Family Time and Lord of the Flies- It's All PG-13

Well it's been a crazy few weeks. We went to the every-other-year Brady family reunion at the end of June and had a great time. I always love hanging out with Husband's cousins and seeing the kids all hang out together. Altogether we're almost 100 people with half of those being kiddos. It's always really fun and somewhat exhausting.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Mr.Yuke(4) finding his BEST BUDDY Mr.J.T.(5) and spending every single minute together. Mr.J.T.(5) has a rule at his house that he can't visit friends/they can't visit him if his mom doesn't know their parents. He was shocked and then overjoyed to discover that I KNOW HIS MOM!!!!! so Mr.Yuke(4) can come over. !!!! I said, "Sure. SOMEtime. Not tomorrow. Not this year. But SOMEtime."
Mr.Yuke(4) didn't miss a beat: Yeah! I know! Like maybe when I'm PG-13 THEN I could go there!!!!!
They made plans to "be best buddies until [they] DIE. And after too."

CousinPA put together a funniest home videos night that had a special tribute to Husband's Grandma who you may remember left us the same week I lost the twins. It was really beautiful and had that "Let me go home" song on it that I love so much. Everyone was in tears. It was great. The woman lived a very full life. I told Husband later that I hope I live even half that full. (With this many kiddos that may be unavoidable. : ) )

They had a BIG GI-NORMOUS INFLATABLE WATERSLIDE on the first day. No, seriously. It was BIG.

We do a generations dinner one of the nights. I LOVE that. This year the grandparents all went out at 5:30 while us parents took our kids swimming in the hotel pool to get them tired, fed them fast food, and got them ready for bed so that the Grandparents could watch them at the hotel when they got back while we went out to dinner. We went to Chili's and had a great time. My favorite part of the evening was when SingerGirl told us an Emily Watts story. Essentially the story was about a trip Emily Watts took to Vegas and the intimidation she felt in hanging out in her bathing suit at the casino pool next to all the bronze hard-bodies. She ended up deciding that she would do them all the service of having someone to look better than in order for them to feel good about themselves. Charitable, no? Well at this point NotAFuddyDuddy says, "You know, I guess I always thought- it's not like people don't know what I look like. I'm not going to take off my clothes and they're going to go- 'OH MY GOSH!!! She's FAT!!!!! I had NO idea!' I thoroughly enjoyed that. Hopefully the humor wasn't just limited to her delivery of it.

The day after the reunion was over, we spent the day in one of our country's beautiful National Parks, just the eight of us. (Hee hee. That sounds funny.) Anyway, it was just us. It was really nice. We saw some beautiful scenery, hiked to a watertrickle, went to a museum, and drove THROUGH a mountain. MonsterTruck(3) got heat exhaustion and we didn't know the extent of it until that night as we were making the road trip back home when he started HALLUCINATING. I am not kidding. I'm talking FULL-ON acid-trip-style freak-out. Poor little kid. He just couldn't understand why we weren't DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THIS. (!!!!!!!!!!!) He screamed bloody murder for half an hour until we got home and got him in the shower. He never was convinced that what he was seeing was not there.

He had a fever the next day so I took him to the doctor. Turns out the heat exhaustion had combined with a virus we picked up at the reunion (The Pinkiest(5) got it too) and caused an extra-special side effect. Scary.

A couple days later I got said virus. Then I felt REALLY bad for the boy. It was HORR. I. BLE. It was some sort of infection of the spinal fluid that was localized in the neck and upper back. You know that feeling when water gets up your nose? Well it was like that only in your upper spine and the base of your head. It hurt A LOT and my arms got really weak like I couldn't lift them. Luckily the terrible pain and fever only lasted about a day and a half, but the recovery took almost a week of sleeping. The three of us slept a lot when we got back.

So I finally recovered from that fun (during which time the 4th of July came and went). [You know I was sick because the 4th is my MOST FAVORITEST holiday ever and I was so tired that all I was able to blog about it was the sentence I put down there about that stupid, terrible waste of $40 we spent at the movie theater that day. SO- happy 4th everyone! Freedom is a privilege that must be carefully guarded. : )] So anyway- I recovered. The next day I thought, oh good. I can finally get up and some stuff done. I got up. I showered. I put in a load of laundry. And I got a migraine. This pretty much only happens to me when I'm pregnant (migraines, that is). It was one of the really bad ones when you can't SEE. Sight is something that I depend on pretty heavily. Like toothpaste. And underwires. I NEED to see. I laid down in bed and sent the kids to every single neighbor within 5 houses in any direction in search of a caffeinated beverage. (That is DIVINE advice from my old OB.) Nobody had anything. I had no choice but to try to sleep it off, knowing full-well the Lord of the Flies scenario that would ensue. At one point during the day I vaguely remember hearing someone yell, "Kryptonite(1) ate the WHOLE jar of jelly!" I had visions of jelly stains on every surface of the first floor as I dozed. Fortune smiled on me in the form of the ProprietoroftheAllenCafe. She had loaned me a library book and she dropped by to get it so she could return it (hopefully before any overdue fines?). I'm a little hazy on the details but I know that upon seeing my children and the state they were in (I can only imagine, having spent my day gaining an appreciation for the blind,) she asked Little Mommy(9) if I was ok and did I need any help? LittleMommy(9) promptly replied that I had a migraine and what I needed was caffeine. TheProprietoroftheAllenCafe offered to get me something on her way back from the library and LittleMommy(9) sweetly informed her that it would need to be Dr. Pepper. (She's a good kid.) That angel of a woman brought me 2 liters of Dr. Pepper and took my jelly-slathered baby home with her. I picked Kryptonite(1) up about 4 hours later when the caffeine had kicked in and I could see again. I don't know what she looked like when she left but apparently it was bad enough to neccessitate a bath. THANK YOU ALLENCAFELADY!!! YOU ARE A LIFE-SAVER! (Unfortunately I think I probably mean that literally because who KNOWS what could have happened to her before Husband came home?)

Now I am trying to hang in there for a couple more weeks until FedEx brings my Twilight book. I re-re-read the three I have but there is still a couple weeks to go. Someone give me something to read, quick!!!

Guess What?

You're it!

If you are unfamiliar with this game it is because you are lucky enough not to have gone to Disneyland with my Brother and Slugger Jr. and a bunch of other family members year before last. While we were there, Brother and Cute Sister took one of my bunch to and from the parks in their car each day, (because everyone knows that the only thing better than Disneyland is NOT riding there with your mom). Well apparently on these drives, Brother taught them all a little game I like to call "Next-Time-I-See-Him-I'm-Going-To-Hurt-Him". (My kids call it "Guess What?".)



Essentially it goes like this:

The Pinkiest(5): Hey Mommy!

Me: What?

The Pinkiest(5): You're-It!!!



Saying the word "what" has been all but banned from our household for the last year and a half because no one wants to be the dreaded "IT". My main problem with this game is that once Husband or I am "It", we are bombarded with little wannabe "Its" ALL trying to make us be "It" again, because we have stopped the game. Yesterday The Pinkiest(5) declared Husband "Quintuple IT!!!!". (Does explaining the vocabulary words like "quadruple" and "quintuple" qualify this as an educational game? Because if so, I should be on the payroll for the Board of Education in This Place That I Live. I'm pretty sure it's more than Bubba's(7) teacher is doing. Good thing he is really smart.) Anyway, there are many irritating things about this game, but the hands-down worst part is that everyone- even Monster Truck(2)- participates in this NottheBradys pasttime. And it. is. annoying.



In spite of my daily attempts to forget the whole thing exists, I thought of it ("IT!") today because- you guessed it.
I'm "IT!"
I've been tagged by This Guy. You should go to his blog at least this once. I normally don't care for cutesy animal pictures, but his pets will make you laugh out loud. Just scroll down to the cute doggies.

So back to annoying games of tag. I'm "IT". I don't know why anyone bothers to fill these things out in the first place. Does anyone actually read them? All right, I admit it. I skim them. But only if I REALLY like the person. In general though, if I see a meme posted I just move on to the next blog in my bookmarks. Why do people pass them on? I will tell you why. Because they, like some of my family members, don't have an inherent spam filter in their brains. I know that brain-inherent-spam-filter-deficiency is a problem because I know someone who forwards sappy-Christian-chain-emails. You know the emails I am talking about. Well actually, I hope you don't. Let me describe. They are the emails which curse you to remain outside the pearly gates and be selfish and not care about kids with leukemia and hate animals and small children and the person who so obviously loves you that they sent it to you if you don't immediately forward it to 15 people. Also, you should forward it back to the person who sent it to you as if they didn't actually read it before forwarding it to you. (This is entirely possible, come to think of it, because I think if they DID read it they would've done the same thing as the rest of us and deleted it when they saw the title:
"Give this heart to everyone you don't want to lose in '08 including me if you care. Try to collect 12, it's not easy!"
(I swear to you I did not make that up.) I receive these type of emails so often that at times in the past I have actually had to enter my own family members into my SPAMblocker. True story. And there you have it.

Well, I will fill this out. I am going to do my part for the earth (thus filling my go-green quota for the year) by NOT tagging anyone else. But I will fill it out- if only because I feel honored to have been tagged. And I think I have just stumbled onto the answer to my own question. People fill these out because IT IS AN HONOR.
Hee hee.

Without Further Ado-

4 Things

4 Jobs I've Had
1. Poop Patrol... I worked as a CNA in a nursing home for a couple of years. Funny how some people find their callings early in life. Excuse me while I go change [another] diaper.
2. Begging For Money... I worked as a fund-raiser for That College I Sometimes Go To, calling Alumni and continuously asking for donations until they finally caved and pledged something.
3. Grocery Store Checker
4. Executive Assistant/Customer Service Training Course Developer... because of my excellent people skills.

4 Movies I Watch Over and Over
1. Tommy Boy... "We're family! We're going to be doing lots of dumb stuff together."
2. Multiplicity... "Hi Thsteve! Come on up! I'm thspittin' on bugs."
3. Fools Rush In... Don't ask me why. I don't have a good answer. Mostly because I don't have to "watch" it to watch it. I get a lot done with that one on.
4. Elf... "And now I'm here...singing a song...to my dad...but you didn't know that I was born...but I'm here now...and I love youIloveyouILOVEYOOOUUUUU!"
"Call security."

4 Places I Have Lived
1. This Place That I Live In
2. That Place With That College I Sometimes Go To
3. Arizona (It's the armpit of the country. Really. Smell IT.)
4. Oregon (Do you hear the Heavenly Choir singing?)

4 TV Shows I Watch
1. I don't have T.V. cuz I live in what Technogeeks refer to as a "shadow". That means it is a sucky vortex of all signals of any kind except for one-spanish channel-kind-of-fuzzy-and-that's-only-if-you-have-bunny-ears. Not even AM radio makes it here. I do watch The Office on DVD with Brother whenever I go home. Good times.

4 Places I Have Been
1. Hawaii. LOVE.IT.
2. British Columbia, Canada... toured there. It's beautiful. I liked the ferry rides. Buchardt Gardens is awesome, all tacky billboards to the contrary.
3. Tombstone, Arizona... If you like the movie, don't go there.
Mr. Yuke(4) just said: Guess what mom?
Me (like an idiot that hasn't just been sitting here blogging about this): What?
Mr Yuke(4): You're IT!!! Miss Preschool Teacher said it's April Fools and we have to go home and play a joke on our moms and dads and that's a good joke. Smug smile of satisfaction.
4. Stuck in an elevator in the Tacoma Sheraton for 3 hours after it had dropped about 50 floors

4 People Who Email Me Regularly
1. My Own Personal Dharma... okay, well maybe not regularly. But really, I'm more of a phone person.
2. Blogger [New Comment on...]
3. Previously Mentioned Family Member
4. Father-in-law

4 Favorite Things to Eat
1. Anything with lots of cheese and garlic. Olive Garden is very good for this.
2. Bruschetta from La Vigna- SO.GOOD. Get some.
3. Stir-fry anything that won't kill me
4. Soft, chewy cookies

4 Places I'd Rather Be
1. Getting a massage at a spa
2. Accepting my winnings from a drawing for a million dollars
3. That College I Sometimes Go To
4. The Bookstore

4 Things I Look Forward to This Year
1. Camping. Actually, WARM WEATHER. THAT STAYS. Then Camping.
2. Husband's family reunion. I always enjoy that. He has roughly 63thousand cousins, all of whose company I enjoy immensely.
3. Losing the baby-baby-baby-baby weight before getting pregnant again. (Hey, I can dream, can't I?)
4. Teaching Steve how to count to four.

4 People to Tag
1. Not
2. Gonna
3. Do
4. It

If you actually read the entire thing, consider yourself tagged by default. Just leave 'em in the comments or else put a link to your own post there.

Bears, Celebrity Death Match, and Dominoes

We just got back from a family reunion. It was what all family reunions are. Fun, all in all, but fun with a backdrop of the up-close and personal look at exactly what you were escaping when you took that plunge and, risking life, jumped from the nest. It was far too short, actually. The reunion, not the jump. The time FLEW by. Let me tell you about some of the stuff I was NOT escaping when I left home.

We spent two of the days out camping. This was a bit of a worry for my kids, especially The Pinkiest (4). It did not help that a bear actually ate a kid near where we live one week before we left for the reunion. In spite of my trying to shield them from this information, my kids found out about it from their friends. Shielding kids from stuff never works. They will still come face to face with whatever it is eventually. Someone should inform the Jehovah's Witnesses of this. Teacher actually had one student this year whose parents wanted Teacher to pretend that Martin Luther King is not celebrated on his birthday but that it is just a day on which we happen to honor him. Like that child is somehow never going to find out that Martin Luther King Day is the date of his birth. As if. These are the same people who somehow believe that if they insist entire school districts bend to their way of doing things their (I can only assume SLOW) children will somehow be protected from knowledge of the evil practice of holiday observance. Does calling it a "winter party" instead of a Christmas party and using no decorations that might or might not be traditionally used to decorate for said holiday change the fact that Christmas is being celebrated by a large segment of the population and these same prohibited decorations are in every store, post office, bank, and street for at least two months. Who do they think they are fooling? Are their kids really that dumb? Or do they keep them in their houses for those five months until Jim Bob finally takes his Christmas lights down in March? It should be called "Politcal Buncha Crap". There is nothing correct about it. But I digress. Shielding kids from stuff never works. Learning about child-eating animals "in the woods" meant that The Pinkiest was not going to be able to sleep "in the woods" until her Father promised to bring his guns with him. Which meant I was not able to sleep, knowing there were weapons around not locked up. Ok. That is an exaggeration. I sleep no matter what. Typhoon, earthquake, crying baby, midterm. But I was concerned. Granted, they weren't loaded, and the kids didn't know where they were, but it still worried me.

My Cute Sister bought the kids bug catching nets and houses which were such a hit that they are still talking about them. (This is a long time in kid years. Attention spans for these sorts of things usually maxes out around 2 days.) The bug catching kept them busy and Bubba (6) still hasn't forgiven me for not allowing him to bring a bug home and feed it. The fun really got going when Brother taught the kids how to host a celebrity death match bug-style and put a red ant and a spider into a magnifying jar together. (Interestingly enough, we all thought that ant was toast. In actuallity, the ant killed the spider in about 5 minutes. I'm sharing this scientific discovery to assauge the guilt I feel over watching it happen.)

The campfire was lovely. The second day Teacher thought we didn't have enough firewood so she bought two more bundles from the campground host. Brother, who believed we were all up too late the night before, decided that he was going to burn through that wood in the same amount of time that it would have taken without it, and built a fire that we could have fired ceramics on. I swear we sat so far away from it that we could just sort of see it in the distance and don't even get me started on how painful roasting marshmallows was. I think I nearly cooked my face. (Just kidding, Brother! It was a good fire.) Well anyway, when the firewood was gone all us girls were not ready to be done with fire, so Cute Sister and I went looking for sticks. We came back and threw them on the dying embers in a fashion that would have made any boyscout ashamed to admit to knowing us. The fire brightened back up and we sat and enjoyed it for two whole minutes before we needed more sticks. We repeated this process a number of times all the while being mocked by those less enthusiastic than ourselves. (Hey, it was dark.) Then Teacher lugged an uprooted tree stump over to the fire and we were able to sit and enjoy the fire until it died out. I would describe how the stump was too big for the fire-ring and was sort of precariously balanced on the metal part and how we prayed we weren't going to start a forest fire, but I couldn't do it justice.

We managed to make it home without poison oak, forest fire, or death by man-eating bear so the camping trip was a success. We did not however, make it home without either pee all over the tent or the flu. Mr.Yuke (3) recently learned the joy of peeing out of doors at the father-and-sons campout. I think Dad may have left out some of the finer points in the instruction stage. Like don't pee uphill from the tent, don't pee from the tent, don't pee toward the tent, etc. What a mess. It was not fun to clean up but luckily only one of us was sick at that point. Poor hubby had to help me take down tents inbetween bouts of throwing up. What fun. The rest of us went like dominoes over the next several days. In spite of all the sickness, the reunion was great. Cute Sister did a wonderful job planning it. We'll go again. But maybe next time we'll be a little more prepared- with a target. Think about it.