Monday, September 28, 2009

Lizzy

"Lizzy, why did you put on your brother's jacket, which is too small for you, only to push up the sleeves because it's too hot?"



"pecause... i wanted to."



And that's pretty much how Lizzy rolls. You try saying "no" to those eyes.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Thursday

Have I mentioned that Brent has started school again?

Brent has started school again.

He's going back to get his MBA and while I'm not jazzed about all the work that it takes, it's just one of those things that we have to do, lot's of people have to do it, it's best just to get it over with. Fortunately for me, when deciding on a program, my husband decided to put our needs first and ended up going to the University of Phoenix.

**side note**

I recall a friend coming to me in college and asking me exactly what she was supposed to say to someone who told her that they were attending the University of Phoenix. Having recently been in the same uncomfortable situation, I knew exactly what to say.

"Oh! That must be really good for your schedule!"

And you know what? I was right. It IS really is good for our schedule. Brent only takes one class at a time... and only has to be in class one night a week... and he should be done in a little over a year... and then he'll have a degree... from the University of Phoenix. A more practical than prestigious route, but we're kinda over prestige right now.

So anyway, tonight was Brent's night for school.

And even though he's only actually gone one night a week, I dread Brent's school night. Allow me to remind you that I consider myself to be completely emotionally unstable and everyday it feels as though I can only hang on to my wits for so long. Then, right as I'm about to loose it, Brent always walks through the door and saves us all from one my frequent mental break downs. Does anyone else think that right before dinner is the hardest part of the day? Waking up in the morning and knowing that there won't be anyone to save me at 5:30 makes me want to just pull the covers over my head and pretend that I don't have kids (that I really do love very very much).

But somehow, I tend to pull through on school nights. Perhaps it's just knowing that I'm on my own or maybe it's the Lord having mercy on my fragile self, but it usually seems as though I deal with the day and the kids a lot better on school nights (i really like calling them school nights. i've also found that i enjoy asking brent 'what he learned in school today' when he gets home. i'm willing to entertain the possibility that i might be lame.)

After losing out on picking up carpool to Jana, I was the big winner and got to have Jane's friends over for most of the afternoon. You should all be so lucky to have friends that make you feel as though these things are a contest. They were great all day, and I was able to be super productive.

And when it was dinner time, instead of breaking down and screaming at each other, with the exception of Lizzy who was really very tired, we decided to enjoy ourselves. Lizzy brought out the camera and Jane wanted to take photos of our 5 buck pizza picnic in the back yard. It had originally been scheduled for the front yard with an accompanying bike ride, but the neighbor's pug roaming free in the circle was more than Jane's nerves could tolerate.









Jane insisted that I take a photo her "gold tooth"

How many 5 year olds do you know who have crowns? How about 2 crowns? Because in addition to the 'gold tooth' on the right, you may notice the massive cavity on the left side of her mouth. That one will be crowned on Monday. I might be the worst mother ever. I swear we brush he teeth with her every day. I swear. Don't judge me, the dentist's office has done enough of that this week. The upshot is that Jane thinks it's really cool... so we have that going for us.

And I got the kids all bathed and in bed early so that I could enjoy a night of really good TV and blogging.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Charlie at one

So that some day, down the road I have no problem remembering Chas and his personality at a year...













That should cover it.

Saying that everyone in the family loves Charlie would be an understatement. We're all infatuated with him.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

One

Happy 1st Birthday Charlie. It's been a good year.



(Unfortunately, your mommy's current state of 'stand by' mode is preventing her from giving you the post you deserve, so stay tuned for a more sentimental one.)

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Ah reading, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

I've been sucked in by mi famlia and feel an overwhelming desire to prove to you how much (read: little) I've read in my lifetime.

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (X)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible - (x) (does skipping around count?)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ( ) *
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ( )
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( )
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ( )
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ( ) **
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (X)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ( )
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (X)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (x)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ( )
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( )
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ( )
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( )
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (x)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (X)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ( )
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ( )
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (X)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (X)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ( x)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ( )
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne ( )
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ( )
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ( )
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ( )
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ( )
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding ( )
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ( )
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ( )
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ( )
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (X)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ( )
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-Mark Haddon ( )
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ( )
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ( )
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ( )
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( )
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (X)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ( ) ***
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
76 The Inferno - Dante ( )
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (X)
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ( )
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (X)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (x)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( )
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ( )
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ( )
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ( )
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ( )
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ( )
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (X)

I'm at 28 and several halves. This gives me some ideas since I'm in need of a new book. Then I will also be able to add numbers to my list and give the impression that I'm a well read/well rounded person. It IS a contest, right? ;)

*There are two pieces of advice that I have clear recollections of my mom giving me. She told me never to read Wuthering Heights and never to watch Psycho. I was in middle school on both counts and I'm kinda proud to say that I've never read/watched either simply because my mom told me not to. I'm about to give into the whole Wuthering Heights thing though. I feel like I'm missing out on hating it with the rest of the world.

** My mom also told me never to read Catcher in the Rye. And I haven't read that one either. When I was in 11th grade, it was assigned reading and my mom called the school and told them that I wasn't allowed. I read Pride and Prejudice instead... for the thousandth time. Ya, I aced that project, impressing my easily impressed teacher with my apparent vast knowledge of English literature, and then proceeded to name my children after it. I might have some issues.

*** As a little kid (think like 2nd or 3rd grade) I pulled Dracula off of my dad's shelf in his bedroom and when I saw the cover, I was so terrified of it that I immediately threw it under his dresser. Have you ever seen the cover? It's seriously creepy. I would go back from time to time to make sure it was still there. I don't know what I thought, maybe that it would come to life and haunt me in my room or something. I'm scared of it to this day and I can't even think about reading it. I really want to buy Pride and Prejudice... and Zombies, but I won't for fear that the same thing might happen to Jane.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

It's been too long

I haven't posted in... a while. I hate it when the blogs I read don't have new posts, especially the blogs I stalk. Don't get me wrong, I want to know what's going on with everyone I know and love, but there's something so enticing about blog stalking. I want those blogs updated like 5 times a day so that I know every tiny little detail about the lives of these people I've never met. It's my own G-rated version of thrill seeking. I'm a deviant like that.

Anyway, I haven't posted because I really haven't had time (lame excuse) and quite frankly, I don't have time now, so I'm just going to leave you with one quick picture because it's just so darn cute.



Until next time.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

THAT was harder than I thought it would be

Today was the day. Jane started kindergarten. And much to my dismay, I'm a bit shook up about it. What is WITH me? I hate all these sentimental feelings I'm having lately. They're really cramping my style. It's not that I'm sad that she's gone or that she's getting bigger. I think that it's more that it's a change. I'm so happy for her, she's SO ready for this

I took so many photos that they REALLY could speak for themselves.





This is Abby. You may recognize her from posts like the tea party birthday, dance recitals and random kids at play posts.



Oh, ya! Lizzy was up until about 1:00 in the morning screaming and crying and scratching and climbing in bed with us, so she stayed home to sleep in.












And then, as quickly and mysteriously as she arrived, she was gone.

See you at 11:25, baby.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Peachy Keen

Charlie hasn't been the easiest baby to deal with lately. I'd go so far as to say that he's been a royal pain... (fill in the blank) Brent and I have spent most of our time either carting him around, listening to him cry on the floor, listening to him cry in his bed, listening to him cry in his high chair, or trying to shove food down his throat before he can spit it back out. argh!

This morning was more of the same. I've got Ben and Davie here for part of the day this week, so this high maintainance mode of his is losing it's appeal real quick.

The kids were outside playing and I was taking the opportunity to straighten up in the kitchen. Chas was taking the opportunity to crawl around on the floor like a wounded soldier and scream at me to pick him up. I was doing my best to ignore him when it suddenly got quiet. I was pleased that he had found something to distract him momentarily. A minute later, I noticed an unusual sound coming from Charlie's direction.

"munch, munch. slurp, slurp. smack, smack."

I decided that it was probably best to figure out what he was eating, lest he try to consume the dog tag I saw kicking around a few minutes before (note, that i did NOT take the opporunity to pick up said dog tag from the floor. i'm lazy like that)

When I found him, I immediately started laughing and grabbed the camera to document his eating an entire abandoned peach.







Yes, there are 5 photos. Be thankful that I didn't post them all.

For the record, I love Charlie.