All shined up...

...complete with Harley Davidson Pirate Bandannas. THANK YOU, GRAMPA JIM!!





some of us embrace our inner pirate,




better than others.




After countless tries, we got:


Two acceptable pix that show we can put the shine on.

Freedom!!

What was once, the very vehicle to my sanity is now gone. Not my sanity, but the vehicle. With Sammy weighing in at 43 lbs and Noah and Aidan at 27 and 30 lbs, respectively, I am a danger to myself and others. As that is one of the few qualifications for institutionalization, I decided I'd better pass this along to another needy soul. Nonetheless, it is a very strange milestone grace á eBay.

I'm What?!

So Scott has been working a freakish number of hours. I'm talking like he went two days only seeing the boys when we brought him coffee in the morning before taking Sam to school. Yesterday this early a.m. outing came off without a hitch. I'm on fire. "We're going again today", I wake up thinking.

Clean underpants and socks on all boys, waffles sticks (made from homemade waffles previously frozen), bananas, juice boxes and even a healthy to-go breakfast for me. We're off!

The first hiccup comes when I pull into the Dunkin Donuts and realize that I've taken my wallet out of my purse and not replaced it. Damn. Home again. Because I live in the sticks this is not like flying down Delaware Ave, but because I live in the sticks I can run in and grab the wallet without unloading everyone like a clown car. I decided to go to the much closer Dunkin Donuts that does not have a drive-thru. Yea, I know, inherently flawed plan.

We pull in. I get Noah out and the line is out the door. Everybody back in. Back to the further Dunkin with the blessed drive-thru.

Time is ticking away and Scott has a meeting and Sam has to go to school. Grrr.

All looks good when I pull in, place my order, get the coffee and the bag and happily pull away. Only to realize I have not gotten the breakfast sandwich, just the pacifying donut holes. Around the huge complex I go *again*, only to find myself at the back of a line of 4 cars waiting to order and no one at the window getting their order....

...

...


I pull out of line, zipped up to the window, expecting them to laugh and hand me the sandwich so I can be on my way! 2 more seconds and some embarrassment and off! The guy remembers me, laughs and calls his co-worker "simple" for taking so long to nuke an egg and we wait. And we wait. And we wait. One by one, the employees start turning to me and staring. I say, "yes, I forgot my sandwich." Little do I know I was fueling a riot. One of the minimum wage hillpeople says, "you just cut in front of a line of people, to which I defend myself with, "I was just coming back to pick up the sandwich." The nice kid who is waiting on me says, "that's ghetto! It's something I would do, but that is ghetto".

I don't even know what that means, but I don't think it was a compliment.

Public Service Announcement

The next time any of you go to Ikea, please get Esther another recycle bin. Ladies & gentlemen, I think we all have $9 of love for Esther & John. Without question these are fantabulous items for recycling and we all love our planet too. It is a win-win.

Last but not least, it will prevent another near-homicidal moment like this one.

Maybe if someone had taken the five finger discount, we could be on our way home to meet Deuce. Yes, I know, 4th trimester taunting is a technical foul, so the first back-up bin is on me.

My Birthday Gifts

Under Sammy's direction, the boys were out fielding birthday flowers.

So as not to be outdone, from Scott:

Gardeners

We have been planting. I know what my expectations are. How realistic they are is another story.

On the agenda is a vegetable garden, sunflowers/marigolds for birthday party guests, herb pots and some flower pots for the patio. One of them should take.


I've gotten the boys involved as much as possible. Bearing in mind that we are almost three and almost five. Our attention capacity is finite. Digging is fun. Tools are good. Seeds are touch and go. Thumbs up for large sunflower seeds. Thumbs down for wispy little marigold seeds.


Let me revisit item number 2 on my gardening agenda. Plants as gifts. We may have as many as 10 kids at the birthday party and Sam has 22 kids in his class. We had some work to do if we were to have any hope of passing these seedlings out. Armed with a bag of dirt, several packets of seeds and a water bottle and three little boys. We got down to business. I had an assembly line that would have made Henry Ford proud! Noah was scooping dirt, Aidan was inserting seeds and Sammy was watering.

We finished up with hand washing while I vacuumed all the spilled dirt. Then to stave off the gardening equivalent of "are we there yet?", we read Frog & Toad's The Garden. Toad screams at his seeds to get growing, then changes tack to read, sing, dance and talk to his seeds, until they finally sprout. It also gave Scott well over an hour of virtual silence to get the sleep that most of use get between 2am - 3am.

This is the second day of planting so Sammy isn't in it :-(

I told my friend about this very industrious use of an hour, to which she complimented me with "That is a Gold Star Mom Day! Any one care to guess what my normal loving and supportive husband said when I told him about the seedlings as gifts for our young guests?? The big jerk said, "are you going to include candy or something with it?"

Well, I am thrilled to report that it is 7 days until the first day that we need the buggers and:

!!!!

I just hope that this doesn't represent all of my gardening success this year.

dear guardian angel

"Aidan, mine was a flying carpet"

"And mine was a flying bird"

They were throwing pillows down the stairs. I can count the number of days it is going to be before they are on those pillows on one hand.

Taking Suggestions

After Friday, birthday season is no longer about me. We're planning a Backyardigans b-day for the boys, who will have to share birthday parties for the next 10 or so years unless you are Aidan or Noah than you'll share b-days for the next 100 years. Barring any unforeseen events (chicken pox), Sammy gets to have a birthday at school this year for the first time!!! This is what I have to work with from the hippie school:

On the day of your child's birthday celebration, please provide a brief biography of special accomplishments or occasions and a picture or two for each year of your child's life. Please choose photographs in which your child is prominent. The photos and biography will be used for the "birthday walk" and kept in the classroom on display for a week.

Any suggestions?? This is going to be hard!!

By the way, there is another paragraph about how the child walks around a candle representing the sun, while he carries a globe. If I am feeling spiritual and calm, I find this quite nice. On an average day during which I've been peed on twice and been up since 6am with all of my children, I can only think: please let him be first out when the place burns to the ground.