So now that I have ostracized all ELEVEN of my readers (i know, a gross exageration) by NOT POSTING A THING FOR WEEKS, let me just slay you know with the WORDS WORDS WORDS!

….. WORDS!

No pictures, either, not even if you beg!

Some assorted thoughts and happenings from my mother’s visit (my dad did not come at the last minute, doh!).
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Tonight when Jocelyn pulled off her t-shirt, part of it stuck on her head. Usually, we leave it there and call it “long princess hair!” But this time, it was partially covering her face, specifically, her left eye.

“I’m a PIRATE!” she called out gaily.
“She’s a PIRATE!” Ethan called out gaily.
“Look it’s a PIRATE!” I called out gaily.

“Ahoy!” said Ethan.
“Ahoy!” said Jocelyn.
“Say, ‘Yo ho yo!'” I said.
“YO HO HO!” Jocelyn chortled, pulling her t-shirt down further over her eye.
“Say, “WALK THE PLANK, YE SCURVY LASSEY!” I said.
“WALK THE PLANK YOU FLOPPY PLASTIC!” Jocelyn said.
“Say ARRRRGHHH!” Ethan said.
“ARRRRRRRRRGH!” Jocelyn said.
“Say ‘schwab the deck, ye landlubbers!” I said.
“Schwab the deck you ladyfingers!” She hollered with delight.

Then I turned into mean mommy and made them brush their teeth, despite their claims that pirates don’t brush teeth.

TONIGHT:
Blessedly, no planned activities (ie: birthday parties, free scoop of ice cream days, soccer/tball games/practices, etc.)
This means we will be home to:
change all the sheets on all the beds
– our bed has about a cup of sand in it, thanks to Ethan taking off his socks in there
– the kids’ beds haven’t been changed in over a week now
Start laundry, make sure all soccer/tball uniforms are, or will be clean for Saturday
Find soccer picture order forms that need to be handed out to parents Saturday (check under laundry)
Wash mountain of dirty dishes in sink
Make kids clean up their art table and the 1,472 million tiny scraps of paper that have fallen on the floor around said art table. (check scraps to make sure they’re not the picture order forms)

SATURDAY:
7am – Everyone rises and parents struggle to bathe dress themselves and get 2 children dressed as well. (OK, maybe just 1 parent struggles while the other dresses themself.)
8am – Ethan’s Tball pictures. (Face should be jam free.) (perhaps with just 1 parent)
9am – Ethan’s Tball game. (Other parent arrives with other child)
11ish – Tball game over.
11:15 Amy freaks out that she hasn’t found picture order forms yet.
12:30 – Amy choir rehearsal
1:30 – Jocelyn soccer game (send james your sympathies for dealing with this on his own) (hopefully picture order forms have been found by now)
3:30 – Amy choir rehearsal over
4:30 – Amy & kids Ikea trip (w/ or w/out James depending on how frazzled he is from dealing with the soccer game on his own) to obtain goody bag items for upcoming Ethan birthday party (note to james: if you don’t come, your wife may come home with unplanned purchases) (like a RUG, we really could use a RUG in the basement!)

SUNDAY:
8:30am – Amy rises, struggles to bathe and dress herself
8:45 – Amy gets breakfast for the kids (who will be up by then) before heading out, still bleary eyed, for the third week in her PAID SINGING GIG!! (I know! I rock, baby!) (I singing in a church choir for sunday mass)(lightning hasn’t struck once!)
9:30 rehearsal
10:30 – mass
11:30 – mass over, amy heads home
12:15 amy arrives home and crumples in a heap on the floor.
1:30 amy picks self up and gets ready for choir concert, and leaves for concert venue
2:00 amy rehearsal at concert venue
3:30 james gathers various quiet activities (coloring books, paper dolls) and heads to concert with kids
4:30 choir concert in which amy has several solos
5:30 concert over, after vague milling around and socializing, amy and family head home.
6pm – amy and james collapse in a heap on the floor while the children play at the art table and scatter roughly 2,258 million tiny scraps of paper on the floor.
7pm – amy freaks out that her parents will be arriving in exactly 1 week and hasn’t managed to clean the entire house from top to bottom and will have no time in the coming week or weekend in which to do so! Whew!

So! Busy weekend for us! How about you?

GARDENING
We planted some peas, but other than that, no garden planning has been done this year. Last year I sweated blood and tears over my sweet little indoor starter seedlings, and then I promptly killed them when I tried to harden them off outside (and it wasn’t the hardening. it was the not watering. i suck). So all the grow lights stayed in the closet this year and we’ll just be putting things directly into the ground.

I won’t be growing zuchini or cucumbers, because a) no one ever ate any but me, and b) the zucchini grew to GARGANTUAN sizes before I could pick them, which makes them less yummy.

The raspberries look like they are going to take over the world, the roots have REALLY spread out, and the strawberries are all intermingled with the raspberries. I should have done something about them last fall and now it’s too late. Note to self: Move the strawberries somewhere ELSE next fall. We already have a TON of little green baby strawberries growing. I can’t WAIT.

We’re doing sunflowers along the deck again – I LOVED those. We planted them on Sunday. I may also plant a pumpkin, because our mystery pumpkin was so much fun. Will definitely plant it later in the spring/summer though, as the pumpkin was ready long before October, and we’ll want some for halloween, o’course!

GOALS
I’m totally screwing the pooch on some of my new years goals, so I need to go over that. Blech.

KIDS
Soccer and tball season is upon us. Ethan’s games are going well, and I think he is really having a ball. Jocelyn love, love LOVES her soccer practice/games and even if she is a little clingy during them, afterward she always says, “I had SO MUCH FUN!” We had a vague repeat of the first game from last spring and I had an eerie deja vu feeling. It’s fun, but it really does run us ragged. Our menu planning is going to go SO downhill. I am the manager for Jocelyn’s team, so far I’ve only forgotten 1 thing. ERr, 2 things. At least I’ve come a long way since our first soccer game. Maybe.

EASTER
i have very cute pictures that i need to do something.

PHOTOS
It’s a shame that I fell off the 360 photos thingee because now the camera is sitting there, getting dusty. Someday I should pick it up again.

MONEY MONEY MONEY!
OK, not really money, but budget. The more I use YNAB, the more I LOVE it and I want to wax philosophical about that and see if I can’t get some of you to USE IT!

THAT’S ALL, FOLKS!

First of all, I”m glad to hear that I am not the only one with a holy terror of the parental visit. Thanks gals for all your comments (is it weird that it is only GIRLS that commented? I THINK NOT!)

So yesterday, the note on the kindergarten board that informs parents what their kids did that day, held huge news. The kindergarteners had compiled and were taking home – their Kindergarten Phone book, with the names and phone numbers of everyone in their class.

Ethan was, to say the least, excited. He also held a little scrap of paper which he said was Austin’s phone number. As to why this number wasn’t in the phone book, he couldn’t say.

While I was picking up kids, James had arrived home and was starting dinner when Ethan received his first phone call. James was somewhat disconcerted, not knowing that kindergarteners everywhere were doubtless phoning up their buddies all over the prince william county area. He made sure a parent was near, took a message and then promptly called me.

“You’ll never guess who just called.”
“Someone for Ethan?”
“YES!”

Tee hee. I should have placed money on it.

“You got your first phone call, Ethan! Sean called you!”
“What did daddy tell him?”
“He told him you’d call him back when you got home.”
“ALL RIGHT! I’M GOING TO CALL HIM BACK!”

When we got home, Sean received his return phone call, Austin was also called and not being home, a message left for him. Then Lucy was called, and they discussed plans for meeting at the park in the near future. Other things that were discussed: Ethan’s upcoming birthday party and Austin’s upcoming birthday party.

After each phone call, Ethan usually beamed with pride and declared, “MY VERY FIRST PHONE CALL!!” (even if it was, at that point, his 3rd or even 4th.)

Jocelyn was not to be outdone, and wanted to make some phone calls of her own, so I let her call Grandma and Grandpa. They weren’t home, so she left a message for them. Ethan got a return phone call from Austin while he was in the bathtub (which was a fantastic way to get him out of the tub, which is always a chore). Grandma called Jocelyn back in about 10 minutes, and Jocelyn said “Hi Grandma! BYE!” and then passed the phone to me.

Yes, indeed, I’m surprised that the phone lines were able to manage all the extra usage as many 6 year olds (AND THEIR SIBLINGS!) tied up lines everywhere to call their friends they had just seen hours earlier.

This morning before getting dressed, he wanted to call Jenni. I managed to forestall that one, by saying she might be at school already.

Boy oh boy. OH boy.

Err, mah BABIES’-Daddy!

Seriously, what is the proper grammer for the daddy to TWO babies? The world needs to know.

This weekend, I kept pestering James to tell me whether he wanted me to make him a cake, or if I should just buy the ultra decadent so-much-chocolate-it-may-kill-you cake from Costco (the tall layer one, with shaved chocolate on top of the frosting. OK, I’m salivating now. Good lord.)

He said, “Oh, you can just get the costco one, that’s fine.”
me: “Or I could make you one.”
him: “That’s fine too.”
me: “I’m gonna make you one.”
him: “ok already!”

I wanted to make him a cake because I haven’t baked anything in a while, and I love to bake. And also because it’s much funner with the kids to make one than to just go buy one. We had the important “what kind of cake should we make for daddy?” discussion.

“Carrot cake!” was Ethan’s vote. I quickly corrected him. (He’s really come about-face on this carrot cake business.)
“Well, carrot cake is good, but I think maybe chocolate. Because your daddy LOVES the chocolate. He is a chocolate lover.”

Jocelyn loved this description of James and has used it multiple times over the past few days. “Daddy is a CHOCOLATE LOVER!”

So in the end, I decided to make him a marble cake, because that’s what his mom used to make him when he was a kid. Only I wanted to fancify it, so instead of just using a 13×9 cake pan like the recipe said to, I decided to put it in 2 round pans.

Marble cake is a vanilla cake where you take part of the batter and add chocolate to it, and then pour the vanilla batter in first, and the chocolate on top and swirl it around a bit so when it’s baked and you cut into it, it’s all marbley with vanilla and chocolate cake.

So, since James IS a chocolate lover, I debated aloud on whether I should make the primary cake chocolate, instead of vanilla, so that would make the majority of the batter chocolate, which he likes better. Then I decided not to, and said aloud, “I should probably just stick to the recipe.”

james: “So NOW you’re going to stick to the recipe, but when I cook, you always want me to do things your way even when I’m trying to stick to the recipe!”

Pish. That’s all I have to say about that. (“Pish” is good for when you have no leg to stand on, see.)

So last night, I prepared my batter and sprayed my 2 round pans, and had the batter all ready to pour, but it did NOT LOOK like nearly enough batter to fill 2 round pans. So I poured the whole thing into ONE round pan and right then, I could tell I was really screwed. It was way too full. But it’s a MARBLE cake, so I couldn’t transfer some of it to the other cake pan or it would stop being marble-y and just be … all mixed together brown cake? Not marble cake? Not sure what you would call it! So, knowing I had screwed the pooch, I just put the over-full round pan on a cookie sheet and slid it into the oven.

(Another reason one should probably not make marble cake in 2 round pans – the “marble” effect is probably better acheived in a single big pan. Then there is plenty of each batter (plain and chocolate) to make it the nice marbly effect when one batter is put on top of the other batter. If you split all that in half, as you would have to with 2 pans, there’s not as much of each type of batter to blend with each other it probably wouldn’t make as nice of an effect.)

Sure enough, 30 minutes later it had overflowed and half the cake had bubbled out onto the sheet pan.

So for James’ birthday, he gets the costco it-will-send-your-blood-sugar-to-new-heights chocolate cake AND he gets to taunt me about tweaking the recipe with disastrous results, which I usually bristle at with unbridled fervor. Now he can tease me all he likes and I will just have to TAKE it because of my cake disaster. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HONEY! MAKE MY LIFE HELL! 🙂

This morning James made the “i’m getting out of bed” movements, so I quick told him to stay put for a few minutes and scurried into the kids room.

me: “Guess what today is?”
Now usually, Ethan answers these sort of questions first. But today, Jocelyn totally put the smack down and answered instantly.
j: “DADDY’S BIRTHDAY!!!!!”
m: “You guys want to climb into our bed and sing him happy birthday?”
j&e: “YEAAAAAAHHHH!!”

And so they did. And it was so super cute. Cuter than bunnies on top of puppies, they were so cute.

Then I told the kids, “Guess what, guys. Mommy ruined the birthday cake! So I’m going to pick you up early from school, and we’re going to go to costco to get one from there.”

Ethan: “Yay! Carrot cake!”
Jocelyn: “No! Not carrot cake. CHOCOLATE. Because Daddy is a CHOCOLATE LOVER.”

That girl. She kills me with the CUTE.

So this morning, we had a gouge or two out of the ruined birthday cake for a post breakfast snack, and tonight we’ll be lighting candles on top of the costco death-by-chocolate cake.

Because James is a CHOCOLATE LOVER.

Happy birthday to the best baby-daddy a girl could have!

love you sweetie.

I have neglected to get some of the ADORABLE drawings that Jocelyn has done up here, so it’s remedy time.

Crazy Monster with Many Eyes

tomorrow – the book Ethan wrote and illustrated.

james: I have a CRAZY idea! How about mac and cheese for lunch?
jocelyn: YES! I like that idea!
ethan: Daddy, that is NOT a crazy idea. Do you want to hear my idea?
james: let’s hear it!
ethan: YES!

That’s it. His idea was “yes!”

james: Excuse me Jocelyn.
jocelyn: I am not a Jocelyn. I am a DOOR.
james: Oh, I see.
*opens jocelyn like a door*

Sorry for the silence. This is all I’ve got.

FOR NOW!

So I posted the “see you on the other side!” posts (on both old and new), and the “you made it!” post (only on the new) and then tweaked all the name servers and database tables I needed to and then had to wait until today before I myself saw my own new website. DNS takes forever for me, I guess!

But finally I can get to my own space! Yay! I’m still working out a few kinks, but that’s just me, everything should be working fine.

Over the weekend, I saw that The Sound of Music was going to be showed a few times, and I promptly told our Tivo to record it, because The Sound of Music is one of my favorite movies EVER.

On Sunday afternoon, I settled in to watch it, though it’s a long one, and so it became a somewhat sporadic watching. Jocelyn fiddled around on the couch for most of the time, watching it with me and loved when they sang. Ethan was playing in the next room, but everything there was a song, he would come running in to watch for it. the puppet show was also a hit. “Edelwiess” is a song I have sung to the kids at bedtime since they were babies, so of course they ate that up as well.

So all in all, they liked the movie and watched a lot more of it than I would have thought. We stopped it Sunday and then yesterday I tried to finish it up. I thought that after the festival at the end they would be totally done with it, but boy did I underestimated them. I started to explain that there was a war, and the nazi’s wanted Captain Von Trap to join them in the war, but he didn’t want to because they were bad people, and so he was going to have to get away from them.

It’s as if I flipped a switch, and Ethan was completely and totally MEZMERIZED. First, he was all, “Yeah! I want to see the WAR!!” and I had to tell him that they don’t show any war, or shooting, or blowing up or anything. Just the dad trying to get away from the soldiers.

So then the festival ended, and the family won the first prize and the spotlight went to the empty archway, waiting for the family to appear and let me tell you, my kids were on the EDGE of their seat.

Ethan: I KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING!
me: what?
Ethan: They’re TRICKING THEM! They’re ESCAPING!

Then of course, the breathless search through the abbey, the family hiding behind the crypts (i think those were crypts) and the eery silence broken only by the loud crashing as the soldiers shakes each iron gate to check if it’s locked. These kids were wide eyed and staring and had to be reassured repeatedly that no, they don’t find them. And then Ralf came up the steps and just as all the soldiers were leaving, hid until the family came out of hiding, and then JUMPED out! The captain opened the gate and ran out and Ralf drew his gun, and Ethan nearly lost it. He was pretty nervous and uneasy through all this already but when the gun came out, Ethan jumped up off the couch and ran behind it. He didn’t hide, but he stood behind it and watched from back there. I couldn’t quite tell HOW frightened he is, so more reassuring that there is no shooting in this movie helped, and then the whole family watched with bated breath as the Captain edged closer and closer until he took the gun away from Ralf.

All seemed well until the Captain made his last comment, “You’ll never be one of them.” which Ralf took offense at.. and immediately shouted for the other soldiers.

The family sped away in the caretaker’s car and we watched as the soldiers tried and tried to start their own cars but to no avail. They laughed and laughed when the nuns confessed their “sins” of taking the parts out of their cars, and then insisted that we go back and watch it again and again.

Finally, the family is walking over the mountains to switzerland, and we emphasized that they got away, they escaped, yay! and Ethan and Jocelyn were just tickled to DEATH.

After James had put them to bed, he came downstairs and I commented, “I really did not think they would be interested in the end, but boy was I wrong!”

Boy was I!

This was a few weeks ago.

Our usual dinner table configuration has me and james at opposite sides of our small round table, and jocelyn and ethan opposite each other.

On this night, Jocelyn had decided she wanted to sit in Daddy’s spot, and she also wanted her chair scootched over until she and Ethan were sitting right next to each other.

Crazy cute sibling cuteness ensued.