7 Quick Takes about Certificates in Kicking Butt, Birthday Cabbage, and Bad Luck on the Rail Trail

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

I finished my self-defense class!

The last day was fun, we suited up and role played three different scenarios where the two big guys approached us in different ways. 

We were a small but mighty group.

I went last, after having watched the other ladies get attacked. They all stayed on their feet, but during the last scenario the instructor grabbed me from behind and took me down to the floor which I wasn't expecting. After a bit of struggle, I managed to roll over and elbow him in the face just like they taught us, and run away.

When we went to evaluate the videos of our mock attacks, the instructor told me they only do floor defense when a participant seems "like they can handle it," so I think I learned what I needed to learn.

—2—

Phillip was making dinner on the night of my birthday when the 14-year-old went to go investigate.

"Eww, cabbage?" she squealed. "You're making cabbage??"

"Yes," Phillip answered her.

"That's what Mom wanted for her birthday dinner?"

"...Sure."

Truth is, he'd completely forgotten that letting the birthday boy/girl choose the menu on their special day was a thing we did. But the other truth is, I'm completely happy to eat any meal that someone else planned, shopped for, and prepared. When you hate cooking as much as I do, the best meal in the world is the one served to you by someone else who made it happen.  

I also should add here not only was the cabbage pretty good and even the kids ate it, he also made me a strawberry ice cream cake with layers of chocolate cake and vanilla pudding with crumbled Oreo. I didn't even take a picture before devouring it, it was so amazing.

—3—

I promised an update picture of our new fireplace with the painted bricks, now that we've got the pellet stove moved back in.

Here's a before picture from a few Christmases ago:

Yes to the holiday joy, no to the 1980s red brick.

And here's an after photo:

So much better!

While I was painting the fireplace, I put a sample of each color on the back of a Ritz cracker box to help us choose a complementary color for the living room walls (it's time to repaint, anyway.) When Phillip took me out to dinner for my birthday, we went to the hardware store across the street afterward to look at paint swatches.

"We look really classy walking in with a cracker box," Phillip said.

"Of course we do!" I told him. "This is a brand name Ritz cracker box, it's not even the store brand!" 

—4—

Phillip and I have a weekly "executive meeting" where we look at the calendar and hash out who is giving rides to which kids, what nights he's working late, or if the kids have concerts/events/other stuff going on.

It works really well for staying on track day-to-day, but I realized that it means we handle each day as it comes and don't often get around to the bigger picture things like planning vacations or home projects. So I was thinking about that and happened to find this post, which turned out to be exactly what we needed.

We usually tried to talk about this stuff before during executive meetings, but without a template it sometimes just fell off our radar. Now theoretically we could have our ducks more in a row. We'll see.

—5—

I got a late birthday card from an older sister at church, and this was slipped inside it: 

She's told me before that people give her a hard time about forgetting to send out her holiday cards, asking her "Don't you like us anymore?" so I think this is how she deals with it.

I doubt she designed and printed this just for me, so what I like to imagine is that she has a stack of these right next to her envelopes and stamps, and habitually slips one in every letter she writes just to let the recipient know: it's not you, it's me.

—6—

The track team often has a carbo-load meal the night before meets, taking turns at different team member's houses who volunteer to host. 

I've heard that this year's team is particularly ill-behaved (recently I got an email asking parents to remind their kids not to throw other people's shoes in the port-a-potty during practice) so I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw an email about this week's carbo-load with this attached list of "house rules" from the host:

• No swearing
• No fighting
• Clean up after yourselves 
• Don't give my parents a hard time
• There are chickens in my backyard. Don't be mean to them.

I'm a little concerned that there needed to be a special addendum on the email with these basic guidelines for civil behavior. So we probably won't be hosting a carbo-load at our house in the near future. And maybe I'll see if my daughter can borrow the helmet and shinguards from self-defense class when she goes, just in case.

—7—

We took a family bike ride on the rail trail on Memorial Day. I thought it was a great time, but the 14-year-old for whatever reason wasn't into it. She was lagging behind and asked if we could at least stop at the ice cream shop about 3.5 miles down the trail. 

Our original plan wasn't to get ice cream, but if that's what motivated her then I guess I was willing to do it. Unfortunately, when we got to the ice cream place we saw that it had evidently gone out of business since the last time we were there.

We took a brief rest and then turned around to bike the 3.5 miles home, and immediately the 14-year-old's pedal broke off her bike. 

The universe just had it out for the 14-year-old that day.

She and I walked back to the abandoned ice cream place and waited for Phillip and the boys to bike back and come pick us up in the van. While we were waiting, we looked up other places where we could bike on a rail trail to an ice cream shop and found two options, so we'll try them out later this summer. Wish us luck. Especially the 14-year-old. 

Click to Share:

Read More »

7 Quick Takes about Birthday Wishes I Didn't Expect, Rusty Water, and Magic Incantations for the Inflexible

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

Today is my birthday! The kids have a half-day of school and after-school activities, so my plans include picking people up or dropping them off at 11:20, 12:30, 1:00, 3:00, and 4:20. Should be a blast.

Phillip is coming home from work a little early so we can take the 10-year-old to gymnastics together and then go out for dinner and ice cream during his three-hour practice, so I'm not complaining.

Also, my ministering sister from church dropped off the sweetest birthday gift. She made pillows from my dad's shirts after he passed away in February, and finished them in time to give them to me today. She even left the pockets intact to put a picture or a note inside that reminds us of him.

My dad wore plaid button-up shirts almost every day, looking at them reminds us so much of him.

This morning it occurred to me that this was the first year my dad wasn't going to call to wish me a happy birthday, and that was a little sad. But just a couple of hours later the doorbell rang and it kind of felt like God had arranged through my ministering sister for him to send his love on my birthday, after all.

—2—

Most parents put their energy into encouraging their kids to read more, and in fact they believe that there's no such thing as a kid who reads too much. But I beg to differ. 

Mine will read and read and read to the exclusion of anything else, and I want to see them spending more time building, creating, and being active rather than always just consuming. I thought long and hard about how to codify that into a rule that didn't require me to track reading minutes or police anyone, and then I approached the kids with this idea. 

"For the next few days, let's limit reading to entertainment during car rides," I said. "When you're at home, you can play outside, call a friend, or think of something else to do. Books are for vehicles only."

Of course, my 10-year-old who will grow up to be the best lawyer in the world, immediately asked "So can I go sit in the van and read in the garage?" 

—3—

After years of thinking about it, I finally redid our fireplace. I didn't love the ugly red brick of the 80s and 90s that was here when we moved in, but it seemed too expensive to replace and I didn't like the look of painted brick, so that's how it stayed.

However, I found this painting kit that uses five different colors and ends up with a brick-like look (in a better color) when you're done. The $239 price tag made me hold off for over a year, but I finally decided to just do it and bought it back in March. 

It sat there unopened for a while because I was too nervous to use it, so this week I asked Phillip to remove the pellet stove from the fireplace cavity. Then I'd have no choice, there would be a 400-lb stove in the middle of our living room until I finished. (This is how I motivate myself to do most things in my life, I'm not sure if it's a good strategy but it seems to work.)

Before photo includes all the junk we found underneath when we pulled out the pellet stove.

Cleaning the stove and doing all five steps of the painting process took less than a day, and I'm very happy with the way it turned out! 

Color is Twilight Taupe.

The first thing the 14-year-old said when she saw it was, "It looks expensive!" (Truthfully, it was expensive for just five small jars of paint, but it was totally worth it because I wouldn't have been able to choose the right complementary colors or figure out the right method to apply them all to get this result.)

Now we just have to move the stove back, and since it's time to repaint the room anyway I'm going to the store this week to choose a shade that goes better with the fireplace. 

—4—

All of our patio furniture is out now, and we had several beautiful days this week to enjoy sitting outside. I'm particularly enjoying all the birds that come to our feeders. Thanks to the Merlin bird app, I can identify a lot of them by sight and also by sound. 

One day I even got my 12-year-old to sit down with me to use Merlin and he got hooked. He probably knows more about the birds in our yard than I do. Now you can't go outside for 5 minutes without him saying, "Do you hear that? That's a rose-breasted grosbeak." He's an old soul.

—5—

One thing I am not enjoying is that the metal patio chairs we bought (on clearance!) at the end of last season are leaking rusty water on our deck. Good thing we didn't pay very much for them. 

The internet said to clean the rust stains from the deck with a white powder cleaner called Barkeeper's Friend. It worked great at removing the rust... but also left the boards with a whitish film on them which looks worse than the rust stains.

Any tips to get THAT off?

—6—

I went with my 14-year-old to see the Michael Jackson biopic. She wasn't even born when he was alive, so she confessed to me that sometimes she mixes up Michael Jackson with Elvis because they "both lived a long time ago" and were respectively called "The King" and "The King of Pop."

Hopefully having seen the movie will help.

—7—

I wouldn't have predicted this a few years ago, but I've become really passionate about physical mobility. I want to be active and do what I want without pain for as long as possible during the second half of my life (although I find stretching uncomfortable and unenjoyable, so I probably spend more time watching Facebook reels of mobility stretches than actually doing them.) 

I've been doing hip mobility for a month or so, and this week I added in some shoulders. For now I'm just following this guy, but I'm sure as soon as the algorithm figures it out I'll be flooded with more shoulder mobility videos.

Sometimes I do the exercises in this routine using a pole, but I have been known on occasion to just grab the kitchen broom and if it's closer to me, and waving it around rhythmically for 7 or 8 minutes makes me 100% look like a witch casting a spell. 

Click to Share:

Read More »

7 Quick Takes about Photo Sessions by the Clueless, Mother's Day Strandings, and Getting Notes in My Kids' Love Languages

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

Well, my 17-year-old and his girlfriend went to prom. They were SO CUUUUUUTE. 

Leaving for the dance.

The day of prom was rainy, necessitating a backup plan for taking pictures beforehand, but thanks to one-day shipping on Amazon we ordered a clear umbrella and made the best of it. The pictures actually turned out great.

I think I have an above-average sense for framing a decent photo, but I don't have a nice camera and I don't know anything about photography. So we made it work with my son's smartphone camera and occasionally Googling "prom poses" and directing him and his girlfriend to "do this."

—2—

For Mother's Day, the kids had me make a list of what I'd like to do after church, then they put it all into a schedule and planned the perfect day for me. 

The first thing on my list was "nature walk," so we drove to a hiking trail and spent about an hour meandering through the woods. (I should have specified "nature walk with no fighting or complaining" but I forgot that part, so I guess that was on me. Lesson learned for next time.) 

Unfortunately when we got back to the van, it wouldn't start.

Well, it started, but because of an ongoing sensor issue that we've spent a lot of time and money trying to repair, it wouldn't shift out of 'park' so we were stuck. We Googled for solutions, tried a few temporary fixes from random people on Reddit, and then gave up and called a tow truck.

They said they'd be a few hours so we called a friend to pick us up and bring us home, and by the time we got home there wasn't time for anything else on my Mother's Day schedule. Which is really a perfect metaphor for motherhood in general, so I'd say the day played out exactly like it was supposed to. 

—3—

The 21-year-old left for Japan! She's going to be doing a summer research internship there and we're so thrilled for her. Two of her biggest passions in life are (1) how things work and (2) learning about new languages and cultures, so this is utterly perfect for her.

She texted us when she landed, but we didn't hear from her after that for several days. We figured she was busy and jetlagged, and possibly having difficulties getting her cell phone to work in another country. 

By the third day, I started to get a little concerned, even though I'm generally pretty chill about checking up on the kids (see exhibit A:)

Text to my 17-year-old when he went out last week.

Luckily, that day we heard from her. She texted, and then Phillip and I were able to FaceTime her and hear all about what she's doing so far. Not that I understood much of the research part. But she seemed happy.

—4—

I'm taking a four-week self-defense class right now. I've got two classes left until I become a threat to those around me. Unfortunately my wrist is still recovering slowly from a sprain and that's annoying, but I can mostly participate.

The location for class is the gym in our church, which the kids think is really weird. 

"Wait, wait, wait," said my 12-year-old. "So you're learning to punch people and break their noses... at church?"

My mouth is open because you're supposed to yell "NO!" with every strike.

Among other things, yes.

—5—

I saw a list on the Internet that said "Stop asking 'How was your day?' Ask these questions to get your kids to actually talk."

I've seen questions just like these before, and they have a near-zero success rate. Who knows, though, maybe this list had the magic bullet that would help me find out all about my kid's day! I chose the most promising one and decided to try it: "What's something you keep thinking about today?"

Over the course of the week, I asked three of the kids and their answers were, "What? Me? I don't know," "Uhhh... stuff?" and "Why are you asking me that? What are you doing?"

—6—

My 17-year-old watched a baby duck rescue go down at his high school, right after he finished his AP Calculus exam. (I did not find out about this when I asked him any of the questions on the list, though.) 

Some baby ducks had fallen in a storm drain behind the cafeteria. The police came and it was a whole rescue operation where they pried open the grate, climbed down on a ladder, and deposited the baby ducks in a blue recycling bin to take to wildlife management.

So I don't know, if you're having trouble getting your kids to give you details about their day after school you could always try "Did you see anything interesting in a storm drain today?"

—7—

This is me, every day after my kids leave for school: 

Unlike the lady in the video, though, it's not my husband leaving the mess. It's the four kids who still live at home. Still 100% accurate, though. (When you have a teenage boy, you still even get to make the beard trimming smiley faces.)

Click to Share:

Read More »

7 Quick Takes about Sea Lions, Unplanned Clean Up Sessions, and Screaming into the Void

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

During general conference last month, we tried something new: everyone wrote questions to stump each other while listening to the talks (i.e: "What Christlike attribute did Elder Caussé talk about?" or "What was the name of the airport in Elder Stevenson's story?") 

(It wasn't my original idea, it was inspired by this post from The Red-Headed Hostess.)

This week we decided to finally play our trivia game. We divided the family into two teams. It was open notes, so anyone who wrote things down was a huge advantage to their team, especially because conference was a month ago (huge shout-out to ME here because I was the only one who took any.)

Here are the team names the kids chose:

Team #1: E'rebody Hit the Sea Lion (Ar Ahr Ar)
Team #2: The Better Team

I didn't know this, but "e'rebody hit the sea lion" isn't just something my kids made up. It's hard to believe, but Gen Z has invented a new fad dumber than my generation planking in 2008. You can see here for an explanation, but it won't explain very much. It makes no sense.

—2—

The 10-year-old stayed home on Monday with an upset stomach. He claimed that it didn't feel like he was going to throw up, that it just felt "weird" off and on, and he seemed okay most of the day. 

Being tired myself, I welcomed the excuse to lie around doing nothing with him, but by lunchtime I looked around at the messy house and said, "Wow, I've got to do something today. Do you have any idea of how many things I haven't done today?

"There's an infinite number of things you didn't do today," he agreed.

"Exactly!" 

"But there's always an infinite number of thing you didn't do," answered, like a freaking Greek philosopher.

I waved his words away and started filling a sink with dishwater. "But today they're infinite-er."

He's right, though, and the fact that no matter how much or how little I accomplish there are still infinity tasks left to do makes me feel better and worse at the same time.

—3—

Remember the 10-year-old's claims that "I don't feel like I'm going to throw up"? Lies.

That night, he vomited in his upper bunk and all the way down the hallway into the bathroom. I know I like to hyperbolize on this blog but I'm being dead serious when I say that in 21 years of motherhood I've never seen carnage like this from the stomach flu. We threw away a mattress.

The 21-year-old is home from school and keeps college hours, so she was still awake and heard it all go down. And instead of jumping in the car and booking it to the nearest hotel, do you know what she did? She cleaned up her little brother, stripped his bedding, and mopped the floor by herself before waking me to help her finish and get him back to sleep. 

My daughter is only home for a short while, actually, between the end of her school year and leaving for a summer internship abroad. I'm pretty sure this was not on her "Restful 2-Week Break" vision board.

—4—

On an unrelated note: even if you think your kids know they can't throw soiled bedding in the washing machine without removing the solid chunks of vomit first, TELL THEM AGAIN. 

—5—

Phillip said he saw someone with a live bird on their shoulder at the grocery store. Every now and then, she'd reach up to pet it and give it a neck scratch. The kids had so many questions when he came home and told us about it.

What kind of bird? He didn't know. Smaller than a parrot but larger than a parakeet.

Was it on a leash or a harness? No. It just sat there like the bird of a pirate.

Did it poop in the store? Not that he saw.

It's possible that the bird was trained to defecate on command. I once went to a playdate at a house with a bird who was trained with a special potty word. "What's the word?" I asked, curious. The other mom looked at me, dead serious, and whispered, "I can't tell you."

That was years ago and I still think about it.

—6—

At church, I was recently called as the Valiant activity leader for the boys ages 8-11. It's super-fun. I work with two other capable and dependable women, and we only have to plan something twice a month (for the last 3 years I was with the teenagers, and their relentless cycle of weekly activities feels a little like waterboarding after a while.) We met this Tuesday, and one of the women I work with is from Mexico, so of course we did a Cinco de Mayo activity.

She taught the kids to make pinatas, then the other woman (who is from Costa Rica) taught them the colors in Spanish and wore them out with a color relay game, and then we had horchata and nachos.

I made a pinata, too:

However, I forgot to put candy in it before sealing it up, which was a huge disappointment to my other kids after I brought it home and they begged me to let them break it open.

—7—

Facebook thought I would be interested in this:

Sounds tempting, but unfortunately I'll be in church at noon, which could be pretty awkward.

Happy Mother's Day!

Click to Share:

Read More »

7 Quick Takes about Eating Chicken Abroad, Words of Wisdom, and Getting Distracted in the Yard

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

This wasn't the first time I've had to report fraud on one of my credit cards, but it certainly was the weirdest. Usually the unauthorized purchase is an expensive piece of tech from Apple or Google, but this time do you know what it was?

Three separate charges to Kentucky Fried Chicken, ranging from $3 to $10. And three foreign transaction fees of a few cents for each of the KFC orders.

I felt weird about even calling to report the fraud because they were such small and strange charges. But since no one in the house had been out of the country that month it was pretty clear. 

Also, I'm not sure if it was our connection or if the lady I talked to was new, but it took her FOREVER and she kept leaving these really long pauses where I'd eventually go "Um... hello?" to make sure she was still there. The thought went through my head, "Am I somehow being scammed right now?" But eventually she figured it out and it's all good now. No more overseas fast food charges at the moment.

—2—

Before my mom left on Monday, we went to a museum with the 21-year-old. In one gallery, there a big wall of notes where you could leave words of wisdom for future museum visitors.

There were the standard political slogans, religious declarations, and words of encouragement and affirmation, along with a generous smattering of "Max was here" and "Taylor + Kelsey 4-EVA!!!" type notes. Pretty much everything I expected to see. 

But here were a few of my favorites:

"Make sure to love yourself, if you don't who will? I know I sure won't."

"Nobody really NEEDS eyebrows."

"If you are still saying '6, 7' you are not funny and no one likes you. It's over."

We stayed for a little while looking over the notes and as we went to leave, another family walked in. Their elementary schooler looked at the notes wall and then realized he could add one. Running over to the table with pens and blank notes, he announced: "Mom! I'm gonna write 6, 7 on it!"

So... it's not over, apparently. 

—3—

Usually, I don't comment on current events on this blog — especially anything political. And usually, I don't think there's anything funny about attempted violent crime.

But not always.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by New Yorkers (@newyorkers)

Last weekend a shooter tried to break in to the White House correspondents' dinner, and while everyone else dove for cover under tables, one man just continued eating his salad with nonchalant curiosity. 

The article I read about it is behind a paywall, so in case you can't read it, here are some direct quotes from an interview with the man in the video:

"I’m a New Yorker. We live with sirens and activity happening all the time. I wasn’t scared. There are hundreds of Secret Service agents hurtling themselves over tables and chairs, and I wanted to watch... A lot of people said, ‘Why didn’t you get on the floor? Everybody else at your table and in the room was on the floor.’ First of all, I have a bad back. I couldn’t get on the floor, and if I did get on the floor, they’d have to bring in people to get me off the floor. And Number 2, I’m a hygiene freak. There was no freaking way I was getting in my new tux on the dirty Hilton floor. It was not happening."

What a legend.

—4—

We had an arborist come to the house this week to give us suggestions to fix our lawn after the absolute hackjob the power company did when they came through in February to "trim" our trees. They hacked off entire limbs, so many that the arborist predicted those trees will die now.

I could go on, but I won't because it makes me too upset. Right now I'm just trying to be positive, and not think about the fact that I will die before we get trees large enough to replace what they did. IT'S FINE.

Anyway, I've decided that deciding to plant trees is extremely stressful. I'm not good at visualizing, so even simple things like picking a paint color for the wall is really difficult for me, even with a paint sample. Planting trees is like that, but worse. If I don't like how the wall looks, I can re-paint in a couple of days. If I don't like the layout of our furniture I can move the sofa. But you can't shift a sugar maple 3 feet to the left (or change it to a beech tree) if you change your mind later on.

—5—

I often watch my ADHD family members with puzzlement and think, "I must not have ADHD because I don't understand that at all."

Except I think I get it with yard work. 

The other day I went outside with a measuring tape and some cones to mark where we're thinking about planting trees, when I noticed a bush that was getting choked by vines. The next thing I knew, I was out there knee-deep in a pile of brush with 3 different kinds of hedge clippers and my kids were asking where dinner was.

And I still don't know where all the cones should go.

—6—

A while ago, our women's group at church had a service auction. We all offered a service that we could do (free haircut, deliver you a dinner, give you a ride to the airport, whatever). We all got a certain number of points at the beginning and then we bid on the services we wanted with real paddles and everything. 

I offered two hours of help decluttering/organizing an area of your home, and this week the highest bidder contacted me to cash in.

We spent two hours in her basement and got so much accomplished! I was worried that I offended her by constantly suggesting that we throw away, well, everything (because that's what I do.) But she asked if I would come back and help her some more next week, so I must not have. At least not so much that it overpowered how helpful I was.

—7—

We're having ongoing problems with our washing machine, but we're not getting a new one. Phillip can fix just about anything, sometimes it just takes time and requires us to be patient for a few days until he figures it out. 

The 14-year-old daughter does not like this.

"Why can't we just get a washer that works? That's what other people do," she complained.

Well, luckily for her, we're outliers. She's our fourth kid so if we did what other people do, she wouldn't even be here. 

Click to Share:

Read More »

7 Quick Takes about the Difference Between Boys and Girls, Mysterious Disappearances, and Hairstyles I Know I've Seen Somewhere Before

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

My daughter was taking care of a family friend's two dogs this week. Kira and Dexter (the dogs) stayed at their house, but my daughter went over three times a day to feed, walk, and play with them. 

Sometimes I went along and I could not get over their dynamic. 

Dexter would try to snatch the ball out of Kira's mouth when she had it, so Kira would tilt her head up and start twirling in a circle, like a middle school bully taking a shorter kid's backpack and holding it over their head to taunt them.

—2—

Prom shopping with boys is a totally different experience. As a girl myself, and as a mom of two girls, I've gotten used to shopping for prom taking months, multiple stores, lots of opinions, pictures, and an entourage of friends for opinions and moral support.

I accompanied my 17-year-old to Men's Wearhouse this week and and here was the entire process of finding shoes:

Man at store: Do you want shiny or not shiny?

My son: Not shiny.

Man at store: [checks box on clipboard] Okay, moving on...

We were in and out of there in 45 minutes, and most of that was just waiting for the guy to enter everything into the computer and pay for it.

—3—

It's spring break, and my kids have been good-naturedly at each other's throats all week. Nothing terribly egregious, just constant nitpicking (correcting how they pronounce a word, pointing out the teeniest sliver of a flaw in their logic, stuff like that.) 

It's exhausting.

The other day I was so tired of it that I told them, "From now on, here's the rule: before you open your mouth, ask yourself, Is what I'm about to say going to make them feel like a loved and valued member of the family?  If the answer is 'no,' don't say it."

The 12-year-old immediately asked, "Well, what if they're not?"

I closed my eyes to summon patience while my 9-year-old answered, "It doesn't matter, you've just got to make them FEEL like they are."

For the record, those two are the worst offenders in the house for incessant bickering.

—4—

My mom is here visiting for our spring break, so we've been doing some fun things. One of them was going to an aviation museum. 

My 17-year-old got to try the flight simulator:

The 12- and 9-year-old were disappointed that they weren't old enough for flight simulator, but there was a video plan race game in another part of the museum so they at least got to do something like it. They spent most of the time trying to find the most interesting ways to crash their planes, which is probably why there's an age minimum for the actual flight simulator.

Another thing: I've never seen anyone as passionate about anything as the volunteers at this museum were about planes. 

I asked one of them for his favorite fun fact about something in the museum, and he took us to this one plane and talked our ears off for 20 minutes. He even went and got his iPad to show us pictures that he was putting in a book he's writing about it. 

My 9-year-old asked a different volunteer a question about propellers, so the volunteer grabbed some toys out of the gift shop to demonstrate his answer and told my boys to take them home for free. Those were two guys living their best retirement lives.

—5—

I've been amazed before at the things people will take from the end of the driveway for free, but this one takes the cake.

We've been holding onto a very large fabric-covered ottoman that we never use because it matches the couches in our basement, but just because it came as a set doesn't mean we've entered into a blood oath to keep it as a set (see more ruthless decluttering words of wisdom here and here) so I set it at the end of the driveway and see if maybe someone would take it off our hands.

The ottoman was there all day (no worries, sometimes it takes a little while) and I meant to bring it inside at night but I forgot and then it rained. I was so mad! Now it was useless. I rolled my eyes and made a mental note to haul it to the dump later and pay a disposal fee. 

It disappeared later that afternoon. My best guess is that there's a portal to another dimension at the end of our driveway, because that honestly makes more sense to me than someone taking that soaking wet ottoman.

—6—

I pulled up behind this truck at a stop sign:

Me as a UPS driver.

—7—

Another thing we did with my mom this week is go to an alpaca farm. No one got kicked but we did get to see one of them spit.

Alpacas don't particularly like being petted but maybe 75% of them would tolerate it, especially if we had treats.

The alpacas are currently about three weeks from shearing, so they were SO fuzzy. You could sink your hand about 3 inches into their wool and leave a mark if they would let you touch them.

My favorite picture the 12-year-old has ever taken.

I also thought the windswept blonde mop on top of this guy was hilarious:

Hey, girl.

There was actually a young teenage boy of 14 or 15 on the farm with us, and the two of them had the exact same hairstyle. I was kind of watching his family to see if they noticed the similarity, but none of them appeared to. 

Of course, we parents are masters at disguising our real thoughts about how our kids look in whatever's trending. They'll learn the truth someday when their own kids see their old photos and let them know.

Click to Share:

Read More »