

This is a true story of four men and one woman, living in a hotel room in Branson, Missouri, who are having their lives photographed, to see what happens when people stop being polite and start being real. The REAL world, Branson! (It wouldn't last a whole season.)

Here are my four guys on the Branson Senic Railway trip. We traveled an hour south into Arkansas, and then stopped on this very very very high train tresle, sat there a minute to let the fact that we were very very very high up sink in (I have a fear of heights and bridges and open windows and so on), and then the train reversed itself and we traveled back the way we came, to Branson Landing. All in all it was around a 2 hour trip, which wasn't too bad, although if it had been much longer, Peyton would have registered several complaints, or pooped on something. Or someone.

I gave the boys some disposible cameras to see what they would take pictures of. Stephen took lots of grainy underexposed pictures of price tags and knick knacks at the Branson IMAX Mall. Mason took lots of pictures of himself and his brothers doing dorky stuff. I paid to have these things developed. You see the fly in the ointment, don't you?

I think now that we're home and eveyrone has had a good night's sleep, I should be kinder and gentler in my Branson vacation review. I mean, it was full of nice stuff, and the sleep loss and rough housing and perpetual motion and constant complaining are things we put up with at home . . . it's just that, at home, I can send perpetual motion complainers off to different parts of the house so that they can fine tune their argument, leaving me to do my job of not hearing them or seeing them. So, next vacation, we're just going to have to rent a house to stay in. Or a department store. Or the Mall of America.

Labor and pain

2009-05-24T19:00:00.001-05:00

I planned a trip for my family in Branson, MO, this past Memorial Day weekend. We saw the Irish Tenors, which was nice, and rode the Senic Railway, also nice. Unfortunately, I learned many many lessons during this trip, including:

1. Peyton is too little and the other two are too rowdy to share a hotel room with. This means no meaningful family vacation until 2015.
2. by 2015, none of us will be speaking to each other.
3. I must never ever plan a vacation, as I get a little emotionally imvolved when it doesn't go as planned.

It was a tough weekend.

Stephen Ells, MD

2009-05-22T10:37:00.003-05:00

Stephen was covered with poision ivy (again) and I was putting some medicine on it, when he said, "Mom, I think I'm allergic to all these bug bites." I said, "Oh, really? You're allergic to bug bites?" He said, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure."

Then there was this long pause

And then he said, "Or maybe cheese."

Stephen is not allergic to cheese. He's allergic to being serious.

Kaleidoscope, Crown Center, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, Earth

2009-05-20T18:25:00.003-05:00

The four Fairview Third Grade classes (all 100 kids) enjoyed a trip to Crown Center, and Kaleidoscope, in Kansas City. Monte and I went, along with other parents and teacher helpers, to herd the herd. It was a pretty good time. Mason made several things, although I didn't get to see him much, since I had to man the "gold and silver paper on a roll" station. I had to cut the paper off for each kid, because the scissors chained to the station for cutting purposes were dull and didn't work very well. Monte didn't fare much better--he was in charge of the "glue a bunch of stuff together your parents would consider trash, and then call it art" station. There were empty tape spools, all sorts of plastic pieces and parts, and crazy ribbon. He looked so bewildered, like he was thinking, "but I just threw a bunch of stuff just like this away at work, and now you are all climbing over me to get to it, and glue it together. Maybe later you can get my hamburger wrapper from lunch out of the garbage and make a hat out of it."

Ah, childhood!

You are so beautiful to me

2009-05-19T11:32:00.005-05:00

You can't see it, because I can't make this picture big enough on blogger, but Mason's eyes are simply stunning in this shot. What a precious little man I have. Ah, he's a heart breaker.

Things you may not know about Mason:
1. Besides video games, he loves the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. We're on the last book, "The Last Olympian" right now. He also enjoys the Harry Potter series, although not quite as much.
2. He asks very mature questions.
3. He loves the Lakers. A lot. He practices his jump shot in hallways, theater bathrooms, restaurant lobbys, EVERYWHERE. Kobe Bryant is his favorite player, but he's starting to branch out and enjoy other players as well.
4. He is beginning to rebel a little, but in his heart he wants very much to please his parents.
5. He is 4 feet 9 inches tall. His mother is 5 feet 5 inches tall. His feet are about an inch shorter than his mother's feet. His mother is 30 years older than he is. I'll save you the graphs and trend charts, and just say, he's gonna be taller than his mother in about a minute and a half.
6. He loves Coldstone ice cream, especially mint with chocolate sprinkles, but hates frozen custard.
7. He likes to go on walks/jogs with his mom and or his dad, and when we're jogging up Chapel Hill, he chants "You can do it! I'm so proud of you! You can beat this hill!" And you know what? It helps a gal get up and over the hill, without too many rest breaks!

There's probably a joke in there about him helping me get "over the hill" but I'll leave it to the reader to craft it.

I'm sooooo sorry!

2009-05-17T21:24:00.003-05:00

For anyone who attended yesterday's worship service at Fairview Road Church of Christ in Columbia, MO, I would like to publicly say I'm so so very sorry for forcing Monte to lead "The Lord Bless You and Keep You" as the closing song. I take 100% of the blame. Totally my fault. Rookie mistake. You know it's bad when your friends look at you and say "Oh, wow. You didn't think this through, did you." Like, when they look at your 80s prom dress choice or your wedding hair.

Nope. I didn't. Thought it would be fine. Figured it would be cool. Like the day we went to Johnson Shut-ins with baby Mason, and I thought a regular diaper would act just like a swim diaper, for a short period of time.

It wont. It'll blow up to 10 times its regular size and then explode in a gelatinous crystallized mess. And all the way back to the car, in the woods, with no real recourse but to carry the bewildered gelatin covered baby, you think to yourself, "I'm going back, not to a real bathroom, but a tent and a campsite." (The baby, although 9 now, still acts as though his parents have no idea what they're doing. I suspect it started right there at Johnson Shut-ins.)

Upside though, I now know what a vocal train wreck that song is! Lesson learned--only three billion more just like it to go! (I'm a simpleton.)

Ahhhhhh-men.

P.S. This afternoon, to get the sound of that closing song out of my ears, I went to the new Star Trek movie. Ooooo, it was soooo good. I give it six stars out of five. Dang it, Chris Pine is cute. Holy cow! I don't get a sitter, like EVER, and I would leave my kids with a street corner hobo to see this sucker twice, and happily pay the eight bucks for the privilege. It. is. So. So. Good. Christmas dinner at grandma's good. Ethel M's chocolate good. Two hour massage good. Free luxury hotel accommodations good. IT'S GOOD! GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!

Just don't sing. They don't take kindly to that on Vulcan.