gettin’ the fix

although it’s not quite the same when you have to unbuckle/buckle three car seats for every yard sale. it cramps my style. but i did score a box of about 30, large vintage prints (on matte board) for a dollar.

i also drug home this doll bunk bed. it needs a bit of work but it was only $5. i’ll just stash it in the attic for now and maybe spring the project on my husband in a few years when he’s grown less suspecting. it will make a good birthday present for my sweet genevieve.

i also got a couple 50 cent aprons. like i need more of those. a new, melissa and doug magnet board for $3.

and a lovely little children’s book. takes you on a tour of some girl’s house and you can poke around in the cupboards. just the thing i would have liked when i was little.

(p.s. and is it just me? or is wordpress making anyone else mad as a hatter right now?)

easy monkey

i like to make this when i have lots of company. after a late night of last minute windexing, i still feel up to throwing this in the butt pan before crawling into bed. that way, when the midnight arrivals wake in the morning, it is to the smell of fresh rolls, oozing in butter and sugar. and while they think you worked so hard, you really just shoved it in the oven around 6 o’clock and went back to bed. sneaky.

so here’s what you do. spray a bundt pan with baking pam and then throw in 15 frozen rhodes white dinner rolls (alternating with about 3/4 cup pecans, if you’re interested). sprinkle the whole thing with a packet of instant butterscotch pudding, a cup of brown sugar and then drizzle over a cup of melted butter. cover it, let it rise overnight and then bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. it’s especially yummy served with fresh fruit and orange juice. but try not to do it very often. i think it might be bad for you.

blooming

that hubby of mine got me flowers. doesn’t really make up for the fact that he cut off all of his hair, but i still love him.

and this is as close as you are going to get to a before and after shot of my new floor (and doors too). we are still working on the giant hole we sawed in the basement two weeks ago. but in this picture you can’t really tell that i need mop boards, door knobs, trim, and paint. you can just pretend it is finished.

out back the catalpa tree is full of blooms. it has been breathtaking all week, with the warm weather and the french doors wide open. the only drawbacks are jehu throwing all manner of toys out of it, gideon thinking he can use it for a urinal when the bathroom is too far away and he wants to get back to eating his toast, and the disturbing screaming you hear in the distance when one child has pushed the other out. maybe, in a year or so, we will build a deck.

but i am quite pleased with the way the tree has filled out. marc went up cleaned out some of the dead stuff and tidied it up a bit. when we bought the place in the winter it was a terrible eyesore. now, not only is it pretty, but it makes wonderful shade. marc says it couldn’t have been planted in a better spot. it seems that the longer i’m in my lovely ghetto home, the more i like it. everything seems to be falling into place. except for those incidents where the fence tried to fall over because the wind was blowing and the basement flooded because we watered the yard. but all that aside…

nailed it

do you know the feeling you get when you see some fellow in a jacked up pick-up? the “oh my goodness, what a dork. why don’t you just hang some testicles from the ball hitch?” sensation. anyways, i get the same feeling whenever i encounter reformed christians dropping the not so subtle hint about the guinness they had last night and how it makes them tight with jesus. just came to me. thought i would share.

daddy’s favorite park

actually, it’s a cemetery. but the kids don’t know that yet and daddy seems to think it is an arboretum. i just like to look for baby names. also, i picked out my favorite tombstone, i looked at a bazillion. and if it weren’t for the fact that i am going to be cozied up in this on the mantel, i’d have it commissioned.

pretty sweet. meanwhile, gideon got in some sling shot practice. you can watch the video here. it is rather embarrassing.

marc suggested that next time i should pack a picnic. i told him that didn’t sound very appetizing. i must be developing somewhat delicate sensibilities, considering how it used to be our favorite thing to do when we were dating. i tell you, it’s all those baby names. marjorie, evangeline, edwina, mabel – makes you just want to run off and procreate.

and then you end up with something that looks like this. dunno.

i don’t believe it

look at him, he’s an angel.

gideon woke up from his nap soggy swoggy today. i asked hubby to throw the pair of them in for an early bath, while i finished cooking. marc doesn’t replace clothes once they are removed, so i wasn’t surprised when the boys showed up to dinner naked. (we are kind of trashy like that anyways. come to think of it, gideon dropped his pants at the sand table today and peed in front of the dear and impressionable young lucy. i told him that girls don’t like it when you pee two inches from their feet and to bugger off. most obligingly, he waddled, pants down, to the furthest corner of the yard to finish his business behind a bush.)

what was i saying? yes, the naked jehu got in trouble during dinner for stuffing food in his juice. he had been told not to earlier, this time he got his hand spanked. such trauma caused him to spring a leak and he peed a gallon onto to his nearby, naked brother. the look of helpless devastation on gideon’s face was quite hilarious. and soon enough they both were crying, all the while jehu was still peeing. i was sitting in the living room nursing at this point, so i just got to watch the hysterics. oh, but i was dying laughing. mostly from watching marc. ha, take that. he ended up throwing them back in the bath. after which the two darlings were returned to me fully dressed and sweet as usual. you’d never guess they’d just as soon pee on you as look at you. but it’s true.

“everybody loves me?”

i usually just tell him “yes, yes they do.” my husband, on the other hand, likes to make an itemized list of all the people who don’t. however you look at it, gideon is very well loved. evidenced by the fact that his entire family drove/flew over last weekend for his fourth birthday. you can see all the pictures here.

(yep, they dress alike and wear silly hats. sorry.) we were especially glad to see auntie piolet from maine (even thought she didn’t get to stay for the party). instead she ended up managing the care and feeding of my dishwasher for almost a week. what a dear girl.

there were 18 of us all together and we had such fun, and perfect weather too. since my house was a disaster we had a picnic at julia davis park. the kids played, chased the geese and gideon scored all kinds of birthday loot. a bubble sword, books, puzzles, trains, bug bingo, you know, all the good stuff.

later we caught the trolley for a tour of boise. where all the kiddos promptly passed out.

and when we got off, all the adults passed out.

basically they got off the trolley, walked ten paces and then fell into a pile. when we all recovered we went home, ate ice cream and had our cake too.

later, gideon got to pick out his new birthday ribbon. the other three still seem to be going strong. so he might have a very terrible, ratty mess by the time he turns twelve. we’ll see.

and here is little bright eyes. she enjoyed all the attention while mommy enjoyed not having to plan a silly themed birthday party. can i do them all like this? maybe i will turn their birthdays into feast days instead. i would rather spend money on food than anything else (it’s the germain in me). plus, it would be nice to standardize everything. then the kids would just grow up knowing what to expect and i wouldn’t end up cutting 100 snow flakes out of card stock with an exacto knife, because of some hair brained idea i had. yes, this would be much better.

taking matters into our own hands

when it came down to it, hubby wasn’t all that eager to saw a big hole in the side of our house. my parents, on the other hand, were quite excited. so we took a deep breath and dove right in. turned out wonderfully. afterwards my dad was mentioning all the things that could have gone wrong and didn’t. “what do you mean,” i asked, “haven’t you done this before?” come to find out he has never even framed in a window. “just have to know how to think,” he told me.

if you noticed in the previous post, the concrete saw turned my house into mount saint helens. they closed the bedroom door and sealed it with a wet towel, but they forgot to close the vent. now, not only do i still have to paint the basement, i have to wash all the walls as well.

but at least gideon has his new window. one step closer to moving the little turds to the basement. which, might i mention, flooded last week. so perhaps not as close as i’d like to think.

if you want more pictures of the hoopla, you can check here. thank you granddad and grandma, for all of your hard work! it’s great to have a family who is willing to travel with shovels.

actually, my brother can’t be separated from his. my husband is the same, he’s had his since high school. and my mom, of all people, scored the black one for her birthday (hence the bow). she also got a jack and pruning shears because she’s like that. one year i mistakenly got her fake nails. she ate them.

up to no good

can you guess?

in any case, it’s as dirty as you wouldn’t believe.

my camera came back to me

and this is what was on it: