Someone is watching out for me after all!

I was starting to think that the universe was out to get me. In the past few days:

• Emma fractured her finger
• our refrigerator died and a repairman can't come until next Wednesday
• my garbage disposal froze (but handyman Nathan was able to get it going again)
• Adana has decided she is a big girl and wants to pee in the potty every 15 minutes.
• Shelby (our dog) got into something that smells like a cross between rotten eggs & vomit. I've been bathing & scrubbing her to try to get that nasty smell out.

So when I woke up today, with a To-Do list a mile long, I was almost afraid to get out of bed. I mean, really . . . what next?

But then the heavens decided to shine down on me (literally - it is a gorgeous sunny day today!). But it's not just the weather that has cheered me up.

What, you are wondering, could possibly be so great that I now have a smile on my face and a skip in my step??

Five words: Dora the Expolorer TV marathon.

All Dora, all day on Nick Jr. (cue angels singing).

My Bruiser Girls!

I have 2 sons. They are your typical boys - rough & tumble, love to wrestle and play hard.

One of them is a soccer fanatic and would rather play with a near-concussion than admit that he's hurt.

The other is a hockey nut (not known to be the safest of sports) and considers a helmet & protective gear to be "optional."

So how is it that this Fall I have made TWO visits to the Radiologist for TWO seperate fractures . . . for my two LITTLE GIRLS!?

Fracture #1 - falling out of a tree house.

Fracture #2 - last night, Adana slammed Emma's hand in her bedroom door. It was an accident, (have your kids ever screwed around at bedtime rather than just Going! To! Bed! like they were told a million times?), but her pinky immediately swelled up bigger than her thumb, turned a nasty shade of purple, and kept her awake in pain all night.

So I spent this morning shuttling between the Doctor's office and the Radiologist. Luckily, it's a minor fracture (I'm thinking: "Luckily it wasn't severed!"). But we still have to wait for the swelling to go down a bit to make sure no tendons were damaged.

And NO (Jessica), I didn't faint. But I sure came close a couple times. Blech.

Soccer in the Pacific NW

Saturday was Jared's last soccer game of the season. His team, Demon Pandas, has been playing together for 3 years now. They ended the season by participating in the President's Cup tournament, a regional tournament of select teams.

Unfortunately, they were required to "play up" a level this year, so they were competing against teams that were 2-3 years older than most of the boys on our team (a lot of our team members are already "playing up.") Result: They did pretty well in the first round, but they got whomped in their final game on Saturday.

The game was played at a local high school football stadium. The fans (all 20 of us parents & siblings) had to watch from the bleachers. It was near-freezing, and FOGGY!

Here are some pictures that I took of the not-so-exciting game:

Here's Jared doing an impressive slide tackle to get the ball away from the opposing team. (If you squint and sort of jiggle your screen a bit, you can kind of get the idea.)

This is Jared working his fancy footwork up the field. He's on the far side of the field, so you'll just have to trust me on that.

We are really looking forward to the boys winter sports: indoor soccer & basketball. All inside! Yeah!

Better than the real thing

I found this funny spoof of the Twilight movie on my sis-in-law's blog. Since I liked the 1st book, yawned through the 2nd, and absolutely hated the last two, I thought this video was great. I'm guessing the spoof will end up being better than the actual movie, with it's intense music, unnaturally gorgeous characters, and contrived lines.

Comments question

I am seeking advice/opinions from all you fabulous bloggers and blog readers. My questions relate to how you deal with Comments on your blog.

1. As a blog reader, do you like it when people respond to you when you post a comment on their blog? More importantly, do you expect a response?


2. If so, what is your preferred method of response? A seperate email? A post on your own blog? A response in the comments section of their blog?


3. As a blogger, how do you typically deal with comments in your Comment section that you want to respond to?

I, of course, LOVE getting comments on my blog (it's Nathan's favorite part of my blog - he reads the comments more avidly than what I actually post.) But I've never come up with a tried-n-true method of responding.

I also enjoy it when a fellow blogger responds to something that I've left in their Comments, but the truth is that I don't always check back to see if they've responded. I mean, honestly, I can barely keep up with reading all the blogs that I enjoy; I rarely have time to also go back and check all the comments that I've left.

I've tried subscribing to a post's Comments feed, so that I could receive by email any further comments that were left. But that drove me crazy. I would get email after email from random people that I'd never heard of, commenting on a blog post that I had pretty much forgotten about.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts with me. No promises, though, on receiving a response. :-)

Nearest Book

Here are the rules:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Here's mine:

A Scout knows there is strength in being gentle. (From the Cub Scout Webelos Handbook.)

I wish I had something more intellectual or interesting laying near me, but those are the rules. My intellectual & interesting books are on my night stand (where I think about reading them each night . . . just seconds before I collapse into exhausted oblivion .)

Mommy, according to Emma

I pulled this off a friends blog and thought it would be fun to do with Emma. I don't know if I have the guts to do it with the boys; maybe I'll do an edited version.

1. What is something mommy always says to you? I’m busy. (Ouch.)

2. What makes mommy happy? A kiss.

3. What makes mommy sad? When you don’t behave.

4. What is something mommy does that makes me laugh? Play hide-n-seek with me & Adana.

5. What was mommy like as a child? I don’t know.

6. How old is mommy? 23 (That's my girl!)

7. How tall is mommy? Medium-tall

8. What is mommy's favorite thing to do? Make dinner

9. What does mommy do when your not around? Make dinner (Do I spend too much time in the kitchen?)

10. What cool thing does mommy do? Take us to fun places

11. What is something mommy's really good at? Cooking (OK, I'm starting to get a complex.)

12. What is something Mommy's not very good at? Building tables and stuff (Her first answer was "You're good at everything!" Then she changed it to this. Humph.)

13. What does mommy do for her job? Take care of kids

14. What is mommy's favorite food? Turkish soup

15. What does mommy do that makes you proud of her? Cook (I need to show her there's more to me than food. But what that is, I really don't know . . .)

16. What do you and mommy do together? Do homeschool

17. How are you and mommy alike? Our eyes

18. How do you know your mommy loves you? She kisses me every night.

Speaking of Jell-o . . .

I have a very good friend who can do simply amazing things with Jell-o. I once saw her bring a Jell-o salad to a church potluck. I swear that thing had at least a dozen different colored layers. It was a work of art (and it really made my contribution - probably a bag of Cheetos - look lousy.)

Well, in her honor, I recently made a batch of JELL-O COOKIES. TaDa!

Granted, my friend would probably have made them multi-swirled-colored-frosted-super-size, but we can't all be a Superwoman like her. :-)

Here's the recipe:

1 1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 pkg. Jell-o (3 oz)

1 tsp. vanilla

1 egg

1/4 cup water

4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

Combine butter, sugar, Jell-o, vanilla, egg & water. Mix well. Add flour & baking powder.

If you have a cookie press, put the dough in and squeeze it out onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Otherwise, you can just roll them into little balls and flatten slightly on the cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes. (They won't look browned on top, so lift one up and check underneath to see if it is starting to brown a bit. Don't overcook or they'll be too dry.)

I get to eat the heart!

Sunday dinners have always been full of tradition. When I was growing up, I have many fond memories of going over to my grandma's house on Sunday afternoon for a feast of roast beef, potatoes & carrots, rolls, and Jell-o. Yum!

Around here, Sunday dinner has taken on a new tradition. Most weeks, we have voi leipa - Finnish open-faced sandwiches, with lots of salami, good cheese, and sliced cucumbers & tomatoes.

But occassionally, when artichokes are on sale, we FEAST on piles of steamed artichokes, with melted butter and basalmic mayo for dipping. Double Yum!

As everyone knows, the best part of eating artichokes is the heart. Here is a video of Adana experiencing her first artichoke heart. Looks like we'll have to start buying more for our Sunday meals, 'cuz she loved it!

(By the way - apparantly Nathan didn't realize that I was videoing Adana. He thought I was just trying to take a picture. Thus the "Are you having a hard time?" comment at the end. He kept setting her up for a great shot and couldn't understand why I wasn't clicking.) :-)

My eyes! My eyes!

What is that bright, glowing orb in the sky!? I need to get out my umbrella to shade my poor, sensitive eyes. (You know you're from the Pacific Northwest if you scoff at the wimps who use an umbrella on a rainy day.)

This is for those of you who have been watching the national weather and have worried (and snickered) that we need to start building an ark soon.

By the way, if you were wondering what Adana was hiding behind her back in the first picture . . . She was sitting on a whoopy cushion. She is her Baba's girl.

Jellyfish!

Emma & I are studying Animals in science this semester. After each lesson, I try to have some sort of project to go along with the animal, to put in her science notebook. On Friday, we learned about jellyfish, so she made some yummy ones for us to eat after dinner.

Today is National Men Make Dinner Day!

Thanks to my friend, Cool, for clueing me in to this very significant holiday!

As with all important things these days, this one also has a website. Make sure you check out The Rules and Glossary.

A couple of my favorites Rules:

Rule #5: Man goes shopping for 'all' necessary ingredients. Bonus points if he takes inventory of cupboards and fridge first, before shopping trip. So you don't end up with two 64 ounce jars of pickled pimentos.

Rule #10: Man sets table, candles are lit, beverages are poured, no ketchup bottles, sour cream containers, or big boxes of salt on table.

From the Glossary:

BOIL: to heat liquid until bubbles rise and break on surface. Looks similar to something you may see in your bath-tub.

STRAIN: to stretch neck around corner of kitchen to see what wife is doing while you're making dinner.

Affiyet Olsun! (Bon Appetite!)

Poulsbo's Fish Park

Today was supposed to be the only day this week that it doesn't rain, so we headed out to visit a local park that I've been wanting to see. It is called Fish Park, and it is located right in the middle of Poulsbo. I've driven by it countless times, but I had no idea that such a fun, secluded little park was nestled just off the road.

The kids & I had a great time exploring all the trails and extensive boardwalks, and watching for wildlife. We saw bunnies, a bald eagle, a red-winged hawk, and the ripples in the water of spawning chum salmon (but the water was too murky to see them well.)

The park is ringed with this great raised boardwalk. Excellent for "hiking" on a wet Pacific Northwest day (and for scaring your little sister that there are crocodiles lurking underneath.)

Just when I finally convinced Adana that there were no crocodiles in the park, she found this sign. She spent the rest of the time convinced that there were sharks nearby, just waiting to bite her toes.

There are two of these platforms, overlooking the water that comes in from Liberty Bay. They are great for spotting salmon, heron & eagles. (But no sharks or crocodiles. We checked.)

All 4 of my kids are in this picture. There is lots of room to run and roam and explore.

Here's a video of the kids hiking. (Note: Jared is terrified of spiders.)

The perfect end to a great afternoon - Sluys Bakery. YUM!

A SURE CURE for nail biting

These bad boys may not seem like a big deal to many of you (I know a few readers of this blog have claws that would scare a tiger), but they are loooong for me. In fact, this is one of the few times in my life that I can remember seeing the white part.

I am a nail biter. I have bitten my nails all my life. I think it may be a genetic thing. My father bites his nails, and probably his father before him. (Heck, his father was from Arkansas; he probably bit his toenails.) :-P

But no more. Never again. I am here to share with you the secret to my sudden, cold-turkey nail biting cessation:

Pinworms.

Up until about a month ago, I lived blissfully ignorant of the existance of these nasty creatures. I never even considered the possibility of slimy, creepy worms living in unsuspecting intestinal tracts and emerging only at night to lay their eggs around some poor soul's anus.

Then a friend posted on her blog about how her son had them.

And how a parent goes about discovering if, in fact, your child has them. (Read this funny story to learn more.)

And how a person gets them. Which is the clincher . . . you get them by eating them.

Why, you are probably asking, would anyone EAT pinworms?! Well, most people don't do it on purpose. Rather, they are hiding - lurking - Underneath Your Fingernails.

ACK!

So, my friends, consider yourselves informed and warned. Now go forth and spread the word. All it took for my kids was telling them how pinworms are discovered. I haven't seen them biting their nails since. (PHEW!)