Odds and Ends

We celebrated Hannah’s 11th birthday this past week.  11??!!  I just need to slow time down a bit!  I think that she enjoyed her day, although she would have preferred that her father was not traveling that day and that the weather had been sunny rather than pouring down rain and storming.  I typically let my kids choose all the meals for their special day and this was no different.  Hannah wanted chocolate chip muffins for breakfast, shells & cheese with Gala apples for lunch, and spaghetti and meatballs with salad for dinner.  Her choice of a birthday treat was homemade cinnamon rolls.  They are definitely a favorite of everyone in our house!  I think we were all on carb overload by the end of the day.  Since Tim had to leave out of town that morning, the day before her birthday we went to lunch as a family and she opened her gift from us then.

We have had some very interesting weather here lately.  This past week we have had an enormous amount of rain – which has made the local creeks and river quite powerful and damaging to many areas.  Last week we had a hail storm out of the blue.  I have never personally seen hail that size with my own eyes!  That is Tim’s hand in the picture, not mine.  Thankfully it didn’t seem to do damage to our van in the driveway, but I can’t say that I inspected it.  However, it is very likely that Tim did and since he hasn’t informed me of any damage I will assume that there wasn’t any!

Yesterday morning Lilly decided to attempt to dress as a horseback rider and recruit her brothers to be her horses.  They got into the spirit of it and even attempted to dress themselves to look like Flicka and her colt.  I love when they pretend!  I think it is the best type of play.  They weren’t using any of their toys, just miscellaneous clothing that they had.  During a couple of the very rainy days this week the kids watched two of the 3 Flicka movies that we own and so some of them (ahem…Hannah) definitely have horses on the brain.

The past couple of weeks we have also been trying to get to know our neighbors.  We were especially excited when we saw that some of our new neighbors that have moved in recently behind us had some “older” kids.  Many of the families in our neighborhood have children, but most of them are closer to Jacob’s age than my other kids.  Ben is thrilled that he now has a 9 year old boy neighbor to play with and Lilly is quite excited as well because they have a girl that is close to her age.

We have had a couple of interesting events lately as well.  I’m glad I can laugh about this first one…now!  Tim and I were having a conversation with Hannah and had asked Ben to watch Jacob.  A few minutes later Nathan went downstairs and discovered Jacob had gotten into trouble.  He yelled for me and I came downstairs to find that Jacob had emptied an entire 1/2 gallon of soy milk in the living room onto the couch and the carpet.  He also emptied the little bit of orange juice that was left in a jug and spilled a good bit of apple juice on the kitchen floor.  I think I screamed.  I didn’t even know what to begin to do to take care of it.  Tim and I ended up spending the rest of the evening soaking up soy milk from the couch and the carpet, taking the covers from the cushions to the cleaners, buying a carpet cleaner, and using the carpet cleaner to suck up the rest of the milk out of the carpet.  We ordered pizza for dinner.

The very next day the kids and I were cleaning out the van.  All of the kids had gone back into the house except for Hannah (at least I thought they had) and I was vacuuming out the van.  A few minutes later Hannah asked where Jacob was.      I thought he had gone inside with the other kids, but apparently he had not because he was not in there.  I looked across all of the backyards to the sidewalk that leads to the park and there he was.  He had ridden his tricycle (except he can’t peddle) down the sidewalk past two houses and around the corner and past two more houses where he was going to cross the street to go to the playground!  I raced across all of my neighbors yards to get to him and found that he was on his way back home when I saw him since some construction workers had stopped him from crossing the street.  I was so worked up the rest of the day.  I am very thankful that this is not a regular occurrence.  I might have heart failure.

Ok, last story for today.  I have been going to the chiropractor’s office regularly for help with my back and imagine my surprise when I went for my appointment on Thursday and the FBI was there!!  I don’t know what was going on, but they told me that the office would reschedule my appointment and they took my name and phone number and date of birth because they said they were going to call me to ask me some questions.  They have not as of yet, so I don’t think they are actually going to.  They were quite nice about it, but of course did not inform me of why they were there or any such thing.  Then as I was going back to my van, a news reporter runs up to me from beside the news van to ask me some questions.  After I replied that yes, I was a patient there, she asked me if I was surprised to come to my appointment and find the FBI there.  No!  The FBI is at all my doctor appointments! is what I felt like sarcastically saying, but I was nice and just said yes, I was surprised.  Then she wanted me to say that on camera.  I politely declined.  Then she wanted my name so she could quote me.  I politely declined again.  Imagine my surprise when Tim later that evening found a news clip that had me in it!  Not close up, and mostly from the side or back, but they put me on the news!  They also quoted the things I had said to her, but of course did not say who I was.  It was certainly the most bizarre trip I have ever had to a doctor’s office.