100 Day School Celebration

I have a smart son.

Today, Jack showed me his 100 day celebration artwork he made at school. He was proud of his 100 boxes of M & Ms he declared he could "eat" and I laughed at his wit when he drew a picture of what he will look like when he is 100 ( a mound of dirt and a gravestone ).

Then, with enthusiasm, he showed me the picture of what he wanted the most. 100 toys to go with the 100 bedrooms in the house with our 100 kids.

Come again?


I laughed. He was serious. I think..........

I told him I know we already have "100 toys" because I seem to be the only one who knows how to pick them up. I then tried to break it to him very gently that we would not have 100 kids let alone a 100 bedroom house.

I was impressed with his optimism when he said we already had 4 kids so......
"We could have them in sets of two. No....TRIPLETS! No WAIT! Uh, Mom.....what is 'four'?"

"Quadruplets?"

"Yeah! Or you could have them five at a time!"

"That's quintuplets honey. And six would be sextuplets and seven septuplets!" You learn these terms when you grow up in a family with multiples. Anything more than "twins" is considered a swear word and you may be struck down for even suggesting such things.

His eyes grew bigger and bigger with excitement as he anxiously danced around actually believing this was all possible. I wasn't prepared to have a birds and bees talk with my six year old with Dora blaring in the background. I just told him I was too old to have 100 kids then continued......

"And eight would be octuplets! And after that, I have no idea what it's called. Insanity maybe?"

Here I was thinking this was just a fun little math lesson until I realized he was really serious. So I asked him who would change all of those stinky diapers?

Being the smart, quick-wit child, he replied, rather quickly I might add, "Lauren can!"

I heard a stunned, "HUH?" in the background then got the impression Lauren wasn't too thrilled with this plan.

Jack then said, "Yeah! Lauren wants to learn to change diapers." And then he was gone..........

Told you he was smart......

10th Anniversary at Disneyland

We had a GREAT time! And note to self.........never EVER go to Disneyland again unless it is in the month of January. And while our anniversary technically isn't until April 1st, we figured we'd take the opportunity to go now since I'll be immobile when our real anniversary comes around.

We stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel right off of California Adventure. This was the lobby:

And this was our view of Downtown Disney:

And this dude from the ESPN restaurant, I swear, was Drake's twin:

In either case, they are both in need of a serious haircut. It was a crack up to watch him make his finger gestures I'm guessing directing people where the nearest exits were......

This is us right before our River Rapids ride. I was the lucky one to get the most wet and my hair wasn't the same the rest of the day:

Trying to get a shot of Main Street USA:

Until a nice lady came along and offered to take it for us:

I think we spent the most time on the Toy Story Mania ride. Kirk got the third highest score on one of our days there. I was ranked #5 on the Buzz Lightyear ride with my lightening fast laser speed action: And no, there is no shame in beating scores of the two year olds in line. If they can't stand the heat.....maybe they ought to stick with the Dumbo ride.

I got one of these:

While Kirk played Toy Story Mania with the dude who holds the high score. He got a few pointers then tried to hide those pointers from me until I pointed out that he looked like a cat with a canary in its mouth. He spilled a couple.......I'll share one with you: If you pop all of the balloons in the clouds together and within the same time, rainbow balloons will fall down worth 2000 points each. Just so you know.....

We had a lot of fun. It wasn't long after we got home and heard the first set of whining and complaining that we were shocked back into reality again. At least our Cokes are cheaper in the "real" world.......

I Don't have time for this!

I really need to be careful what I do and say around the kids.

The other day, I was frustrated that Erik couldn't get his act together when we needed to be out the door..... like yesterday. This, by the way, is typical. He wouldn't get dressed then when he did, it was slopped on by his semi-nutritious breakfast of Cinnamon Toast Crunch which meant going upstairs for a new outfit just to later discover he also didn't know where he put his shoes. Typical. And being typical, the typical response by myself is, "I don't have TIME for this!"

So, what does my three year old say to me when he didn't want to stop playing his video game? "MOM! I don't have TIME for this!"

Ok. I deserved that one.


The night before Kirk and I were leaving for our 10th anniversary get-a-way, I was doing laundry. That's not the typical part....... I was also trying to get little kids ready for bed. Typically, I throw their pj's over the stairs railing if I'm not quite ready to go downstairs that way they will be waiting for me when I am.

Typically, this trick works great. Not-so-typically, my youngest caught me and thought he would "help". The contents of a clean and folded basket ( sometimes typical but usually not ) were thrown over the railing.

And typically, I had to get a picture so I could blog it. My second most popular phrase?

"Not HELPING!"

Things to remember for next Christmas

1. Pay someone a million dollars to cut out the toys from their obnoxious, over-kill packaging.

2. If no one takes me up on my million dollar offer, be sure to at least wear gloves and keep naughty words to a minimum.

3. Don't put out my cute, breakable Christmas decorations.

4. Teach Ian that glass ornament balls are not to be used for throwing.

5. Buy more ceramic glue to fix said broken decorations.

6. Hide fudge from Erik.

7. Outside lights really aren't a necessity. Candles in the front windows work just fine.

8. The kids don't like mint flavored hot chocolate. Freaks of nature.

9. Karaoke machine from Craigslist = huge hit. Must buy more CDs

10. Ignore Christmas etiquette by leaving decorations up past Valentine's Day.