Lucky 13

Today is our 13th anniversary!
Hard to believe.
We didn't celebrate too much. The boys had a piano recital today (they did great!), and afterward we went to eat at La Madeleine (a restaurant I never thought I'd get Ben to set foot in, but after eating my leftover tomato basil pasta the last time I was there, he decided to give it a try). However, we've been battling a stomach bug the past few days. Mosey was sick all day Thursday. Brigham was sick Thursday night to Friday morning. Ben was sick all day Friday. Well, it was my turn today. So after we came home, I went to bed, and didn't leave until about 10 minutes ago. I'll be going back directly.
But I didn't want the day to pass without my marking it.
It was otherwise also a crummy day to be sick. I have so much to do!! I still haven't unpacked from our trip. I have 2 loads of clean laundry that haven't been folded since *before* our trip! I have another load in the dryer, and another in the washer that I forgot about from 2 days ago. Oops. And there are at least 2 more loads on the floor in my room...
Also I haven't sorted mail in about 3 weeks. It is getting ridiculous and scary since there are probably bills in there that need to be paid.
And the house is it's typical chaotic mess after the week.
But, none of it will get done tonight, and probably none will get done tomorrow, so I'll just have to deal.

math

At our family reunion last week, I spent too much time talking up homeschooling. I'm paying for it this week. A certain boy who shall not be named, but who is pictured above, has not been real thrilled about returning to lessons. His expression pretty much sums up what he thinks about math, and how I've been feeling about lessons the last few days...
You mean, I'm doing all *this* when I could be shipping my kids off for 7 hours every day and enjoying some peace and quiet??
:-)

good internet filter?

Picture very not-courtesy of Google images.



It is high-time for us to get a good Internet filter. Yesterday the boys found some berries growing in our backyard, and wanted to find out what they were. Brigham thought they might be from a holly bush, and so, like the internet-savvy boy that he is, he went to Google Images and typed in "holly." Then he asked me in a confused voice, "I wanted to find pictures of holly berries, and instead all I got were these pictures of girls." Oops. I quickly typed as fast as my fingers were able, "holly berry images," and then he found what he was looking for.
Thankfully he was only on the originally holly screen for a few moments. Yikes.
Any recommendations out there?

Family reunion

We all went to Utah for the past week! Ben's family had a family reunion in St. George on the occasion of his oldest brother's 40th birthday (man, are we getting old or what?). We stayed in this awesome huge house (Two pools! Sand volleyball court! Foozeball table! Air hockey table! Ping pong!), and the boys played with their 15 Turner cousins. It was fabulous. We ate too much, stayed up way too late, and had a great time. It was the first time we'd all been together in a few years. I took lots of pictures, but I'm extremely backed up in my photo edits, so those will have to wait.
Meanwhile, it's a bit of a let down to come back home to real life and laundry and dirty floors and piano practicing and math homework. Boo. I need to plan another vacation!


This photo has nothing to do with our vacation. I just thought it was cute.

Bluebonnets

This has been a bonanza year for bluebonnets in Texas. 2007 was also a banner year, but I think this year is even better. All the rain we had in the fall, plus the extra-cold winter this year were perfect conditions for bluebonnets, and all kinds of other wildflowers.
I took some senior portraits for a friend this last week and in preparation, the boys and I went scouting for the best bluebonnet patch. When we went to this field (just west of the westernmost Dell building out in Round Rock, for fellow Austinites), a man leaving work volunteered to snap a shot of the boys and I. How funny that we all ended up being color-coordinated that day! I wish I wouldn't have forgotten about my sunglasses.
I won't go into the grisly details of me getting myself back UP from that position in the field. Let's just say that I'm glad I had my boys there to help me, and I'm sure I provided some entertainment for all the worker-bees in the Dell building with office windows facing the field. :-)
I have individual pictures of the boys also, but haven't had time to process them yet. I had 3 photoshoots this past week (not bad for someone who isn't in business and doesn't advertise)! So I'm a bit backed-up. Haven't even looked at my Easter pictures yet. I didn't take many this year.
This wasn't the ideal time of day for bluebonnet pictures, but still, I'm always happy to have a picture of the boys with ME in it. Proof that they do have a mother.

wheelchair update

I ended up buying an e-bay wheelchair-- the TiLite TR that was a demo model in a showroom. So far, it's been ok. It arrived and I quickly realized that the 8 degree camber on the wheels prevents it from getting through the door to my bedroom. So I had to order a new axle, which isn't here yet. And then the foot rest was too high, so I adjusted that (had to go buy a new set of allen wrenches to get the 1/8" size before I could make the adjustment), and then realized that the 6 inch front wheels (which I really liked), were then too big and kept bumping into the footrest, making it really difficult to turn. So I took off the front wheels from my old wheelchair and put them on the new one and now it's working better. It's drifting slightly to the left, which may be because the front wheels are not really made for the casters that came with the chair. It still doesn't handle as well as the old one, but maybe the new axle assembly will remedy that. We'll see.
I guess I could have paid another $1500+ to get a chair totally custom made for me, but I still think this was worth it. We'll see. I hope it doesn't give me as much aggravation as the last one did.

Mosey-ism

We were at Walmart tonight and the cashier asked if the boys were triplets. I told her that Joseph and Brigham were twins, and Moses was their brother. She asked Mosey if he was older or younger, and he said to her, "I'm six. If I were older, I would be nine." Then he turned to me and said (this is word-for-word), "It's definitely self-evident that I'm not older because of my tone of voice and how tall I am."
Sure, Mosey, you keep using phrases like "self-evident" and you'll have people doubting that you're the younger brother, high-pitched voice and all 45 inches of you notwithstanding. :-)

Bandaid Bonanza

What is it about bandaids and kids? They must emit some kind of silent-to-adults siren song for the under-10 crowd.
We'd been out of bandaids for a few months. My kids survived. No one bled to death or got gangrene or anything. Shocking, I know.
I finally remembered to buy bandaids about 2 weeks ago when I was filling a prescription at Target. It was a big box of 100 assorted bandaids.
Do you want to know how many bandaid-requiring wounds my kids have suddenly acquired in the past 2 weeks? 35. Yes, thirty-five. That's about 12 each, or one per day per kid since I bought them. Aye, yi, yi!!
Now I remember why it took me so long to replace the bandaids!

close, but no cigar

We drove up to Dallas yesterday, thinking we might be driving back with a new car (well, new to us). Ben has been thinking about replacing our 10-year-old Hyundai for a while. It's a good car, has given us extremely little trouble, and still runs great. But it's looking a bit... battered, and Ben really needs something he can use to drive VIPs to lunch once in a while. He's been looking online for months, and has narrowed the field down to a Jeep Grand Cherokee. He even knows the year he wants. Anyway, he found a seemingly great deal on a Jeep at a dealership up in Dallas. Ben did some research on the company and discovered a bunch of extremely negative reviews, so we were wary, but decided to go check it out anyway, being on our guard. We drove up there, looked at the car which looked really nice, and then drove it to a mechanic to have it checked out. Well, sure enough, there were a bunch of problems with it-- weird stuff going on with the electrical system, a problem with the suspension, and several other things that should (according to the mechanic) have definitely made it fail the state inspection, and yet it had a brand-new inspection sticker on it. Too fishy for us, and we drove it back to the dealership.
So, no new car, but we did have a nice time in Dallas, anyway. We went to see "How to Train Your Dragon," which we had pretty low expectations for, and then ended up really liking a lot.
We drove by the Temple, and almost finished listening to the 4th Septimus Heape book, so it was a pretty good time, despite the disappointment with the Jeep.
We'll have to watch the first two conference sessions online during the week. If we had been in Utah, we would have been able to listen to it on the radio!
We had a good Easter today, too, but I'll report on that later after I have time to upload my photos.

April foolery

My boys really got into April Fools this year. Here's the rundown of the pranks:
1. Lunch for breakfast (tortilla pizzas)
2. Dinner for lunch (pasta and broccoli)
3. Breakfast for dinner (cereal)
4. Drop of food coloring in the bowls before cereal was poured, turning the milk unexpectedly blue
5. Socks stuffed into dad's shoes
6. Tape wrapped around dad's car's steering wheel (sticky side up, of course!)
7. Joseph and Brigham walked into their piano teachers house carrying their violins and calling out, "We're ready for our violin lesson!"
8. Various items dropped on mom (paper, stuffed animals), "from nowhere!" (courtesy of Mosey)
9. Brigham, at various times during the day, saying things like, "Oh, too bad we missed that festival!" making me panic and mentally run down my calendar trying to think of what we might have missed! (I admit he got me on this a couple of times)
10. Joseph wrapped a rubber band around the spray hose in our kitchen sink-- an oldie but goodie.

Fun stuff.

Mosey-ism

Just now, after dropping his pencil on the floor for the 4 billionth time: "Mom, I cannot locate my pencil!"

After playing in the park, digging and making some sort of "slide" with his brothers, "I just made a feeble attempt digging into the dirt." (And he even knows what "feeble attempt" is-- I haven't the slightest idea where he has come across that phrase.)