My niece, Raleigh (5), came over this morning to visit with the boys while they ate their breakfast. I was in the kitchen unloading and reloading the dishwasher and straightening up but listening in on their coffee talk. So at our little square dining room table sat a little one at each side. As far as I know, Wheat began the conversation and it all started and ended a little something like this:
Wheat: “Raleigh, look at this cereal box. This is a wind turbine. Do you know what this does?”
Raleigh: “No.”
Wheat: “It creates energy from wind.”
River: “Waleigh, look at this book. I am gonna show you a picture of President Lincoln. <flipping pages>…Look, Waleigh. This is President Lincoln right here in this circle.”
Raleigh: “Jenna has a mean boy in her class and he threw a book at the teacher. He is a mean boy. His name is….Ummm….Nicholas Lester.”
Lake: “Well, he should have been made to go see the principal’s office”
Raleigh: “We don’t have a president at our church but maybe we do and it’s my dad because he’s the preacher.”
Lake: “Not president, the principal! You know….the principal’s office where you go when you get in trouble at a school?”
Raleigh: “It wasn’t at a school, silly. We don’t go to school. It was at our church.”
Lake: “Ooohh.”
Wheat: “Raleigh, did you know I have a parasite in my body? My mom says I have a parasite in my body and it eats all my food up when I swallow it. My parasite is big and long and at attaches to the inside of my stomach and like latches on there and you can drink this stuff that will kill the parasite and then you can poop it out and look at it.”
Man what a day….Jason surprised us all by taking a vacation day (one of many he will be taking in the weeks to come so as to not lose 60 hours of vacation) without telling us. Yay! We also woke up to an amazing blanket of thick, fluffy snow all over our neighborhood…finally enough to sled in for the first time since our kids have been born! After hours of playing in the snow and sledding, we came in for hot cocoa and watched our 44th president take his oath in Washington, D.C., amongst about 1.8 million people. What a cool day!
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Our boys had such a fun day learning about the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We read some books and articles online and then did some crafts to commemorate the occasion. In one of the stories, we read that the approximate 250,000 people who attended his speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 stuck their feet in the cool water in the pool in front of the memorial and bought sack lunches from vendors which contained cheese sandwiches, apples and a piece of pound cake. So for lunch we had grilled cheeses, apple slices and pound cake muffins.
Below is a pic of one of their crafts which were reproductions of Andy Warhol’s famous painting of Marilyn Monroe which we took to symbolize that each portrait is the same, just a different color, just like all people.
And below is a pic of our favorite project. They colored the hands all different shades of ivory and brown and pink to represent all the many colors of skin and we printed and cut out MLK quotes and glued them onto the hands. The boys had a blast and we crafted all day in place of math & reading and the usual school work and I think they learned more on this day than they have in months.
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River (youngest): “I am stronger than both of you guys.”
Wheat & Lake: “No, you’re not.”
Wheat (oldest): “River, let’s say we’re in a fight. I punch you in the stomach. You cry. I win.”
Lake laughs while River stares at Wheat with a very steely gaze…
River: “I punch you in the penis. I win.”
Jason: choked on his sushi…
Lake walks up to me and says….
“Mommy, I drew this picture of us with a heart in between us and I know it looks like a butt but it’s not a butt, it’s a heart.”
Yes…they are back, already! They seem to think along with many of our trees and foliage that it is Spring and when the trees begin to bud then it is time for them to visit the Baileys. Well, you know we don’t use harsh pesticides or herbicides in, around or near our house so this is something we deal with although not without a great deal of screaming and/or sometimes cursing these creatures. We have an air vent next to our front door where they like to enter the house. Why? Don’t ask me…it is no where near the kitchen although these ants never seem to care much about the kitchen and it’s contents. So next to the front door is my desk and they have found many fun things to do there lately. While working yesterday, I spilled a Dr. Pepper into my keyboard. Not that big a deal…the keyboard (detached…this was not my laptop) is old and has been on it’s last leg for some time. So, I did my best to clean it out and went along with my day. Keyboards are cheap…this could have been a lot worse. Today, after school when I began to work a bit, I noticed that the ants built a colony in my keyboard overnight. Ok…now this is really irritating to me. The boys and I had to run a few morning errands so out of frustration and not caring whether this act sent my keyboard over the edge or not I drenched it by spraying a lemon & lime juice mix all over it. I once read that lemon and/or lime juice is a natural ant deterrent and will rid your house of them without the use of chemicals. Well….I really would like to talk to the people who claim this. After I drenched my keyboard with the juice, the boys and I left the house for about 2 hours. When we came back, not only was my entire desk and keyboard uber sticky (which I HATE) but all the ants had fetched bottles of tequila and shakers of salt and were out basking on all the keys.
Question #472 for God when I get to Heaven – Why on earth did you create ants? (This question appears about 236 entries below “Why on earth did you create mosquitoes?”)
Lake was just doing some reading in his handwriting book and had a sentence that said “Zoey saw two cats” and Lake screamed, “MOM, this book is saying it is ok for this girl to saw two cats!” LOL
So my boss along with a few friends and family members have been urging me to join Facebook for quite some time. Who has time for this? Every day I wake up, brew coffee, feed kids, clean up after breakfast, brew more coffee, school kids, cook lunch, feed kids again, clean up after lunch, work a bit, play with kids, do more lessons if need be, cook dinner, feed kids and husband dinner, clean up after dinner, sit down with family and play a game or Rock Band on Wii (our new family time event since Christmas) and once the kids and husband are off to bed I sit, by myself, and veg and read or crochet and/or both. So, not sure why, but I started a Facebook page last night and OMG how addictive this is!! I knew it would be which was why I was so hesitant. I stayed up way too late making and editing things on my page and then finding friends to ask if they wanna come be my friend and pretty much all day today I have been chatting up people and/or checking out pages of long lost friends, looking at pictures of their kids that I didn’t even know they had, listening to albums that I didn’t even know they recorded, and the list goes on and on. So if yau’ll don’t see me for several weeks you know where I’ve been. LOL
And the pizza part….since I have been so consumed all morning with my head in Facebook I got lazy and threw together a homemade pizza for the boys for lunch. Yes, I think it is as easy (and much healthier) to do homemade pizzas than it is to bake a pre-made, frozen pizza and yau’ll know me, I don’t buy pre-made and/or processed foods. However, I do buy ready-made pizza crusts because I don’t like eating pizza toppings overtop raw dough and that is what every pizza dough recipe I have ever attempted has tasted like. Anyway, NOTE TO SELF: REMOVE the cardboard from under the pizza crust BEFORE baking. While my house is still in one piece, our pizza crust never got crispy as it should have and it tasted like cardboard. I did bake the pizza on my Pampered Chef stone so the cardboard was between the crust and the stone so this likely protected us from fire. If anyone drives by my house and sees smoke, please call 9-1-1!! And incidentally, I have made a hundred homemade pizzas this way and have NEVER left the cardboard under the crust….I am blaming Facebook. LOL
Today is Wheat’s birthday! I can’t believe how fast these kids are growing up! He is such a loving boy and always does the right thing. He accepted Jesus into his heart this Fall and although this is a journey for him (and us) and he has not been baptized yet he fully understands what it means to do good for himself and everyone around him and to live like Jesus. We are so proud of this child and can’t wait to see him grow more and I know I am a blink away from buying his first car and/or shipping him off to college. He is so smart and he got exactly what he wanted for his birthday – a Didj and a digital camera. He loves photography and takes pictures with my camera all the time. One of his creations is below which is a little something he threw together on my sister-in-laws fridge with magnetic words. It is so funny to me because it has many of his favorite things in it. (BTW, a Didj is a handheld video game similar to a Nintendo DS but the Didj is made by Leapfrog and while it appears sleek and cool and has ‘big boy’ games to go with it like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, etc., it is educational and makes them solve math equations and read, etc., in order to beat the levels so this makes me happy:)
And before the judgements begin flying…sticking candles in a brownie was not my cop out. Wheat detests birthday cake and always has. I had to force it into his mouth on his first birthday which was also the very first time he ever tasted it and he went into sugar shock and almost puked. Cookies are ok with him sometimes but he hates any sort of icing so a cookie cake from the mall is out of the question. A brownie is what he asks for because he loves chocolate so a brownie is what he got. No nuts, no a’la’mode, just plain brownie.
Today is my birthday and all my life I have had to attend some sort of Christmas celebration on this day as well as receiving gifts (granted anyone had any money leftover from Christmas to give me a gift) which were always, ALWAYS wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper. As an adult, it’s not an issue unlike when I was a kid. And since I had the privilege of being in labor all day on my 24th birthday with Wheat in 2000, I am now always consumed on my birthday with not only some sort of Christmas celebration but also planning my eldest son’s birthday party which is the day after mine. Again, as an adult, this is how I prefer my birthdays are spent. But for my son, I always make sure he has a very unique and special day set apart from any sort of Christmas celebration and that NONE of his gifts are ever wrapped in snowman or Santa Claus paper. (also understanding he will likely not be so dramatic with these things and make them an issue like I did since he is male)
Nonetheless, today is chock full of two Christmas celebrations…the first being at my mother’s here with all my siblings and all nine grandchildren and at noon we will travel to Jason’s home town to be with his family. So today, our beloved Lake, knowing what was in store and with much excitement, moseyed into the kitchen where Jason was brewing our coffee. Jason says to Lake, “When your mom gets out of the shower, you be sure to tell her Happy Birthday because today is her birthday”. Looking very stunned and at the same time confused, Lake replied “Is she Jesus?” (This is the part where you imagine me and Jesus standing side by side and insert the fist bump between us both).
I have to make a note to my amazing husband who always tries to make sure my birthday is still special in some way (even in the midst of my disapproval) and always surprises me with gifts and/or handmade cards from the boys. I love you, minsnack!
And lastly, a big phat Congrats to my little bro (who be starvin’ like Marvin and needs his roast beef) and his amazing wife for the little seed they planted 7 or so weeks ago for which they announced to us all today (enter a grandmother, 3 sisters and 2 brother-in-laws crying like a bunch of babies and hugging while all 9 grandkids stood around extremely puzzled and freaked out). Becoming an Aunt never gets old, even the 7th time around. 
