Start to Finish

Here is the newest story you'll be hearing about my mom for the next 30 years:

Mom: John, have you seen The Hangover?
John: Yes. Start to finish, the funniest movie I have ever seen.
Mom: Oh. Well, I haven't seen "Start to Finish"

Uppie! Uppie, Mama!

From June

This is the face of a poor little boy who wants his mommy to pick him up.

Time To Get Packin'

This is Sweet Jack today after dinner in his swim shirt, covered with ice cream and pretty much everything else he encountered today. His swim shirt, of course is the one thing I know he will need on our vacation. Thank God for Dave! He hand washed it, and it is drying as we both sit here working and watching a movie. Sometime soon (midnight) we may start packing. Yea! Soon we will be on vacation!

P.S. I was just going to pull an Uncle John and pack the dirty shirt. Then, when we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house I could say, "Mom, be a dove and wash this for me." JUST KIDDING!

P.P.S. New Camera! Yea!

Mow

I made Dave drive me to the library after dinner, after insisting that I wouldn't ride in the cargo trailer with Jack. When we got there, Dave asked why, exactly, he had to drive me since I am not pain killer free. I didn't really have a good answer. Maybe over the past week+ I forgot how to drive. Maybe it was that half glass of wine.

Anyway, when we got home, it was pretty close to bedtime, but Dave was weeding, I was filling Dave in on some gossip, Luke was reading, and Jack was hanging off the front door knob yelling, "Mil! Mil! Miiiiiiillllllllll!" I let him into the house and handed him a sippy of milk. He said, "Dink do."

We went back outside and before you know it, Jack was pointing to the gate to the backyard yelling, "MOW! MOW! MOW! MOW!"

And I said, "Do you want your milk? It's right over there. There's your milk!"

And Jack said, "MOW! MOW! MOW! MOW!"

And I said, "You're milk is right there."

And Dave said, "He wants to MOW. The lawn."

Ooooh. So I let him get his John Deere mower from the backyard and then he was happy. It was pretty obvious, but I was really clueless. It must have been that half glass of wine.

Silver Medal Dutch Oven Rainer Cherry Crumble

Another year, another camping dessert competition, another silver medal. Well, the judging was a lot less formal this year, so this is pretty much self awarded. I suppose I could have fought for a tie for first, but MB's strawberry shortcake was realllllly good. Dave and I made the Rainer Cherry Crumble from the June Cooking Light, and it was also really good. We borrowed MB's cherry pitter and Luke pitted cherries, almost faster than Jack was eating them. Then we pawned Jack off on MB, so we could finish pitting cherries and actually end up with enough for the crumble. Actually, instead of angling for first place, I should be sharing my second place with MB, since she helped so much.

The picture makes the Silver Medal Cherry Crumble look sort of disgusting, I blame my phone, since I was still camera-less at the time.


Fortunately, other people brought cameras, so we have these pictures of the boys:

Deep Thoughts

It's possible that I could come up with a very moving and thoughtful post about life, death, denial, acceptance, optimism, regret, sorrow. But instead, I have this thought to share: Doesn't that seem like a really big straw to go with an iced coffee?

19th Of July

ABC 123 19th of July. Blah. Even my own special cake-eating and present-buying holiday couldn't totally cheer me up today. Oh well, there's always next 19th of July.

I wasn't able to make or order a delicious cake, but I had Dave pick one up during one of the times I sent him to the grocery store today. It was good.


And since I can't leave the house to shop for summer clothes like I usually do on the 19th of July, or thereabouts, I focused my energy on online window shopping. For cameras. As you can see above, I am still using my phone as my only camera these days, and it isn't pretty.

As a Boulder, green, earthy, granola type, I always feel the need to shop at locally owned businesses. So I have been to our local camera store a few times, but I just haven't been able to pull the trigger and buy a camera there, when I can get the same thing cheaper somewhere else. I just end up at Target, getting the camera for $25.00 less than at the local shop, and then half an hour later, I buy the same camera at Costco for another $50.00 less than at Target, and then 20 minutes later I return the first camera to Target. It's so annoying and complicated. After my camera fell in the sand in Mexico, I took it to the local shop to see if they could fix it. They said no, and that Canon would charge me almost as much to fix it as to buy a new one, (like $200) so I should just buy a new one. While I was there, I jiggled the camera enough to get it working again. It worked for another month, on and off and then broke for good. So the next time I was at Target, I picked up a camera half heartedly and started looking at it. The sales guy said, "Can I help you?" And I said, "Yeah, my camera broke, so I guess I have to buy a new one." He said, "NO! Don't do it! Call the Canon customer loyalty number, they will hook you up. You can just get a better camera for like $100.00." I figured it was worth a shot, and the helpful target salesman was right! For $100 they will fix my camera, or I can get a refurbished better model for somewhere between $125 and $200. (Actual retail price for a new one ranges from $250 to $400.)

I am comparing and contrasting cameras and not feeling too guilty about not supporting the local store. Just this once though.

Only One Shopping Day Left...

The 19th of July is only one short day away. In case you needed a reminder. And I think I am going to do my comments contest again. Comment on any post between today and the end of July and you'll be entered into my comments contest. I'll pick one random commenter to win, and the prize is to be determined. Probably something lame. Maybe not though! Last year, commenter JEJ won a gift certificate to her local independent book store.

A few weeks ago, my friend Laura and I were discussing the merits of sending your children back to daycare as soon as they had been on antibiotics for 24 hours. I'm for it, but she was feeling guilty for not indulging her sick children more. I said, "As someone who was babied as a sick child, I can tell you it doesn't work out well in adulthood. Once your mom has left you with a little china bell to ring whenever you need something, you can expect that any sickness you suffer as an adult is going to be that much worse since no one is waiting on you," Laura said, "A CHINA BELL??? I feel like I have the rosetta stone to MetaMegan. And a great idea for a 19th of July present."

And little did she know how appropriate a present it would turn out to be! Of course, I take back everything I said about no one waiting on me, Dave has been the best, he is taking great care of me. And with the combination of 19th of July presents and care packages, I might have a very nice 19th of July after all.

In other news, the tooth fairy forgot to come last night. I hope the tooth fairy didn't also have emergency laproscopic surgery last week! That would be awful. I think, if I can put Twilight down, that I might try to sew a tooth pillow today as I convalesce. We'll see.

File Under TMI

I'm thinking of starting a new category of blog posts that I will label TMI. Maybe not, depending on how this one is received... But I have exciting news! Jack peed on a tree this weekend while we were camping! He saw Luke do it, and then several times over the course of the weekend he said, "Potty. Tree. Pee." After it stopped seeming like a fluke, and started seeming like he was peeing after he said that (we could tell from the far away look in his eye) we started to try to rip off his diaper and give him an opportunity to pee on a tree. And he did it once! I think this is major news on the potty training front. It is a very, very exciting development.

Then and Now

I try to take a picture like this every summer at the airport. My pictures are not really well organized on this computer, so I am going to guess that this was summer 2004, when Luke was about 17 months.

And this is Luke and Jack before we went to Mexico, when Luke was 6 and Jack was about 17 months.

Trailer

When Dave was building his trailer, I said it reminded me of this awesome bike I had seen online. And when I was on the website, I saw that if I link to them, I could win one of their bikes!



Wish me luck!

Beer

I was doing some awesome mothering this evening after Jack and I got home. I said, "Let's read a book!" And then we sat down on the couch to look at the Crate and Barrel catalog. We got to a crazy wine rack section, and Jack pointed to the bottles and said, "Beer." Well, it sounded like "Bee-uhr".

Me: No, that's wine.
Jack: Bee-uhr.
Me: Actually, that's wine.
Jack: Bee-uhr. Bee-urh. Bee-uhr.

When I told the story to Dave and Luke, they thought it was pretty funny. Dave started laughing even before the funny part because I said we were reading Crate and Barrel Magazine. "Uh, you mean catalog, right?"

Back in the (Bay) Days

I was sharing my wonderful Fourth of July memories with my family during the fire works on Saturday. My dad used to outdo everyone with a different adjective for each firework display, and my mom went with the old standby of "oooh" "ahhhh" "ohhhhh". And I LOVED the fireworks. My favorite of my dad's adjectives was "multi-faceted" which I heard as "multi-fascinating". Of course nothing could top Bay Days, and all through college whenever I would meet someone new from Bay Village (which was often since lots of people from Bay went to my college and since I didn't go to Bay High, I didn't know any of them) I always said, "Wasn't Bay Days the best?" The answer was always yes. I partly did this to annoy Dave because he thought Bay Days was lame.

What was Bay Days? Well, I think it was mostly a place where goldfish went to live their last week. I know we always left with one or two and the fate of one of those goldfish could be the subject of a chapter in my memoir. More on that some other day. Other than the goldfish you could win, I think there were rides. And maybe a parade? Definitely fireworks. Bay Days and Mardi Gras were the highlight of my social calendar from about age 6 until 14.

I still love to go to the fireworks, so this year, when I was told to dial into a conference call at 9:00 pm on the 4th of July, I had to politely decline. And then when Jack fell off a chair and split his lip I told him to shake it off. And when Luke started whining, and whining, and whining, and Dave said, "Maybe going to the fireworks isn't such a good idea after all", I responded with, "I want to go to the fireworks, so we are going to the fireworks. Now everyone needs to quit whining and bleeding, and start pedalling or we are going to miss it, and I am going to be angry!"

It was really the stuff of memories. Family togetherness and all. So once we got there and sat down 2 seconds before the show started, I tried to fill everyone in on how much fun I had at the fireworks as a kid, with my family. It really worked to change everyone's mood. Dave came up with some great adjectives. Jack did a lot of oohing and ahhing. I ran out of adjectives pretty quickly, and I think that might be because the fireworks display was a lot longer, and possibly better than the Bay Days display. Luke got into the spirit finally. Well, sort of. His favorite fireworks response was, "Oooh. Ahhh. Lame."

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July Everyone! I hope you are all out at barbeques, Bay Days, Red White and Boom, or what have you, and not in your basement, restoring a database. (Especially if you already worked 12 hours on your holiday yesterday!)