Ariel's version of art

Sometimes I realize that my facebook status updates will eventually meander their way down my facebook page and end up eaten by the vast internet abyss. So I should probably jot down those odd comments my children make sometimes.

Ariel hates sandwiches. OK, maybe she doesn't. Maybe she loves sandwiches. But she dissects them- eat the meat first, then the cheese, then a bread. So I hardly ever give her a sandwich- choosing instead to give her a plate of lunch meat, a cheese stick and some fruit or veggie or yogurt tube or whatever. Usually our lunch meat is balogna from the farm- it comes like regular balogna from the store- in round circles. But the similarity ends there- it's a VERY different product. But right now we have thin sliced turkey from the grocery store. Ariel loves it, but she eats it into these long strips as she hums and talks to herself. And with these long strips she pretends. She hangs them from her mouth as fangs, or slithers them across the table as snakes. I don't buy my children toys... I just give them a hunk of lunch meat and say "Here, go to town." OK, not really.

So today Ariel is playing with her lunch meat and I suggest in a most helpful way, "Ariel, I sure wish you would eat the lunchmeat..."

"Instead of making art with it...." she replies absentmindedly as she wraps a big strip of lunch meat around her bitty arm in some sort of ancient Egyptian arm band.

I never really thought of her lunch meat toy as art. But, in an odd way, I suppose it is. Maybe one day I'll see her in some modern art museum meat jewelery exhibit. Anyway, I thought it was a comment I would like to remember.

Ariel funny and Hidden Oaks.

The kids always steal our mail. Rachael had a coupon pack and discovered a Red Robin ad detailing a contest where kids can design a burger that could go on the menu as a gourmet burger. So my pajama clad children and I were lounging on the bed, I had "Journey to the Center of the Earth" all open and we're ready to read our chapter. But, this ad is so glossy and thrilling that we simply MUST first discuss the fine art of burger making. So Rachael has the floor and she's designing her burger. We listen raptly as she tops her ground beef with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, ketchup, mayonaise (which she hates), mustard, cheese and meat. There is a moment of silence as we contemplate this masterpiece. Then Ariel adds a topping in her teeny tiny voice: "And pants." It was so out of the blue, such a serious comment- this adding of pants to the gourmet burger- that I thought I misunderstood her at first. "Pants, Ariel?" I queried. "Yes, pants!" No explanation why. And we all cracked up. And we couldn't read our book, which is way too full of silly words like "stupified" and "indignant" and "manometer" and men speaking very formally to each other about the formation of rocks and whether or not they are still 80 leagues under Iceland. So I sent their silly giggly selves to bed for Trevor to read them a story, which he is upstairs at this very moment doing. I think pants on a burger will be a joke for a while, though.

AND-- on a MUCH more serious note, we went to Hidden Oaks Nature Center today. We haven't been in a while so this was a fun excursion. All pics are from my iphone so they are not the best quality.

Smelling a huge pretty flower.


Sitting on the butterfly bench.


Inside the nature center is all kinds of cool stuff to do- this is a leg thing that shows (I typed shoes! lol!) all kinds of bugs and how many legs they have.


There are also lots of costumes to dress up with. The girlies dressed as snakes and then jumped on Trevor the bird. heh.


There was this shelter thing behind the nature center. It wasn't there last time we were there and there was nothing around it. It was cool. Trevor is holding a magnifying glass the kids got from their coupon book through the library's summer reading program.


After being inside the Nature Center for a while, we head out to the many trails outside. We once hiked back there and I got completely lost. Thankfully, this time we didn't get lost. But I wore completely impractical hiking shoes.


I guess they knew their favorite color. or the air speed velocity of a swallow. heh... AURGHHHH!



NOW which way should we go guys? We ended up trekking back up to the playground and played for a while. But the wasps kept bugging me. I was wearing a black shirt and all I could think of was that time we were geocaching and Ray disturbed the wasp nest and they chased him forever until he ripped his shirt off. Turns out wasps like black shirts. So I was all super paranoid and twitchy because the wasps kept freakin LANDING on me and crawling around on me. Normally wasps don't scare me. But landing all over me does kind of make me nervous. So after wasp filled minutes in the woods, and wasp filled minutes at the park, I was ready to head out. So we went to the ever exciting grocery store.


This is Cooneyisle's Chaos Magickian. He regularly sits like this on couch arms, chairs, the table. Chaos runs the house.


THere's Reznor under the table. Rez is the laziest puppy I have ever seen. He literally spends most of the day sleeping. He gets up to eat food off the floor as I cook. Honestly, I think I need another cat and perhaps another dog. ;) Shadow doesn't come downstairs until later.

Goofy Newfy

I should blog about our Newfoundland puppy. We have had several bad experiences with dogs. Mostly dogs that aren't so wonderful with children. Especially non dog savvy children like mine are. We finally decided that buying from a breeder would be our best bet in getting a dog with a more stable temperament and a known lineage. So then it came down to researching breeds. I wanted a dog that was larger, would love kids, would be able to live with cats, wouldn't be super high energy and would basically be a good first dog. I don't mind hair. I don't mind drool. I can provide basic training and exercise. Everytime I researched breeds, Newfoundland dogs came up as a #1 choice. So we found a breeder near us and, after months of looking at the breeder website and speaking with the breeder, we brought Rez home! His full name is Reznor (yea, Nine Inch Nails fan here) and he is a big sweetheart. So far he has been a GREAT puppy. As of 5 months he is housebroken, knows "sit" "wait" "down" "settle" (most of the time), "give" "leave it" (at home) "rollover" and walks with a loose leash MOST of the time. He is ok with the kids distracting him, he is ok with commands on the trail where we usually walk but he is still learning in other places. But I think he's perfect for 5 months!

As for Rez with the kids, he is fantastic. He isn't bothered by their screechy "AWWW!" noises they make around him. He loves when they put their heads on him while he's laying down- he will roll over on his back for belly rubs. He does all the normal puppy things, too. He plays keep away with their toys, he eats shoes, whether you are walking by or if the shoes are in the hallway. He is supremely lazy- like ultra lazy. His routine usually involves him getting his food from a Buster Ball in the morning. Then he gets a mile walk. Then he sleeps and sleeps and sleeps or chews his chewie toys. He wakes up around mid afternoon and wanders around and makes mischief or plays fetch or hide and seek with the kids, or just watches us as we go about our day. He goes for an evening walk for a mile and then he zonks out for the evening around 8pm. I am trying to get him swimming more, too, as he is turning into a water dog. The first few times we showed him the water he wasn't thrilled with it. Now he *loves* it. We walk him by the streams and he often tries to drag me over to them so he can wade in the water, though he would rather swim than wade now.

Yesterday we took him to Riverbend Park in Great Falls to go swimming in the Potomac. Here are some pics and a video.






Here's a video of Rez swimming. We have him onleash because he is still a baby and we don't want the current taking him away and I don't want him wading up on one of the rock outcroppings and not coming back in!



Here's another one of him swimming:

The Air and Space Museum

I have not updated this blog in a LONG time. I figure a post is well nigh due! Understandably, a lot has happened since Christmas: Ariel turned 4, Trevor turned 8 and Rachael turned 6. We visited parents, we went camping, we celebrated holidays. Our kitten, Stripey, had to be put to sleep- FIV. We went to a breeder and got a Newfoundland puppy who is now 5 months old and the best dog ever in a drooly, hairy, good natured sort of way. The kids start school soon and Ariel will be starting preschool this year. I am still in college and feel like I will be forever. But there is an end in sight.

BUT-- enough of all that. This post would be too lengthy if I talked about the year until now. So I will jump right in with our trip to the Air and Space Museum. I post most stuff to Facebook, so it has kept me from updating a blog. I mean, everyone who would WANT to see pictures of family, well, they are friends on Facebook, right? Anyway....

Yesterday we went to the Air and Space museum with my friend, Sharon. Sharon and I have been friends since like 8th grade, I think, when I moved to Florida. After I got married and moved to Virginia, we kept in touch, but ended up with very different lives. She is single, has her masters and travels to foreign countries teaching. I got married, had children and became a stay at home mom. This time around her job brought her to DC for a few days for orientation before jetting off to her newest assignment. So I got to see my best friend since high school! I haven't seen Sharon since she, Ray and I met up in Vegas, hmmm, 3 years ago? So she stayed with us for the weekend this time, and then Friday I met her in DC at the museum with the kids. We had a nice time. She had never been to the Air and Space museum. I've been a few times, but I love going to any of the DC museums and this is one that holds the kids' interest well. Here's some pics!

It really annoys me that blogger posts all my pictures in reverse order. This is one of the many fake people chilling at the museum. There were more fake people here than there are in department stores. This woman is showing us what people ate on the plane in the 50s (I think). Ariel was convinced the coffee on the tray was real.


I don't know what was up with Trevor's desire to punch all the fake people. Everytime I saw another one, I would call the kids excitedly and say "oh! Go stand with that fake person and I'll take your picture!". Ariel looks like she is thinking "please mom, stop making me pose already."


Then we saw this big plane front and I told the kids to go stand in front of it and instead, they tumbled under it and acted like they were being run over. Just don't take me places, I'll make my kids be kids AND I'll take their picture as proof they aren't model citizens smiling politely for a camera. In fact, they rarely humor me. I used to say "Just humor me guys" so often, it became a phrase they uttered to each other whenever they weren't getting their way. heh


When Sharon was with all the kids I told her I HAD to get her picture of her being "mom-like".


A fake person landing on us in a hang glider. I couldn't sling the kids up into the picture, so Ariel got to get out of taking a picture with him. I would love to go hang gliding.


The moment we got into the museum, Rachael started in about seeing "this balloon that goes up and down!" I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about as there is no balloon that goes up and down in the museum. Sharon wanted to see Early Flight, so we meandered that and, since we were on THAT side of the building, we wandered the exhibits on that side. The whole time Rachael was asking to go see this balloon on the other side of the museum. So, finally, mystified, we wandered in that direction to see what she was talking about. She ended up making a beeline for the hands on part of the museum and there was this balloon that went up and down based on how much weight you loaded into the basket. It was small and it sure made an impression on her because she must have remembered it from last year when we were here. And Rachael, after whining about seeing this balloon for an hour, spent like ten seconds playing with it before moving on. I told her she had been whining about this balloon for an hour and she better get back over there and play with it some more this instant. But she ignored me. I get no respect. Or maybe she knew I wasn't serious. But here they are wandering in the direction of the balloon. Both girlies looked impossibly cute today. Rachael got some new shoes from the LL Bean catalogue. They are a size too big but she insisted on wearing them because they were the same blue as the ice creams on her dress. I'm glad she could walk in them, they really were huge on her.


I don't really know what Trevor is doing with this fake boy. But it looks like he's dancing with him.


Checking out this exhibit about velocity and pressure. You turned a wheel and this box went up and down this pole. Really, not a thrillfest of an exhibit, but you would have thought the kids made fireworks by turning that wheel the way they argued over whose turn it was to turn the wheel! The guy in the background was "sleeping" but when the kids would argue, he would open his eyes a bit and peek at them arguing until they worked it out, then he would go back to "sleep". Weird. If you want an argue-free nap, mister, you have to go home, or at least not be in the kids area of the museum.


Sharon doing the gyroscope exhibit. The wheel would turn, and the chair would turn in the opposite direction as the wheel. Pretty cool.

All in all, we had a great day at the museum. We rode the metro in, which I actually really like doing. The kids are old enough to walk with me, sit nicely and be a pleasure to be in DC with. I really like taking them into DC. The trip home on the metro is always a little trying, though. The kids got super silly and Rachael, who is a decent reader now (she's reading on a Henry and Mudge level) saw the Foggy Bottom metro stop and sounded it out as Froggy bottom. All the kids thought this was hilarious and spent the rest of the trip home say froggy bottom to each other and giggling. That tried my patience a bit, but I made the mistake of laughing because they all thought it was so funny and so inadvertently encouraged them. Oh well! We all had a great day, though it was bitter sweet to say goodbye to Sharon for at least a year.

Picture dump!

Here's some Christmas pictures. Our day has been absolutely wonderful so far. Relaxing, weather is perfect, company is wonderful, kids are happy. I love Christmastime. As I type this Trevor is laying on the couch reading "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" from his Grandma, Rachael is listening to High School Musical 3 (I think) on her new HK boom box and Ariel is going low tech with the bubble wrap. If it's not felt, or a spatula.. it's bubble wrap. We enjoyed homemade cinnamon rolls, breakfast casserole and mimosas (and later I drank the rest of the Champagne!) for breakfast. Currently we have the turkey smoking for dinner and will eat sausage/cranberry stuffing, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner. The stuffing is in the oven and smells soooo good. I'm hungry! More pictures of dinner will come later. As well as video of Trevor riding his skateboard and the kitty and random pics on Ray and Pam's camera. MERRY CHRISTMAS!


The tree before the kids came downstairs. All set up for Christmas! Ariel is the far left, Rachael is the middle and Trevor is the right.


We called the photo "Get the heck outta the way Grandpa!" heehee. The kids coming downstairs to check out the tree. Trevor woke up at 4am. OMG. I heard him and Rachael heading downstairs and caught them and said "Um, no. It's too early! Open your stockings and wake us up at 6am to go downstairs!" Thankfully, they were reasonably happy to do that.


Trevor posing on his new skateboard!!!! He was THRILLED. It's a way cool board and he has been out on it a couple times.


Ariel with this insane cat she wanted. It meows and purrs and moves its head and blinks its eyes. It's creepy but cute.


Rachael's new robe. The girls loved their jams and HK robes. Ariel ran upstairs and put her jammies and robe on right away. heehee. Ray and Pam have pics of her in her jams.


Her grandma B gave Rachael is enormous Barbie bus that was also a hottub. It is truly insanely huge! And lots of fun. Inside is a pretty Mariposa (I think) Barbie that her Auntie Kristen sent (I think?!) and also "cooking show" Barbie from Santa.


Trevor building with his Erector set from Santa.


Trevor and Ray building- they are working on the helicopter.


Rachael zonked out on the couch for an hour or so after breakfast and then running around outside.


The rigged thing Ray put over the smoker so the turkey would hold a steady temperature. We smoke our turkey every year. Yum.

Sick Rachael, tired mom

So I will give you some pictures. We put our tree up this weekend. We have a glorious, prelit fake tree. I was always againts having a fake tree until we bought one. It is *so* easy to put up. And prelit is like, omg, THE BEST. We bring out the three big tree segments, click them together, the branches fall open and I kind of spread out the pieces of pine "twigs" so it looks less smushed and more tree like. Then the kids come in and we ooh and ahh over the ornaments. It never fails.. EVERY year I think we have no ornaments and I wonder what we will put on our tree. And every year I realize we have TONS of ornaments, plenty for the tree. Over ten years you would have thought we had collected lots of xmas ornaments, but alas, in our move from CA back to the VA area, our box or ornaments got lost. So we had all these really pretty ornaments that we never saw again. Oh well, now we have more.. plus the wonderful addition of handmade ones from the kids.


I keep forgetting that blogger is posting my pictures backwards. Here's the finished tree. I think Ariel took this picture. I took off that vine thing hanging on it.


Trevor, Rachael and Ariel hanging a few ornaments on the other side of the tree.


The stockings were hung by the worm farm with care....


Trevor can make the weirdest faces for a picture. he's hanging an ornament. Notice Chaos in the background, chillin in his Santa hat.


The kids found their hats from last year. Notice Ariel's favorite pumpkin shirt to go along with her reindeer antlers. I think her expression is kind of priceless, too.


Rachael has been sick today. Some kind of stomach bug. She isn't running a fever, but has been throwing up all day and can't hold down anything. This was how she spent her morning, on our bed with Stripey making sure she was ok.


Strip Stripe has grown a lot since I think I last posted pictures. He still has his kitten teeth, but the kitten crazies are mostly over. He still plays with his tail and does somersaults on our bed in the morning. And he climbs up my leg when he wants attention; but he also spends lots of time sleeping. He plays with Chaos and Shadow, too and LOVES that cat tree.


Chaos looking quite festive and full of Christmas cheer. heh.

Humiliating my cats.

These are bad iphone pics, but I have to post pictures of my poor cats.

Yes, I have three kids. But my cats are also my OTHER three kids. They really are spoiled and very much a part of our family.


Ariel putting a puzzle together. Ariel and I seem to find plenty to occupy us during the day, even with the colder weather.


My cats are HORRIFIED by the cold weather. During the summer they spend their days trying to escape the house and be FREE!!! But during the winter they are so disappointed to run outside and have it be so cold. They usually turn and run right back in. And proceed to spend the day following us from room to room like dogs. Shadow normally crawls into my lap at every opportunity. He's not in my lap in this pic because I have probably not let him crawl into it so I could help Ariel with her puzzle.


And then, we humiliated them. Ariel and I had to stop at Petsmart to get the kitties their food. I ended up buying them some hats because they were on sale. Poor Shadow got the reindeer hat. He hated it and quickly pawed it off.


Chaos, because he is so big and, well, round, got to be Santa. The hat barely fit him. And he totally didn't care it was on. He wandered around for a good 15 minutes with it before it just fell off. I think he looks rather endearing as Santa.

Other than that, nothing much has been happening!

Thanksgiving...

We had a great Thanksgiving day, engaging in many fun activities such as the bean bag toss (including chucking them at eachother), football, geocaching and, of course, eating. OK. Here's pictures:


Brett keeping Trevor away from the football.


Dad and Trevor practicing their mad karate skillz.


Ray carrying Rachael AND Ariel and catching the football. Yes, he did all that.


Dad doing his touch down dance. heh.


Mom, Rachael and Ariel chilling after spinning in circles.


A cache! A cache! Geocaching in NC. We found a couple caches.


On our way home from geocaching. I like how Rachael and Claire have the same facial expression. Maybe Rachael was a dog in a former life. heh


My dad got this nifty belt that has a bottle opener on it. It looks a little, um, odd opening beers from your belt buckle. But hey, it works!


My mom gnawing on a turkey neck. The camera died right after this picture so I have no pictures of the actual dinner.


But the dinner was so good that it made Brett pass out afterwards.


Then Kristen and I cleaned the kitchen up, but dad came in and did a couple things. It really wore him out. ;)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!