Snippets

*A few days ago Brielle said that someone should invent liquid bacon, so you can drink it and pour it on stuff.

*Aaron discovered that if he hooks the water balloon attachment for the hose onto the pump for the air mattress, he can make a really annoying noise for a really long time........

*As we were leaving the very crowded, very hot parade on the 4th of July, I overheard a lady talking to her kids, she said "We all make mistakes in life, and coming here is one of them!"

*Aaron was making a project using plumber's putty (don't ask) and Max asked him what it was. Aaron explained how it was used and Max says "Oh, so it's like toilet glue!"

*I recently checked the stat counter on my blog and was excited to find that the number of people coming here has tripled!
At first I just assumed that I was becoming more popular, but after further examination I learned that an freakishly large amount of people do online searches for photos of a spleen.

*Speaking of spleens, my spleen has been feeling much better (thank you for asking) and for the last week I will randomly walk past one of my kids, yell "SPLEEN CHECK" and poke them in the ribs.
Great fun!

*A few days ago Max lost one of his top front teeth, he now looks even more adorable and talks with a whistle. He said that it's difficult to say the words ttthhhhh, ssssss and ffffffff.

*Why is it that when children have recently lost a tooth and you try to get a picture of their cute new smile, they always stick their tongue through the gap where the tooth used to be?

*Max has spent the last few years of his life building things with his large duplo bloks. Recently, he has discovered Lego blocks, so we can no longer walk around the house barefoot.

*My teenage son needs to get a job (do you have any idea how much it costs to buy car insurance for a 16 year old boy?) unfortunately, he has a very busy schedule with band this summer and doesn't really have time for a job. Any ideas where he can apply for work?

*Aaron just got a remote control helicopter which is at this very moment, hovering dangerously close to my head.

*We love Netflix because we can watch entire seasons of television shows, back to back without commercial interruptions. My boys have recently discovered the Dr. Who series and have watched the first four seasons already.
Yesterday Max told me that for Halloween he wants to dress up as the TARDIS.

*Max is a very good reader and has recently started reading chapter books on his own. He is now standing next to the computer, reading as I type and "correcting" everything he doesn't agree with.
Seriously, more annoying than autocorrect.

The ex-spleen-ation for my pain....

Several days ago I woke up with a terrible pain in my left side, just below my ribs. It wasn't a constant pain, but would hurt whenever I moved.  At first I assumed that it was because he day before, I had fallen asleep on our couch while watching TV, and I may have pulled or twisted a muscle or something.
I wasn't completely sure of this, (and may have been a bit bored) so I decided that what I needed to do was to consult Dr. Google (AKA The Hypochondriacs best friend) to discover the real source of my pain.

I did a Google search for "pain under the left ribcage" and came up with 4 different things that could be wrong with me. (I made sure to do this while my children were all in the room, you know, just to make sure that there would be someone around to feel sorry for me)

#1. A collapsed lung

#2. A broken rib

#3. An enlarged or ruptured spleen

#4. A pulled muscle

Before I read these possible diagnosises (is that the correct plural form of the word? Spell check doesn't like it. Should it be diagnosi? Diagnosen?.....) out loud to the children, I made sure to see what the treatments would be for each ailment.

The top three all required, or at least suggested bed rest, so those were the ones I went with.

I told the kids about the pain in my side and that there was a possibility that I had either collapsed a lung, broken a rib, or had a ruptured spleen, and would need to take it easy for a while. I also may have mentioned that they would have to wait on me, bring me ice cream and let me control the TV remote.

They all looked at me blankly (there may have even been some eye rolling involved) and pushed me away from the computer to read the news from Dr. Google themselves.

I should have read further, because apparently, if you have a collapsed lung, it would probably make breathing difficult, and if I had a broken rib, I would be in much more pain that I appeared to be in.

Therefore, I decided that it must be my spleen.

Some of the children didn't know what a spleen was, or where it is located.
Being the very helpful kind of mother that I am, I went ahead and showed each of them where their spleen is.

It seems that my children's spleens are very ticklish, because they laughed a lot, squirmed, and tried to get away from me when I poked them under their ribs, causing me to twist around and make my spleen hurt even more.

These offspring of mine didn't really seem all that concerned about my painful spleen, and they laughed at my discomfort.
One of them even suggested that I had probably just pulled a muscle or something.

The nerve!

So later that night, after they all went to bed, I found a picture of a spleen online, and emailed it to each one of them.

As it turned out, a few days later it stopped hurting, and was probably just a pulled muscle.

The happiest place on earth?

Last week we returned from our family vacation to the Magic Kingdom. The last time we went there, Max was only 2, and doesn't remember anything (except refusing to ride Dumbo after standing in line for 45 minutes)
This time, Max turned out to be quite the little daredevil, he wanted to ride all of the rides. His favorite ride turned out to be Space mountain, however, he still wanted me to ride with him so I could hold his hand.
He really didn't like any of the rides where he got wet. Splash Mountain is my all time favorite ride, and I really wanted a photo of the look on Max's face so we sat him in the very front. I completely forgot how wet the front seat passenger would get.
Max was not amused.
And as for those stupid ride photos, why do they all make me look 40 lbs heavier than I think I am?
Stupid cameras.

The best quote of the day came from Max, after a mix up on the seating for Space Mountain. He wanted to sit in the front seat with his dad, but at the last second, he got confused, switched seats with his sister and ended up sitting in the second row. To say that the kid was furious would be an understatement. We argued with him for a while, trying to make him understand that HE was the one that switched seats (he got turned around and misunderstood where everyone would be sitting) but he kept blaming everyone else for him not being able to sit in front. Finally he looks at all of us, throws up his hands and says "EVERYONE SAYS THIS IS THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH, BUT IT REALLY ISN'T!!!"

While we were passing one of the shops in Adventureland, we saw a huge pile of pillow pets, Minnie mouse, Stitch, Goofy, Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh and Max's favorite Perry the Platypus.

Max had brought his birthday money and he had just enough to buy the Perry the Platypus Pillow Pet. (I dare you to say that ten times really fast) (No, seriously, go ahead, I'll wait.........)

We convinced him that we should come back at the end of the day so we didn't have to carry Perry around with us all day.
That evening, after watching "The World of Color" in California Adventure (really awesome show! I highly recommend seeing it. I spent the whole time trying to figure out how they did that) we made our way back to Disneyland to purchase Perry, and Brielle wanted to buy a Minnie Mouse pillow pet for herself.
We stopped at the Emporium near the entrance and got Minnie, but they didn't have any Perry's. In fact, the guy working there said he didn't think they even made them.
We made a mad dash back to the shop in Adventureland. We saw a kid walking around the store holding a Perry the Platypus pillow pet. I couldn't see any more so I asked the clerk. Apparently the other kid had bought the last one.
I asked the clerk if she knew of anywhere else they might have one. I even picked up Max and told the lady to look at his sad face.
She made a few phone calls, and there were none to be found.

Max was very sad that night, Brielle had Minnie, but there was no Perry for Max.

Riding back to the hotel on the shuttle, Max fell asleep. Max did not wake up to walk into the hotel. I guided the sleepwalking Max into the hotel while CJ video taped him stumbling around. The hotel staff got quite a kick out of him as he tried to lay down on the floor while we were waiting for the elevator, then he tried to lay down on the elevator floor, then the floor in front of our room door.
When we got inside our room, he finally ended up landing with his top half on the bed, and his feet still on the floor. He slept this way for about a half hour until we took pity on him and put him in his pajamas.

The next day we went to the beach. At first the kids weren't too excited, but when it was time to leave, we couldn't get them out of there. Aaron LOVES the water. I think if we lived there, he would become a surfer. While we were there, Max needed to use the restroom, so we had CJ take him to the restrooms back by the parking lot. They had been gone quite a while, and I was starting to get worried, so I called CJ on his cell phone. I got no answer. A few minutes later I tried again, still no answer. Finally, my husband went looking for them, soon they showed up, CJ had miscalculated and went the wrong direction.
He had also left his cell phone in the car.

That night we attended an Anaheim Angels baseball game. Our hotel was close enough that we just walked to the stadium. As we walked in the gates, we all got a Hula Dancer doll. Aaron immediately turned around and asked me if he could sell his on eBay. My first thought was that we now had a bunch more crap to stuff in the car on our way home.

The next day we went back to Disneyland. We got up super duper early and made it there in time for the special early entrance. We went straight to Space Mountain and Max got to ride in the front :)
As we were passing one of the shops in Tomorrowland, I looked in and saw three Perry the Platypus Pillow Pets on the shelf! Max grabbed one and we bought it immediately. I learned that the store would hold Perry for us until it was time for us to leave.

Win, win!

We spent the rest of the day riding as many rides as we could before it got too crowded. At one point we split up, I took the older boys on Splash Mountain, and Brielle took Max on Thunder Mountain Railroad, while hubby hung out on a bench, waiting for all of us.
We got back to the bench, but Brielle and Max were nowhere to be seen. We waited for quite a while, then I went looking for them. (sound familiar) Due to a miscommunication, they went to the wrong bench and got lost.
Brielle felt really bad, and CJ tried to console her by saying how much worst it was when he and Max were lost. They argued for several minutes about which one had the worst experience getting lost, when Max looks at both of them and says "HEY! I got lost TWICE!!"


By about 7:00 that night, we decided we were all Disneyed out and decided it was time to leave. We went and picked up Max's Perry, bought a bunch of suckers for souvenirs and took the shuttle back to the hotel.
We still hadn't eaten dinner, so we found the nearest Spaghetti Factory and went there. It was after 9:00 when we got there so we were all tired and hungry. About halfway through his mad-n-cheese, Max snuggled up against me and fell asleep.
We now have video of him sleepwalking out of the restaurant, and back into the hotel.

The front desk staff were quite entertained.

Our last day in California, we went to Pasadena because CJ wanted to visit Caltech. I can't believe that our kid is old enough for us to start visiting Colleges.

That afternoon we went to the beach again. Again, Aaron spent his time diving into the waves. We had to keep telling him not to swim too far out because he was making me nervous.
I told Max he should really go put his feet in the water. A few minutes later, he came back soaking wet, with sand covering the entire front of his body. Apparently, a wave hit him, and knocked him over.
Max shook the sand off of his arms and said "I WOULD LIKE THE BEACH MUCH BETTER IF THERE WASN'T ANY WATER!"

Poor Max.

We did have a great vacation. We also got to visit my husband's family who lives in the area. The kids got to pick lemons from the trees in their back yard (they have lemon trees in their back yard!!)
and make fresh strawberry lemonade! The family all commented on how tall all of the kids are, and on how much Max looks like his grandpa :)

The zombie birthday party in review

We finally had Max's zombie birthday party last Saturday.

Due to some scheduling conflicts and the fact that Max kept forgetting to hand out the invitations at school, the party ended up being three weeks after his birthday.
We even tried to work a deal with the kid where we offered him a brand new bike instead of a party, but he had his heart set on the party, and we promised him a party.........

Up until the day before, we were trying to convince him to go with a different theme, seriously, the dollar store was full of really cool pirate stuff, but no dice, Max's obsession with the game "Plants vs zombies" won out.
The night before the party, I stayed up ridiculously late to make a zombie pinata (I didn't even attempt to buy one. I did a google search to see if I could find one as an example, but the only one I could find was too scary for me, let alone a group of seven year olds)

A bunch of newspaper, tape, crepe paper and a few hours later I came up with my version of a zombie pinata.

And before you ask, yes, I did mean to make it's eyes uneven.

During the time I had been taping this creation together, I was baking two dozen red velvet cupcakes. Max originally wanted brain cupcakes, but after finding some disgusting zombie looking teeth at the dollar store, I came up with the idea for the zombie cupcakes also. I will say that the teeth were a big hit with the kids.

Fortunately, they tasted much better than they looked.

Saturday morning, I was quite concerned, because Max had handed out 12 invitations, and I hadn't received a single RSVP.
We had made up 12 goodie bags full of dollar store plastic toys, and I really wanted to get rid of all of them.
We ended up having a total of 4 boys show up. Max said that the day before, all of the boys were asking where the party was going to be. I kind of wonder if some of them didn't come because we weren't going to a cool bouncy house or something. Max said a lot of the boys play soccer, so we're just going to assume that the other 8 boys were at soccer games.

We had several games planned for the party.

Game #1- Brielle had used sidewalk chalk to draw a large game board on our driveway. We called this game "Zombopoly"
Some of the squares said things like "You lost your head, go back two squares to find it" "Do a zombie dance and move ahead one square" and "You found a head, but it isn't your own, go back one square"
Aaron made a large dice (die? dice?) that the kids rolled to determine how many spaces to move.
I got this idea from a website with kids party games. It said that the kids LOVED to play this game. Actually, they were pretty lukewarm about it.
We did have some zombie glasses for them to wear while playing the game. I really wanted to get those glasses that have the eyeballs on springs, but we couldn't find them anywhere, so we went with some stupid plastic glasses with cardboard inserts that made them look like they had crazy eyes.  I guess I shouldn't complain, they were 6 for a dollar at the dollar store.

We had also planned to play some other games, we had a relay race planned, a version of musical chairs, using the music from Plants vs Zombies, and a game called "Wake the zombie" One child lays on the ground, very still, and the others take turns saying things to try and make them laugh. Once the "Zombie" laughs then their turn is over, and the kid that makes them laugh gets to be the zombie.
Unfortunately, the boys were more interested in jumping on the trampoline than they were in playing the games.
The boys found our stash of pool noodles. These had been cut in half to make "snords" they created a new game on the trampoline which was basically jumping while whacking each other with the snords.

We managed to get them off of the trampoline long enough to eat some pizza. One kid didn't like pepperoni, so I peeled it off for him, then he said the pizza looked weird and he wouldn't eat it. Another kid already ate lunch and wasn't hungry.
We had a lot of pizza left over.
We had pizza for dinner Saturday night and breakfast on Sunday.

We got some special relighting candles for Max. He hadn't ever seen these before, and he thought they were pretty funny.
I love his giggles :)

Max opened his presents and got several Lego sets. This is great, because he loves builing things!

Next, we broke the pinata. Unfortuantely, the plastic broom handle broke before the pinata, so they used the shorter pieces of the broom handle until they broke, then they just started stabbing it with the small sharp pieces of the broom handle.
Let me just point out now that Smarties are not the best candy to put in a pinata. When beaten and stabbed, the packages break and you end up with a lawn full of Smartie dust and plastic wrappers.

We finally just dumped all of the candy out and the boys piled on top of each other to get at it. All except for Max, he ended up with one tootsie roll. Poor Max.
One kid, Connor ended up stuffing his goodie bag so full of pinata candy that it broke. All of the boys put their candy on the table and went back to jumping on the trampoline.

Within a few minutes, there was a new hole in the net of the trampoline, it is a hole large enough to drive a car through. Aaron said that Connor was the one that did it.
While Connor wasn't looking, I had Aaron go and take about half of the pinata candy out of his bag and put it in a bag for Max.

Without the net on the trampoline, we didn't feel it was safe for them to be on it, so we needed a new activity. Aaron brought out the water balloons that he had spent the morning filling. Aaron was very protective of the water balloons, because he discovered just how much work it was to fill them. He split the kids up in teams, gave them each one water balloon and a snord then told them to fight each other. It didn't take long for all of their balloons to be broken and so then they started beating Aaron with the snords.
After a few minutes of this, he just gave up and let them go crazy at each other with the bucket of water balloons.
Soon after, the parents started showing up to get their kids. I gave each one a goodie bag full of plastic junk and sent them home:)
Then I sat on my porch swing, looked at all of the mess in the back yard, put on a pair of Zombie glasses, closed my eyes and took a nap.
I now have less than a year to convince Max that a new bike would be way better than a party.

Birthday Max, the zombie boy

Next week, Max is turning seven.

YES! I KNOW! MY BABY WILL BE SEVEN YEARS OLD!!

Yesterday we were discussing what he would like to do for his birthday party. I suggested a pirate themed party. Max was slightly interested at first, but then he got what he thought was a much better idea.........

Max wants to have a Zombie Apocalypse Birthday party!

He has a few great ideas for the party, starting with cupcakes frosted to look like brains.

I, however, have a few concerns, like how are the parents of his friends going to react when they get the invitation?

Will the seven year old children be frightened at the idea of a Zombie Birthday party?

Is there a way to portray the zombies as being "friendly" Zombies so the children won't be frightened?

Are there such things as friendly zombies?

Will all of that Zombie blood stain my carpets?

It would be so much easier if he would go with my idea of a Pirate birthday party. I can get a bunch of eye patches pretty cheap.

In other news, the pick up zone at the kids school is outrageously crowded, so much so, that many parents have been parking on the road near the school to pick up their children rather than waiting in line.

The problem with this is that the neighbors have been complaining. (rightfully so, some of these parents don't pick up their kids until 30-40 minutes after school lets out, allowing their little darlings plenty of unsupervised time to run freely through the yards, climbing trees and fences, throwing rocks, trampling flowers, having pine cone fights.....) (some of the parents even park in the neighbor's driveways to wait for their kids, needless to say, the neighbors have reason to be upset)

Last week I noticed that the lines on the road by the school had been repainted to be closer to the sidewalk, and no parking signs had been put up, making it quite clear that there should be no parking on that part of the street.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from the school informing everyone that new stripping had been put put on the road, and the parents are no longer allowed to park there due to the new stripping, and the police department will be enforcing the rule of no parking in the area, and anyone parking in the area of the new stripping will receive a ticket.

My kids walk home, and being the rebel that I am, I have informed them that they are required to keep all of their clothes on while walking on that street.

Creeper or genius?

In school, Aaron sits next to a boy who constantly harasses him. He writes on his arms with ball point pens, he steals his pencil and throws it out into the hall, he steals his ruler and hits him with it......

You get the picture.

Aaron is a pretty big kid, one of the tallest in the sixth grade. This boy (we'll call him "Bubba") Is actually taller than Aaron, however, Aaron is quite strong and manages to knock the kid over and wrestle his pencil/ruler/textbook away from him.

I used to worry that the teacher wouldn't see Bubba stealing Aaron's stuff and only notice when Aaron is sitting on top of Bubba, recovering his belongings, and think that Aaron is the instigator, but Aaron said the teacher doesn't care.

Either the teacher doesn't care or he realizes that both boys are taller than him and there is a serious chance he could get hurt if he got involved.

A few days ago Bubba started a new activity. Suddenly he wasn't content just to steal pencils and rulers, he now felt the need to take Aaron's homework and other assignments.

Aaron decided that physical confrontation wasn't going to work any more, so he decided to take another approach.

Aaron found out Bubba's dad's name, which ironically was Bubba Sr. and looked up their address on White pages .com.

Next he went to Google maps, found where Bubba lives and using the street view, he printed out a photo of their house.

The next day at school, Aaron sat the folded piece of paper on the edge of his desk. It took a while, but eventually Bubba took the bait, and grabbed the paper.

Aaron said when he unfolded the paper and saw his own house he freaked out a bit.

"Hey! That's my house! What are you doing with a picture of my house?........You stalked me! You're such a creeper!"

He had assumed that Aaron had actually come to his house and taken a picture. (Aaron let him believe this)

Aaron grinned at him then gave him his slightly deranged, zombie eyed look and said "I'm watching you!"

Bubba has left him alone for the last few days.

Excuse me while I go purchase some additional home owner's insurance

Aaron's favorite television show is Mythbusters.

He loves to watch how they scientifically try to prove or confirm whether or not a myth is truth, however, I think his favorite part is watching how they blow up stuff if it doesn't blow up in the first place.

He once told me that this was a good show for him to watch because he can let someone else experiment, and he can still see whether or not something works (and he won't have to try to blow it up himself)

I do like how they begin every show saying "Don't try this at home" (However, Aaron has changed that phrase to "Don't try this at home, go to a friends house.")

It never really occurred to me to be worried about his fascination with this show until one day when he came up to me and said "Hey mom, can you get me some liquid nitrogen?"

Say what?

Liquid nitrogen?

My response, naturally was "NO!"

Then a few days later, he asked me if I could get him some lithium. And an incinerator.

(again NO!)

Last week we were trying to clean a spill off of the stove. I'm not sure what it was, but it was burnt on pretty good. Aaron said "Hey! I know what would clean that stuff off of the stove!"

"OK, what?' I asked.

"Sulfuric acid! Of course I would have to wear a bio hazard suit and there probably wouldn't be much of the stove left when I'm finished, but it would definitely get rid of that burnt stuff!"

No Aaron, I will not get you any sulfuric acid.

Then yesterday he came up to me really excited and asked if I knew of any way he could earn forty dollars.

"Forty dollars is a lot of money" I told him "Why do you need forty dollars?"

"Well, I found something really cool on Amazon and I want to buy it!"

He's really into electronics, and it's not unusual for him to find some sort of cable or memory stick or other computer accessory that he wants, so I just assumed that it would be something like that, so I was very surprised when he told me what he wants to buy on Amazon for forty dollars.

Are you ready for this?

Uranium ore.

That's right, believe it or not, you can purchase a chunk of uranium ore on Amazon for $40.00

Naturally, I told him "NO!" to which he replied..............

"But it's radioactive AND explosive!!"