The Short Version

I think I am the President of the Procrastinator's Club.  Of course, I wouldn't know, because procrastinators would just put off having their meetings, wouldn't they?

Anyway, I've been gone WWWWAAAAAYYYYYY too long from my blog.  And so much has happened!  But I'm afraid if I try to do super detailed posts of everything, then I won't get around to doing any posting at all, because I'll just fall further behind.  So, I'm going to do the highlights, and you can fill in the details in your mind.  I trust you to make up awesome things.

So, without further ado...

Pete had his birthday.  He got a computer mouse, and then some drawings done by the kiddos.  It was very chill.

I started a chore chart for my kids. Jakob had been doing bathrooms with me for forever, and the other kids didn't have any chores.  I revamped it, and now we have a rotation of several chores.  My kids have been really great about doing chores-eager, even.

I have to supervise them, but for the most part they do pretty well.  A couple of weeks ago Troy was on dusting, and I didn't know that he was trying to do it by himself.  Needless to say, I had to scrape off oodles of dust stuff off of my dresser.  But he tried, and I guess that's what counts.

I also got a laundry basket for each of my kids, and now they fold their own clothes.  I have to help Ivy a lot, but they do well folding their own clothes.  I'm not quite ready to have them try and run the washing machine by themselves, but it's helped me a lot to divvy out their clothes for them.

Brock lost his two top teeth in the last little bit.  I love the toothless smile.

We spent mother's day with my parents.  It was really fun.  My mom is a spaz.  She's so cute!

My cute friend Sara got some free tickets to a show called "Handsome Little Devils", so she invited me and our other friend Anna to go. The actors do a lot of juggling tricks-that kind of thing.  It was really impressive. And I got pulled up on the stage!  The actor next to me had me hold some roses out in front of me, and he whipped the tops of them off while balancing on a ladder!  It was really cool.

We had an Easter egg hunt at my parents' house, in the 400 mile-an-hour wind.  Idaho "spring" is very, very windy.

Ivy had her third birthday.  For some reason, I always space on the candles for cakes.  Also for some reason, I had a brand new "1" candle, but that's it-no others.  Awesome.  So that's how we ended up with two matches as the other candles.

She got some clothes, and some hair things, a Tinkerbell doll, and the movie Bambie.

I was outside on a Saturday, and Troy ran out to be with me.  His hands were in his jacket.  He tripped, and fell flat on his face on the driveway.  I saw the whole thing and couldn't do anything to stop it.  So very sad.

A few days later, Troy graduated from preschool.  He loved preschool, but he is so ready to go to kindergarten in the fall.

And speaking of graduations, Brock graduated from kindergarten.  Their program was really cute, and I thought I would cry a lot, but I didn't.

(Okay, so here is where I tried to insert a video of Jakob's piano songs, but it wouldn't load.  Good job, blogger!  So, maybe someday I'll get it to load, but until then, just pretend that you can watch that video here.)

I had my piano recital.  I've been teaching Jakob this year as well.  He did an awesome job!  He was all, "My legs were shaking a lot!"  And I don't know why he decided to stand while playing, but whatever.  He did great, as did my other students.  I played as well, and did pretty good, but botched the end of my last song.  Oh well, though.  It's not the first time I've messed up a performance, nor will it be the last, I'm sure.

Also, I look like Beaker when I play the piano: my eyes are really wide, and my mouth turns down at the corners.  It's neat.

Right after school got out, I got sick, for a week!  It was way super awesome.  I love being sick.

We took a quick jaunt to Utah for Pete's mission reunion.  I was a little bored but I think Pete enjoyed seeing some of the people from his mission.  We hung out with family, and went to Thanksgiving point, to the dinosaur museum there.  I had no idea why Ivy is crying in the above picture.

They have a digging spot at the museum, where you can uncover "bones".  All my kids enjoyed that part.

All of my boys have individually told me that they want to either study or dig up dinosaur bones.

We ate at Benihana on the way back home.  The kids' menus folded up into hats.  Troy zonked out with his hat still on.

And, this last Sunday, Ivy decided to take some scissors to her own hair.  The pile of hair she chopped off is in her hands in this pic.

She did a very thorough job on both sides of her head.  It was very mullet-esque.  It's kind of hard to see in the pictures of it.  Needless to say, we needed to get it fixed up.  I figured a cute little pixie hair cut would work.  And, of course, all this happened before I got her 3-year-old picture taken.  Because I've been really on top of things lately.  (Pres. of the Procrastinator's Club, remember?)

Here it is, all fixed up.  Pete thinks it's kind of boy-ish, but I think if I keep a barrette in it then it will be feminine enough.

Well, that pretty much catches us up to speed.  Sorry it's not heavy on the details, but I just wanted to get 'er done, you know?  So that maybe, someday, I can step down as the President of the Procrastinator's Club.  You know, when I get around to it.

Bandits

It was not a good week for cakes in our house. This is what happened to Brock's cake (thankfully, the day after his birthday). The same culprits that got the last cake, Butch Cassidy (Ivy) and the Sundance Kid (Troy), were responsible for this cake's untimely end.


And why is Ivy Butch Cassidy, you may ask? Well, before/after/during the Great Cake Mash-up, the two partners in crime also got ahold of our hair clippers.



Um, and there's three of those bald spots on Ivy, and one on Troy. (See it? A few inches above her ear? Right where hair is supposed to be growing?) Troy insists that Ivy did it all herself. And yes, I believe him. If he's willing to just stand there while Ivy puts mascara all over him, then why wouldn't he just let her shave his head?

We're lucky enough to have bought some clippers that charge, so you don't have to plug them in. Convenient, huh? And they just happened to be in a drawer that Ivy never opens. Oh, and she also used the scissors to do a few choice chops, like right on top of her head.

Even though she's been our only child to style her own hair with cutting equipment, I'm glad she didn't, like, shave her eyeball or something. And I've been able to do an old man comb-over to cover the spots enough. And eventually it will grow in, and because I've learned my lesson the clippers are oh-so very high, on an unclimbable shelf. So we're safe from any other hair mishaps. I hope.

I cringe to think of the day that Ivy can open doors, though. Not that her fellow outlaw wouldn't help her out with that. Grr.

Decisions, Decisions

I didn't know which blessed event I wanted to post under "most recent mess":

The mangled cake?


The permanent marker on the back door? (Which I did remove with rubbing alcohol. Oh, it took off the marker, but it also took off some paint as well. Neat.)


Or maybe the broken Spider-man 3 DVD?


Yep. I just could not decide.

Mask of Mascara

Troy came downstairs on Tuesday. "Um, Mom? Um, Ivy, um..."

WHAT was all over his face? I quickly figured it out.

My mascara.

I asked, "Troy, why did you get into my makeup?"
Troy's reply: "But, it wasn't me, it was Ivy!"

This is what I found:

(Forgive my lousy picture; I didn't realize that there was a fingerprint on my lens. Though I should know better by now-there's always a fingerprint on my lens.)

Ivy would make a good warrior. She's even the one that decorated Troy. Oh, and my toilet lid.

And I immediately went out and bought new mascara. Because eewww.

Thoughts

Jakob's jaw is getting bigger, I think, because he's starting to get a gap on the side between his teeth. It probably doesn't help that his front tooth is loose, either. It's kind of Hillbilly-ish.

I took the last of the medicine for my rash on Saturday. This medicine has steroids in it. And seriously? How can anyone in their right mind want to do to their body voluntarily what has just happened to mine? I have the fishbowl head feeling, where I'm just standing there and then all of a sudden I feel like I'm tipping over backwards, yet I know that my body isn't actually moving. I absolutely crash during the day because I'm so tired, but at night when it's time for bed I lie there awake. And then when I do sleep, it's crazy dreams and tossing and turning. And then I'm all shaky, like too much caffeine or something. I don't get why any of that would be ideal, just to get bigger muscles or whatever. Yeah, I'm really hoping all of the side effects go away in the next little bit.

We took the training wheel off Jake's bike. I say wheel, singular, because the other had fallen off before. And I say Jake's bike, even though it was Brock's bike for his birthday. My kids are kind of...transient when it comes to what belongs to whom. After we took the other wheel off, Jakob started yelling and pedalling as fast as he could up and down the street. "Yeah! This is awesome! Woo-hoo!" a la Leonardo DiCaprio on Titanic ("I'm king of the world!")

I'm trying a new motto: cease to be idle. It's kind of working.

I can't decide which animal Brock is most like. He's like a squirrel, where he hoards away toys in his bed. He's a night owl, for sure.

I've also come to face the reality of laundry every day. Back in the good ol' days of two kids, I could put it off and just do once a week. Now if I wait just once a week, my kids run out of clothes and the pile is almost as tall as I am. This week I realized that I have to do at least a load a day. *sigh* I wonder when a good age is to have your kids start the machines etc. by themselves...

I can't find Ivy's toothbrush. It's probably in our massive mess of toys. Not that I can really perform the actual act of brushing with her. Eating toothpaste is kind of like brushing with toothpaste, right?

We buzzed the boys' hair the other night. Troy looks bald because his hair is getting lighter and his skin is getting darker.

Memo, our killer cat, has brought us many treats in the last couple of days, including two birds. I'm very impressed with her hunting skills. My gag reflex while scooping up said dead birds is very impressed as well.

I love to eat out. If I could, I would eat out once a day. But I would make sure it could get delivered to me. More restaurants should have delivery.

I hope that cat food is an appropriate snack food for little mischievous girls.

I wish that brownies would magically make themselves, like a neverending supply. But they would also change themselves to be different kinds of brownies. Maybe I've been reading too much Harry Potter...nah.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

First of all, I just have to say that I love the phrase "Constant Vigilance!" Mad-Eye Moody says it in the Harry Potter books, when he's showing them the Unforgivable Curses. If only he had had a megaphone to say it with. It reminds me of that movie, "The Bachelor", with Chris O'Donnell in it, where his grandpa carried a megaphone around and would say stuff in it.

*krrk* PROCREATE! *krrk*

So, yeah. This week has been a little hard. On Tuesday everyone was grumpy, but not all at once. So one child would be happy, then the next would be crying or what have you. And then there are the messes. *sigh*

I don't know how many times I've seen Ivy sport the Goth look:

I know Jakob keeps his markers picked up. But somehow she finds one, and kablam! Marker mouth. Tuesday after her nap I got her out of the crib, and she had spit up on her blanket and sheet. The reason: she had been munching on pencil shavings.

Last night I was made aware of this little ditty:

It's a Darth Vader laptop, but notice anything missing? Um, yeah, ALL the keys got pulled off. I don't know who, or when, but suddenly they were flying through the air. I had to put them all back on. (By the way, do you know how hard it is to figure out where the keys go without looking at a keyboard? I wonder who came up with the keyboard, and why they didn't just do it alphabetically.)

Then there was this lovely thing. Now, it's not like I'm off, like, primping for the prom or something when all this happens. This one I was downstairs paying some bills:

Apparently Troy wanted to make something. And he must have wanted it REALLY garlic-y, because the entire bottle of minced garlic was poured everywhere. He had also gotten the hand mixer out, complete with the beaters. Oh, and the day before, he had put an Etch-a-Sketch and a paper in the microwave. Thank heavens he didn't turn it on!

Troy also did this one:

My children are so presumptuous. This was Wednesday, when Troy got out the sherbet and started eating it. Hey, he was willing to share-he also got out three bowls and three spoons, most likely for his brothers and himself, though straight out of the carton was good enough for him. (I'm getting awful flash-forwards of my kids in college.)

Oh, and on Tuesday Jakob took a picture over to Ila that he drew, and Brock went with him, and they completely made themselves at home at Arin's house. I was down doing laundry and heard the door open and shut, but just assumed they went out to play. Presumptuous children.

So apparently, I need to learn a lesson in "CONSTANT VIGILANCE", because my doing crazy things like the bills or the laundry only gets me in trouble. I guess I should be staring them down, watching their every move. Or maybe I should install hidden cameras everywhere that feed to a device that I keep with me at all times. Oooh, then I could also install a megaphone system, too.

*krrk* I HAVE CONSTANT VIGILANCE! PUT THE SCISSORS DOWN NOW! *krrk*

Broken

I love my boys. Really, I do. Which is probably why they're still alive right now.

Just kidding. Well, not about the love thing....

Okay, let me start over. Lately we've had a lot of things break. Some of it has been the kids' fault, some of it is just the nature of "stuff". But it always seems to happen all at once. I already mentioned our car's woes. But now our other car has joined in, with an almost flat tire, a broken seat belt, and the glove compartment refuses to shut. Fixed the tire, but the other stuff not so much.

My boys have discovered a new hang-out: under the kitchen sink. And they've taken the phrase "hang-out" literally, and probably hung on the sponge-holder thing, which now refuses to close all the way.


Here's my sad Charlie Brown Christmas tree. See the ribbons clumped? And the anti-ornamented spot at the bottom? That's why the tree came down the day after Christmas, my friends.


Plus, I didn't want any more ornaments to meet the same demise as these two did:

The snowflake on the left my mom attempted to tape back together. The star on the right was one of my favorites, and Memo chewed the arms off. (Although I think I liked it more when I thought it was wood; I then discovered it was styrofoam. But still.)

Our doorknob on the back door broke, so we were sporting this fine, white trash, duct tape look for a while. The front door deadbolt broke the day after. Luckily I'm somewhat of a handywoman (cough! hack! -sorry, give me a minute to collect myself after the laughing hysterics stop), and they've both been fixed. (In my case, "fixed".)


We can't even keep cookies unbroken around here.


Other stuff in the broken category: a picture frame for Pete's diploma, the door on our entertainment center, Pete's headset to the computer, crayons-always, a few of the kids' books that I put on the bookshelf (silly me, thinking books belonged on a bookshelf), a couple of drill bits from my attempt at hanging a shelf in our garage (handy, remember?), half of our toys because it's apparently the cool thing to hit toys with other toys...the list goes on and on.

But...things not broken: three little boys' chicken necks. Yet. (Just kidding. Kind of.)

New Christmas Tree Ornament

I had heard cats liked climbing Christmas trees. She also likes batting at the ornaments, and pulling on the ribbon hanging from our tree.

Between her and the boys, our once put-together, eclectic ornamented, red-and-gold themed Christmas tree is a saggy, limped ribboned, ornaments-all-rehung-on-the-bottom-and-front-two-branches Christmas tree. Kind of Charlie Brown Christmas tree style. *sigh*

For Future Reference...

Two-year-olds and scissors and curtains are not a good combination, because this is the result:


When you tell your husband to get a shirt for your son, make sure before taking off the tags that the shirt is a boy's shirt: (See the gathering on the sleeves? Don't ask me why Pete didn't notice it when he bought it, or why I didn't notice it until he had had it on for most of the day.)


(Of course, shirts can be optional in our house, especially when the couch is a "swimming pool") :


And maybe the key to this many smiles in one picture is to keep the kids up late and feed them lots of candy. I'll have to remember that for our picture appointment this coming weekend.

Ultra Tan Man

Getting into mischief can make one so sleepy.



Are you trying to figure out what's on his clothes and hands?



And what got spread all over my bathroom?



Why, it's sunless tanner, of course! My sister got some in a package of sorts, and she gave it to me. And Troy found it and decided his toy bear was looking a little pale.



In case you're wondering, baby wipes work wonders.

I'm thinking of investing in a leash or chain of sorts for him. Just a 10-foot long rope that keeps him in my range at all times. Honestly, I don't ever know whether to laugh, or cry, or be angry. Usually I just end up in shock. Then I take a picture of it, and blog about it so you can thank your lucky stars you aren't cleaning up the messes that I am on an almost daily basis. You're welcome. (Also, when he grows up and has a kid that gets into everything, I can pull out the evidence and say, "Serves you right!")

College Memories (Or, Don't Know How I Passed Half My Classes Because I Was Playing Too Much)

My cute cute sister just transferred to a different school. She's a junior now, and by the sound of it, having a blast while there. She tagged me for telling of times we did crazy things in college. Seriously, where do I begin?

My freshman roommate and I were up "studying" for a test we both had the next day. And we both drank super caffeine drinks at, like, 10 at night. "Hyper" doesn't really cover it. I folded myself in half, tucking my legs under my head. Then I stuck my hands together. My roommate carried me around by my arms like a basket at 2 in the morning and showed everyone on the floor. Some people didn't think it was as funny as we thought it was.

Highlighting boys' hair, dressing them up in our clothes...

Of course snow fights and water fights and food fights and pen fights...

One night some guys we were hanging out with decided to act like Veloca Raptors the entire night. We went to Taco Bell. They snapped their teeth at the ladies taking their orders, and did the short arm thing. It was hilarious. Of course, there were about 8 of us, all packed into a 2-door car.

We wanted to make brownies, but accidentally dumped the mix onto the floor a little. We were making them for boys, anyway, so we added extra "ingredients"-lint, egg shells, dirt, whatever we could find.

The same brownie night, we acted like we were on a scavenger hunt through the guys' cooking dorms for brownie stuff. We just wanted to meet the guys.

We stole couch cushions and chairs from our guy friends' apartment. At 2 a.m.

Jenga or Twister with Consequences. Whoever lost had to go through the Spanking Machine-crawling under everyone's legs in a line while they spank the loser's butt.

Writing our names with our butts in the air. Also a 2 a.m. activity. (I think we rarely went to bed before 2 a.m.)

One night some guys came in with ski masks and totally kidnapped me. Drove me around blindfolded and dumped me off at some chick's house that I didn't even know. Weird.

We cooked s'mores over the stovetop. It doesn't really work.

One day we snuck into our friends' apartment and waited for them to get home so we could jump out and scare them. Totally didn't work-they were boys.

There was endless bowling and ice cream and dancing on the tables at a school dance. We hiked and campfired in the canyon. We decorated rooms and t.p.'d and spied on the neighbors across the parking lot with our lights off.

One week we didn't feel like cooking, so we convinced different apartments of guys to cook for us. It totally lasted all week. We had some serious flirting skills. Or begging skills.

One night we snuck into Old Main and went up into the very top of the tower that was restricted.

So, there ya go. A peek into the funnest four years ever! I hereby tag Pete and Kristine. They were both there for part of the party I like to call my "college education". Worth every penny, Dad!

Every Second, Part 2

Troy has such a sweet, innocent face. You'd think just looking at him that he would be a perfect little angel, only playing with the things he's supposed to.

But, I'm his mom. So I know differently. I'm glad that he used the permanent marker on the inside of the cabinet door only, and the wash off marker on the outside.


And here's a video of our Houdini, performing his newest stunt of climbing out of the crib. We'll be investing in a big boy bed sometime this week.

Every. Second.

Hole in brownies:

The hole-maker:

A Spiderman Post, of Course!

Just when you think you can't get anything else Spiderman...

Jakob got a Spiderman bike! His other bike was WAY too small. He's still working on pedaling well, and if we'd have consistently nice weather then maybe he'd get better at it! But soon enough it will be nice all the time, and then I'll be able to ride my bike, too!

And apparently, Jakob thought our garbage can needed a little extra something. That's a Spiderman, with his name (kind of) underneath. One day when he's a famous artist, everyone will know who did it!