Freecycle

I am a huge fan of Freecycle. We have a relatively good community here and I like being able to give things away that we don't need instead of throwing them away. I also have gotten some amazing stuff: I got Spider-Man and Batman costumes for free that the boys love to wear, some great backyard toys and three pairs of soccer cleats for Josh to wear now and for the next couple of years. It really is a great resource.

And then, every once in a while, we get something that is not-so-perfect. I thought these were going to be soccer shin guards for kids. I don't know what sport or what size child these are intended to protect, but they definitely will not work for Josh for soccer.

Michael, on the other hand, couldn't be happier and wears them all the time and begs people to kick/hit/punch him in the shins. I love Freecycle.

Last First

Tonight was our last first in our week of firsts: Josh's first soccer practice. Earlier in the week, the younger boys and I went and picked up Josh's uniform. Yesterday, we bought him shin guards and thereby completed his gear. His first game isn't for another couple of weeks, but we couldn't resist the temptation of putting it all on to check out our little (or not so little anymore) soccer player. In any case, I can only assume this is the cleanest we will ever see these clothes so I wanted to document them now.

This is what he wore to practice tonight (minus the little brother):
Practice was fantastic. Coach Dave had these kids running for almost the entire hour. He may be my new favorite person. The boys loved him and were totally engaged and excited the entire time. However, since he was completely wore out beyond handling even the smallest problems with anything but tears by the time we got home, I am extremely thankful that practices are on Fridays. I will be beyond shocked if he doesn't sleep in tomorrow morning!

Young

Wow. I found this picture yesterday when I was putting our wedding pictures together to make a photo book. He looks so young. I definitely think he has only gotten sexier with time, but, wow, he looks so young.

Another First

A week of firsts, and today was our second first. This is the kind of first that makes me a little teary-eyed. Well, actually, if I am not careful it can make me an all out waterfall of a mess. Today was Jason's first day back at work.

To ease the pain, he stayed home until Josh left on the bus. So, since we had some spare time and spare space on the SD card, we took some pictures of Jason's first day of school.

Here are the crazy men in my life being silly.

Here are the crazy men in my life being serious: (I actually have to label the pictures, because I am not sure that I will be able to tell the difference soon.)
Of course, even by himself Jason has a hard time not being silly.
But he did keep it together for a couple of "nice" pictures.

Now, if you will excuse me, I think I need to go get a tissue.

First Day, First Grade

Okay, well really we don't know how the first day of school went yet. The school hasn't called, so I can only assume it is going fine so far. This morning, Josh said he was excited, but he looked really nervous. His little friend that we are trying to avoid told him his teacher would take away his toys and never give them back. Nice. Hopefully, spending time with his truly nice teacher will help him feel better. We met her on Thursday and she seemed very friendly. The school nurse was very excited for Josh when we found out who is teacher was and told me she was the best. I am just going to go ahead and believe that she doesn't say that about every teacher. And really, Mrs. Gray was very nice, but Josh morphed into a dinosaur as he entered her room so all he would do is grunt, growl and show her his "claws." The fact that she didn't seemed at all disturbed by that made me feel really good about this next year.

Today, we started off the day with the breakfast of champions: Star Wars pancakes. It was a well-balanced breakfast with ships from both the light and dark sides of the force.

Josh has some stylin' gear this year. He picked out the backpack and Nana bought his lunch box.
As is our tradition, Josh posed on the front porch for me. It is getting rather difficult to get anything but this pasted on smile from him these days. He actually had a unwrinkled shirt on this morning, but his Fall allergies are kicking in and he has a difficult time distinguishing between his shirt and a tissue. Oh well.
Here is some brotherly love on the porch. Michael likes to wear a backpack too and can't wait for when he starts school in a few weeks.
And this is just a silly shot I took because we had extra time to play around this morning.
We actually had a lot of extra time this morning. It is one of my goals to keep that going through the year. I hate the rushed feeling we often have the morning. I hate how much a I yell when I have that rushed feeling in the morning.

So, there it is. This day happens only once a year and hopefully it will be a good one. However, if last year is any indicator, I will never really know as Josh is rarely forthcoming about that sort of thing. When I ask him about his day, the best I can hope for is, "It was good." "Fine" "I don't remember what we did."

Home Gym

Middle Eastern Food

I hosted the Desserts and More Club at my house tonight. The host gets to pick to the theme and I chose Middle Eastern food. Let's just say, I chose wisely. It was so, so, so yummy. These were my contributions:

Boereks: My first time with phyllo dough.

Since the Turks claim credit for phyllo dough, I figured I would make these little cheese and herb filled pastries. It was my first experience with this extremely thin and delicate pastry. The outcome was tasty, but this is definitely not an everyday food. I think I spent at least an hour buttering, filling and folding 50+ of them.

Orange-Butt Chicken, aka Chicken stuffed with orange

My brother christened this recipe with the first name. My brother just has a way with words. Looks good, huh? I was especially pleased with my presentation on couscous with chopped oranges and onions.

Well, let's take a look at why Doug calls it Orange-Butt Chicken. Basically, after you rub the chicken in lemon juice and sprinkle it with spices, you shove an orange up its butt.
And then take it out when it's cooked.
In an act of protest, perhaps about the orange, the chicken refused to be cooked after 1 hour 15 minutes. So my beautiful platter sat on the table uneaten and I think we are going to have Orange-Butt (I mean, Bum) chicken for dinner tomorrow instead.

Why We Don't

(Disclaimer: I am not against co-sleeping in principle. If it works for you, great. I am all about surviving as a parent.)

I love our children. I love when our children sleep. Every once in a while I get caught up in the idea that I could cuddle up and sleep with one of our kids.

I usually learn my lesson pretty quickly.

Between some nasty eczema and several molars erupting at once, Ben has not been the best sleeper. The other night, we put him to bed and got him up several times. The last time, I had already climbed into my cozy bed. Ben started crying, so I thought I would spare Jason and his movie the interruption and bring Ben into bed with me. After he decided that I was an adequate substitute for Jason (which doesn't always happen), he tried to make himself comfortable.

At first, he thought picking my nose with his toes would be relaxing. Then kicking me in the nose. Then sleeping with his head ON my face.

And that's when he went back to his bed.

Thief!

This is all that is left of our tomato plants. In protest of the heinous summer heat, they shriveled up. I don't blame them. I have felt the same way often this summer and I don't live out on the deck. In any case, I went out the other morning and cleared out the dead parts and still was a little surprised at how anorexic they looked compared to their early summer splendor. However, I have several tubs of homemade spaghetti sauce made from my own tomatoes (thank you, Mom!) in the freezer, so I am perfectly happy no matter what happens. And, with most of the shading gone, the jalapeños are growing better than they have all summer.

The plants actually have 20+ green tomatoes on them. For a while, I was getting a red tomato every other day. Sun-ripened tomatoes are one of my favorite vegetables to put on my salad. And then, the thief came. I haven't tasted a tomato since. I have never seen the thief. All I know is that right before I think a tomato is ready to be added to my salad, it travels off the plant and onto the railing of the deck. The thief then eats only half of the tomato...
...and leaves the rest of rot. That is just depressing. I am willing to make a contribution to feeding the local wildlife, but this is just a waste.
I guess the real miracle is that this critter didn't go crazy on the tomatoes when we had several ripening every day.

It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This

Nana came to our house Friday night bearing gifts. Bearing Star Wars lunch boxes (also very cool, but not seen here) and these:

So, so, so fun. We could hardly wait to try them out. Of course, that meant we had to enter the world of alternate ingredients. Sugar cookies = butter and eggs = none for Josh and Ben = very sad boys. We used Ener-G egg replacer, ground flax seed and butter flavored Crisco to get a very unpromising dough. It was dry, crumbly and tasted a little bit weird to me. But we persevered and managed to get it rolled out so we could use these:
The boys were ecstatic. Both Josh and Michael got a chance to use the cookie cutters, which is why some of them don't have many facial features. They honestly had a difficult time deciding which cookie cutter to use first because they were all so cool. This then led to long discussions about which one they were going to eat first. They entire process was fraught with wonderfully difficult decisions. Jason kept quiet for most of the time, but I think he struggled with the same decisions.
For Josh, the bounty hunter won out and even though he was very excited to eat Boba Fett, he was true to his native cautiousness and took a nibble of the helmet before committing entirely to this new food. I thought it was a complete miracle that he picked a cookie up and put it in his mouth entirely of his own will. Trying to get him to try an Oreo was just about as difficult as trying to get him to eat a vegetable, so this was definitely a break-through. Apparently the draw of eating Star Wars characters is strong with this one.
Success! He even closed his eyes and rubbed his belly with pleasure and informed me that he likes these cookies even better than bread. Somehow, I thought that might be the case. Thanks, Nana!!!

Right Around the Corner

I am in the middle of a sewing frenzy. This frenzy was brought on by the realization that CHRISTMAS is only 4.5 months away. So, I made a list, checked it twice and dusted off the sewing machine. I have gifts and decorations that I would love to get done. Sometime. Before next Christmas. Here are a couple I got done this week.

First on my list was the tree skirt that I started in January. The one my kind friend helped me with and counseled me to go home and finish right away or it would never get done. Yeah, she was right. So, eight months later, I finished the skirt. Jason got a little confused and thought it was a festive shawl.

I can only hope it looks this good around the tree.
Second, I am making bean bags for my niece and nephews this year - these aren't stuffed yet, but I am pretty happy with how the boy ones turned out. The colors are great on Tucker's. Cale's are harder to make out, but Jason pointed out that they are camo so it is supposed to be hard to read his name. Hopefully this frenzy will last.

The Big Boys

Monday was a fun filled day for me and the two older boys. We ditched Daddy (ill) and Ben (too much work) and went to D.C. I gave the boys the choice between going to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs and the Air and Space Museum to the space ships. Space won out. So we hopped on the Metro and traveled into the District. Since Nana works at GWU, we took a little detour to stop by and see her and honor her with the chance to take us out to lunch. Lucky woman.

Michael got a chance to check out what it is like to be an Office Manager. Doesn't look too hard, does it?

Then we headed to the most kid-friendly restaurant we could find, TGI Friday's, for lunch. This is what happens when you arm a 4-year-old with a knife and it takes more than 5 minutes to bring food to the table:

Fueled up on pasta, fries and soda, we hopped back on the Metro and went to the museum. Us and half of the world's tourists. The boys loved the huge rockets and old spacecrafts. And Josh enjoyed posing with his jaw dropped in awe so we could all remember how impressed he was with them.
Again, Josh was awed. And Michael enjoyed showing off his belly. I lose a little bit of control of them when I am behind the camera.
Aside from the humongous rockets, we love this museum because of all the hands on activities and experiments that are accessible to the kids. They even got to climb in the cockpit of this plane.
After about two and a half hours at the museum, the boys were done. Feet were hurting, legs were hurting and mouths were whining. So, they collapsed in front of these pictures of the planets for one last photo and we went home.

Of course, leaving D.C. is never a simple process. After locating the nearest entrance of the nearest Metro station, we had a 45 minute ride back to our car. The Metro train had no air-conditioning. I think that might be against the Geneva Conventions. All I can say is, it wasn't pretty. Getting off the train into the hot and humid Virginia weather was a relief. But, we made it home and hopefully the boys have great memories.

Wedding

My cousin, Michelle, got married yesterday. It was the third wedding among her siblings in a year. As in exactly 365 days. Last year, on August 8th, my cousin Becky got married which started a domino effect. Her brother Dave followed a few months later and one day short of a year later, Michelle tied the knot.

Their parents must be exhausted.

Michelle's colors were red, black and white. This made for a sweet and sassy wedding.

Sweet:

Sassy:

Weddings are always fun. In my family, we have a family BBQ the night before where the two families get together and relax before the big day. So, Friday night both mosquitoes and people enjoyed the huge spread. The day of the wedding, we all went to the temple for the wedding and the chance to stand in the sun pretending not to be hot for the pictures. Then we went back to the church for lunch and to prep for the reception. Seeing as how I was on the kitchen staff this time, I had plenty of opportunity to make sure that the food was good. And it was good. (Especially the gluten-free cookies my cousin's wife made -wow.) Then we all grumbled about our sore feet, cleaned up and went home. It was a fun day. And now that the marriage-age children in that family are hitched, the betting pools are starting about the rest of the single cousins.

My Virginia cousins (sweet, sassy, crazy, funny and stressed) at the temple:

Dino Dig

On Friday, we packed up the boys and a picnic lunch and headed over to Leesylvania State Park for their Dino Day. The kids got to dig in a bucket of dirt for something paleontologists never find - an entire dinosaur, skin and all. There was a big dinosaur puzzle and dinosaur stamps to create their own dinosaur skeleton. Equally exciting, there were a few playgrounds and the Potomac riverbank to explore.

Friday was the last day of Operation Exhaustion - a carefully planned and executed campaign designed to minimize Josh's time with a girl in our neighborhood who is teaching him some bad habits. It was successful as he didn't play with her at all this week - but I am exhausted to the point of tears, so we are going to have to try another tactic next week. I don't really have a problem with him playing with her some of the time, but they have spent way to much time together this summer.

The Zoo

On Monday, we took the boys to the zoo. It seemed like a good plan for a (relatively) cool day in Virginia. With school starting this month, summer seemed short to me all of a sudden. So, we are ramping it up before we lose two of our family members to the school year. I can't remember when we went to the zoo last. Literally. I have vague memories of having gone a few times, but I can't seem to place them by year, so I really don't know when it was. I won't lie - there was some whining, but on the whole we had a great time. And since there were no meltdowns or injuries, I consider the visit a success.

So, here are before and after shots.

We saw the Amazonia Habitat, Kids' Farm, tigers, lions, prairie dogs, invertebrates, macaques, apes, orangutans, Reptile Discovery Center, crocodiles, komodo dragons, tortoises, gorillas, horses, pandas, emus, and zebras. In any case, the boys all began the day moving (or being carried) under their own power and after 4 hours theyall ended up in the stroller. This sit and stand stroller may have been our best purchase to date - 3 kids from ages 6 to 1 in one stroller literally saved the day.

While we were at the zoo, one of the Egyptian cobras escaped from the Reptile Discovery Center and went on killing rampage of the goats in the Kids' Farm. We left about then so the kids wouldn't have to be exposed to the carnage.

Mid Year Resolutions

I have no idea how I am doing on my New Year's resolutions, mainly because I haven't taken a look at them since the New Year. Way to go, Irene. I have, however, now made a couple of Mid Year resolutions. In no particular order, they are:

1. Read books we already own. I don't actually have a book buying problem, but I am developing back pain from carrying the book bag we bring home from the library every week. Which isn't a bad thing (the amount of books, not the pain), but to some degree it is a little silly considering how many books we already own that I haven't read. Most of them I inherited when I married Jason, but a few are purchases I never got around to reading. Recently I have read Among the Righteous, which is about Arabs who helped Jews during WWII, and am currently reading Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women. In any case, considering that most of them are Jason's, I suspect this means I will be on a diet of mostly non-fiction relating to the Middle East, but it will probably be more mind-broadening than the Twilight series (which I am a little ashamed to admit I have read more than twice).

2. Speaking of diets - I am back on the Weight Watchers Wagon. I made this decision after a short, but telling, conversation I had with the Wii Fit board. The conversation went like this:

Irene: How much do I weigh?

Wii board: @#%$&#!

Okay, so the board didn't really swear at me, but it might as well have. That or groaned under my apparently ponderous weight. So, back to counting points it is.