Friday, August 19, 2016

7 Quick Takes about the Breakfast of Champions, Getting All Philosophical, and What Happens When an Old Person Takes a Young Person School Supply Shopping

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

1


This is what my son had for breakfast yesterday morning.


It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

At first glance, you might assume those are sausages beside the eggs. But they're actually pickles.

Because my kids are still on summer vacation and that's how we roll.

2


Our wall phone (do people even have those anymore?) kicked the bucket, so we got a new one. As I was looking it over, I noticed this button at the bottom marked "Noise Reduction."

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
So... any ideas on what this does??

Not sure exactly what this means, but I don't think the tiny circuit board inside this phone can handle that task for our family. We'd need something more like the size of one of those government-owned supercomputers that take up an entire room.

I'm tempted to try the noise reduction feature on the phone, but I'm afraid the collective uproar of our 6 children might make it burst into flames. And we did just buy it, after all.

3


Earlier this week I pulled up Google to look up something random and saw this:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

I had to look at it for seriously 30 seconds before I realized there was not a diagram of a scowling uterus and fallopian tubes embedded in the Google logo.

Truthfully I'm still not sure what it is. It might be an angry piece of pizza doing pull-ups, but I'm not sure that's any less odd than the uterus.

By the way, I was looking up the Olympian Kerri Walsh Jennings because I heard there was some controversy over a comment she made. As it turns out, the Internet was just trying to make a a big deal out of nothing. Again.

4


This week I've been thinking about life, and right now it feels like I'm standing on a subway platform with a train rocketing past so fast it blows my hair back and knocks my hat off.

On Sunday my 12-year-old was asked to give her first talk in church (in our church we have no paid minister to give sermons, members of the congregation take turns instead), followed by two of my friends' boys (ack, they're not boys, they're men) who are leaving to serve two-year religious missions to Brazil and Hungary.

Then we came home and my daughter started talking about how she's going to be out of the house by the time the baby is in first grade and she "won't get to see him grow up."

It's all too weird. Contemplating the passage of time is giving me bouts of disorientation and/or vertigo.

But I also feel so lucky. I feel so stinking blessed when nobody is screaming and we're all sitting together in the living room watching the baby sitting in his brother's lap. Because this is the best it gets.

5


After church a woman who'd taught my daughter's Sunday School class years ago approached me and told me she loved my daughter's talk and was watching it thinking, "That's my girl up there!"

It made me think of how grateful I am for the "village" we've found at church. Because we all take turns teaching the classes and leading youth groups, each kid has so many "moms" (and "dads") watching them grow up and rooting for them and caring about what happens to them. It's just cool.

In fact, just this Sunday my toddler wandered over to someone else's pew and started showing his toy cars to the nearest adult. We'll just pretend I was thrilled to be part of the village instead of mad that Phillip zoned out while he was on toddler duty and didn't stop him from escaping our pew.

6


Since waiting until the last minute to go school supply shopping last year turned out not to be a good idea, I decided to get it done earlier this year. I went to Staples and only took one child instead of three. Also a good idea.

My son was incredibly helpful in managing the list and getting everything we needed, including a basic calculator for his sister.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Way cooler than anything I owned as a kid. Except my Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. That was awesome.

I was saying how cool that it could go in a 3-ring binder and my son asked, "Did they even have calculators when you were a kid?"

Yes, for your information, and sadly they were the most high-tech device I had access to until I was 16.

7


Do you ever run out of steam when it's time to get the kids in bed? Bedtime here is 8 PM, but Phillip and I were having one of those nights, and finally at 8:15 or so as the kids were playing in the yard and the sun was starting to set he asked, "So what's the next step here? The kids are running around in the dark screaming..."

And all I could do was look at him and say, "Well, do you want them running around screaming in HERE?"

Maybe not Mom of the Year material, but I thought it was a good question.

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17 comments:

Rosie said...

Oh man, summer makes bedtime so hard... When they're running around happily outside and leaving me alone, I'm not at ALL inclined to make them come in! The struggle is real.

AnneMarie said...

Hahaha! I love where your mind goes so many times. That Google search...I'm cracking up over here :P FYI, from what I understand (via something I saw on google the other day), I guess each day they have been having pieces of fruit doing olympic events as the Google doodle or something. It's weird, and I don't fully understand it. Maybe it's an attempt to encourage people to eat fruit? Who knows?

I love how you mention your church being a "village"! That's really the way it should be, you know? I think it's so sad when I go to churches and people just seem so far removed from each other. I'm always that person introducing myself to everyone, because I like knowing the others in my church family ;)

Jenny said...

8 pm comes and nice, happy mom leaves and kids are either in bed or moms pulling her hair out and trying really hard not to yell. Right now happy mom hasn't been around as much anyway because it's the end of summer and I really want people not to touch me or yell for me all day long haha.

Jenny Evans said...

Well, in that case it looks like a bunch of grapes wearing a graduation cap and doing an overhead press with a barbell. That makes SO much more sense. Not.

Jenny Evans said...

Yeah, my nice, patient self goes off duty at 8pm every night.

Actually, she takes a lot of breaks during the day, too.

Moira said...

Eating pickles along with breakfast is something that I would totally do (even when not pregnant). >_> There are very few scenarios where I won't also have a pickle on the side. XD

Oh my gosh, that really does look like a uterus! I can't believe I didn't see that.

Your 7QT has me all nostalgic for my church back in VA. They have a huge community there that I got to be a part of for almost 3 years before I moved to NJ, and I really miss the support system. It's taken a lot of practice, especially now that I'm pregnant, to not prematurely dismiss the community I might have around me (even when it isn't obvious) because I'm pining after a different one. I don't think I'll ever again take community for granted. It's a wonderful blessing.

Beth Anne @ Beth Anne's Best said...

Plus it's light outside until what seems like 9pm. Hard to convince someone they need to sleep when it's light outside.

I remember my grandma went to north dakota for a wedding one summer and she was like it was 10 or 11pm before the sun went down some nights!

PurpleSlob said...

HAHA! PP had to have a pickle as a snack yesterday!
Yeah, the Olympic fruit freaked me out too.
Villages are the best. Your question about wanting them inside screaming was very valid!
Man, the 12 yo talking about leaving the nest gave u pause for a minute, I'm sure!

Michelle said...

Kerri Walsh Jennings is my favorite Olympian! I hate the way her words were twisted.

Jenny Evans said...

The Internet was all, "Her words ignited a firestorm of criticism online" but only ever quoted ONE person on Twitter who was mad about it... so that leads me to believe it was actually a non-issue.

Jenny Evans said...

I grew up in Minnesota so I know what you're talking about! I was further south but I remember it staying light until 9:30 or so easily in the summer.

Jenny Evans said...

Absolutely. I think just showing up to church to spiritually refill our cup and then going home is missing half the point!

I don't think anything is easy when you're pregnant so you're doing great, but I'm glad you're trying to stay positive and see the good that's right in front of you.

Beth Anne @ Beth Anne's Best said...

Yeah when I lived in Texas it was after 9 some nights. I remember when I went to France a few years ago it was close to 11pm! I remember I booked a hotel near the airport because it was 8pm when we got in and I didn't want to deal with going into the city in the dark and it was light for several hours after landing. So crazy!

Jen said...

Trapper Keepers!! Man, I loved those things.

Katy said...

So glad you could educate your son about us old people using calculators back in the day. :)

I think those Google cartoons are weird as well. I'd say maybe 25% of the time I get it! Hmm. Maybe that makes me old? Where's that slide rule I used to use?

Alicia @ Sweeping Up Joy said...

Ahh! Can I "noise reduction" my life? I love that my 3 year old is entertaining himself, but does it have to be so loud? If I could just reduce that noise a little, he could still play and I could think. :)

Thanks for the giggles about the little uterus working so hard.

April Stephens said...

I can totally relate to that last one. Sometimes you gotta let screaming kids stay outside. And I thought the Olympian on google was poop, and I keep wondering why there are so many emojis for that. If only the emoji designers were parents, they'd be tired of looking at poop by now.