Catching Up

Well I suppose I should be writing more blogs lately but things have gotten a bit more crazy around here. With all the calls to Texas regarding the kids I'm trying to adopt. I find this very hard to deal with since I seem to lack patience. I want call backs right now, I want answers right now, I really don't like being jerked around, but here I am.

So on the home front here, the kids are getting restless as there are only about 2.5 weeks of school left. However there wont really be much of a break since Princess goes to college for two weeks, and Jokester goes to Reading and Writing summer camp. My running around will actually get a bit worse as I have to bring Princess to her classes and pick her up. 

Superman is in a opposites mood, I guess I can't really call it that because it's not really opposites. He just makes things up for what he wants them to be. The other day he said he hated someone, and I told him that it isn't nice to say that about someone. He tells me, " oh when I say that I really mean that I like them a lot." Here's another one, " when I say stop it means I like BG." I'm not sure where he is getting this from, but at first it was kinda cute, but now he seems to think he can apply it in all situations and make his own reality, and it's becoming irritating now. 

Henry did something the other day that just blew my mind...he came upstairs with the boys and I when it was time for bed. He walked around, turned and looked at me and popped a squat and peed. The little bastard peed in my house! He hasn't done that since he was 2 months old!
Then to make matters worse, DH notices a wet spot on the floor and finds out it was BG. The only dog who was behaving himself was Smokey and he's usually the one peeing all over. My house is revolting against me or something. Ha! They have a lesson to learn, and that is...I shall not let them win! It is war! Bring on the water balloons household get your squirt guns cuz here we go!

No seriously we probably will have ourselves a water war here soon, but in the mean time...the things that stray from the norm of our family life with continue to shock me, make me just stop and bust out laughing, make me cry, or just plain stump me. I wouldn't trade it for the world either.
Well maybe the dog pee would be a good thing to go, but you get my drift. This is who we are, we learn new things each day, face new trials, and over come hurdles, but through it all we are still here and not somewhere else. 

Speaking of trying days...tomorrow the entire street can not use their drains. Why? They are repairing the sewer line and plugging everyone's drains to the sewer. Use the drains and there just might be sewer backing up into the house. That would not be fun, nor would I be happy, and it would be about the same time as the lady from CPS in Texas called me.

Wish me luck getting through 12 hours of that, thankfully most of the family will be at school/work for the duration. Now I just have to figure out where to do my business all day. Yes, yes I went there. Everyone has to do it, there is no denying it.

I lost Track of Time

Well sometimes things just get away from us. My Princess went out last weekend and found the perfect prom dress with all the accessories. I wonder where the time flew? It seems like just yesterday she was in first grade.  How did she get to seventeen without me knowing? 


My Jokester is going into 2nd grade next year. With him too, it seems like he was just in his walker sneaking french fries from our customers, and not a seven year old boy who is obsessed with healthy eating. 


Then there's my little Superman. DH, wasn't it just awhile ago, that Superman had the emergency surgery when he was 2 months old? He's going to be five this year, and tells me he knows everything.


How time flies. Quite frankly time doesn't even care if your having a good time or a bad time. Time just keeps marching on doing it's thing. Looking back it seems as if the last seventeen years hit warp speed, and holy crap I wasn't supposed to get older this fast either. The last age I remember being was twenty-seven, and cool, and full of energy, and skinnier. A lot skinnier, and not sleep deprived, and I was fun, and skinnier. 


Ok, enough with the skinnier stuff. While it's true that I was skinnier than I am now, that was then and this is now. I must deal with what I have now, and that's all I can do. Seriously though, I do not like being over weight. Let me back that one up a bit and speak the truth. I do not like being fat. 


I seem to be one of those people who lately lacks any motivation. It took me three years to actually do more than just talk about quitting smoking to actually trying to quit. Which I did quit on Valentines day.
Don't ask why that day, I have no clue. It just was time, that's all.  I have to get unbelievably pissed and disgusted with the circumstance that I don't like before I move to change it. Prior to that, I'm all talk. 


Well I'm starting to get pissed about my weight. I want it gone. I am not going to just sit back and embrace my fatness and chalk it up to getting older. Screw that. Big excuse right there. I have over used the excuse of the problems with my back and hips to not do any exercising. Truth is, I can exercise in moderation without ending up in bed for weeks. It is when I go all gung ho that ends up putting me in bed  for weeks. I'm not about to add another excuse to use. Older my ass...


Diet. More specifically my diet. Ha ha, well I should say the families diet. It's changing, whether we like it or not. I have been put on a reduced sodium diet. Guess what? It sucks trying to find stuff to eat. Why, you ask? Here's why...for the most part with a few exceptions, everything out there has sodium in it. Whether it's there naturally or put in by man. There is sodium everywhere! There is salt in stuff that doesn't even need salt in it for crying out loud! I can't get away from the stuff it seems. Since I already have to take drastic measures in finding or making food that is low sodium, I might as well go out on a limb and loose some weight too, and eat healthier like my mom taught me to do. 


Now the hard part for me. I have no idea why I have such a time with this, but I have just a bitch of a time trying to get all the knowledge that is in my brain into a workable plan. It's driving me crazy. Snort, hehe I'm already crazy. Guess that was a short drive. I can research, and dig up information like there is no tomorrow, but putting it all together....whole nother story. I used to be good at this, apparently not any more. So here I sit, with a ton of knowledge and no idea what the hell to do with it all. I put it in a sloppy temporary form of something to tide me over while I continue to work on the plan. Argh!!!! Talk about a set-up for failure. 


Well once again I wrote another post that just took on a mind of it's own. You would think I would have some control over my fingers and what they type, but they just type whatever the hell they want to. This is what the end product looks like. Hope you had a happy read, y'll take care now. I'm off to find some low sodium recipes for enchiladas for dinner tonight. You know this means I have to make everything from scratch here. Ugh.

Hell Yeah! My Boys Rock!

Well hmm, if I could ever get my butt off of Facebook I might actually get something written here. That and a whole bunch of other things that seem to become an obstacle, you know like me still under the weather, or Jokester having the flu, or conferences tonight, or dinner, or laundry. 


Holy crap! Conferences! 


Ok so I am totally writing this like an hour later. Why? Because I had just looked at the clock and guess what? The clock said 5:19. No biggie right? Wrong. Superman's conference was at 5:20. Good thing the school is only three minutes away if traffic is bad. 


So now I'm back from conferences. Who knew that if Superman stopped beating the crap outta the people in his class he would actually really kick some academic butt? Priorities my son, priorities. Let's just say his teacher is blown away by his intellect. (Oh yes, I blatantly  just strutted about how smart my kid is, oh yeah oh yeah.) He is so ready for Kindergarten.


Jokester continues to make progress in catching up to the rest of the class. I wish that I had been able to get him into this school last year and not had him with the most shittiest teacher ever. She did so much harm in his learning when she wrote him off twenty-three days into the school year. BITCH. Here's what the current school did for him. Not only did this school, NOT put him back in kindergarten per your recommendation, but put him in 1st grade and managed to teach him the crap you were supposed to teach him and get him just shy to being on target. We shall be visiting former school when he gets the papers to go onto 2nd grade so that Jokester I can shove it in said BITCHES face. 


So sorry about the rant, but hey what the hell. I'm proud of my kids, and I'm not afraid to show it. Nor am I afraid to get up in someone's face to kick some ass. Ya know, now that I write that...it doesn't even make sense, get up in your face and kick some ass? Two totally different area's of the body...naw seriously I'm just that good.


Of course once again I didn't write about what I was going to write about. I can't even remember what it was that I was going to write about, but this turned out so much better. Why? Because rather than tell you about the chaos that is my life, I get to tell you about just how damn smart and lovable my boys are.

Superman is itching his nose, seriously he is

Without them life sure would be easier, but who the hell wants easy when you can have The Crazy Life. And now I'm just sharing the Ramblings of a Mom.
Oh Lord I'm done, I promise ROFL.

When Did I Grow Up

Ya know, I used to see mom's out there when I was much younger and think to myself, "wow how did they let themselves get so dumpy?" I mean I seriously remember being there in Target and actually thinking this an after thought of the line of, "I will never let myself get so uncool."

Now why I thought that, I have no idea. I, myself was never the type of  being in style kinda girl, or a cool kid. Maybe that's the reason I thought that. Then again, every teenager who has parents who give a damn about them view the parents as aliens from another world. Think I'm sticking with the second one.

I was doing good when I had Princess. Cool, hip, fun mom. I mean I was really strict with her, but we had a ton of fun. I actually knew how to laugh. We went camping, fishing, roller blading, snuggling, shopping... Now? It isn't happening. Somewhere I lost my youth.

I'm not fun anymore. I don't have the energy to do things with the kids. In fact the little bit of energy I do have, they suck right out within five minutes of waking up. I don't laugh as much, and I don't just stop and grab a hand and start dancing. I'm too busy trying to get through a day. Screw that, to busy trying to get through an hour. 

The little things that I should be gaining pleasure from are just wearing me down. I am not able to enjoy life right now. It seems somewhere along the way...I grew up and became one of those dumpy parents from my yesteryear. 

Gosh darn it! I refuse to cave into the stereotypical description of growing up! If it rains, you can bet your sweet ass I'm grabbing a little hand and we are going to go dance in the rain. Ok, it will only be with Superman, since Jokester, and Princess hate rain, but dancing we shall go. Oh, and when it gets much warmer here, it's still a bit chilly. 

Fast River of College

So here I sit about to write another blurp about my life, and I'm drawing a blank. Well actually not a blank, there's lots going through my head, just having trouble grabbing a thought. Sometimes I feel like I have suddenly gotten ADD, because I find it so hard to focus on one thought. They tend to be like something floating in a fast moving river. The current takes these thoughts away before I can get a grasp on one. 


Because of this I tend to just be in myself, because trying to be vocal to someone is very hard. Things tend to come out in a cluster fuck or like a record that skips all over the place. For instance, I was having trouble making that last sentence understandable, so I got up and brushed my teeth. I didn't stop trying to grab a thought while I brushed my teeth, but when I came back I just started typing and it came out right. Maybe I just need to be multi-tasking. If that's the case it will take me forever to get one of these things done. 


So today is Friday, and if Superman made it through today without any form of violence at school he will get to pick something out of his rewards bag. Hoping today is a good day for him. 


Today, Jokester takes his spelling test. Keeping my fingers crossed that he does well on it. It wasn't looking very promising this morning when I asked him how to spell the word "hope", he kept spelling it "hoke". Oh my son, you can do it!


Princess got to go visit a college yesterday, and when I picked her up, I asked if she liked it. "Oh yeah mom it was great!" "Did you like it better than Oshkosh?" (she did a two week pre-collage stint there back in 9th grade)"Way better than Oshkosh, they have sky-ways and tunnels so I don't ever have to go outside!" ??? "Um Princess, I don't think that qualifies as a good college. You know the ability to never go outside." "I know that mom, you asked me what I liked better than Oshkosh." Point taken daughter, touche. Then she kicks into high gear... "Plus it's close to the Mall of America, and there was a good selection of food places there, and the students who were telling us about the college said the community was really cool, and the dorms looked pretty good too, they have a separate dorm for the Freshman." Oh Lord we are up shit creek if this is what she is basing her decision on the college she is going to go to. "Princess, I understand the importance of food for your bottomless stomach, but I highly doubt your going to have a whole bunch of spare time to go hang out at MOA, and if you decide to go there you can still live at home and save some money on rent and oh I don't know...food. How about the classes? Do they have the one's you need? That is after all the reason your going to college." "Yeah their language classes looked pretty good." "Ok those aren't the important classes. How about the science classes you need, do they have those?" Vague answer coming..."I'm sure they do, but if they don't they are contracted with other colleges that will have the ones I need. Oh and I get a $8,000 scholarship because I'm in AP, that's a $32,000 savings. Plus all their scholarships automatically roll over the following year." Well hell's bells there is promise for this kid. Way to try and win the argument with the highlight of saving money. Now keep in mind that this kid has a very good chance that she will get into Harvard or any other esteemed college. "So Princess is this the college for you?" "It is until I go visit the next college. Then that's the one for me." Oh this is going to be a very very long process...sigh.






  

Laying Down the Law

I have lost it. Yep plain ole lost it. I'm getting sick and tired of telling the boys to do something, and them not listening. I do not like repeating myself, but with them I sound like a broken record. Well tonight I'm done.


The boys were actually playing great together for a really long period of time, which happens like maybe twice a year. They were having a good ole time destroying a ball, balloon, and who knows what else...I'm sure I'll step on the pieces later tonight. They also were playing with the retractable dog leash, which they know is a no,no. Told them several times to put it away. Did they listen...of course not. Just like when they didn't listen when I told them to eat their dinner. Guess what went into the garbage?


On school nights we start getting jamma's on and doing Superman's neb and all the good stuff that goes with getting ready for bed at 7PM. Tonight however they decided once again not to listen to me. Saw that one coming didn't you. After 20 minutes of telling them to put the dog leash away, and 15 minutes of me telling them to get their jammies on, I lost it. I will freely admit it, I lost it.


I walk into the living room and start heading down the hallway...Jokester is the first to see me and starts moving to the living room where his jammies are, Superman is still attached to the dog leash and doesn't have a clue yet that I'm on my way. He finally looks up and sees me and immediately starts saying, "I'm sorry mom" over and over again. He now starts heading back to the living room. 


I manage to grab Jokester's arm and spin him around and start marching him towards the stairs, catching Superman as we go. Jokester is crying, "I don't have my jammies on", superman is still on the I'm sorry mom thing. I bellow, GET UP STAIRS...NOW! Both boys are now crying and saying sorry. I yell once more, "I don't care if your sorry. You were told to leave the dog leash alone and get your jammies on. Your going to bed now!" 


Screw the jammie's, screw brushing teeth, screw the meds (DH is gonna get my head for this one if he reads this post), screw going potty, screw getting tucked in, screw getting the music box wound up, screw the snot running down both faces. I'm done. Not playing this game any more.
I gave each of them their good night kisses snot and all, shut off the light and went downstairs.


Five minutes later Jokester walks into the kitchen where I am, and says to me, "we really need to talk about this." Whoa there boy, just who do you think you are? He really has no clue he's adding fuel to the fire and that I'm at the exploding point. I look at him and say, " Jokester, I'm tired of telling you guys to do stuff over and over again. You don't listen to me until I'm screaming at you. I don't like yelling and I told you nicely to put the dog leash away. I told you nicely to get your jammie's on. You and Superman decided you didn't need to listen to me. You both caused this, now get - into - bed."


Five minutes later Superman is in the kitchen telling me he really wants to play. Oh really? So I told him no and to get back up into bed. I'm thinking what the fuck boys, do you really not hear me or what? My head is ready to explode from the headache they have given me. Oh happy night, but at least I laid down the law. 

The Bullshit Trials of a School System

Well I was just reading one of One Tired Mama's Posts about schools, and IEPs and all the crap we as parents have to deal with regarding our child's education. Now I have to write this, cuz apparently I'm still pissed at said school system. A lot. 


The first round began with Princess back in elementary school. Princess has Turner's Syndrome, and with it comes some special things.  Someday I'll devote a post just to TS, but not today. 


The main reason that Princess had an IEP was for her speech therapist. Part of TS is a high arched palette. It make pronouncing words correctly more difficult. Even now if she talks too fast I can't understand what she is saying. The other reason was for math and reading. She really had a tough time with both early on. 


Now I'm gonna begin the gritty nastiness of dealing with the schools. When Princess was in 4th grade we moved to Wisconsin. Once again she was given an IEP. No problems the first year, however the 5th grade turned out to be a nightmare for not only her, but her whole class.


Her teacher SUCKED! Big time. I called a conference with her because Princess's grade took a nose dive off a cliff. She didn't get great grades before, but she sure wasn't getting straight F's and D's. The teacher's response was, "Oh it's the whole class. All of them are really struggling." "Excuse me? Your telling me the whole class is having trouble, and flunking?" This is where it got really nasty, well I guess I got really nasty. Keep in mind this is a very small town school, I'm used to the big city schools.


I got up in her face and said, "I'm thinking it's not the students who are to blame. When you have eighteen kids flunking, something tells me it's the teacher. Your a crappy teacher!" Let me tell you that didn't go over so well.I ended up taking Princess out of school and home schooled her for the rest of the year and half of the next. The next year we had custody of our nephew and he ended up with the same teacher, and holy crap did she ever kiss my ass. Hope the new attitude stuck with her. I have never met a teacher who was so hated by so many students and parents. How sad.


When I started home schooling I found out that Princess didn't know her short and long vowels. How the hell did she get to 5th grade and not know her vowels!? I mean after all she had been in Title 1 reading for four years. Who the fuck missed the boat on this one? I had to start at the beginning with the phonics. She seriously would not have been able to read this post back back to me without 90% error. Within a year I had her caught up to her grade level and then some. This was done only teaching three to four hours a day. Something is very wrong with our school system.


Princess went from getting F's and D's to straight A's, and has continued doing this for six years. The next problem came when we moved back to Minnesota. Apparently these states do not use the same semester/trimester system. Because we had moved two weeks before the semester ended in Wisconsin, they refused to give Princess her ninth grade credits. Seriously?! The school I got her into is a Charter School, and their hands were tied on the credit thing, they couldn't just let her test out. They originally wanted to put her back in ninth grade to gain her credits. Oh yeah, not happening people. This kid worked her ass off and is not going back into ninth grade. Holy tantrum was happening here on our parts. We came up with a compromise...she would continue in the tenth grade and go to night school for her ninth grade credits. This girl went to school for eleven hours a day M-Th for an entire school year, and managed to get straight A's in both schools. Take that assholes. My girl rocks!!! She is almost caught up now, she has half a credit of math to do still, and we are not so worried she wont have the credits to graduate next year.


Now let's move on to Jokester's first year of school which was last year. He was in a different school since there were no openings at the school Princess goes to. I am kicking myself for putting him in this school. His teacher sucked ass too. Some back ground here. The boys have not really had the opportunity to socialize with other kids their age. Every where we move there are no kids their age. We don't know the people in our communities, so getting together with other parents and their kids wasn't happening. It's always been just the three of them. There was never any need to daycare or preschool. Jokester went to Kindergarten last year, and it was a nightmare. Twenty-three days into the school year his teacher wanted a conference. Ok, so I go. She tells me point blank that Jokester is NOT going to pass Kindergarten. Come again, what? She determined in twenty-three days that Jokester just wasn't ready for this. Umm, yeah it's going to take a bit for him to get the hang of this since this is completely new, but your writing him off already? Bitch. Basically in a nutshell we refused to take him out of school, she persisted with the shitty attitude towards him. If I had been able to get him in another Charter School I would have ASAP. I think Jokester is Dyslexic and when I brought it up to them they were like oh, maybe. They finally brought someone into school to test him but not for Dyslexia but rather for Autism/Aspburgers. Where did this come from? We waited and waited and waited for the test results...finally at the end of the year I found out he got into Princess's school and I went to get the records all together. Asked where the report on his testing was...they couldn't find the the results or the guy. I'm sorry You lost a whole guy, along with the test results on my son? So I called the new school and informed them of what was going on, and wasn't really sure what grade he would be going into. This was a actual concern since if he had to repeat Kindergarten they might not have an opening for him. They weren't too concern once they heard about the nightmare. Sometime during the summer I got a letter in the mail, stating he had flunked Kindergarten. Fuck you. 

He went into 1st grade this year, and didn't have to re-do Kindergarten. Yes he is struggling, which if the previous school had done their job right wouldn't be happening. Jokester's teacher says that he is making great progress, but he probably wont be up to the reading level he should be at the end of the year, but he wont be too far off, and the teacher is not too concerned. He is getting the extra help he needed so badly the year before, and is kicking butt in math which he struggled with so hard before. I continue to work hard with him here at home, and hopefully between the awesome school and myself we will get him where he is supposed to be, and make sure that he still likes school in the mean time. 

So for all you parents out there who are getting screwed over by the schools, your not alone. There are student advocates available...use them. If things are not going the way they should...become the biggest thorn in their side. If you don't fight for them they will just be swallowed in the bullshit of a school system. One other thing...schools and teachers don't expect you to give a crap. It is refreshing to have a parents support even if you make their life hell. There are so many parents out there who don't give a crap, so when you do step up and call the school out on something it takes them by surprise. They become hostile until they know your doing it for your kid, and not just blowing smoke up their ass. Keep at it and good luck.

Nerves Like Wet Spaghetti Noodles

Jokester is really getting on my nerves today. He is the type of kid who needs constant interaction with other people, or needs constant stimulation from video games or movies. I think silence makes him very uncomfortable. 

All is fine if someone is playing with him, or he is playing a video game. If say Superman decides he wants to do something by himself, Jokester has a fit. He will mope around and in general become a huge pain in the ass to me. I could literally play with him for twelve hours and he still wouldn't be happy. 

Superman on the other hand, likes to do his own thing. If he needs someone to play with him, he will politely ask you to play with him. If you happen to be busy at the moment he will usually wait patiently until your done doing whatever it is.

Not Jokester. He will hound you every three minutes. "Mom, can I play games on the computer?" "Not right now Jokerster." Three minutes later, "mom how about now?" "Jokester, I will tell you when it's time, now go play with something else." Three minutes later, "mom"..."Jokester if you ask me one more time you will not be playing on the computer, do you hear me?" "Yeah." One minute later, "now?" "Ok Jokester, no computer today. I'm done with this stuff." I have to push him away, or he will just sit there and do those deep sighs until he gets his way. I'm not playing that game either.  

It doesn't matter if you just played three games of pool, or swords, or the new game he invented. He want's you to play with him non-stop. Unfortunately I can not do this. I have meals to make, laundry to do, dog hair to vacuum, and other various things that need to be done in order to make the house run. 


So we are painfully and very slowly working on getting his imagination working so that he doesn't need the constant stimulation. He really does have an awesome imagination if only he would use it. In the mean time I will continue to be the "mean" mom. 


Random thought: A hidden tube of chap stick when placed in the dryer will and has melted all over the laundry. Fuck.

Forget the Laughing Garden

Ok so enough with the serious stuff already. I spend about 90% of my time being serious and depressing, this blog is supposed to be a way for my humor, to come out as I struggle to deal with my Crazy life. At least I think there's some humor in me somewhere. And on that note...

I really hate my forgetfulness, it makes life so complicated and chaotic. I listen to the boys babbling on to each other when they aren't trying to kill the other (when they are trying to kill each other, I don't listen), and the things that come out of their mouths just makes me chuckle. I would love to share some of the things, but alas my forgetfulness strikes. I am seriously thinking I should invest in a recorder so that I might share the cuteness with others.

In fact last night while driving home from picking Princess up from night school, the boys were have great conversations. I mentioned the recorder thing to Princess between chuckles and she got out her phone and tried to record them. It didn't really work, but thanks bugs for trying. Yes I call my daughter bugs, and it isn't because she likes bugs either. She's just my luv bugs. He he, I got to embarrass her!

Jokester and Superman have a typical brother relationship I guess. I personally think they do way more fighting than the average brothers, but then again I don't have to sit and listen to other brothers all the time. During the rare times where they are not trying to kill each other, these two get along fabulously and peels of laughter abound. Jokester, being true to his nickname loves to make Superman laugh, and he will stop at nothing to make this happen. Superman thinks he is hilarious. You know those videos of the babies laughing hysterically? Superman laughs just like that. His laughter is contagious. It makes you stop whatever you are doing to listen, and then wonder what they are doing or getting into.

On a different topic...the weather here in Minnesota is deifying all weather norms. We have virtually no snow, although we are supposed to get a light dusting today and tonight. Yesterday the temps were 52 degrees, which I think is much better than -20 below. I do understand the need for snow here, since we don't get rain...well usually don't get rain as I speak it is misting out, our spring will be very dry. Not a good thing for the farmers if we don't get some form of precipitation here. I decided to go out to the garden and see if my carrots were still going. I just threw some leaves over the tops of them in a half hearted  attempt to see if I could get carrots in the winter. I had read that if you throw about a foot of mulch over them they would keep going. My leaves didn't even come close to being a foot, more like four inches. To my surprise...there are carrots still growing, and to an even greater surprise the onions that I thought had died are growing too.

It's a carrot!

Some of the carrots didn't make it, or rather some of the tops didn't make it. I suppose when I go out this spring to start digging I will find some more. Hopefully they will have become good size by then.

My surprise onions. If you look close there is actually some green in there.

These really took my by surprise since I thought I had killed them this summer. They didn't have the ideal spot to grow and were over shadowed by the cabbage which went crazy. I'm very glad they are coming back since I use onions in just about everything. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

They might be small, but there they are, my carrots!

I had a really hard time getting a picture of these little guys, for some reason the flash on my camera is powerful enough to cause permanent blindness. That is, unless I stand fifty feet away from whatever I'm taking a picture of. I really need a new camera. Carrots...that's what I was talking about. I have never planted carrots before, in fact the only veggie's I have ever grown have been tomatoes for Princess. She loves tomatoes with a passion, and she really had her fill this summer. Jeez back to carrots here. I planted them kind of late and a bit too close and was too lazy to thin them out and didn't really have anywhere for them to go had I actually thinned them so they didn't grow very big. I also apparently have the soil that is the consistency of concrete as you can see from the largest white one that was starting to curve back up. Lessons learn right?

In all my garden was a huge experiment, and one that I really enjoyed doing. Before the earwigs attacked the corn, and the rabbits attacked everything else but the beans, carrots, and tomatoes my garden looked awesome! I found out that I really need to start my seeds much earlier than I did as some things didn't get to fully grow before the frost hit. In fact I should be starting them now I guess. Not sure where I will put all these to be soon to be plants someday, as my house is stuffed to capacity. I suppose I can always use the huge coffee table that is in my upstairs bathroom. Yes I have a coffee table in there, don't ask...please.

I would post a picture of my beautiful garden, but alas I can not find one. I know I took pictures because I was so proud of myself, but they are no where to be found. Which means I must have deleted them. The only picture that remains is of bare ground when I dug up the garden or rather when DH and his oldest dug it up...not very interesting if you ask me. 

Random thought of the day: hell I don't have one right off the top of my head. Minds a little on the blank side today.

On a side note, did you figure out how I got the tile of this post? I forget, the boys laugh, and I grew a garden...pretty good huh? Pa leeez it's called lack of imagination, you should re-read the random thought line again.

Jokester AKA Joe

     Introducing the Jokester AKA Joe. This kid just makes me shake my head sometimes. I wonder what is going on in his mind. Joe is the middle child and he grew up in our restaurant we ran while living on DH's Reservation. He would go around to people and mooch french fries from the customers. Needless to say he really likes the fries.

Joe likes to think he is funny and like to make people laugh. He tells really bad jokes, but usually will do something he thinks is funny. Like say, instead of giving you a kiss goodnight he will wait until the very last second and lick your nose instead. He finds this hilarious, I thought it was funny the first time, not any more. He likes to pull stunts, which Superman thinks is really cool (remember the story of the bed jumping, guess who's idea it was?). He likes to live vicariously through Superman. When I say this I mean he comes up with ideas that he knows are no-no's, and has Superman do it, and then comes and tells on him.

Joe thought having a peanut shell stuck in his hair was just the craziest thing.

     Now Joe and Robert are your typical brothers, and when I say this I mean they fight like there is no tomorrow. Someone is always picking on the other. When Robert was a baby Joe would beat up on him. I told Joe that one day Robert would be big enough to whoop his butt, and I would just say, "I told you so" when that day came. Well that day came and Joe was absolutely astounded that Robert knocked him on his butt. You know what I said don't you? These two can go from killing each other one second to falling down laughing the next. 

Now is this the face of a kid who would do anything wrong?

      Joe is my little helper, that is, only when he is in the helping mood. If he's in that mood, this kid will constantly ask me if there is anything he can help with. He likes to help Princess do the dishes, she's not so keen on the idea. Makes more work for her. I had a garden this summer, and of course he wanted to help. Unfortunately his version of helping ended up with him and his brother playing in the dirt. In all fairness he did actually learn something about the food we eat. I must have done something right. 

     Getting Joe outside to play this summer was hard. You see Joe likes to veg out in front of the TV watching cartoons or playing video games. When I told him to go outside his response to me was, "um, yeah I'm not really an outside kinda person". My response was, " um, yeah today you are so move your butt". I found the best way to get him outside is to give him learning lessons. Loves to gain knowledge this kid does. 

     Joe started Kindergarten last year, and had a very hard time of it. Not his fault at all the school he was in was, to say nicely...a HUGE disappointment. I still get in a rage when the subject is brought up. Anyhow, three days before pictures Joe fell off the monkey bars and came home with a very fat, black and blue lip. After making sure he was ok, the thought of there goes the perfect school picture down the tube, but it captures the essence of Joe just being a boy.  

       All in all Joe is a fun loving, snuggling, sport loving, goof ball. He is my goof ball. One of his spelling words was "nut", and when I gave him an example of the word used in a sentence it was this, " you are a nut, and your driving me nuts". He thought that was pretty funny, but he remembered the word. Mission accomplished.

Joe showing off his hair doo, he did by himself. 

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