Curly's Favorite Story

You already know that we gather the kids around us each evening before bed and we read from the scriptures and have family prayer. So tonight Curly could hardly sit still...he just had to tell his story...for the fiftieth time!

It's his favorite story and it goes like this.

A couple of weeks ago, we had our weekly family fun night. After a sit-down lesson, we decided to do some arrowpoint activities out of Sport's book just to help him move a little further down the Cub Scout trail. We started with some lessons on what to do if you meet a stray dog and the use of 8 different machines. Then we turned the page to our one last activity, the standing long jump.

Now our living room is long and rather narrow, but it was originally intended to be two rooms, a living room and a formal dining room. The living room half is about 13' x 13' and it is covered in carpet. The dining room side is the same size but covered with hardwood. We have our church pew on one side of the room under the windows, and on the other side we have a couch and a loveseat. That leaves the entire center of the room just perfect for doing the standing long jump.

We started on one edge of the carpet and the kids jumped as far as they could. Princess seemed to have the competition sewed up at first, but then the Dog Walker got up there and with his long legs, he could make it more than halfway across the carpeted area, so we crowned him the winner.

Then we decided to let them have a couple of jumps to see who could get all the way across the carpet in the fewest jumps. Curly hopped across like a little bunny with the most jumps and as you can imagine, the
Dog Walker was again the winner. He spanned the carpet with only two jumps!

Fast forward to the next day...

It was Tuesday and the Gym Rat stopped by.  That is typically his day off and we love it when he spends a few minutes with us. Curly and I and Baby Doll were the only ones home and Curly started telling the Gym Rat about our jumping contest. "Let's see how far you can jump," I suggested.

The Gym Rat is usually up for any competition that involves brute strength, so he readily agreed. He slipped off his shoes and lined up on the edge of the carpet. He is 6'6" and his long legs took him nearly 2/3 of the way across the carpet. Curly was so excited! It was definitely the best jump we had seen.

Then we started telling him about the other contest. We wanted to see if he could clear the carpet in 2 jumps. On his first try, he had an extra little hop in the middle. Curly would have none of that and he insisted that the Gym Rat do it again. Not one to be outdone by his little brother, the Gym Rat lined up again. He swung his long arms back and forth as he prepared to make his best jump yet.

Curly was bouncing up and down on the couch (which is against the rules, by the way), but he was so excited!

I think his excitement fueled the Gym Rat's hopes of being awesome. He hit the carpet about 3/4 of the way across and landed  almost in the middle of the hardwood on the other side. The problem was that he was wearing socks...

His feet slipped right out from under him and he totally landed on his backside!

Curly and I were so surprised we didn't know what to do. As soon as we were sure he was OK, we started to laugh! Then the Gym Rat joined in too. His jump was definitely the best by at least a foot (or maybe a butt...).

A New Instrument

I'm pretty sure I've told you before that I encourage all my kids to play musical instruments. Since I can't afford piano lessons for the lot of them, we have generally chosen the band programs in the local schools. In fact, we attended the Dog Walker's last high school concert yesterday. They did a fabulous job!

Well, somehow, Teach never learned to play an instrument. Oh, we started her out in elementary band just like her siblings, but she never took to the clarinet and the entire experience was terrible. When she landed in middle school, we gladly switched her over to choir. This was the same path we had allowed the Gym Rat to take several years earlier, and he never learned to play an instrument either.

As they got older, we tried to remedy that situation. We bought the Gym Rat a guitar and paid for lessons, but he just never got it. We put Teach in piano for a year, but then finances demanded attention elsewhere, so we moved on. Neither one of them learned to really play anything.

Last weekend, Teach went to a little jam session with her church group. I think it's the first time she realized that she was the only one who didn't have a musical talent to share and it bothered her. An awesome guy friend of hers had a ukelele and he promised to teach her to play and by the time she got home, she was very excited about those 4 chords.

I must admit I giggled a little behind her back, but ever the supportive mom, I encouraged her new-found obsession. We got online and she shelled out $50 for a ukelele starter kit. We asked for 2-day shipping, which meant it should have arrived on Wednesday.

She started looking for the package on Tuesday.

And I don't mean a little. She waited in the living room with the blinds up, just watching the street. If she had to leave the room, she put someone else in charge of keeping her constant vigil. And still it didn't come.

She was up by ten (which is bright and early for her) and in front of the window again. Every time a big truck drove down the street, she jumped. She even got a false alarm when my new office chair my sweetie ordered for me for Mother's Day arrived. Finally, about 3:30, she decided she better get ready for work. She was so disappointed!

At 3:55, she climbed in her car and headed for Smiths.

At 4:02, the UPS man arrived with her package.

I immediately texted her and even though she was working in the customer service booth, she asked me to bring her the box. Against my better judgement, I sent the Dog Walker out the door with it. She was so excited!

When she got home just after midnight, she had her precious instrument in tow. Apparently it wasn't a problem at all...Marcie in Pharmacy helped her tune it...

Now if she could just learn to play...

What's for Lunch?

My sweetie works for a large engineering company across the valley and it is too far away for him to come home for lunch, so he packs one every day.  With all these kids, we have several large (OK, there are three) chest freezers in our house. One is only for meat, one is almost exclusively TV dinners bought for lunches when they are on sale really cheap, and the other one is for everything else.

So this morning my sweetie sent Crafty to grab him something out of the freezer before he dropped the kids at school. Crafty grabbed a grocery bag, headed downstairs, and came back with the box tied up and ready to go. My sweetie slipped it into his pack and they ran out the door.

When he got to work, he took the package out of his bag and put it in his little fridge. It was still tied in the grocery sack. His usual mode is to let the dinner thaw during the morning hours and then it doesn't take nearly as long to cook for lunch.

Around 1:00 he sent me a text. "The kids packed my lunch...fish patties...12 pack."

Not exactly your typical TV dinner, unless you're a seal...

Cinco de Mayo Celebration

I know, I know, Cinco de Mayo was almost two weeks ago, but I've had so many things to tell you I haven't had a chance to share my fun pics with you (and Teach is getting mad at me because I asked her to take a bunch and then I never used them).

No, I'm not Hispanic, but my SIL is, effectively making my grandsons Hispanic too. Not that it matters, we started celebrating Cinco de Mayo long before Gamer was part of our family. It began as (what else?) a scout project and ballooned from there.

We always cook Mexican food (this year it was sweet pork like Cafe Rio) and we love to bash around a pinata for a while. Gamer is in charge of the pinata. We get it much cheaper if we send him to the Mexican store. This year he brought back some fun and different Mexican candy (usually the sweetness is overpowered by the peppers, but not this time). We got caramels, suckers, marzipan, and some kind of gooey stuff that Crafty absolutely loved.

The pinata got off to a rocky start. It was shaped like a bucket and extremely heavy even though it was only half full. We let the kids whack at it in age order starting with Baby Doll. She was pretty upset about swinging at those princesses...

Then Curly made a valiant effort...and so on, up the line. The Dog Walker didn't try very hard because he said he really didn't want to break it. All the kids started chanting for the Gym Rat. They just knew with his awesome rippling biceps that he would be able to crack it open!

And he did...

He also smashed the dickens out of the candy!

Half the suckers were in powder form, the other half had lost their sticks completely. Tootsie Rolls had been knocked right out of their wrappers! I don't think the kids will hope for the Gym Rat to pick up the bat again any time soon.