Playing around

The world is a cruel place

Last night we had a temper tantrum because the smallest of the nesting dolls had the audacity to NOT open. "Mommy MAKE it open! Make it open NOW! WAAAAAH!" I was tempted to go and cut the thing in half just to prove my point.

Tonight it was one of her babies. The darned baby won't close her pretty blue eyes the way the other one does. This went on for about 15 minutes. Finally we flung the demon doll across the room and that seemed to solve the problem for now.

If you go out to the dump today...

...You're sure of a big surprise.
If you go out to the dump today
You'd better go in disguise.


For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the dump bears have their picnic.

Chorus:
Picnic time for dump bears,
The big black bears are having a lovely time today.
Watch them, catch them unawares,
And see them snacking on bags of decay.
See them gaily shove their snout.
Into things we've thrown out.
And never have any cares.
At six o'clock their mommies and daddies
Will take them home to bed
Because they're tired big black bears.


If you go out to the dump today,
You'd better not go alone.
It's rancid out at the dump today,
And safer to stay at home.

For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the dump bears have their picnic

TO CHORUS

Every dump bear, that's been good
Is sure of a treat today
There's lots of wonderful things to eat
And wonderful games to play

Beneath the trees, where nobody sees
They'll hide and seek as long as they please
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic


ANYWAY.That was one of the songs that the kids sang in the van. We went to the dump to look at bears. There were about 20 bears there during the time we were there! We were shocked to see people inside the dump, walking around. They offered to take our camera to get a closer shot, but as you can see it still doesn't look very close. So as they are taking pictures with our camera, Kookie's taxi pulls up. No joke, that's the local cab driver's name. She steps out and hitches up her pants, butts out her cigarette and she announces how stupid those people are, that dump bears are more dangerous than wild bears because they are used to people etc. We continue to discuss the lunacy of climbing through the fence to get closer to the bears, when the girl with our camera shouts out, "There's a bear behind you." We turned and looked and a HUGE bear was about 10 feet from us. Everybody flew to their cars, except for Damon who crouched down in front of FIL's car. He didn't want to miss this. When the bear saw that we saw him, he turned around and slowly walked up the road. It was great entertainment for the kids, but my MIL says that if the bear was any closer she would have fainted. Matt got the camera back and took a picture of him leaving.

I love summer

Ok now Ty has made ADHD hot

Adderall XR: Ty Pennington's Building Plans for Back to School Success Oh now I don't mind if Damon has ADHD, then he can be as hot and cool as Ty as long as he takes his Adderall XR. ;-)

A new man

He was thrilled once it was finally done.  He loves feeling the back and bragging to his brothers that he doesn't have to use a brush and they do, na na na na na.  Kira was chasing him around and laughing and Campbell suddenly got really mad at him because he didn't like his haircut.  Campbell's very opposed to change, unless it is a Campbell-approved change.  Patrick got a new haircut too, I cut it first and it looked to much like Willy Wonka, so I had to cut more off of the sides and by the time I was done I had taken off a lot more than I had planned.  Oh well, Patrick is happy with it.

Summer reading

Because you never can be too safe

This is the boy who flings himself in harm's way on a daily basis. As a toddler, he had a nasty habit of flinging off of playground equipment and staircases. He is always game for a good rollercoaster. He didn't even flinch when we were 10 feet from a bear (I'll save that story for another day). But he wears his life jacket for sandcastle building 30 feet from the water. Just in case.

May God bless him.

Dirty girl, hey go ahead, google that loser

I never could have imagined how cute dirt could be until I became Kira's mom.

Kira noticed that Daddy and Grandpa were cleaning out the chimney.  She's thinking "Hi Daddy, umm, Dad you're on the roof.  Uh Hi Grandpa.  Um, these are the guys who keep telling me not to stand on the table."

Oh I see...

Link spam - Wikipedia

Now I'm off to delete my blogspam...

This entry seems to have opened the floodgates of spam HELL. Thanks for the offers, but I am by NO means interested in Vacuum parts, on line poker, handwriting analysis, tramadol prescriptions, discount cialis, marketing my blog or anything remotely to do with pubic hair removal. But really, thanks for the offers.

Puck's Excellent Adventure

Puck was an excellent traveller (both ways). He was quiet, polite and didn't even smell bad, the whole way there.

He made many doggy friends in Wawa. I thought he did very well, he tried to play with every dog that he met, but he respected their body language and always came to me when he was called.




Puck enjoyed running on the rocky shore


And playing on the beach









He got to meet Aunt Sharon, he was pretty good with her considering that he is supposed to be a big goofy puppy.

Matt was blown away by how good this dog is. It was a bonding experience for man and dog.

Aside from some bad smells, Puck was very good on the trip home. Well, his presence did cause some problems. Let me explain. I had wisely bought the boys each a tennis ball sized jawbreaker to have on the trip home. I thought that it would mean hours of quiet driving. I thought wrong. Damon and Campbell couldn't even get them into their mouths, and Patrick's kept falling out of his mouth. First it landed on Puck's back, getting white sugary goop all over him. We had many tears, but I washed off the short brown hairs with bottled water and a napkin and he tried again. About 5 minutes later I hear, "Awwwww, I dropped it again." "It's okay, I can wash it off again." In a very grumpy voice, Patrick says, "No you can't, it landed on Puck's dink." The boys all made jokes about that for the rest of the drive home.

He is very loved and he knows it. So, what do you think, does this dog need his own blog? Maybe a blog day.

You know you are keeping your fridge too cold when

you have to use a chisel to get your pickles out.

HOW?

Well we couldn't get an appointment on Monday, so instead of waiting, we went to a walk-in clinic. The doctor said that Patrick had swimmer's ear and that fluid was also building up on the other side of the ear. Damon's was almost as bad. So he gave us a prescription for oral antibiotics (zithromax) and antibiotic/steriod ear drops. It took about 3 days for them to start to feel better. They have pink discharge coming out of their ears now, which is apparently within normal. Yesterday they were still relying heavily on Advil to quiet the wailing.

How did both Patrick and Damon end up with swimmer's ear? And stranger still, Patrick's friend S. and his brother both have the same thing! They have spent many days together this summer, some of those in the friend's swimming pool. But it is a brand new pool that is crystal clear, and S.'s brother's friends have spent even more time in the pool and they don't have an ear infection. S's mom was worried that it might be her pool and was going to ask an expert, but I told her I wasn't worried that it was her pool. My theory is that they are swimming a lot and it has been a hot summer, which means that their ears are very warm moist environments for bacteria to get into. Or it could be that all 4 of those kids were swimming in the Great Lakes (Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Superior). Oh well, my brain hurts, so I'm not going to think about this one too hard.

I'm getting things under control here, so I thought I should update on the phones. I have found all 3 cordless phones! One was in Patrick's room on his bookshelf. One was underneath my bed and the last one was between the couch cushions. Typical places, but things were so busy here, I didn't have a chance to look.

Trying my patience, and trying their patients

After another night of WAILING children, I started calling the doctor's office at 9:30, which is when they supposedly start to answer the phones. Busy. I wait 5 minutes, busy. I've been calling every 5 or 10 minutes for the past hour and 40 minutes and it has been flipping busy every time.

I like our doctor, I've been going to her for 12 years and she has been the only doctor my kids have known. But here I am with two kids in pain and I can't even get a freaking appointment. This is unnacceptable. I'm going to try for another 15 minutes and then I'm packing up my 4 kids and going there anyway. UGH. If they can't see me then I'll have to look for another family doctor.

Look in the pool at the 2020 Olympics

You just might see Kira. JussPress | New The girl has no fear of the water. When she was swimming in the big pool on Friday, she wanted to take her water wings off. I let her and she swam, desperately trying to keep her head up, but she kept sinking (my arms were waiting). I'm going to look into private lessons, because the only classes available at her age is to get them familiar with the water and this girl wants to get going.

A Pain in the Ear

Dr. Mom has diagnosed both Patrick and Damon with Swimmer's Ear (Otitis Externa). It is strange because I hadn't heard much about swimmer's ear until about 10 days ago when Patrick's buddy had it. His mom figured he got it from swimming in gross lake water when they were campting. A few days ago, Patrick started complaining that his ear ached from time to time. Then yesterday, Patrick and now Damon started WAILING about their ears. Only having had experience with inner ear infections, I was figuring they would both end up with fevers, but so far nothing. They have pain when you touch them anywhere near the affected ear and they do swim every single day. Either in our little pool or at friends' pools. I think it is strange that even though it isn't contagious, both of them got it at the same time and shortly after Patrick's friend. So I guess we are headed to the doctor's office tomorrow to get some antibiotic drops. That will not be fun, but I'll just be thankful that only 1/2 of the kids were affected.

Kissing cousins

Aren't they adorable together?

Clutter

I can't find any of my phones. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Action figures and newspapers I'm having no problem locating though.

Vacation's over

Oh where to begin, where to begin. Well at the beginning. Since I can't get anything done when the kids are up, I stayed up for most of the night getting everything packed. We left at 6 am, and I slept most of the 12 hour trip.


Wawa, well Michipicoten actually, is a beautiful place. Lake Superior is gorgeous, although cold. The views from Matt's aunt's cottage are breathtaking. Photography doesn't do it justice, but we keep trying.

Kira enjoyed her trip. Between playing on the beach and tearing the cottage apart, she kept very busy.

The boys had lots of fun, fishing, looking at the bears at the dump, building a fort, climbing on rocks, playing in the waves, and going in the sauna (of course they do this until they are hot enough to go jump in the lake).

As for Puck, he came with us and experienced his first family vacation. Now that is a blog entry for another day! Matt was complaining when he looked at our photos, saying we might as well title that folder "Puck's big vacation." It was hard to resist though, a gorgeous puppy in a beautiful surrounding.

I have a lot more photos, I took about 600 of them. I will blog some more of them as I sift through them.

Like quizzes eh?

Your Slanguage Profile

Canadian Slang: 75%

Aussie Slang: 25%

New England Slang: 25%

Prison Slang: 25%

Southern Slang: 25%

Victorian Slang: 25%

British Slang: 0%

What Slanguage Do You Speak?

Got to get out of here

We're leaving for the cottage.  With 4 kids, a puppy, grandparents, and 2 doting aunts, it will be very busy, and fun.  We will be hiking, fishing, kayaking, surfing, visiting and maybe if I'm lucky, relaxing.

The true face of Kira

Finally, captured on film. Now you see what I am up against, what the WORLD is up against.

Videos

I just uploaded some video clips to JussPress | New

So far I only have a few of Puck. I'll try to get the kids on there soon. You can see Puck's favourite tricks. I'm still trying to catch him turning on the tap, but he's quick.

The lacrosse finals ended in heartbreak

okay, not really. But Damon's team lost. Damon was awesome too. He got the ball of their players many times and he had 4 breakaways and shots on their net. It was SOOO close and they only lost by one goal that was scored in the last minute of the game. The final score was 7-8. The playoff games were all really exciting, the crowds get really excited and cheer for their teams. We were sitting with our friend who is the mother of the other team's goalie, so it was all friendly cheering. Damon was a little bit sad, but he was proud when all the coaches from both teams remarked on how he played and excellent game. Matt's parents even came to watch the game and then visited with us afterwards.

I would like to say that we are finished lacrosse for the year, but that wouldn't be true. We were back at the arena last night and again tonight for Select team practices.

Splash

Kira at her brothers' last day of swimming lessons modelling her Gymboree Splash outfit (minus the matching sandals). It looks a bit wrinkled there, but I LOVE that outfit so much.

Trying on Damon's camo flip flops.

Now try teaching him to turn it off!

Puck learned a new trick this weekend. It's a pretty good trick for hot weather too.



He started this because he was hot and thirsty in the backyard and I offered him the hose on a low stream.  He lapped it up.  Then whenever I tried to use the hose for anything, he was jumping up and trying to drink from the stream.  Then he came inside and saw the kids washing their hands and saw that there was a stream there.  Now he is hooked and can even turn on the cold water in the upstairs bathroom.  It's our fault for having lever handles.