Stories

Mimi (random quote):"That brings me tired."

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My mom is here visiting and since she has curly hair, Mimi asked if she could have curly hair too.  We went that night to get some sponge curlers. 

She didn't love how they felt...

But she (and we) LOVED how it looked. 

Sonya came too!  The kiddos are in heaven.

Mom hard at work on the floor cloth. 

Yoda pretending to work on it too. 

The school had a walk-a-thon, Greg's mom walked with Parker. 

And Greg walked with Mimi.  

It was a beautiful day.

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After running errands I came home to tell everyone about it. 

Me:"Let me tell you about the Wild-Goose-Chase I just went on!"

I told everyone about how crazy it was to try and find a working car wash and dropped quarters and how it all worked out in the end. 

Parker looked at me, mesmerized. 

Me:"Are you amazed?"

Parker:"I thought there was supposed to be real geese!" 

The Middle

I wish this post was titled "the end", meaning the end of the kitchen redo.  But it's not, it's the middle.

Things are moving along, but slowly.  I'm trying to keep things from getting too messy, so that I can keep the kitchen fully functioning, but sometimes it's tough.  I don't want to double the cost of fixing up the kitchen with going out to eat at every meal...

  Here's the room with some paint stripped off, some still in place.

Greg took the kiddos for most of a whole Saturday so that I could sand down the inside cabinets.  Yoda gets really upset by the sound of the sander, and unplugs it.  It makes for some frustrating sanding.

The final appliance to get the switch was the microwave--so we did that, too. Of course something as simple as switching out a microwave should only take someone 3 minutes-- it took us more like 20.  It's like a curse.

Long before we moved in, one of the previous owners moved some of the kitchen cabinets to the garage.  Our plan is to move one of them back in.  The cabinet's plan is to make that as difficult as possible.  Greg helped me take this beast down.  Again, something that would take a normal person 5 minutes, took us close to an hour.  Ugh.  

This is close to where we are right now, although the microwave is no longer on the floor.  There's still that lovely hole in the linoleum that brings horror to all those that visit.  I have big plans for the floor and they change from week to week.  This week it's to make a floor cloth to cover it until I decide what to do permanently. Good thing my mom is here to help! 

 Here's Yoda covered in paint, he's a cute, little distraction.  

 Here's a random shot of some of my favorite tools for this painting job.  Sanding block, so that I can sand without disturbing Yoda, small roller brush, yellow paint funnel thingy, and paint-can key.  The only thing missing is the hard rubber mallet that I use to close up the paint cans.  I'm crazy about keeping paint cans clean and easy to open and close.  So the yellow paint funnel thingy, key and mallet help with that. 

I made the kiddos help empty the cupboards...

Here's the pile of stuff that we put in the family room so the stuff would avoid getting dusty. 
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Just to refresh your memory, here's what the kitchen used to look like...

And if you want to see more of the redo, click here.  Wish us luck on the next part! 

Money

Mimi is figuring out money. She got some from the tooth fairy. She's got some change from other places. The money resides in her piggy bank. She shakes the bank for fun.

Back on the half birthday she asked if she could bring some money and come with Parker and me to the store. I said yes. She went upstairs and picked out her money like she's choosing a soccer team, not at all concerned about how much money is in her hand. She came down the stairs with $2.53.

At Toys R Us, she was looking for something to buy. She saw some Littlest Pet Shop animals for about $3.50. I told her the price, and she moved on. I said she had more money in her bank. She told me, "I'm not giving them any of that."

The next time we went to Toys R Us she came down with $3.68 and a 2 Euro coin.

While in the car on the way to church, she asked the woman riding with us, "Do you have moneys?"

The woman said yes.

Mimi said "I have more coins than the green long paper ones."

The woman said, "Me too."

And in case you thought all this mature money talk has changed her style. The picture below is the counterargument.

Shopping and Shel Silverstein

Greg, asking Parker how his new pants look: "How do they look?
Parker: "Pretty snazzy!"

*Later*

Parker putting on his new shoes: "These are snazzy!"
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Mimi, while looking over my shoulder at a scribbled-note that I'm writing: "How can Dad read it?  That's not read-ish!"
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Greg, describing the new pj's that he bought for Yoda: "Well, he liked them so much that when he started licking them, I decided we better buy them."
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While listening to an NPR story (found here) about Shel Silverstein, Yoda was so excited to listen to the poems, he pulled up a chair to get closer to the radio.  (The radio is on the counter and not bolted to the underside of the cabinet because of the continuing kitchen reno--more on that soon.)

Two Very Serious Robots

It's not like I caught them while they weren't smiling.  They put on this very serious face while acting like robots.  They also stand really still for a few moments.  It's like they aren't my kiddos for just that brief time.  As anybody knows, that knows my kiddos, they don't act serious, or stay still for anything or anyone at anytime--unless they are asleep.

Trucks

Update:
I forgot to add that on Green Day Mimi called herself Green-a-lishious, she's pretty funny.

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As we drove past a truck like this

Yoda:"Truck! Truck!"
Me:"Yes, it's a big truck."
Parker:"Say 'Big Truck' -- 'BIG'"
Yoda:"BIG"
Parker:"TRUCK"
Yoda:"TRUCK"
Parker:"BIG TRUCK"
Yoda:"BIG TRUCK"
Me:"Yeah!  A 2-word sentence"

***later, as we drove home past the same truck***

Yoda:"Bye, BIG TRUCK!"
Me:"Wow!  A 3-word sentence!"
Mimi:"What if he said a 4-word sentence -- HI LITTLE TRUCK MAYONNAISE -- ?

Yoda taking over

With Parker and Mimi off to school for much of the day, Yoda might be the star of the show for a while, we'll see....The catch is, he's a baby of few words, and what he says doesn't make much sense unless you have me or Greg to translate.  Here's a few videos (I think they are like 10 seconds or so) of Yoda and his funny words.

The Ballad of Mimi's start of Kindergarten

Get comfortable, it's a long story.  It started a few days before the first day of school. 

She went to meet her teacher and walk around to get a feel for the classroom and school.  This day was called show-what-you-know, just a 20 minute conference with just her and her teacher.  When I explained what would happen that day, I neglected to say that the teacher would ask the questions and that Mimi would tell her the answers.

What ended up happening was Mimi marched in with her backpack full of school supplies, sat down, and started telling her teacher exactly what she knew!

Mimi:"There are different kinds of dinosaurs, bipods and quadrupeds.  Some dinosaurs are herbivores and some are carnivores..."

The teacher looks to me for help at the same time that I realize Mimi is not stopping.  So I gently tell Mimi to listen what her teacher is going to ask and then she can show what she knows about those questions.  BTW, she's does fine and knows just what she should know for a girl her age.

Next, it's a week or so later and it's the first day of school.  Mimi is in afternoon Kindergarten meaning she doesn't need to be ready for school until about 11am.  Not what I envisioned for her or me, but it's working out nicely.  After we walk Parker to school that cold and chilly morning, we get her home and ready for school.  This is the outfit that she picked out for herself.  

The school does something called gentle start.  On the first day about 1/3 of the class goes to class, on the second day another 1/3 of the class goes, and then on the 3rd day (you guessed it!) the last 1/3 of the class has their first day of school.  So we show up and there will be just 4 students that day, and Mimi knows 2 of them!  One from church and one from preschool.  She was ready to go! 

Life would not be complete without a random, short-lived illness thrown in the mix.  Mimi did not feel well the next day, but since she didn't have to go to school, she just sleeps it off and is feeling better by Monday.  Here she is curled up in a quilt from Grandma Eunice, by far the warmest one we have in our house.  It's fitting that she is using a quilt made for Greg for when he started College and Mimi is started school herself.  Also, it was the roof to the blanket-fort we had built that morning. 

This was the first day of school with all the students in the classroom, so I drive her to school (normally she will take the mid-day bus).  She was again jumping out of her skin to get there.  

I wanted to get a picture of her in her red shirt.  Each day of the first 2 weeks the students are supposed to wear a specific color that they will be learning about.  This day was red, and she picked a red and white stripped shirt.  

Mimi:"I bet I'll be the only one like a Zebra!"  But she was TOO excited to get there and I couldn't keep up with her at the same time as take a picture, so this is the best I could do. 

And here's Green Day.

She called herself "Green-a-lishious"

Green Day--I enjoyed calling it that, but the kiddos were clueless why it made me happy when we actually heard a Green Day song on the radio on the way home from school.



I'm just realizing that I don't have a photo of her getting on the bus, hopefully I won't leave it until the last day of school like I did for Parker.

It was a dark and stormy morning...

 

I think this was the most nervous that Parker has been so far on the first day of school, but still he was running in front of us to get there.

It was quite chilly and rainy, not really dark and stormy
 as the title suggests, that was just to keep people reading...
Most of the time Mimi walks, but she slept-in and it was so chilly, that she wanted to be wrapped up. 

This was my view-Yoda's little frog legs, he didn't seem to mind the cold. 

By the time we got to the school I was able to convince Parker to take down his hood for a picture.  

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The night before the first day of school:

Me:"What do you want to do on your last day of summer?"
Parker:"Go to [big fancy Italian Restaurant]."

Me:"I had expected something a little more warm-weather related, but a chance NOT to make dinner, ok!" 

 

Here's Parker stunned by the size of the meatball.

And here he is smiling about the size of the meatball. 

Mimi's first day of school stuff is on it's way...

Code Red

The count down...

The crowd...

The launch pad...

The launch sequence...

The recovery

Summer So Far: Take Three

I've been in denial that summer is ending, but since school starts THIS week, well, I've got to face the truth...

Here's a few goodies from the past few weeks.

Mimi, as she's about to bite into a cheese burger:"All cheesed UP!"

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 We finally added a rope swing to our big front tree.  I love this tree so much it doesn't even bother me that we have 30+bags of leaves each Fall. 

 A silly face for Yoda.  I think he was experimenting with a smile. 

 We went to the State Fair for the first time.  We went early in the morning, NO lines! 

 Greg took Parker and Mimi on the sky ride.  Mimi wished she hadn't gone on it at first. 

 Random picture that Greg took, meat of course. 

 I opted to walk Yoda to the end of the ride. 

 Parker and Mimi's first roller coaster ride (I think anyway). 

 Mimi asks for cotton candy whenever she sees it, at the grocery store, for example.  That's just wrong.  Cotton candy is for things like a fair, or the circus.  She was pretty happy to finally get some fluffy pink stuff.  Look at the size of that bag!  And that was a small!  Hello!

 Our day was pleasantly less expensive because we have a AAA membership.  I believe it's the first time we've even used the card for a discount. 

 Lots of sprinkler time during this crazy hot summer. 

 We started going to the science museum again.

 The day we went was so empty, so we were able to do stuff I don't normally have patience to wait in line for.  For example Yoda is sitting in a window that looks into a big water tank.  That light in front of him is a remote controlled camera, and it's pointed right at Yoda. 

In this picture Parker is working the controls and if you squint, you can see Yoda on the screen.  Normally this part is so popular that we don't get to be in both places.  What a treat:)

More of the summer wrap up to come....