God laughs at my plans

So we are finally all back together here in the land of HOT.  I mean it feels like the surface of the sun outside.  I have grown up in California and have lived here all of my life, but give me one good summer in Minnesota and I suddenly am a hot weather wimp (Ok ok so I’ve always been a wimp).  Me and my air conditioning unit are already longing for a nice mid-70’s with a cool wind.  Well a girl can dream can’t I?

Besides the absurd how-can-humans-survive-this? weather, Music Man and I are completely overwhelmed with LIFE here.  Kids. Chaos. Clutter. Homeschool. Insanity.

You see, when you introduce small humans to a whole house full of toys that they haven’t played with for months, they will immediately destroy any work that you had previously done to maintain a clean environment.  They will laugh in your face at your attempts of cleanliness.  Its like Christmas morning and they have been given free reign.  Their little minds are BLOWN.

And then you will cry.  Or at least take huge deep breaths and repeatedly say to yourself “don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry” like I did.  (Hey I did better than last year where I really did cry.  And cry HARD)  Because in a mere 0.002 seconds the house will look like an actual atomic bomb has exploded in your living room.  If I weren’t so shocked and saddened by this affair, I would be astounded at the level of destruction these munchkins can make in the short amount of time.  Really its amazing.

Well part of the reason we decided to skedaddle out of our cozy midwestern town and head back to the land of daddy’s-who-must-work is because we had decided to have Ariel join in Monday school through our local church.  Our church has a brick and mortar school with a homeschooling option.  For homeschoolers, you can come to Monday school for fun classes (and sometimes not just on Mondays), and also enjoy sports, drama, music, field trips and other fun things that only a ‘real’ school can give (or a really good co-op).  I think its a wonderful option for homeschoolers.

I really pumped up my sweet little 5 year old gearing her up for her first 1/2 day of drop off school.  She was so excited!

 

Of course she had an Ariel backpack!

Well we had gotten to the right place, stepped right up ready to get instructions and the lady behind the counter said “Uh, yah we don’t have kindergarten this year.  There weren’t enough kids who signed up for it.  All we have is 1st grade classes and up.”

And for the second time in two days I had to repeat “Don’t cry.  Don’t cry.  Don’t cry” to myself.  Thank goodness Ariel is good-natured and didn’t quite catch on why the other kids were leaving to go into their classes and she was still stuck with me.

The administrators were kind and accommodating and are allowing my precocious daughter into any 1st grade classes we would like to participate in.  All we have to do is figure out what we wold like to participate in.  There are other co-ops or do nothing but actual at home homeschooling only.

And now I am struggling as to where to place my feet.  Which road do I follow?  Basically God laughed at my plans.  

So I’ll leave you with something that made me laugh.  I had Ariel hold up a sign that read

“1st Day of Kindergarten.  I want to be a Princess… SO I DON’T HAVE TO HAVE ANY JOBS”.

Building a strong work ethic over here.  *sigh*

This might be a long year folks

The Princess and the Toad

This week has been quite the whirlwind.  You see we had to fly (Mr. Sunshine and I) and drive (Music Man and the rest of the munchkins) back to California.  *more on this in a later post*

Well its no small feat to accomplish this big task of moving back home.  Well our other home I guess.  Which means we had lots of work to get done beforehand.  So while my in-laws, Music Man and I were hard at work, Ariel and Mini Man were hard at work too.  They were busy in the garden with us, busy exploring nature, and most of all they were busy playing with found toads.

I just LOVE the juxtaposition of my baby girl all frilly-ed up petting her toad.

Just couldn’t be happier.

Here she is kissing the toad.  Perhaps she honestly believes it will turn into a prince?

Grandma had a good idea about creating a place for the toad to sit.  Ariel actually said “We are creating a habitat!”.  Grandma and I were so surprised to hear this come from my 5 year old.

First you have to start with water…

Then you put in some rocks for the poor little bugger to sit.  Do you see him?

There he is!

Mini Man was so gentle.  Look at that one finger touch.  Like a pro.

Next up on the to-do list is helping Grandma in the garden.  She was lucky to find an actual shovel just Mini Man’s size.

He was a genuinely good helper.  He is only 3 1/2 but he was out there for a couple of hours right there alongside his Grandma.  I couldn’t believe it!  As Music Man says “he’ll make a good farm hand!”  And with all of our produce that our garden grows, we will surely need the help!

Country Rules

Country living has its perks.  Clean air, room to run around, old fashioned values, friendly neighbors…  Well, some neighbors.

This past week Music Man and I were up late as usual (we are total night owls), and heard a loud BAM BAM BAM.  Music Man jumped up and ran to the window.  I yelled “get the light!”.  Music Man was gifted a crazy powerful spotlight for his birthday this year and he loves it.  In fact he uses it on a nightly basis to see if there are deer in our yard sleeping.  I swear I think the poor deer are saying ‘yes yes we are here old man.  Now quit it with your light, we are trying to sleep!’.

Well this night we were super glad to have this spotlight.  Why?  To catch the young punks who were bashing in our mailbox.  MM shines his bad boy light and all we heard was screeching and ‘Aaaaahhh’ from several teenagers/young men as they peeled away from our house a la Dukes of Hazard style.

Then here was the conversation that went down between Music Man and I.

Me “That sucks!”

MM “I wish I had a shotgun so I could have shot them”.

Me “SHOOT THEM????!!!  You don’t want to go to jail for a mailbox!”

MM “It’s not going to kill them.  But it will hurt”

Me “How badly will it hurt?!”  (I’m imagining a big gaping hole in a poor teenage boys chest at this point.)

MM “It will burn their a** which is what they need.”

Me “Uh ok” (I’m clearly confused)

MM (Sensing that I am not getting it) “A shotgun bullet has a bunch of bb pellets in it.  It mostly just stings.”

Me “So it doesn’t kill them?”

MM “Well it could if you were really close but we aren’t close enough at all to do that”

Me “Yes but couldn’t you still go to jail?”

MM “Nope.  Country rules.”

Well this is what we found in the morning.

Was this really necessary?  I guess one hit wasn’t enough to get their rocks off.

I just might be convinced to settle up with some Country Rules.

*It should be noted that Music Man is well acquainted with Country Rules because he himself was administered this healthy dose of terrible teenage medicine while doing jerk things to neighbors growing up.  Guess a little sting helps put your brain back in your head*

**I don’t actually support real violence towards neighbor kids.  But I do support a 1950’s mentality where a neighbor goes to their neighbor and chews out that Denis the Menace kid who decided that throwing their baseball into their neighbors window on purpose, gets you a big dose of punishment.  And if that punishment should sting on the tush, then so be it.**

Making applesauce

After canning cucumbers and corn we turned our eyes to apples.  Our trees are actually starting to produce so we decided to make a jump on it while we could and make a couple of bags of applesauce.

First you have to have a cutie pie helper to pick apples off the tree

 

*that soft focus is due to the extreme humidity.  Unpleasant yes, but it makes for fun pictures!*

Because it was just the beginning of the season for our apples (still unsure about exactly which kind they are since it was the previous owners who planted them), we decided to use our regular pot to cook up the apples.

I agree Mini Man, I’m worried about those apples boiling over too (which they did).

I think Mini Man is actually investigating the corn in our big ole pressure cooker.

Our big pot of cinnamon applesauce!  This made 20 cups of cinnamon-y apple-y goodness.  Yum.