Life in The Circus

I get a lot of pictures on my phone from kids when we're just hanging out, or ran out for drinks and took selfies.  Some I know about, some I find later.  If I'd been keeping up with daily blogging I would have thrown them up as I went along, but now they get their own post.

Random pictures from 2015.

I don't even know.

A visit to my work:

When the power went out at work mid-day and the sent us home (in the summer) so I took the girls to a dollar theater matinee:

Fancy drinks after an ortho appointment:

The Toothfairy Test

I had a conversation with a co-worker a few weeks ago about being a parent.  I think she said it nicely when she stated, "It doesn't matter how many books or articles you read, or how prepared you think you are for parenting, it's never enough.  Those kids come with their own hard drives and you can only hope that they'll turn okay despite you."

Here here, amen, and all that jazz.

Parenthood is giving me a great big slap in the face right now with a couple of my children who are struggling with school, and I'm at a complete loss as to what more I can do.

And equally as aggravating: the toothfairy. (here)  Yeah, totally on the same level for me.

Yesterday morning I was throwing a load of laundry into the dryer because I needed an article of clothing out of it to wear to work.  Tayler's alarm went off in her bedroom, and she crept out into the hallway rubbing her eyes.

"Mom, I need to tell you something."

This could be the opening for who knows how many things so I simply turned and looked at her, waiting for what would follow.

"Cali lost a tooth yesterday but she didn't tell you because she wants to see if the Toothfairy is real."

I almost had a hallelujah spot right there in the closet of a laundry room (Literally.  It used to be a large linen closet).  I hate the Toothfairy.  Loathe her.  Who in their right mind ever thought she was a good idea?  You're naturally growing up and loosing body parts, let me give you money.  And here it was, my perfect chance to be done with it for good.  Cali is my last believer, and we're on borrowed time with her belief at that.

But then I thought of all the ways to realize that the Toothfairy isn't real... and of course, subsequently the Easter Bunny and that jolly ol' elf, Santa Claus himself...  In one early morning moment all of that would be gone from our house.  Forever.  And not just the loss of those beliefs, but we'd be leaving behind a stage of our lives.  That would be the end of little kids in our home.  Our family would step into a new phase of life.


And it all hung on that stinking Toothfairy.

I walked Tayler downstairs where we raided The Man's wallet for a single dollar, because let's face it, I rarely have cash on hand.  I handed the dollar to Tay and asked her to go make the exchange.  If Cali woke up it would be much less strange to see Tayler standing next to their bunk beds than it would be to see me.

But Cali didn't even stir and Tayler found the tooth hidden in an empty gum box (I don't know... my kids are weird).

And with that we borrowed just a little more time for Cali's childhood, before she gets too big on me.

For the record Cali didn't say a single word to me about her missing tooth until after dinner last night.  And she only showed me the gaping hole in her mouth, she made no mention of her test, and the fact that it successfully proved the reality of the Toothfairy.

Not a single word.

I guess that's how it is when you know something secret, that not everyone else is sure they know.  There's power in that, and that was good enough for her.

Or she faked sleeping and knows exactly what went down and now has a completely different secret.

I guess I'll never know.

I Touched It.

On Sunday I responded to Sean's message in the fridge:

Because I was feeling sassy.

On Monday I noticed:

Because our family is awesome like that.

I probably take more amusement out of this than I should, but it really made me giggle when I saw that.

I think you need a sense of humor to survive a family.

To survive anything, really.

Daily Grind.

This was the first post ever written on this blog.  I wanted to keep track of my life, the details of it, and so that's what I first wrote about it: the daily grind.

This post was originally written and posted on April 10, 2008.

Divorced... with kids.

Someone should make a TV series out of it.

Seriously.

I'll admit switching gears from stay at home mom to working mom hasn't been easy. I'm still trying to get the hang of it. The routines are different and there is so little time to spare.

I'm up at 5:00 a.m., the girls are up at 6:30, and we're out of the house by 7:30.

Off to daycare where thankfully they eat breakfast because if I had to add just one more thing in the morning we'd never make it out of the house on time.

I say I wake up at 5:00, but realistically I'm rolling out of bed an hour later at 6:00.

Mornings are not my friend.

Some how, miraculously, all five of us are ready to go in an hour and half.

(Maybe I won't mention that sometimes this means compromise to avoid arguments, like Cali (3 years old) wearing her dance out fit and snow boots to daycare).

I can usually drop the girls off at 7:45 and make it in to work aby 7:55-ish, where I get to answer the phone (Thank you for calling Burt Brothers, this is Stephanie...) and scan my life away... one paper at a time.

I only have seven overflowing inboxes...

Lunch time is errands. If it weren't for that one sacred hour of the day I would get nothing done. I squeeze as many little errands into that one hour as I possibly can. This includes grocery shopping.

I start the count down for 5:00 at about 2:30, when finally I can hit the gym (more daycare for the kids, but they like all the friends they're making). The gym is the one thing in my life that I do for completely selfish reasons.

I do it for me.

Of course, this means dinner at 7:00, and somehow we squeeze in homework, baths, and story time to make it to bed by 8:00.

Not me, the girls.

After the girls are in bed, I get to do laundry and dishes and any other miscellaneous cleaning jobs like mopping and picking up stray toys.

Maybe I'll make it to bed by 11:00...

Buying A House.

This post was originally written and published on November 19, 2008.

I think back to a year ago when I was living in my birth-dad's house. I had $500 a month to my name and four little girls to take care of on that.

I marvel at how extremely blessed I am to be where I am now.

I just can not emphasize how happy I am!

I have my girls,
a new car,
a great job where I've already been promoted and training in new things,
great friends,
(the dating scene hasn't been too bad either)

and I'm buying a house.

I've come such a long way in one year.

Life is good, and I have been so blessed!

Check out this great online tour of the house. I should say though, anything can always happen so I'm trying very hard to stay level headed about this until we actually close and I have the keys in my hand. Right now closing is set Dec 15 to give the family time to move out. But as far as I've been told my application will be fine with the lender and I've paid my earnest money and we're under contract with it.

I Have My Hands Full.

This post was originally written and posted on November 10, 2011.

I went to Subway for lunch, went through the process of creating my sandwich, and handed over my debit card to pay for it.  The cashier, a lady who was a bit older than I am, took my card and stared at it.  

Intently.  

It has this picture on it:

"What's the story with this picture?" She asks.

"That would be my family," I reply.

She starts counting.  I kid you not.  Gets her finger out and starts ticking off the kids, one, two three, four...

"How old is your oldest?" She asks after counting off all six of the kids.

"Eleven."

"Wow, you work faster than I do.  I had six in 14 years of each other." 

I won't tell her that I have six within 5 years.

Here it is.
 
I have six kids.

They're all in elementary school.

I have my hands full.

As I'm repeatedly reminded of by strangers who feel it their duty to tell me so.

But they're amazing kids. 

I can take them into public and I know they're not going to throw a tantrum.  They're not going to run around and scream.  (Though they may dance a little and giggle a whole lot).  They're polite and they, for the most part, share with each other. 

You say I have my hands full simply because of the mass of them?

Huh. 

I would have said otherwise.

Valentine's Teeth.

This post was originally written and posted on February 24, 2010.

You know... in case the boys get too close.

It's Not Onions, It's Salsa.

This post was originally written and posted on May 26, 2011.

Last night's dinner was a Taco Bake Casserole.

But Cali (age 6) took one look at it and declared, "Mom! Why did you put onions in this?"

At first I was confused because I hadn't, but then I realized... "I didn't. I put salsa in it."

A look of relief washes over her face, "Oh! Okay."

 She loved it.

I don't think I'll break down the ingredients of salsa for her quite yet.

{pic source}

There's A Hawk In Our House.

This post was originally written and posted on 12 December, 2011.

Imagine one hawk flying crazily in the kitchen with five screaming girls freaking out about it... one in tears...

but I get ahead of myself. 

I wasn't actually at home for the first half of this adventure so I'll have to tell it to you the way it was told to me.

It started with this picture text from The Man:

"I was getting into the shower when these two birds crashed into the window.  Scared the heck out of me.  One's still breathing but not moving.  Not sure what to do with it."

To which I replied via text, "Oh wow.  Is this one of those things where we have to bring it in the house with a box nest?" 

Let me interject here that I was only kidding.

"I'm going to nudge it if it doesn't move I'll have to finish it I guess."

"Ew gross."

"It's looking at me. Grrrr."

"I'm trying to pick it up but it's holding onto the ground."

"It knows you're going to kill it."

"Not yet.  I was trying to see if it could move."

"Tayler says we should call FedEx."

"I tried your box idea.  I should have closed the box."

"Maybe I should have said that the box idea only works if they're hurt and can't fly."

"I thought it couldn't.  It didn't move at all except to hold the ground when I picked it up."

"It's a hawk.  I looked it up."

"Are you serious?"

"Yep. I'm certain. The picture matched perfectly."

"Oh geez.  Is it still in the house?"

"Yep."

At this point The Man posts on facebook, "Does anybody have a fishing net or butterfly net I can borrow? ASAP."

Insert mental image here...

"Kaye Lynn says to call Tracy Aviary."

"I just need to get it outside."

"Right.  They can come and get it."

"It tried flying.  It wasn't successful."

I found out later that West had tried to go up and actually take his shower at that point, telling The Circus not to worry about it, it wasn't going anywhere.  As life goes, as soon as he gets upstairs it starts flying around.  And girls start screaming bloody murder. 

And there were tears.

"What the... is it breathing?"

"Yes."

"Man that bird is having a bad day."

After laughing hysterically about this with my co-workers I head home.
I walk into the house from the garage door to see this blocking my path:

And I have to admit that I freaked out inside just like The Circus.  What if it freaked out on me when I stepped over it?  Finally I was able to force myself to step over it, as it glared at me with it's angry hawk eye. 

I looked up the website for Tracy Aviary and found that they don't actually take wild birds because of quarantining, but was able to get the phone number for Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah, who does take them.

"Hi.  I have a hurt hawk in my house..." Followed by an "Oh!" and a burst of laughter with, "that's a first!"

So West gently picked the poor thing up,

and went to put it in the same box that brought it into the house, but realized we should probably learn the lesson that it can fly out of the box and did we really want that happening in our car?

Insert mental image here.

So we put a blanket in our dog carrier instead.

We took the hour drive up to Ogden, where two ladies stayed late to wait for us, and one put on the huge leather gloves (please note that West used only paper towels in the picture above) and reached in and... the poor thing had died on the way. 

We learned that a bird's trachea is the back of their tongue, and she could see a lot of blood coming from it.  Which meant that there was significant internal bleeding.

We also learned that it was a Cooper's hawk.  They hide in the trees until a prey comes along, and then the tactic is to chase them into something to kill it, like, oh, say our house.  But this guy didn't pull out of the chase fast enough, or as West imagines it, was fighting with it mid-flight, so he hit the house too.

At least he's not hurting and West didn't have to get the shovel.

My conscience is clear.

Mommy Daughter Date Night.

The post was originally written and posted on August 23, 2008.

It's hard to fit five people in a "self" shot!

It kept coming at me over and over and over, "I'm bored... I'm bored." 

And it wasn't even the kids saying it! 

I was utterly and uselessly bored out of my mind. Our house was spotless, the errands were done, I'd already read most of the day away, and I could think of nothing to do.

"Alright girls get some nice clothes on we're going on a date to a restaurant!" 

This is the fun part of having all girls. Matching cute clothes, doing hair, and since it was a very special occasion, we all put on perfume and lip gloss. To Applebee's we went in all our girl glory.

 And then, being as it was just we girls we went shoe shopping, and of course, topped the night off with Baskin Robbins. 

What would I do with out those girls to keep me sane? 

Though in the same breath, by the time we got home and I was ushering them into pajamas, they were completely driving me insane! 

Casidee put it best, though, when she declared, "this was the best night ever!"

I couldn't agree more.  Where would I be without those girls in my life right now?

Don't Worry, Mom. I Got This. Famous Last Words.

My cell phone rings.

It's a call from "Home Kids."

I answer and on the other end is my nine year old, Cali.

"Hi, Mom!"

"Hi, Cali."

"Where are the cupcake papers?"

"The paper cups you bake them in?"

"Yeah."

"Are you making cupcakes?"

"Yeah."

"I'll be home in an hour, how about you wait until I get there and can help you?"

*Silence*

"Or is there a sister there that can help you?"

"West is here."

I have to take five seconds to go over this in my head. She's never baked on her own before.

"If you have any questions about what to do please ask him for help."

"Okay.  It's not hard, Mom, the directions are right on the back.  I got this."

"Okay... the cupcake papers are in the cupboard where the sugar is."

"Okay!  Thanks, Mom!"

I get home about an hour later and the house smells good, like baking, but not like cupcakes.  More like...

"Are these blueberry muffins?"

I peer closely at them, still nestled in their papers inside the muffin tin, sitting on the stove top.  They look really pale and the middles are decidedly under cooked and a bit gooey looking.  Though the batch in the pan next too it looks alright.

West begins to tell me the story from his end of the happenings.

Cali did indeed decide she was going to bake.  She found a package of "just add water" muffin mix in the cupboard that I had recently bought on a whim and had decided that it was exactly what the day was calling for.

She read the directions and managed to get the right amount of water mixed in with powder.

West is vaguely aware that she's making something.  He's sitting on the couch and Cali comes and perches herself next to him.  A few short minutes go by and the timer goes off.  Cali disappears into the kitchen where she cracks the oven to check things out, resets the timer and perches herself on the couch again.

A few short minutes later the timer goes off again.  Cali disappears into the kitchen where she cracks the oven to check things out, resets the timer, and perches herself on the couch again.

This goes on a few more times when The Man finally asks her what's going on.

Cali states that the directions said the muffins would only take two to three minutes to cook, but they still weren't cooked yet.

At hearing this I interrupt with, "Two or three minutes?  There's no way."

The Man smiles and says, "I know, that's what I was thinking too."

So he gets up and goes into the kitchen with Cali where, even by now the muffins should have been done because she'd reset the timer several times already and time enough had gone by for them to be baked.

He cracks the oven and there the muffins sat, as cold and gooey as ever.

She'd never turned the oven on.

As it turns out she read the mixing directions very carefully, but when it came to the directions for actually baking them, she'd only glanced.  She quickly picked up on "two to three minutes" and figured that was the all she needed to know and stuck the muffins into a cold oven and set the timer for her two minutes.

"Two to three minutes" was the time suggested for cooling after it came out of the oven, at the very end of the paragraph explaining oven temperature and actual baking time.  You know, the part she decided to skip over.

With the oven now turned on and Dad there to help the second batch came out much better than the first.

And Cali has now learned that if there's a paragraph there, perhaps she ought to read more than the last sentence.

{pic source}

Surviving the Toothfairy

I thought about throwing up a spoiler alert for this post, but then I realized, if you're old enough to peruse blogs for leisurely reading, then you're probably old enough to handle what I'm about to disclose, making a spoiler alert unnecessary.

If that's not the case, I blame your mother.

And you should too.

Tayler lost a tooth yesterday.

I don't know who started the whole business of the tooth fairy, but it's one I could I do without.

Just for the record, at our house the going rate for a tooth is a dollar.  The end.  No books and toothbrushes and five or even twenty dollar bills.  I think that's insane.  Do you realize how many teeth your children are going to lose?  And that's the standard you're going to hold?

If you can do that, all the more power to you, sister.

As it goes, the tooth fairy often forgets at our house.

And the toothless child will come to me in the morning, rubbing sleep out of their eyes, and say something to the affect that the tooth fairy never came.

And then I reply with, "I'm sure she came!  Let's go look."  And somewhere between where ever I'm standing and their bedroom I find an excuse to visit my purse, like, I suddenly desperately need chapstick.  I detour to my purse, put on chapstick, slip a dollar into my palm, and head to the bedroom.

I rustle pillows around, and look under blankets and then, "oh here it is, it just fell on the floor."

I learned this from my dad (Dick), though it didn't occur to me that it had gone down like that until I was a parent and "the tooth fairy didn't come," and suddenly a lightbulb went off in my head and things became very clear.  And in that moment I knew exactly how to handle it because I knew I had never suspected otherwise as a child.

It works every time.

So yesterday Tayler lost a tooth.

So this happened.

Because that's the level that my life has come to, setting an alarm to remind me that the tooth fairy needs to make a visit.  Usually I set the alarm for 10:00 or 10:30 at night, but exhaustion had sunk into the very depths of my soul last night. If I hadn't known better I would have suspected that I'd been drugged, I was so drained and foggy. So I gave myself a break and set the alarm for the morning for right before I would leave to my math class.

Just as I was finishing my makeup the alarm went off on my phone, reminding me that I had a very important parental duty to attend to before I left the house (seriously, who made this toot fairy act up?  And WHY?) so I grabbed a dollar and went to the bedroom that Tayler and Cali share.

We all keep our bedroom doors closed, all of the time, to keep the dogs out.  And in the case of the kids, to keep them from eating whatever hasn't been put away.  Which is a lot.  The issue I was facing on this morning is that Tayler and Cali have a bit of a broken doorknob and it takes a few turns to get it to open.

As quietly as I could muster I wrestled with that doorknob, hearing every turn and moan that it made, and every bump of the door on the door frame as I struggled with it.

Right then I formed a back up plan.  If they wake up I'll just tell them I'm checking on them before I leave, give them hugs in their beds, and quickly do a swap tooth for dollar as I wrap my arms around Tayler.

I got the door open and peered into the room.

They were still dead asleep.

Tayler and Cali sleep on the other side of the room from where the door is so I tentatively stepped into the room and in doing so stepped on something that made a rather loud rustle.  The floor of their room was completely covered with toys, clothes, books, blankets, and what have you.  I guess I know what we're doing tonight.  I tried to walk across the room, dodging a small table, without making any noise by what I was walking on, and with out killing myself.

One step on a stray lego and it would be all over with.

I made it to Tayler's bed, but realized I had another obstacle ahead of me.  I've taken the girls' bunkbed apart to refinish it.  It's currently sitting in pieces in multiple stages of being painted in the basement.  The girls are sleeping on their mattresses on the floor.  Tayler's mattress is pushed up into the corner of the wall, going down the length of one wall, while Cali's is pushed right up next to Tayler's, going down the length of the other wall, creating an L shape.  But what this has done is left me with no obvious access to the top of Tayler's mattress where her head and pillows, and thus tooth, are.  There are walls and Cali and her mattress on every side.

My only option is to kneel on the side of Tayler's mattress and lean over her as I reach up to her pillows.

You have got to be kidding me.

Go for the hug approach, I think as I kneel down onto the bed.

But she doesn't move.

I lean over her and take my hands on either side of her stack of pillows.  She has three pillows under head and I'm not sure which layer she put the tooth under, and I'm hoping and praying that she listened to me and put it in a baggie to make it a little easier to find.

I decide to start with the top layer and work my way down.

I put my hands on either side of the pillows and run them under the pillow toward the middle, practically face to face with sleeping Tayler as I'm bent over her to accomplish this.

Good thing I brushed my teeth.

And I then I feel it.

I'm not sure what it is though.  But it has to be it.  So I grab it and leave the dollar in its place.

I'm still not in the clear.  I get my hands out from under the pillow and push off the mattress to get myself up and off.

And I stand there, frozen.

But she's still asleep.

I turn and take the death walk over piles of stuff back around the table and out the door.

I feel like my greatest success of the day happened at 6:30 this morning.

Out in the hallway, after the door is closed again, I look at what's in my hand.

"To the Tooth Fairy.  From Tayler." With her address and the tooth taped into the corner.

And suddenly I feel a little guilty that I didn't have a book or a toothbrush or even a five dollar bill to put under her pillow.

My greatest success of the day has now become a huge guilt trip.

And I can't put enough emphasis into the thought, who even made the tooth fairy an issue to begin with??

Chicken Enchilada with Avocado (Peppermint?) Cream Sauce. A Pinterest Recipe.

A little tid bit about me: I hate cooking.

For reals.

As a teen my dad (Dick) would try to teach me how to cook and it just made me ornery.  As a new stay at home wife I tried to make sure I had hot dinners ready when my husband came home and for the first year of our marriage it made me ornery.

And then I had kids and I was still trying to have hot dinners ready when my husband came home and that was chaos that made me feel not so much ornery, but frazzled.

And then I became a single mom who worked full time and still had the kids and come dinner time I found I only had so much time between work and baths and homework and bed time and cooking made me stressed.  Nightly.

Now I still work full time and I still have the kids and I have an amazing husband who gets home before I do, so there's no way I'm having a hot dinner ready for him when he gets home, but I feel I need to get on it right away because they're all home and hungry, plus I've added school to the mix and ya'll, dinner sometimes gets skipped at my house.

Find what you can kids, this mom's had it.

Or I order pizza.

And thankfully my husband is a gem and never complains.

But the ironic, fateful twist to all of this is that I love to eat.

I love good food.

So when I sit down to make my menu and shopping list, and I get onto pinterest to see what recipes there are because I have no culinary imagination or talent, outside of following a recipe to the "t," my tastebuds start dancing and I go all Betty Crocker on that menu and shopping list.

And then I've locked myself into actually having to make all of these meals throughout the next two weeks because it's what I went shopping for and I'm not over exaggerating when I say I have no culinary imagination outside of following a recipe.

Once it's on the menu, and I've purchased the ingredients, I'm locked in.  Because what else am I going to do with all of this stuff I just bought at the grocery store?  I have no idea.

The other night I was locked into making a chicken enchiladas with avocado cream sauce recipe from pinterest.
Pinterest link here
Original recipe here

{pic source}

Cas, Tayler, and The Man were all right there with me helping me to chop vegetables and stir sauces and stuff tortillas and once it was in the oven we were even all in good moods still.

I might like cooking now that my Circus is old enough to help out with it.

So this recipe, five of us ate it and it gets five votes.  In fact, five of us went back for  seconds so there's that.

But the strangest thing happened: after the avocado sauce was all made up in the food processor and Cas and I were getting ready to fill and roll tortillas we were struck by the prominent scent of peppermint.

So much so that it was making me nervous.  How do you add avocado, cumin, and lime juice and come out with... peppermint?

But we put the enchiladas together, threw them in the oven, and even then other members of the family was commenting on the peppermint smell.  How does that happen?  I didn't even know.

After 20 minutes we pulled dinner out of the oven and everyone dug in, exclaiming how even if it smelled like peppermint, it sure didn't taste like peppermint, and I was beyond baffled by the whole thing.  We went about our evening, cleaned up dinner and went to bed.

The next morning I reached up to open the spice cupboard while I was making my morning eggs when suddenly it felt like someone had poured a small cup of liquid on my hand.  Our spice cupboard has a shallow spice shelf with a second door on front of the main door of the cupboard.  Something had definitely poured onto my hand from the outside shallow part when I went to open the entire door.

I opened the shallow door and found a bottle of peppermint extract was tipped over without its lid on.

Which would explain the amount of liquid that had just poured onto my hand.

Which would also explain the smell of peppermint at dinner the night before.

I can't even begin to tell you how relieved I was to find out that my avocado and cumin sauce did not, in fact, smell like peppermint.

Brynn's Phone Frustration

Sometimes I get shocked with how far technology has come, even from when I was a kid, which wasn't that long ago, thank you for asking.

Our kids today are being raised in an instant gratification, information and access to people right now and at my finger tips day and age.

Which has its pros and cons so don't get me wrong, I'm not here to say it's bad.  And regardless of the pros and cons, it is simply amazing how the world of communication has changed.

I see it blatantly when I watch my kids trying to process technology.  Brynn was trying to call a friend with my cell phone and she kept huffing in frustration.

Finally I asked, "Did you get a hold of her?"

"No!  The phone's broken, something's messed up and it's not working."

"Let me see it," I took my phone from Brynn's hands and dialed the number, putting the phone up to my ear to hear what was going on that had her so frustrated.

And I heard it, "Beep beep beep beep beep..."

I started to laugh.

"Brynn, the phone isn't broken, that's a busy signal.  It just means they're using their phone already so your call can't go through."

"So I can't call her?"

"Just call back in a few minutes."

{pic source}

The whole concept, that I grew up on, completely blew her mind.  How archaic, to have to wait for someone to hang up their phone before your call can go through.  What in the world?

Dear Neighbors.

Dear Neighbors,

If you can't find the green bag that was left on your driveway (I don't even know what they were for...)

I might know where they are.

And I might be certain that you'll not be getting them back.

I apologize.

Sincerely,

Steph.

Some Days.

Cali asks, "Mom, what did you check for my field trip?  Sack lunch or school lunch?"
"I don't remember."
"Because I got a note that said you checked sack lunch."

...

Yesterday my group project for English got turned in.  And I made it through my biology final.  I made The Man take me out to dinner to celebrate the end of a hard semester.

"What am I supposed to do with all of these flashcards now that biology is over?  I can't decide if I should keep them or burn them."
To which Tayler suggested I sell them for $25... each.
"Girls, that was a pack of 300 index cards and I used almost all of them..."
After some discussion of math Brynn blurts out, "That's $7500!  You better buy me something with that money."

So I guess if anyone's interested...

...

Because what else are you supposed to do with a half deflated balloon?

Monster Tag vs. Playing Kitties

Sean, in his deepest, roughest, commercial announcer voice approached the girls, who were sitting together, and booms, "Who wants to play monster tag?!?"

To which the girls politely replied, "Do you want to play kitties?"

A persuasive conversation ensued for a minute between Sean and his sisters and then a collective agreement was made.

But before you say, "Poor Sean," as people always do,

Let me reply with, as I always do, don't go feeling too bad for that boy. He knows how to hold his own.

The conversation continued, with kittens in hand, "I need an evil lair. And I need a citizen kitten to kidnap so a super hero kitten can be called to rescue it."

And thus the game proceeded, evil lairs, damsels in distress, super heroes and all.

A side note: Cali was overheard discussing the names of the kittens she was playing with, a white one and a gray one.

"This one is named Snowball, and this one is named Dirty Snowball."

A Family With Two Last Names. And The Dentist That Can't Figure It Out.

Being a "combined" family has it's unique challenges.  One of the big ones for us, and probably all combined families, is that our children don't all have the same last name.  And what further makes that interesting is that my last name doesn't match my biological children.  Which is really neither here nor there, we're a family and that's all that matters.

But in certain instances it gets... interesting.

The lunch lady at the elementary school finally has it down.  Or rather, I should say, the new lunch lady has it down.  The old one?  I'm pretty sure she was just stealing the lunch money, but in the name of the benefit of the doubt, we'll just say she obviously didn't know which kids belonged in our family.  Even when I listed them all out individually with the amounts that should be applied to their names.  Even when I sent each child with a separate check...

*Ahem*

So the new lunch lady at school gets it.  She knows that our two last names are connected into one family and that they all belong to me with one phone call.  "Hey lady, your kids need money."

Cool, I'll take care of that.  And with one phone call I know that one check can be sent in, with a note breaking it down, and all the kids will be taken care of on her end the way they need to be.

Our pediatrician struggled for a minute with it, but it was his own fault.  When we moved in with West we moved far enough away from our old home to warrant finding closer doctors and dentists.  We adopted the pediatrician that West was already using for his kids and all found a new dentist.

One day I took one of my girls into the pediatrician (I'm pretty sure it was Tayler, *sigh*, UTI's) and he looked at my last name and asked if I was linked to Jayme and Sean?

"Yes, I'm their step-mom."

"So their dad is..." and he points at Tayler and generally indicates my girls as a whole.

"Her step-dad."

The puzzled look clearly explained that he hadn't followed, "You're their step-mom?"

"Yes."

"And he's the step-dad?"

"Yes."

"Well who's the biological parent then?"

I burst out laughing.  "I'm Jayme and Sean's step-mom but I'm Tayler's biological mom."

The light bulb went on in his head, realizing that while he'd been trying to figure out the biological and step connections, the way he'd phrased his questions always led for the answer to imply a step-parent.  Had he stuck to one set of kids for his questioning he would have had an easier time finding his clarity.

At our dentist they have the kids set up under two different accounts, one for each last name.  Every six months, without fail, we get two reminder postcards.  And then two phone calls to my cell phone.

"Hi, may I speak with West?"

Already knowing it's the dentist for the kids, and already knowing that it's going to be about setting up appointments I say, "This is his wife."

And she proceeds, "I'm calling to set up an appointment for Jayme and Sean."

This situation has happened twice before so I already know how this is going to play out.  They're going to want to make appointments for Jayme and Sean, I'm going to bring up the other four girls, who having a different last name are on a different account, they'll set the appointment up for all six and then... call me back minutes later for the girls again.

"Okay, but we also have the four other girls so I need to make appointment times for all six of them to come in together."

"Okay, what's their name?"

I tell her and even spell it.  She hesitates.

"Well they're not on my list right now but we can make those appointments."

"They should be on your list.  We've always brought them in on the same day and we received both postcard reminders for them."

"Well it doesn't matter we can set up the appointment for all six kids."

And we proceed to find a day and time that will accommodate for all six kids.  I spell names, she finds them and plugs them in.   We hang up.

Three minutes later she calls back.

"May I speak with Stephanie?"

I don't even wait for her to say why she's calling, "I seriously just talked to you and made these appointments."

This has happened three times now.

Do they not realize when they see those names on their list that they just spent all that time, mere seconds earlier, setting up appointments for them?

Did I not say they were going to be on the list?

Do you need more caffeine?

I understand that we have two last names in our family.  I understand that my last name does not match my children's.  I understand that even if our family has been coming to you for a couple of years now, that your support staff changes and they don't know us.  I completely understand and even expect to have to explain that we have two accounts.

But if I tell them our two names are on the list, and if we spend five minutes setting up appointments, and if our second account shows up next on that list, don't you think you would notice that?

In our house we...

Wear mustaches.

Practice being chiropractors.

I Love Your Colors

For a few days the sun peeked it's glorious head out of the clouds and the smog and warmed our little piece of the world up to a point where we couldn't contain ourselves any longer.

We were outside in shorts with balls and picnics and soaking in the warm air.

Of course, while having a picnic in the front yard why settle for just a blanket when you can have the whole table set?  This is what I came home from work to.