The boys got their hair buzzed today. You know what that means? For about 5 minutes Caleb enjoyed a real mohawk.
Yeah, so much better than that fraudulent fauxhawk earlier this morning.
Too bad it only lasted a few minutes. His punk rocker fantasy is postponed until his hair grows out again. I’m such a mean momma.
Why oh why are my boys obsessed with mohawks?
They wet and gel and form these fauxhawks. When we buzz their hair, they beg for a few minutes of mohawk before the middle gets shaved too.
I see a future in a retro punk band.
I am alive. I have had some bloggy thoughts make brief appearances in my brain, but I haven’t taken time to sit down and form coherent sentences with those thoughts. I haven’t abandoned the blog. It just seems that way.
The children are out of school, of course. That means, I’m working hard to keep us on a loose routine and supervise morning and afternoon chores and help everyone get along. This apartment isn’t all that big and it gets hot in here some days. That can lead to grumpy children who feel they don’t have enough space and take it out on anyone within a few feet (which, often, is everyone!).
I am also trying to take the children down to the pool in the backyard of our building just about every day. They are becoming good swimmers, and it’s fun to watch them. It also is nice to be in the sunshine and cooling off in the pool. And it wears them out like nothing else, so bedtime is a breeze!
Last week, my husband and I were able to get away for a little vacation together to celebrate our 15th anniversary. My mother-in-law and father-in-law came to stay with the children — a huge blessing. So now, in addition to the blog ideas I had at Disney World, I also have several other thoughts to share with you. I hope to get around to those soon.
We’re leaving soon for a fairly long visit in Virginia and West Virginia. I’ll be taking my laptop, and I’ll have internet connection everywhere we go, so I hope to have time to write here while I’m away. We couldn’t be more excited about the trip! I’m telling you — that little vacation with my husband and this trip to see family and friends are like water in a desert. This past year has been very difficult for our family. I’d say it’s the most difficult year of our lives. And we are thankful for the weeks God is giving us to refresh us.
I’ll post a few more Disney World pictures and then sign out for today. Thanks for keeping up with me here at this blog.
My fierce pirates are ready with the cannon!
The girls were ready to ride their first real rollercoaster.
A refreshing snack on a hot day. Lots of sharing going on!
Minnie’s house was so much fun because the kids could touch everything.
And those bright green t-shirts from Brazil are the best souvenirs we’ve ever bought. I put those green shirts on all four boys, and I don’t have any trouble easily picking them out in a crowd. I was dreading the day they start outgrowing them, but then I recently saw that a little shop down in Orlando by the Brazilian supermarket (where I like to buy Bis chocolate bars and Patrick likes to buy Guarana soda) sells t-shirts exactly like these! But that’s probably more than you wanted to know.
The castle at night and the parade of lights were absolutely beautiful! I almost cried it was so pretty. And my boys were excited because Peter Pan turned himself from white to green right in front of them — like while making eye-contact with my boys. They were thrilled! And Snow White came over to shake my older daughter’s hand and call her by name and tell her happy birthday right in the middle of the parade. And even though my daughter is eleven now and really too cool for Disney princesses, it made her day! She was beaming because Snow White called her by name! (She was wearing a badge that said, “Happy Birthday, Lauren!”) I have a whole blog post about being called by name rolling around in my head that I may get down into sentences and paragraphs here one day. Or maybe not. We’ll see.
Ok, one last picture. After a full day of Magic Kingdom, these kids were tuckered out. There was no way we could carry these three up three flights of stairs, and they were not waking up for anything. So, we loaded them up in the wooden cart we use to haul groceries up in the antique elevator. They never even knew they were carted upstairs like sacks of potatoes.
Summer vacation is in full swing in our home. We have already spent plenty of time at the pool. And yesterday we had the ultimate vacation day — a day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom.
Sometime soon I will explain how we received tickets for a day at Disney. I also want to blog about the magic of the Magic Kingdom, my pet peeve about the Magic Kingdom, doing a theme park with six kids, and rude people.
For now, though, I will just share these pictures of what our children kept calling “the best day of our lives.” 
Our three-year-old can fall asleep anywhere. He gets sleepy, and he just konks out no matter where he is.
Wonder where he gets that from?
Seriously, five minutes. Five minutes. The bigger kids and I left the room for five minutes to go put our pj’s on, and these two were comatose when we returned. Drooling, snoring, REM, out-like-a-light ASLEEP in five minutes or less.
But don’t they make a sweet picture?
I like to think I have a good memory, but -clearly- I occasionally have some issues with remembering. Most notoriously was one major memory gaffe in the early stages of my relationship with my husband. As long as I live, he will never let me forget the most regrettable memory blunder of all-time.
It was early enough in our relationship that my husband was still trying to put his best foot forward with my parents. During weekend visits, he’d rise early to make scrambled eggs on a Saturday morning to impress my mom. He left his Duke t-shirt at home so as not to agitate my dad. I like to think my senior memory moment was the final ice-breaker, the single event that united my husband and my parents in one moment of shock and awe as they turned to me in disbelief and horror.
A couple years earlier I had seen the movie Point Break with some girlfriends. (Those of you who have seen this movie are already laughing. Stop it. We’re not to the laughing part yet.) I remembered surfing and bank robbers who wore masks of the faces of past Presidents. I also remembered Keanu Reeves. That’s pretty much all I remembered. Except, I did remember that I liked the plot of the movie.
As we stood at the video store (Yes, boys and girls, we used to leave our houses and go to a store to rent the movies. They did not magically appear in our mailboxes. We had to walk uphill both ways to get to this video store and back home again.), as we stood at the rack of movies, my husband noticed this movie was rated R and asked if I was sure we’d want to watch this with my parents. Ignoring this flashing red warning signal, I remembered that my friend Jennifer, who is far more conservative and who had once turned off a period-piece movie because it showed too much cleavage (or at least that is my memory of the situation which, as you’ll soon learn, means absolutely nothing) — Jennifer loved Point Break. ”So,” I reassured my husband, “I’m sure it’s fine. Just lots of action and bank robbing and surfing.”
Once home, we popped some popcorn and settled in to watch this movie with my parents. Mere minutes into the movie, like in the opening scene, somebody busts (pun intended) into a room filled with topless girls. Naked breasts are everywhere, foul language fills the room – from the movie, not from my husband who was ready to kill me. Actually, I don’t know that there were many topless girls in the scene. I only know that we saw naked boobies and we heard bad words. While watching a movie. With my parents. And my husband wanted to die.
We quickly turned the movie off. We probably watched Hee Haw instead. And I learned that night that my memory cannot be trusted. I needed some ginkgo biloba in a serious way. I also was not allowed to choose the movies for nearly fifteen years. Only recently, when I absconded control of the Netflix queue, was this judgment reversed.
So I tell you all that to say that sometimes we only remember the things we liked about a situation (or movie) and not the embarrassing or uncomfortable or rated R parts.
I’ve been studying the life of Moses this year, and I have seen that the Israelites had the same memory problems I have. Shortly after entering the desert, they began to complain about their circumstances and fondly reminisce about Egypt. Clearly, they forgot the glaring breasts-flashing-on-screen equivalent bit of information that they had been slaves in Egypt. So while, yes, they had had cucumbers to eat in Egypt, they were so thoroughly exhausted from making bricks all day and meeting unrealistic quotas and having to watch all their firstborn sons be put to death that they couldn’t really enjoy the cucumbers.
In the heat and discomfort of the wilderness, those Israelites only remembered the good stuff from Egypt, forgetting all the bad stuff. Like me in my Point Break moment, they were in serious need of ginkgo biloba.
Do you ever do that? Look back on the past or to the place you used to be and wish you were there again? Forgetting all about the parts that really weren’t that great?
I do. As I’ve studied the life of Moses, I’ve realized that I am far too much like those Israelites in the desert. I need some spiritual ginkgo biloba to jog my memory. I’m learning that I can’t trust myself to remember correctly or think correctly because my heart is deceptively wicked. But I can trust God. And if He has me right here, right now, I don’t need to look longingly back to the Egypt I remember.
Anyone want to watch a movie? I remember a good one.
Merry Christmas in May!
On Saturday, we had an early birthday party for my oldest child. She will turn 11 in a couple weeks, but she wanted her party before school lets out for summer. So, we cranked up the air conditioners and decorated for Christmas. My daughter wanted a Christmas-themed birthday party, so we put up the three-foot tree, strung up some lights, placed some garland across the piano, and hung a couple of stockings. Because she’s almost 11, she actually did the decorating. I made the cupcakes.
All the party preparations sparked a fun conversation about which birthday parties throughout the years have been our favorites. I thought I’d mention some of Lauren’s favorites for today’s Miscellaneous Monday.
1. American Girl Party. Lauren’s 8th birthday. My mom and I had bought all sorts of American Girl party supplies at 75% off the regular price at the Hallmark store in my hometown. Every girl was invited to wear a party dress and bring along a doll. We decorated with AG stuff, streamers, some AG books standing around, and other girly-looking things. The girls decorated straw hats for their dolls with feathers and ribbons and lots of glue. We played games from the AG pencil game book. The whole afternoon was very girly and fun. Lauren was in the midst of her “I don’t like icing on cake” phase, so I made her cake in rose-shaped silicone pans — one large rose and several smaller rose-shaped cupcakes. Then I sprinkled them with powdered sugar and served them on a plate covered in doilies.
2. The Disney Princess Party. Lauren’s 5th birthday. We decorated the basement of our church with pastel balloons, lots of streamers, and a large Disney Princess piñata. I made a cake that looked like a castle, complete with sugar-cone turrets. We played games like pass the crown and the dress-up relay. That was really fun. The girls were divided into two teams and they raced to put on the boa, the princess shoes, the crown, and the fluffy skirt. They made Fruit Loop necklaces and decorated their own crowns. It was a little girl’s dream party.
3. The Barnyard Bash. Lauren’s 4th birthday. This might be our most favorite party yet. The cake looked like a pig (a Family Fun idea). Everyone wore overalls. We covered our Little Tykes playhouse with large pieces of cardboard, painted to look like a barn. My in-laws even brought bales of hay to decorate our yard. We gave everyone red bandanas to tie around their necks upon arrival. Then we served hot dogs in pie tins for lunch. We played chicken limbo and we did a barnyard cake walk. I taped farm animal shapes onto paper plates and tied string on them to make masks that the children could color. Each child sat on the bale of hay in front of our miniature barn for Polaroid pictures they could take home that day. It was so much fun!
There have been many other parties — the Virginia Tech Hokie party, the Hello Kitty party, Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, Flowers & Hearts, Sports, Pirates, Barney, and more I am not remembering. We love parties. We love Christmas in May.
How about you? What fun birthday party ideas do you have to share?
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