Pinterest Fathers Day Pressure!

So, by now you've heard of or become addicted to Pinterest, right?  Well, what started out as love and joy for me, has turned into an internet site which has now added 135,548 things to my already too long to-do list.  All of these recipes and crafts and kid activities are now haunting me - DO ME DO ME DO ME.

And Father's Day was no exception!  Hundreds of the cutest ideas you will ever see, and I had plans to make the cutest thing of all - painted frames, chalkboard thought bubbles, perfect kid photos, kids holding D-A-D letters, etc etc etc.  Oh, and the meal I was going to cook!  Angels would sing about the Thai chicken (Mark's favorite) I was going to create!

Yeah, well, here's what got done - these Fathers Day questionnaires.  No, they're not framed.  Or even wrapped.  And they ONLY got done because I'm home from church with a sick Connor who has diarrhea.

I can't complain too much, though, because Connor's intestinal ailments started at 4:00am this morning, and he woke up Mark to deal with it (thank you, my son).  So, Mark's Fathers Day started way too early, and with cleaning poop.  Although, as a dad, that IS Mark's number one job.  He scoops the dog poop in the backyard.  He probably changed more dirty diapers than I did over the course of 3 kids.  He cleans the litter box every night.  As Noah pointed out a few days ago,

"Daddy is a mighty smeller!  He can smell poop from anywhere!"

Is that astounding ability the hallmark of a great father?  If so, Mark is KING indeed.

And Mark politely declined my offer to cook today - he decided to cook his own Fathers Day meal - BBQ ribs.  It's better that way, trust me.

So, anyway Happy Fathers Day, Mark.  The kids got pretty much everything wrong except your age and your hair.....status.  Well, maybe your favorite animal IS horses, just like Shelby, and maybe you really do love Canada's fiddlehead ferns, just like..........no one!  But I do so love Noah's comment about loving his dad "because he drives safely home from Africa." 

Mark likes the idea of making me go camping.  Me, not so much.

"Fiddlehead ferns?  NOT!"

 

We love you, Markli!

Creature Feature Saturday!

Well, what was supposed to be a girls Saturday with the boys out camping, turned out to be a family creature feature day thanks to rain.  YES, my boys are kinda wimpy, first-world, suburban, white-bread kids who whimper and whine if a raindrop touches them (Do NOT look at me like that!  They certainly do NOT get that from me!  Ahem!).  Anyway, I decided they needed toughening up...

I remember watching creature features with my dad.  I don't know how I remember this since growing up in the remote mountains of the Columbia River gorge in Washington, we only had one blurry TV channel - ABC.  And of course, that was in the olden days before even VCRs (gasp!).  So, in addition to hundreds of episodes of TJ Hooker and Love Boat, I guess ABC had creature features!

Anyway, we were all laying around on Saturday morning around 9am wondering what to do with ourselves, and I stumbled across a SyFy movie called MegaGator.  YES!!!!  Paydirt!  Noah even donned his favorite monster shirt for the occasion:

Aaaaaaaaaaand his face was pretty much frozen in this expression for the whole day. It rarely changed, even when we offered him his favorite snack, Doritos.

But have you ever watched a SyFy creature feature? Woah.  Lots of blood and gore, and the acting, well, it kinda makes you wish YOU were being put out of your misery by the MegaGator.

So, we switched to a couple of Mark and I's favorite movies, the first being LAKE PLACID.  Another MegaGator movie, BUT with good actors with great chemistry, and a screamingly hilarious script.  We had an edited-down version, in which we didn't get to see the people getting edited-down, if you know what I mean.  HA HA HA

Connor abandoned our Creature Feature Movie Fest after about 20 seconds of MegaGator, though he did pop in from time to time to complain at us about watching these "idiot movies."  He was trying to be a tough guy.  But creepy music creeps Connor out, even if he won't admit it.  *Mommy must remember this for future use…heh heh heh*  Here's a typical scene in the living room from this day - Shelby disbelieving, Mark with his usual TV expression, Connor's look of studious disgust, and Noah covering his eyes:

Here's one I love - Noah, Shelby and Mark all completely engrossed:

Shelby and Mark after a particularly witty Lake Placid exchange:  "I'm rooting for the crocodile!  I hope he eats your friends whole.  Is that a crime??  To wish for the eating of law enforcement?!?"  (gotta love Betty White)

After Lake Placid ended, Noah made peace with it by saying (in a VERY small voice, especially for Noah), "Well, the crocodile was just hungry."  Shelby echoed his sentiment with, "Yeah, the humongwous crocodile was just hungwy.  It couldn't fwind crocodile food.  So it HAD to eated the people."

And with that, we moved onto Mark and I's all-time favorite creature feature, and one that would probably make both of our top ten favorite movies list - TREMORS!  We've seen it probably 537 times and never tire of it.  However, it HAD been a few years since we'd last watched it (in other words, BC - before children) and forgot how awful the language was (it's PG-13).  Oops.

Again, we love Tremors more for the hilarious script and chemistry and banter.  Well, and Kevin Bacon, of course.  That might be me more than Mark, though.

• Earl (L):  Darn it, Valentine, you never plan ahead.  I mean here it is Monday, and I'm already thinking about Wednesday.  Wait, is IS Monday, right?
• Valentine (R):  Yup, we plan ahead, that way, we don't do anything right now.  Earl explained it to me.

Maybe you have to be there, but trust me, this movie is hysterical.

You know, I think I'm doing this blog post solely because these photos of Noah CRACK ME UP so much, and I had to document them.  Is it wrong to take so much entertainment from my scared little 7-year old son, whom I love more than life itself?  Nah!

Anyway, here's my 

"Ode to the Funny Frightened Faces of Noah"

And my personal favorite, one that's going to make me laugh out loud for the rest of my life every time I see it:

Here's Shelby, not scared at all, trying to figure out a scene from Tremors:

Meanwhile, here's Noah:

Connor coming in, again to tell us how dumb we are for watching creature movies.  We told him it was just for fun.  Connor:  "IT'S ABOUT WORMS EATING PEOPLE!  HOW IS THAT FUNNY?!?!!?!?"  And then a scary scene came up, and Connor ran away.

After our double feature Creature Feature movie fest, Shelby was BEGGING to watch another one, and she wanted it to be about SNAKES.  I'm sorry, Grandma (who hates snakes).  I'm just not raising her right, I guess.  Anyhow, since we didn't have Anaconda (darn), she made do with playing "Wormie" with a cat toy:

And here's a tip, should you find yourself now wanting to watch a creature feature - don't EVER watch the sequels to Lake Placid or Tremors.  They're awful.

Finally, this seemed like a good blog post in which to post our newest iPhone app obsession - Freaky Faces!