Boy, n: A noise with dirt on it.

I left Tyler playing with his buckets and shovels in our front yard. 

When I came back to check on him a few minutes later, he had moved on to bigger and better things....

Like the giant mud puddle (we lovingly call our lake) that appears beside our house after it rains.

Since he was already filthy, I decided to just let him play in it... for 2 hours.

The girls behind him were having a "no boys allowed" party.

They ran in the sprinklers, played with water balloons, and painted their nails....

while Tyler played shirtless in a giant mud puddle next door.

I'm just glad he took off his shoes.

Even if we did have to throw away his socks.

Pancake Soup

Do you ever let your kids make monumental messes just because it's keeping them happy and occupied?

Or am I the only one?

Today Tyler made pancake soup. He took the bowl containing leftover pancake batter from dinner (yes I made pancakes for our Sunday dinner.... ) and added some water, milk, an apple slice or two (which he said he added to make it smell good) and some of the pancake that Jaxon mutilated during dinner. He called it pancake soup. He really wanted me to taste it. He promised me it was delicious. He was tasting it (which made me want to throw up and get angry all at the same time.... Why is it that the kid will eat pancake soup but won't even consider completely ordinary foods like peas, strawberries, or macaroni and cheese as possible candidates for consumption??).. but finally he was satisfied with me smelling it. 

It smelled like....pancake soup.

PS. Serious blog catching up coming soon (hopefully).

PPS. Is it just me or did this post have a lot of parenthesis in it? 

Butter Hair , Dirty Shoes, and Chubby Bums

Can you see how greasy Jaxen's hair is?

I don't think the picture does it justice.

First thing this morning,  Jax rubbed his toast, butter side down, all over his head.

It was awesome.

(and then he proceeded to eat the toast)

Do you remember the dirty shoes?

Don't tell anyone, but I haven't cleaned them yet.

(He has a second pair of shoes, so he's just been wearing those).

Today he brought me one of the gross shoes and said,

"Dirty?"

I said "Yes, go put it back"

So he went straight into the kitchen and threw it into the sink.

I assure you that's not where he originally found it.

I guess he just thought it needed to be washed.

Which it does.

This is what the inside of Tyler's shoes looks like when he gets back from school.

And this is after a good deal of sand comes out when I take his shoes off.

Can you guess where he spends most of his time when they play outside???

Yep.

The sandbox.

Jax has started trying to go potty.

He comes into the bathroom, 

takes off his diaper,

and says, "Pee?"

So I  put him on the potty.

He sits there for a minute grinning at me (not peeing, of course),

and then wiggles to get down.

Then, of course he wants to wash his hands.

That's the last time I try and Teach Tyler a Lesson....

Yesterday, we came outside just as Tyler's friend Creed was opening some awesome new sidewalk chalk. Of course Ty ran over to investigate. They started coloring happily. When I asked Tyler to come color on the side walk (instead of up on Creed's porch because chalk gets tracked into their house) he got mad and threw the chalk and it broke.

Tragedy.

We went inside and after Ty had calmed down a bit, we talked about what he needed to do to make it up to Creed that he broke his new sidewalk chalk. We decided to take some money out of Tyler's piggy bank and go buy Creed a new piece of chalk.

Keep in mind three things:
1. This was not ordinary side walk chalk. It was in cool shapes and the one that broke was the yellow one... which is Creed's absolute favorite color.
2. If Ty had broken it by accident, I would have felt bad but I wouldn't have made him buy him a new one. Those things just happen sometimes. But since he threw it in a momentary fit of rage.... I felt he needed to take responsibility for his actions.
3. I know Creed's parents didn't expect him to replace the chalk, and that Creed would soon forget about it, but there was more than one lesson that Ty could gain from this. . . Even though I felt really bad watching him take the money out of his little bank...

It was getting close to bed time but I figured we had to execute our plan while it was still fresh in his mind. So I loaded both kids up in the car and made our way over to Target, with Ty clutching is baggie of money. After looking for over a half hour we couldn't find the blasted chalk. We found plenty of regular side walk chalk but not the same kind that Tyler destroyed.

Finally we found an employee and she directed us to the same isle we had been looking at. Oh, and did I mention that both of my kids wanted to sit in the front of the cart?

That was splendid.
After a bit more looking, I gave up. I loaded the kids back up in the car and decided to try the Walmart down the street. By this then it was bed time, but I figured we were already out and bed time was already going to be late.

As we pulled up in the Walmart parking lot, Ty started wailing in despair. . .
He had left his baggie of money in the shopping cart at Target.
We turned around and went all the way back to Target. I then unloaded the kids again and we searched all of the carts in the area where we returned ours.
 No luck.
We went to Customer service to see if it had been turned in.
No luck.
While we were there I asked the Customer Service girl if she knew where we could find the side walk chalk. She directed us to the toy section. We had looked there before, but I thought we'd give it another thorough look, but we didn't find it.

Finally, I gave up on Tyler's money and the chalk and we all loaded back up in the car.
And..... then Tyler found his money tucked on the side of his car seat.
Of course!
We went straight home after that...

Did I mention that Jax got stung by a bee right before this began?

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I could tell you about my whole dang day, but that would be long and boring.
I will, on the other hand, tell you the two events that ruined it.

1. I took Kati out to do her senior pictures. We've been meaning to do them for a while and just barely got around to it.  Although, when I snapped the first picture all I got was a lovely flashing "Error 99", instead of Kati's smiling face. I tried again, and again, and all I could get was the dang error message. So after trying everything I could, I finally gave up and called Canon. They had me try a few things, only to come to the conclusion that something was wrong with the internal body of my camera, and that I would have to ship it to them to have it fixed. Also, that the repairs were going to cost a few hundred dollars. After getting all of the information I  needed to have it repaired, Kati and I went over to Pictureline to see if there was anything they could do.
There wasn't.
Then (since I had a babysitter) we went over to the mall to grab a couple of things.

2. When Kati and I came out of the mall, I unlocked my car and it beeped three times. What does it mean when it beeps three times? That the alarm has been set off.
So I immediately ran to the back of my car, and sure enough, my camera bag was gone. When we left Pictureline I put my camera under a chair (a photo prop) and put a blanket on the chair. Not to mention you can't see into the back of my car because the windows are tinted. So, the only thing I can figure out is that whoever stole it watched me put my camera away at Pictureline and followed us to the mall. I recently read about people following photographers and stealing their equipment, but because I hadn't really been using my camera and it was safely hidden I didn't think too much of it.  All they grabbed was the camera bag. Not the stereo, my ipod, Kati's bag... just my camera bag.  Which unfortunately held thousands of dollars of equipment. Equipment that has taken a lot of work, time, and sacrifice to acquire.

The only thing that brings me a little bit of joy is that some idiot stole a broken camera. It's kind of ironic. In fact I'll probably laugh about it tomorrow. At least a little bit....or maybe not.
Unfortunately, he (or she?) also got two lenses, two batteries, several memory cards, an external flash, my business cards, and all of my other little toys and accessories.... all of which work perfectly. And quite frankly, I would rather pay a few hundred dollars to have my camera repaired, then the thousands it will take to replace it.

Now I am just waiting to hear back from our insurance to find out if they will cover anything. My car wasn't damaged, which I am grateful for. The cop said they knew what they were doing, whatever that means. They just picked the lock (in a broad daylight) and helped themselves to my things.

Now I'm feeling rather

Angry

Vulnerable

Sad

and Tired. 

So I think I'll go to bed.

Empty Cupboard

Dear Tyler and Jaxen,

Thank you for giving me a good opportunity to go through the contents of our cupboard.

Love,

Mom