Endangered Popcicles

Last night, Seth announced, "I'm gonna eat all my dinnah, so I can have a popcicle."

"Great!" I said. I'll take what I can get.

He finished everything he needed to and earned that popcicle. I got the cicle out, unwrapped it and handed it to him.

"Ooo, an ORANGE one! Those are RAHR," he remarked. Then he took it and went outside. He laid down in the swing under the grape arbor and swung away, licking his rare popcicle.

That's my kid.

Shopping Trip II

We had no food in the house, of course. If you read my last post, you'll know why. I knew I would face the necessity of a trip to the grocery store today. I tried to pretend it was not coming. I just loved having a $50 grocery bill last week--why mess up that record with planning for the next week when the hungry hordes would be back? I lived with my fantasy grocery bill for a week, and today, I had to pay the Denial Troll that lives down the street at Hy-Vee.

Before my metaphors get any worse, I'll spare everyone and just tell you what happened. It was actually a fairly positive experience. Here's what I did:

1. Missions: I had a pad of paper, on which I printed one or two items that I needed (with GREAT specificity). I sent the two older ones off on a "mission"--they were to get the lowest price unless I gave them a specific brand to buy. This kept them busy most of the trip--plus, saved me some time shopping.

2. Separation: After a brief, unsuccessful stint sharing the seat in the car-cart, I told the younger two boys that they had to take turns with the seat. This worked out well as Seth was excited about his "missions" with Zac.

3. Fun with Scales: The boys weighed every fruit we bought. Good practice in reading scales for them, and as long as I didn't find Seth swinging from it, things were great (yes, it has happened before...)

4. Only One Store per Trip: The key. Period.

They got to ride on the horsey this time.

Trip to Searcy

On Friday, we headed south to Searcy--and our boys. Blane was as perfect a traveler as you can imagine on the way down. The boys met us excitedly at the door when we arrived and were quick to show off their Hustle Award medals, HU b-balls and T-shirts for camp and VBS.

It didn't take long for the friction to start. On Saturday morning, I was roused from our bed at 8:30 by a disturbance in the living room between Blane and Seth (eight-thirty is nothing to complain about as a mother of young children, but I was hoping for 9!) I think there is something in the dynamic of three. The g-parents said Z and S were great all week--more screaming and fights occurred over the weekend than in the entire week preceding our visit.

It was a nice, quiet weekend other than the screaming (no--really!). The boys played, Scott visited Grampy, we ate dinner at the club with Gram and had dinner with her at the house on Sat. night. Sunday service was beautiful as usual when you attend church in Searcy--heavenly choirs will be sounding like a full auditorium at College Church or Downtown, I'm sure (though, couldn't you say say that about any big C of C in a Christian college--them folks know how to sing!)

On the trip back, Blane asked me every question his little mind could think up--many. I had to read my magazines in snippets. Oh well--life is back to normal!

Color Correction (with apologies to HGTV)

I realized after looking at the blog that it is hard to really tell what color the cabinets are (they look light blue in the picture. They are actually a cool sagey gray. The wall color I had originally picked out is closer to a robin's egg blue. And the cabinet doors WILL reappear--I took them out to the garage and will paint them next week.

What I've Been Doing While the Boys are Gone

Just Scott, me and B home this week. I have taken the opportunity while the older boys are at basketball camp to paint my kitchen cabinets. I orignially was just going to paint the island and the wall. But I got hung up on the wall color and instead found a good color to paint my cabinets. I'm very pleased with the results. Here are a few pictures (yessss...we now have a digital camera!) with comments.


Here is the island and the wall color I had orignially picked out. Note that the cabinet are still that sweet, sweet 70's finish.




Now, here is the updated cabinet picture. The blue wall doesn't look so hot with the cabinets this color, so it's going to go. Maybe I'll replace it with a buttery wheat color...




Look how great the hardware looks with the cabinets!




Anyway, that's how I spent my summer break this week.

Consequence Box

The other day, when the boys and I were at Target, Blane was not in the mood for obeying. As we headed to the car to go home, I made the mistake of telling him his "consequence" was that he was going directly to bed for a nap upon arrival, so I paid for that by having to strap in a screaming, kicking preschooler with the van door shut.

He cried all the way home. When he started to wane a bit, I told him that every time he didn't listen to Mommy, he would have a consequence, or a bad thing that he didn't like, given to him. If he did what was right, he wouldn't get a consequence.

I don't know what it was in how I worded things, but for some reason, Blane tearfully asked if I would get consequences out of a box and give them to him.

(Hmmm...hadn't thought of it that way, but hey, if it works for you.. )

"Yes, Blane, I'll get my consequences out if you don't act right. If you don't obey, I will leave them in the box."

That little mental picture has worked well for him over the past week. I hope it has an expiration date sometime after the age of 18.

Swimming lessons

Zac and Seth are doing a great job with their swimming lessons. Zac had already moved to level 2 by the third day. Seth is putting his head underwater and doing a great job kicking around on the kickboard. For Seth especially, this is a big deal!

We hope to keep momentum going for them--we'll probably do a second session later in the summer. It's been a struggle for Seth especially, because he had a scary experience at the pool at age 3, but he's coming around.

Dogs and Water

Yesterday, Pam and Rachael came over with doggy Alex. The Zanders are going to Tanzania for 2 weeks and have asked us to get Alex from the kennel a few times and take him to Shawnee Mission Park's dog area to play, so Pam was going to show us the ropes. We piled everyone and Alex in the car and headed west. The dog park is an open, off-leash area which is attached to the larger Shawnee Mission Park area. Part of the lakeshore is open with a rock beach that is perfect for letting the dogs swim. We parked and let puppy Alex go. The boys loved it...we were at the crest of hilltop with a large, mulch-lined road leading across the top of it and down, with big swaths of waving Kansas prairie grass on each side (how's that for idyllic language? I didn't describe other undesirable elements lying ON the path. But to be fair, there wasn't as much of that as you would expect--they did have bags and a doggy poop disposal area. Anyway, back to our story...) There were, of course, other dogs there. The guys especially loved these two little mini dachshunds who had arrived at about the same time as us. One was just the right color for a roasted hot dog. She was very friendly and trotted along with us for a while. It made me think fondly of Pepper (my childhood weenie dog) and I got a hankering for one of those little dogs. There were also several excited Labs and some other more unusual dogs that I couldn't identify--several that looked like they had some boxer in them, but in other respects were not remotely like a boxer. We went down the road to the lakeshore, where most of the dogs had gathered. Pam had brought a tennis ball and we threw the ball in the water for Alex to fetch. The guys had a great time pitching the ball out in the lake and rewarding Alex with a treat when he brought it back. Alex slowly lost interest and we had to remind him to get the ball by throwing small rocks out towards where the ball was floating. I had to curb their rock-throwing enthusiam by reminding them not to throw the rocks out near the other dogs--that would hurt! We wandered slowly back. It was really muggy, but in only in the high 80's and the wind was blowing, so it wasn't too unpleasant. The waving prairie grass was a pleasure to watch, and the boys had fun running through it. We'll let you know how futher visits to the dog park go.

Floss

The other day, Blane was in the bathroom while I was getting ready. As usual, he is full of questions about everything. He picked up some floss and asked, "What is this?"

I told him. Then he asked, "Whose is it?"

Hoping it would satisfy him, I said, "It's mine."

"Oh," he said. "Will you get ME some floss at the store?"

Uh...okay.

Superdelagates

Last night I was folding clothes and watching Brit Hume. I went into the kitchen to do something and Blane, who was sitting at the island working with PlayDoh, said something like, "Mommy, do they have enough super-del-a-gates?"

I never in my life thought that is a word that would come out of my 3-year-old's mouth.

And...no...I am NOT spending all my days watching or listening to political coverage! But, hey, you've got to admit it's exciting, and it's not a bad thing for children to become aware of how our presidential process works.

Zac on the Big Screen

Last Friday, the Zanders offered us two tickets to the Royals game. Zac and Scott went. Scott called me in the middle of the game and told me that Zac had appeared on the big, 7-story screen at the ballpark for about 10 seconds! They were interviewing people in the crowd and someone right in front of Zac was interviewed. So Zac waved and got his 10 seconds of anonymous fame.