Tiny Talk Tuesday

Jacob: "Mom, I saw a commercial on TV, and the man said if you love your kids you will buy them an i*Phone, an X-box, and three sixties."

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Last summer, Kloe and Jacob set up a little stand in our front yard to sell lemonade. And rocks. Not ON the rocks.....just AND rocks. You know, 'cause they so naturally go together. They called my cousin and asked him if he would like to come over and buy some lemonade from their stand. When my cousin arrived, Jacob - slick little salesman that he is - was pointing out the finer points of the rocks he had for sale, and my cousin was picking out the ones he wanted to buy.

Jacob asked him, "Do you want to buy some rocks? Or do you just want to give me your money?"

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Last fall Jacob played football for the first time. When we signed up for football, they were doing physicals at the same time as the sign-ups. This year, he has decided that he wants to play soccer instead (he's played before). So last week when we went to sign up for soccer, I just handed the lady our form and a check, and then we left. As we were leaving, Jacob asked, "That's it? They're not even going to hammer my knees or anything?" :)

I'm Off....

....to the State PTA Convention in Austin, with a few of my friends and fellow PTA officers.

Have a great weekend!

What you might find....Part 2

Every time I wash a load of jeans, I get a good chuckle from the treasures I find in Jacob's pockets. Remember this?

This week's haul:



* one mini plastic kaleidoscope
* one tube of cherry flavored Chapst*ck (wasn't this same tube in the last laundry day post?)
* also one tube of cherry flavored Carm*x
* one Spiderm*n tatoo
* one green army man
* one carabiner compass from Sonic
* one packet of BBQ sauce from McD's (?? - he doesn't even eat this)
* one (used) blue popsicle stick
* one blue sticky bug
* two dum-dum suckers
* three yellow starbursts
- - {cue singing} - -
* and a sil-ver-er sher-er-ifff baaaadge

YO!

After Kloe's trip to Dallas with Grandma a week or so ago (still need to blog about that), Jacob got to have his turn this week. While he was gone, we upheld our family tradition of celebrating with food. :)

We have a new Cup of Yo that just opened here, and since we've never eaten there we thought we'd give it a try.



Isn't this a cute little place?



Mmmmmm, so yummy. Have you tried it yet? My favorite was the blueberry sorbet. Kloe loved the pink lemonade sorbet, and The Mister chose his old standby - chocolate. Toppings galore, fresh fruit, sauces, whipped cream....everything your little heart (and hips) could desire.

Sure am glad frozen yogurt is fat free! ;)

A Return to Obsession

I used to be a total TV junkie. Several years ago, there were three or four (or five) TV shows that I watched faithfully. You know, as in, "Gotta go, it's time for my show," or, "My show's on. Call me back during a commercial," or, "No, I don't want to go get ice cream, my show's on." (that's when you know it's serious). We're talking loooong ago, like Once and Again, Providence, Ed (anyone remember that one?), and of course, ER. One by one, they all got canceled. Truly, I'm convinced that God canceled them all so I would get off my duff and rejoin the real world.

Since then I've been very intentional about not getting caught up in any other shows. I live in a house with a few people who, um, are a little obsessed really like TV a lot, and so I've had to really watch myself. I don't sit down and watch TV (except movies), even though it's on all.the.time. at our house. I don't watch American Idol, Biggest Loser, Big Brother, or The Bachelor/ette. Not Survivor. Not The Office. Not Desperate Housewives or any of the CSIs. I've seen Grey's Anatomy exactly once. And I never saw one single episode of Lost. I know. Please don't shun me.

I did start watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition about a year ago. Ok, so that's one.

But then.

But then....one of the shows that began to appear pretty regularly on our TV every week - same bat time, same bat channel (apparently I've had these obsessions since childhood) - was Castle. And I would catch snippets of it while I was doing the dishes, or folding laundry, or, you know, dusting the entertainment center while it was on.

And then suddenly I found myself staying tuned for the scenes from next week's episode, and double checking the time and channel. And I may have even planned my schedule around it a few times once. I got totally wrapped up in the whole obvious tension between Castle and Beckett.

And.....I got totally wrapped up in the whole obvious question. Is it? Or isn't it? I would watch with squinty eyes, analyzing and examining and pondering. I think it was over half way through the season before I finally realized that Richard Castle is not Jas0n Bateman.

After all, I had never heard of Nathan Filli0n.

And I was totally out of touch with the TV world.

And the last time I saw Jas0n Bateman, he looked like this:



And now? Well, do you see why I was confused?



They totally look alike, don't you agree?

There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard.

New digital camera, because now I HAVE to have one: $179

Airline tickets: $340

Renewed passport: $100 (thanks to my Monday shenanigans)

Fun new summer wardrobe: $250 (ha - I'm totally making that up)

New designer luggage: $499 (HAhahahaha, SO making that up)

Shopping money for the trip: $200

Extra day of babysitting: $20 (she's cheap, but she's good!)

Losing 5 more pounds before I leave: 560,000 calories

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Winning a FREE cabin on the Premier Christian Cruises Girl's Get-away Cruise.......PRICELESS!!

Guess what I did yesterday.

I got my passport renewed.

Prices go up today.

After an hour and a half of racing around town, trying to stay ahead of the crowds, finding one closed place after another....it got to be quite amusing. First I went to the post office. The line was out the door and the man in front of me said, "They just came out and said there's no way they'll get to everyone before they close." Great.

On to the second post office. Got there right at closing time, and the man in front of me said, "They just told me I'm the last one they're going to take today. You can go to the court house - they're open until 5:00 - but you have to have your own pictures if you go there. You can get pictures at Wal.green's, it only takes 8 minutes." Great.

Another woman and I take off to Wal.green's. I don't know where it is, so I follow her, tearing through town like a mad woman. Slide into the Wal.green's parking lot on two wheels at 4:10. There are already 3 people in line when we get there - that makes 4 with the lady I was following. Four people times 8 minutes = 32 minutes. A teenage boy waiting in line is kind enough to look up the location of the courthouse for me on his i*Phone. Fortunately the girl printing the pictures works fast, and by 4:37 I am on my way.

Arrive at the courthouse shaking after slamming my car over several speed bumps. Jump in line at 4:45. Wait. I don't have a form. Crud. Ten minutes to fill out the form, and back in line at 4:55. MADE IT! Whew!

So what was all that about? Well, the local news decided to announce THE NIGHT BEFORE the last day, that passport fees are going up on Tuesday. Everyone and their dog who might possibly ever in their life want a passport thought it would be a wise idea to get one before the price increase.

And why would I need a passport? Hmmmm, where could I be going?
Any guesses?
(nope, not going to Africa to adopt a baby....but I wish I was!....at least now I'll be ready if God ever gives me the go-ahead!)

Miscellaneous ramblings.

Just because you're my friends, and this is what I would talk about if you called me on the phone. :)

• Kloe and the Mister have been out of town all weekend. Kloe left on Thursday with her Grandma, headed for her uncle's house in Arkansas. The Mister left on Friday to meet up with them there. They will both be back tomorrow night. Here's Kloe's favorite part of the trip:
  
  
  
  Ahhhh, Grandmas! And here's The Mister's favorite part of the trip:
  
  
  
  Jacob and I have been living it up since they've been gone. We've been to Chuckeeeeee Cheese's (for games only, not food), roller skating, watched an instant-download Netfl*x movie, and had dinner out twice.


• For one of our dinners out, we ate at Double Dave's for the first time last night. I know. It's my new favorite pizza place.


• Woke up with a nasty crick in my neck this morning. Ugh.


• My yard is green green green thanks to all the rain we've gotten in the last week. Unfortunately, also thanks to all the rain, the weeds are running rampant.


• I've had my bread machine sitting on the kitchen table for the past 2 (or is it 3?) days, because it's been so long since I've used it, I forgot you have to use bread flour - not all purpose flour - and I don't have any.


• Going to put my new sewing machine to use today. Jacob asked me if I would make him a police officer costume. He's the dressin-uppest kid I've ever seen. Cowboy. Doctor. Scientist. Secret agent. Spy (which apparently is different that a secret agent). Pilot. Sp*derman. And some odd conglomeration of Indiana Jones and an entomologist. Maybe I'll do a post about that someday, with photos.


• I'm going to start a new "home binder" system that I saw here, in hopes of bringing some sense of order to the paper tiger that currently terrorizes my home. I will NOT be making 14 binders - or however many it is she uses. For now I'm trying ONE.


• I love, love, love these prints from Red Letter Words.
  
  
  
  Don't you love them? I'm thinking surely I can make some for less than $165, don't ya think? A little paint and some canvases on sale at Hobby Lobby.... The only thing I can't figure out is how to make the letters. My MIL does have a Cri.cut, but I really like the way the words are all different sizes, and I'm worried I wouldn't be able to get them all to fit right without using $165 worth of vinyl. Hmmm, food for thought. Anyone have any ideas how to make it work? If so, please share!

Do you have a good system for organizing papers?
Ever used a bread machine?
Any ideas for making the words fit on my canvases?
I'd love to hear from you!

Family Night - Rainbows

In light of the torrential downpours we endured enjoyed for four straight days over the 4th of July weekend, and in honor of the sun finally coming out on Monday, we had Rainbow Family Night on Tuesday night. I'm telling you, you really can make a family night theme out of anything.

I found lots of fun rainbow ideas at Kaboose Crafts and BirthdayPartyIdeas.com (I use them for a lot of family night ideas).

We started by making a slightly less-cute version of this rainbow cake, that I actually first heard about on my friend Jenni's blog. We used a regular white (oops, I think I may have used yellow, but it worked) cake mix, divided it into six equal parts, and added gel food coloring (liquid won't work) to make the colors of the rainbow.



We each layered the batter colors in our own little glass baking dish.





Umm, oops....a bit too much batter I guess. We had rainbow volcanoes.



And I forgot that the original cake was actually baked in layers, with frosting in between. Oops. It did look way prettier than ours. But look! Didn't these turn out cool? I think it was more fun to see the different patterns in each one.



While the cakes were baking, we made this rainbow ice cream by alternating layers of softened vanilla ice cream with various flavors of jell0 powder.



Kinda blurry, but it came out really pretty! And fun, but oh. so. sweet.



While the ice cream was re-freezing, we attempted to paint rainbow quesadillas with the leftover food coloring gel. It actually worked pretty well, but for some reason Kloe and Jacob wanted to paint bullseyes on theirs (???) instead of rainbows.



And this odd picture is lemonade with blue ice cubes. It turned green as the ice cubes melted. :)



After dinner we made what were supposed to be rainbow hats, but we didn't put enough streamers on them so they actually looked more like thinning clown hair.



Wanna guess how we ended the night? Go ahead, I bet you can guess! I was looking back through our old Family Night posts and had to laugh at how many times we've done scavenger hunts. I guess it's my stand-by when I can't come up with any other activities. So this time we went searching for the rainbow! We colored strips of paper to make two rainbows, then each of the kids had their own clues to find all the pieces of their rainbow.







Once they had each found all their pieces, they had to put them together in the right order, then use the numbers written on the back of the pieces to decipher the code to open the lock on....



The Pot of Gold, of course!



FUN family night....even with exploding volcano cakes, too-sweet ice cream, bullseye quesadillas, clown-hair hats, and a red, polka-dotted pot of gold! So thankful family nights don't have to be perfect!

Five for Friday

I know, I know. I just can't seem to get my Five for Fridays on the right day. I promise I'll try to work on that. :)

1. Kloe and I were batchin' it (I have no idea how to spell that word, much less if it's legal to use it in reference to girls) last week, as The Mister was out of town on business, and Jacob went to spend a few days with my mom. We took advantage of the time alone and enjoyed dinner out at this fun place.
   
   
   
   
   
   I know that last picture looks like the guy sitting across from us was on fire, but really it was the onion "volcano" on the grill that was burning.
   
   It was the first time either Kloe or I had eaten there, and we had a lot of fun. Even though Kloe was afraid she was going to catch on fire. :) And...she was the only girl at our table who caught the piece of food the chef was trying to flip into everyone's mouths!


2. On Friday, the kids and I took a little road trip to a fun water park in a town a couple of hours away. And I forgot my camera. Great. Practically the only fun thing we've done together this summer and I have no pictures! We did have an awesome time, though. The kids loved the lazy river and the whirl pool; I loved that it is indoors AND heated! We're hoping to go again before the end of summer, so hopefully I can post pictures next time!


3. Flossing update: I went to the dentist last week, and the hygienist said I take "really good care" of my teeth. Yay! This is the only New Year's resolution goal I am still doing, so yay! On the down side, the dentist said I need to get braces again. Really? Really? Weren't 3 years of misery, embarrassment, and torture in my tween years enough? Yuck. I told Kloe what the dentist said, and she just slowly shook her head back and forth. "No?" I asked. "You're too old," she said. Thanks, sweetie, that makes it better.


4. Look what my mom bought me!
   
   
   
   I've been wanting a sewing machine FOR.EV.ER. I've asked for one for every birthday and Christmas for I don't know how many years. I'm so excited! Not that I'll be whipping out all my home decor or my children's wardrobes any time soon, but I'm excited nonetheless. There are so many times I've thought, "Ugh! If I only had a sewing machine!" ....and now I do! Yay!


5. I am lovin this lately. Have you tried it?